Murder Most Fair

by Anna Lee Huber

  I arched a single eyebrow at this absurd accusation. “Except I was with my husband and my brother Tim during the hours in which the murder happened.”

  His gaze darted to Sidney’s face and back. “Maybe they’re lying for you. Or maybe they’re part of it.”

  Rather than take the same umbrage at this suggestion as I did, Sidney seemed coolly amused. “And what earthly motive would we have had to do so?”

  Isaac’s face reddened with anger. “Maybe she was spying on you. Maybe she knew something about you that you didn’t want others to find out.”

  I continued to glare at him in silent disdain despite the fact that this insight was not far off the mark. We hadn’t killed Bauer, of course, but I did wonder what she knew about me. And whether she realized I had worked for the British Secret Service.

  But how had Isaac come up with such an idea? He had never been particularly insightful, and I doubted that had changed in the past five years. So what had inspired his notion that there might be something Bauer knew that I wished to hide?

  “Really? A German spy in our midst. How terribly cliché,” I drawled. “And what, pray tell, could she possibly have been sent to the wilds of Yorkshire to learn? The secret to making Wensleydale cheese perhaps? Or worse, maybe she meant to lay siege to Bolton Castle.” I knew I was outright mocking him now, but he had made me so irate that it was all I could do not to slug him as I’d done when we were children and he’d derided Tim for not knowing the proper order of his kings and queens.

  Isaac was practically shaking with fury, and finding I had no desire to hear what else he had to say, I turned and strolled away.

  Tante Ilse stood huddled inside a fur-lined greatcoat that was now much too large for her shriveled frame, gazing down into the hole where Bauer’s coffin rested. Her expression was so haggard, so forlorn, I worried she might tumble over the edge. So I hastened toward her across the snow-trampled ground, wrapping a supporting arm around her waist, and threading my other arm through my muff so that I could clasp one of her hands. She looked up at me with watery eyes and then resumed her contemplation of the earth.

  “Come away from here, Tante,” I urged gently. “It is cold, and Fräulein Bauer would not wish you to catch a chill on her behalf.”

  Mother stepped away from the vicar and moved to her other side. Her gaze was hard as it cut to me. “Yes, let us return to the house. Frederick?” she called over her shoulder, asking for my father’s assistance.

  “I can help, Mother. You and Father have already done so much.” And it was true. Mother had remained by Tante Ilse’s side more than any of us, caring for her in her grief as best she could.

  “That’s quite all right, Verity. Let Tante Ilse take your father’s strong arm.”

  I frowned at her icy tone, not certain what I’d done to upset her.

  Father patted my shoulder, his consoling gaze telling me he knew. Not that he would explain it to me. I passed my great-aunt off to him, watching their slow progress across the uneven ground. It had just occurred to me to wonder if Father had forgotten our discussion the previous evening, when he called out to my sister in his measured voice. “Come, Grace.”

  She turned from where she stood with Cyril in surprise. “But I thought to ride with . . .”

  “You’ll see him at the house. I have need of you now.”

  This was a statement Grace couldn’t argue with, not without sounding insolent and childish. But it didn’t stop her from casting a mistrustful glance my way. My sister was far from stupid.

  Aware of our intentions, Freddy did his part by taking Tim’s arm and directing him toward his motorcar, leaving me and Sidney to manage Cyril alone.

  “There’s no reason for you to drive out to Brock House on your own. We can give you a lift,” Sidney declared, draping his arm around Cyril’s shoulders in a bonhomie fashion.

  “Oh, but how will I return to Hawes?” he balked, staggering along as Sidney propelled him forward.

  “I’m sure someone will be coming back in this direction. Besides, this will give us a chance to get to know one another better.”

  I might have told Sidney that these words and the amount of teeth he flashed at Cyril when he smiled were not doing anything to soothe his anxieties, but then I realized that was precisely Sidney’s intention.

  Cyril swallowed. “Oh, well, yes. But this is really not necessary.”

  “Oh, but it is.” Sidney opened the rear door of his Pierce-Arrow, staring at him until he relented and slid inside. Meanwhile I settled into the passenger seat, turning to gaze over my shoulder at him.

  I made pleasant small talk until we reached the outskirts of the village, while all the while Cyril tugged fretfully at his collar. But as the motorcar’s speed increased, my banter grew more serious.

  “We understand you spoke to Fräulein Bauer on the morning of the day she was killed?”

  Cyril rolled his shoulders, undoubtedly having anticipated this question. “Yes, Grace told me that Mr. Hardcastle told you he’d seen us talking, but I don’t know why he did so.”

  “Are you saying he lied? That you didn’t pull your motorcar to the side of the road by our drive to say something to her?”

  “Well, I might have greeted her on my way to Long Shaw.”

  “Might have?” I asked incredulously, sharing a look with Sidney.

  “All right, yes, I greeted her. But it was merely a passing comment.”

  “And yet, you stopped and pulled to the side of the road to do so. You didn’t simply wave.”

  “I . . . I believe I asked after your great-aunt,” he added in a choked voice.

  I searched his face, trying to understand why he was lying. He must have realized he wasn’t very good at it, and yet he persisted in doing so. Either he was playacting, or the most ill-suited Military Intelligence officer I’d ever met. But which was it?

  I decided to try a different tack. “You told us multiple times that you spent most of the day at Long Shaw with your uncle. And yet every minute of your time there can’t be accounted for. Not to mention the fact that Long Shaw is but a short distance from the field barn where Bauer was murdered. You could have slipped out, killed her, and then returned, hoping everyone would be none the wiser.”

  Cyril’s eyes widened with panic. “But I didn’t! I didn’t kill her! Do you think I’m mad? Why would I do such a thing?”

  “It seemed to me you already knew each other,” I countered. “Your reaction to her presence, pedaling past on her bicycle when you dropped Grace off at the end of the drive the day of her arrival, seemed unduly strong. In fact, it looked very much like fear.”

  “It wasn’t fear!”

  “Then what was it?”

  “Surprise maybe,” he hedged.

  “Surprise?”

  But then he tried to backpedal. “I don’t know. How would you feel if someone suddenly appeared where you hadn’t expected them to?”

  “So, you’d met before?”

  “No! I didn’t say that. I only meant . . .” He broke off, turning away in exasperation.

  I gripped the back of the seat to steady myself as the Pierce-Arrow swung through a turn. “You were surprised to see her here,” I finished for him. “But where else would you have expected to see her?”

  “I don’t know. In the village, maybe.”

  “In the village?”

  He stilled as if he’d just realized he’d admitted something he shouldn’t have.

  “Then you had seen her before.”

  He eyed me with acrimonious dislike. “Yes.”

  “Did you speak with her?”

  “No more than a cordial greeting,” he sniped.

  Now this I could tell was the truth, though it was counter to what I’d wanted to hear. I tilted my head, studying him closely. “And yet somehow I don’t think you left the encounter with a good impression of her. Why is that?”

  He didn’t answer, but he also didn’t refute what I’d said.

  “W
as it because she was German?”

  “No. Besides, I didn’t know that then.”

  “Not pretty enough?” I baited, catching Sidney’s eye as he listened intently, though he was focused on the road before him.

  His jaw tightened with anger. “No.”

  “Not taken in by your charms?”

  He glared at me in response, the veins standing out on either side of his forehead.

  “Perhaps she all but ignored you.”

  “It was because of the way she looked at me!”

  I stared at him in disbelief, not understanding. “The way she looked at you?”

  “Yes.” He made a sound of disgust, whether at himself or us. “Do you think I don’t see it? Do you think I’m not accustomed to it by now? The way people see or hear of my damaged hand and instantly assume I’m a coward.” He flexed the fingers of his left hand and then cradled it in his lap. “I don’t know how she knew about it. Maybe the servants were gossiping or she saw the scars. People assume it’s a bullet hole, but it’s not.” He laughed bitterly. “I wasn’t even in the trenches when it happened.”

  “What did happen?” I asked evenly.

  “A motorcar accident. I was driving a couple of brass to a forward command post when a shell hit the road just before us. I swerved, but the left front tire clipped it and rolled us. Broke my collarbone and a leg, but those knit neatly. The large shard of glass that got embedded in my hand was not so forgiving.”

  By then we’d reached the house, but Sidney halted the motorcar at the edge of the drive.

  “And yet everyone assumes the worst?” I pressed, not without sympathy.

  Cyril had turned to stare forlornly out at the barren trees still dusted with snow. “Though I’m not certain the truth is any better.” His pale skin flushed with shame. “No one wants to hear of a junior staff officer wrecking a motorcar. Not when there are genuine war heroes like Sidney Kent and the Townsend boys about.” His face twisted with acrimony. “Ironic, isn’t it? I had the easy war. Suffered a minor injury and returned home, for the most part, in one piece. I should be thanking my lucky stars. But instead I find myself envious of those poor bastards lying in the hospital, missing a limb.”

  Cyril’s confession was so raw it had to be genuine. For he was not only ashamed of his injury, but also ashamed of his desire for glory and his inability to cope with other people’s assumptions about him. Was that why he allowed Grace to cling to him? For the sake of his own vanity? It would explain the embarrassed reluctance he sometimes exhibited. He craved her adulation, but was also chagrinned by his need for it.

  Grace had said the other girls had flocked about him at Mrs. Wild’s garden party, but I wondered if that was still the case. If the gossip surrounding his injuries had soured their interest.

  “Fräulein Bauer looked at you as if she thought you were a coward?” I prompted him, trying to bring him around to the original reason we’d corralled him into the Pierce-Arrow.

  “Yes,” he mumbled sullenly. “I didn’t know at the time she worked for Mrs. Vischering. That’s why I was surprised to see her.”

  “And when you stopped to speak with her on the road.”

  He didn’t answer at first, and I thought he might continue to deny it, but then he heaved a sigh. “I was trying to explain how I’d gotten the injury, but she didn’t want to hear it. She rode off before I could finish.” He turned his head so that he could meet my gaze. “I know it’s foolish. Why should I care what a maid thought? But the judgment in her eyes, it had been so . . . cutting. When I happened upon her on my way to Long Shaw, I found I couldn’t not try to make her understand.”

  He was right. It made little sense. But that was what also made it so believable.

  I nodded to Sidney, telling him to drive on.

  “Did you follow her later and try to make her understand?” I posited, scouring the trees in the direction I’d last seen the straw-haired stranger for any sign of him before turning to gauge Cyril’s reaction.

  His shoulders had slumped and his expression turned bleak—all of the fight having gone out of him. “Did I follow her to the field barn, do you mean?” He shook his head. “No. As God is my witness, I did not.”

  I found I wanted to believe him, but simply wanting to did not make it true. After all, he’d just provided us with a possible motive for his murdering Bauer, even as mad as it sounded.

  Grace was waiting at the gate to the courtyard as we rounded the drive, her arms crossed over her chest in evident fury. Much as I regretted the necessity, I could not regret the tactic we’d employed to get Cyril alone. We never would have gotten the answers we needed from him with Grace present. She not only would have hindered our efforts, but he would have also balked at confessing them in her presence.

  I offered Grace an apologetic smile as I passed by her on my way up to the house, but the cold glare she continued to aim at me told me I would not be easily forgiven.

  Once inside, I hurried up to Tante Ilse’s bedchamber, where Abbott had told me she’d been taken to lie down. My chest tightened with worry. I knew Bauer’s death had been hard on her, and funerals were never easy, but she seemed weaker with each day that passed. More than ever, I was certain something else was wrong.

  I opened the door to find her reclining in bed. Her face was pale, and the lines scoring it more pronounced, as if she was in physical pain. I glanced at Mother where she stood next to the bureau, surmising she’d just dosed her with her medicines, including laudanum.

  “Tante,” I said, sinking down on the side of the bed to take her hand.

  “Verity,” she said, patting my hand as she offered me a faint smile. “You are a good girl.”

  Guilt lanced through me at receiving this praise. “I’m sorry I haven’t been here to sit with you more.”

  “Nonsense. I know you are out searching for Bauer’s killer.”

  I glanced at mother again as Tante Ilse continued to speak, finding her mouth clamped in a tight line. Her anger had evidently not abated.

  “That is where you are needed. You were always a clever girl, a woman of action. Just like during the war.”

  I stiffened at these words, worrying Tante Ilse would say something more about the war in front of Mother, but she was cannier than that.

  “I know it cost you much,” she murmured in a softer voice. “More than some realize. But most wounds can be mended with a bit of time and patience.”

  That she was speaking of my relationship with Mother, with my family, was obvious. And yet she did not really understand the full extent of our estrangement.

  I could see that the laudanum was taking effect then, softening her features, and shrinking her pupils. In contrast, Mother seemed to be growing more irate, slamming drawers and muttering under her breath. Considering the number of times she had scolded me and my siblings for such behavior, calling it ungenteel, I knew she had worked herself up into a righteous fury. Past experience had taught me there was no use discussing matters with her when she was in such a state, so I remained by my great-aunt’s side, hoping Mother would take herself away to blow out the storm brewing inside her elsewhere.

  But Tante Ilse did not seem to understand this.

  “Sarah, what has worked you into such a bother?” she asked. “You seem to hold some apple of discord.”

  I cringed, knowing full well what her bone of contention was. Me.

  Mother finished folding the shawl in her hand and thumped it down on the vanity table near the window. “You want to know why I’m so bothered?” She gestured to me sharply. “This ‘good girl’ of mine, who has so much empathy to spare for you after your maid’s death, could not even be bothered to offer me a smidgen of compassion when my own son was shot down over France.”

  “That’s not true,” I protested, albeit with no heat. “I empathized as best as I could.”

  “Yes, when I telephoned. But you couldn’t be bothered to travel home and hold my hand.”

  My voice quavered
with emotion, but I kept my calm by staring fixedly at the bed. “You know why I couldn’t. I’ve explained it to you many times. But I am sorry I didn’t come sooner. I truly am.”

  “Yes, your critical war work and the sporadic nature of the train schedules.” She scoffed, ignoring my apology. “Those excuses barely held up to scrutiny then, and they certainly don’t now.” She arched her chin. “You simply didn’t want to halt your drinking and carousing.”

  “That’s not true, Mother. You weren’t there, and you don’t know.” I scowled, struggling to keep the resentment from my tone. “No matter what Matilda may have reported to you. My presence was needed in London for my war work.”

  “She’s right, Sarah,” Tante Ilse chimed in to say.

  “What do you know of the matter?” Mother snapped.

  “More than you do,” she answered, unruffled by her niece-in-law’s outrage. “Your trouble, Sarah, dear, is that you’ve always seen things how you wish them to be rather than what they are.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Precisely what I said. You were hurt and angered by Rob’s death, and so rather than direct that anger at God, or your government, or at Rob himself for joining up to fight, you turned it on the person who was not here to defend herself.”

  “Stuff and nonsense!” Mother proclaimed with a splutter. “You’re merely taking her portion. As you’ve always done.”

  “Not when it wasn’t warranted. But she’s apologized for not coming home sooner, and I know her reasons are justified.” Tante Ilse raised her hand, halting Mother’s answering tirade with a shaky flick of her wrist. “You must stop telling her who she should be, and accept her for who she is. Verity has always danced out of line. And you have more reason to be grateful for that than you will ever realize.” Her gaze shifted to me, wavering, and then boring into mine with her iron will. “And you must also learn to value your mother for her strengths. There is a reason she inspires such fierce, undemanding loyalty in others, just as there is a reason you do. In times gone by, she is the type of woman on which the bedrock of many a village, tribe, and clan would have pivoted through fair times and foul, contrary to what male historians would say.” Her eyes flashed at this last utterance before she subsided back into the bedding, her vitality all but draining from her.