Page 62 of In Want of a Suspect
“Why else might someone set fire to the storehouse?” Marianne asked. “What else might they want to destroy?”
“Wool? But that seems hardly worth all this effort.” Lizziethought about how despondent Jack had seemed, his business on the brink of ruin. “Or maybe it’s not about the goods, but the building itself.”
“The fire has certainly rendered the storehouse useless for storing goods, illegal or otherwise,” Darcy pointed out. “Mullins said as much the other day—without a place to store goods, he can’t sell them.”
“So it’s possible that someone might have set the fire to stop the exchange,” Lizzie said. “But who?”
“And would that same person murder to keep their secrets?” Marianne asked, tapping on Leticia’s name.
That made them all pause.
“I suppose we must assume any of our suspects is capable of anything,” Lizzie murmured, looking at Darcy.
“Agreed,” he said, although it was clear he was uncomfortable with the idea. “Although Mr. Hughes was already at Cavendish House when I arrived that day, to inform Josette of her cousin’s murder.”
“That’s hardly an alibi. If he left right after killing her and had a horse, he could have gotten there a good fifteen minutes before you arrived, at least.” Lizzie hesitated. “Josette would be able to tell you definitively when he called upon her that day.”
“Speaking of Josette,” Marianne said, “are we going to consider her?”
“We must,” Lizzie said, although she was hard-pressed to come up with reasons why Josette would want to kill her only living relative. “She might have discovered that her fiancé wasengaged in illegal activity, and set fire to the storehouse to stop it. Although it does seem unlikely. She doesn’t seem to have the constitution for it. And why would she kill her own cousin?”
“She wouldn’t,” Darcy said. “I promise you, she was truly devastated when I informed her of Leticia’s death.”
Marianne, however, wasn’t willing to give up so easily. “Maybe she didn’t want to share her inheritance?”
“Maybe,” Darcy conceded. “Except I don’t know what she did or didn’t inherit because her grandmother’s will is missing.”
Marianne drew a large question mark under Josette’s name. “So we can all agree that Josette as either the arsonist or the murderer makes the least sense, but she might be at the center of things. And whoever is responsible for the fire may not be the same person who is responsible for the murder,” Marianne said, scribblingmore than one perpetratorat the bottom of the slate. “What else do we know?”
“The necklace,” Lizzie said, opening her reticule. She withdrew Leticia’s gold necklace. “I found it near her body. Someone removed it from her person—forcibly, because the clasp is broken.”
“It could have been any one of these suspects trying to make it look like a robbery,” Darcy pointed out.
“I don’t suppose you can tell me anything about it?” Lizzie asked Elinor.
“I’m afraid not,” she said. “I’m no jeweler. It’s a lovely piece, though, and it looks expensive.”
“May I?” Marianne asked. Lizzie handed over the necklace and Marianne inspected it carefully. She held it closer to thelamp as she turned it one way and then the next. “I could be mistaken, but this appears to be a locket.”
“What?” Lizzie leaned forward. “I didn’t see a latch.”
Marianne tapped the pendant. “It’s hidden by the filigree, I’m fairly certain. I only know because last week I recovered some stolen jewelry from a lady who lives in— Oh, well, never mind that. But I went to an awful lot of jewelers, and I met one who makes pendants that are secret lockets. Apparently they’re all the rage among the society set.”
Lizzie recalled now one of Lydia’s dramatic spells. What was it she had said? Felicity Carlton had a splendid necklace given to her by her fiancé that looked like an opal pendant but opened into a locket that contained a lock of his hair. “Can you open it?” she asked Marianne.
“Maybe,” she said, trying to dig her fingernails in between the finely wrought lines of the pendant. She tapped, pulled, pressed, and pried at the various seams and edges, but it didn’t budge. Reluctantly, Marianne passed it to Elinor, who had a go at it, and then Lizzie, and finally Darcy. Neither of them had any success, and Lizzie felt the frustration in her very fingertips.
“What if there is something in this locket that provides a clue as to what Leticia was really up to?” she said. “Lockets are made to conceal.”
“The jeweler who made it will know how to open it,” Marianne said. “We just need to find him.”
“We need to split up,” Lizzie announced. “It will take toolong for us all to follow each lead individually, and we have no way to know who we ought to be focusing on first. I don’t want whoever is responsible to wiggle away. Darcy, you need to call on Josette—offer your condolences, and then try to figure out what she knows about her fiancé’s business and what Leticia might have wanted to tell us.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked, clearly concerned.
“I’m going to see if any of the London jewelers made this necklace. A lady doesn’t buy this sort of thing for herself. This is something a suitor or a lover gives a lady. Don’t worry, Darcy—I can hardly come to any harm while in a shop.”
“I’m sure you’d prove to be the exception,” he said, which earned him a small smile.