She huffed a sound that Jasper took for amusement. “People do not always form their letters the same way every time, especially when someone is drunk as a wheelbarrow.”
He took from his pocket the handwriting sample Dora herself had given just after Helen’s body was found and set that one out for her as well. He tapped the W in her surname and allowed her a moment to see the same fanciful tilt of the middle arch. Her false bravado crashed.
“I believe a graphologist would agree that you authored the suicide note, Miss Sweeny. So, stop wasting my time, and let’s get to the reason why you did it.”
He waited as she visibly calculated what to do next. She had been seen in Harrow the day of Stephen’s death, and she’d lied about her whereabouts. The handwriting samples would only be another strike against her in a court of law. Murder was murder, and if she confessed, she would either be imprisoned for a greatmany years, or she would face execution. Though clemency was more often granted to women than it was to men.
“Cooperate, Miss Sweeny, and I will do what I can to see that you do not hang.”
At the flaring of her eyes, he knew he had her.
“She trusted him,” the maid said softly. As she kept speaking, her voice began to climb. “My lady, she trusted him, and he killed her. He killed the babe inside her too. And he lied. All these years, he lied and tricked her into thinking he was a good man, but Stephen Decamp was nothing but amurderer.”
“He lied and tricked her all these years?” Jasper’s attention caught on that phrasing. “How do you mean?”
Miss Sweeny’s chin lifted, and she looked to be reconsidering her decision to speak.
“Cooperation is your best chance, Miss Sweeny,” he reminded her. “How did he lie and trick Helen all these years?”
The maid sighed in resignation. “The tear catcher.”
Jasper braced his arms on the table. “What do you know of it?”
He’d made no mention of the trinket found in Helen’s hair to the maid. But then, he remembered what Ursula had said earlier in the butler’s pantry at Cowper Hall. “You were dismissed from Helen’s room when Ursula brought up the letter from Mrs. Stroud to myself and Miss Spencer. But you listened at your mistress’s door, didn’t you? You heard Ursula tell Helen about the small glass vial found in Theodore’s hand after his death.”
But there had been no mention of it being a tear catcher.
Which meant Dora Sweeny had already known of it.
“You were Helen’s maid before she married. Nadia informed me that Helen had given it to someone. A man. Did Helen tell you that she’d given it to Stephen?”
“She never said his name, but I knew it was him,” the maid answered. “My lady always wore the necklace strung with thatlittle tear catcher, and when it disappeared from her jewelry box, I feared I’d be accused of taking it. But then she told me she’d given it away.”
“How do you know she gave it to Stephen?”
Miss Sweeny lifted a shoulder. “She said she’d given it to a man she shouldn’t have. A man that society would never approve of.”
The viscount certainly wouldn’t have approved of Stephen. Society, too, would have put Helen and the butler’s son through the wringer.
“And when you heard Theodore was found with the tear catcher in his hand, you presumedStephenwas involved,” Jasper said.
The maid was solemn, but there was also an undercurrent of anger she couldn’t suppress. “Stephen would meet my lady on the roof of the Craven Hill house,” she said, echoing what Nadia had revealed earlier in the butler’s pantry at Cowper Hall. “I don’t know how he and Master Teddy found themselves on the roof that night, but if Stephen had the tear catcher, and they struggled…”
“The boy might have grappled with Stephen and grabbed hold of the tear catcher before being pushed,” Jasper finished theorizing for her. But that was all it was. A theory. And one the maid had not properly thought out.
“Explain to me then, why Helen would have asked Stephen to take her to London. If she suspected the small glass tube her mother wrote about was her old tear catcher, and Helen knew Stephen was the last one to possess it, why would she involve him?”
Miss Sweeny blinked. “Maybe she didn’t tell him what it was she was after. I don’t know, and neither do I care. Stephen killed her when she found out he’d pushed Master Teddy. He took my lady and her babe from me, and he deserved what he got!”
Jasper sat back in his chair and crossed his arms, contemplating the maid’s version of events. Clearly, she’d been devoted to Helen. So much so that she would commit murder to avenge her. He wondered if Helen would have done the same for her, had their roles been reversed, and found he could not believe she would have.
“Did Stephen confess before you shot him?”
This question seemed to startle her, and the maid scowled. “He said it was his fault. He kept mumbling about her body and all the blood, and how he just left her there. It was a confession.”
“Or you jumped to the wrong conclusion without proper evidence,” Jasper said. “Helen told you she gave away her tear catcher, but she never named Stephen specifically. I’m sorry, Miss Sweeny, but if she held any suspicion at all that he might have had a role in Theodore’s death, it simply doesn’t add up that she would have arranged to meet him the night of the storm, let alone go with him to the Craven Hill house.”
Jasper got to his feet as another theory took shape. “However, if she’d given the tear catcher to another man, and she learnedthatman might have grappled with Theodore before his fall…” He paced toward the door, his mind working quickly as he mused aloud, “What if she wasn’t rushing to London to beat Leo and me to the hidden trinket, but someone else? Someone who knew that trinket would connect them to the boy’s fall.”
