Percy blinked. “I—I don’t know.” He looked lost. “I didn’t meet Glynis until late in the Season—it was at one of Lady Islay’s events.” Percy frowned, then his expression clouded. “Lady Islay is Guy Walker’s aunt, and I gathered that she’d invited Glynis at Guy’s suggestion.”
“Indeed?” Penelope looked at Alaric. “Didn’t you mention that Mr. Walker was known not to take rejection well?”
Stokes had his notebook out and open. “In fact,” he said, “you hypothesized that Mr. Walker was the sort who ‘might have bailed up Miss Johnson over a suspected liaison with some other man, and given her inexperience, she might well have said or done something that caused him to lose control.’” Stokes looked at Alaric. “Any further thoughts?”
Alaric grimaced. “I concede that scenario is possible. How probable…I can’t say.”
Percy looked sickly pale again. “Both Henry and Guy showed interest in Glynis early on. Before…” His expression grew stark. “I didn’t pay much attention, of course, especially after Glynis accepted my offer. But as we had to keep our engagement a secret, both Henry and Guy were still attentive, sniffing around… Glynis mentioned on Sunday night that she had to keep discouraging them and didn’t quite know how. That’s why I suggested Alaric as a gentleman she could safely cling to if she had need of an escort or to help put off Henry or Guy if they became too persistent.”
Alaric looked at Barnaby and Penelope. “That’s what I detected when Glynis approached me—that her request of my escort on the terrace was with the intention of sending a message to some man.” His lips twisted self-deprecatingly. “It just wasn’t the message I’d assumed it was.”
“Both Wynne and Walker are on our list,” Stokes said. “Neither has an alibi—Wynne claimed Mrs. Cleary was his, but that won’t hold.”
Percy was slowly shaking his head. “Surely not. I’ve known both of them for years.”
Constance had been following her own train of thought. “But where are Glynis’s letters?” She looked around the faces. “It seems the murderer must have taken them, but why?”
“Presumably because they held some clue to his identity.” Barnaby frowned. “We’ve been talking of Percy’s letters to Glynis, but there’s no reason to assume she hadn’t received letters from other gentlemen and kept those as well—especially any missives of a romantic nature.”
“I can imagine the murderer might have suspected she could have kept them and searched, then simply taken the lot rather than pick through them and risk missing one,” Stokes said.
“If he took them,” Alaric said, “by now he’ll have burned them. He’s too clever to hold onto something so incriminating.”
“So one would suppose,” Penelope said, rising excitement in her voice. “But if he’s burned them, we might still have a major clue.” She looked around the circle. “It’s late August, and it’s been unusually hot—no fires have been lit for weeks. There should be no ashes in any of the grates—I think we can rely on Mrs. Carnaby to have seen to that. So if ashes suddenly turned up in some grate, I’m sure the maids would have cleaned them up—but that should have stuck in their minds as odd. Who had burned what and why?”
Stokes nodded, Penelope’s eagerness infecting him. “That’s something we can check.”
Barnaby mused, “Against Alaric’s assumption the murderer would have disposed of the letters, sometimes murderers do unexpected things. He might have taken the letters for some other purpose.” Barnaby glanced around and lightly grimaced. “And no, I can’t at the moment think of what.”
“There’s also the possibility,” Constance said, “that Glynis herself took the letters from the hatbox and hid them somewhere else. She was sharing the room with Mrs. Cleary—perhaps, in light of having to keep the betrothal a secret, she decided to put the letters somewhere out of Rosa Cleary’s orbit.”
Stokes was busily jotting. He inclined his head. “That’s possible, too.” He looked up. “Regardless, the letters—or evidence of their disposal—is something we can search for. We could mount a search of all the gentlemen’s bedchambers. I can’t see a murderer using any of the reception rooms to dispose of incriminating evidence.”
“I could help with that.” Percy’s eyes shone with a fanatical light. “If anyone sees us searching, they won’t question it if I’m with you.”
To Constance, and she suspected the others, it was clear that Percy needed to be doing something to actively help find Glynis’s—his fiancée’s—murderer. Anything to assuage the guilt riding his shoulders, to soothe the cauldron of his emotions. The nervy energy that had him in its grip cried out for action.
Stokes saw it. He dipped his head in acceptance. “That will help. We can search for the letters or any sign of them and also for the ring and chain.” He grimaced. “Although that’s easier to conceal—he might even have decided it’s safer to keep that on him.”
Stokes closed his notebook, slipped it away, and drew out his watch. His expression darkened. Tucking the watch back, he glanced around. “There are several points we need to follow up. It’s already after three o’clock, and as we only have until tomorrow morning before this investigation starts to hit rocks, I suggest we split up. Penelope and Constance—if you’ll come with me, I need to interview Mrs. Macomber. After that, we should search the married couples’ rooms.”
“Meanwhile,” Barnaby said, “Percy, Alaric, and I will search the gentlemen’s rooms.” He nodded at Percy. “We’ll start with yours. Not that we expect to find anything, but we need to be thorough, and starting there will quash any protest.”
Stokes looked around the faces, then nodded. “Right, then. In this case, time is not on our side—we need to make the next hours count. Let’s get to it.”
The determination in his voice—and the sense of finally having something definite to pursue—resonated with them all.
* * *
Unfortunately, Stokes made Mrs. Macomber nervous. And when she grew nervous, she grew dithery—even more dithery than she generally was.
“I really don’t know anything about Glynis’s letters.” Mrs. Macomber attempted to look haughty, but the effect was more like a cornered rabbit. “I didn’t feel it was my place to pry. I was her chaperon. Mrs. Johnson herself was with us through virtually all of the Season. My role was merely to guide Glynis socially, and…and…”
The older lady’s eyes started to fill with tears…
Stokes looked at Constance with widening eyes.
Recognizing the danger, Constance briskly asked, “Do you think Glynis might have hidden her letters somewhere else?” Stokes retreated, stepping back from the armchair in which Mrs. Macomber sat swathed in shawls, and Constance went on, “She was sharing a room with Mrs. Cleary, and the hatbox was on the armoire, where Mrs. Cleary could have looked…”
Distracted from her incipient weeping, Mrs. Macomber looked puzzled. “Glynis didn’t mention any reservations about Mrs. Cleary. Indeed”—Mrs. Macomber fluffed up like an indignant chicken—“it was Glynis who refused to share a room with me— me, who was hired purely to support her!” Mrs. Macomber sniffed, and her spurt of energy faded. “All I know is that Glynis always put her precious, sentimental things in her hatbox.”
Constance inwardly sighed and looked at Penelope.
Penelope leaned forward and gently said, “We appreciate your help, Mrs. Macomber—any help you can give us. Can you tell us if the letters were tied up in some way?”
Mrs. Macomber nodded. “Yes, Mrs. Adair, they were. Glynis kept them neatly tied up with a canary-yellow ribbon. A pretty color on her, it was…”
“Although we understand you didn’t pry,” Constance carefully said, “do you happen to know if Glynis had received letters from any gentleman other than Mr. Mandeville?”
Mrs. Macomber frowned. “I can’t say that she did, but she might have. Mr. Mandeville hove on our horizon rather late in the Season, and Glynis was doing well attracting the attention of suitable gentlemen prior
to his appearance, so”—Mrs. Macomber lightly shrugged—“it’s possible one of those gentlemen wrote to her, but as to whether she kept his letters or not, I’m sure I couldn’t say.”
“I spend each Season in town,” Penelope said, “so I’m acquainted—in a distant fashion—with most of those here. I can appreciate that it would have been quite a coup for Glynis to have attracted the attention of any of the available gentlemen presently at the Hall. Which of them showed interest?”
Constance sat back and admired a master; Penelope had hit just the right note to elicit confidences from a hired chaperon.
Mrs. Macomber leaned closer to Penelope and lowered her voice. “It’s depressing to speak of it now, of course, with poor Glynis gone—and in such a hideous fashion—but at one point, I had great hopes she would attach Mr. Henry Wynne, Mr. Guy Walker, or Mr. Robert Fletcher. All were vying for her smiles at that time.”
Mrs. Macomber’s expression lightened, as if she was looking back on a remembered near-triumph, then her face fell. “Of course, that was before Mr. Mandeville. Once he appeared, Glynis didn’t look at any other man.”
Constance and Stokes shared a glance.
Penelope patted Mrs. Macomber’s hand. “It is terribly sad. You came so close to seizing the prize.”
Mrs. Macomber nodded; she lowered her head and applied her lace-edged handkerchief to her eyes.
Penelope arched a brow at Stokes, clearly asking if he had more questions.
Stokes shook his head.
Constance turned to Pearl and spoke in a low murmur. “Stay with her. I’ll tell Vine to remain on guard outside the door. Until we have the murderer by the heels.”
“Indeed, Miss Constance,” Pearl grimly replied. “You can count on us to keep the old lady safe.” Pearl glanced across the room at the chaperon. “A sniffly thing, she is, but she’s got a good heart, and she’s not a pea-brain, either—she just sometimes sounds like one.”
That was a ruthlessly accurate observation. Constance kept her response to a nod. She turned to find Penelope taking her leave of Mrs. Macomber.
From beside the door, Stokes gravely inclined his head to the chaperon. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Macomber. We’ll leave you in peace.”
“Thank you, Inspector.” Mrs. Macomber spoke with greater strength than she’d displayed to that point. “I hope you find your man in short order.”
On that note, Stokes, Penelope, and Constance quit the room.
In the corridor, Constance paused to tell Vine that his services as guard were still required.
“Aye, miss. I’ll stay right here.” Vine grinned. “The maids bring me up my tea and dinner, so all’s right in my world.”
Constance arched her brows at him in affectionate warning, then walked to where Stokes and Penelope had halted a few paces along the corridor.
“We should look in on the others,” Stokes said, “and let them know they need to keep an eye out for a canary-yellow ribbon—wrapped around letters or not. And that they should check any letters they find to make sure they aren’t addressed to Glynis.”
To Constance, Stokes seemed edgy. Not nervous but restless—wanting to get on. She nodded and pointed. “Percy’s room is that way. They were going to start in there.”
* * *
Barnaby and Alaric were searching the antechamber of Percy’s room in a rather desultory fashion. The activity was, after all, all for show; they didn’t expect to find anything—they just had to go through the motions before they moved on to the other gentleman suspects’ rooms.
Percy’s room was the master suite of the Hall. It was a long room with a partition dividing it into an antechamber with armchairs before the hearth and various pieces of furniture, such as a wardrobe and sideboard, dotted about the walls. A door in the left wall led to a relatively recently constructed bathing chamber. Alaric knew that on the other side of the partition, the large four-poster bed sat in all its glory, facing tall windows. There were more chests and tallboys and the nightstands in there, yet to be searched.
Percy had assisted by opening the wardrobe to the left of the door and leaving Barnaby to search it, while Alaric went through the drawers and cupboards of a sideboard against the wall to the door’s right. Percy stood in the middle of the antechamber, watching them and looking around. Alaric noted that Barnaby was watching Percy from the corner of his eye. As was Alaric; why, he didn’t know. He knew Percy wasn’t the murderer and felt confident Barnaby did, too.
Percy looked at Barnaby, then at Alaric, both industriously searching, then Percy shrugged and walked to the archway that led into the bedroom. “I don’t suppose it matters if I help, does it?”
From where he stood, Alaric couldn’t see Percy, but Barnaby turned and, with his gaze, followed Percy as he vanished into the bedroom.
Barnaby continued to watch. Alaric went back to sifting through the papers Percy had shoved into the sideboard’s drawers.
The sound of a drawer being opened in the bedroom reached his ears.
“Oh my God!” came from Percy.
Alaric looked up to see Barnaby striding for the bedroom.
“I say!” Percy exclaimed.
Quitting the sideboard, Alaric followed Barnaby. He found him with Percy in front of a tallboy against the wall. Both were peering into the top right-hand drawer.
As Alaric joined them, Barnaby reached into the drawer and drew out a bundle of letters tied with a bright-yellow ribbon.
Percy was gabbling, “But—but—they weren’t there! They weren’t there this morning.” He wrung his hands.
Barnaby and Alaric exchanged a look. They believed Percy; his horrified shock was all too genuine.
Then Alaric frowned and looked at Percy. “How can you be sure?”
His nonaccusatory, matter-of-fact tone drew Percy back from the brink. He immediately replied, “Because I swapped my cravat pin this morning.” He pointed into the drawer; Alaric looked inside and saw the wooden box of cravat pins and shirt studs and sundry fobs sitting at the front of the drawer, with the rest of the drawer stuffed with loose letters and notes. Percy pointed to one particular pin—a diamond set in gold. “That’s the one I’ve been wearing lately—I had it on yesterday. But this morning, I switched it for this one.” Percy jabbed a finger at the black onyx head of the pin currently anchoring the folds of his gray silk cravat. “As a sign of mourning.”
Barnaby nodded in a decisive fashion that signaled his unqualified acceptance of Percy’s explanation. “Remember I mentioned that the murderer might not burn the letters but use them for something else? He did.” Barnaby held up the sheaf of letters. “He put them in your drawer, thinking to implicate you.” Barnaby glanced at the general detritus in the drawer. “Most men don’t change their cravat pins every day—or even every week. He wouldn’t have expected you to have looked in this drawer this morning.”
“But,” Alaric said, following the same line of thought, “that means he must have put the letters here sometime between when you left the room this morning and now.”
The main door opened.
Barnaby and Alaric walked back to the archway and saw Stokes follow Penelope and Constance into the room.
Three pairs of eyes locked on the bundle in Barnaby’s hand.
Stokes humphed. “We were coming to tell you the letters were tied with yellow ribbon.”
“Canary-yellow ribbon, to be precise,” Penelope said. “But you’ve already found them.”
Constance came forward and took the letters from Barnaby, who handed them over without quibble. Constance pulled the ribbon bow undone, then started flicking through the letters.
Alaric went to look over her shoulder. When she glanced at him, he explained, “I know Percy’s hand.”
Stokes and Penelope outlined what they’d learned from Mrs. Macomber. “So there’s definitely the possibility of letters from Wynne, Walker, and Fletcher. Those were the three Mrs. Macomber said were most attentive prior to Percy capturing Glynis’s
interest.”
“Except,” Constance said, looking up from the sheaf of letters she’d made her way through, “these are all in one hand.”
“They’re all from Percy,” Alaric verified.
Constance hesitated, then she gathered the letters, retied the ribbon, and offered the bundle to Percy. “Here. Best put them somewhere else.”
Percy took them and thanked her in a choked voice.
Barnaby then explained how Percy—under Barnaby’s eye—had discovered the letters and what the timing of their appearance in the tallboy drawer meant.
Stokes looked enthused. “This is a chance we can’t afford to pass up. Clearly, those letters were placed in Percy’s room by the murderer to divert our investigation and paint Percy as the killer. If we can find which guest came up to this floor, to this room, between the time Percy left it and now, we’ll either have our man or at least reduce our suspect list substantially.”
No one argued.
Penelope narrowed her eyes. “The critical time period is, in fact, shorter than that.” She looked at Barnaby and Stokes. “We held all the guests in the drawing room for most of the morning—from the time we arrived, which was nine-thirty, more or less on the dot.”
“True.” Barnaby looked at Percy. “What time did you go down this morning?”
“Just after eight o’clock,” Percy replied. “And Carnaby can tell you that most of the guests were already down and at breakfast when I reached the dining room.”
Constance and Alaric both murmured agreement. “Most came down in good time,” Constance said.
“They wanted to speculate on how your interviews would be run and what they might expect,” Alaric dryly added.
“So if our murderer wasn’t among those already down, he had an hour or so’s opportunity then,” Penelope said. “We didn’t release the guests from the drawing room until after eleven o’clock, and luncheon was served at twelve-thirty, so that was another hour during which he might have slipped up to Percy’s room.”