Orlando waited until they’d taken leave of Mrs. Blackett and were halfway to the kitchen garden in search of their next witness before airing his thoughts.
“Is it me, or does this seem to be something and nothing? First she suspects Robertson, then she isn’t sure . . .” He rubbed his brow. “In any case, I suppose we have a tangible suicide letter to get our teeth into. That definitely needs investigating, approved signature or not.”
“It does indeed. As does the mysterious man who was looking for Edward. Although how somebody could have broken into a locked room beats me.” Jonty shrugged.
“Maybe Wilshire will give us a clue in that regard. He saw the room and Mrs. Blackett didn’t. Let’s hope he’s observant.”
“The Peter Pan bit interested me. Not least because . . .”
Orlando’s ears pricked. “Not least because what?”
Jonty, who’d spotted two men—gardeners by the look of their clothes and hands—approaching, raised his finger to his lips. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Dr. Stewart?” The older of the two men took off his cap and nodded respectfully.
“It is.” Jonty held out his hand to be shaken, even if it was at the risk of upsetting the usual hierarchy in the Blackett household. “And this is Professor Coppersmith. Thank you for sparing this young man to answer our questions.”
“Anything to oblige Mrs. Blackett. Wilshire here will tell you whatever you need to know.” The older man showed no sign of leaving them to it.
Orlando inclined his head. “Thank you, Mr . . .?”
“Taylor, sir.”
“Taylor. Excellent. I’m sure you’ll be well aware that we need to observe the strictest confidentiality in our cases, so we’d be grateful if you’d give the three of us a few minutes alone.” Orlando smiled and waited. The strategy played out as the gardener tugged at his hat and wandered off.
“Does what we say here have to stay a secret?” Wilshire frowned.
“Only if the three of us agree that it would be for the best.” Jonty smiled reassuringly. “Does that bother you?”
“It’ll only bother me if they start asking questions.” Wilshire jabbed his thumb towards Taylor and another, younger, lad, who were beating the living daylights out of some straggling trees that had clearly been given their marching orders. “Worse than old women. Even though I suppose there’s nothing I have to tell you that they haven’t already heard.”
Being first in on a death scene must have provided many a talking point.
“Use your discretion. You’ll be fine.” Jonty cuffed Wilshire’s arm. “Is there somewhere we can sit?”
“There’s a pair of benches in the orchard, or a wall the other side of the kitchen garden.”
“Anywhere we can’t be listened in on would be perfect. Lay on, Macduff, as Dr. Stewart might say,” Orlando added, then followed in Wilshire’s wake, while Jonty tagged along, shaking his head.
Wilshire was strongly built, square jawed, with the sort of bluff attitude about him that Orlando had seen, and appreciated, in some of the men in his platoon. Lads who’d never returned home to enjoy such a lovely autumnal day, their mother country at her most benign and beautiful. This young man wasn’t all that handsome, compared to many of the young men they’d interviewed down the years. Not that his looks were likely to prove germane to their investigation, but someone who noticed things couldn’t help but take notice of that particular thing.
Once they were settled—on the little garden wall—Orlando got out his notepad, at which Wilshire looked suitably serious. “Mrs. Blackett has explained who you are and why you want to talk to me. I’m ready to do all I can to help.”
“Excellent!” Orlando fiddled with his pen. “We’re sorry to have to ask you to go through the details yet again, when you must have been through them countless times, but can you tell us precisely what happened on the day of Edward Atherton’s death? We’re especially looking for anything that with hindsight seems odd.”
Wilshire didn’t appear bothered by having to tell his story again. He gave a straightforward account of getting Edward from the Blackett’s house to his flat, via coach and train and cab. “There was nothing out of the ordinary. We’d come up the evening before and stayed over so he’d be ready for his appointment the next day.”
“Did he always stay over?” Jonty asked. “And was it always you who looked after him?”
“Not at first. I mean, we used to take it in turns to look after him, but he soon asked for me to be his valet permanently.” Wilshire’s voice resounded with pride. “I did a good job. Mrs. Blackett told me so. She says she’s trying to find me a similar position with one of her friends.”
“You’d prefer that to being out here in the fresh air?”
“I would, sir. Although don’t take me wrongly. I’m not looking down on this work.” Wilshire rubbed some soil off his hands. “But I feel that’s where I’d be better employed.”
Jonty nodded. “I wish you all the luck in the world. Now, going back. I’m not sure if you told us whether Mr. Atherton always stayed the night before visiting the doctor.”
“Ah yes, sorry. He didn’t used to, but as he got weaker and weaker, he preferred to take everything more slowly and comfortably. I guess that was the third or fourth time he’d stayed the night. He’d also go up when he had business in hand. That had been going on much longer. Since he moved here.”
“Did you accompany him on those trips?” Orlando’s pen hovered over the page.
“Yes. While he managed his affairs I made sure the household side of things was shipshape. There was a cleaner came in, but you never know if they’ll do a proper job. I carried Mr. Atherton up the steps into the doctor’s house and while he was having his consultation, I’d generally do some errands, either for him or for Mrs. Blackett, if there was something she needed to be collected from town.” Wilshire stopped, brow furrowed, then carried on. “There was one odd thing. Mr. Atherton asked me to get him a quarter of liquorice allsorts while I was about my errands. That does seem peculiar if he was intending to take his life, but perhaps he only wanted to cover up the fact. Act normally so I wouldn’t suspect.”
“Perhaps.” Orlando cast aside a sudden, inappropriate thought of what a shame it was for those sweets to have been discarded, unwanted. Especially when they’d have found a warm home in his pocket. And in his stomach. It had been a source of great amusement to Jonty, when they’d first met, that his new friend seemed to possess one solitary vice: a passion for sweets, if vice such a thing could be called. The sharing of peppermint creams had been a positive encouragement to their courtship.
“Professor Coppersmith. Are you listening?” Jonty’s voice brought Orlando out of his sweet-laden thoughts. “I’m sorry, Wilshire. You probably distracted him with the mention of liquorice. If it had been Peace Babies you’d bought, we’d never have got his mind back on the case.”
Orlando didn’t bother to honour the barb with a reply, not least because Jonty would have seen through him. “Mr. Wilshire, could you describe precisely what happened when you returned to Dr. Robertson’s house?”
“They weren’t done. Still in the consulting room, even though it was past the time for them to finish. Mrs. McGinley said we weren’t to worry. She’d just that minute made a pot of tea so she offered me a cup, but as the time kept drawing on I got worried.” Colour started to rise on Wilshire’s face. “I wanted to knock on the door, simply to find out how long they’d be, because the carriage was waiting. She insisted I couldn’t interrupt, so I went to listen at the door. I wasn’t being nosy, no matter what she might have said. I wanted to know if things were coming to a conclusion. When I couldn’t hear anything at all, I got worried.”
“Quite right.” Orlando nodded encouragingly.
“Did you hear that I had to break in? The door was locked from the inside but I couldn’t force it open, so I had to smash one of the panels—Mrs. McGinley lent me a hammer to do that. I managed to get my hand through and turn the key. We were lucky that was still in the lock. Thank goodness the doctor hadn’t bolted the thing.”
Orlando frowned. “The door could be bolted?”
“It could. There was a bolt at the top. It wasn’t drawn.”
Was there any significance in that? Wouldn’t Robertson, if he intended murder, have wanted to ensure they weren’t disturbed mid-act?
“What about the windows?”
“They were closed, too. It had turned warm, but it had been a bit sharp earlier on, with a spot of rain threatening so I wasn’t too surprised about that.” He’d obviously noticed the details, and mulled things over. This was the sort of witness Orlando relished.
Jonty cut in. “I wonder if they key had been left in the keyhole to stop anyone trying to unlock it from the outside? Assuming the housekeeper had a spare key to the room.”
“That’s possible.” Wilshire slowly rubbed his fingers, clearly puzzled again. “Although she didn’t offer to unlock it, once I made it clear I was intending to get in one way or the other. I never thought about that at the time. It’s odd, isn’t it?”
“It is. And we’ll have to ask her about it.” Jonty made a note. “So the key was in the lock. What else did you notice when you entered the room?”
“Apart from two dead men?” Wilshire winced, keeping his gaze on his hands, where he’d found even more soil to rub away. “I wasn’t expecting that. I thought maybe Mr. Atherton had been taken ill and Dr. Robertson was treating him.”
“Of course,” Jonty said soothingly. “Go on.”
“I couldn’t know for sure they were dead, at the time, but . . .” He looked up. “Did you serve, sir?”
“I did.” Jonty ran his finger down his scarred cheek and said, in a lighthearted but strained voice, “You don’t get these shaving.”
Wilshire grimaced. “I thought not. Anyway, you get to have a feeling for when there’s no life left in someone, and that’s the feeling I got when I opened that door. Mrs. McGinley called for a doctor—there’s a colleague of Dr. Robertson who lives in the next street—and he came as soon as he could. Too late to do anything, though. I insisted we get the police involved too, although they came later.”
“Sensible lad.” Jonty ran his pen down his notepad, along a list of questions, stopping at one and asking, “Was there any way somebody else could have got into that room, and then, presumably, out again? Assuming they weren’t hiding somewhere until everyone had gone.”
“I don’t think so, unless there was something like a false door leading into the next room. The windows were shut, weren’t they? And there wasn’t a balcony outside, surely?”
Maybe the servants’ quarters were awash with discussions about whether Edward had been done away with and whether the murderer was anyone other than the obvious suspect. “And I’m sure there wasn’t anywhere somebody could have hidden themselves, unless they were one of those people you see at the music halls who can bend themselves into knots and get into a little chest. I’ve thought about it.”
“We can see that.” Jonty smiled. “I wish some of my students thought matters through as thoroughly.”
Wilshire visibly swelled with emotion, chest puffed out and head raised high. “Would you mind if I shared an idea I’ve had with you?”
Orlando nodded. “Please do. Your mind’s eye provides the nearest thing we can get to actually seeing the scene of death, so anything you have to say will be of interest.”
Wilshire looked over his shoulder—probably for dramatic effect, as there was nobody close by—then lowered his voice. “It struck me that you wouldn’t need to be in that room to kill somebody. If the poison was in the whisky, then it could have been put in there beforehand. Maybe whoever it was didn’t even intend to kill Mr. Atherton, only Dr. Robertson. Or the other way round.”
Orlando’s mind went straight back to Jonty and his “ Cui bono?”
“That’s a good point. If the doctor was fond of a tipple, you could lace the stuff at any point, especially if he kept it in a decanter rather than a bottle. Then you could be miles away when the poison went into action, as long as the chemistry worked out and the thing didn’t precipitate or denature.” Jonty almost sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, using such chemical terms. He must have been nattering with Dr. Panesar again. “Clever. And it would point against Mrs. McGinley having been the one to do the poisoning.”
“Why’s that, sir?” Wilshire frowned. “I don’t quite follow.”
“Because, as a modus operandi, it would indicate her, being the person best placed to adulterate the whisky. Unless she had very little imagination, it wouldn’t be a sensible approach to take.” Jonty raised an eyebrow at Orlando.
“Yes, much more likely to be the approach taken by somebody who’d a chance of being somewhere else, and therefore out of suspicion, when the fatal hour came.”
Wilshire nodded, evidently considering the point. “They say poison’s a woman’s weapon, though.”
“Perhaps we need to look for another woman, then.” Orlando didn’t feel it was worth pursuing the argument. Particularly when one might posit that the reputation of poison as being the province of the female of the species could make it an attractive proposition for a man who wanted to deflect suspicion elsewhere. “And we have to consider whether the poison could have got into the glasses by accident.”
“The only trouble with these theories—any murder theories—is the presence of the two suicide letters.” Jonty sounded a proper note of caution. “Did you happen to see them, Wilshire?”
“I think so. There were certainly two important-looking pieces of paper on the desk. Important-looking because they were laid in line with each other, prominent, where you couldn’t miss them. I didn’t get to read them,” he added, with a touch of regret, “because there was so much happening. At the inquest they read Mr. Atherton’s out. It stated that he couldn’t face another morning living the way he was living. He was sorry for the pain he’d cause his family and friends, but he was sure it was for the best.”
“Do you know what the doctor’s letter said?”
Wilshire shrugged and shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
“Hmm. And how would those letters sit with your idea of a third party poisoning the whisky?”
“Ah.” Wilshire wagged his finger. “I’ve thought about that, too.”
Orlando hid a grin, recognising a kindred spirit. Of course Wilshire would have done. Most likely he thought through everything.
“It struck me that if you were leaving a suicide note, you’d have put it in an envelope, all neat like, and addressed it to someone in particular. In Mr. Atherton’s case his sister.”
“I understand that’s what often happens.” Orlando suppressed the memory of his father’s death. There’d been no note then, just a spoken admission that he couldn’t go on, before he committed the deed in front of his family. He and Jonty had dealt with suicides before, but experience didn’t make it any easier to forget the past.
“Exactly, sir. So what if those letters weren’t intended to be taken in that way?”
“I’m sorry? I don’t follow.”
“What if they’d been written when they were low in spirits and they’d got them out to compare them now that they weren’t feeling so down? Reminding themselves how silly they’d been . . .” Wilshire studied his gardening boots. This wasn’t as strong a theory as his others had been. But Orlando and Jonty had come across a similar thing in the past, where a letter had been reused in not dissimilar circumstances, an apparent suicide that had actually been a cunningly executed murder. And those two letters did need explaining, unless the case was no more than it appeared to be: a double suicide.
Jonty had probably been thinking of that same case. “That’s not impossible. We need to get hold of a copy of them, to see if the words themselves yield a clue. Now, back to the bodies. How did they appear, apart from the obvious effects of the poison?”
“Hold on.” Orlando raised his hand. It was all very well for Jonty to talk about obvious effects of poisoning, which he’d most likely obtained from a reference book or from the omniscient Dr. Panesar, but neither of them had ever seen—thank God—a man struck down by cyanide and would value Wilshire’s eyewitness account, gruesome though that might be. “Let’s not pass over that point. I’ve read about the symptoms, coma, cardiac arrest, and the like, and how death can be extremely quick at high doses. Would that accord with what you saw?”
Wilshire thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. There didn’t seem to be much evidence of them thrashing about or being sick or anything. And it wasn’t like we saw in the war, when the gas came.”
“No. Quite.” Orlando took a deep, cleansing breath, as though he felt even now that sickly aroma in his nostrils. In the trenches, gas—in whatever form—had usually taken longer to kill.
“Their faces were a bit red, dark red, but I don’t know if that was the poison or struggling for air. Mr. Atherton looked distressed all round, naturally. They both did.”
“Thank you.” Orlando wished he hadn’t asked. Unwanted memories were coming back.
If Jonty was experiencing similar feelings, he wasn’t showing them. “Can we just get this absolutely clear? I know that the body will have all sorts of involuntary reactions, however willingly one takes poison, but I want to get your first impression. Was it that they’d taken poison and waited calmly for it to take effect, like Cleopatra and the asp?”
Wilshire frowned at the word “asp.” “I’m sorry . . .?”
Maybe he’d mistaken it for something less genteel. “Excuse my colleague’s flights of fancy. You can take his book of Shakespeare’s plays off him but it doesn’t stop him thinking about them at every occasion.”
“Ah, I see. That Cleopatra. They put it on once, here in the grounds, and we were allowed to see it.” Wilshire nodded. “I didn’t have time to form any impression one way or the other, I’m afraid. I’m not a doctor so I wouldn’t know if what I saw was natural or not.”
Orlando understood the effects of cyanide were pretty quick and pretty devastating if you took enough of it. Time to change tack.
“Can we go back to when Mr. Atherton came up to London to manage his business affairs? Mrs. Blackett mentioned that her brother always had a lot of documents to sign, and had made sure to have his signature verified before it had deteriorated too much. To confirm it was indeed him signing any documents.”
“Yes. I remember the solicitor coming. Mr. Atherton asked me to act as an independent witness so it was all aboveboard.”
Orlando made a note, to check whether an independent witness was necessary for such a thing if the solicitor himself acted as a commissioner for oaths.
“I’m sure he valued your common sense. It was definitely a signature you witnessed, and not anything else?” Jonty produced a charming smile. “Did Mr. Atherton need any other help? Not physically, I mean. Did he ever ask you to write things down for him?”
“Oh, no. He had Miss Chambers for that.”
“Who?” Orlando and Jonty asked in unison.
Wilshire laughed. “Miss Chambers. I suppose you would call her his secretary. Every time we were in London she’d come along and take notes. Shorthand. Then she’d type them up or, if there were too many, bring them back the next time.”
Jonty gave Orlando a sly wink. “She sounds a godsend.”
“She was. Such a nice girl, very efficient. We’re friends now. Mr. Atherton thought the world of her. Sometimes he would ask me to make her a pot of tea or go and buy her cakes.”
No wonder Wilshire had no great inclination to return to digging up rhododendrons or whatever it was he’d been doing, now he’d had experience of supplying nice young ladies with tea and cake.
Jonty tipped his head to one side. “Mrs. Blackett didn’t mention her.”
Wilshire grinned, then leaned forward, conspiratorially. “Mrs. Blackett didn’t know about her. Mr. Atherton didn’t want her to know.”
“And why was that?”
“He said because she’d tease him about it. I can understand that. I have an older sister, and she always rags me if I even look at a girl.”
Jonty grinned. “Big sisters are the bane of our lives. I have one and not even motherhood has made her any better.”
Orlando thought he’d better chip in before the conversation turned to whether Jonty had a girlfriend for Lavinia to tease him about. “Did Mr. Atherton really suspect his sister would think Miss Chambers was his sweetheart? Or do you think he was covering over the real reason?”
“I honestly don’t know, sir.” Wilshire leaped off the wall. “Mr. Taylor’s on the way back to get me. Seems like my time is up.”
“It appears so. Thank you.” Orlando folded his notepad to put it away.
“Before you go, have you any idea how we can contact this Miss Chambers?” Jonty whispered so Taylor couldn’t hear.
“Tell me the name of your college, and I’ll write to you. Best not to let people here get wind of it.”
“Very sensible. Thank you,” Jonty added, loudly. He smiled at Taylor and gave Orlando his “Well, what do you think of that?” expression.
***
“Do you think there’s anything suspicious in Mrs. Blackett trying to find Wilshire a job outside the family?” Jonty led the way back to the cab, which they’d instructed to wait for them at the lodge. “Or in her not being told about Miss Chambers, who quite possibly was the person who prepared her brother’s suicide letter? Or am I just suspicious of everything?”
“No to the first, not sure to the second and definitely yes to the last. Although don’t apologise for it. Sometimes it’s the little things which shed light on a case. I think Wilshire’s just ambitious, and rightly so. Why should he settle for this sort of life if he could make his way to something better? Maybe he’ll end up as steward at the Old Manor one day.” Orlando smiled, remembering the house where he’d spent so many happy days with Jonty’s family. It wasn’t quite the same place now that the eldest Stewart boy held sway there.
“Steward at the Old Manor? Young Hayes is lined up for that.”
Edward Hayes had been “acquired”—some might say poached—during a case a dozen years previously and had progressed to being the present steward’s right-hand man. A glowing spell of service in the Royal Sussex Regiment had only added to the admiration he was held in, although the other lad, Covington, they’d acquired during the same case hadn’t been so fortunate. The war had taken the good and bad alike, and Covington had definitely fallen into the former category.
“He’d enjoy having someone to train up. Have a word in your brother’s ear.”
“I will. Sheridan is always on the lookout for good staff.”
Recollecting servants they’d known occupied the rest of the walk and the first few minutes of the cab journey, until Orlando remembered an earlier discussion. “Peter Pan.”
Jonty, who’d been peering out of the window, turned. “Yes?”
“You promised you’d explain.”
“Oh, yes. The Llewelyn Davies family. There were four boys. No—five. Five boys left alone in the world when their mother and father died. Barrie became their guardian. Did as good a job as could be expected.”
“Oh, yes. I remember your dear departed mama telling me about that. I had to lend her my handkerchief.” Orlando had always been Mrs. Stewart’s favourite among the four partners her children had found. “That was a long time ago.” Back in 1910. He wasn’t sure he and Jonty had discussed the Llewelyn Davies boys since.
“It was. I still miss the old girl.” Jonty took a deep breath and stared out of the cab window again. “One of them, Michael, was the model for Peter Pan, according to Papa, but he also reckoned that Barrie himself was more like the boy who never grew up.”
“I see.” Orlando stared at his feet, not really wanting to discuss a boy who wouldn’t grow up. Too close to home, his own journey into adulthood having started relatively late in life.
“I expect you’re more a Wind in the Willows man.” Jonty turned then tapped his hand.
“When you’ve lived with Mr. Toad as long as I have, who could blame me?”
Jonty grinned. “Yes, I did notice that for a long time every motor journey was punctuated with snide allusions to Toad’s driving and shouts of ‘Parp parp’ if we went a spot too fast.”
Orlando snorted. It had taken Jonty calling him “Mole” on as many occasions as possible to get him out of the habit.
“Anyhow, back to business,” Jonty remarked. “You once met one of the boys, I think.”
“Oh yes, I remember. At the cricket. The affair of the wooden cat.”
“Hardly the way I’d have put it, but yes. Well, as if being orphaned wasn’t tragedy enough, George Llewelyn Davies was killed during the war. Same regiment as Atherton’s, I believe. Just one death among many, but it seemed a particularly cruel stroke of fate.”
“Indeed.” There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to who had died and who had survived.
“Then this summer, Michael was killed in a swimming accident with a fellow student. Near Oxford. I’m surprised you didn’t see the story.”
Orlando was surprised, too. No matter that he’d turned coat and joined the rival university, he liked to keep in touch with events at his alma mater. “That’s probably because you have a habit of hogging the paper and not letting other people near it. When was this?”
“May, June, around then.” Jonty gave Orlando a smile.
“That’s sad.” Orlando remembered how lonely he’d felt at Oxford, how he’d have benefitted from a friend. “But if it was then, that’s why I missed it. All I can remember is piles of research work to deal with. And Dr. Panesar’s adding machine project.”
“I remember you being rather distracted at the time.” Jonty didn’t seem able to manage a smile. “I’m not sure it was an accident.”
“What wasn’t an accident? When the adding machine blew up?” Orlando was determined to keep things light. He hated to see his lover so low.
“No, numbskull.” Jonty shook his head. “Michael’s drowning.”
“Oh.” Another conundrum to get their teeth into? “Is that based on knowledge or intuition?”
“Both and neither,” Jonty replied, in his typically infuriating way. “I met Michael, briefly, last year at a cricket match. When you were away pretending to be at a mathematical meeting but probably filling your tummy with beer.”
“Ha-ha. Go on, I’m intrigued.”
“I remember thinking that he might show the same preferences, romance-wise, that we do. I know,” Jonty raised his hand to stave off protest, “one can’t really judge, and one can never inhabit another man’s head, but there are signs to be read if you know them. A look at another man that lasts a bit too long. Not towards me, I hasten to add.”
Orlando nodded. He’d been late in learning about those signs, too, as he’d been late learning about so much. The results had bordered on the disastrous.
Jonty ploughed on. “When I read the story in the newspaper, I wondered if it was some sort of lovers’ suicide pact.”
“Not another double suicide, surely? That seems a coincidence too far.” Orlando snorted.
“Coincidences happen, as you delight to remind me. And plenty of people have had a familiar model presented. In the form of Romeo and Juliet.” Jonty nodded, as though that might settle the argument.
“You’re never suggesting that Atherton and Robertson were romantically involved?”
“Of course I’m not, you big daft lump. All I said is that the idea of a double suicide doesn’t need to be reinvented time and again.” Jonty punched Orlando’s shoulder.
Aggrieved at the assault, however playful, he tried to appear miffed, but couldn’t hide his interest. “Back to those who might have been involved.”
“Michael couldn’t swim too well. And that is a fact, not a conjecture, because it came up in conversation at the cricket, and I remember thinking it odd that anyone should have such a fear of water.”
“Where did this drowning happen?”
“Somewhere on the Thames.” Jonty frowned. “Stamford?”
“Not Sandford pool?”
“That sounds right. You’ve heard of it?”
“I’ve been there. If that’s the place I’m thinking of, it’s a bit like a weir pool, the Sandford Lasher. Nobody in their right mind would bathe there.” Orlando shivered. He knew of someone who’d damn near come a cropper there. “Why on earth were they swimming in that particular stretch when there are plenty of other better ones? Especially for a nervous swimmer.”
“I have no idea. That makes me even more suspicious, though. Ah, here we are.” They drew up at the station, in excellent time to catch the next up train. Once they were firmly ensconced in a compartment where they couldn’t be overheard, the fractured conversation could continue.
“Back to that business with Michael Llewelyn Davies.”
“Yes?” Jonty replied brightly.
“I’ve been pondering your theory about his death. I can understand why somebody would commit suicide if they were unhappy, or scared, or in great pain. But why would anyone take their own life if they’d found love?”
Jonty frowned, did his habitual tip of the head to one side, then reached over to tap Orlando’s head.
Orlando swatted the hand away. “What are you up to, pest? And in public, to boot!”
“I’m not convinced that being in a train careering through the Surrey countryside counts as in public.” Jonty added another tap. “That’s for luck. And I’m trying to wake up your brains. You forget that not everyone is as lucky as we are. We’ve managed to hide in plain sight for a long time and, thank God—and I don’t say that lightly, I really do mean it—we’ve had support from family and friends. Invaluable help in keeping hidden. Maybe Michael and his young man couldn’t imagine such a hopeful future. Right.” He slapped his hands on his thighs. “This is nothing but mere speculation, and that of the most morbid kind. No more talk of suicides or notes or anything like them for the rest of the journey.”
“Notes! Damn it.” Orlando blew out his cheeks. “We should have asked Mrs. Blackett for a copy of her brother’s final letter.”
“We should. I’ll drop her a line when we get home. Better still, I’ll get Ariadne to drop Mr. Blackett a line. He might be easier to persuade to come up with the goods.”
“Why wouldn’t she? Mrs. Blackett, not Ariadne, I mean.”
“Do rouse up those brains of yours again. A clear-cut written intention of taking his life wouldn’t be very good for her murder theory, would it? I won’t allow more such talk.”
Orlando frowned. That hardly seemed fair, just when things were getting interesting. “Not even if it’s relevant to the Atherton case?”
“Not even then. I propose we find somewhere in London where they put on a decent nosebag and can produce a decent bottle of wine to go with it. We can leave our subconscious minds to think about Wilshire and Atherton and Uncle Tom Cobley and all. Is that a deal?” Jonty smiled sweetly, blue eyes twinkling. How could anybody refuse him?
“It’s a deal. No more talk about the case until we’ve seen Mrs. McGinley. Or,” Orlando added, making sure all his options remained open, “until something new turns up unexpectedly.”
“Ever the optimist.”
Orlando had never been called an optimist before. In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d an optimistic bone in his body, but he’d settle for that now. Especially with the prospect of a slap-up dinner hull up on the horizon. “Do you fancy beef or fish tonight?”
“To be honest, I fancy you, but as there’s no chance of you being laid on the table with an apple in your mouth, I’ll settle for whatever meat sounds nicest.”
“Idiot.” Orlando rolled his eyes. “Read your newspaper and keep out of mischief.”
He turned to look out of the train window, concentrating on the fields and the trees and the birds and anything else he could get a glimpse of. And not on the stirrings below his belt what would be fine if they were at Forsythia Cottage but not suitable for the Great Eastern Railway. Even for those travelling first class.