Page 82 of The Vanished Sister

“More than surprised. You must have seen how little room there is for maneuver. My hired trap had a devil of a time turning around. In the end the driver unhitched his horse, squeezed it past the body of the trap, and then reattached the harness to the rear end of the trap somehow, and walked horse and carriage back up the drive.”

“By which time Mrs. Carstairs must have heard the hullabaloo?”

Mrs. Albright took a biscuit from the plate she’d laid out and bit into it. She chewed slowly and Mrs. Watson had the feeling that she was mulling over much more than the answer to this particular question.

The silence dragged on. With three pairs of eyes trained on her, eventually Mrs. Albright said, “Well, Mrs. Carstairs couldn’t have not heard it, what with the trap driver having knocked over a large planter which went over the edge, landed on the next terrace, and broke with a terrific noise.

“A minute or two after that, she came out to investigate. I apologized profusely. But she only said, with utmost graciousness, that I was not to worry about it. In fact, she apologized to me and said that the staff hired for my stay had yet to arrive so if I didn’t mind, she would make sure they came the next day to remove the detritus and see to my needs.

“I said of course I didn’t mind—for someone like me, servants were a great luxury; not having them was the norm. She then invited me in for tea. She said that with the gathering at High Burrow taking place soon, she was afraid that she’d become too busy in the coming days and decided to visit Villa Inglese a little early to make sure that the house would be satisfactory.”

“And was it?”

“Yes, and how. Beautiful flower arrangements in the entry and the drawing room—even in the bedroom, as I later saw. And at tea, there was a pot of lavender, in case I wished to have lavender infusion instead.”

Pain struck like a blade between Mrs. Watson’s eyes: all that when Mrs. Albright shouldn’t have arrived for another two days.

“While you were here in this drawing room, did she leave your sight for some time?”

Mrs. Albright puzzled over the question for a minute. “Since there were no servants, she went to fetch tea from the warming kitchen and was gone for a minute or two longer than I expected. But she must have been unfamiliar with the house—and had to do everything herself, when she’d been waited on hand and foot all these years.”

Now much of the crime, or at least the portion in Devon, was unhappily clear to Mrs. Watson. Justina must have met Mrs. Whitehill at the railway station herself, the reason that Inspector MacDonald’s men could not find a cabbie who had delivered Mrs. Whitehill anywhere.

Justina brought an unwary Mrs. Whitehill to this house outside Lynton, a highly isolated yet beautiful and respectful location, tastefully furnished, and further perfected with fresh flowers and a pot of living lavender on the table.

Dr. Merriweather, the pathologist for the coroner’s district, was already analyzing preserved tissue and stomach content samples from Mrs. Whitehill and would soon be able to furnish a more complete picture of what had happened between the time Mrs. Whitehill walked into Villa Inglese and Mrs. Albright’s inconvenient arrival. Safe to say by that time, Mrs. Whitehill must have become insensate, allowing Justina to move her to the terrace, if not without trouble, then at least without noise.

Most likely Justina had not meant to pitch her over onto the private cable car, quietly rusting away at the upper end of the tracks. She might not have even seen the cable car beneath the small trees. After dragging Mrs. Whitehill out of the drawing room, Justina needed to make her body at least temporarily invisible, and that had been the closest spot that would allow her to push Mrs. Whitehill over the balustrade to the side farthest away from the front of the house.

Mrs. Whitehill landed on the cable car, which began its unexpected slide down the track. Did Justina feel a rush of relief when she understood what had happened? That even if Mrs. Albright should ask to look around on the terrace, she would not see a body on the ground underneath.

And then what? She made sure she looked presentable after her exertion, cleared away the tea stuff she’d put out for Mrs. Whitehill, and also threw Mrs. Whitehill’s travel bag over the edge of the terrace: That could not remain behind to be found by Mrs. Albright.

All those details taken care of, she welcomed Mrs. Albright into the house. While she disappeared to prepare tea for Mrs. Albright, she had the perfect opportunity to retrieve the travel bag and stow it in her carriage. And then, after a chitchat with Mrs. Albright that lasted the length of Hamlet, she took her leave.

Mrs. Watson should be sorry—and she was—for poor Mrs. Whitehill, who lost her life so cheaply and abruptly. But the tsunami of panic and the accompanying current of frantic energy coursing through her—she had to be feeling what Justina must have experienced that evening, so much so that her hand trembled.

Miss Charlotte glanced at her, then back at Mrs. Albright. “Did Mr. Carstairs hire the house for the month?”

“Why, yes, he did.”

Inspector MacDonald started after a second, and rushed to say, “In that case we shall expect you to remain here, Mrs. Albright, until the end of the lease.”

As they left Villa Inglese, Mrs. Watson could almost see Justina on the same path that evening, driving herself. Had she parked the carriage some distance away, tied the horse up, and then, under the cover of night, snuck back onto the grounds of Villa Inglese? Were she Justina, she would have needed to know where Mrs. Whitehill had ended up.

Had she made the hair-raising trip down the cliff face in the dark? Did she find the cable car empty, Mrs. Whitehill already pitched into the waves below by the force of the impact? Or did she need to finish the job manually, judging it better to risk Mrs. Whitehill washing up elsewhere in a few days than being discovered at Villa Inglese by the nosy Mrs. Albright?

Dear God, had it been the very next afternoon that Mrs. Watson and company, returning from a glorious outing to Lynton and the Valley of Rocks, had seen Justina standing on the cliffs near High Burrow, a pair of binoculars in hand?

Had she been watching for a body to float by?

“Mrs. Carstairs probably hadn’t intended, originally, to push Mrs. Whitehill over the balustrade of the terrace. What would she have done with the body then?” Inspector MacDonald asked Miss Charlotte.

The young woman, her cheeks rosier than usual from their earlier exertion, a few stray filaments of fine flaxen hair haloing her coiffure, looked adorably wind-blown, as if she’d stepped off an advertising poster for the latest models of safety bicycles. Mrs. Watson, however, shivered at what she might say.

“Remember the Roman coins and whatnot at High Burrow?” asked Miss Charlotte.

“But that was an accidental discovery, wasn’t it, Roman coins in that particular pasture?”