Page 32 of Word of the Wicked (Murder in Moonlight #5)

Here, maids were making the most of the wintry sunshine and hanging out washing. A footman was leaning against one of the clothes poles, idly watching and flirting, though he sprang to attention quickly enough when Constance and Solomon strolled past his line of vision. The maids dropped curtseys.

The footman strode toward the visitors. “Sir, madam, may I show you to the front door.” It wasn’t really a question, but Solomon chose to answer it.

“Actually, no, thank you. You may be the very man we are looking for.”

“Me?” The footman was little more than a boy and looked distinctly alarmed.

“You don’t need to worry,” Constance reassured him. “You’ve done nothing wrong. As you probably know, we are trying to solve an upsetting puzzle for Miss Mortimer.”

“I heard it was Mrs. Chadwick’s—er…puzzle,” the footman replied with more than a hint of insolence.

“Then it seems you don’t know quite everything about your betters,” Solomon observed. “Oblige me by looking at this envelope, addressed to your mistress. And yes, she did give it to us to investigate. Do you remember it?”

The footman peered at it, rubbing his knuckles against his cheek. His uncertainty might have been due to memory, or to concern over what his employer truly expected of him.

“Yes, I do,” he said at last. “It was on the hall table about a month back—maybe more. It was at the top of the post pile I took up to her.”

“Why do you remember that one in particular?” Solomon asked. “Doesn’t Miss Mortimer receive many letters?”

“Yes, she does, but not with writing like that. Even the letters from children aren’t all in capital letters.”

“I see. Is it your normal duty to take the post up to Miss Mortimer?”

“Yes, unless Miss Jenson or someone has taken it up in passing. Since I was on my way up, I did it.”

“Can you remember the time of day?” Constance asked.

“Teatime. Well, after tea, since she had callers.”

“Can you remember who those callers were?”

“I didn’t look. Mr. Larkin and Betty the parlor maid showed them in. I just hung the coats up and carried the tea tray.”

“Hmm. So they were all front-door callers,” Constance said, wondering how to ask if Mavis Cartwright ever visited the back door.

“Of course.”

Solomon said, “Did anything else unusual happen that day? Around that time?”

The lad began to shake his head, then stopped suddenly, his eyes widening. “Actually, yes, the vicar was sent for! So he must have been among the guests.” He grinned, pleased with his feat of memory and deduction.

“Who sent for the vicar?” Solomon asked.

“Old Mrs. Flowers. She was dying again.”

“Again?” Constance asked, startled by the similarity with David’s story of the murder at the Crown and Anchor.

“She thinks she’s dying regularly and sends for the vicar. Give him his due, he always goes to her, and she’s never died yet.”

“How did he receive this summons? Did some family member come to the manor house?”

“No, there was a note to the vicarage. Alice Cartwright, the vicar’s maid, brought it.”

Alice… “By the back door?” Constance asked, her heart beating suddenly fast.

He scratched his head. “No idea. I was stationed outside the drawing room door when Betty brought the note in.”

Curiosity had brought the two maids over to join the conversation.

“Betty was showing out Miss Fernie,” said the first maid, “when she caught sight of Alice scuttling up the path. So Alice just gave Betty the note and waited outside while Betty ran up for the vicar’s instructions.”

“Did Betty leave the front door open?” Solomon asked.

Constance almost wished he hadn’t.

“She did,” the second maid said. “I know, because I was polishing that big mirror in the hall that someone had breathed on, and the wind howled in!”

“Thank you,” Constance said. “You’ve all been very helpful.”

Almost blindly, she turned away, heading back the way they had come.

“Alice,” Solomon said, catching up with her easily. “Not Mavis but Alice, resentful on her mother’s behalf?”

“I hadn’t thought of it, but… I suppose it makes sense.

She could easily have darted inside without the maid’s noticing and left the letter on the hall table with the others.

Her grudge against the Mortimers must be huge.

And against Nolan for rejecting her mother and failing to give her the respectability that would have saved them both from scorn.

Mrs. Chadwick, the Keatons… Just examples of unkindness from apparent leaders of the community? ”

“And it would explain why the vicar and his wife are the only prominent people in the village who didn’t get a letter. The vicar visits Mavis, is kind to her, tolerates her haunting the church at all hours, and he and his wife employ Alice.”

“All true…” Constance shook her head. “No, I still think it’s Mavis, though perhaps with Alice’s connivance for this first letter.

A matter of luck, perhaps, if Mavis met her scuttling up to the manor house.

But I don’t see how Alice could creep in and out of the vicarage at night without being seen or missed.

She’d surely be far too tired, for one thing.

There’s a cook employed there too, and I daresay the vicar can be up and about at all sorts of odd hours.

Mavis answers to no one, and if she is seen in the street, everyone assumes she’s on her way to or from the church. ”

Solomon considered. “Maybe you’re right. If so… Do you think Alice knows what her mother is about? Could they be allies? They must be close, after all. For years it must have been the two of them against the world.”

Constance cast him a sardonic glance. “What, like me and my mother?”

“You stand by each other,” Solomon said.

“We don’t conspire together and never have. On the other hand, my mother and I are not everyone. They could be in alliance.” She sighed. “I suppose we should go and visit Mavis and see what she says.”

Solomon took her hand. “You don’t want it to be Mavis.”

“I think she has suffered enough. I don’t want to add to the village’s scorn for her.”

“And yet we can’t allow her to continue writing such letters,” Solomon said gently.

“No. No, we can’t, of course.” She clung to his fingers. “Am I right, Solomon? Are we right? I’d hate to accuse her of something else and be wrong.”

“Then let’s go back to the inn and look at everything again.”

*

Alice’s half day was on a Saturday, and she always spent it with her mother. At least it kept her out of the church for a few hours.

Not that Alice disapproved of churchgoing. She could hardly do so and work for the vicar, who was a kind, if distant, man. Besides which, his fiery sermons gave her hope that the true wrongdoers in her mother’s past would face their punishment on Judgment Day.

Over the tea that her mother always tried to make into a special meal for her on Saturdays, Alice said, “That Mrs. Silver was asking me about your missing box.”

“What box?” her mother asked in surprise.

“The little carved one with the secret catch that Miss Mortimer gave you.”

“I thought she was interested in letters, not boxes.”

“So did I. Maybe she’s just a general nosey. Though what Dr. Chadwick’s thinking of, setting her and Mr. Grey on us, I don’t know.”

Mavis picked up a slice of bread and butter. “I don’t think she’s a nosey. But she is curious, by nature. I rather liked her.”

“You like everyone.”

“Well, their inquiries are nothing to do with us.”

“Then why,” Alice asked, when she had swallowed her mouthful of boiled egg on bread, “are they interested in your lost box?”

Her mother brightened. “Perhaps they found it.”

“I heard her asking Mrs. Raeburn about the vicar’s lost prayer book, too.”

“I didn’t even know he’d lost one.”

“Oh yes,” Alice said. “Lovely book. Mrs. Raeburn gave it to him, so it meant a lot. So did your box to you, though I never understood why. You always stick up for the Mortimers.”

“For Miss Jessica. She’s no more to blame than you are.”

Alice gave up and devoted herself to tea while she gazed restlessly around the room. A large pile of newspapers lay in the dark corner next to the fireplace.

“Why do you always have so many newspapers?” she asked irritably.

“Mrs. Keaton lets me take the old ones that are unsold. I use them to light the fire.” Mavis wriggled uncomfortably in her seat. “And they’re useful when it’s really cold. Keeps the frost off the windows.”

“Does it?” Alice asked. She had a much smaller but similar pile of newspapers in her tiny attic bedchamber, but she used them quite differently.