Tennant nodded and headed upstairs with O’Malley.
Julia looked around for the servant. “Let’s take her to a room with a fire.” They followed Alfred into a sitting room. “Fetch some brandy for Miss Allingham and ask her lady’s maid to bring a wrap.”
“I don’t have a lady’s maid,” Mary said dully. “Lou’s maid . . .” She closed her eyes.
“Ask Mrs. Allingham’s maid to bring down a shawl or blanket.”
Mary looked at Julia. “Why are you here . . . you and Inspector Tennant?”
“We know, my dear. I’m sorry.” She took Mary’s wrist and counted the beats. Then, she said to Will, “Keep her warm and give her brandy by the spoon. I must . . .” Julia’s eyes flicked toward the ceiling.
“Of course, Doctor. I’ll look after her.”
* * *
Sergeant O’Malley arranged the removal of Louisa Allingham’s mortal remains. Under his direction, constables carried her body on a stretcher from Blenheim Lodge to a waiting wagon. Julia would perform the postmortem at Kensington station.
She would likely conclude that self-administered strychnine had caused Louisa’s death. Confirmation would wait for the chemical analysis, but there was little doubt. Will and Alfred had described the classic death contortions visited on the body by that deadly poison. And on Louisa’s night table, O’Malley found a hundred-tablet bottle of strychnine sulfate with only a few pills left.
Julia looked around and thought,All the tragedy’s elements are in this room.The marriage bed, a symbol of the betrayal and disappointment that drove Louisa to murder.Her father’s medical bag.It stood open on its shrine-like stand, the likely sourceof the strychnine pills. Julia found a set of lancets inside the bag. Any of them could have inflicted Margot Miller’s neck wound. When Julia examined the gash, she’d thought of a lancet first. The case also held several old syringes. Julia guessed that a closer examination of Scott’s whiskey cork might reveal a tiny perforation. She would mention it to Richard.
Julia moved to the portrait of Louisa’s father. He and Doctor Scott had been old friends, and she wondered if he’d been a party to the deception in its early stages. She thought,Betrayal was in the man’s nature, remembering Louisa’s thwarted ambition to nurse in the Crimea.All the men in her life failed her, starting with him.
Father, husband, doctor, all were trusted figures. All were authorities over their daughters and wives, or so the moralists preached. None of their actions justified Louisa’s crimes, but they explained what she had done. Louisa must have looked at her father’s portrait every day, along with the preserved remnants of his medical career. Julia felt a wave of pity, then a tide of love and gratitude for the doctor who’d played the role of parent in her life.
“So much went terribly wrong for poor Louisa.” Tennant had come up quietly behind her. “So many betrayals.”
At the word “betrayal,” Julia looked at him. He read her thoughts uncannily at times.
“Miss Allingham confirmed your conclusions,” Tennant said. “Louisa confessed most of it to her. The night he died, Charles escorted Scott and Allen downstairs.” He nodded to the communicating door. “Easy for Louisa to wait for them to leave the room, slip into her husband’s study, and add the arsenic she purchased to his whiskey. She returned later to stage the scene by adding the green paint.”
“And what of Will Quain’s intervention? How did he—”
“An amateur sleuth’s flash of inspiration. He had an epiphany triggered by two daubs of paint and a conversationwith a furrier. I’ll tell you about it on the way to the station house.”
Julia picked up her medical bag. “I wonder if Mary will forgive Louisa for her brother’s death.” She and Tennant stopped at the top of the landing. “Forgive his failures, too, and find peace.”
Downstairs, the broken glass had been swept away, and Will helped Mary’s coachman fit a wooden panel into the empty window.
“Unless my detecting powers have deserted me utterly,” Tennant said, “that gentleman intends to help her try.”
CHAPTER18
The following morning, Julia nodded to the glazier fitting replacement glass into the front door panel at Blenheim Lodge.
“A temporary fix,” he said of the frosted pane, “until Miss Allingham orders another stained-glass window.”
Julia wondered what he knew. The morning newspapers had reported the death of Louisa, the widow of Charles Allingham. No other details had leaked to the press. At some point, the whole story would be part of the public record, but not yet.
The door was open, so Julia went inside. The silent house displayed none of the conventional marks of a household in mourning. Its window curtains stood open, and no black crepe shrouded the door knocker or the hall mirror. Julia supposed the ghastly circumstances of Louisa’s death rendered those practices false.
Alfred appeared. The footman looked at Julia as if she were a fellow shipwreck survivor. The servant extended his hand and snatched it to his chest, remembering his place. Julia shifted her medical bag and grasped it.
“Did you sleep? You look to me as if you didn’t.”
He shook his head.
Julia had left a sleeping draught for Mary and wished she’d thought of him. Alfred had seen the worst of it, along with Mary and Will.
