Page 59 of The Meriwell Legacy
Alaric watched as Constance closed her eyes and—like Monty—appeared to consult a visual memory. After a moment, she shook her head, opened her eyes, and looked at Stokes. “I sincerely doubt those two ladies will be of any help. They were discussing some lily and how best to grow it, right up until the moment Rosa gasped. Once she did, we all looked at her.” Constance met Penelope’s gaze. “As I said, Rosa was staring straight ahead when she gasped, but by the time I noticed—by the time any of us got a clear look at her face—she’d looked down, and the revealing moment had passed.”
“Did the men halt and look back?” Barnaby asked.
Briefly, Constance closed her eyes, then opened them and said, “Yes. At least a few of them paused and glanced back, but it was just the usual cursory glance. The instant they saw us all gathering about, they presumably assumed we had everything in hand, and they faced forward and continued on. I’m afraid I didn’t focus on their faces—I just know they were there, looked back, then went on.”
Stokes and Barnaby shared a long glance, then Stokes said, “If we don’t get a bead on this murderer by morning, we might have to sit all the gentlemen down, one by one, and ask them to say who was where as they left the billiard room.”
“And,” Barnaby stated, his features hard, “who paused and looked back.” Grimly, he regarded the others. “That’s one of the few things we know about our murderer—like Lot’s wife, he absolutely has to be one of those who looked back.”
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Chapter 10
All the investigators—among whom Constance now included herself, Alaric, and even Percy—had remained under the oak, discussing how best to address what were now their critical questions: Which gentleman had Rosa been staring at when she’d come over faint? Which gentleman had left the billiard room at the rear of the gentlemanly pack and then paused and looked back at Rosa?
As Barnaby had pointed out, the trigger, as it were, for Rosa’s murder had to lie there. The murderer had to have seen with his own eyes that Rosa was a threat to him; that was why he’d killed her.
Their first thought had been to round up the guests and, in whatever way, press ahead, but that impulse had swiftly been tempered by caution; if their actions tipped their hand to the murderer and he felt that they were closing in, he might well flee—or worse. Although what worse he might do, no one had defined. But of even greater concern was Stokes’s assessment that identifying the murderer as the man Rosa had stared at was, as evidence went, too flimsy to obtain a conviction. As Stokes had explained, “We need to know who he is, and then we need to build a case, either through his reactions to being accused or by finding solid evidence linking him to one or both murders.”
Barnaby had looked around their circle and gravely stated, “In this case, identifying the murderer will only be the start of building a prosecutable case against him.”
“But,” Penelope had said, “as long as we can be certain we know which gentleman he is by tomorrow morning, Stokes can hold him and prevent him from leaving, and then we’ll have time to build our case.”
Evidently, bringing Glynis’s and Rosa’s murderer to justice all hinged on learning his identity beyond question by midmorning the next day.
Consequently, despite the feeling that they were starting to find their way through the morass created by the house party—with at minimum four suspects, a large and rambling house, and people wandering here and there at will—an uncertain mood had enveloped them; the prospect of failure had hovered oppressively beneath the branches of the oak. As they’d debated their options for reducing their list of suspects to one, the knowledge that tomorrow morning was their last opportunity—that they had to succeed over just those few hours before the party broke up and everyone, including the murderer, left—had weighed on them all.
Eventually, they’d realized the afternoon was waning. Alaric had checked his watch and discovered it was already six o’clock; despite nothing being decided regarding their next steps, together with Alaric and Percy, Constance had hurried back to the house to change for dinner. Heads together, still discussing potential ways to unmask the killer, Barnaby, Penelope, and Stokes had ambled off to the stable, ultimately to return to the Tabard Inn.
As Constance held up her arms and allowed Pearl to slide her evening gown over her head and draw it down, she wracked her brains, going over all the happenings again in the hope of stumbling on some clue they’d missed.
“You’ll be late if you don’t concentrate,” Pearl admonished as she wrestled closed the buttons down the back of the gown. “Woolgathering, you are. And you rushing up at the last minute to change.”
“We’re on the hunt for this murderer.” Constance wriggled, settling the bodice, then reached for her pearl earrings. “We still don’t know who he is—and we need to know by tomorrow midmorning, before everyone leaves.”
Pearl humphed. “You’re a lady—leave searching for murderers to those paid to do it.”
Constance smiled. “Mrs. Adair is far more of a lady than I am, and she’s in the hunt up to her eyebrows.”
Pearl’s only reply was another humph. She finished with the buttons and prodded Constance toward the dressing stool. Once Constance sat, Pearl started on her hair; the activities of the day had freed myriad curls from her originally neat chignon. Working swiftly, Pearl loosened the thick, wavy mass, brushed it out, then wound it up into a knot.
Constance secured her string of pearls about her throat, then glanced about the room and belatedly realized the other occupant was absent. “Mrs. Macomber went down?”
“Mmm.” Pearl had pins between her lips. She set them in place, anchoring the knot of Constance’s hair, then said, “I finally got her courage up, and she toddled off near half an hour ago. I saw that Mrs. Cripps take up with her, and the two settled into chatting, so I think she’ll be fine.”
“Good. I was worried she’d take to life as a recluse.”
“I think she considered it, but she likes a good chat, and recluses don’t get much of that.”
“True.” The instant Pearl set the last pin in place, Constance shot up from the stool. She whirled, grabbed the evening reticule Pearl had left out for her, and headed for the door.
Sliding the strings of the beaded reticule over one wrist, Constance strode up the corridor. The rooms she passed were silent, all the other guests already downstairs.
She stepped into the wide hall where the corridors from the various wings converged before the head of the main stairs. She glanced to her left, down the corridor leading to the gentlemen’s rooms, and almost involuntarily slowed.
They hadn’t searched for the chain and ring.
She glanced at the stairs. Everyone else would be downstairs by now. She listened, straining her ears, but heard nothing; the rooms all about her were deserted.
