Page 53 of Murder in Moonlight

“Look around. Speak to the widow again. And to Mrs. Bolton.”

“Not to Mr. Davidson?”

Harris regarded her over the top of his glass and said nothing.

“I could do that,” she offered.

Harris lowered his glass, scowling. “This is a police investigation. We are dealing with someone who committed premediated murder on a man he knew well. Stay away from it. Besides, we haven’t ruled you out as a suspect. Or Mr. Grey.”

Constance smiled. “Yes, you have, Mr. Harris, or you wouldn’t be talking about it to us at all.”

*

“Do you thinkthat’s true?” Grey asked as they walked up from the village, where they had left the policemen to a hearty inn dinner. Randolph and Davidson had vanished, presumably back to Greenforth. “That Harris has ruled us out as suspects?”

“If he has, it’s because of you, not me. Neither of us has an alibi before midnight. On the other hand, neither of us has a motive in his eyes. If he knew my presence here had nothing to do with you, I’d leapfrog Mrs. Bolton to the top of his list.”

He looked down at her. The incongruous conviviality of their drink with the policemen seemed almost to have relaxed him. “I doubt you have a previous record of violence.”

“I learned early on to employ threat by proxy, namely that of large men.”

He lifted one eyebrow. “Are they kept busy?”

“No. But they are there.”

He looked away. She couldn’t tell if it was distaste or concern. But she had felt the hard muscle of his arms the first time she met him, when he pulled her from under the falling man in Coal Yard Lane. His kind of poise spoke of…preparedness.

“Are you a violent man, Solomon Grey?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you try too hard not to be read. But I would admit you to my salons.”

His gaze flew back to her, veiled as always, and yet she thought he was not pleased.

“It is a compliment,” she drawled. “Whatever you think.”

His lips twisted. “Probably one I don’t deserve. I am not a violent man, though I have always looked after my own. But what makes someone kill in one situation and not in another? If our culprit was easily spotted as a murderer, no one would have gone near him.”

She looked behind the words, behind the elegance and self-confidence, and still saw a man too much alone and too self-reliant. Like her, only he let no one near at all.

“What situation would it take for you to have murdered Walter Winsom?”

He met her gaze. “If he had harmed my brother.”

Her heart thudded. “Did he?”

“No. I had already found the proof before you entered the library the night he died. He was aboard the wrong ship at the wrong time.”

“And now you feel so guilty for your suspicions that you want to solve his murder.”

“Perhaps. Partly.”

“What was your brother’s name?”

He looked startled. “David.”

“Does he have to have been harmed? Couldn’t he have run away and lived his own life? Was he older than you?”