He strolled to a reedy plant on the side of the path. “Do you never talk to Cavindish? With an empty house, I find myself talking to my wife and sister more and more.”
I ran my thumb over the onyx head of my stick. I missed Cavindish something fierce at times, but my house never felt empty. Not with Jane and the other servants there with me. But servants weren’t also the friends of most people of my acquaintance. I suppose if they were just anonymous faces who made sure my bed was made and my meals cooked instead of people full of humor and conversation, my house would feel empty, too.
“I don’t speak to Cavindish,” I said lightly, “but there is one particular fern in my sitting room I sometimes have words with. It always seems to catch at my skirts when I walk past.”
Betram chuckled. “I miss having a woman about to speak with.”
A heaviness settled on my chest. “We shouldn’t have let so many years pass without at least corresponding.” After all our spouses had died, the ones connecting us, it had seemed easier to ignore Perrin and Bertram. To not make the effort to stay in touch. I regretted my neglect.
“I have been lonely.” He ran his fingers up the shafts of some decorative grass. “I’ve been thinking of late to remedy that situation.”
I squeezed the knob of my walking stick. A dog made a fine companion. Something Bertram could talk to in his empty house. And Southey did need a new master. “Oh? And how would you do that?” I asked, hoping my voice didn’t sound too eager. If Bertram wanted the dog, he could start keeping thebeast in his rooms now, a way to get better acquainted. And keep the animal from being underfoot.
“By remarrying, of course.”
A moment of dread seized me. My heart thudded in my chest. “Any potential candidates in mind?” He couldn’t mean me. Betram had always seemed a lovely man, but we didn’t know each other all that well, and what I did know wasn’t of someone for whom I had any particular inclination.
I buried my face in my drink, hoping the mug would hide my expression of horror when he said my name.
“I’d thought I might try to get to know Miss Walker better.” He plucked a flower from a plant and brought the blossom to his nose. He inhaled deeply.
Relief was quickly followed by embarrassment. How highly I must regard myself to think that he would want me for a wife. I couldn’t stop my own burst of laughter.
Bertram narrowed his eyes.
“Oh, I’m not laughing at you but at myself. So, Miss Walker has caught your eye, has she? That is to her good fortune.”
His shoulders lowered an inch. “She isn’t some mindless chit. I couldn’t stand the idea of pursuing someone just out in society. And she seems most eager to leave her father’s household. Being a caretaker has been hard on her.”
I hadn’t realized Betram and Miss Walker had spoken in any depth, but there had been many hours trapped inside from the rain where two people might cozy up by a fire for a private chat. “I’d thought her feelings lay in a different direction.” And feelings didn’t disappear the moment the object of one’s affection died.
Unless she’d caused that death. Unless she was one of those people devoid of natural affections, a person who could show tenderness to a person one moment and loathing the next.
I’d met a few people like that in my life. Thankfully, they had been few, but I’d learned never to turn my back on them.
Moral insanity, I believe was the terminology for such a person. I finished my chocolate, but even the heat streaming down my throat couldn’t warm the rest of my body. A physician had once given a lecture at The Minerva Club about the research of Phillipe Pinel. How he’d described some individuals as suffering from a type of insanity without the symptoms of delusion. That a person could appear ordinary and rational but suffer from a madness consisting of the perversion of natural feelings, impulses, and affections. How a mother could feed and care for her child and then hold its head under the bath water if the child’s crying became too irritating.
Could Miss Walker be one of those lost individuals? In her mind, could it seem just and reasonable to kill the man who’d spurned her once too often?
I pressed my lips together and considered Bertram. I didn’t want him to entwine his life with her if that were the case. If Miss Walker was the killer, I needed to discover that, and soon. “Don’t be in a hurry to make any big decisions. Miss Walker had some attachment to Perrin. I’m sure she needs some time to properly mourn.”
Bertram pulled the blossom from its stalk. “He didn’t deserve any attachment. Just as he didn’t deserve my sister.”
The heat in his voice had me falling back a step. I knew Bertram, felt some natural sympathy for him.
And I’d forgotten that he, too, was a suspect in Perrin’s murder.
“Your sister seemed happy in her marriage in my eyes,” I said carefully.
Betram tossed the remnants of his flower to the ground and plucked another. “I bought her so many of these plants. Miranda loved to spend her time out here in the sun.”
Rather than indoors with her husband, I suppose. “I was looking for you on Friday before lunch. I’d hoped to ask if you wanted to include a note in the letters I’m planning on sending to our nephews. Where were you?”
To anyone with a devious mind, my unsubtle question would have been recognized for the attempt at ascertaining an alibi for Taylor’s death that it was. Bertram merely smiled. “Those dear boys. Without any parent now. We shall have to be there for them, of course. Give them any guidance and assistance they might need.”
“Of course.” I shifted my weight. “And Friday? You were….?”
“Practicing my corner shot in the billiards room. I find I play better when there is no one about to distract me.”
