“Liège? I’d never heard that Beatrice had moved to Liège. Why are you asking me? You know we never kept in touch, or I’d have known where to search for Emma. What does Mary Ellison have to say about that?”
“She believes her daughter went to Paris, married there, and shortly afterward, moved to Belgium.”
“Well, then, what’s the matter with that?”
“I think Mrs. Ellison has been covering up the truth, that Beatrice was dead.” It was what he himself had begun to accept. “Did Emma ever suspect that?”
“Of course not. She believed her mother was living in London. It’s what the whole world—well, what the Dudlington world believed, anyway.” She set her teacup down and considered the policeman in her parlor. “Are you suggesting that Beatrice killed herself? That she couldn’t face living without her husband, and after seeing to Emma’s future, she did something awful?”
Mary Ellison would never admit that her daughter was a suicide—it was not something that happened in respectable families, and her pride would prefer that people believed any plausible tale rather than stumble on the truth.
“My friend in Paris writes...”
“It needna’ be suicide,” Hamish said. “There’s prostitu-tion.”
Social suicide, by anyone’s standards.
“Perhaps that’s why Mrs. Ellison paid the debt at the rooming house, when Mrs. Greer wrote to demand her money. It could have been quiet blackmail.”
“What debt?” Grace Letteridge asked him. “And who was blackmailing whom?”
He’d answered Hamish aloud. Cursing himself, he said, “No one. I was just speculating on something that Inspector Cain discovered in the records Inspector Abbot had left. An address for Beatrice Mason in 1904. But it was useless by the time Mrs. Ellison learned of it two years later.” He quickly shifted the subject. “Do you remember Abbot?”
“Of course. We saw him about as often as we see Inspector Cain. He would pay brief visits to Dudlington from time to time, looking in on the shopkeepers and the rector and the doctor. Keeping his ear to the ground, he’d called it.”
“What sort of policeman was he?”
“He was disastrous when it came to something serious like Emma’s disappearance. He couldn’t fathom why she’d left a loving and comfortable home to run off to London. He was close to retirement, old-fashioned in his thinking about women, and unwilling to believe that a Harkness could do anything approaching the scandalous.
He left most of the questioning to Constable Hensley.
Mrs. Ellison was distraught, and it didn’t help when Inspector Abbot badgered her, practically tearing poor Emma’s room apart in an effort to learn how she’d hoped to make her way to London. The fact is, no one came forward and admitted to helping Emma leave, and in the end the inquest returned a verdict of foul play by person or persons unknown. That upset Mrs. Ellison even more, and I lost my temper with Constable Hensley, calling him in-competent and stupid. And that’s when I began to suspect him. I couldn’t believe a London-trained policeman was so inept. He had to be covering up something, and the only thing that made sense was his part in Emma’s murder.”
“Murder is hardly more socially acceptable than suicide.”
“Yes, well, even the fact that Mary Ellison is related to the Harkness family isn’t much comfort to her now.” The words were bitter, spoken with anger.
“I’m told that someone saw Emma somewhere behind the church one day, rolling in the grass, as he put it, with a young man.”
She stared at him. “So that’s—” And then she broke off.
“That’s what?” Rutledge asked when she failed to go on.
Grace Letteridge shook her head vehemently, but her mouth had tightened.
“Who was the young man?” he persisted.
But she was already collecting the tea things and carrying them out to the kitchen, effectively closing the subject.
He followed her through the house.
“I even know the name,” he told her as she set the tray on the kitchen table, her back to him. “It was Robert Baylor—”
She whirled so quickly he wasn’t prepared, couldn’t even defend himself. Her right hand slapped him so hard across the face that he saw pinpoints of light dancing in front of his eyes.
“Don’t ever say his name to me, do you hear? Don’t you ever dare!”
And before he could prevent it, she was out of the room and going up the stairs where he couldn’t follow her.
Rutledge stood there in the kitchen, his face stinging and his own anger mounting.
“You shouldna’ ha’ pressed her sae hard. No’ if the young man was hers.”
“If it was Robert Baylor who seduced Emma Mason, why does she feel so strongly that it was Hensley who killed the girl?”
But then there was no proof that Emma had been seduced. She could just as easily have fought Baylor off. Especially if the attack had been a trial balloon, as it were. A test to see whether this very pretty girl was willing or not.
Hensley, on the other hand, hearing about what appeared to be a successful seduction, might well have tried his own luck, and when Emma threatened to tell her grandmother, rid himself of the girl and the problem.
Then why had Hensley even brought up what Constable Markham thought he’d seen?
Because, Rutledge realized, Robert Baylor was safely dead in France and couldn’t deny it. And Hensley had quietly managed to shift suspicion to Grace Letteridge.
Hensley was clever. He’d escaped one black mark against his name in London. He couldn’t have risked a second one here, particularly not laying hands on a young girl whose grandmother was connected to the Harkness family.
Was that a strong enough motive for the first murder?
Emma’s?
Bowles had given the constable a second chance, allowing him to redeem himself in the backwaters of Northamptonshire. But even Bowles would quickly wash his hands of Hensley if there was a raging scandal of that nature.
Chief Superintendent Bowles valued his title and his position more than he valued a subordinate.
Rutledge had the feeling that the disconnected bits and pieces were beginning to make more sense.
But what about the second attempt at murder? Hensley’s own?
Rutledge had made an enemy of Grace Letteridge, bringing up Robert Baylor’s name. And if she’d shot Hensley in revenge for what she believed he’d done to Emma, Rutledge realized he’d better be watching his own back.
Then where exactly did the relationship between Robert Baylor and Grace Letteridge fit into this picture?
21
In late afternoon, Rutledge walked to The Oaks and re - ceived a chilly reception from Keating.
“When am I to have my barmaid back again?”
“It won’t be long. Towson is showing improvement.”
“What brings you to my door? I’ve nothing more to say to you.”
“I’ve come to speak to one of your guests. Mrs. Channing. Is there a parlor where we can speak privately?”
“You’re not to upset her,” Keating told him belligerently. “Not under my roof.”
Surprised by such unexpected protectiveness, Rutledge said, “I’ve come to ask a favor of her. Not badger her.”
Hamish said, “She has befuddled him.”
Keating went away to speak to her and after several minutes returned to conduct Rutledge to a small but pretty sitting room done up in cream and gold, as if Keating had followed the existing color scheme when he repainted the room for his use.