Missing Susan

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “How very premeditated!” said Elizabeth sarcastically. “Why, there’s mafia hit men who are less thorough than that. And this is a sixteen-year-old planning to kill a baby for no particular reason. Sure!”

  Without comment, Rowan resumed the narrative. “ ‘She then went up into the nursery, withdrew the blanket from between the sheet and the counterpane, and placed it on the side of the cot. She then took the child from his bed and carried him downstairs through the drawing room.’ ”

  Elizabeth interrupted again. “What about the suffocation?”

  “She seems unaware of that detail, doesn’t she? Where was I?-‘Having the child in one arm, she raised the drawing room window with the other hand, went round the house and into the closet, lighted the candle and placed it on the seat of the closet, the child being wrapped in the blanket and still sleeping, and while the child was in this position, she inflicted the wound in his throat. She says that she thought the blood would never come-’”

  “It wouldn’t if he was already dead,” said Elizabeth. She looked thoughtful. “But she says nothing of having smothered him in his bed.”

  “No,” Rowan agreed, “in fact, she says that the child was not killed, so she thrust the razor into its left side, and put the body, with the blanket round it, into the vault.”

  “What?” cried Elizabeth. “She claims that she stabbed Savile with the razor? I’d like to have seen her try that!”

  “Yes, it is hard to stab someone with the blunt tip of a straight razor, isn’t it? Slashing, yes. But puncture wound? No, I wouldn’t have thought so.”

  “Well, this is rubbish,” Elizabeth declared. “If I were going to confess to a crime, I believe I’d endeavor to know more about the circumstances than this poor girl did.”

  “Perhaps she was doing her best,” Rowan pointed out. “Some of it may even be true. If the child had been killed in the nursery, she could have carried him down as she described and inflicted the postmortem injuries to divert suspicion from the household. And I suppose that such an act might prey on her young mind as much as an actual murder.”

  Elizabeth was silent for a few minutes, contemplating the evidence. “She had no reason to lie,” she said at last. “If she was admitting to murder, she might as well tell how it really happened. Since she got it wrong, we can assume that it was because she didn’t know what actually occurred on the night of the murder. She was taking the blame for somebody else.” She sighed. “You’re right, Rowan. Your version is the only one that makes sense. Daddy is fooling around with the nursemaid, when the child wakes up and starts to cry. In trying to hush the boy, Mr. Kent accidentally smothers him, and then-perhaps with Constance’s help-he takes the child to the privy and cuts its throat to make the killing look like an outside job. Constance may be guilty as an accessory after the fact, but she didn’t kill the child. Why didn’t the authorities realize it at the time?”

  “It was an unsolved case of four years’ standing,” Rowan reminded her. “I don’t suppose they wanted to look a gift horse in the mouth. I myself think that there was a certain amount of religious hysteria involved in her confession. Since the crime, Constance had been living at Brighton in a religious institution, and it was to the minister in charge that she first confessed. Why not? The crime had blighted her life anyway. What marriage prospects would she have with her family under perpetual suspicion of butchery? And what else could she hope for in that era? Not a job as a governess, surely?” He smiled at the absurdity of it.

  Elizabeth took back the crime book and turned to the end of the chapter. “What happened to Constance? It says here that at her trial she was condemned to death, but that sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. I wonder how Mr. Kent felt about that.”

  “A regrettable but necessary sacrifice,” said Rowan, in his best imitation of a Victorian patriarch.

  “She served twenty years, then was released from prison. Oh, damn! This book says that no one is certain what became of her after that. That’s not fair! I want to know.” She looked suspiciously at the guide. “You know, don’t you?”

  Rowan shook his head. “No, but I suspect that the answer is known these days. Scholars of Victorian crimes are like bloodhounds, and that’s just the sort of puzzle that would send them off baying through the courthouses on three continents.”

  “I don’t have time to do that,” said Elizabeth, frowning.

  “Here,” said Rowan. “Give me one of those mawkish postcards you’re always buying. Yes, that one of Glastonbury will do.” He pulled out his fountain pen and wrote on the back in his nearly legible scrawl: Please send information on final whereabouts of Constance Kent to Dr. Elizabeth MacPherson, c/o Mountbatten Hotel, Seven Dials, London. He addressed the card to Kenneth O’Connor in Yorkshire. “There,” he said cheerfully. “That will give you something to look forward to at journey’s end. Kenneth will know the answer to this, if anyone does.”

  “Last night as sad I chanced to stray,

  The village death-bell smote my ear,

  Thy winking aside and seemed to say

  ‘Countess, prepare-thy end is near.’ ”

  – TRADITIONAL ENGLISH BALLAD

  on the death of Amy Robsart

  CHAPTER 14

  OXFORD

  THE GROUP SPENT one night at Ruthin Castle in North Wales, where they attended the regular Friday night medieval banquet, learning to eat soup with their fingers and gaining a new appreciation for the beauty of Welsh singing. Since they had to leave at ten the next morning (“Before the shops even opened!”), they were unable to form much of an opinion of Wales. Frances noted that bad carpeting seemed to be endemic among the ancient castles of Britain, but otherwise the company found it a pleasant and picturesque place. It did not have the aura of a thirteenth-century castle, though. Centuries of renovations probably accounted for that. It seemed no older nor more impressive than Moretonhampstead, nine hundred years its junior.

  Rowan Rover, who was not well-versed in Welsh law, decided to refrain from any questionable activity until the party again crossed the border into England.

  Another long drive on Saturday took them south again, with a stop to tour Powys Castle, and finally to the Shropshire town of Shrewsbury, where Frances would at last walk in the footsteps of the fictional Brother Cadfael. Rowan Rover had the weekend off, as was his custom, and he bade them farewell at the train station, promising to see them Monday morning for the journey to Oxford.

  They checked into the Lion Hotel, an old coaching inn on the summit of the town’s old street, Wyle Cop. Former guests at the seven-hundred-year-old establishment had included Charles Dickens, and Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale. Such real celebrities, however, paled beside Shrewsbury’s true celebrity: Brother Cadfael, who never existed at all. In his way, though, he was as much a local dignitary as was Jack the Ripper in the East End. The bookstores and curio shops sold Brother Cadfael dolls and hand-drawn maps, and the Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, his erstwhile home, featured an entire rack of Brother Cadfael paperbacks in the back of the sanctuary itself.

  Susan was extremely amused by that. “That’s great!” she said with a laugh. “Ellis Peters has become a local industry. Boy, I’ll bet Joan Hess wishes they’d sell her books in the Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas! Wait till I tell the fans back home.”

  Elizabeth, whose interest in fictional crime was minimal, had to have all this explained to her twice, but she went along uncomplainingly on the one-hour Cadfael walk, provided Sunday morning by a knowledgeable city guide. (The shops were all closed, of course.) Susan, who had read all of Ellis Peters’ work several times, was being her usual tiresome self, embellishing all the guide’s remarks with plot summaries of each of the books. At one point Alice MacKenzie was heard to murmur that a reenactment of a Brother Cadfael murder wouldn’t come amiss. She was looking pointedly in Susan’s direction at the time.

  That afternoon, many of the group took walks of their own along the Meole B
rooke (now called the Rea Brook) or up to the castle overlooking the River Severn. The weather was still more warm and fair than anyone had a right to expect in an English autumn. By now they were quite spoiled by their good fortune and were taking it for granted.

  Elizabeth spent the afternoon writing more letters and examining her map to see what real murder sites lay on tomorrow’s route. She had found Shrewsbury disappointingly peaceful and law-abiding. As she looked over the names on the map, one quite near Oxford struck a familiar chord: Cumnor.

  “Amy Robsart!” whispered Elizabeth. In addition to her true crime addiction, she had taken to reading the novels of Sir Walter Scott, as an homage to her newly adopted homeland. In Kenilworth she had discovered a sixteenth-century mystery that seemed to implicate Queen Elizabeth herself. Her latter-day namesake took her collection of crime books out of her suitcase and began to search for an account of the mysterious death at Cumnor Place. In the third book she found an article on it, and soon she was happily engrossed in real medieval intrigue.

  Amy Robsart, the only heir of the Duke of Norfolk, fell in love with Robert Dudley, third son of the Earl of Leicester, and in 1550, at the age of eighteen, she married him in a grand wedding attended by the boy king Edward VI. “The Prince and the Pauper,” muttered Elizabeth, whose knowledge of history was heavily reinforced by popular fiction.

  The young couple lived together in the country, seemingly happy, and certainly wealthy. At the death of Amy’s father, she inherited his considerable fortune. There was trouble for them, when Dudley was imprisoned for taking part in the Lynn Rebellion, but by and by he was released and they went home to the country once more.

  In 1558 Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne, and Robert Dudley was summoned to court. First he was made Master of the Horse, and then a Knight of the Garter. He was constantly in the company of the queen. Amy stayed at home in the country. Soon it was common gossip in the court that the queen was familiar with Dudley, and people began to speculate on whether he would divorce his wife to marry the Virgin Queen. Ambassadors reported home that England would soon have a King Consort.

  On September 4, 1560, the queen remarked that Lord Robert’s wife was exceedingly ill, and perhaps already dead. In fact, twenty-eight-year-old Amy was in perfect health at Cumnor Hall-but four days later she lay dead at the foot of the main staircase with a broken neck.

  “The queen was an accessory before the fact,” murmured Elizabeth. “I wonder what Rowan will say about that?”

  Rowan, who was somewhat tired from his morning train ride, and even more preoccupied with more current intrigues, looked completely horrified at his seatmate’s suggestion that Queen Elizabeth was an accessory to murder. “Nonsense! I don’t believe a word of it.”

  “But how do you explain the fact that she knew Amy Robsart was going to die four days in advance?”

  “Amy Rob-oh!” Rowan reddened. “That Queen Elizabeth. I thought you meant the Queen Mum. Sorry, I must have drifted off for a moment.”

  It was a clear day, with a chill wind making it cooler than usual, as the coach sped eastward out of Shropshire and back toward Oxford, which even in Amy Robsart’s time was considered within commuting distance of London.

  “Well?” said Elizabeth. “Was she murdered?”

  With considerable effort the guide turned his attention to the conversation. “Who? Oh, Amy Robsart? Yes, of course she was murdered. Wives never fling themselves down staircases just because one has one’s eye on a new bird.” He spoke with heartfelt sincerity. “At least mine never do.”

  “I thought her death was rather convenient. Wealthy little Amy dies, leaving her husband with a fortune and with the freedom to marry his sovereign, untainted by the divorce courts.”

  “He wasn’t home at the time,” Rowan pointed out.

  Elizabeth snorted. “Would you be?”

  “No. I suspect that his henchman-in-residence, Forster, did the deed, and that it was all hushed up at the inquest, which Dudley stage-managed personally. All the documents concerning the inquiry into Amy Robsart’s death were destroyed, you know, so we can’t very well second-guess the case from this century. But perhaps the most damaging writing about the case was an anonymous bit of libel called Leicester’s Commonwealth. Copies of it went round England like a naughty chain letter. That book called Lord Robert an adulterer, a murderer, an atheist, a coward. Just about every bit of invective imaginable. And even before that book appeared, people were scandalized by Amy’s convenient death, so the queen had to give up her intention of marrying him-if indeed she had ever meant to. She was very sharp in public relations, was Gloriana.”

  “Can we go and see Cumnor Place?” asked Elizabeth. “It’s just outside Oxford.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Rowan. “You are several hundred years too late. Not even the ruins remain, and I have no idea where the hall itself actually stood. It’s probably a street of bungalows these days. But Amy herself is buried in St. Mary’s Church on the high street in Oxford, if you’d like to pay your respects.”

  “Thank you,” said Elizabeth. “I will.”

  They had a cold afternoon’s walk at another medieval ruin, Minster Lovell Hall, a roofless stone shell on the banks of the River Windrush. The stately ruins lay in pastoral solitude in an expanse of meadow, bordered by the little country Church of St. Kenelm, resting place of the manor’s builder. As they walked about the site, chivvied by the wind, Rowan told them Minster Lovell’s romantic tale: the discovery in 1708 of the body of the last Lord Lovell, hidden away in a secret room.

  “That was silly!” Susan Cohen declared. “Did they forget where they put him? It was the English Civil War, wasn’t it? I know about priests’ holes from The Gyrth Chalice Mystery by Margery Allingham-”

  “No,” said Rowan hastily. “Francis, Viscount Lovell, was somewhat ahead of his time on that score. He supported an impostor named Lambert Simnel, who attempted to depose Henry VII. You remember Henry VII?”

  “Fiberglass statue in Exeter,” said Alice MacKenzie.

  “People have been remembered for less,” said Rowan without missing a beat. “Anyhow, Simnel was defeated, and the viscount conveniently disappeared. Otherwise, he’d have been executed. Apparently, he was concealed in a secret room here at Minster Lovell, but unluckily for him, the one servant who knew his whereabouts died suddenly, and Viscount Francis was never found. His bones were finally discovered two hundred years later.”

  “And after he meets the Gyrth’s heir in the book, Albert Campion has to protect this gold cup that has been hidden in the house since ancient times-”

  Rowan stopped and looked at her. “What did you say?”

  Susan repeated her summary of the Margery Allingham plot, in which the Gyrth family must retain and display an ancient golden cup of mystic significance in order to keep their lands.

  When she had wound down, the guide smiled. “Well, Susan,” he said, “at last I am able to contribute something in your area of interest. Apparently your mystery author based her tale on the tradition of a house called Nanteos, near Capel Seion in Wales. Until recently its owners displayed an ancient wooden cup, said to possess miraculous healing powers. Now do be quiet.”

  Susan opened her mouth and shut it again.

  “What happened to the viscount of Minster Lovell?” asked Frances Coles quickly.

  “I’m afraid he starved to death in his hiding place.”

  “And where is the secret room?” asked Charles, fingering his camera lens.

  “I’ve no idea,” Rowan replied. “There isn’t enough left of the building to tell us, either.”

  “Too bad,” said Elizabeth, eyeing the still-prattling Susan.

  “Yes, isn’t it?” said Rowan.

  As they drove through Cumnor that afternoon, Elizabeth scoured the landscape for a sign of stately ruins-an old gatepost, perhaps, or a lone chimney-but Amy Robsart’s residence had apparently been swallowed up by modern developments, and she could find no trace of the scene o
f the crime. Her disappointment was short-lived, however, for twenty minutes later Bernard announced, somewhat unnecessarily, that they had arrived in Oxford.

  He navigated the busy streets, clogged with rush hour traffic, and set them down in Beaumont Street, at the door of the Randolph Hotel. Susan was rattling on about Colin Dexter and someone called Inspector Morse, but everyone contrived to ignore her. Rowan drowned her out, explaining that the neo-Gothic hotel was built in 1864 and was named after Dr. Francis Randolph, a principal of Merton College. “In the Spires Restaurant, you will find the coats of arms of all the colleges,” he told them. “After I check you in, you are at liberty until tomorrow morning. I’ll take you on a formal tour tomorrow, but do go out exploring on your own this afternoon. The shops are open,” he added wickedly.

  Twenty minutes later, as he pretended to study the notice board in the hall next to the lobby, Rowan saw most of the tour group troop out of the hotel, chattering among themselves. Only the Warrens had not departed, which did not affect his plan in the least. Their whereabouts did not concern him. The important consideration was that Susan was gone, and with only four days left until the end of the tour, he could not afford to tarry any longer.

  When the group disappeared from sight, Rowan strolled up to the registration desk and intoned in an impeccable Oxonian drawl, “I say, I wonder if you remember me from a quarter of an hour ago? Guide on the tour that checked in? One of the young ladies left her purse in the coach, and I’d like to put it in her room, if I may. I know you have bellmen who generally fetch and carry, but in this case I’d rather do it personally. The purse contains the young lady’s passport, you know, and a bit of cash. They will do it, these tourists. So careless. If I could just have the passkey to Miss Cohen’s room, I’ll pop right in with it and bring the key straight back.” His smile was dazzling. “Thank you so much.”

  Fortunately the timid young thing at the desk did not notice that the guide was not carrying the aforementioned purse as he dashed off upstairs with the key to Room 307. He was, instead, carrying a screwdriver and a pair of needle-nosed pliers, but they were concealed in the pocket of his tweed jacket, well out of sight. Rowan had spent the weekend at home devising alternate, ever more bizarre and risky schemes for dispensing with Susan Cohen. He had returned to the tour, armed with various devices to implement those schemes-and a renewed determination to finish the task once and for all. A newly arrived stack of demands for payment and invective from yet another ex-wife had fueled this latest resolve to complete the contract-and thus to extricate himself from financial ruin.