Page 67 of Corpse in the Canal

Etta stilled. “Percy’s?” She pulled back, staring at Constance. “Of course not. It’s mine.”

“You hid it there?” Solomon asked gently. “Why?”

Constance felt a stinging sensation in her abdomen. Please don’t have shot your son. Please…

Etta made a sound of sheer distress, deep in her throat. Constance walked her the few steps to the uncovered chair and lowered her into it, then perched on the arm beside her, while Solomon shifted to block the distraught woman’s view of the carpetbag and the open trunk.

“Why did you hide it?” Constance repeated.

“So that I would never see it,” Etta replied, weeping soundlessly now. “Never be tempted…”

Oh God… Constance swallowed. “Never be tempted to shoot anyone else?”

“It’s a sin,” Etta gasped. “Even now…”

“What did you do?” Constance asked. She didn’t want to hear and yet they had to.

“I hid it,” Etta said, with the first hint of impatience, baffling Constance, who feared the woman was utterly mad.

It was Solomon who caught on first. He crouched down to be on a level with Etta. “You hid the pistol, so that you would not be tempted to use it on yourself.”

Etta squeezed her eyes shut in shame while the tears poured down her cheeks. She nodded. “It’s so hard, so hard now with Percy gone. There is nothing. I am nothing. Yet I must not give in, I must not. I must not.”

“You shall not,” Solomon said firmly. “Of course you shall not. Come, let us go down and find your maid.”

Etta seemed too exhausted not to obey. She rose with Constance’s help and allowed herself to be led like a child back to her bedchamber. The maid, a woman of around Etta’s own age, glowered at Constance as though blaming her for her mistress’s state. Though as Constance turned to leave again, she seemed to change her mind, for she called, “Thank you, ma’am,” after her.

*

“How did you know?” Constance asked Solomon as soon as she had shut their bedroom door.

In the dressing room, Solomon was changing into evening clothes, his chest bare as he reached into the drawer for a clean shirt.

“That she is suicidal?” He didn’t look at her, concentrating on his clothes. “It just came to me. She hides it well, behind her constant busyness, but there is something about the eyes. A…blackness. It wasn’t visible, at least not to me, until she lost control over seeing the pistol.”

She went to him then, her mouth dry with fear, and took both his hands. “Solomon. Look at me. How did you recognize this blackness? Because it is in you? Or someone you know?”

He didn’t usually have such difficulty meeting her gaze, but he managed it. His fingers tightened around hers. “I have seen it a few times, once in someone who acted upon it. I could do nothing but support his family. Constance, don’t look like that. In the past, when I was young, such thoughts brushed my mind. I never seriously thought of acting on them. But I understand the distraction of…busyness.”

She stared at him, almost as if she had never seen him before. “That was why you were so driven? So determined to succeed. That’s why you built your empire.”

He shook his head. “No, no. Well, perhaps a little, before I even left Jamaica. It is not in me. Not even before I met you.”

Terror flowed over her. She could not help touching his face, his hair. She pressed her body to his, for he was so precious, all of him.

He stroked her hair. “Don’t be afraid for me. There is no need. It is something I understand but could never do. You must have seen it in others, the hopeless and the desperate, and even in successful people. They hide it like an illness.”

“Like Etta. We have to tell Harvey.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“Solomon?”

“Yes?”

“She could still have killed Percy with that pistol. She was seen that day near Adelaide’s house.”

“I know,” he said again.