Page 11 of The Meriwell Legacy
The question triggered some other avenue of thought, but before she could follow it, the brassy-haired lady—Carradale had murmured that the lady’s name was Mrs. Prudence Collard—looked around the circle of faces and stated, “I believe that brings us to the end of the evening. We retired then, didn’t we?”
The other ladies agreed. “We ladies went up the stairs first,” a Mrs. Humphries said. “I assume Miss Johnson was with us.”
Mrs. Collard was frowning. “I’m sure she was.” She looked around at the other ladies, inviting their confirmation. “Surely, she must have been?”
After an instant’s pause during which the other ladies plainly consulted their memories, Mrs. Hammond stated, “I, too, had thought Miss Johnson was with us, but I cannot say for certain that I saw her retire.”
The ladies looked at each other, waiting for someone to say they had seen Glynis, but no one spoke.
Then the oldest lady in the room, a Mrs. Fitzherbert, who Carradale had explained was a relative of Mandeville’s there to lend countenance, rapped the floor with the tip of her cane. “It’s simple enough to check.” She turned beady eyes on one of the ladies, a youthful widow by the name of Mrs. Cleary. “You, Rosamund Cleary, were sharing a room with Miss Johnson, were you not?”
“Yes…” Mrs. Cleary didn’t sound all that sure.
“Well, gel—did the chit reach the room last night or not?”
Mrs. Cleary, who, like many of the ladies, had been rather pale, blushed. She hesitated, then under the weight of the gazes of everyone there, admitted, “I…can’t say. I wasn’t in the room at that time…indeed, for some hours. All I know is that she wasn’t there when I got back, and her bed hadn’t been slept in.”
A ripple of murmurs and sly looks suggested all too clearly where Mrs. Cleary had been—dallying with one of the gentlemen.
Mrs. Fitzherbert snorted. “Well, that’s no help.”
The old lady’s snide tone sparked a flash of resistance in Mrs. Cleary. She straightened and, in a firmer voice, declared, “Be that as it may, I was on the terrace, at the rear corner, a little while later—just taking the air after everyone had retired upstairs.” She glanced swiftly around at all the faces, then looked down at her hands. “And I saw a gentleman come out of the shrubbery.”
Eyes grew round, then everyone glanced at their fellows.
An uncomfortable pause ensued.
Carradale broke it. “Which gentleman?”
Mrs. Cleary looked at him. “I don’t know. The moon had set, and there wasn’t enough light to see clearly—just enough to be sure that it was a gentleman I saw.” She glanced around again, this time openly assessing all the men, then looked back at Carradale. “I can’t even say that it was one of the gentlemen in this room. I didn’t see his face or anything else to identify him.”
“In which direction did he go?” Constance asked.
Mrs. Cleary blinked at her, then her gaze grew distant. After a second, she replied, “Toward the house.” She refocused on Constance. “He walked toward the front of the house, but I didn’t see if he went inside or not.”
By the expressions of studied blankness that flowed over most faces, it was plain what everyone believed the sighting meant. Constance wished she could look every way at once—to take in the reaction of each and every gentleman. She raked as many faces as she could. Did any look guilty? Or furtive or even conscious?
She noted that beside her, Carradale was also surveying the other men. He was, she realized—assuming the staff at the Hall and at his home could be counted on—the sole male present who could not have been the man Mrs. Cleary saw. Not unless he’d gone home and come back, but that would be easy to prove, and she doubted Carradale was the sort of man who would expect staff—both at the Hall and at his home—to lie for him in a matter of murder.
Regardless, given all she’d sensed and seen in the shrubbery as they’d stood over Glynis’s body, she truly did not believe him in any way involved. There’d been too much anger at the waste of Glynis’s life seething just beneath his surface.
After a too-prolonged silence, Monty Radleigh blinked owlishly. “I…say. That’s something of a turn-up.”
As if the simple words had somehow penetrated when the prior discussion had not, Percy Mandeville, host of the house party and owner of the house, slowly straightened in the chair in which, until then, he’d been slumped. His expression suggested sudden resolution.
Constance watched him, wondering…
Percy opened his mouth…then shut it. Three seconds later, after staring blindly straight ahead, he slumped back in the chair and covered his eyes with one hand.
His reaction sent a ripple of unease through the gathering. Hard on the heels of that, a palpable sense of panic started to swell, with every gentleman looking increasingly agitated, increasingly defensive.
Then Edward Mandeville offered, “Perhaps the gentleman was out taking the air, too.”
The panic deflated like a pricked balloon. Relieved murmurs of “No doubt” and “That’s it” abounded, and the fraught moment dissolved as everyone looked at their fellows, waiting for a gentleman to admit he’d been outside and must have been the man Mrs. Cleary had seen…
No one spoke.
Unease returned, creeping like an oppressive fog over the company. Once again, neighbor glanced sidelong at neighbor, at this man, then that, wondering…
