“Be careful, Miss Spencer,” Mr. Bloom warned as she stepped down. Before the door closed, he added, “Or at the very least, be more careful than Miss Hailson proved to be.”
Chapter Sixteen
An agitated hush had fallen over the servants’ quarters at Cowper Hall. Jasper had arrived at the viscount’s front door about a quarter hour earlier, and when he’d informed the butler, Decamp, that he needed to speak to him privately, the man’s firm chin had quivered with worry.
He’d led Jasper belowstairs to his office in the butler’s pantry. Along the way, he’d chatted nervously, informing Jasper that Mr. Cowper and Mr. Dalton had not yet returned from London, and that the viscount had been prescribed a sleeping draught as he had not been doing well since receiving news of his granddaughter’s death.
Once they reached the pantry, where Decamp guarded the family’s silver, china, and crystal, all polished to an otherworldly gleam for when they were laid out upon the dining room table, the butler had run out of things to say.
Informing the older man about the death of his son had unfolded as Jasper predicted: The announcement that he brought bad news had forewarned Decamp, and the older man had braced himself. But he had still staggered to a chair andcollapsed into it when Jasper explained what he’d found at Stephen’s farm.
When Decamp remained speechless, his head in his hands and tears falling freely, Jasper stepped out to summon a passing maid. It was the same young woman whom he’d overheard being chastised by Frederick Cowper on the night of the storm, outside the billiards room. He asked her—Ursula, he recalled—to bring tea, which she did within a minute.
“Stephen is dead,” the butler told her, his voice raspy. “The inspector found his…his body…”
Ursula gasped and then pressed the cup and saucer into Decamp’s shaking hands. She added another cube of sugar, perhaps to help balance out the shock that must have been surging through the man.
“Mr. Decamp,” Jasper began. “I understand this is a very difficult moment, but I do have questions for you regarding your son’s movements over the last few days. Specifically, since the reading of Mrs. Stroud’s last will and testament.”
The butler nodded, though it was with obvious effort and sorrow.
“I’ll stay with you, Mr. Decamp,” the maid offered. She glanced at Jasper. “If that is all right.”
“It is,” he assured her.
Before he could begin, the click and scratch of paws on wood floors sounded from the corridor, gaining speed and proximity. Two enormous wolfhounds scurried into the small pantry, the head of each dog reaching nearly to Jasper’s hip. The same dogs had been at Nadia Stroud’s side at dinner the night of the storm. They circled and sniffed about the room for only a moment before Nadia herself appeared in the doorway.
“Porthos, Aramis,” she called, snapping her fingers. The wolfhounds obediently rounded up next to her and sat. Then, Nadia turned her intense focus onto Jasper, as if wishing shecould snap her fingers at him to make him disappear. “I heard you were here, Inspector, and were speaking to our butler. It seems you are unaware that it is bad form to question an employee without first speaking to their employer.”
Jasper took the reprimand with gritted teeth. “As my business is with Mr. Decamp, I saw no reason to ask permission to speak to him.”
“The Inspector has brought terrible news, Miss Stroud,” Ursula said, her voice high and tinny, more like that of a young girl than of a young woman.
Nadia crossed her arms. She wore a riding habit and, by her dusty boots and skirt hem, looked to have just come in. “What terrible news is this? Is it about Helen?”
“No,” Jasper answered. “I’ve just found Stephen Decamp at his farm, dead.”
The peevish attitude Nadia arrived with fled instantly, and the dogs next to her whined, as if they, too, understood the announcement.
Nadia turned her concern toward the butler. “Decamp, I am so very sorry.” She went to him quickly and laid a hand upon his shoulder, then looked to Jasper. “Inspector, what happened?”
With a glimpse toward the butler, he revealed, “At this time, it appears he took his own life.”
“No.” Decamp shot up from his chair, dislodging Nadia’s hand and forgetting that he held a teacup and saucer. They fell to the floor with the telltale sound of porcelain breaking. “No, my son would never. He wouldn’t!”
As Nadia tried to calm him, and Ursula crouched to mop up the tea with a rag and collect the broken pieces of cup and saucer, Jasper waited. It was common for family members of suicide victims to reject the finding, to make the claim that their loved one would never end their own life, even when the evidence was ample that they had. No one wanted the memoryor the legacy of their loved one to be tainted by the scandal of suicide. The elder Decamp would be no different in this regard.
However, Jasper admitted that there had been something not quite right about the scene in Stephen’s dining room.
Once Decamp had collapsed back into his chair, and Ursula had gone to fetch another teacup and saucer, Jasper related, “There was evidence he’d been drinking heavily. In his distraught state, he might have been driven to an extreme decision. Especially after Helen’s murder.”
Decamp blinked and tightened his jaw but stayed quiet.
“Did you know of their affair?” Jasper asked. The butler certainly looked guilty with knowledge of it. Nadia, too, seemed to draw up her shoulders as though bracing for something unpleasant. Their silence lengthened.
“Did you know she was carrying a child?” Jasper asked next.
The bite of their eyes as they each stared at Jasper, dumbfounded, told him they had not. Nadia’s lips parted, distress pulling her brow taut.
