“A picture begins to form,” Rafe murmured. “Those poor young ’uns. Is Vivien’s name even Jameson then?”
Fletch shrugged. “Wilma’s husband was the Jameson. Vivien was raised as Wilma’s sister, with the name Cockburn. Would you use that if you wanted to start over?”
Rafe winced. Wilma probably married just to change her name.
“We’ll have to bring Vivien in, get her statement, see if it agrees,” Hunt grumbled. “Unless we find more evidence, we’ll have to release her.”
The women began lamenting over the impoverished circumstances of a family raised in ignorance and what they could do about the poor children.
Hunt finally bellowed into a brief lapse in the chatter. “So I am to send Wilma to assizes for possibly pushing Ana Marie downstairs thinking she was Kate or because she didn’t want to be labeled thief? And possibly poisoning poor Jasper and plotting a kidnapping? Are motive and opportunity sufficient evidence? And does that mean Morgan gets off free for being an idiot?”
“An accomplice in kidnapping,” Rafe suggested. “He bound and gagged Miss Marlowe, because Wilma said the toxin would wear off. She’s the one who dried the mushrooms and knows their properties.”
“That’s why we couldn’t find any of the dangerous sort in our woods!” Meera exclaimed. “Wilma brought dried ones with her, most likely picked last summer.”
“When did Wilma’s husband die?” Fletch asked with a heavy dose of irony, echoing Rafe’s earlier cynicism.
Walker glanced at Rafe’s notes. “Last fall.”
“After Morgan showed up bragging about the house he was to inherit,” Rafe surmised.
Whispers rose to concern and anger.
Hunt slammed a hand on his desk to silence the nattering. “And we’re to believe this lunatic also poisoned Mrs. Young, why?”
“Because she’s a lunatic,” Rafe said dryly. “The one thing Wilma willingly talks about is her daughter. My theory, based on what we’ve heard so far, is that she was investing in her daughter’s future, and hence, her own. She seems quite convinced Miss Vivien will make a fortune with her dress designs and find a rich husband in the manor with her beauty. Mrs. Young was about to take the place in the shop that Miss Vivien needed to accomplish this.”
“To be perfectly fair,” Dr. Walker intruded. “Wilma may have only wished to incapacitate Mrs. Young, as she did Mr. Jasper. It takes a great deal of the toxin to kill—unless there is an underlying weakness. She couldn’t have known Mrs. Young was already ill, and I doubt she’s sane enough to consider anything beyond what she wants, which was to keep Mrs. Young from the shop.”
“So she might have poisoned her husband regularly just to incapacitate him and stupidly thought everyone reacted the same.” Kate covered her face with her hands. “The poor woman has probably been unbalanced for a long time. Being forced to bear a child out of wedlock at fifteen. . .”
Rafe knew she was reacting to her own story, but her sympathy wasn’t completely misplaced. What would it do to an already unstable person to have to treat her child as her sister. . . He winced.
Fletch spoke again. “According to Morgan, Wilma’s father drank his earnings and abused his family when drunk. When he couldn’t pay Morgan for his work, he regularly gave Willa to him as payment. He would have beaten her if she hadn’t done as ordered. I don’t imagine there’s any law against Morgan accepting the offer.”
Kate gasped in horror. “As payment! Can you imagine how being treated as a commodity must have confused an impressionable child? She’s not mad, she’s simply carrying out lessons learned at her father’s hand!” She widened her eyes, appalled at a new thought. “What if her mother was the one who taught her how to use mushrooms to incapacitate?”
“The court won’t care,” Hunt said bluntly. “She’ll hang. Morgan will be transported for aiding her, at the very least. I’m happy not to have to be the judge who has to rule on a lunatic and circumstantial evidence. Are we declaring Miss Vivien innocent? Lavender, are you prepared to vouch for her?”
Rafe thought that an enormous burden to place on the shoulders of an eighteen-year-old brought up as a sheltered lady, but the girl proved her character by nodding. “Viv has her half siblings to raise. She’s not the most efficient seamstress, but her designs have worth. Maybe without her mother’s. . . influence. . . ?”
Clare hugged her. “If you are willing to work with her, we’ll see that she receives the help she needs with the children.”
“Leaving me to strangle her,” Kate whispered with a sigh.
Rafe would have tried to reassure her but Fletch intervened.
“You’re a good mother. You’ll put some sense into her. Come along, I think you need tea. And the boys are itching to report on a clock.” He helped Kate to her feet and led her out.
Rafe wasn’t the only one in the room who stared as the grump and the squire’s daughter walked off, hand in hand.
Forty-two
Kate
When Fletch turned toward the old part of the manor on his own pursuit, Kate tugged his sleeve to catch his attention. She appreciated his polite consideration, but she really wasn’t the sort to be led about. “Where is Vivien?”
Around them, the crowd poured from the study, discussing the prisoners.
