She spoke firmly, and yet with each assurance she gave, the conviction in her tone lessened until the final assertion came out almost as a question.
As far as accusations went, it was an understated one, especially compared with her fellow servants’ efforts, which had lacked subtlety. Indeed, it was so restrained, Bea could not be entirely sure she was pointing her finger at Parsons.
Oh, but of course she was—and look at how well it had worked. The interview had begun with the kitchen maid withering under Bea’s interest and concluded with Bea’s gaze turned toward another suspect. And Parsons was a very promising one indeed, for he had discovered Monsieur Alphonse and insisted against all reason that his death was merely a horrible accident.
A dubious claim from the very beginning, it took on a new complexion with the discovery of a significant and well-justified resentment.
Nevertheless, Bea remained focused on her current interrogation and reviewed with Gertrude her movements the night before. “And when you went up to bed at one, you saw Monsieur Alphonse in the courtyard?”
“Yes, your grace, yes, I did,” she said firmly. “He was doing a spot of gardening.”
As she was familiar with the chef’s thorough destruction of the roses, Bea assumed this was a deliberate understatement and regarded her suspect cynically. “A spot of gardening?”
For the first time since she had entered the room, the maid’s demeanor lightened and she seemed almost to giggle. “Excuse me, your grace, I should have said a lot of gardening, for he was in the process of digging up Mrs. Blewitt’s roses. I know I should not make light of it, for it was very wrong of him to destroy her whole garden, but she is so very possessive of her flowers and treats us all with suspicion any time we get within a foot of them. I can only suppose Monsieur Alphonse decided he’d had enough of her distrust. To be sure, he would have preferred onions, but it was not as if he intended to do the gardening himself,” Gertrude said, then, realizing the incongruity of the statement in the face of evidence to the contrary, she added that rooting up the bushes was much easier than planting them.
As Bea agreed with this assessment, she nodded and seeking to confirm the housekeeper’s version of events, asked if Mrs. Blewitt had seen what Monsieur Alphonse had done to the garden when she came in to inspect the kitchen.
“She couldn’t have possibly noticed it then,” Gertrude said, “because the second she did, she would have put a stop to it.”
Bea, unable to argue with the irrefutable logic, thanked the kitchen maid for her time and asked her to summon Parsons. Visibly relieved, the kitchen maid leaped to her feet, murmured a final, “Yes, your grace,” and fairly ran to the door.
Chapter Twelve
Parsons cried.
’Twas a disconcerting sight, to be sure—those prominent cheekbones, so judgmental whilst contemplating Beatrice in the corridor, glistening with tears, and his lower lip trembling like that of a naughty child being scolded by his strict governess. And his pointed chin, it bobbed up and down without control as droplets fell freely from his jaw onto the lapel of his jacket, the lines of which were ruined by shoulders rounded with despair.
It had engulfed him so suddenly, the storm of emotion, and Bea wasn’t even sure what had sparked it. All she had said to the tall man as he’d entered the room was that he may take a seat.
That was all it had required—a murmured invitation and a slight gesture toward a chair.
Ah, but obviously that was not all, for he, like Gertrude and Annette and everyone else in the house who had gone before him, knew precisely the purpose of her interview and found the prospect of an interrogation deeply distressing.
He had, Bea thought, better cause than most to be apprehensive, for the evidence was surely stacked against him. His claim that the chef had perished in an accident was foolish at best and nefarious at worst, and he had a very strong motive for wishing Mr. Réjane ill. Although the chef had done many things to agitate and annoy his colleagues, only his transgression against Parsons had actually threatened a man’s livelihood.
Just because he appeared guilty, however, did not mean he actually was, and Bea considered how best to proceed. In her experience, butlers did not weep—they intimidated and dismissed, yes, but did not crumble into sobbing heaps—and the thought of offering comfort was at once insufficient and patently absurd. Wrapping her arms around an elephant and murmuring soothingly in its humongous ear would be less preposterous than her trying to console Parsons.
An invigorating slap on the cheek, perhaps, would remind him of the situation and help him to regain his composure. Uncle Horace had once performed the service for his steward, who was in a lather because he’d spilled ink all over the month’s accounts, rendering them unreadable.
But surely it would never do for the Duchess of Kesgrave to go around striking the neighbor’s servant, no matter how positive her intent. And although the slap had returned the steward to his senses, her uncle’s hand had left a red mark on the other man’s face, which had troubled her relative so much, his own ability to think was undermined.
No accounts were balanced that day.
Maybe a restorative drink, she wondered. A glass of port or madeira?
Undaunted by the display, Kesgrave addressed the butler with brisk authority, assuring him that the
