Page 40 of The Vanished Sister

“Why were you holding this conversation with your stepbrother?”

Mrs. Wellesley did not redden or appear remotely abashed. She stared directly at Inspector MacDonald. “We grew up together. Charlie is five years younger, but Reggie and I are the same age. We were constant companions as children and today I still consider him my dearest friend. Why shouldn’t I speak to him of what’s on my mind?”

Inspector MacDonald looked again at Charlotte. She gazed back at him. Why stop here? Keep going.

The policeman took another deep breath. “You’ve been back in England almost a year. Your late husband’s mistress presumably remained abroad where you used to reside. What brought on this sudden fit of anger against her?”

“Because she recently returned to England on the arm of a new paramour.” A muscle leaped at Mrs. Wellesley’s jaw. “I thought the infelicity of my marriage was behind me, but it isn’t. I’ve never been so angry even when my husband was alive.”

Inspector MacDonald leaned back slightly at her vehemence.

A knock came at the door. Sergeant Perkins, who should have been out talking to innkeepers in town, stuck in his head, his eyes feverish with excitement.

“Inspector, we’ve someone here to see the victim. He says she might be his mother.”

Thirteen

Mr. Chester Broadfield of Shropshire, a rather doughy young man, reminded Charlotte of a loaf of underbaked bread. But he clutched at Charlotte’s arm with far greater force than had the maid Dawkins, so much so that she was obliged to remove herself from his grasp for fear that he’d leave bruises.

“You need to breathe slowly, Mr. Broadfield,” she reminded him. “Slowly, and not with such force.”

Otherwise he was liable to become light-headed.

With trembling fingers, Mr. Broadfield mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. “My apologies, gentlemen. I—thought I’d have a bit more forbearance.”

“It’s nothing to worry about,” Inspector MacDonald assured him. “Much has been inflicted upon this lady, and if you suspect she might be related to you—I fail to see how you wouldn’t be deeply affected.”

“True, true,” said Mr. Broadfield, still panting. “But if I can’t even bear to look at her, I don’t see how I can ever become certain that she was re—related to me.”

“Do you know of any identifying marks on your mother?” asked Charlotte. “If you do, one of us can do the looking for you.”

Mr. Broadfield leaned against Charlotte—he had not listened to her earlier advice and had hyperventilated. She shuffled backward and lowered him into a chair. “Head between your knees, Mr. Broadfield. Slow your breathing.”

He did drop his head down, but out of dizziness, she suspected, rather than obedience. She also suspected that he lost consciousness briefly—she had to pull the back of his daycoat to prevent him from toppling over—and that was the reason his breaths eventually slowed.

After a minute or so, he straightened slowly, his eyes glazed. “My goodness, when did I sit down? What were we talking about?”

“Identifying marks on your mother, good sir, if you know of any.” Inspector MacDonald supplied the information.

Mr. Broadfield rubbed his temples, his beardless face now not only pale but clammy. “She—she does have a trio of small reddish moles on the inside of her right elbow. She told me when I was a child that they formed a perfect equilateral triangle.”

Inspector MacDonald examined the woman’s arm, rue and relief flashing across his features turn by turn. He then glanced back at Mr. Broadfield. “My condolences, sir. I’m afraid you’ve found your mother.”

Together, Charlotte and Inspector MacDonald managed to guide Mr. Broadfield out of the room. The bereaved son did not faint again, but required scalding tea laced with strong liquor to put some color back in his face.

And then, from his rambling answers, they cobbled together an account of what must have happened.

Mr. Broadfield’s mother, a woman who had survived several husbands, was known as Mrs. Whitehill at the time of her death. Her spouses had been upright and high-minded clergymen, one and all, but there was no one more upright and high-minded than Mrs. Whitehill herself.

But except for the frequency with which country vicars proposed to her, this exemplar of English womanhood lived a life of unimpeachable regularity. Until recently, when she, who rarely traveled, decided on a holiday to the Devon coast. Even more remarkably, before her departure she’d left a sealed note on her nightstand and instructions to her housekeeper, Mrs. Hawthorn, that the note was to be forwarded to Mr. Broadfield in case she did not return in ten days.

Seven days passed. The next morning, when Mrs. Hawthorn went into Mrs. Whitehill’s bedroom to dust, the sealed note was gone. This alarmed the conscientious housekeeper, who had aired out the room daily in her mistress’s absence. She wrote to Mr. Broadfield in Birmingham, inquiring whether by some chance he had come and taken the note from the house while she’d gone to the market. Mr. Broadfield replied most emphatically in the negative as he had not set foot in his mother’s house since Easter, when he last visited.

Mrs. Whitehill had left behind an address in Devon. That address in hand, Mr. Broadfield dutifully took the train to Ilfracombe and called upon the inn. Only to be told that his mother had never arrived at the appointed time.

“And that was when your Sergeant Perkins came into the inn. He heard me speak to the innkeeper and asked about my mother’s build and coloring. And then—”

Mr. Broadfield burst into tears.