Page 39 of The Vanished Sister

Now they were at last ready to leave, Mrs. Carstairs’s maid Dawkins in tow. But outside they found not only Dawkins waiting but a woman in black whom Mr. Carstairs introduced as Mrs. Wellesley, his stepdaughter.

Despite her unusual height, upon first glance she appeared fragile. But when she spoke, her voice was more than resolute, it was implacable. “I would like to see the body, too, Inspector. Dawkins has been with my mother only in the past two years, but I’ve been her daughter my entire life.”

“Are you sure, Rebecca?” said her stepfather, frowning a little. “That is not your mother, but still a gruesome sight.”

“I’ll be fine, Papa,” replied Mrs. Wellesley, her tone suddenly much softer. “I just need to see for myself that it’s not Mamma.”

“All right, then,” relented Mr. Carstairs. “Go and come back fast.”

At the constabulary, Charlotte, who had stayed out of the viewing room in the morning, entered this time. Of the two other women, the maid Dawkins immediately swayed, as if the ingrained stench was enough to make her faint; Mrs. Wellesley grimaced but remained stoic.

Inspector MacDonald lowered the sheet just enough to reveal the dead woman’s head. Dawkins cried out in horror and clutched at Charlotte—Sherrinford Holmes—the nearest person to her. Mrs. Wellesley, her expression pained, advanced for a closer look.

“My stepfather is correct,” she said after a moment. “This woman doesn’t have pierced ears and my mother most certainly does.”

She glanced at the cowering maid, whose hand Charlotte was gallantly patting, murmuring, “There, there,” and turned to address Inspector MacDonald. “Dawkins only needs to look at her hairline. Perhaps you can draw the sheet up to her brows.”

Inspector MacDonald obliged. The maid, with Charlotte’s support, tiptoed forward, her eyes closed.

Charlotte murmured encouraging words for several minutes before Dawkins lifted her trembling eyelids and emitted a short shriek. But she stared. Then she looked back at Inspector MacDonald. “Sir, this is not Mrs. Carstairs. Her hairline is square and extremely neat. This woman’s is anything but. And I dare say her hair is a very different texture, coarser and thicker than Mrs. Carstairs’s, which has very fine strands and is like a cloud when done up.”

MacDonald sighed. Charlotte, too, exhaled. Mrs. Watson would be relieved. But it would be only a brief respite, before other anxious thoughts crowded the dear lady’s mind and her heart became heavy again with dread for her sister’s fate.

Since the women showed no ill effects from having viewed the body, Inspector MacDonald arranged to interview them. Mrs. Wellesley immediately asked to go first.

They barely sat down before she said, “I don’t know that unfortunate soul, by the way. Even if I’ve seen her before, I’m not sure I’d be able to recognize her as she is—and I don’t know anyone who is known to be missing.”

Inspector MacDonald nodded and asked about the house party. Mrs. Wellesley confessed that she’d spent a great deal of time either in her room or out walking. She attended all the meals, but otherwise did not consider it her duty to entertain the guests, who were her half brother’s in-laws, not hers.

“What about your aunt, Mrs. Watson, whom you were meeting for the first time?”

Mrs. Wellesley shrugged. She should appear dull, a woman all in black against walls painted a lusterless brown. But there was a strange vitality to her, a coiled, frustrated energy. “I’m past the age where I immediately find myself enthralled by mysterious, hitherto unknown relations. And even if I wasn’t, I’m not sure our Aunt Watson was all that interested in us. She was tense the entire time she was at High Burrow, rarely left Lord Ingram’s or Miss Holmes’s side, and paid attention only to my mother.”

That did sound like how Mrs. Watson characterized her visit to High Burrow.

“I understand you grew up at Noble House, Mrs. Wellesley?” asked Inspector MacDonald.

If Mrs. Wellesley had stopped to think the matter over, she might have realized that she didn’t need to answer questions for the police, given that it was not her mother lying dead elsewhere in the station. But she seemed to consider it an obligation, one she wanted out of the way as soon as possible, but an obligation nevertheless.

“I moved to Noble House when I was three and left at nineteen.” One side of her lips quirked in something that was not exactly a smile. “I returned upon becoming a widow.”

Her mourning dress, though black, wasn’t covered entirely in crepe but only had trimmings in that material. Charlotte had thought crepe was mandatory for a widow in the first year of mourning, but she was not as well versed in mourning fashion as she was in other aspects of feminine attire.

“Have you been happy since your return?”

Mrs. Wellesley straightened the cuff of her sleeve. “Happy enough, I suppose. But returning to one’s childhood home isn’t the same as returning to one’s childhood. Things have changed—people, too.”

Inspector MacDonald glanced at Charlotte. After viewing the body, at her urging the women had been offered tea and scones, during which time she had pulled the inspector aside and given him a particular line of inquiry.

At his look, she nodded, urging him to go ahead.

Inspector MacDonald took a deep breath. “Mrs. Wellesley, on the first night of the house party, did you and your stepbrother, Mr. Reginald Carstairs, hold a conversation in the library, while most everyone else was in the drawing room?”

Mrs. Wellesley’s gaze turned sharp. “Well, obviously not everybody was in the drawing room. Yes, Reginald and I spoke to each other in the library on that night, what of it?”

“A seeker of books was caught behind the shelves by your sudden entrance and could not easily make an exit. This person therefore remained in place and overheard you say, in a vehement tone, ‘She destroyed my life. She destroyed my dignity. I won’t let her get away with it.’ ”

Her eyes narrowed—Charlotte would be displeased, too, if her private conversation was now fodder for a police interview. But then Mrs. Wellesley shrugged. “Ah, that. I was speaking of my late husband’s mistress. My husband was a wastrel who had squandered his inheritance and we had to live off my dowry. So I was the one, essentially, paying for his mistress. Yet she had the temerity to mock me to my face. I fully intend to see to it that she grows old bankrupt and alone.”