by Sara Rosett
“And you couldn’t hear them?”
“No, but I could see Jane’s face. She had the last word. Alfred wasn’t happy. When I asked him about it, he would only tell me that it didn’t matter—that it was nothing.” She turned away. It was harder to hear her voice as she said, “I jumped to the same conclusion that you did, that Alfred was . . . flirting with her. Alfred wouldn’t say anything else. I went off to dance with another chap.”
Trying to make him jealous, I thought.
Violet went on, “I danced three or four dances with other boys. Then, because it was getting close to midnight, I went off to find him.”
“And I bet you asked him about it again?” Violet was one of the most persistent people I knew.
“He couldn’t expect me to just forget it. I found him at the side of the ballroom, laughing with some chaps as if nothing had happened. When he saw me, he said it was time for the fireworks, and we should go to the balcony upstairs for the best view. I went, but I asked him if he was ready to talk about what had happened, and he refused. And that was the last time I spoke to him.” Violet’s voice trembled. She took a handkerchief out of her handbag and pressed it to her eyes. “I didn’t speak a word to him on the stairs. I wanted him to realize just how angry I was.”
I tried to work out the timeline in my head. Alfred and Violet went upstairs shortly before the fireworks started, and I’d seen Alfred pushed over the balcony at the beginning of the fireworks display. Something was off. I slowed the motor as we caught up to a lorry on a narrow stretch of the road. “But you said you never went outside on the balcony—that you went to your room instead. How could you know he was blackmailing Jane if he didn’t tell you before the fireworks started?”
Violet jerked the handkerchief away from her face. “Because I was so infuriated I couldn’t stay in my room. I waited a few minutes, then slipped into Alfred’s room. He was on the balcony, and I knew he didn’t see me because his back was turned to me. He never turned around. Alfred had this little book, a notebook—” She made an impatient gesture, waving the handkerchief. “It makes more sense if I tell you about the notebook first. Alfred and I argued about it.”
“That’s not particularly surprising. All couples disagree.”
“I suppose. Alfred had a small black leather notebook. I asked to borrow it one day to make a note, but he wouldn’t let me have it.”
“And that piqued your curiosity, but I don’t see what it has to do with Alfred’s death.”
“I’m getting there. You need the background to understand it properly. Where was I? Oh, the notebook. He wouldn’t let me see it, so of course I was curious. Don’t look at me like that. You’d be exactly the same way.”
“Yes, I suppose I would be. I am a terribly curious creature.”
Violet said, “Alfred and I were to be married. If he wouldn’t share his notebook with me, what else was he hiding?”
“A good question.” I didn’t add that Alfred had obviously been hiding quite a bit more than a notebook.
“So I decided I’d find it and take a quick peek. Oh, I know that’s not the done thing, but as I said, he was going to be my husband, and I couldn’t have him hiding things from me. Yesterday I stopped by his room to ask him a question. As I walked in, he put the notebook away in the middle drawer of the writing desk. So last night, when I was so upset, I decided I’d take his idiotic notebook and see what was so private that he wouldn’t share it with me.”
She focused on smoothing her gloves as she said, “I slipped into his room while he was on the balcony watching the fireworks. I pulled out the drawer, and there was the notebook.” She lifted her chin. “I took it back to my room.”
“Was there anyone else on the balcony with him?”
“No, not that I could see, but the balcony stretches along the back of the house. Anyone from the other rooms on that side of the house could have come out onto the balcony from their room and joined him there.”
“That’s true.” Lady Pamela and Thea had rooms farther along the corridor on that same side of the house. The French windows from their rooms would open onto the balcony.
I inched the motor forward, hoping to pass the lorry when the road opened up. “So, what was in the notebook?”
“The first part of it was random jottings, bits and bobs. Nothing important. A note to telephone his tailor, a reminder to order more milk. Can you believe it?”
“It does seem odd. Did you look through the whole book?”
“I did, and I was feeling indignant by the time I got a few pages into it. They were such trivial things. Why would he keep me from looking at it?” Her gaze dropped, and she plucked at the trim on her handbag. “But in the last few pages, I found a list of names . . . of a sort. Across from some of them were dates and amounts of money. A folded-up piece of paper was tucked in the back. It was typewritten and obviously the kind of thing you’d type up if you were using an exercise book. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog—that kind of thing.”
“Jane’s typewriting practice.”
“Yes. I didn’t realize what it was then, of course.”
“So Alfred was blackmailing more people than Jane.” Aunt Caroline and Gwen’s instincts had been right about Alfred. He wasn’t a gentleman. I’d thought he was a slippery one—that too-ready smile—but even I hadn’t expected him to be a blackmailer.
“It does look that way.”
“You said there were names listed?”
“Sometimes. One was a single initial J, which must have been Jane. And then there were some that had to be nicknames.”
“Such as?”
“Well, there was a Lady Snooty listed. I figured that had to be Lady Pamela.”
“Most likely.”
“That was the most obvious one. The others . . . I wasn’t sure who they could be,” Violet said.
“Well, this is interesting.”
“What do you mean?”
The road finally widened, and I shifted gears. We zipped around the lorry. “Blackmail is an excellent motivation for murder. Do you have the notebook with you?”
“No.”
“You left it in a safe place, then?”
Violet didn’t answer, and I turned toward her. “You did hide it? I suppose it’s safe enough in your room . . .”
She raised her chin. “No, I burned it.”
“You burned it?”
“The wall! Watch out for that wall.”
I was so shocked I’d let the Morris drift to the spongy earth at the edge of the road. I jerked the wheel, brought the motor back onto the road, and slowed so I could turn to Violet. “Don’t you realize you destroyed a piece of evidence that could be used to show other people had a motive to want to hurt Alfred?”
“I realize that now, but when I found out Alfred had died, I was so shocked. I wasn’t thinking straight. I knew I shouldn’t have the notebook. I couldn’t get it back into his room, not with the police in there. And I didn’t know how long it would be before the police might want to search my room. When they found that notebook, how would I explain having it? I’d have to tell them I’d been in Alfred’s room. The footman had seen me come upstairs with Alfred. If the police figured out that I was in Alfred’s room before he died, then what would I do?”
I tapped the steering wheel. “The fire in your room this morning. You weren’t cold. That’s when you burned it.”
“It seemed the best thing to do at the time.”
“You didn’t save anything from it?”
“No. I stirred the fire until even the cover was gone.”
“I have a pencil and some paper in my handbag.” I pushed it across the seat to her. “I suggest you reconstruct the list as best you remember.”
Chapter Thirteen
By the time we arrived back at Archly Manor, Violet had recreated as much of the information from the list as she could remember.
We turned through the gates, and I pulled over in the shade. Violet handed me
her list. “This is all I can remember.”
Violet had not excelled in penmanship, and writing while the motor was moving made her notes even harder to read, but I was able to decipher the first name. “Lady Snooty,” I read. “I agree, that’s probably Lady Pamela, which is interesting.” I thought I probably knew what Alfred was blackmailing Lady Pamela about, but I didn’t share that information with Violet. I went on to the next word. “Muncher? Any idea who that could be?”
Violet shook her head. “Not the faintest.”
“And no amount was listed beside this name? Or couldn’t you remember?”
“No, that one was blank.”
“Perhaps Alfred tried to blackmail this Muncher person but wasn’t successful. Perhaps Alfred’s list contained blackmail targets as well as people he’d been successful in getting money from.”
Violet threw herself back against the seat. “It’s hopeless. The only one that we have any idea about is the initial J. But we know that Jane was on the train when Alfred died. The only thing we’ve accomplished today is to eliminate Jane as a suspect.”
On the way back to Archly Manor, we’d stopped again at the house with the blue door and the white shutters, and I’d spoken to Mr. Brown. He’d confirmed he’d picked up a young woman with blonde hair at the front gates of Archly Manor a little before midnight the previous evening. He had driven her to Finchbury Crossing, the nearest train station, and waited until he saw her board the last train to London. I knew it was the last train to London, and it didn’t stop at any nearby villages. I’d checked the train schedule when I was in London in case Gwen couldn’t bring me to Archly Manor.
Violet said, “We’re not making any progress.”
“I disagree.” I tapped the list. “We know Alfred was holding something over these people. Any one of them could have decided they didn’t want to continue to pay and pushed him over the balcony.”
“But most of the amounts are so small—trifling, really. Would someone really kill to avoid paying a few pounds?”
I ran my gaze down the column where Violet had noted the amounts of money. The smallest amount of money was listed next to the initial J, while the rest were mostly a few pounds, except for the amount beside the name Lady Snooty.
“I can’t say for sure those amounts are exactly right, but they were all small.” Violet pointed to Lady Snooty. “Except for Lady Snooty. I’m sure it was ten guineas.”
“Yes, most of these amounts are fairly minor, but think about it. Would you want to go on paying a few pounds every week for who knows how long—possibly the rest of your life? And what if Alfred asked for more? Or decided that he’d rather sell his information to the newspapers?”
Violet shifted in the seat, frowning. “I still find it hard to believe Alfred was doing this. I didn’t know him at all. Mum and Gwen were right.”
It seemed the fact that her sister and mother had accurately assessed Alfred’s character bothered her almost as much as his duplicity.
“And what do you mean, sell the information to the newspapers?” Violet asked. “They wouldn’t care if Jane was typing away hours before dawn in Sebastian’s study. That’s not anything the gossip sheets would be interested in.”
“But we don’t know what information Alfred had on these other people,” I said, thinking of Lady Pamela. I’d heard her father was a stickler for propriety. Lady Pamela wouldn’t want hints linking her with drugs in the papers, but I didn’t share that information with Violet. I loved her, but Violet had a tendency to speak before she thought.
I turned my attention back to the list and deciphered the next scrawl, which was the abbreviation Dr. “Who do you suppose was the doctor? The one here in the village or someone in London?”
“Who knows? It’s so vague. It could be anyone.”
“No, it couldn’t be anyone. Let’s see what we can work out. Did Alfred ever mention going to the doctor? Was he sick recently?”
Violet shook her head. “No.”
“What about your friends? Do you know any physicians?”
“No.”
“Or it could be a professor. What about that? Anyone like that in your circle of friends?”
Violet gave a little laugh. “No. None of our friends are brainy.”
“Well, we’ll start with the doctor here. What do you think about the last one, Songbird?”
“Again, no idea. No one in our circle is known for being an excellent singer—except Alfred, of course. No one could sing as well as he could. I can’t think who it could be.”
“Well, we’ll just have to find out, won’t we?”
I released the brake, and we rolled on through the extensive grounds around Archly Manor, the dappled shade streaming over us as we followed the curving road. I said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the inspector from Scotland Yard arrives this afternoon. He might already be here.”
Violet gripped the seat and turned fully toward me. “Scotland Yard?”
“I overheard the police inspector and the chief constable. They were set on handing the case off to someone else. All of the attention and notoriety it will get has made them want to wash their hands of it as quickly as possible. You should tell the Scotland Yard man about Alfred’s notebook.”
“Oh, I’d much rather you do it. I’ll get flustered and say something wrong and end up arrested.”
“I doubt that. And if I tell them about it, I believe it’s called ‘hearsay.’ You’re the only one who actually saw the notebook.”
“And burned it.” Her shoulders drooped.
I stopped the motor on the sweep in front of Archly Manor. As soon as we stepped inside the reception hall, a new police constable met us. “Miss Belgrave and Miss Stone? Please come with me. Inspector Longly wants to see you.”
Violet shot me a distressed look. I smiled encouragingly and followed the constable down the hall. Violet caught my arm and spoke low. “I don’t think I can do it again—answer all those questions. I know they’ll try to trip me up and confuse me, and I’ll say something wrong.”
“Nonsense, you can’t say anything wrong if you stick to the truth.”
The constable escorted us to the study. A man, probably in his early thirties, with light brown hair and a thin mustache was seated behind the desk where Police Inspector Jennings had been the night before. The man had what I supposed would normally be a friendly, open countenance, but at that moment, he was frowning and looked severely put out. He stood and focused on Violet.
“Miss Stone?”
“Yes.” Her reply was barely a whisper, and I was slightly amazed to see my normally fiery and energetic cousin answer in such a subdued manner.
“I’m Inspector Longly. The investigation into your fiancé’s death has been handed over to my department, and I have a few questions for you.”
Violet swallowed. “Of course.”
“But first, I must ask, why did you leave Archly Manor?”
Violet twisted the handle of her handbag. “It was—well, you see . . .” Violet glanced at me.
I stepped forward. “I’m afraid it’s all my fault, Inspector.” I extended my hand. “I’m Olive Belgrave, Violet’s cousin. I ran up to London today, and Violet decided to come with me.”
He glanced down at my hand. What I thought was a resigned expression chased across his face. He extended his hand. Not his right hand, but his left. The light coming in from the French windows behind him silhouetted his figure, but as my eyes adjusted, I realized his right sleeve was empty and pinned to his jacket. After a moment of shuffling my handbag and gloves, I extended my left hand, and we shook hands.
He motioned to a pair of chairs for us, then moved around behind the desk. “Why did you think it would be fine for you to take a little jaunt up to town?”
Violet and I took a seat, and I said, “We weren’t told to stay here at Archly Manor, and we were returning within a few hours. I didn’t see how it could be a problem.”
“It is very much a problem when an i
nvestigation is ongoing and the people I need to interview are not present.”
“But we’re here now. It’s not even teatime. Surely your investigation hasn’t been thrown off that severely by not being able to speak to us right away. In fact, I bet you only arrived here an hour or so before us.”
“My arrival time does not matter,” he said, but I saw a slight upturn at one corner of his mouth for a brief second. “Now, what was so urgent that it required both of you to go to London?”
“One of the maids packed up her belongings and left during the party last night,” I said. “She had had an argument with Alfred, and I thought that she was just as viable a suspect as my cousin.”
“So you’re doing my job for me?”
“I couldn’t be sure you would be more open minded than your associate who interviewed me last night. It was clear that he’d decided Violet was the guilty party and would look no further. I felt it important to present you with other options.”
At the mention of Inspector Jennings, Longly sighed. “You intended to force my hand?” His tone was less heated than it had been.
“If necessary.” I allowed my spine to touch the back of the chair. His anger had burned off, and I didn’t think he’d snap at Violet.
“I assure you I won’t seize on one suspect to the exclusion of all others. Everything will be considered.” The door opened and a constable with a notebook entered. “Good, we can begin now.” Inspector Longly turned to Violet. “I’m afraid I have to ask you to go over everything again. It’s important we have all the facts clear and down on paper.”
Violet gave a small nod.
Inspector Longly said to me, “If you’ll wait in the reception hall, I’ll send for you in a moment.”
I gave Violet’s shoulder a pat on the way out, then went to the reception hall and paced up and down, unable to sit. About a quarter of an hour later, Violet came out of the study and gave a slight shake of her head as she passed me and went up the stairs. The constable was right behind her, and he escorted me back to the study, where I took the same seat as before.