The Maid’s Secret

by Emily Organ

  “I had my reasons, Inspector; the main one being pride. No one wishes it to become public knowledge that he has a cuckold for a son.”

  “I appreciate it is a sensitive matter, Mr Lombard. Have you ever discussed it with Mr Glenville?” Inspector Trotter asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “Did you show the letter to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did he have any idea who might have written it?”

  “He said he couldn’t be certain, but he suspected that it was the housekeeper’s handwriting.”

  I accidentally blotted the page with ink when I heard this last part.

  Mrs Craughton?

  “You believe the housekeeper, Mrs Craughton, wrote you a letter to inform you that Miss Sophia was meeting with another prospective suitor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you discuss it with her?”

  “Not directly, no. Glenville told me he’d speak to her about it. Like me, he was rather embarrassed by the situation. The wedding had been arranged for such a long time, you see, and the future of our businesses depended on the union. I hoped that Glenville would sort it out. He clearly didn’t, because the girl was off gallivanting again just last week, was she not?”

  “Did you feel any anger towards Miss Sophia?”

  “No.”

  “Mr Lombard, can I ask if you ever approached Mr and Mrs Glenville about your son marrying Miss Jane instead?” asked James.

  Ralph Lombard reddened.

  “Did you?” asked James again. “It would make sense, would it not, if the proposed marriage to Miss Sophia wasn’t going to plan? After all, your ultimate goal was to unite your family businesses.”

  “It was a fleeting thought,” admitted Ralph Lombard after a long pause.

  “Did you discuss it with them?”

  “Briefly. But they have other plans for Miss Jane. She is to marry a society man. She has this patroness, this elderly dowager, who has taken an interest in her future.”

  “But despite this, you made the request, Mr Lombard, because you were not convinced that Miss Sophia would be a suitable wife for your son. Is that an accurate appraisal?”

  “No!”

  Chapter 33

  “Well done, Blakely,” said Inspector Trotter once Ralph Lombard had left the room. “What made you so sure that the Lombards were holding something back?”

  “I wasn’t,” replied James. “It was a bit of luck, really. I was getting tired of the rather dull replies to our questions. I decided it was worth a shot to find out whether they knew more about Miss Sophia than they had cared to admit.”

  “It paid off,” I said. “Well done, James!”

  “I don’t think the Lombards cared which of the Glenville daughters their son married,” continued James. “The important matter was that he was married into the Glenville family, so that their son’s personal and professional future was secured. Perhaps Miss Sophia was proving to be too much of a troublemaker for their liking.”

  I considered this theory. It made sense.

  Besides, hadn’t Mrs Lombard sat in the chair upon which the empty packet of cyanide had been found?

  “Now we will need to speak to Mrs Craughton again,” said James. “We need to ascertain why she sent such a letter to the Lombards.”

  The housekeeper refused to speak to James and Inspector Trotter with me in the room taking down the notes.

  “The girl is my junior,” she said, giving me a withering glance.

  While Mrs Craughton was in the library, I went down to the kitchen to make some tea. Maisie stood at the table cleaning silver cutlery. She looked painfully thin and miserable.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Maisie?” I asked. “I’m worried about you.”

  “Why?” She looked up at me, her eyes wide and fearful.

  “You seem so sad.”

  “Yeah, well, Miss Sophia’s dead and I’m worried it’s ’cause of summink I done.”

  “Such as what, Maisie? What might you have done?”

  She rubbed repeatedly at the handle of the fork in her hand.

  “It was nuffink much. I didn’t mean no ’arm by it. It’s proberly nuffink do with what ’appened.”

  “What is it you’re trying to tell me, Maisie?”

  “Nuffink. It’s nuffink.”

  “But it must be something, because I can see that it’s bothering you. Even something which seems small and irrelevant might be important. That’s what Inspector Blakely and Inspector Trotter told me.”

  “I ain’t tellin’ ’em nuffink!”

  “There’s nothing to worry about. They need all the information they can get, that’s all. They won’t hold you responsible for anything you may have done.”

  “You don’t understand ’ow it really is, Flo. You ain’t been ’ere long enough ter understand.”

  Her face hardened, and I could tell that the moment when she had been ready to confide in me had passed.

  “Maisie, it’s important.”

  “But it ain’t, though.” She held up the fork to examine it, then rubbed at it furiously once again.

  “Please, Maisie.”

  I realised that the more I pleaded with her, the more determined she was to keep from me what was on her mind.

  Was she really in danger, as James suspected?

  I knew that I would need to be careful if there was any truth to his suspicions.

  “Thank you for your help today, Miss Green,” said Inspector Trotter as I handed him the notes I had written down during the interviews. “I’ll take these back to the station and have a read through them. Same time tomorrow, Blakely?”

  “Indeed. See you then, Trotter. We have Viscount Wyndham and Lady Wyndham coming tomorrow.”

  Inspector Trotter quit the room, leaving me and James alone at the table in the library.

  “How did you get on with the housekeeper?” I asked.

  “She admits that she sent the letter to the Lombards. She said that she hadn’t mentioned it sooner because she hadn’t considered it relevant. As to why she sent it, I simply don’t know. She says that she wanted the Lombards to know what Miss Sophia was really like. I don’t think she held the girl in high regard, did she?”

  “She didn’t seem to. She has often called her ungrateful. I wonder if Mrs Craughton was even envious of Miss Sophia. She saw a clever young woman who had everything she could possibly want given to her, and yet she didn’t seem at all happy with her lot. Mrs Craughton probably didn’t understand it. I don’t see why she felt the need to meddle in the proposed marriage, however.”

  “Exactly. And I don’t know why she didn’t tell us sooner that she knew Miss Sophia had another suitor. She didn’t admit that to you, did she?”

  “No.”

  “She sketched a plan of where everyone was sitting that evening. Does it appear accurate to you?”

  I looked at the sketch. Mrs Craughton had clearly labelled each person.

  “Yes, it looks about right to me,” I said. “Do you still think Mr Glenville is behind this, James?”

  “I believe so. But there’s little evidence pointing to him at the moment.”

  “You still don’t like him, do you?”

  “I don’t, I’m afraid.”

  “He gave me his permission to help you today.”

  “Yes, he did. That’s something to be grateful for, isn’t it?”

  “There’s more evidence connecting the Lombards to Miss Sophia’s death than there is connecting Mr Glenville.”

  “That seems to be true at the moment, Penny, but let’s wait and see. Oh, darn it! I meant to mention something about the cyanide packet to Trotter.”

  James leafed through his notebook and pulled out a small envelope. Inside it was the empty packet of poison.

  “I was examining this yesterday evening as I mulled over the day’s events,” he said. “And look here. There’s something interesting on one side of this packet.”

 
He laid it in his palm and moved closer to me, so that I could see better. My heart skipped as I smelt the familiar scent of his eau de cologne.

  “Look. On this side of the packet the paper is slightly thinner, as if some of it has been torn away. And have you noticed this slight red stain?”

  I peered more closely at the square of paper in the palm of his hand. “Where?”

  “The light’s not very bright in here, is it?”

  James glanced around the room before walking over to the mantelpiece and fetching a candle.

  “Here.” He placed it on the table and lit it with the flint he normally used to light his pipe. “That’s better.”

  He sat down next to me, even closer this time. “Now can you see it, Penny?”

  I stared at the packet of poison in the bright, flickering candlelight. “Yes, I see it now.”

  There was a small patch of roughened paper, as if a part of it had been ripped off, and I could see the faint red mark James had mentioned.

  “In fact, if I hold this up to the candle, you can see the light shines more brightly through the part where the paper is thinner. Lean in, Penny, so you can see better.”

  I lent in close, so that our shoulders pressed together. I didn’t realise how near I was until my cheek brushed against his, and I was slightly startled by the roughness of his stubble against my face.

  “I see now,” I said quietly.

  But I wasn’t thinking about the empty packet of poison he was holding up. Instead, my thoughts were consumed by how close to him I was at that moment, and how I could hear his soft breath by my ear. I had kissed him once before, while under the influence of alcohol, and had regretted it deeply afterwards. This time I had no excuse to make a second attempt, so I resisted the urge and remained where I was, holding my breath and making the most of this rare moment of intimacy.

  “Do you know what I think?” he asked softly.

  “What?” I asked cautiously, wondering whether he would refer to the packet of poison or our inappropriate closeness to one another.

  “I think this packet has been stuck to something.”

  James turned his face toward me and I felt his warm breath on my cheek. I didn’t dare look at him because I felt sure that I would try to kiss him again. I reminded myself that he was engaged to be married, urging my heart to forget any attraction I felt toward him. I removed my spectacles and stared resolutely at the paper packet in his hand.

  “Do you?” I practically whispered.

  With the candle burning in front of us, the rest of the room dimmed into darkness. It seemed as if James and I were the only two people in the world.

  “Yes. I think someone has attached this packet to something with a blob of wax,” he said. “That’s what the reddish mark is. Then they’ve pulled it off again, and some of the paper has been torn off by the wax. Somewhere there must be a piece of wax with some paper residue from this packet stuck to it.”

  “I think you may be right. I can’t think of anything else which would leave such a mark on the packet. That’s very clever of you, James.”

  “There’s no need for flattery. I only reached this conclusion after studying the packet for a long time yesterday evening. I don’t have much else to do in the evenings, you know.”

  “Don’t you?”

  I finally turned to face him. He was so close that I could see the candle flame reflected in his bright blue eyes. I felt conscious that our lips were extremely close.

  “No.”

  “What about Charlotte?”

  A flicker passed across his eyes.

  “Charlotte?”

  “The future Mrs Blakely. Does she not keep you company in the evenings?”

  “She lives with her parents in Croydon.”

  “Oh yes, I remember now. Well, when you are married she will be with you in the evenings.”

  He looked away and I wished that I hadn’t mentioned his fiancée. The air in the room felt slightly cooler all of a sudden.

  “Perhaps you are one of those women who becomes rather excitable about weddings. I can’t say I care much for them myself,” he said.

  “No, I don’t care much for weddings. Or marriage either. Unless it’s to the right person, of course.”

  He looked at me again and began to smile. “You do say some funny things, Penny! Of course marriage is supposed to be with the right person.”

  “Yes, it is. There’s no use in considering it otherwise, is there?”

  “No, there isn’t.”

  His face became serious again as we held one another’s gaze. Did he truly believe that he was marrying the right person?

  A sharp knock at the door startled us so much that James dropped the cyanide packet and I almost fell off my chair as I leapt away from James’ side. I smoothed down my apron as Mr Glenville strode in, and felt a cold perspiration on my forehead as he surveyed us both.

  “The other chap’s gone already, has he?” asked Mr Glenville, staring at me.

  “Yes, Inspector Trotter has just left,” replied James in a matter-of-fact tone. “Flo and I were just reading through the notes from our interviews with the Lombard family, weren’t we, Flo?”

  I nodded.

  “I see,” said Mr Glenville in a slightly reproachful tone.

  I felt sure he suspected that something had passed between myself and James. He kept his dark eyes on me as he walked over to the table and joined us.

  “Was anything of interest mentioned during the day?” he asked, finally turning his attention to James.

  “It was all fairly unremarkable I’m afraid, sir, except for one thing.” James leafed through the notes. “Here we are. Mr Lombard mentioned that he once asked you if there was a possibility of a betrothal between his son Dudley and your daughter Jane.”

  Mr Glenville frowned. “Why should he have told you that?”

  “I’m not sure why, exactly. It was simply a piece of information he offered us. Is it correct?”

  Mr Glenville sighed and laughed uncomfortably. “Yes, I’m afraid it is. I don’t think the chap was ever really serious about Jane. He and Mrs Lombard had some nerves about the marriage as the wedding day grew closer. And Sophia was playing up a bit at the time, as you well know. Dudley is their only son, and they’re extremely protective of him. This was the only marriage they would ever have been at liberty to arrange! It’s rather different when you have several other children to consider. When compared with her sister, Jane does seem the docile type; however, I put that down to her age. I’m sure that in a few years’ time she will be every bit as lively as Sophia was! I told Lombard that and it reassured him. Marriage would have been the making of Sophia. I have no doubt that she would have become a calm and devoted wife. And mother.” His voice began to crack. “Sadly, that has all been taken away from us.”

  “It has indeed,” said James. “Thank you, sir, for sharing your feelings on the matter.”

  “Not at all, my good man. Do please ask if anything else requires clarification. I’m rather impatient to get this unpleasant business resolved before Sophia’s funeral. I should so like her to rest in peace.”

  “We’ll do our best, sir,” said James.

  “The Wyndhams are coming here tomorrow, aren’t they?” said Mr Glenville. “You need a clear and honest answer from Wyndham as to why that empty packet of poison was found on his chair. I’d like to hear his explanation for that.”

  I readied myself for bed that evening with a range of emotions whirling through my mind. I had enjoyed spending time with James that day, even though Inspector Trotter had been present for much of it. My mind kept wandering back to the moment we had shared as we inspected the empty packet of cyanide. I hadn’t wanted that moment to end.

  There was no longer any use in denying the fact that I was attracted to James. I had pretended for several months that he was of no interest to me as a suitor. But it seemed that the more I pretended, the more drawn to him I became. I couldn’t help myself.

&
nbsp; As we shared that special moment in the library, I had felt that I belonged by his side. Although I knew that it was wrong, it hadn’t felt wrong. The only matter which seemed incongruous was the fact he was engaged to be married to someone else.

  What did he think of during the evenings he spent alone? Was he looking forward to his marriage? Or did he wonder whether he was making a terrible mistake? Was I underestimating his strength of feeling for Charlotte? Did he really care for her and simply pretend to me that he didn’t?

  I wished I knew the answers to my questions. The only solution was to ask him myself, but there never seemed to be an appropriate time to do so.

  Chapter 34

  Much to Mrs Craughton’s consternation, I was permitted to take down the notes from the Wyndhams’ interviews the following morning. Lady Wyndham was invited into the library first. Her pretty, heart-shaped face was creased with anguish and she wore a beautiful fitted dress of black silk. She sat down in the chair and immediately began to weep.

  James cleared his throat and spoke.

  “Are you all right, Lady Wyndham?”

  “No. This is distressing; too distressing to discuss. Why won’t you allow my husband to accompany me?”

  “We won’t detain you for long. We must question each guest alone to identify any differences between their versions of events.”

  “I should warn you that I’m not at my best without my husband by my side.”

  “We understand that. This isn’t easy for anybody. However, it’s important that we establish the facts of what happened on the evening of Miss Sophia’s death. We’re trying to find the person who harmed her.”

  “Of course.” She dabbed at her red eyes with a lace handkerchief before giving her brief version of events.

  “Did you witness any cross words between Miss Sophia and her siblings?” asked Inspector Trotter.

  “No, none at all. It’s no secret that she and Master Maurice have their differences, of course. And as for Miss Sophia and Miss Jane, you would never think they were sisters! They’re not alike at all. The Glenvilles have had their differences, but I was pleased to see that they had been swept aside for the celebration of Miss Sophia’s birthday.”