As Eva arranged Lady Phoebe’s hair to frame her face and pinned its length in a French twist, she studied her mistress in the mirror. Twice now Lady Phoebe had spoken her sister’s name with telling emphasis, one Eva had grown accustomed to in recent years but hadn’t heard in the past few months.
“Is there something wrong between you and Lady Julia?” she ventured.
Lady Phoebe hesitated before replying. She glanced down at her lap, then back up into the mirror. “I’m truly at a loss to understand it, Eva. Yesterday morning everything was fine, or as fine as it has been between us for a very long time. And then, last night after dinner . . . well . . . it was as if last spring never happened. As if we hadn’t reached that unspoken understanding and decided to be civil to each other.”
Hearing the distress in her tone, Eva patted her shoulder. “Did something happen during dinner? Was something said?”
“Nothing I can think of. I’ve gone over it in my mind a dozen times. There was nothing. We didn’t even sit together. We were at opposite ends of the table. Julia and Regina seemed to be happily discussing the redecorating plans.”
“And who did you sit with, and what did you discuss?”
“I sat between Hastings and Olive Asquith. What a pair. Hastings was drunk, of course . . .” She trailed off, tilting her head. “Which was odd because he seemed to drink so little, at least that I saw.”
“Perhaps he’s been drinking on the sly, in his room.”
“Yes, probably.”
“And what about you and Miss Asquith? What did you talk about with her?”
Phoebe wrinkled her nose. “She’s an odd one. I tried to learn more about her. Don’t people like to talk about themselves?” Eva nodded, and Phoebe went on. “She would tell me nothing—not where she was from, who her people are, only that she attended the North London Collegiate School. Lucky, wasn’t she?”
A wistful note entered her voice. Lady Phoebe aspired to someday obtain a higher degree of some sort. She had attended the Haverleigh School for Young Ladies near Foxwood Hall, but until quite recently the school had focused primarily on the social graces and the running of great households or, for their scholarship students, subjects that would enable them to find employment.
“Olive issued something of a warning to me last night, after dinner.”
“A warning?” The blood surged in Eva’s veins. “Did she threaten you?”
“No, not quite that. But she said I should go home before things here became overwhelming for me. I haven’t the first notion what she could mean. She was going on about large houses no longer being the thing, as she put it, and then suddenly switched to the very personal question of what I would be willing to give up to achieve my goals. I found her rather impertinent, really.”
“As well you should. Miss Asquith doesn’t know you, yet it sounds as though she felt free to judge you.” The very notion raised Eva’s hackles.
Phoebe nodded at her assessment of Miss Asquith’s behavior. Eva went to the armoire and tossed its double doors wide to reveal Lady Phoebe’s suits, dresses, and dinner gowns. “Would you like anything specific for today?”
“It doesn’t much matter. Something simple and comfortable for the ride home, please.”
“Very good, my lady.” Eva was just reaching in to select Lady Phoebe’s dark green silk motoring outfit, but nearly dropped the ensemble when a scream echoed from the corridor. Another shriek raised goose bumps on her arms and sent shivers up her back. She met her mistress’s startled gaze.
“What on earth,” they blurted at once, and hurried to the door.
Like dominoes, the doors along the corridor opened one after another. Lady Julia, Lord and Lady Mandeville, the dowager, Ralph Cameron, and even Myra Stanley poked their heads out, their eyes wide with alarm. “What is it?” the dowager asked in a shrill voice.
In the middle of the commotion, Olive Asquith stood outside Miss Brockhurst’s bedroom door. The door was open, and Miss Asquith pointed inside with a rigidly extended arm. Her cheeks, devoid of color, gleamed with tears.
No one moved. Neither of the gentlemen seemed inclined to investigate any farther than their thresholds. Even Lady Phoebe stood motionless, no doubt gripped by the same apprehension that closed around Eva, making her feel detached and dizzy. Surely this could not be . . .
With a deep breath she stepped around her mistress and strode down the corridor to where Miss Asquith continued to point and shake and weep. Eva expected to have to rouse her from her stupor, but as she reached the other woman, Miss Asquith’s trembling lips moved.
“Regina,” she whispered. “She’s . . . Oh, she can’t be . . .”
Eva’s stomach turned over and her throat fought each breath she attempted to draw. She peered through Miss Brockhurst’s doorway. The room appeared undisturbed, tranquil, a typical morning scene, much like Lady Phoebe’s, with sunshine spilling across the floor and gentle breezes rippling the curtains and bed canopy. Miss Brockhurst lay on her side in the middle of the bed, the covers loosely drawn up to her shoulders.
“Did you check on her?”
Miss Asquith nodded shakily. “I nudged her. She didn’t respond. Do something. Someone needs to do something.”
Instinctively, Eva darted glances at Lord Mandeville and his solicitor, Mr. Cameron. Both stood framed in their doorways—literally, as if an artist had painted both men in place with their dressing gowns and mussed hair. Beyond color and form and figure, both appeared flat and lifeless.
Eva forced her feet to move, as images from the past several months flashed garishly behind her eyes. Surely this could not be happening again. Surely Miss Asquith had made a mistake. Surely Miss Brockhurst slept too deeply to be awakened by a nudge.
She reached the foot of the bed, then circled to the side where she could see Miss Brockhurst’s face.
And she knew.
A blue cast tinged the corners of Miss Brockhurst’s lips, and her eyes . . . her eyes stared through the slits of her eyelids to some point in midair. Eva’s lungs emptied of their own accord, a heaving exhalation that drained her body of strength, of feeling. As numbness spread through her, she wanted to sink to her knees, rest her head on the side of the mattress, and let oblivion take her.
“Eva? Is she all right?” Lady Phoebe stood in the doorway, her face pinched and pale. She crossed the threshold, moving closer, and Eva found the renewed strength to lean down closer to Miss Brockhurst’s prone form.
“What’s this?” She leaned lower still. Tiny flecks marred the pillow on the other side of Miss Brockhurst’s head. Reddish-brown flecks. Quickly, Eva went around to that side of the bed. Miss Brockhurst’s black hair covered part of the pillow, with those rusty flecks marching out from beneath the tangled forest of curls. An acrid scent drifted from the bed linens to sting her nose. Her gaze flicked to the bedside table, to the crystal tumbler that sat near the corner of it, a trace of brownish liquid staining the bottom. Whiskey? Perhaps, but that was not the source of those tiny stains on the pillow. Those were different. She knew exactly what they were, knew even without seeing whatever wound had caused them.
But see she must. She reached a tentative hand beneath the curls, lifted them away from the pillow and from the back of Miss Brockhurst’s neck.
Her other hand flew to her mouth, and she blinked—blinked in the glare of the morning sun playing upon an untold number of diamonds studding the wings and body of a dragonfly.
The dowager’s hat pin protruded from the base of Miss Brockhurst’s skull.
* * *
“Well, yes, it’s true that no one in the family gets on particularly well,” Phoebe told Chief Inspector Isaac Perkins an hour later. They sat in the dining room, she and the inspector and his assistant, Constable Miles Brannock. The Brockhursts had been interviewed first; Phoebe hadn’t been privy to their statements. Julia had come next and had returned to the drawing room, where everyone had gathered, with a shaken look. Did the chief inspector consider her a su
spect?
Now it was Phoebe’s turn, and Chief Inspector Perkins had asked about the Brockhurst family’s relationships. He had phrased his question almost as a statement. “Not much love is lost between them, is there?” Short of lying she could only but admit theirs had never, to her knowledge, been a close family.
The room swirled slowly around her. The chief inspector’s voice wafted in and out of her ears as if water filled them, and her stomach churned like the swill in the bottom of a ship’s hold.
Regina was dead. Vibrant, headstrong Regina, who had always done as she pleased, who took orders from no one, who had wished to share some secret excitement with Phoebe on this very day. Never again would she dazzle a roomful of people with her larger-than-life presence. Some people had considered her simply too much—too ostentatious, too garrulous, too overbearing. Her family, Phoebe supposed, agreed. But how could such a life be snuffed out so abruptly, so unceremoniously?
“Can you explain why that was, Lady Phoebe?”
Phoebe snapped out of her reverie. How long had her mind drifted? She couldn’t say. She refocused on Chief Inspector Perkins. He sat a good distance from the edge of the table to accommodate his paunch, though that did nothing to relieve his straining suit buttons. He tipped his head back and in turn scrutinized Phoebe from down the length of his pocked nose. Beside him, Constable Brannock, an Irishman with thick red hair and keen blue eyes that missed little, waited patiently to record her answer. She took comfort in his presence; Constable Brannock had become rather well known to her in past months, and she knew him to be a fair and honest man.
What had the chief inspector asked her? Oh, yes. She drew a breath. “Several factors, I would say. There has always been strife in the family. Their personalities are all quite different, you see. Regina . . . Miss Brockhurst . . . was a particularly independent and strong-willed woman and—”
“So you’re saying she caused the rifts in her family.”
“What? No. I’m not saying that at all. My cousin simply wasn’t one to keep her opinions to herself. If she saw behavior she didn’t approve of, she said so. And she didn’t approve of her brother’s behavior. Neither did their father. But that’s hardly for me to explain, Inspector. Did you ask the family these questions?”
“Whether I did or didn’t isn’t your concern, Lady Phoebe.”
Miles Brannock flashed her a look from beneath a shock of his bright auburn hair. His mouth made the tiniest of twitches before he pursed his lips in an official manner and scribbled in his notepad. Phoebe and the constable were both accustomed to the chief inspector’s brand of questioning as well as his condescension. Both had learned to let Chief Inspector Perkins have his way during his interrogations. The real work would come later, and Miles Brannock would perform the bulk of it—with Phoebe’s help, and Eva’s as well.
She turned her attention back to the inspector, who seemed to be waiting for her to say something. So far he hadn’t asked any questions relating to Julia, and Phoebe restrained a sigh of relief. “I’d much prefer to relate to you what I witnessed with my own eyes, sir.”
He harrumphed. “All right then, Lady Phoebe, had you ever witnessed your cousin stealing anything?”
“No, never. Of course not.”
“What about the dragonfly?” he shot back at her so sharply she flinched.
“Oh, that. Regina said she borrowed it from her mother. She planned to return it.”
“Hmm. They all do,” the man muttered. “What happened next? Tell me about last night. You said people were awake in the house when they should have been sleeping? Your sister said the same.” Ah, finally, a reference to Julia, but nothing incriminating.
“Well, I heard Lord and Lady Mandeville arguing in their suite.”
“Which Lady Mandeville?”
“The younger. I did say they were in their suite.”
Miles Brannock compressed his lips, no doubt to hide another twitch.
“Did they exit the room at all?”
“Not that I saw. I heard someone in the billiard room, although I can’t tell you who it was.”
“In the billiard room, you say? In the middle of the night?”
Phoebe shrugged and nodded. Then her eyes went wide. “Do you suppose whoever was in there might have . . . ?”
“I am not supposing anything, Lady Phoebe.” The chief inspector raised a half-closed fist to his mouth and, to Phoebe’s disgust, belched. “And don’t you go supposing either. Are you sure you don’t know who it was?”
“I didn’t think to check, although it’s safe to say it wasn’t Hastings or Verna, nor Olive or Regina—”
“How do you know it wasn’t your cousin or Miss Asquith?”
She blinked. “Oh, well, because . . .” Here Phoebe paused. She was only about to tell the inspector what she saw, but at the same time what she saw could possibly incriminate Olive Asquith. Yet she couldn’t not tell the inspector. After all, Olive might have been the last person to have seen Regina alive. She might even have . . .
Phoebe shut her eyes against last night’s memory. If only she had gone into Regina’s bedroom. She had come so close to doing so. Why hadn’t she?
Selfish reasons, ones for which she might never forgive herself. She hadn’t wished to become embroiled any further in the tribulations of this house. She wanted morning to come, and with it the motorcar that would take her home. She had wanted to get away from everyone here, even Julia. Especially Julia, with her caustic disregard last night. Now, however, she wished only to undo whatever had damaged their rapport; she wished to return to the accord they had reached in the spring.
But . . . if she’d only gone into that bedroom last night, would she have found Regina alive? Dying? Could she have helped her? If she had found her cousin dead, would it have meant that Olive murdered her? Perhaps Olive found Regina dead, but then why hadn’t she said something last night?
“Lady Phoebe, if you please,” the inspector prompted.
“Miss Asquith,” she said quickly, before she could change her mind. “I saw her exiting my cousin’s bedroom. It was quite late at the time.”
“And what were you doing up?”
She very nearly gasped at his implied suspicion. “Something woke me, the arguing coming through the walls, I suppose. And I heard other noises, doors opening and closing, so I got up to investigate.” Even to herself, she sounded defensive, almost defiant. She breathed in deeply, searching for her composure.
“And?”
Phoebe frowned.
He held out his hand in a gesture of impatience. “Did Miss Asquith say anything?”
“She said Miss Brockhurst was having trouble sleeping, and she, Miss Asquith, had been reading to her. Then she went straight back to her room.”
“And what did you do?”
“I . . . er . . .” She swallowed a bitter taste of guilt. “I also returned to my room.”
“You went nowhere else?”
“No. Just to my room.”
Moments stretched while Inspector Perkins studied her. She began to notice how stuffy the room had become. Despite the temperate weather, the windows had all been shut, and with the door to the hall closed as well, not a breath of air stirred. Perspiration dotted her forehead; a drop trickled down her back. The inspector, too, was sweating, but then he typically did. She couldn’t remember seeing his florid complexion without a sheen from the slightest exertion. Perhaps he deliberately made the room uncomfortable to discompose, even agitate those he questioned. He wouldn’t want a potential suspect to feel too comfortable, would he?
“May I go now?” she asked when the ticking of the mantel clock seemed to become deafening.
“Tell me about your relationship to the deceased,” he asked bluntly. “Had the two of you argued recently?”
“No, not at all,” she said quickly, loudly. The inspector raised a bushy eyebrow. Phoebe’s heart thumped, and she realized how her hasty reply had sounded. She swallowed to calm her nerves. “R
egina invited my sister and me here to help her redecorate the house, to help her with ideas for each room. We were having a lovely time until . . .”
“Yes?”
Why should he make her feel so exposed all of a sudden, and as if she had something to hide? Why couldn’t she simply answer his questions without her pulse bucking and heat flooding her face? “Until the rest of her family arrived. As I’ve already told you.”
“Your cousin had recently come into a great deal of money. Were you jealous of her?”
“Good heavens, no!” She swallowed again. “Certainly not. Why would I be?”
“You tell me, Lady Phoebe.”
He suspected her. Her—after all the help she had provided in two previous murder cases. She darted a glance at Constable Brannock, one he returned with sympathy and, yes, exasperation in his eyes. At least he knew she could never commit a violent act against another individual, unless that individual threatened her life or the life of someone she cared about.
“Inspector, my cousin and I got on quite well. In fact, she had something special to confide in me today, something I’ll never learn now . . .” Her throat closed around a threat of tears, and she bowed her head as she once more attempted to collect herself.
“So then, Lady Phoebe, if someone were to tell me there had been some friction between you and Miss Brockhurst, they would be lying?”
Her mouth falling open on a gasp, she swung her head upward. “Who said that? Yes, of course it would be a lie. Regina and I never argued . . .”
“Never?”
“Well . . .” Now he was confusing her, trying to catch her up in a lie of her own, not that she had anything to lie about. Once again, he made her almost feel guilty, and that only served to make her appear guilty. She drew herself up and squared her shoulders. “Not since we were children, at any rate. And since she was several years older than I, it’s not as though we played together or spent a lot of time in each other’s company.”
For several moments the only sound in the room was the scratching of Constable Brannock’s pencil. Phoebe tried to sit calmly, her eyes focused on the mantel clock across the way from her. Chief Inspector Perkins drummed his sausagelike fingers against the tabletop and regarded her as if waiting for her to sprout wings or . . . or make a confession, perhaps.
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