“Yes, I agree, but in what way?” Charlotte took a piece of the fudge also.
“Someone discovered her? No, that would mean they killed the discoverer, if he, or she, threatened blackmail. Her husband discovered, and was about to expose her to public shame? Even to throw her out for adultery?”
“When he was having a love affair with Jerome Carvell? Hardly!”
“She discovered him with Jerome Carvell and killed him in a fit of utter disgust,” Emily offered.
“Thomas thought she didn’t know about Jerome Carvell,” Charlotte said. “She suspected he had a lover, but she thought it was a woman, as anyone would.”
“But Thomas thinks she is a grieving widow,” Emily responded, pulling a face. “He doesn’t know she has a lover herself.”
Charlotte conceded that point in silence. Pitt’s opinion of Dulcie was not something she wished to dwell on.
“I love Thomas to distraction,” Emily continued. “But he is not always the best judge of a woman. Very few men are,” she added graciously. “Well, something made it imperative. Perhaps he was going away, because she couldn’t marry him, and she had to make herself free to stop him leaving forever?”
“And maybe he was going to marry someone else?” Charlotte suggested.
“Which would mean he was free to marry,” Emily said with rising eagerness. “That narrows down the field automatically. There are not so many gentlemen of Dulcie Arledge’s age who are unmarried, and respectable.”
He did not have to be of her age, but that was a subject neither of them wished to pursue.
“Do you think he really intended to go away?” Charlotte was doubtful.
“No. All right then, if he is not about to become unavailable, perhaps he has suddenly become available? When there was no point in her being free before, because he was not, now he is, so she acted to become free also.”
“That makes sense,” Charlotte agreed. “Yes, indeed, that sounds quite possible. Or, of course, someone she has met only recently?”
“That too. Which could be Bart Mitchell, Mina Winthrop’s brother.”
“Thomas suspected him, I think, but not for that reason.”
“What reason?”
“On account of Mina.”
“What had Arledge to do with Mina?”
Charlotte explained the very little she knew.
Emily dismissed it. “Or else someone like Landon Hurlwood, who has been recently widowed. He is suddenly available, where he was not before. Now he is really most attractive.” Her voice was touched with enthusiasm. “I could not blame any woman for being a little smitten with him. And I imagine if he cared for you, it would be very easy to lose your sense of proportion a trifle.”
“Hitting your husband over the head and then decapitating him and leaving him in the park is not a trifle,” Charlotte said swiftly. There was, however, a thread of enthusiasm in her too, and Emily disregarded the words in favor of the tone.
“But he fits the qualifications precisely, doesn’t he?” Emily leaned forward, her elbows on the wrought iron table.
“Yes,” Charlotte agreed with growing conviction. “Yes, he seems just the sort of person. But I imagine there must be many others. The difficulty is, how do we decide which one?”
“Do we need to?” Emily looked puzzled. “Surely you can see that this is almost certainly the right kind of answer?”
“Of course I can. But we need to prove it to be sure. Then we need to know if he killed Aidan Arledge, and of course, if Dulcie knew about it.”
“Oh.” Emily let out a long sigh. “Well, that is going to be interesting. How can we do that? Especially since Thomas apparently could not …”
“He has never considered Dulcie,” Charlotte said, biting her lip and feeling the twinge of guilt back again.
“Maybe she had no idea that he did it on her account.”
This time it was Charlotte who gave the knowing, exasperated look.
“Yes, I suppose so,” Emily agreed. “She is not naive at all. I’m sorry. What shall we do?”
“We must be certain.” Charlotte was speaking as much to herself as to Emily. She relapsed into thought for a moment or two. “We must provoke a reaction,” she said at last.
“In whom? Dulcie? How will that help? She won’t betray him.”
“Not in Dulcie, in him!”
“But we don’t know who he is. It not only could be Landon Hurlwood. It could also be Bart Mitchell, or any of I don’t know how many others!”
“Well let us start with Bart Mitchell and Landon Hurlwood.” Charlotte bit her lip. “Although I confess I am not certain how to go about that.”
Emily thought for a moment, then her face lit with a smile.
“I am. Obviously the affair is secret, and if it had anything whatever to do with Aidan Arledge’s death, they will be desperate that it should be kept so for quite a while afterwards. It can only come to light as if they had fallen in
