thinking about the little boy and… I hope his father didn’t beat him too badly for what I brought. I should have thought better about it. But I was just trying to help.’
Dubois held her gaze. His expression became somewhat softer as he said, ‘I was there late last night. The old man said he had turned the vegetables into a nice soup they could also share with a sickly neighbour. And the boy was playing with the horse. I think the cart got broken when his father kicked it, but it will be repaired.’
‘I just wish that father would vanish and never come home again. Then the boy could have peace.’
‘His grandfather would be all he has and the old man could die any day. What would he do then? Some of the orphanages are worse than living with a drunk father. No, he is well off still having a parent to care for him.’
‘Care?’ Alkmene echoed in disbelief. ‘You call that care?’
Dubois shook his head at her. ‘Why do you think he responded so violently? He is worried the vicar with his plan for children will take his son away from him. It is the constant fear of the single parent. My mother was just like that. Thinking: if I die, what will happen to Jake?’
So his name was Jake. It was simple and strong and befitted him.
Alkmene moved her glass over the table. ‘My mother died when I was just four years old. I don’t remember much of her, but that she sat on her tabouret at her dressing table and did her hair before leaving for some party. It flowed down her back all golden, and my father brushed it.’
Alkmene fell silent, remembering the tender intimacy of that scene. Her parents had loved each other in a quiet, but intense way. Maybe that was the reason her father had never remarried, even though family and friends had advised it, not just for the sake of ‘the child’ as they had called Alkmene, but also to ensure he would get a son, an heir for all of his property and name.
But he had not wanted to replace the love of his life.
‘I guess you are lucky that you had your mother much longer,’ Alkmene said slowly.
Dubois huffed. ‘It is easy to think you are lucky when you have a little more than another.’
Alkmene winced. It seemed that whatever she said to Dubois, to show him she understood, or at least tried to, it was always the wrong thing.
After a silence Dubois added, ‘I am glad she is no longer alive, because she would constantly worry about me. Now I am free to do whatever I want. To risk my life in whatever way I want to.’
Alkmene had often met men who talked like that, risking their necks horse riding, polo playing, even experimenting with light planes. They needed danger to feel alive.
Perhaps deep inside of her she understood that feeling, better than Dubois or anybody else would ever guess. So often when she sat at home reading about strange events in times of old, she had wished she could have been there to help solve them. She had been amazed at how easily people had gotten away with murder, simply because nobody had asked the extra question or two.
Now Silas Norwhich’s death had given her a perfect opportunity to ask all the questions she wanted. And with Dubois’s help she might actually have a chance of proving someone guilty.
But this was real life. Not a book.
If someone was guilty here, and they proved it, he or she would end up on the gallows for it.
Someone would die because they had refused to leave the case alone. The police seemed eager enough to write it off as an accident and be done with it. What right did they have to be poking into it? A mistreated party had not asked them. They could not even know if Silas Norwhich would have been glad to see his death avenged. If he had loved his niece and she turned out to be involved, would he have wanted her to be executed?
‘Hey… What are you thinking about now?’
She looked up at Dubois, realizing he was studying her with a frown. He had told her before it was not a game and as they progressed, she began to see what he had meant. This was a matter of life and death. Something stark black and white, while she had an unsettling feeling that nothing in this case was black and white, clear and obvious. They were not even sure Silas Norwhich had been coldly murdered. His fall and subsequent death could have been unplanned, unwanted, by the person who had been present as it happened. He or she might have fled in panic, not out of guilt. How to untangle the whole web?
Dubois was still watching her, waiting for an answer.
She tried to smile. Forcing herself to sound light and unconcerned, she lifted her glass. ‘Shall we finish off the bottle? It sours when it’s left too long.’
Still pensive, Alkmene approached the men’s wear store to get the old-new handkerchief for Dubois. He had told her as they parted that he was meeting Silas Norwhich’s manservant for dinner later that day, to get all the details about the room in which he was found. ‘If he has anything special, I might call upon you tonight, so you’d better have my handkerchief ready and waiting for me.’
The clerk who had taken the assignment from her the other day was there and waved her into the back room at once. He spread a handkerchief on the table for her, gesturing over it with his hand. ‘It is the same quality, material, colour. This should do very well.’
Alkmene demanded the specimen she had left him to make a close examination of similarities and differences, but the clerk claimed to have thrown it out with the trash. ‘I can assure you this was the best I could do.’
Alkmene hoped his best would be good enough and left, having paid for the new-old handkerchief in cash so it would not pop up on her father’s bill. He was so chaotic that he might not notice, but just in case he did, she didn’t want to answer any difficult questions about it.
She believed Jake was right in saying she should not hand over the money demanded in the blackmail note, but that meant the blackmailer might make good on his threat to inform her father of her alliance with a convict. She could hardly explain to him that the purchases ending up on his bill were for said convict. He might think she had gone mad and sign her over to an asylum before he left on his next botanical expedition.
Actually, merely hiring a chaperon for her would be bad enough.
She needed her freedom to move around.
Once home, Alkmene gave the handkerchief a critical perusal and decided it looked too new, so she crinkled it and put it under a pillow, then sat on the pillow for an hour or so reading in a French novel so she could surprise Dubois with a casual conversational phrase here and there.
Satisfied with the handkerchief’s appearance now, she moved to the theme of scent and sniffed it critically. It was too new still.
She used some of the lavender drops she poured on her pillow on occasion to sleep better to create a flowery scent that a man might mistake for soap. After all, despite all his criticism of her, Dubois didn’t launder himself either, so what did he know?
At last she put the handkerchief in some brown paper and put it ready to present to him should he appear after his meeting with Norwhich’s manservant.
She had some dinner, Cook’s leek soup, followed by mutton in cream sauce with rosemary-covered baked potatoes. She took dessert, blanched pear with whipped cream, into the living room and got out On Rigor Mortis, to find out what it meant that the dead man’s fingers had been so stiff when the police surgeon arrived that he had to break them to get the bit of paper out.
The treatise was very long and dry and not at all conclusive about hours and times of death, and instead of making copious notes that would prove vital to their quest, she just had three lines scribbled in pencil, when the butler opened the door and announced, ‘A guest for you, Lady Alkmene. He has no calling card and… Hey, wait a moment, sir.’
He was pushed aside by someone who whooshed