Page 97 of Corpse in the Canal

“It is not a medical matter,” Constance said. “I am sparing you the pain of questioning you in front of the Harveys. And giving you the chance to explain yourself—before I ask Inspector Harris to charge you with the attempted murder of my husband.”

Penelope let out an almost inhuman moan and collapsed backward into the nearest chair, burying her face in her hands.

Until that moment, Constance had not been completely sure her theory was correct. “Pull yourself together,” she said with deliberate contempt. “It was my husband who came within an inch of death, not you, and I don’t have the luxury of dissolving into such a pathetic state. Why did you try to kill him?”

“I was trying so hard not to kill him,” Penelope wailed, though at least she dropped her hands from her tear-streaked face. “God forgive me, I meant to miss!”

“What kind of weapon did you use?”

“My father’s pistol,” Penlope whispered.

“Had you used it before?”

“My father taught me to shoot with it years ago, at targets he set up on Channing Meadow. He said I had a good eye, and I did. I hit the old bottles on rocks, the paper targets tied to trees. So I was sure I could shoot precisely where I meant to.”

“My husband’s head?”

Penelope gasped. “Near his head! He was standing still, talking to you. It should have been simple. But I saw him fall and I was so frightened I fled!”

“You fled,” Constance repeated. “Without seeing if you could help the man you had just shot, but taking the time to place the torn piece of Mrs. Jenkins’s dress in order to implicate her. I don’t think you were as frightened as all that.”

“I was! I put the rag there before I fired the shot!”

“Why?” Constance snapped back.

Penelope blinked. “Why?”

“Why did you try to implicate Mrs. Jenkins?”

Penelope gazed at her in silence. Twice, she parted her lips as though she would speak, but on both occasions shut them again.

“Because Percy Harvey preferred her to you?” Constance said.

Penelope was no fool. Her eyes widened and expressions of temptation and resentment and fear flickered there. Admitting to being motivated by Percy’s obsession with the other woman would certainly detract from any secret longing she harbored for Everett. On the other hand, it would give her a reason for Percy’s murder.

“Everyone preferred her to me, or to any other woman in the county,” she said at last, and there was a certain bitter truth in her voice. “Percy was an indiscriminate rake of no value to me.”

“But he did flirt with you?”

“He didn’t know any other way to treat a female.”

“Was he ever…inappropriately physical in his flirting?”

She hesitated. “Once. But he was easily distracted.”

“By what?”

“The unexpected appearance of my father. Or perhaps by the elbow that struck his face as I turned away from him. Either way, it was the only time he troubled me. I had no reason to shoot him.”

She probably didn’t. Although she had just provided a very good motive for her father.

“Then why did you shoot at us?” Constance asked, holding the younger woman’s gaze.

Penelope closed her eyes, as though that was the only way she could free herself from Constance. Her throat worked. “Because I knew you suspected Sir Felix. He told us you had been to Larchwood, asking impertinent questions. I thought if a shot fired near you, while Sir Felix was clearly elsewhere—and he was—you would have to change your suspicions.”

“And why not move them onto Adelaide Jenkins?” Constance said affably. “Thus killing two birds with one shot, as it were.”

A tinge of color crept into Penelope’s pale cheeks. And at last she opened her eyes, tilting her chin with a hint of revived spirit. “I found the fabric on a bramble bush by the canal and took it with me on impulse. I didn’t see why she shouldn’t suffer a little of what Sir Felix did.”