He reached across and gripped her clasped hands. Then he looked up at the sky. “We could pack up and call it a day.”
“No, let’s paint. Let’s at least rough out ideas and return another time.”
Mary sorted through her box, choosing and then rejecting several tubes. After a while, she glanced over at Will. He’d squirted a round of Flake White and had scooped up a daub. He was staring at the paint-smeared palette knife.
“Mary . . . why did they conclude it was suicide?”
“He’d been moody. Morose. He died brooding over that painting of a suicide,Chatterton. The coroner made much of that as . . . as revealing his state of mind. And there were blackmail letters.”
“Do you know what they said?”
Mary shook her head. “And there was the Paris Green paint in his whiskey. I saw the emerald powder spilled across his desk. It couldn’t have been an accident. He drank it deliberately.”
Will looked again at the daub on his palette. “But why would he use your paint? Every kitchen has rodent killer in a cupboard. Every carriage house has it on a shelf somewhere. With a signature, any chemist will sell you arsenic. Could your brother be so cruel?”
“Will, what are you saying?”
He held up the palette knife with its daub of Flake White. “Begin with arsenic in another form.” Then he scraped it into the circle of Paris Green. “And mix the two later.” He swirled the paints with the tip of the knife.
“But—”
“Who was with him the night he died?”
Mary bit her lip. “Doctor Scott was there. He came to play chess, but he’s dead, too. Poisoned. Did you know that?”
“Yes. Who else?”
Mary’s eyes widened. “Sidney Allen. And there are all these things in the newspapers about him. And Rawlings. Rawlings was there, Charles’s manservant. Inspector Tennant has been searching for him for weeks. Good God, is it possible? Have we been wrong all this time?”
“Yes. I think it’s possible.”
Mary bundled her tubes into her paint box. “We must go back. I must tell Louisa. All along, she doubted—and she was right. Inspector Tennant . . . perhaps he suspects, too. Maybe that’s part of it. The reason he arrested Rawlings and is looking for Sidney Allen.”
They packed everything and made their way up the hill. Almost at the top, Mary stopped.
“Will?”
He was a little ahead of her. He put the basket down and waited for her to catch up.
“The newspapers wrote about unspeakable crimes. Kidnapping and prostitution. Does that mean Charles . . .”
Will turned away. “Come along, Mary. We’re nearly at the top.”
They covered the last few yards to the carriage. “Will, why would Rawlings or Sidney Allen want to murder Charles and Margot Miller? Why would anyone?”
Will stowed their equipment and looked at her. “I’ll tell you what I know . . . and my part in the story.”
* **
Julia’s early afternoon filled with problems and patients. At two o’clock, a lull brought time and tea. Julia opened the casebook, scanning the entries for January, reading on into February, and arriving in mid-March.
She stopped dead. “Good God.”
Julia scrambled to the door and looked left and right for the clinic’s orderly. She called to Clemmie, “Is Jackie back from the chemist?” When the nurse nodded, Julia said, “Ask him to find me a cab—as quick as he can.”
She packed her medical bag and Doctor Scott’s case notes. Jackie Archer and a hansom waited at the door.
“Where to?” Jackie asked.
