“Not now, Miss Fox.” He paused outside his office door. “I’m too busy. Good day.”
There was only one thing to do—tell him here and now in the corridor. “Pearl had a child.”
His jaw slackened.
“The child was adopted by her sister and brother-in-law, the Larsens. They’re bringing her up as their own.”
His gaze shifted away and he frowned in thought. After a moment, as if he’d been wound up, he invited me inside. He closed the door behind me, but I remained near it while he rested his handson the desk.
He lowered his head. “I’ve never seen the girl. I don’t even know her name.”
“It’s Millie. She’ll be four in March.”
He sat heavily on the desk chair and rubbed his chin. The fingers of his other hand lightly tapped the desk. He was calculating Millie’s birth year and perhaps when she must have been conceived. His fingers stopped tapping and he swallowed heavily.
“Pearl stopped working for a few months over the winter of ninety-six. She told me she was ill and went to convalesce at her sister’s home.”
So I’d been right. Millie was Pearl’s child. A niggling doubt had lingered after Mrs. Larsen denied it. “You never saw Pearl during that time?”
“She didn’t want to see me. She wrote saying she was too ill and illness made her look ugly.” He almost smiled, but it didn’t quite eventuate. “She was always worried about how she looked, even with me.” He passed both hands over his face. When they drew away, he glanced up at me. “My God. You’ve shocked me, Miss Fox. I—I can’t believe she wouldn’t tell me!”
I couldn’t quite believe it either. But if Mr. Culpepper was lying, he was a very good actor.
“Is the girl mine?” he asked.
“I hoped you could tell me.”
He lifted a shoulder. “The timing fits. We were certainly together then, but…” He squeezed his eyes shut.
“But she was also with Lord Wrexham,” I finished.
He gave a small nod. “She would have told me if the child was mine. Wouldn’t she?” He seemed to be asking himself, or perhaps the ghost of Pearl. His gaze grew distant. “When she returned to work, she was as happy as she’d ever been. She and Wrexham went to a lot of parties then. She was always careful not to mention them around me, but I heard. It was almost as if she decided to make the most of what was on offer, and there was a banquet spread out before her.”
That didn’t sound like someone who’d just given up her baby. Unless she hadn’t wanted that baby.
“Why didn’t she tell me?” he muttered.
I bit the inside of my lip. The only reason she wouldn’thave told him was because she knew, or suspected, the child wasn’t his.
I went to open the door at my back, but thought of one more question. “Did Pearl ever ask you for money?”
He’d been rubbing his hand through his hair and when he stopped, his hair stuck out at odd angles from his head. “No.”
“Not even quite recently?”
He shook his head. “She knows I couldn’t give her anything. Besides, Rumford gave her everything she could have wanted. What did she need more for?”
I thanked him and slipped out, leaving him staring vacantly after me. I was glad I’d spoken to him. His answers were a revelation. And yet some things didn’t ring true. How could he have not known that his lover had a baby? Surely he would have noticed the swell of her belly when they were together before her self-imposed confinement. And surely he wouldn’t simply have accepted her excuse that she was ill. If he loved her, he would have tried to see her during her illness.
I also didn’t believe that he had no money. He was the manager of one of London’s premier theaters. Even if he didn’t have enough on hand for whatever Pearl needed, he could get a loan. If nothing else, Pearl would have gone to the man she loved first before going to Lord Wrexham.
If she had asked Mr. Culpepper for money so she could take back her child, he must have become angry that she’d never told him about Millie. Perhaps they argued and he killed her during a confrontation. Perhaps the entire conversation I’d just had with him was a fabrication, an act. He might not be an actor himself, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t perform when necessary.
The more I thought about it, the more I warmed to the idea. Ever since realizing Millie was Pearl’s daughter, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. What other reason could there be for Pearl to want money? She was going to pay off her sister and raise Millie herself.
Which pointed toMrs. Larsenas the murderer. She could have killed Pearl out of fear that she was going to lose the girl she’d raised as a daughter for almost four years.
“MissFox! Wait!”
