“And she poisoned her husband to prevent him from finding out? Or from revealing the whole thing to the police?”
Solomon passed the account back to Constance. “Veronique would not murder her funding source, so I doubt she killed St. John.”
“But even a visit from the police could badly affect her business. She depends on her reputation and the goodwill of Society’s powerful patrons.”
“Wouldn’t cutting out the blackmail have pacified St. John enough? Why risk murdering him?”
“I don’t know,” Constance admitted. “But we need to find out where Veronique was on the night St. John died.”
Solomon nodded. He was silent for the rest of the journey to the office until, just as the carriage was pulling up, he said, “It’s not right yet. Why stab him when he’s already dead?”
“To cast the blame on Nevvy,” Constance said, gathering up her bags.
“Why was Nevvy even there? WhoisNevvy, and what has any of it to do with this morning’s corpse and the other attempts to intimidate you?”
“We haven’t solved it yet,” Constance said defensively, “but at last we have some kind of motive and a few more paths to look into.”
Solomon alighted and handed her down. “We have something important,” he agreed, “and it’s just as well you spotted these things. We’ll discover how they all fit together.”
His praise and his optimism still warmed her ridiculously, and her own slightly flattened spirits lifted again. In the office, a burst of hilarity emerged from Janey’s preserve at the back, butboth she and Hat stuck their heads out of the office to greet their employers.
“Conference, Janey,” Constance called, and the three of them trooped into Solomon’s office. “How is Hat getting along with everything?”
“I wouldn’t have picked her out, to be honest,” Janey said. “But she’s bright and got the hang of it without a problem. She’s even stopped being scared to answer the door. She’ll do.”
“Good.” Solomon took the case notes from his desk and passed them to Constance, who had always been the chief keeper of their lists. “We need to go over every aspect of this case together and decide on our next steps.”
They started at the beginning with the discovery of the body, and Constance added to the notes as they went along, particularly Janey’s full impressions of the Willow household.
“Can you really see the old ladies physically bringing bodies to our door?” Constance asked. “Without help? Would they really soil their hands in person?”
“I can see themwantingto,” Janey said. “Even ordering it.”
“And who would obey them?” Solomon asked. “What of the menservants? Are they brawny fellows?”
“One of the stable lads is. It was him I first spoke to, but he seems too amiable to do anything so awful—even the manure incident.”
Constance felt her lips twitch at the almost primly spokenmanure. Not so long ago Janey would have called it something much earthier, and Janey’s quick grin at her confirmed she was well aware of it.
“Well done,” Constance murmured. “So, you don’t think he could be made to do such things?”
Janey considered. “Maybe. His job depends on his obedience, after all. But I don’t think hediddo it. Not the two bodies, anyway. He wasn’t in the least embarrassed to talkabout it. None of them were, not even the housekeeper, Mrs. Robertson. She paid lip service to us being unfit subjects of conversation, but it was clear she was as interested as everyone else. No one was looking furtive.”
Constance made a note in the Willow column. “So before your visit to the house, we already had the two bodies and the manure,” she said. “After, we had the note on the gate, and the other body. It could all be part of the same campaign to drive us out, and yet nothing to do with the actual deaths of either St. John or Nevvy. What if the bodies died in the Willow house or outside it? What if Mrs. Willow and her sister poisoned St. John?”
“Why?” Solomon asked blankly. “No one disliked him.”
“What if they knew whatever it was Veronique did? And, instead of blackmail, resorted to murder? Being overly self-righteous, from what Janey says, they’d have to be mad as hatters, of course…”
Solomon and Janey looked thoughtful, but Constance sighed.
“We still have the difficulty of removing the bodies to our doorstep without leaving a sign,” she said ruefully. “And Janey’s seeing no guilt among the servants who might have done the moving. Besides the fact that we don’t even know if Veronique was blackmailing St. John. Moving on…”
By the end, they had a list of fresh inquiries. Janey was sent to discover what she could about Veronique.
“Especially what she was doing on the night St. John died,” Solomon said. “Try making friends with her assistant and discover their relationships with other customers. If she was blackmailing one of the St. Johns, she could have been doing the same to others. Take Lenny with you if he’s free.”
“He’s busy nearly every day now,” Janey said proudly. “But I’ll see if he can spare an hour or two. What are you going to do?”
