were at the body.”
“And no way of knowing precisely when the Lieutenant died,” I added to the list.
“You and Captain Ellis left the Forest on the same day. Merrit must have been dead by then.”
And Mrs. Ellis was already on her way to the station to meet her returning son.
“So it isn’t Willy you’re looking at, but Roger Ellis,” I said. “You used us.”
He could hear the disgust in my voice, and answered coldly, “I have a murder case to solve, Sister Crawford, and my best suspect is dead. If he killed himself, all well and good, but if he did not, then our murderer has two deaths on his conscience.”
“If he has a conscience,” I replied. “Have you finished with me? Am I allowed to return to France? I’m needed there.”
“You are needed here as well. Would you be willing to return to Vixen Hill?”
“No,” Simon answered for me. “The Colonel would be furious if you put his daughter in harm’s way.”
“Besides which,” I added, “Roger Ellis may not want me there.” In spite of the time we had spent together in that little bistro in Rouen, he wouldn’t want me to tell Lydia he was also searching for Sophie.
“I think,” Inspector Rother said dryly, “the person who would most dislike having you there is the senior Mrs. Ellis.”
“Gran?” I repeated.
“Quite,” he answered. “She has been throwing sand in my eyes since the moment I arrived at Vixen Hill, busily protecting her grandson. And you see far too clearly for her comfort. I have just verified that myself.”
I remembered Lydia’s letter to me in France. Everyone had sent me Christmas wishes-except for Gran.
Chapter Fourteen
I had no intention of returning to Vixen Hill. I didn’t want to spy for the police. What’s more, on our way back to Hartfield, I had all but promised Simon that I wouldn’t consider it.
But in the afternoon, Lydia Ellis came knocking at my door in The King’s Head, and when I answered, she said, “Mama Ellis was telling the truth. You are here.”
“Did you doubt her?”
“Roger swore you were still in France. That he’d run into you at one of the hospitals.”
That was close enough to the truth for his purposes.
“Yes, not surprisingly.”
I asked her to come in, and she did, looking around at my room with interest. “I’ve been to The King’s Head I don’t know how many times,” she said, “but I’ve never been in one of the rooms. It’s rather nice, isn’t it?”
For the polished wood of the floorboards was set off with a dark blue carpet and paler blue curtains accenting the chintz covering the chairs. Framed prints of hunting scenes hung on walls papered with morning glories. Nothing to compare with Vixen Hill, but quite comfortable.
“As you already know, Roger is back from France too,” she said, walking to the window to look out and then turning to face me. “He’s different, somehow. I don’t know what it is.”
“This time he hasn’t come home to watch his brother die,” I pointed out gently.
“Yes. But I’m wary, I don’t know if it’s a real difference or feigned. Or my wishful thinking.” She was pacing again, back and forth, back and forth.
“Are you asking me whether you should stay here with me for the duration of his leave?”
“Will you come back to Vixen Hill? Margaret has been asked to return as well, and she’s hoping the police will even summon Henry home from France. But they’ve dispensed with Eleanor and her brother. That’s odd, isn’t it?”
“The police have their own way of judging these matters,” I replied, unwilling to go farther.
“I expect they talked to her in Portsmouth, and don’t want us to know what was discussed.” She stopped by the door and touched a picture frame, straightening it. “The police asked me over and over again-even though I’d given them a statement, just as you’d done-about finding George’s body.” She toyed with another frame. “I thought they were convinced after he went missing that Davis Merrit had killed George. That was the conclusion of the inquest, for heaven’s sake. So why are they intending to look at Roger now? Because they are, aren’t they? Do you believe Roger is a murderer, Bess?”
There was fear in her eyes when finally she turned to face me. All I could do was shake my head. “I’m not the right person to ask,” I answered.
“I don’t want him to be guilty,” she said quietly. “I’ve had a lot of time to think after you left. Have you found that little girl?”
“I looked for her,” I countered. “Do you have any idea how many orphans there are in France?”
“I wonder what Roger would say, if he’d come home to find that you’d brought her with you.”
“Lydia, it’s not as simple as that. There are legal issues. She’s a citizen of France, because her mother was. Rules. Even if Roger wanted her, he would have to go through a solicitor, to find out what he was required to do. You and I would have no claim on her.”
“Yes, but I don’t see why that should stop you from looking for her.”
“No, of course not.”
She sighed. “You’d think, wouldn’t you, that everyone would be glad to find that she has a good home.”
“Lydia. You do realize that if George knew what he was saying, that this child is the image of Juliana, will you be comfortable bringing her into your home? Mrs. Ellis will see her dead daughter in yours, and so will Gran. And Roger, of course, if he survives the war.”
“I don’t care who she looks like. I’d be grateful to have her.”
But that was easy to say now. When she hadn’t seen Sophie, as I had.
“What would you say if Roger came home with her?” I asked, curious.
She laughed, but not in amusement. “He never will. You know that. He’s ashamed of what he did, and he won’t want a constant reminder underfoot. He couldn’t have loved her mother very much, could he, or he’d have moved heaven and earth to find her.”
I couldn’t judge whether that was a consolation to Lydia or if she was seeing the relationship between her husband and the French mother of his child as she would like it to be. Not love, but lust. She could live with lust. Or so she thought now.
Yet from what Roger had told me in Rouen, it hadn’t been either love or lust, but loneliness and fear and the knowledge that for this moment, at least, they were both alive. If Roger had spoken the truth, it was never an affair.
“You’ll keep trying all the same?”
“I’ll keep trying.” I’d seen Sophie. I knew I had to.
She nodded and turned from the fire. “I have Davis’s cat. I couldn’t bear to see it put out, and of course it couldn’t stay in the cottage. He had nowhere to go, did he? Merrit? And so he couldn’t have taken his cat.”
“What did Roger have to say about that?”
She smiled sadly. “He doesn’t know. I’ve put Bluebell in the room above the hall, and she seems quite happy there. No one goes to that room, except for me. I’m not haunted by Juliana, like the others.”
And yet she had been, by her own account, when she fled to London that first time.
“Will you come back with me?” she asked. “Please?”
“I don’t know that it’s wise, Lydia.”
“Please?”
“How did you get to Hartfield? On your bicycle?”
“I learned to drive,” she told me. “I never want to feel dependent on someone else again.”
“That was clever of you,” I told her sincerely. “Lydia, let me think about it. I don’t know just what I should do.”
“I’ll bring Mrs. Ellis back with me. To help convince you.”
And with that she was gone.
