Page 37 of The Vanished Sister

“Did anything happen during the night?”

The same question had produced no useful information from Mr. Carstairs, but Mrs. Albright again grew animated. “I left my window slightly open because I enjoy a bit of fresh air at night. A cry of alarm woke me up not long after I fell asleep. By the time I reached my window and looked about, it was only to see below me someone’s limbs disappearing into the library’s window and then the library’s window closing.”

Inspector MacDonald paused for a moment to digest this nugget. “How were you able to see? Was the library’s light still on?”

“A small lamp that didn’t give much light, but enough for me to see. After the person climbed in, the curtain was drawn and there was no more light shining out.”

“And by a person’s limbs, you mean a man’s?”

“Those of someone wearing a pair of trousers.” Mrs. Albright delighted rather transparently in this bit of equivocation.

“And the cry of alarm? Did that belong to a man or a woman?”

“A woman, I should think.”

A cry of alarm, yet the woman still allowed the man—or at least a person dressed as a man—entrance, rather than alerting the whole house that there was an intruder.

“What time was that?”

Mrs. Albright puffed up. “I can tell you precisely, Inspector—I lit a match to look. It was almost exactly half past midnight.”

Inspector MacDonald frowned. “Did you by any chance investigate—the happenings in the library?”

Mrs. Albright caressed the cameo brooch at her throat. “Sir, when I was a young woman attending my first country house party, I was told not to roam about the house at night, because I wouldn’t want to walk in on anything interesting, if you know what I mean.”

Charlotte, when she had been a respectable young lady, had been to house parties. They had been relatively tame affairs—not every overnight gathering featured an abundance of bed-hopping—but nevertheless the young ladies had been similarly cautioned, lest they witnessed goings-on that polluted their pure, maidenly eyes.

Inspector MacDonald glanced at Charlotte, plainly to inquire whether Sherrinford Holmes had any questions, now that they were near the end of the interview. Charlotte beckoned him closer and whispered in his ear, “She never answered your question.”

The police officer sucked in a soft breath. When he turned to their quarry again, his expression was stern. “Mrs. Albright, advice you were offered decades ago does not constitute an actual answer. Let me ask you again. Did you look into the happenings in the library? And keep in mind that you are speaking not to your neighbors at tea but to the police.”

Bright patches returned to Mrs. Albright’s cheeks. She clutched now at her cameo brooch. “Oh, very well. I didn’t go down at first. I stayed by my window, waiting for the person to reemerge. But it grew late and I became impatient. So around two in the morning I left my room and tried to enter the library, only to find it locked from within. I knocked, but no one answered.

“I could have raised a ruckus but that would have been too much. Instead I went back to my room, waited another half an hour by my window, and then went to bed because I couldn’t stay awake another moment.”

So as of half past two that morning there was an extra guest at High Burrow? Or simply some illicit movements?

Mrs. Albright went on to claim that she slept until seven, breakfasted in her room, then made ready to depart. “We must have left shortly after nine.”

“And what time did you return to your own dwelling?”

“I didn’t pay special attention. Before noon, certainly,” said Mrs. Albright, with the first trace of petulance Charlotte had observed this day. “I invited Mr. Carstairs in for a spot of tea, but he said he had to go to Barnstaple to buy trinkets for the missus and was gone before I knew it.”

Twelve

After the interview with Mrs. Albright, Charlotte and Inspector MacDonald, two constables in tow, drove to High Burrow. Lord Ingram, in old tweeds and a pair of Wellington boots, met them outside the gates.

“Nice boutonniere,” he said to Charlotte.

She grinned. “I rather think so myself.”

Her lover, having noted Sherrinford Holmes’s predilection for exaggerated boutonnieres, began to fabricate them out of Stern Hollow’s abundant supply of dried botanical material a few years ago. This one, however, was fresh, made of heather racemes harvested early this morning.

But he was not on hand merely to compliment his own handiwork but to serve as her excavation expert.

The day before, during Inspector MacDonald’s call at Sans Souci, Lord Ingram had made sure to mention the Roman legionnaire grooming kit that had been found at High Burrow. Inspector MacDonald, perceptive young man that he was, had immediately caught the significance of that detail, namely, that there had been recent digging on the estate.

Justina Carstairs didn’t need to have been drowned; she could have been buried.