His expression registering faint distaste, Edward lightly shrugged. “I admit I know little of such things.” His gaze went past Constance; she followed it to the small table beside the bed—to a vial of laudanum standing beside a glass of water. “Perhaps it was an accident. I understand many women are addicted to that stuff.”
Still frowning, Constance looked at the body. “Laudanum kills while the victim sleeps—they simply never wake.” At the edge of her vision, she noticed the ivory-white of a pillow tucked down beside the head of the bed, half hidden by the drapes that hung there.
She looked up as Percy waved at the body and, in a choked voice, said, “It’s obvious Rosa was awake when she died.”
Edward’s frown deepened until it approached an aggravated scowl. “Perhaps she was. But surely there must be some mundane explanation for her death.”
Everyone—including the men still crowded before the door—looked at Edward in disbelief.
Constance remembered the comments various members of the company had made regarding Edward’s presence at the house party—that he’d been sent by Percy’s family to ensure nothing scandalous occurred. Given Edward’s role, in the circumstances, it was perhaps unsurprising that he did not want Rosa’s death to be another murder.
Dismissing Edward and his wishes, Constance looked at Percy. “I believe the proper course of action is to summon a doctor to confirm the cause of death.”
Percy blinked at her, then nodded. “Yes. That’s what we should do.”
“And perhaps,” Constance went on, “we should send for Lord Carradale. He knows the situation here and will also know the doctor and can assist with deciding what action should be taken once we have the doctor’s verdict.”
“Yes.” Percy nodded more decisively.
Several of the men behind him nodded, too; Constance had noted that most of the guests had confidence in Carradale as one who knew how to navigate the pitfalls of their world.
Percy turned and tried to see over the wall of men. “Carnaby—are you there, man?”
“Yes, sir,” the butler replied from the corridor.
“Send for Dr. Swale,” Percy ordered. “Tell him we’ve a lady found dead in her bed and need his services urgently. And also send to Carradale and ask him to come as soon as he can.”
“Indeed—at once, sir.”
The gentlemen before the door started to file out of the room.
Constance hesitated; she wanted to look at the pillow hidden beside the bed, but didn’t want anyone to know she’d spotted it. She also didn’t want anyone straightening Rosa’s legs and fingers and closing her eyes before the doctor and Carradale had viewed the body. To her mind, how the body lay was the most critical evidence that Rosa’s death had been anything but natural.
She didn’t glance again at the hidden pillow but instead advanced with her arms spread to gather and herd Percy and Edward, along with the other men, out of the room ahead of her.
She followed them into the corridor and closed the door behind her. Up and down the passageway, guests were gathered in small groups, discussing the latest horror in shocked and somber tones. The ladies looked as shaken and rattled as, inside, Constance felt. Glynis’s death had been a shock, but Rosa’s death—under the same roof beneath which they’d all been sleeping—went well beyond dreadful into outright frightening.
To Constance’s mind—and she was sure in many others—they had a murderer in their midst.
She cleared her throat and, when everyone looked her way, said, “This may sound insensitive, but as we are all wide awake, early though it is, it might be best to dress and go down to breakfast and”—she glanced at the door behind her—“vacate this area.”
Carnaby had dispatched footmen to do his master’s bidding; as pale and as distressed as anyone, he remained in the corridor, obviously waiting to carry out any further requests the guests might make. He added his encouragement to Constance’s. “Breakfast will be ready momentarily, should anyone feel so inclined.”
“I’m not sure I could eat anything.” Prue Collard looked at the door behind which Rosa lay. “But I do think you’re right about us all going downstairs. We don’t need to hover within sight of…our latest tragedy.”
Constance inclined her head; she couldn’t have put it better.
Unsettled, wary, and uncertain, the guests dispersed, retreating to their rooms to dress before heading downstairs.
Once they were alone in the corridor, Constance turned to Carnaby. “There’s a lock on this door, but no key. Do you have it?”
“Yes, miss. The key will be in the housekeeper’s room—we don’t leave keys in the locks, as the guests are prone to forgetting and locking the doors, and then the maids can’t get in.”
“Of course. But I believe we should lock this chamber until the authorities have made their decision about what caused Mrs. Cleary’s death.”
“Indeed, miss.” Carnaby glanced around and spotted a maid waiting nervously by the servants’ stairs. He beckoned her nearer and sent her for the key.
Constance had been thinking; no one but she and the staff would know the door was locked. “As well as locking the door, I believe it would be best to station two men from your staff on guard, here in the corridor. Then if anyone attempts to gain entry, perhaps one of the men could come and fetch me?”
“Of course, miss. If I might say, that’s a wise precaution. There are always those who have a ghoulish fascination with the dead.”
Especially murderers who want to hide their tracks. Constance merely nodded. She waited until the maid returned with the key and Carnaby locked the door. He regarded the key, then presented it to her. “Perhaps you should hold this, miss.”
She looked at the heavy key resting in the butler’s palm, then reached out and took it.
Two footmen arrived, and Carnaby directed them to stand guard before the door to Rosa’s room and to report to Constance if anyone approached, wanting to get inside.
With all as secure as she could make it, with a grateful nod, Constance left Carnaby and his guards and hurried back to the room she shared with Mrs. Macomber.
Constance scrambled into her day gown. Her maid, Pearl, arrived as she was settling the bodice; while Pearl did up the tiny buttons closing the back, Constance related what had happened.
Grimly, Pearl offered, “I can sit with the body, if you want.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary—the door’s locked, and we’ve got guards outside.” Constance glanced at Mrs. Macomber. “I would rather you kept an eye on Mrs. Macomber. I—Carradale and I—really need to know if she can shed light on any of this, or at least on why Glynis was murdered.”
“Has to be the same man, surely. But why’d he do Mrs. Cleary in? Might she have known who he was—or known enough to guess?”
Constance stilled. “Those are excellent observations and questions.” She twitched the sleeves of her gown into place. “But now that Mrs. Cleary’s gone, it’s going to be much harder to learn the answers.”
After allowing Pearl to brush out her hair and tame the long tresses into a plaited coronet, Constance left Pearl to her vigil beside Mrs. Macomber’s bed and hurried back to where the two footmen stood guard outside Rosa’s door.
She glanced up and down the corridor, but saw no one lingering in the shadows.
“Most of the guests have gone downstairs to breakfast, miss,” one of the footmen reported. “Some of the ladies looked a mite green—they seemed ready enough to get away from here.”
“I see. Do you have any idea how long Lord Carradale will be?”
“Shouldn’t be long, miss,” the other, older footman said. “His lordship’s not one to dally when asked for help.”
Realizing she meant to wait for Carradale to arrive, the older footman fetched a straight-backed chair for her and placed it against the wall. Constance sat and waited, trying to suppress her impatience.
Five minutes later, she heard footsteps—boot steps—poundin
g up the back stairs. She leapt to her feet as Carradale appeared at the end of the corridor; the relief that flowed through her was powerful enough to make her blink.
He strode forward; sharp and startlingly intense, his hazel gaze locked on her face. “I received a garbled message that one of the guests had died.” His gaze lingered on Constance for a moment more, then he drew breath and glanced at the door before which the footmen had come to attention.
Constance remembered how to breathe, found her tongue, and gestured to the door. “It’s Rosa Cleary. The maid who brought up her washing water found her quite obviously dead in her bed.”
Alaric frowned. “Last evening, I heard she’d retired early—that she’d suffered a turn. Had she sickened or been taken ill?”
Constance drew in a fortifying breath. “I don’t believe it was anything like that.” She reached into her pocket and drew out the key. “But come and look and see what you think.”
She unlocked and opened the door, then stood aside and waved him in. She followed and watched as his steps slowed, then halted. From the foot of the bed, he studied the body.
Constance closed the door, then went to the side of the bed. “After the maid screamed, I reached the room first. I made sure nothing was touched or altered.”
“Good.” The word was even, yet weighted with emotion; when he raised his gaze and met her eyes, she identified the emotion as impotent fury. “She was murdered, too.”
Not a question. Constance nodded. “I believe she was smothered.” She drew back the heavy curtain that framed the head of the bed and pointed to the pillow thus revealed. “With that.”
Alaric looked at the pillow. “Did you move it?”
“No—I haven’t touched it yet.” Constance glanced questioningly at him, and when he nodded, she gripped the pillowcase by one corner and carefully tugged it free.
He moved to her shoulder and watched as she turned the pillow over.
She held it up, angling it so the light from the window slanted across the pillowcase’s surface. They both studied the ivory cotton; several smudges of pale color were discernible, along with a more definite hint of an impression of parted lips, marked by the soft plum-colored lip paint Rosa had favored.
Constance glanced at the body. “She wasn’t that young—she wore powder on her face and rouge on her cheeks and painted her lips.”
He nodded. “And she was, beyond question, murdered.” After a second’s thought, he added, “Quite aside from by whom, what we don’t know is why. Why kill Rosa?”
She set the pillow down beside the bed. “As my maid suggested, the most likely reason, surely, is that Rosa somehow knew enough to at least guess who murdered Glynis.”
She paused, her expression suggesting she was thinking back, reviewing something. Then she offered, “That turn Rosa had last night—she insisted it was nothing, just a slight faint—but what if it wasn’t?” She met Alaric’s eyes. “We were in the corridor when the gentlemen came out of the billiard room. Could Rosa have seen something—something about one of the gentlemen—that shocked her and caused her to come over faint?”
He studied her green eyes, lit with compassion and determination. They were eyes he could get lost in, but…not yet. Not now. “You mean she recognized something about one of the gentlemen that made her suspect he was Glynis’s murderer—the man she’d glimpsed coming out of the shrubbery that night.”
“Yes. The first time she’d seen him—leaving the scene of Glynis’s murder—the light was poor. Last night, while the corridor wasn’t ablaze with light, it was better lit. She might have recognized him then, when she hadn’t before.”
“Striding out of the shrubbery entrance and striding out of the billiard room.” He tipped his head. “I grant it’s possible.”
Constance frowned and looked down at the body. “But if she recognized him, why didn’t she say? Rather than retire early—calling attention to her ‘turn’—and giving him a chance to creep in while she slept and smother her.”
Alaric looked down at the remains of what had once been a vibrant lady. Rosa Cleary hadn’t been a saint, but she’d by no means deserved to have her life cut short. He stirred. “Perhaps our speculation is misplaced, and it truly was just a turn. However, the murderer might have reasoned as we just did and decided he needed to ensure Rosa didn’t tell anyone of anything she recognized—now or later.”
He thought, then added, “I believe we can be certain of one thing—Rosa’s reaction last night was enough to sign her death warrant.”
Constance pointed to a small vial on the nightstand. “She very likely took a dose of laudanum to help her sleep. That would have made her even easier prey. No surprise she didn’t wake in time to scream.”
He nodded. “Given she saw the gentlemen exiting the billiard room last evening and had an obvious reaction of some kind, whether she recognized Glynis’s murderer or not didn’t matter. Our gentleman murderer thought that she had, or at some point would, and so he killed her.”
Constance met his eyes, and he read in hers her unqualified agreement.
He held her gaze for an instant more, then looked at Rosa’s body and grimly stated, “It’s time to get Sir Godfrey back.”
* * *
Together with Percy and Edward, Alaric and Constance were waiting in the library when Sir Godfrey arrived.
The portly magistrate stumped through the door, then leaned on his cane to bend a disgruntled eye on Percy. “What’s this, then, Mandeville? Another murder, you say?”
The dark rings beneath his eyes emphasizing his pallor, Percy flatly replied, “So we believe.” He gestured to the door. “You’d best come and take a look.”
Sir Godfrey shuffled around. “Who is it, then? One of your stable hands? Perhaps it was he who did away with the chit in the shrubbery.”
The suggestion was so inapt, it left them all momentarily dumbfounded.
Alaric recovered first. “No—another of the female guests was discovered smothered in her bed this morning.”
“Mrs. Rosamund Cleary.” Constance’s tone was quietly condemnatory. “The lady who reported seeing a gentleman leaving the shrubbery around the time Glynis met her end.”
The news set Sir Godfrey back on his heels. He stared at Alaric, then looked at Percy. “Oh.”
Thereafter, Sir Godfrey made no further comment as he trailed Percy and Edward up the stairs. Alaric and Constance followed. When they reached Rosa’s room, Constance drew out the key; while she unlocked the door, she explained her part in the discovery and that she’d ensured nothing in the room had been altered since the body was found.
Sir Godfrey gave her an odd look, but when she stepped back and waved him inside, he ventured in—and stopped short just over the threshold. After several moments, he swallowed and said, “Ah. I see.”
All hint of his customary bluster had fled.
Alaric followed Constance into the room. She went to the side of the bed and lifted the heavy curtain aside to reveal the pillow. “This pillow was tucked down here, out of sight.” She reached down and lifted the pillow, then turned it and displayed the face of the pillowcase to Sir Godfrey, Percy, and Edward. “If you look closely, you can see the marks left by Mrs. Cleary’s powder and rouge and also her lip paint.”
His hands crossed on the head of his cane, on which he was leaning heavily, Sir Godfrey craned forward and peered, then, his face losing what little color he’d retained to that point, he nodded. “Yes.” His voice sounded strangled. “I see.”
“If any evidence beyond what you can see in the bed was required to determine that Mrs. Cleary was murdered,” Alaric grimly stated, “I contend that pillow and case puts the matter beyond doubt. Rosa Cleary was smothered.”
Constance added, “Almost certainly by the same man who murdered my cousin, Miss Johnson.”
In a voice devoid of emotion, Percy said, “Carradale and I checked with Carnaby, and he swears the house’s doors and windows were all locked last night. Given M
iss Johnson’s death, the company retired early, and Carnaby and the footmen made doubly sure there was no way that any itinerant”—Percy gave the word contemptuous emphasis—“could gain entry.”
“Further to that, Carnaby checked again this morning, and no door or window shows signs of being forced,” Alaric stated. “So unless you wish to postulate that two ladies being murdered at one house on two consecutive nights is the work of two different murderers, one an itinerant and the other someone who is residing under this roof, then we have a double murderer who is almost certainly one of the gentlemen currently staying at Mandeville Hall.”
Alaric caught Sir Godfrey’s gaze. “In my opinion, you should summon Scotland Yard immediately.”
He wasn’t all that surprised when, after a fractional hesitation, Sir Godfrey nodded. Realization, followed by swift calculation, had gleamed in the magistrate’s eyes; investigating a double murder committed by a gentleman at a ton house party held the potential for all manner of social mantraps that—pride be damned—Sir Godfrey would prefer to avoid.
“Harrumph! Yes.” Having made his decision, Sir Godfrey was eager to extricate himself with all speed. He turned from the bed and addressed Percy. “I’ll send a message by courier as soon as I get home. Regardless, anyone the Yard sends won’t reach here before tomorrow afternoon at the earliest.” Sir Godfrey started for the door. “I will, of course, return to consult with the inspector sent to take charge and offer him my insights. Until then, my earlier edict regarding everyone remaining at the Hall must stand.”
Constance returned the pillow to where it had been. Seeing Sir Godfrey almost at the door, she frowned. “Sir Godfrey—what about the bodies?”
“Heh?” Sir Godfrey, Percy, and Edward had all started for the door. All three looked back, the magistrate with his bushy eyebrows rising.
Hiding her exasperation— men!—Constance waved at the body in the bed. “We can’t leave Mrs. Cleary like this. And what of my cousin’s remains?”
Sir Godfrey regarded Rosa’s body anew. “I’m sure whoever is sent will want us to keep things the way they are as far as possible. But as for the bodies, they should, I believe, be placed on ice, or at least somewhere cool, until the inspector from Scotland Yard releases them.”