Annie was not angry. Bewildered, perhaps, but the accusation was too absurd for anger, although she supposed that Sir Leonard was obliged to pursue every avenue, however unlikely, to unearth her husband’s killer.
“Sir Leonard,” she said calmly. “I did not kill my husband, nor did Judith, of that I can be certain. We were together in the butler’s room from the time my husband left the house until the dressing hour. Then we separated to dress… my maid was with me, and I imagine Judith has someone who can vouch for her actions, also. After that we were together in this room, awaiting my husband’s return. We sat here until you yourself came to tell us of his death. I am sure if you talk to the servants, they will confirm all of this, although there is no one from outside the house to support the story.”
“Indeed, and the servants are loyal to you, as is Mrs Herbert Huntly. My enquiries have confirmed all that you say. Nevertheless it is possible. The butler’s room is far from the servants’ hall and kitchen, and is very close to the garden door. From there one may leave the house unseen by the servants, pass behind the high wall of the kitchen garden to be quite invisible from the house and thence directly through the shrubbery to the lane. It is in fact the exact route your husband took on his way to the church. It is no more than a five minute walk to the spot where he was killed, five minutes back again, equally unseen, and you could then await the official report of your husband’s death with as much surprise as your acting talents can contrive.”
That was even more puzzling. “I am sure that seems very logical to you, Sir Leonard. To me it seems too fantastic for words. I had no idea there was a garden door, nor any notion where the lane to the village lay, so such a scheme would never have occurred to me. Nor do I have the least idea where to obtain a pair of pistols, or how to load them. I have never seen a pistol in my life. However, this will not weigh with you. Let us suppose that I have done as you say, and reached a suitable spot for my wicked deed. I now have to wait for my husband to return, and as I am sure your investigation will reveal, the Vestry meetings might finish in an hour or might run on for more than two hours. I should be standing in the open, with a pair of pistols in my hand, for perhaps a whole hour, at great risk of being observed.”
“Not so,” Sir Leonard said smugly. “There are thick bushes beside the lane at that point where you might have been concealed, and you could have kept the pistols in a bag.”
“You have an answer for everything!” she said, dismayed. “But answer me this, if you will. Why on earth would I want my husband dead? I had been married for barely two months, and this was the first time we had ever had a disagreement. You surely cannot imagine that after one dispute I would turn against him with murderous intent? It is too far-fetched for words.”
“Mrs Huntly,” he said gently. “I do not know you, but I understand, I hope, something of human nature. I know that your husband was the fortunate beneficiary of his brother’s tragic death, and that he subsequently married rather quickly. It occurs to me that it is not only heiresses who may be prey to fortune hunters. It may be that, having ensnared your husband and discovered marriage to be less to your taste than you supposed, you determined to do away with him and secure your future as a wealthy widow. The quarrel, perhaps, precipitated a plan already carefully laid.”
Annie stared at him uncomprehendingly. “That is the most outlandish story I have ever heard. The wildest Gothic novel would be more credible.”
“Nevertheless, I must consider the possibility. Someone murdered your husband, someone he knew and trusted, someone within walking distance of that spot on the lane, which is not half a mile from this house. Here, therefore, in this house, is where I must look for the murderer, and you are the most obvious person with a possible reason to want him dead.”
She could not fault his logic, yet she knew it to be untrue. How could she convince him? “I can see how you might arrive at such an erroneous conclusion,” she said slowly. “Yet I cannot fathom why you think I would choose guns, of which I have no experience, when I could simply have poisoned my husband.”
“Poisoned him?” he said faintly.
“Indeed. My uncle is an apothecary, and I have lived in his house for six years, helping to measure and store his ingredients and make up his medicines and pills. I have a medicine chest upstairs filled with any number of syrups and simples, and I have been treating my husband, at his request, for some time now. If I had wished him dead, there are half a dozen ways I could have done it without anyone suspecting a thing.”
The physician put in, “I can vouch for Mrs Huntly’s expertise with drugs. She described a remedy she had used to induce sleep in herself in terms which leave me in no doubt that she has the knowledge to kill a man. She is not alone in that, for a number of potent poisons are well-known to country people as well as apothecaries. Most act very quickly, however. Some instantly, others within a few minutes or hours and are therefore easy to recognise. A poison subtle enough to escape detection would also be slow, needing perhaps weeks to take full effect.”
“Ah! And this was an emergency,” Sir Leonard said, lacing his fingers together across his stomach. “Your husband, I believe, threatened to chastise you — to punish you. Do you deny that?” She shook her head. “There you are, then. You could not wait, but needed him to die at once. Even though it was risky, you were desperate enough to try it. And it almost worked, Mrs Huntly. You almost got away with the murder of your husband.”
10: Suspicions
For a moment, Annie’s mind flew into a panic. He truly believed it! She could hardly comprehend the enormity of it — that she might be hanged for a murder she had never committed. For all her husband’s restrictive ways, she had never, ever wanted to be free of him. He was her husband and if he was not perfect, which man was? She sincerely regretted his death.
But that day, when she had defied him, and he had threatened her… Sir Leonard made a good point, for it was true, she had been terrified of what he would do to her. Yet would he truly have hurt her? If she had cried and pleaded with him and begged his forgiveness… if she had told him of the child? Would that have been enough? She could not say for certain, but this was no time to express her doubts on the matter.
“I do not believe my husband would have beaten me, Sir Leonard. If he had been of the same mind when he returned, then I should have revealed that I am with child. No husband would use violence against his wife in such a situation.”
“Ah.” Sir Leonard nodded thoughtfully. “That is… interesting. I shall consider what you have said, Mrs Huntly.”
Adam moved nearer. “There is one other aspect to consider, Sir Leonard. If Mrs Huntly had wished to remove her husband and ensure a comfortable widowhood, she would do far better to wait. Since the property is entailed in the male line, a son would guarantee her future as mistress of Willow Place. That would be the time for murder, supposing such an improbable intention should enter her mind.”
Sir Leonard’s brows lifted a fraction. “The property is entailed?”
“It is.”
“And you are, I believe, the next male in the succession at present?”
A slight hesitation. “That is true.”
“Then I hope you have someone to vouch for your whereabouts at the time of your cousin’s murder, Mr Huntly, for I have not forgotten that Wickstead Manor is not so very far from here. You were at the Vestry meeting with your cousin, and could easily have followed him down the lane.”
“Oh, am I suspected now?” he said sharply. “Great Heavens, man, if I had ever wanted Willow Place for my own I should have disposed of Rupert before he married and possibly fathered an heir. I might even have disposed of Herbert, too, instead of leaving him here to enjoy a long and fruitful marriage. It is preposterous nonsense. You are determined to insult every one of us, I perceive.”
“It is no insult to implement the majesty of the law.”
“That is true, Cousin,” Annie said, laying one hand on his arm. “Anger serves n
o purpose. Sir Leonard must conduct full enquiries into my husband’s death so that the murderer may be brought to justice. Since I know myself to be innocent, I have no fear of the law.”
“You should fear it!” he cried. “Our law courts are far from infallible.”
She could feel him trembling with indignation, but at her touch he subsided into silence.
Sir Leonard and his fellows all rose and took their leave, and the room fell into a strange kind of calm. Adam still breathed heavily, his fists clenching and unclenching, as if ready for a fight. Judith was white-faced, the traces of tears on her cheeks. Annie herself was more bemused than anything else. Her odd little marriage, so longed for and yet so different from her dreams, had spiralled in days into furious disagreement and then into violent death, and now… now she faced the hangman’s noose. Or perhaps Adam did. It was a nightmare of the most incredible kind.
“Well, that was most objectionable!” Judith said to no one in particular, angrily wiping away her tears. “Do not tell me that he is a magistrate and must do his duty, for a man may be civil as he goes about it, surely.”
“I daresay he wished to provoke us into some kind of revealing remark,” Adam said.
“What is there to reveal?” Judith said, with some heat. “None of us killed Rupert, after all, and there is not the least reason to suppose we did.”
“That is not entirely true,” Adam said slowly. “We have all of us quarrelled with Rupert recently, and we all stand to gain from his death, in one way or another. We are the most obvious people to suspect.”
“Then what are we to do?” Judith cried. “There must be some action we can take to demonstrate our innocence. I cannot sit here and meekly wait for Sir Leonard to decide whether I am a murderess or not.”
“That is not his decision to make, fortunately,” Adam said. “However guilty we may appear in Sir Leonard’s eyes, he must convince a jury of it, beyond reasonable doubt. It is not enough to say merely that we might have murdered Rupert, but he must prove it. But you are right — we cannot sit about hoping for something to turn up. We know that we did not kill him, so someone else must have done. What we must do is to find out who that is.”
“That will not be easy,” Judith said.
“True, but if we all pool our ideas and work in concert, we should be able to come up with something.”
“Yes, we must cleave together,” Judith said. “We are all that remains of the Huntly family now, and we must put our trust in each other.”
Annie listened to them in silence. It was all very well to talk of family and trust, but she hardly knew Judith or Adam well enough to speak of trust. A two months’ acquaintance was not sufficient for her to understand their characters or habits or principles, beyond the most superficial level. She could not say of either of them with any degree of confidence that they were incapable of the crime of murder in general. It was hard to believe it of either of them, but who could ever say what evil lurked in the heart of a man or a woman, however honourable they appeared to be?
In this particular case, she could be quite certain of Judith’s innocence, for she had been with her all afternoon, apart from the hour of dressing. Adam was another matter. She knew so little of him. He had visited many times until his banishment, but he had showed only his jocular self, jesting with the men and flirting with the ladies. There was a more serious, perhaps even introspective, man hidden within, or so she hoped. He was serious enough now, that much was certain. As to whether he had murdered Rupert she could not say, but she could never be sure.
In one sense, however, Judith was entirely right. The three of them, together with Judith’s daughters and her own as yet unborn child, were the last of the Huntly family, or at least this branch of it. Rupert had wished to keep his wife to himself, which had precluded greater familiarity with his relations, but now, with the threat of arrest for murder hanging over their heads, it would be as well to become better acquainted with them. And if Adam were indeed a murderer, she would surely be able to detect some sign of it if she knew him better, some weakness of character or oddness in his behaviour that would alert her.
So when the dressing bell sounded, and Adam jumped up with an exclamation of dismay, and would have left, she said, “Will you not stay and dine with us, Cousin Adam? We shall not be at all formal at this present, so you need not worry about your boots.”
“Oh, yes! Do stay,” Judith said eagerly. “We have so much to discuss still.”
“I should like it of all things, especially as my housekeeper and manservant are away just now, and I have nothing but cheese and a slice of pigeon pie to look forward to at home,” Adam said, his words strengthened by a warm smile. “I feel obliged to point out, however, that Rupert forbade me the house. Although he cannot have expected that prohibition to bar me from offering my condolences and rendering any assistance that might be in my power, he would certainly disapprove of you dining with me.”
“I hope I respect my husband’s wishes as much as any wife should do,” Annie said with dignity. “Such was my duty when he was alive, but he is no longer here to guide me, and circumstances have changed beyond all recognition. If I were to continue according to my husband’s precepts, I should be terribly alone. His… his protectiveness prevented me from knowing you well, but you are my kin now, and it is only right that we should be friends.”
“Indeed we should!” he said warmly. “We must and shall be the very best of friends, as I have hoped from the first, and let us begin now, tonight, this very moment!” He seized her hand and swept it to his lips before she could protest, but it was done so gracefully and he released her so promptly that she could not protest.
Dinner that evening was the liveliest she had ever experienced at Willow Place. Judith, who had spoken hardly a word in Mr Huntly’s presence, was almost vivacious, and Adam soon lost his solemnity and became once more the light-hearted and amusing man she remembered. Annie said little herself, for her nerves were too raw to laugh or even smile much, and her husband’s empty chair seemed to stare balefully at her from the other end of the table, but her companions’ banter lifted her spirits.
She was reminded forcibly of dinners at the Castle Street house, with her uncle and aunt discussing all the doings of the day, the children jostling for the last potato or portion of custard, her mother reminiscing about life at the vicarage, and all of it noise and cheerfulness and jollity. The memory brought a burst of grief so potent that she felt as if her heart were being squeezed, and had to set down her spoon for a moment to recover her composure.
It was Adam, seemingly absorbed in a slightly salacious story about the verger, who noticed her distress. “I beg your pardon, Cousin Annie! Here we are, joking away as if this were the summer fair, while your husband’s body still rests upstairs.”
“It is quite all right,” she said. “I like to hear your raillery, but it reminds me of home. My former home, I mean, and I do miss them all dreadfully.”
“Of course you do, and especially just now,” Judith said.
“Perhaps I might go and stay with them for a while,” she said wistfully. “Not immediately, but in a few weeks. It would be the greatest comfort to see them all.”
“Might they come and see you?” Judith asked.
“Oh no, for my uncle cannot leave his shop, and my aunt cannot leave him, and Mama would never travel alone on the stage, even if she had the money for the fare. But I have my own carriage, so I might go to them, might I not?”
“That is an excellent idea,” Judith said. “When next you write, you must mention it to them.”
After a while, reassured that she was not about to have a fit of the vapours, the two reverted to their primary discussion, which was a review of everyone they knew in the neighbourhood who might bear a grudge against Rupert. It was not easy, for he had been almost entirely unknown to them all until after his brother’s death, and even then could hardly have been said to have entered the local society with any enthusiasm.
He had attended church every Sunday without fail, and had received callers politely, but he had held no dinners and accepted no invitations. As for the lower classes, he was slow to settle his bills and even slower to institute repairs for his tenants, but this was so normal a practice as to hardly attract comment, let alone be sufficient motivation for murder.
“Could it be someone from outside the immediate area?” Annie asked, when all local possibilities had been exhausted.
Adam sighed. “I wish it might be so, but Sir Leonard gave very clear reasons why it could not be. The murderer was on foot, not mounted and certainly not in a carriage. That spot is more than two miles from the road by the shortest distance, which is over moderately rough ground, and very open. To keep out of sight, skulking in the shelter of the trees — three or four miles, at least, and there would still be a need to arrange a conveyance by which to escape after the deed was done. Where would one conceal a carriage, or a couple of horses, with a groom to watch them? Or is the assailant presumed to have arrived and departed on the public stage? No, it must be someone local.”
Annie had to concede the logic. “Only Rupert’s acquaintances would know his movements,” she said thoughtfully. “Someone from afar would not be aware that he attended the Vestry meetings on certain days, or the times of his journeys to and fro, or the path he would take. I did not know his usual route myself.”
So little of him she had known! He had never talked of his meetings, or estate business, or anything he deemed as belonging to the male sex alone. He would occasionally inform her of important events reported in the London newspapers, although he felt the newspapers themselves not suitable for the frailer female sex to peruse. He kept such newspapers as he subscribed to in his desk, and burned them when he had quite finished with them.
How dull their evenings had been! They could not exchange the trivial doings of the day because he was always with her and knew everything she did, just as she knew what he did. Conversation at dinner had focused largely on the food — his praise of certain dishes, and disapprobation of others. He might comment on their shared activities of the day, and sometimes he would inform her what they would be doing the next day, but there was nothing that she would describe as stimulating discourse. If she had ever raised a subject of interest to her, he was quite likely to tell her repressively that it was not a fit topic for a lady, or else to launch into a monologue to ‘improve your mind, Mrs Huntly’.
The Apothecary (Silver Linings Mysteries Book 3) Page 10