Page 22 of Word of the Wicked (Murder in Moonlight #5)

Sophie blinked. “You are taking this remarkably in your stride, as if such things happen to you every day.”

“Not every day. But someone obviously doesn’t like my questions… Is Mr. Grey still in the drawing room?”

“When I left, yes. Shall I…?”

“No. No, I just need to be sure he is safe. Has my hair come loose?”

“Only a little,” Sophie said. “Let me see if I can repair it for you.”

Mrs. Silver nodded, and Sophie retrieved a couple of hanging pins, plus a few spares from her own reticule. “You think it was Mr. Mortimer who pushed me, don’t you?”

“Well, I don’t like him,” Sophie admitted.

“May I know why not?”

“Oh, every reason. He is smug and insulting and thinks he is so charming, when he is just entitled, like a child with too many toys.”

“And hands?” Mrs. Silver suggested.

Sophie wrinkled her nose. “That too. To be fair to him, though, I suspect my parents encourage him. They would like me to marry him and be the lady of them manor one day.”

“That is not your wish?”

“ He is not my wish.” Sophie drew in her breath. “My affections are engaged elsewhere.”

“By Mr. Ogden?”

“Is it so obvious?”

“Your partiality for his company has been noted by several people.”

“But not by him,” Sophie said ruefully. “Netta says I might as well be a book as a human being to him.”

“I don’t think that is quite fair.”

“It isn’t. People think that because they don’t see his emotions that he doesn’t have any. He does. He cares deeply for those children, and for his friends.”

“Who are his friends?”

Sophie shrugged. “Apart from me? The children. Mr. Raeburn, who thinks very highly of him. And some people at Cambridge who don’t mind that he’s odd and just like him for himself.”

“As you do.”

Sophie couldn’t help smiling. “Oh, I do. I know he can be awkward with people he doesn’t know, but he learns and improves, which is why I take him to tea at Miss Mortimer’s every Wednesday.

Of course, he is better when Perry is not present.

” She scowled briefly, then smiled again very softly.

“He can be really funny, you know, and droll with a straight face. And he knows so many astonishing things, has such compassion and understanding of people, as well as literature and music and poetry, such that it would make you weep.”

“You love him,” Mrs. Silver said.

“I do,” Sophie said proudly. “Though how would I ever know if he loved me?”

“You could ask him,” Mrs. Silver said.

Sophie’s cheeks burned. She felt like shuffling from foot to foot.

“He is honest, isn’t he?” Mrs. Silver said. “But I think he would never…impose.”

“I am more worried about imposing upon him.”

Mrs. Silver smiled. “I think you will know when the time is right.”

“Did you?” Sophie asked.

Mrs. Silver blinked. “Did I what?”

“Know when the time was right? You are going to marry Mr. Grey, are you not?”

“We are engaged,” came the slightly wary reply.

Sophie placed the last pin from her reticule into the soft strawberry-blonde hair. “Don’t you want him here with you now?”

“Not quite now. I… There are reasons I don’t want him to know about this incident. Will you promise me your discretion, Sophie?”

“If you promise me yours.”

Mrs. Silver smiled. “Of course I do.”

“Then I’ll confess to you that I have been so angry and confused, it even crossed my mind that my mother wrote that letter to herself, just to get my father’s attention.

It must be terrible sometimes to know he belongs to the whole village and not just to us, to her.

I know she feels that sometimes and is ashamed.

She does so much, you know, and I don’t take nearly enough off her shoulders. ”

“You do well enough. Perhaps what Dr. Chadwick needs is a proper assistant. An apprentice.”

“That,” said Sophie, much struck, “is an excellent idea. And I don’t really mean that my mother did send those letters.”

“Of course you did not,” Mrs. Silver soothed.

She rose from the chair, flexed her sore arm, and walked unaided up and down the room.

A little more color had seeped into her lips and cheeks.

“I believe I am ready to go back now. I have a shawl in the drawing room that will cover this tear at the shoulder of my gown. Sophie? Who do you think did send the letters?”

Sophie shrugged. “Someone too scared or powerless to risk offending anyone? But I have no idea who that might be.”

*

“Where did you vanish to?” Solomon asked Constance when they were finally alone, walking back to the village.

The Chadwicks had left half an hour before, the doctor being summoned by a patient, and the vicar’s carriage had just passed them bearing Miss Fernie as well.

“You were gone so long I began to worry.”

“I just went to the cloakroom, but I ran into Sophie Chadwick, and we had a little private talk, which was enlightening in some ways.” She told Solomon what Sophie had said about Ogden and Mortimer and her parents.

It took her mind off the severe ache in her shoulder and arm, which seemed to have borne the brunt of her fall.

“Interesting,” he said, though in discontented tones because still all they had was possibility.

“And according to Miss Mortimer, Miss Fernie was forced out of her position as teacher because she was embezzling the school funds. No one knows this, apart from Miss Mortimer and the vicar, who managed her removal and her pension between them without scandal.”

“Then she surely bears a grudge against them,” Constance said, gripping Solomon’s arm tighter in her excitement. “Which would explain Miss Mortimer’s letter, in a spirit of how dare you judge me? ”

“But the vicar didn’t get one.”

“The vicar didn’t say he got one. Perhaps I shall speak to him again tomorrow. Perhaps she’s saving Mr. Raeburn for a particularly nasty letter.”

“Or perhaps he doesn’t matter to her,” Solomon said thoughtfully. “It’s Miss Mortimer she must feel betrayed her, because they grew up together as friends of a sort.”

“Then why Mrs. Chadwick? The Keatons? Nolan the blacksmith?”

Solomon shrugged. “Perhaps she got a taste for the letters after sending Miss Mortimer’s. She is very much the judging sort, from what you have said.”

And she might well have shoved me down the stairs . “Yes… But can you imagine her defending the ignorant Nell Dickie by writing to the Keatons? Or telling Nolan off for scolding the rowdy children in his shop?”

“She might feel scolding the children is her business alone,” Solomon said. “And I suppose it’s possible her letter to the Keatons was about something else entirely. We only suspect it was to do with Nell Dickie.”

“I should have another talk with Mrs. Keaton, too.”

“I feel I am leaving you in the lurch here with everything still to do,” Solomon said. “Why don’t I wait another day? We might even solve this tomorrow, and we can return to London together.”

Constance sighed and rested her cheek against his arm. “That would be good. But your mind would be on David. I could come with you to London.”

“In the middle of the case? Would that be fair?”

“No,” Constance said, slightly miffed that he had argued so swiftly against it, even though he was quite right. “You need to make sure David is still safe, while I try to penetrate this village soup of gossip and accusation. Do you think Mortimer is a violent man?”

“Violent?” Solomon sounded startled, and uneasy. “I could more easily imagine his lashing out in temper than troubling to compose anonymous letters that he would surely find ridiculous.”

“What if that was the point? Some kind of joke that he began just to annoy his aunt, who keeps him on some kind of financial leash?”

“And the other letters are just covering fire, as it were? That we have been reading too much into?” Solomon rubbed his chin. “You might have something there, only I don’t see what his letter to his aunt has achieved for him.”

“Neither do I,” Constance admitted. “So why did he keep sending them to others? Did Mrs. Chadwick annoy him by thrusting her daughter under his nose?”

“It hardly appears to annoy him,” Solomon said dryly.

The village was quiet, with only a few lights still showing behind curtains and shutters.

In the long nights of winter, Constance supposed, a person could probably flit more easily between houses, pushing malicious notes under doors.

No one would see, concerned as they were with keeping themselves and their homes warm and dry.

Even the Goose taproom, though it still had a light, was quiet. The innkeeper came through to lock the main door behind them, and they made their way up to bed. Constance felt suddenly very tired, and her arm throbbed.

“Knock on my door before you leave in the morning,” she said.

Was that disappointment in his gaze? More than anything, she wanted the comfort, the sweetness of his embrace, but in such intimacy she would never be able to hide the pain in her arm or the bruising that had no doubt formed colorfully by now.

And if he knew, he would not go to David as he needed to do.

He halted at her door and took her into his arms. His lips felt cold on hers, and then warm, almost burning. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”