“Was there anything irregular in your father’s death?” I asked.
“No, nothing,” she said, with a sad look. “He was going to visit friends in the country, and the coach mired down. The passengers got out to help free it, and the effort burst his heart. He died almost instantly, we were told. Blame it on the bad road, and the bad weather—nothing more. I wish I could blame it on something more. It seems unfair.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” said Mr. Clemens, speaking very gently. “I lost my own father at a young age, so I know how it must have felt. But you were telling us about the doctor—please go on.”
Miss Donning sat up straight, and nodded. Her voice sounded bitter, now. “Yes, well, Oliver promised to see that I got my share, and to put it directly, his promise was worthless. He and Cornelia bought a fine house, he had fine offices and always the newest surgical equipment, and I got the old home and the hand-me-down furniture and seventy pounds a year. There was an occasional dinner invitation, or a night at the theater or the opera if Oliver and Cornelia were getting up a party and thought to include me. I suppose many would think Oliver had taken quite good care of his poor spinster sister-in-law.”
“But you don’t think so, do you?” said Mr. Clemens. He stood up and took a few paces, then spun around suddenly and asked, “There’s more to it than just the money, isn’t there?”
Miss Donning lowered her glance again. “You are right, Mr. Clemens,” she said. She picked up her wineglass and drained it, then set it down next to the decanter. “Sometime after my father’s death, I understood that I had been cheated, and I confronted Oliver about it. I didn’t want Cornelia to know what I was about, so I went to his offices. I made my little speech, and he sat there smirking. When I was done, he suggested that I might earn back my dowry. I was a sheltered young woman, Mr. Clemens, but I knew what he was proposing. I left the office in a cold fury, determined to have nothing more to do with him.”
“I can understand why,” I said. “Good Lord, what a monster!”
“Monster indeed,” said Mr. Clemens. He walked gently over to our hostess and refilled her wineglass from the decanter. “And yet you were with him just the other night. Why?”
“I did not go with him, but with my sister,” said Miss Donning. She picked up the glass and took another sip of the sherry. “I have only one sister, Mr. Clemens. She may have been married to an ogre, but she is still my flesh and blood. And she needed me even more than I did her—after all, she had to live with the beast for twenty-six years. I don’t know how she dealt with it, Mr. Clemens. If you will recall, Cornelia sat between me and him. I did not want to hold his filthy hand, even in the name of evoking the spirits,”
“I am sorry,” said Mr. Clemens. “It must be hard for you to tell these things to a stranger.”
“I don’t really know why I am telling them at all,” she said. “The city is better off with him gone—though I’m not sure my poor sister realizes that yet.”
“You said before you didn’t think she could have killed her husband,” said Mr. Clemens. He sat back down again, but leaned forward as if to hear her better.
“That is my opinion, though she had more reason than anyone,” said Miss Donning. “She knew of Oliver’s infidelities—I wasn’t the only one he approached in that manner, and some were more agreeable than I. She knew, and was powerless to prevent, his cheating me out of my dowry—and out of my chance at a life beyond this wretched house. She saw the beastly way he treated their son—he strapped the boy without mercy for the slightest infringement, real or imagined. Tony was never happier than the day he was sent away to Rugby School, and he was miserable every time he had to return home.”
Mr. Clemens leaned forward and said in a quiet voice, “Do you think the son could have killed him?”
“There were times when he would have, yes,” said Miss Donning. “Once at dinner Tony attacked him with his fists. Oliver threw him against the wall and slapped him—and for a brief moment, Tony’s eyes were those of a wild animal. They lit on the carving knife, and I knew as well as I know my own name that he was thinking about snatching it up and wielding it against his father. That moment passed—but there must have been many such, and Oliver did nothing to mend the rift between them.”
“Do you happen to know where Tony is living now? Is he in London, or within reasonable distance?”
“I believe he is in town at present,” said Miss Donning. “He shares apartments with two or three other young men—he moves from time to time, and I can never keep it straight just where he is staying. I will find you the current address before you leave; it is out in Chelsea, I think.”
“Chelsea!” I said. “That is where the murder took place.”
“That is correct,” said Miss Donning, smiling pleasantly at me, as a teacher does at a schoolboy who has just recognized the answer to a simple problem. “I wouldn’t attach too much meaning to the fact. After all, you are currently living in Chelsea, are you not? And nobody suspects you of the murder.”
“I reckon we ought to go see him,” said Mr. Clemens. “Do you know whether he knew about the séance the other night?”
“Oh, of course,” said Miss Donning, still smiling very broadly.
