Page 73 of A Ruse of Shadows
Mrs. Farr had been standing by the parlor door, watching Charlotte. At her late husband’s name, a great rigidity took hold of her, as if she stared not at Charlotte but directly into the eyes of a basilisk.
“I see you recognize that name, Mrs. Farr,” Charlotte murmured. “I am on calling terms with Miss Harcourt, your niece by marriage.Her mother, Mrs. Harcourt, is no more. But thanks to a photograph she took many years ago, I was able to recognize you and Miss Duffin.”
Mrs. Farr did not speak. She did not even seem to breathe.
Charlotte dug deep into her shopping bag and extricated a brown paper package of baked goods. On the rickety round table next to the fireplace, the tea things that had been there for Jessie’s visit hadn’t been removed yet. She refilled the kettle from a nearby pitcher of water and placed it to boil on a spirit lamp. By the time Mrs. Farr shuffled into the parlor, Charlotte had already set out the lemon biscuits and sliced pound cake she’d purchased from Mrs. Hatfield’s tea shop earlier in the afternoon.
“What do you want?” asked Mrs. Farr once again, this time more insistently.
Her voice remained raspy, but her accent had changed, the roughness of the streets dropping away to a polish acquired by elocution exercises overseen by a strict governess.
Charlotte seated herself. “I am not entirely certain. The Christmas Eve Murder, you see, could very well be subject to a new investigation.
“Looking at the case, it may not be difficult for someone to make the argument that you committed the murder and were let off the hook because the investigating officer did not want a beautiful young woman to hang.”
Mrs. Farr gave a lopsided, rictus-like smile. “The poor inspector. What did he do to deserve this?”
A sarcastic reply.
“I am also interested in that,” said Charlotte. “In the meanwhile, I have some guesses about what happened that fateful Christmas Eve. As so much remains unknown, my guesses necessarily rest on a number of assumptions.
“First I assume that the police inspector assigned to the case was a capable investigator. The report he authored was clear and cogent—I can infer from that only a high degree of professional proficiency.
“Next I assume that the attachment Mrs. Harcourt felt towardyou was genuine. Judging by the open, indeed eager, manner with which Miss Harcourt speaks of you, and the unrestricted discussion she and her mother had held on the murder over the years, I would have to conclude that either the late Mrs. Harcourt had a completely clear conscience with regard to you, Mrs. Farr, or that she was the most devious liar and criminal I’ve ever had the misfortune of coming across.”
Mrs. Farr’s lips twitched, as if amused by the idea of her late sister-in-law as an arrant evildoer.
“For the moment, I choose the former interpretation: Mrs. Harcourt felt free to discuss the murder not out of a culprit-at-large’s desire to gloat but because she was riveted. And because she was anxious for you after your disappearance from Manchester.
“With those two assumptions in place, we can begin to consider an intriguing observation Mrs. Harcourt made to her daughter: that she herself, by all means a suitable main suspect, received little attention from the police.
“If we accept that as an expression of genuine bafflement, and if we accept the premise of the detective inspector’s general competence, then we cannot consider it an oversight on his part. I posit that he showed scant interest in Mrs. Harcourt because he already knew she was not guilty, which implies that he knew whowasguilty.”
“But if he knew who committed the murder, why did he make no arrest?”
Mrs. Farr, recovered from her initial shock, had taken a seat across the tea table from Charlotte. Her question sounded casual, that of a politely interested bystander.
The kettle burbled and steamed. Charlotte warmed the teapot, which she’d emptied earlier, then set fresh tea to steep. A pedestrian walking by the house would have paid little heed to this most ordinary tableau, two women at tea, gossiping about neighbors and the price of milk.
“I cannot speak in absolutes,” Charlotte carried on, “but it is quite possible that you murdered Mr. Victor Meadows, your late husband.”
Mrs. Farr crossed her arms over her chest. “His bedroom was locked from the inside, both doors.”
“True, butwhenwere they locked? The maid who came to relight the fire in the morning hadn’t expected to encounter a blocked entry. And judging by the evidence you gave, you also found it unusual that the connecting door between the master’s and the mistress’s bedrooms was barred on your husband’s side.
“An argument could be made that a disgruntled rabble-rouser from the factories entered the bedroom from the window—in his stockinged feet, as he left no prints—and proceeded to lock the doors from inside to prevent any disruption to his deadly work.
“But it is just as likely that the murderer entered Mr. Meadows’s typically unbarred bedroom from inside the house. And then, wishing to give the impression that someone not of the house had taken his life, locked the doors and opened a window.”
“And then leaped to the ground?”
“And then walked across the architrave. The distance is only fifteen feet or so. The architrave is three inches wide at the top. A daring and dexterous individual can manage the trek without the aid of the climbing vines that covered the wall. With the vines, a determined soul, even one lacking all training and experience, can make it to the nearest window, which happened to be yours.”
“You think that so easy? You think you can manage to move fifteen feet on a ledge narrower than the width of your hand, in the dark, in the cold, without falling off?”
“Only at the height of desperation would I attempt such a thing. And I would more likely than not plummet to the ground. But then again, I have always enjoyed cake a little more than is good for me,” said Charlotte, biting into a slice of surprisingly well-made pound cake, moist and crumbly.
“But thatIam doomed to fail does not mean someone else could not have succeeded at the same endeavor. Let’s suppose that I were built more favorably for such trials. Since I’d have decided, beforehand, that I wanted the murder to appear to have been committed byoutsiders, hopefully I’d have also thought of other difficulties that might arise.
