‘I am sorry, Miss Kent, I am afraid I have not quite the pleasure of understanding you. If you could perhaps speak a little more slowly.’
Dido drew a long breath and endeavoured to calm herself. But the agitation into which the last hour had thrown her was so great, it almost took from her the power of rational speech.
It was late in the evening and the rest of the company were occupied at the card tables. In the half-light of the morning room, the clock ticked solemnly upon the mantelshelf and flames fluttered round a log in the hearth. The little spaniel had found her way in from the hall and was resting her head trustingly against Mr Lomax’s leg. He ran one of her long silky ears gently through his fingers as he watched Dido with grave concern.
‘I understand all that you say about the dinner bell and about the young woman’s arrival in the shrubbery,’ he said. ‘And it is all admirably reasoned. But this matter of her ladyship’s sleeves: I am afraid I cannot comprehend why you should consider such a trifle so important.’
‘I am sorry. I was forgetting you are a man.’
This was not quite true. In fact, she was rather keenly aware of him being a man. His reassuring, manly solidity, gathered into the chair across the hearth, was a great comfort to her. She was at that moment very glad to have such a confidant and it was very important to her that he should understand everything that was in her mind.
‘Lady Montague is a very fashionable, well-dressed woman,’ she began.
‘Yes, I suppose that she is. Though I am no great judge of these matters; my late wife frequently complained that I could not tell one of her gowns from another.’
‘Then you have perhaps not noticed that lately there has been something very unfashionable about my lady’s appearance?’
‘No, I have not.’
‘Her sleeves are long. She is the only lady in the house who dresses so.’
‘Ah,’ he said frowning. Then, after thinking for a moment, he added, ‘But, Miss Kent, I believe that when I met you in the chapel, you had on long sleeves.’
‘Oh dear, Mr Lomax! You must have been a sore trial to your poor wife! Do you not even notice the difference between day and evening fashions?’
He gave a helpless shrug of his shoulders.
‘
‘I must believe you since you are clearly much better informed on these subjects than I am. But I still do not see why you should consider it so very important.’
Dido jumped to her feet and walked to the table where the candles stood. ‘It is important,’ she said, keeping her back turned to him, and staring into the candles’ light until her eyes were dazzled, ‘because Catherine informs me that it was on the very day of the murder that my lady changed her way of dressing. And because…’ She hesitated, but it had to be said. ‘And because I know why the change has been necessary. Mr Lomax, the other evening I was impertinent enough to turn back the lace of her ladyship’s sleeve – and I saw how badly bruised her arm is.’ There was a sound from the gentleman somewhere between a gasp and a word of protest. She closed her eyes and saw in her mind again a vivid picture of that wrist; the ugly old yellow and purple bruises showing clearly the imprint of strong, rough fingers.
She turned at last to look at him. He was sitting with his hand resting on the dog’s head, watching her anxiously.
‘You do believe me?’ she said.
‘Of course I do,’ he said gently. ‘Your distress is more than proof enough for me. Now, come and sit quietly by the fire and tell me everything else that is in your mind. There is something else, is there not?’
‘Yes, there are the things that Jack told me.’
‘Jack?’
‘He is the youngest of Sir Edgar’s footmen.’
‘And what is it that Jack told you?’
He had told her a great deal more than she had expected.
Cheerful now, with the white smile fixed permanently on his face rather than flashing nervously, he had seemed to feel it incumbent upon him to show his gratitude by answering every question she asked as fully as he possibly could.
‘Well, now, let me see,’ he said in response to her query about his visits to my lady’s dressing room on the day of the murder. ‘It was the logs first, miss. I took them up – well, I suppose that’d be just after the gentlemen went out.’
‘About ten o’clock, then?’
‘Yes, that’d be about right. She wasn’t up from her bed then. I only saw Mrs Pugh – that’s her maid.’
‘And the next time you went up?’
‘That was with fruits and cold meat. That’s always about midday. She was there in the dressing room then. And then I went up with a glass of wine for her to take her medicine with. Then it was more logs. Then it was a screen from the drawing room because the fire’d got too hot for her. Then the next time, that was the chocolate. And then I’d only just got back down when Mr Carter gave me the letter to take up. That’s how it always is, miss, days her ladyship spends in her dressing room, I’m up and down stairs all day.’
‘So this last visit you made, it would have been about one o’clock?’
‘No, miss, that was later – after two, I’d say. It was certainly after the gentlemen came back from their shooting. I know that, you see, because Sir Edgar was there in the dressing room when I took the letter up. He was sitting with her, talking the way he does sometimes about how she should look after herself and take her medicine and all that.’
‘Sir Edgar was there? Are you sure of that?’
‘Oh yes, miss, quite sure! Because I remember him making a fuss about the letter.’
Dido’s interest sharpened. ‘What kind of a fuss, Jack?’
‘Well, I didn’t mean to spy. I wouldn’t want you to think that of me, miss. But I had to wait, you see, because that’s what I’m supposed to do. Wait to see if there’s an answer to be taken.’
‘Yes, of course, I quite understand. Under those circumstances you would not be able to help seeing what happened, though I am sure you did not wish to intrude.’
‘Yes, that’s just how it was! Well, I was standing there by the door, waiting while the lady read her letter. And I couldn’t help noticing – though I didn’t mean to, of course – that she was a bit shocked by what she read.’
‘I see.’
‘Well then, miss, Sir Edgar asked her what it was and she sort of…well, she dropped the letter down into her lap as if she didn’t want him to see it. But he reached over and pulled her hand up and took the letter from her.’
‘Did he do that roughly?’
‘It’s not my place to notice, miss. But since you ask, I must say, yes, it was rather rough…very rough. Because she tried to hold on to the letter to stop him seeing it.’
‘I see.’ She looked at the boy, who was smiling very earnestly under his fringe of black hair. ‘Naturally, you would have tried not to notice too much about that letter. But I wonder – after all, you had to carry it quite a long way. It would not have been very surprising if you had just happened to see what kind of paper it was written on perhaps – or what the handwriting of the direction was like…?’
‘I didn’t notice very much, miss, and, of course, I wouldn’t talk about it to anyone else. But since it’s you that’s asking, I did see it was rather fine striped paper it was written on.’
‘And the handwriting? Was it a lady’s writing?’
‘No, miss, I don’t think so.’ His brow puckered up in thought and eventually he said, ‘No, it wasn’t a
