AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She suppressed her desire to be irritated and forgot to be charming.
“Sir Basil Moidore’s daughter, Octavia Haslett, was found stabbed in her bedroom.” She had practiced what she intended to say, and now she concentrated earnestly on remembering every word in the exact order she had rehearsed, for clarity and brevity. “At first it was presumed an intruder had disturbed her during the night and murdered her. Then it was p
roved by the police that no one could have entered, either by the front or from the back of the house, therefore she was killed by someone already there—either a servant or one of her own family.”
He nodded and did not speak.
“Lady Moidore was very distressed by the whole affair and became ill. My connection with the family is as her nurse.”
“I thought you were at the infirmary?” His eyes widened and his brows rose in surprise.
“I was,” she said briskly. “I am not now.”
“But you were so enthusiastic about hospital reform.”
“Unfortunately they were not. Please, Mr. Rathbone, do not interrupt me! This is of the utmost importance, or a fearful injustice may be done.”
“The wrong person has been charged,” he said.
“Quite.” She hid her surprise only because there was not time for it. “The footman, Percival, who is not an appealing character—he is vain, ambitious, selfish and something of a lothario—”
“Not appealing,” he agreed, sitting a little farther back in his chair and regarding her steadily.
“The theory of the police,” she continued, “is that he was enamored of Mrs. Haslett, and with or without her encouragement, he went up to her bedroom in the night, tried to force his attentions upon her, and she, being forewarned and having taken a kitchen knife upstairs with her”—she ignored his look of amazement—“against just such an eventuality, attempted to save her virtue, and in the struggle it was she, not he, who was stabbed—fatally.”
He looked at her thoughtfully, his fingertips together. “How do you know all this, Miss Latterly? Or should I say, how do the police deduce it?”
“Because on hearing, some considerable time into the investigation—in fact, several weeks—that the cook believed one of her kitchen knives to be missing,” she explained, “they instituted a second and very thorough search of the house, and in the bedroom of the footman in question, stuffed behind the back of a drawer in his dresser, between the drawer itself and the outer wooden casing, they found the knife, bloodstained, and a silk peignoir belonging to Mrs. Haslett, also blood-stained.”
“Why do you not believe him guilty?” he asked with interest.
Put so bluntly it was hard to be succinct and lucid in reply. “He may be, but I do not believe it has been proved,” she began, now less certain. “There is no real evidence other than the knife and the peignoir, and anyone could have placed them there. Why would he keep such things instead of destroying them? He could very easily have wiped the knife clean and replaced it, and put the peignoir in the range. It would have burned completely.”
“Some gloating in the crime?” Rathbone suggested, but there was no conviction in his voice.
“That would be stupid, and he is not stupid,” she said immediately. “The only reason for keeping them that makes sense is to use them to implicate someone else—”
“Then why did he not do so? Was it not known that the cook had discovered the loss of her knife, which must surely provoke a search?” He shook his head fractionally. “That would be a most unusual kitchen.”
“Of course it was known,” she said. “That is why whoever had them was able to hide them in Percival’s room.”
His brows furrowed and he looked puzzled, his interest more acutely engaged.
“What I find most pertinent,” he said, looking at her over the tops of his fingers, “is why the police did not find these items in the first place. Surely they were not so remiss as not to have searched at the time of the crime—or at least when they deduced it was not an intruder but someone resident?”
“Those things were not in Percival’s room then,” she said eagerly. “They were placed there, without his knowledge, precisely so someone would find them—as they did.”
“Yes, my dear Miss Latterly, that may well be so, but you have not taken my point. One presumes the police searched everywhere in the beginning, not merely the unfortunate Percival’s room. Wherever they were, they should have been found.”
“Oh!” Suddenly she saw what he meant. “You mean they were removed from the house, and then brought back. How unspeakably cold-blooded! They were preserved specifically to implicate someone, should the need arise.”
“It would seem so. But one wonders why they chose that time, and not sooner. Or perhaps the cook was dilatory in noticing that her knife was gone. They may well have acted several days before her attention was drawn to it. It might be of interest to learn how she did observe it, whether it was a remark of someone else’s, and if so, whose.”
“I can endeavor to do that.”
He smiled. “I presume that the servants do not get more than the usual time off, and that they do not leave the house during their hours of duty?”
“No. We—” How odd that word was in connection with servants. It rankled especially in front of Rathbone, but this was no time for self-indulgence. “We have half a day every second week, circumstances permitting.”
