Lost Among the Living(88)

“What else?” Alex asked, his voice quiet.

“I looked past her. You were there, sir. You had taken off your overcoat and put it over Miss Frances so no one could see. Helen was being sick in the bushes. One of the gardeners came around the corner, and you shouted at him to call a doctor.”

The kitchen was quiet for a moment. I could not imagine the horror of it. I could not.

“What else do you remember?” Alex asked at last.

“Nothing, sir. I went back into the house. The servants were all talking in the kitchen. I didn’t want to be out front anymore, didn’t want to see. Eventually the doctor came, and the police. They asked us questions, and then they went away.”

“Did you see anyone else when it happened?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you see Mr. Forsyth?”

“No, sir. I don’t believe he was home.”

“What about Mr. Wilde?”

She shook her head. “He wasn’t there, sir.”

“Yes, he was,” Alex coaxed. “Do you not recall?”

She paused, then shook her head again. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t see him. If he was there, I don’t recall it.”

It went on like this for a few more minutes, with Alex prodding her memory, but Miss Jennings had nothing more to say. Finally, we rose to take our leave.

“You won’t tell anyone you talked to me, will you?” she asked as she walked us to the door. “I told you, I don’t talk about the family. I don’t want a reputation as a gossip.”

“It’s quite all right,” Alex said. He turned to her on the step and put on his hat. “You have my discretion.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

He walked down the step toward the motorcar, but when I moved to follow, Petra Jennings gripped my arm. “I know you won’t listen to me, but I’ll say it anyway,” she said.

I paused and looked at her. “What is it?”

“Your husband.” Her face was washed of color in the overcast light, her eyes large in her narrow face, her grip cold on my arm. “Everyone said he was dead.”

“He was a prisoner,” I explained. “He’s home now.”

“Is that so?” Her gaze was hard. “He came to the house out of nowhere, all the way from France. He asked me questions about Miss Frances, about her sketchbook. He asked me where it was, what kind of things were in it. And the next day, Miss Frances was dead. What do you think that means?”

“He was in his motorcar when it happened, pulling up the drive,” I said.

“I didn’t see that,” she said. “I only know what I saw. He had put his coat over her when I came outside. That’s all.” She let me go, and I followed Alex into the motorcar. I did not look back at her when we pulled away.

“What was that about?” Alex asked me.

I unfolded the road map and looked for the route to Torbram. “Someone overheard you,” I replied.

“Overheard what?”

“You asked Petra Jennings about Frances’s sketchbook the day before she died. Someone overheard you and got to it first. Got to Frances first and killed her. Miss Jennings thinks that because you were the one asking questions, the killer is you.”

“That explains the fact that she was terrified of me,” Alex said. From the corner of my eye, I saw him glance at me. “It’s a theory you yourself held not too long ago. I take it my manly charms have made you change your mind?”

I turned the map over. “There is that,” I admitted. “However, there is also the fact that Miss Jennings lives in a cottage I see no way she could have paid for. And the fact that the man’s shirt she was ironing had pin marks in the left sleeve.”

“So you noticed that, too,” Alex said. “David Wilde. Whom she has no recollection of seeing that day.”

“Yes,” I said. “Let’s go to Torbram and see what Alice Sanders has to say.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN



By the time we drove into Torbram, it was late afternoon and the sky was lowering, the clouds threatening a downpour. We had been spattered with intermittent rain throughout the drive, which had slowed us down. Now we faced the prospect of finding Alice Sanders as early night fell and brought a storm with it from the sea.

We started at an inn, where Alex parked the motorcar, hired us a room for the night, and asked the innkeeper if he was familiar with the Sanderses. As a Londoner, I thought this method of finding someone absurd, but Alex assured me that in a place as small as Torbram, it would work.

He was correct. Torbram was larger than Anningley, with a snappier High Street and a lovely seaside walk along the south coast overlooking the ocean, as well as winding neighborhoods of pretty homes, but it was still a small town. The innkeeper did not know the Sanderses, but his wife had heard of them, and the girl working in the kitchen knew that Alice Sanders served tables at one of the local pubs. Alex and I followed a network of local hearsay, and eventually we made the journey along the seaside under the threatening sky to the place where we’d heard Alice Sanders was waiting tables.

The pub was called The Red-Haired Queen, and it was nestled on the end of the seaside strip, its battered old beams looking out over the cold, dark, rocky beach and the tossing surf beyond. Around the curve of the shoreline, I could faintly see the outline of a lighthouse through the clouds, and I imagined on a clear day I’d be able to see all the way to Cornwall.