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No crime. Of course she had committed no crime. Perhaps she had overlooked something, and if she had not, then Mary Farraline might still be alive. But certainly she had not taken the brooch. She had never seen it before. A lift of hope brightened inside her. She met Rathbone’s eyes and he smiled, but it was a small, bleak gesture, a matter of determination rather than confidence.
Beyond the bare room in which they were sitting they could hear the sounds of slamming doors, heavy and resonating, iron against stone. Someone called out, and the sound echoed, even though the words were indistinguishable.
“Tell me again precisely what happened from the time you entered the Farraline house in Edinburgh,” he instructed.
“But I—” she began, then saw the gravity in his face, and obediently recounted everything she could remember from the time she had stepped into the kitchen and met the butler, McTeer.
Rathbone listened intently. It seemed to Hester as if everything else in the world became distant except the two of them sitting opposite each other, leaning across the wooden table in desperate concentration. She thought that even with her eyes closed, she would see his face as it was now, every detail of it etched on her mind, even the silver flecks in his hair where it sprang smoothly from his temples.
He interrupted her for the first time. “You rested?”
“Yes—why?”
“Apart from your time in the library, was that the first occasion in which you were alone in the house?”
She perceived his meaning immediately.
“Yes.” She spoke with difficulty. “I suppose they will say I could have gone back to the dressing room and taken the brooch then.”
“I doubt it. It would be an extraordinarily dangerous thing to do. Mrs. Farraline was probably in her bedroom….”
“No—no, when I saw her, it was in a boudoir, a sitting room some distance from her bedroom, I think. Although I suppose I am not sure. Certainly it was some way from the dressing room.”
“But the maid could have come into the dressing room,” he argued. “In fact, her duties immediately prior to such a long journey would almost certainly have taken her there a number of times, checking that she had everything packed, all the necessary linen was clean, pressed, folded, placed where it should have been. Is that a time you would risk going in, if you were not supposed to be there?”
“No … no it isn’t!” Then her spirits fell again immediately. “And when I rested in the afternoon my valise was in the room with me. No one could have put the pin into it there.”
“That is not the point, Hester,” he said patiently. “I am trying to think what they will say, what opportunity you had to find the pin and take it. We must ascertain where it was kept.”
“Of course,” she said eagerly. “She may have kept it in a jewel case in her bedroom. It would be much more sensible than having it in the dressing room.” She looked at his face, and saw a gentleness in it which gave her a curious prickle of pleasure, but there was no lightness in him which corresponded to hers. Surely if Mary had kept it in her room, that was almost proof Hester could not have taken the brooch?
He looked almost guilty, like someone who must disillusion a child.
“What?” she demanded. “Isn’t that good? I never we
nt into her bedroom. And all the time except when I was in the library, or resting, I was with other people.”
“At least one of whom, my dear, must be lying. Someone placed the pin in your case, and it cannot have been by accident.”
She leaned forward urgently. “But it ought to be possible to show that I had no chance to take it from the bedroom, which will be where she kept her jewel case. I am almost certain it was not in the dressing room. To begin with, there was nothing for it to rest on.” Her voice rose in excitement as she recalled the details of the room. She leaned closer towards him. “There were three wardrobes along one wall, a window in the second, a tallboy with drawers on the third, and also a dressing table with a stool in front of it, and three mirrors. I remember the brushes and combs and the crystal jars for pins and hair combings. There was no jewel case on it. It would have blocked the mirrors. And there was nothing on the tallboy, and it was too high to be reached.”
“And the farther wall?” He smiled wryly.
“Oh … the door, of course. And another chair. And there was a sort of daybed.”
“But no jewel case?”
“No. I am certain of it.” She felt triumphant. It was such a small piece of memory and reason, but it was the first. “It has to mean something.”
“It means your recollection is very clear, not a great deal more.”
“But it has to,” she said urgently. “If the case was not there, then I could not have taken anything from it.”
“But, Hester, there is only your word that the case was not there,” he said very softly, his mouth pinched with concern and sadness.
“The maid—” she began, then stopped.
“Precisely,” he agreed. “The two people who would know that are the maid, who may well have been the one to place the pin in your luggage … and Mary herself, who is beyond our reach. Who else? The eldest daughter, Oonagh McIvor? What will she say?” There were both anger and pain in his face, though he was attempting to be as formal as his profession demanded.
