Page 12 of Marriage and Murder (The Casebook of Barnaby Adair #10)

The man was of portly build and garbed in a dark conservative suit paired with a tapestry waistcoat in muted hues. He had curly graying hair peeking out from beneath the brim of a pale-gray hat, wore highly polished boots, and carried a silver-headed cane. His mien seemed serious if a trifle flustered by the rush, but his most outstanding feature was a pair of mobile bushy eyebrows that danced above a pair of shrewd blue-gray eyes.

As they pulled up before the others, Madeline, Henry, and the gentleman were all out of breath, and the three sported similar expressions of shock and earnestness.

“Thank God,” Henry announced, “that you haven’t started with Pincer yet.” He indicated the gentleman. “This is Mr. Farnham, the Huntingdon family solicitor, and he has information you need to hear.”

Madeline stepped in to perform the introductions, confirming Farnham’s standing and making him known to Stokes, who introduced Penelope and Barnaby. Plainly curious, Farnham shook their hands. Unsurprisingly, he was already acquainted with Mallard and exchanged a reserved nod with the policeman.

Then Farnham looked around the open foyer. “Now, I do have matters of note to convey to you…”

Mallard took the hint. “Perhaps your revelations might be better made in the interview room.”

Farnham nodded. “My thoughts exactly, Mallard. Thank you.”

After speaking to the constable behind the desk, Mallard led the group to the interview room off the corridor beyond.

As with alacrity they moved to claim chairs about the table, Penelope saw her own burning curiosity reflected in the faces of Barnaby, Stokes, and Mallard.

Henry looked concerned and very serious as he held Madeline’s chair for her, then he sat beside her, with Farnham taking the chair on Madeline’s other side.

Everyone settled and fixed eager gazes on the dapper solicitor.

Having set his hat on the table, Farnham cast a swift, shrewd look around those gathered and, without waiting for further invitation, commenced, “First, let me state that until half an hour ago, when Miss Madeline Huntingdon informed me of her sister’s murder, I was not aware that Miss Viola Huntingdon had passed, much less that she’d been killed. You may be sure that if I had known, I would have come forward earlier. However, as we are here now, let me give you what information I possess regarding Viola’s recent interactions with me and my office. She —Viola—came to see me several months ago and instructed me to look into the specifics of the boundary between Lavender Cottage and the neighboring property owned by a Mr. Arthur Penrose.”

Penelope stiffened and exchanged a fleeting, wondering glance with Barnaby before returning her attention to Farnham.

“My clerk,” Farnham went on, “is a very thorough man, and he pulled out every map and sale notice concerning both properties. We worked our way through the lot and came to the conclusion that Viola was correct in her assertion that at some point in the past, the boundary had been illegally shifted, removing a considerable slice of land from the Lavender Cottage plot and claiming it for Penrose Cottage.”

Farnham leaned forward slightly to glance at Henry. “There is a question of long-established use of the land, but in terms of formal title to the acres in question, that indisputably lies with Lavender Cottage.”

Farnham sat back and resumed speaking to everyone. “I informed Miss Viola of that circumstance about three weeks ago, and she instructed me to commence legal proceedings to formally reclaim the land. To do that, I needed to draft several documents, and she made an appointment to return to my office and sign the papers on the afternoon of Wednesday last week. As I understand it, that was the day before she was murdered.”

Stokes looked up from his notes. “And she kept the appointment?”

“She did,” Farnham replied, “but for quite the first time in all the years I’ve known her, she was late.”

“How late?” Barnaby asked.

“About twenty minutes or so,” Farnham said. “It didn’t really matter, as I’d kept the hour free in case she wanted to talk further about the case. But when she came in, she was in quite a taking over a completely different matter.”

Barnaby bit his tongue and hoped no one else prompted the solicitor.

No one did, and Farnham obligingly continued, “It seemed she’d just learned that a gentleman she had thought herself on the verge of accepting a marriage proposal from was only interested in her wealth. An hour earlier, she’d apparently had Swithin—of Swithin’s Jewelers here in town, a sound man—tell her that the stones in her aquamarine bracelet, a keepsake of her mother’s given to her by her late father, were now fake, as were the stones in the matching necklace this man—Montgomery Pincer, who Viola referred to as Harold—had given her as a gift. Pincer had borrowed the bracelet to facilitate the making of the matching necklace, and at all other times, the bracelet had remained in Viola’s possession. The conclusion that Pincer was responsible for the substitution was inescapable. Naturally, Viola was devastated to learn of such a betrayal of her trust, but on leaving Swithin’s shop and starting up the street toward my chambers, she saw Pincer with another man in the market square. Although I don’t believe that, at that point, Viola was sure as to what she hoped to achieve, she followed the pair when they left the square. They went to a small park opposite St. Edmund’s, and she hid behind the trees and bushes near the bench on which they sat and eavesdropped on their conversation, only to discover that they were discussing her! That was when she heard from the despicable rogue’s own lips that he was only interested in her for her money. By the time the men left and she came on to my chambers, she was…well, not quite incandescent with fury but close to it.”

Farnham faintly winced at the memory. “She showed me the bracelet and the necklace and insisted that she wished Pincer to be taken up by the police”—Farnham tipped his head toward Mallard—“and charged with theft.” Farnham sighed. “My duty always lies with my client, so in all good conscience, I advised her against taking such a step.”

He glanced around the circle of faces. “I’d known Viola since she was a girl, and I knew she would hate—absolutely hate—having her naivety displayed for all the locals to see and wonder at and gossip over. I pointed that out, and as I expected, the prospect gave her pause. When she asked for my advice on how to deal with Pincer, I agreed that she should break off the connection immediately and, as she was so upset about the missing aquamarines, that she should suggest that if he gave her back the stones, in exchange, she would give him the necklace, that being the only physical evidence that would allow the theft to be traced to him. I stressed that she should not frame the offer as a threat but approach the matter as a negotiation. I strongly advised her not to threaten him outright, as he probably knew her well enough to know, as I did, that she would never pursue the matter publicly.”

Farnham sighed. “She’d calmed down by then but wasn’t yet certain as to what she would do about Pincer. She agreed to consider my arguments and said she would write to Madeline and seek her counsel as well. As I knew Madeline, I encouraged that. I did offer to keep the jewelry for her, on the grounds Pincer might be tempted to protect himself by stealing the pieces away, but she insisted she would keep the items safe.”

That’s why she hid the jewelry in the urn, Penelope thought.

“After that,” Farnham continued, “we moved on to the matter that had brought her to my chambers that day, namely, the documents regarding the boundary dispute.”

Stokes looked up from his notebook. “Did she take any away with her?”

“She did,” Farnham replied. “There were several documents for filing with the court that she signed and I retained.” He glanced at Madeline. “I will acquaint Miss Huntingdon with those at another time, but on Wednesday”—Farnham returned his gaze to Stokes—“Viola took with her two letters for delivery to the relevant parties. I did offer to have them delivered by my servers, but with Ashmore being so out of the way, that would take time and also be an added expense, and Viola was adamant she could deliver the letters very easily herself.”

Penelope leaned forward. “To whom were the letters addressed?”

“As you might expect,” Farnham said, “one was to Mr. Arthur Penrose, informing him of the pending legal action. The other letter was a courtesy notification to the local magistrate for the district.” Farnham nodded at Henry. “Namely, Lord Glossup.”

Stokes shot a glance at Henry. “Did Viola ever give you this letter?”

Henry shook his head. “However, thinking back, on that Thursday morning before Humphrey relieved himself against her hedge, Viola was walking toward me in a rather determined fashion, and she had some paper in her hand. But then she saw Humphrey in action, and she screeched and started shouting.” He looked at Madeline. “That might have been the letter.” Then Henry frowned and looked across the table at Barnaby, Penelope, and Stokes. “I wonder what became of it.”

Grimly, Stokes added, “And the letter to Arthur Penrose.”

Everyone looked at each other, only to find their expressions reflecting the uncertainty, questions, and conjectures writhing in all their brains.

After a moment, Stokes looked at Farnham. “Thank you for your assistance, sir. You’ve given us much to digest.”

Farnham grimaced and picked up his hat. “Would that I could be of more help.” His chair scraped on the floor as he rose and bowed to the company. “If you have no further need of me, I’ll be on my way.”

Madeline rose as well, as did Henry, and together, they escorted the solicitor to the door, along the way making whispered arrangements regarding future meetings to discuss the settlement of Viola’s estate.

The others waited until Madeline and Henry returned and, with uncertain expressions, sank onto their chairs.

Stokes sighed and told them, “Johnson explained to us that Pincer was set on proposing to Viola as a way to repay his debt owed to Johnson’s boss, O’Reilly, but after her death, Pincer transferred his campaign to you.” Stokes nodded at Madeline. “However, when informed that Pincer was our prime suspect for Viola’s murder, Johnson explained, exceedingly convincingly, why he doubted Monty was our man.” Stokes glanced rather sourly around the table. “Johnson’s arguments were so sound, he swayed us all.”

Mallard grunted unhappily but didn’t disagree.

“Then,” Stokes went on, “just before you two arrived with Farnham, Carter, the medical examiner, came looking for us. Carter explained that he now believes the carriage clock was deliberately broken by the murderer so that we would believe the murder happened at three-thirty-three. In light of that conclusion, Carter has revised the time of the murder as being between one and three o’clock, more likely earlier than later.”

“And of course,” Penelope explained, “that means our murderer almost certainly has an unshakeable alibi for three-thirty-three.”

“And now,” Barnaby concluded, “we’ve had Farnham with his surprising news, which has shifted all the facts around and added others we didn’t know before, with the end result showing us a completely different picture to the one we thought we were looking at mere hours ago.”

They all digested that.

Frowning, Henry stated, “Yet as matters stand, we still don’t know when Viola died or who strangled her.”

Penelope grimaced. “Sadly, critical though those points are and in spite of our previous beliefs, at this juncture, both are entirely up in the air.”

Barnaby stirred and sat straighter. He looked around the table. “From this point on, we need to anchor our thinking on solid, verified fact. We’ve been led astray by accepting some apparent facts too easily and also by assuming some observations mean more than they do.”

Nods came from everyone, then Mallard glanced around and asked, “So what now?” He eyed Stokes. “Pincer?”

Stokes considered, then nodded and straightened in his chair. He looked at Barnaby and Penelope. “However, we’re going to have to be careful not to lead him. We need to get him to tell us what happened at Lavender Cottage?—”

“Without prompting him,” Penelope filled in, “to describe or agree with one of our assumptions, which might now be entirely wrong.”

They briefly debated the location for Pincer’s interview and decided that the interrogation room in the basement, near the cells, would better underscore his new reality.

Mallard hauled his bulk upright. “It might be cramped with all of us in there, but if we bring him up here, he’s likely to get the idea that he might yet talk his way out of being charged with anything.”

Stokes nodded as, with a scraping of chair legs on the floor, all of them rose. “If he senses hope, he’ll seize it and run, and we don’t have time to waste bringing him back to earth.”

Mallard headed for the door, opened it, and led the way to the foyer, where he and Stokes gave orders to have Pincer taken to the interrogation room, along with extra chairs.

Ten minutes later, Stokes, Barnaby, and Penelope led the way into the interrogation room. The chill in the small chamber hadn’t improved, and the stone walls created an odd resonance that made their trooping footsteps loud and distinctly ominous.

Monty was already seated in the single chair on the other side of the narrow table, facing the door with his hands manacled and his shoulders drooping. He barely glanced at them as they filed in, and Stokes claimed the chair directly opposite, with Penelope and Barnaby on his right, while Mallard, who had lumbered in behind Barnaby, took the chair on Stokes’s left.

Henry and Madeline had followed Mallard and moved to sit in two chairs placed against the wall, a few feet behind Penelope and Barnaby. O’Donnell and Morgan stood at attention behind Monty, their presence within arm’s reach intentionally intimidating, and Constable Price came in last, closed the door, and took up a position with his back to the wall nearby.

The instant the door shut, Monty raised his head, looked at Stokes, Barnaby, and Penelope, and blurted, “I didn’t kill her! You have to believe me. It wasn’t me!”

Everyone blinked. Stokes had paused in the act of drawing out his notebook. Smoothly, he continued the action, met Monty’s gaze, set the book on the table, and slowly nodded. “All right. But if you want to convince us and any judge and jury of that, you need to tell us exactly what happened last Thursday—the day Viola Huntingdon was murdered—from the moment you arrived at her cottage.”

Monty was already nodding like a bobble-headed doll. “When I got there?—”

“When exactly was that?” Barnaby asked.

“One-thirty on the dot.” Monty went on, “Viola liked me to arrive at that precise time. Her housekeeper left at noon, and Viola liked to have her luncheon and tidy away and have time to…well, I suppose you would say primp. She expected me at one-thirty, so that’s when I got there.”

“You came across the fields at the rear of the cottage and entered through the kitchen door,” Stokes said.

Monty nodded. “That was what I always did.” His tone almost eager, he explained, “I didn’t really want to be seen by the whole village, and Viola didn’t want the gossips to know, either. I think she feared being made fun of, so me coming and going via the fields and the kitchen door suited us both.”

“Was the rear door unlocked?” Penelope asked.

“Yes,” Monty replied. “It was always unlocked during the day.”

“But Viola trusted you,” Barnaby said, “and she’d given you a key, hadn’t she?”

Monty paused. His gaze darted between Penelope and Barnaby to Madeline, and he patently debated lying, but then, hauling his gaze from Madeline and fixing it on Barnaby, Monty swallowed and nodded. “She gave me a key to the kitchen door a few weeks ago. I’m not sure why. I didn’t ask for it.”

“But it came in handy, didn’t it?” Stokes’s tone was cutting. “It was you who used that key to get into the cottage last night.” When Monty just stared at him, Stokes grunted. “Just answer yes or no. Thanks to Price, nothing came of it, and at this point, it’s no longer important.”

Monty thought, then hung his head. “Yes, it was me.”

“Why?” Barnaby asked.

Monty shifted on the hard chair. When they all simply waited, he eventually offered, “I was hoping to convince her—Madeline—to marry me.”

Mallard growled, “In the age-old way of convincing a woman. You worm!”

No one else said anything, but the weight of condemnation in the atmosphere palpably grew.

Hands gripping tight, Monty seemed to shrink as he whispered, “I was desperate.”

Stokes glanced at Penelope, who was looking daggers at Monty, then he glanced back at Madeline and Henry, equally furious, then returned his gaze to Monty. “We’ll leave that matter for later. For now, tell us exactly what happened—what you saw, heard, and felt—when you opened the kitchen door last Thursday and stepped into Lavender Cottage.”

At first, Monty’s expression grew distant, then his features subtly altered as if remembered terror was slowly sinking its talons into him anew.

Viewing the change, Penelope thought that Johnson had been absolutely correct. Monty was an utter coward. He would never have the backbone to kill anyone.

Monty swallowed and, plainly in the grip of his memories, said, “Viola wasn’t there to meet me. She usually was, and I was a little surprised. I called out, but she didn’t answer. And then I realized how quiet the place was. Unnaturally quiet. Slowly, I walked on toward the dining area. I didn’t know what was going on, but then I reached the dining table and looked into the parlor, and I saw her…”

His recoil, his blatantly genuine revulsion at the remembered sight, put paid to any lingering notion that he might have been Viola’s killer. Not even the best actor on the London stage could manufacture that depth of horror.

Hoarsely, Monty went on, “She was dead. Obviously dead. She was lying there in a heap, her eyes wide open and staring, her tongue…” Monty closed his eyes and visibly shuddered.

In a matter-of-fact tone, Stokes asked, “Did you check for signs of life?”

Vehemently, Monty shook his head. “I couldn’t bring myself to go near her, much less touch her.” He swallowed hard and said, “And it was beyond obvious she was dead.”

“Did you notice the clock lying on the hearth?” Barnaby asked.

Monty opened his eyes, his gaze growing distant once more, and he nodded. “I saw it, but I didn’t touch it.”

“Did you see what time the clock showed?” Stokes asked.

Monty shook his head. “I didn’t look. What was the point? She was dead.” He lifted his manacled hands as if to gesture, then let them fall back. “She was just lying there, dead.”

Stokes studied him for an instant, then mildly inquired, “So what did you do?”

Monty exhaled and fixed his gaze on the table between them. “I just stared. I was frozen for I don’t know how long. It was…horrible. Then it slowly sank in that if she was dead, I’d lost all hope of paying O’Reilly.”

To Penelope, that rang true. She glanced briefly at Henry and Madeline and saw that Henry was holding Madeline’s hand, and Madeline was gripping his as if it were a lifeline.

As Penelope returned her attention to Monty, he went on, “It was like a terrible nightmare unfolding in my mind. I suddenly thought, what if you found the jewelry—the bracelet and necklace? You’d realize the stones were paste and check the jewelers, and Jacobs could identify me as the man who had the stones replaced—as he just did.” Monty’s voice had taken on a fearful edge. “I panicked. And then I looked at her and realized she wasn’t wearing either piece. Ever since I gave her the necklace, I never saw her without both. She was delighted with them and always wore them whenever she was with me.” He twisted his clasped hands, and the manacles clacked. “I had to get those two pieces back, then there’d be nothing to connect me with Viola. So I searched. I started with her bag, the tapestry one she always carried whenever she went out. She always left it sitting on the hall table, just inside the front door, but someone had been there before me, and the bag was upended and dropped on the floor and the contents strewn everywhere. No necklace or bracelet, but I didn’t really think she would have carried her favorite jewelry in her bag. I went upstairs and searched her bedroom. I searched there and everywhere else I could think to look.”

His expression stated he was reliving those moments in his mind. “I even searched in the kitchen. I’d heard that sometimes women hid their jewelry there, in the cupboards or the flour bin, but there was nothing there either.”

Penelope leaned forward and asked, “After searching in the flour bin, did you go back to the body?”

Monty looked almost shocked at the suggestion. “No. I didn’t see any reason to.” Then, with obvious candor, he added, “I couldn’t make myself go back in there, where she was lying dead, anyway.”

Penelope nodded and sat back.

Monty gave her a wary look.

“So what happened next?” Stokes asked.

After a moment of thinking, Monty picked up his tale. “I was getting more and more desperate, and I knew time had to be getting on, so I left. I went out through the kitchen door, through the woods and on through the fields. I was in such a state, imagining this and that and thinking of Viola lying there, that I wasn’t as careful as I usually was. I went over the stile and dropped onto the Tollard Royal-Ashmore lane just as the minister was driving past in his gig. He saw me and smiled and saluted with his whip. I had to drum up a smile and wave back. I don’t know how well I managed, but he didn’t stop, just bowled on, and as soon as he was out of sight, I pelted across the lane and into the field where I’d left my horse and rode home to Bowerchalke.”

Stokes flipped back through his notes, read, then said, “You arrived at one-thirty. Judging by the extent of your search and the time you spent before starting it, it must have been two-thirty or thereabouts when you encountered Reverend Foswell.”

Monty shrugged. “About that. Perhaps the reverend can tell you when he saw me.”

“You can be sure we’ll ask,” Mallard rumbled.

Monty looked at Mallard, then ran his gaze over the faces of Stokes, Penelope, and Barnaby. “But you believe me, don’t you? I didn’t kill her. She was already dead when I got there. Without her”—he raised his hands in a defeated gesture—“I wouldn’t have had anything. I needed her alive.”

Stokes shut his notebook and tucked it into his pocket. “As to whether you’ll swing for Viola Huntingdon’s murder, I can’t yet say, but you will be charged with the theft of her aquamarines, which we recovered from Jacobs. As he’s already identified you as the man who commissioned him to swap the stones, and we have witnesses aplenty that the substitution wasn’t carried out at Viola’s behest, that charge will stick.”

Oddly, Monty was nodding, his expression suggesting he was almost eager to face the lesser charge. “And you’ll find who killed Viola, won’t you? Then you and everyone else will know it wasn’t me.”

Stokes’s expression turned stony. He regarded Monty for a moment, then stated, “We’ll definitely be pursuing Viola’s murderer, but you may be very sure that the notion of saving you from the hangman’s noose won’t contribute in even the smallest way to our motives for doing so.”

With a look of utter disgust on his face, Stokes rose, as did everyone else. Without another word to Montgomery Pincer, they turned and quit the room and left him to his fate.

In procession, they trooped up the stairs and halted in the foyer.

Stokes sighed. “He’s not our murderer. If we say that the murderer broke the clock to give themselves a cast-iron alibi—and by Carter’s account, that’s the only viable explanation for the broken clock—then Monty has no strong alibi for three-thirty-three.”

Grimly, Barnaby stated, “The murderer—the real murderer—does have that invincible alibi for three-thirty-three. The only mistake they made in setting that up is that they didn’t allow for Monty arriving at one-thirty and finding Viola already dead.”

Penelope wrinkled her nose. “If Monty hadn’t turned up, the chances are this case might never have been solved.”

Barnaby nodded. “The murderer thought they were being very clever in resetting the clock and breaking it, but in reality?—”

“In light of the very short list of suspects,” Penelope stated, “through that action, the murderer turned the finger of suspicion directly at themselves.”