Page 33 of Word of the Wicked (Murder in Moonlight #5)

W ith a nod to the respectability of the house, Solomon and Constance separated for the night, though with a considerably warmer and longer farewell than of late.

Solomon did not even mind—much. A cold wash helped. The rest of him was happier than at any time since their first night together. They were about to finish another case, and David’s problem seemed likely to be solved just as soon as Abel Drayman was found.

And most of all, Constance would be his wife. They would make their own home.

He lay awake for a while, going over the Sutton May case in his head, but his mind kept straying to the personal until he drifted off.

In the morning, they went down to breakfast separately. The sight of Constance, her eyes dancing with humor and excitement, only made him more determined.

The church service was at ten o’clock. They left the inn just after half past nine and strolled along the road past the school and Miss Fernie’s house.

Sure enough, she hurried past them in a dark blue wool dress and coat with a matching hat.

Not quite lady of the manor, but much more stylish than the usual village schoolteacher.

She carried an old prayer book and kept her eyes straight ahead as if she did not see or recognize either of them.

When Solomon touched his hat, her nostrils flared, but that was her only reaction.

Constance and Solomon strolled on a few more yards, then turned back to view the procession of most of the village toward the church. They crossed the road and, a few minutes later, entered Miss Fernie’s garden.

It was a sizeable cottage compared to Mavis Cartwright’s or the one attached to the schoolhouse. Even walking down the path, Solomon could see good-quality curtains and a well-proportioned front parlor with its fire banked and a guard on the hearth.

Constance looked behind her and to either side, then peered blatantly in the parlor window. “Pretty.”

“Can you see anything there that shouldn’t be?” he asked, moving toward the window on the other side of the front door.

“Not obviously, no. But then, this is where she would receive visitors.”

“Dining room,” he said, peering. “Decent table and four chairs and a sideboard. Good carpet. Let’s go around to the back.”

Behind the dining room was a kitchen, old-fashioned but functional.

“This looks like a storeroom,” Constance said eagerly at the other back window. “All the stolen things could be in here.”

“Or it could be her parents’ old furniture and things she cannot bear to throw out.”

She grimaced. “Spoilsport. We might need to break in.”

“Last resort,” Solomon said, though it would not be the first time they had broken into someone’s property in the pursuit of a case. It just seemed more reprehensible when the victim was a little old lady living alone.

On the other hand, this particular little old lady might have pushed Constance down the manor house stairs.

He stood back and regarded the upper windows that were built into the eaves—presumably these were bedrooms. Solomon eyed up the lower and upper windowsills, and the drainage pipe from the guttering.

Then, after handing Constance his hat, he leapt up onto the kitchen sill, discovered a decent foothold, and climbed up, holding on to the pipe and the upper sill alternately and scrabbling for footholds.

With difficulty, he hauled himself onto the upper sill and, feeling like a Peeping Tom, forced himself to peer in the window.

It was not a bedroom, but another parlor, and a rather cozy, feminine one, too.

A fire also burned in this grate beneath a handsome mantelshelf.

Above it was a portrait of a young woman in ball dress.

She wore an old-fashioned, high-waisted gown and a tiara in her hair.

She was not particularly pretty—there was a certain hardness about the eyes and mouth—but it was a face of character, and it bore a strong resemblance to Miss Fernie’s.

Her left hand rested on her right shoulder, showing off a glittering bracelet made of two strands of diamonds with a ruby at the center.

The artist had made it seem that the light reflected off the diamonds and onto the lady’s face.

Solomon glanced down at the ground quickly and almost lost his hold on the stone. Constance’s anxious face was turned up to him.

“What did Miss Mortimer’s bracelet look like?” he asked.

*

Constance stuck Solomon’s hat on the end of a tree branch and clambered onto the windowsill with some difficulty.

“Don’t come up,” he said in alarm.

Naturally, she ignored that, for she had to see.

On the other hand, he had a point. Climbing in a crinoline was no easy matter.

Since her arms and legs were shorter than Solomon’s, she found it easier to shin up the pipe, as she had often done in her reprehensible childhood, until Solomon reached precariously for her hand and helped her jump across the windowsill beside him.

He was scowling, but didn’t waste his breath on pointless remonstration.

Secretly glad of his hand at her back, she gazed straight ahead. The portrait and the bracelet gleamed at her through the glass.

“The bracelet,” she murmured, “looked just like that. According to Miss Mortimer’s description.”

She gazed around the rest of the room, which was furnished with a comfortable, upholstered chair, a table set for one with a tall-backed dining chair, and a couple of smaller tables with ornaments, knickknacks, and a vase.

One of the little tables was draped with fringed silk cloth.

“Could that be the Keatons’ stolen shawl?”

“It could,” Solomon said grimly. “Look at the round table by the fireside chair. I suspect that is the vicar’s prayer book.”

It was certainly a small book bound in burgundy leather with elegant gold tooling, the page edges also gleaming with gold leaf.

“All those years ago,” Constance said slowly, “she must have stolen Miss Morton’s bracelet to wear for her London Season.

Or even just to wear to have her portrait painted.

Why on earth would she bother when she has to hide it away?

She’ll never bring anyone here. No one will ever see it.

The parlor downstairs is where she takes her guests.

Do you suppose all of these things are stolen? ”

“Possibly.”

An intricately carved, small wooden jewel box stood on top of the shawl-covered table, presumably the one Miss Mortimer had given Mavis Cartwright. Perhaps the bracelet was inside it.

“Why would she take that?” Constance demanded. “Why would she take any of those things? Just for spite?”

“Who knows? I have known an otherwise very fine person who seemed compelled just to take things. As if he couldn’t help it.

But this is…like a shrine to her cleverness, her fantasy.

She must have plenty things of her own in that storage room downstairs.

This is her secret pleasure. A portrait that can never be admired, surrounded by things she must hide. Can you climb down again?”

That was another good question. Having come this far on the false courage of sheer curiosity, the journey back made Constance’s stomach quail. She wanted to close her eyes and beg Solomon to somehow get her down again, but that was just too poor spirited for her to live with.

Heart in mouth, she launched herself from the sill to the pipe.

Her hands and feet scrabbled for purchase and she slid painfully almost half the way down before recovering some measure of control.

She reached the bottom with her dignity mostly intact and regarded the front of her skirts and coat with some disfavor.

They were covered in dirt, and crumbs of paint and rust, with several pulled threads if no actual holes.

She shook out her skirts, brushing furiously with her equally grubby gloves, which had the leather scraped off a couple of fingertips. Better than my skin .

“Are you hurt?” Solomon asked. “Your arm…?”

She flexed it very carefully. “I didn’t feel it until now.”

“I could just have told you what I saw.”

“I know. I wanted to see it for myself.”

He helped brush off her skirts with his bare hands. “Well, you were right about Miss Fernie, whatever her reasons. The question is, what do we do about it?”

“Break in and take it all back?”

“We don’t even know what is stolen and what is not. We need confirmation.”

“Or divine guidance,” Constance said flippantly. “Let’s go to church.”

He brushed something off the brim of her bonnet then rescued his own hat from the tree branch. “Are we decent enough?”

“You are,” she said, inspecting him. “I will probably be forbidden entry if Miss Fernie and Mortimer have been spreading their gossip.”

He crooked his elbow, she took his arm, and they departed Miss Fernie’s garden as if they had every right to be there in the first place.

Even walking very briskly to church, they had missed a chunk of the service. From within came the village voices raised in hymn singing. Solomon opened the heavy door as quietly as possible and they slipped inside.

It was hardly a large church to begin with, and it was already full, the congregation squashed together on the pews and even standing at the back.

Several heads turned to see who was so late, including Miss Fernie’s near the front.

Those who stood at the back—farm laborers, from their dress—shuffled along the wall to make room for Constance and Solomon.

While they all stood singing, Constance had little chance of recognizing most of the congregation, but several of them were certainly children, all singing lustily. Only when the hymn finished, and they all sat, could she begin to see more of the faces.