That evening, a pair of weary Cambridge fellows compared interview notes over Scotch broth, bread, and a glass of red wine. They had so much to relate, some of it overlapping, some of it taking them off on new tangents. And, most important of all, perhaps, a concrete piece of evidence in the form of Atherton’s suicide letter’s text.
It is pointless trying to exist in a body that can no longer accommodate the wishes of its brain, for existence it is and not living. There is only one way out of this prison and I anticipate that I will need another person to help me utilise the key to the lock. In that event, please do not let any blame be attached to him or her. I have use of my tongue and can employ it to voice a change of mind at any moment.
I do not worry about becoming a burden to those around me, because I have resources enough to buy any care and attention I need, but I cannot buy my lost dignity. I do worry about the grief I will cause my family and friends, so for that I ask them to forgive me.
I truly believe I shall but sleep and awake in a better place. I hope I find mercy and forgiveness, both there and with those I leave behind.
“To the point, certainly.” Orlando returned the paper to Jonty. “His mark would have been at the end, no doubt.”
“Yes. It would have been easy to forge his signature, given that he carried the letter around with him in that envelope and he’d left it unsigned until needed, even if I’m not sure that gets us any further forward. Back to the old cui bono thing.” Jonty slipped the paper into the file they’d made to hold anything relevant to the case. Hopefully Paul Robertson’s suicide letter would join it there soon.
Orlando swirled the wine in his glass, admiring the colour. “I think I remember Miss Chambers. Startlingly efficient girl, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Spot on.” Jonty tipped his head, like a bird listening for a worm. “That publisher business Charles was so cagey about fascinates me. Do you think it could have some connection to Atherton? He was clearly having his life story put down in words, feelings and all. There are plenty of books doing the rounds along the lines of ‘What I did in the great war’ and he might have wanted to seize his chance.”
“Paul Robertson would have had to be handling it for him posthumously, then. Which brings us back to why he killed himself, that nasty patch of quicksand from which we can’t escape.” Orlando took another sip of wine. “Unless he just meant to kill Atherton but not himself. Inveigled the man into thinking it was a joint pact—you know the sort of thing, ‘We take the poison at the same time,’ only Paul was going to keep the stuff in his mouth and then spit it out. Either he accidentally swallowed it or he split the capsule open by mistake.”
“Surely a doctor would be more careful about that? Still, I concede it’s a faint possibility.”
Orlando sighed. “Horribly faint. We need to run those memoirs of Atherton’s to ground, be they business or personal, although I don’t fancy Mrs. Blackett being anxious to share them. Wouldn’t she have mentioned them already if she thought they were germane to the case?”
“Who knows?” Jonty refilled his glass, then did the same for Orlando. Evidently this was a two Bordeaux problem. “She seems a touch too cagey for my liking. We should ask, however, even if it’s just to show that we know the material exists—or used to exist as she could have destroyed it—and are on its trail. She might surprise us.”
“She might.” Orlando wasn’t convinced. “Actually, maybe we could get somebody else to do the deed for us. What if our Ariadne gets Dr. Sheridan to ask his cousin? Mr. Blackett might be more amenable than his wife.”
“Now, that’s an excellent point. We could take Ariadne out for lunch tomorrow. She’d like that, unless she’s busy annoying small invertebrates or whatever she gets up to when nobody’s looking.” Jonty twirled his glass, the ruby shards of light flickering through the crystal. “This case is starting to come together. A bit. There’s a definite centre to it, away from the consulting room. That double drowning; it connects Atherton, Robertson, and the brother.”
Orlando nodded, cradling his glass in his hands, warming the wine to release the bouquet. “These notes that Atherton dictated to Phyllis. Could they have concerned Robertson and his interest in men? That being the secret he’d discovered?”
“Perhaps.” Jonty shrugged. “But I’d have thought Phyllis would have noticed that. I mean, training notwithstanding, you can cheerfully ignore a whole lot of ‘the regiment got moved to Plugstreet on the eleventh of May, where Dusty Miller bought it’ type of stuff, but could you really forget ‘Robertson hath the vice which dare not speak its name’?”
“If it was couched in the sort of language you’d have to be in the know to understand, then maybe. Potentially libellous, though. Or at least contestable if it reached print.” Orlando took another sip of Bordeaux. As Mrs. Stewart had often averred, it certainly seemed to help the thinking process. “It would add to Paul Robertson’s motive for killing Atherton, if he could stop that stuff being made public.”
“Back to the quicksand. Because why kill Atherton if you’re going to take your own life anyway, unless it was just sheer hatred? And if Robertson was seeking to suppress those jottings, he failed, because they remain in circulation. If they do prove to be damning, they could still destroy the man’s reputation.”
Jonty suddenly thumped down his glass. “Which gives somebody else a motive to silence the pair of them. If Charles knew about these notes, that’s why he might have wanted to see both men, in order to protect the reputations of his brother and Buxton. He’d persuade Atherton not to publish his story by telling him it would reflect badly on the Llewelyn Davies family. If he insisted on proceeding with it, and Paul didn’t help dissuade Atherton, Charles might have felt obliged to drug the whisky.”
Orlando shook his head. “That wine isn’t helping your brains. The whisky must have already been poisoned when Charles got there that morning, for one thing.”
“Smoke screen,” Jonty said defiantly. “It was all pretence, setting himself up as if he didn’t know anything about what was going on.”
“Hmm.” Orlando wasn’t persuaded, but there did seem to be various elements that made little sense. Too many strands of coincidence drawing together. “And talking of your publishing theory, why would Paul want to encourage the publication of a book which might incriminate him?”
“All right.” Jonty wagged his finger, clearly not wishing to cede any ground. “What if we’ve read this wrong? Say Atherton had contacted the publishers independently, then Paul made an appointment to see them so he could find out what Atherton’s book was about.”
“That’s possible.” Orlando didn’t want to cede too much ground in the ideas department, either. “Any publisher might be wary. Apart from the issue of libel, if Atherton’s writings were near the knuckle, they’d risk prosecution for putting out obscenities.”
“I can’t believe that Phyllis would have forgotten if there was any stuff so saucy. Unless, he used two amanuenses. One for the bits which might offend a young lady’s ears.”
“All speculation.” Orlando was a touch annoyed he hadn’t thought of that aspect. “It seems like two people had it in for Paul. Charles because of the influence he had on Buxton and, I think we can safely speculate, Atherton because of Llewelyn Davies. I’d put a five-pound note on Paul Robertson being the one he suspected of involvement in those deaths. Maybe the reason for Atherton’s continued visits to the doctor was to pump Paul for information. And by the way, have you seen this?”
He got up, went to the bookshelves, and fished out a copy of Three Men in a Boat.
“See?” He held out the book for Jonty to read the reference to the Sandford Lasher.
A very good place to drown yourself in.
“I told you nobody would willingly go and bathe there.”
“Hmm. Point taken. Still, Robertson’s connection is unproven, as you’d say to me, although given your record at the horse racing, if you’re willing to lay money on the nose, I’d be inclined to take your theory seriously.” Jonty picked up his glass, drained it, and laid it down with a note of finality. “Is there any way we can make this more than just supposition?”
“I’d start with Mrs. McGinley. She’s a mine of information.” And better to get any relevant information from her and avoid going back to the brother for the moment.
“Excellent. It’s been a good day, all told.” Jonty waved his hand airily.
Orlando narrowed his eyes. He’d seen that gesture before. “All told? I think there’s something you’ve left unsaid.”
“I can’t fool you, can I? This lost memory that’s been nagging me. The thing I’ve left undone. The interview with Phyllis helped me to remember it.”
“Ah. A promise you’d made to a comrade, like Atherton did. I told you it would be along those lines.”
“You did. And you were pretty well right on both counts.”
“Both?” Orlando watched Jonty’s fingers draw intricate patterns on the chair arm.
“Yes. School and army. There’s a strange conflation of the two. No wonder this case reminded me.” The restless movement of his fingers carried on. “And I know why Georgie’s school makes me so uncomfortable.”
Orlando rose, took Jonty’s hand, led him across to the sofa, and settled him at his side. “Tell me all about it.”
“There’s not much to tell. When I was in France, we had a young officer join us. Hughes. Second Lieutenant. Fresh-faced and wet behind the ears.”
“There were a few of those, weren’t there?” He and Jonty had been comparatively long in the tooth by the time they’d joined up.
“Too many. You won’t be surprised to hear he only lasted about a fortnight.” Jonty exhaled loudly. “I’d forgotten all this, no surprise. Not the most peaceful of deaths.”
Orlando slipped his arm round his lover’s shoulders. Thank goodness he could offer that small comfort. “I can imagine.”
“I suppose you can. I’m relieved to be able to discuss the matter with someone who doesn’t need to ask for clarification.” Jonty nestled into the embrace. “We’d been chatting one evening, when we’d been pulled back from the lines for a touch of respite. He felt the need to make a clean breast of affairs from his schooldays. I daresay the sound of the guns had focussed his thoughts on not leaving anything unsaid. You’ll perhaps be able to guess what it concerned.”
Orlando held him closer. “Had he suffered as you did?”
“Quite the contrary. He’d been the perpetrator.” Jonty sighed once more. “It never ceases to amaze me how much of this wretched stuff goes on, every day, all over the country. Such wickedness. He blamed his childhood—he’d been the centre of the attentions of a priest who’d taken ‘suffer little children to come unto me’ too literally. It had inclined him to try the same stuff on victims of his own.”
“Dear God.”
“I find it hard to imagine how men like these can possibly be forgiven, but God must have a bigger and softer heart than I possess. I’d like to . . . well, I can leave that to your imagination, too.”
He could, though Orlando didn’t want to think too much about it. “Did this happen at Georgie’s school? I thought you said it was a decent place.”
“No. Some other cesspit of iniquity. The thing is that one of the lads he’d picked on, Saunders, had moved to Georgie’s school. Probably to get away from Hughes. I guess he’ll still be at the school, in his final year, or last but one.” Jonty pulled back from the embrace, looking Orlando in the eye. “Hughes asked me, if he didn’t make it home, to get word to Saunders, to tell him he was sorry. And I’ve failed to do it. I could have saved him years of sorrow and anger.”
“Would you really have saved him all that? With an apology at secondhand?”
Jonty shrugged. “I don’t know. But I could have done something. Should have done it.”
“This isn’t your fault. You didn’t hurt Saunders in the first place and you’re not the one who had to apologise. Anyway, why should you be obliged to discharge someone else’s debt?” Orlando knew the answer: because Jonty was a good and decent man, a real Christian in an age where too many merely paid their faith lip service. “And, as I’ve said before and will no doubt say again, you can’t be responsible if you didn’t remember.”
“I know all that, Orlando. I’ve been telling myself those things all the way back from London. It should make me feel better about the situation, but it doesn’t.” Jonty grazed his hand along Orlando’s cheek. “I don’t even think it’s the right thing to do. This Saunders lad may well have got over it; the last thing he might want is somebody coming along and bringing it flooding back.”
Orlando nodded. He knew that Jonty would have to see it through, no matter how much he’d like to persuade him otherwise. And no matter how much it would bring back to mind his own benighted schooldays.
“But I’ll have to find a way to do it.”
“Why did Hughes have to ask you?” Orlando regretted the question as soon as it had left his lips; the anguish on Jonty’s face cut him.
“God alone knows. I wasn’t stupid enough to say anything which would suggest I knew about things like that. He was in his cups, and I suppose I was the nearest pair of ears. Your old pal coincidence striking.”
“You’ll find a way to do this, and I’ll help, however I can.”
“I know you will. It should be as easy as finding Saunders, saying ‘My fellow officer, Hughes, told me he wanted someone to apologise to you if his number came up. I have no idea what it’s about. Good-bye.’ But it won’t be that simple, will it?” Jonty laid his head on Orlando’s shoulder. “Glad I’ve got you at my side when I go over the top on this one.”
“I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
They sat in silence for a while, content in each other’s company, until Jonty sat up, smiled, and stretched—a touch theatrically. “Right. Time to sleep on all this, I think, and let the old noddle turn it over.”
“Now, when you say ‘sleep’ are you in fact referring to that activity which often precedes sleep and seems to get the brain cells working even better than a little tipple does?”
“I could well be. If you play your cards correctly—and you being such an expert at bridge that should be easy.” Jonty stood up, took hold of Orlando’s lapels, and eased him off the sofa. “If you’re not too exhausted.”
Orlando leaned down for a kiss. “No, never too tired for that.”
They were halfway up the stairs when Jonty stopped. “Lunch tomorrow. With Ariadne. I’ve a better idea.”
“Oh, yes?” Orlando still felt a frisson of concern every time Jonty had an idea. Who knew where it might lead? Possibly somewhere a lot less pleasant than their bed.
“It’ll take a bit of preparation, so tomorrow’s out. Anyway, the weather is supposed to be a touch damp. But there’s a rumour that the day after is set fair so we’ll ask if she’ll be our guest then.”
“Our guest for what?” Orlando wasn’t going to agree until he had all the details. Knowing Jonty, he might be proposing that they join the latest expedition to scale Everest.
“Punting,” Jonty replied, as though it were obvious. “With picnic laid on. If we take plenty of rugs we’ll be fine. You can operate the pole and look elegant while I make sure our guest keeps dry.”
That sounded promising. Not only had he been running around so much that a leisurely cruise down the river would seem very bliss, but it would smack of their earliest courting days. It was a shame that, given the presence of Ariadne, they wouldn’t be able to moor up under a conveniently spreading willow and canoodle, but otherwise it seemed like one of Jonty’s better ideas.
“If you can organise the picnic and our guest, I’ll sort out a punt and enough eiderdowns to keep seven grown women warm.” Orlando pulled his lover closer for another kiss. “Good thinking.”
“I have my moments. Maybe I’ll have some of them when we eventually get up these stairs. There are distinct rousings in the bushes.” Jonty tried to make his way to the next step, but Orlando wouldn’t let him.
“That’s the second time you’ve used that expression.”
“Oh, it’s this case keeps putting it in mind. Somebody said something like that about Barrie. I think their marriage was in name only as he didn’t get excited about his wife. Or come to think of that, anybody.”
“Your father never told you that, did he?” Orlando couldn’t imagine Mr. Stewart—for all that he had a habit of ranting on about the dubious morals of the royal family—discussing such things.
“No, it was an old schoolmate. Tapper Dandridge. He could be extraordinarily crude at times—you should have seen what he used to scribble at school—and he reckoned the poor bloke has never actually done it. You know, consummated things. Physically or psychologically incapable or something awful like that.”
“How terrible.” Sixteen years ago Orlando wouldn’t have made that observation. Prior to meeting Jonty, Orlando had viewed sex as a subject rather like fossilisation. He knew it existed, that people found it important, but it had little relevance to his life. Maybe if he and Jonty had never met, he’d have ended up celibate, like Barrie, although perhaps not for the same reasons. He could imagine himself physically capable but crippled by his own memories and emotions, unable to trust his body in the hands of anyone else.
Jonty sighed. “I know. I’ve never really understood the whole celibacy business, unless it’s monastic, but then I suppose self-denial as a whole bothers me. How can I please God just by the act of making myself miserable or insisting everyone else be as miserable as I am? I’m not sure I’d even want to believe in a God who demanded I deny myself every good thing.” Jonty took Orlando’s lapels again, smoothing them between his fingers. “You’re a very good thing and I must be duly grateful for the fact.”
“Would you like to get down from the pulpit now?” Orlando rubbed the back of his hand along his lover’s cheek. “You’re preaching to the converted.”
“I’m sorry.” Jonty sighed. “It just makes me so mad. Anyway, I don’t know if Barrie was denying himself for any particular reason, like a preference for men, or whether he was totally incapable. It was simply how it was. Which is why the wife ran off. Tapper said she had needs Barrie couldn’t fulfil.”
“Would you run away if I couldn’t satisfy your needs?” Orlando ventured, slowly, quietly and from the bottom of his heart.
“Oh, Lord.” Jonty grabbed Orlando’s right hand between his two and squeezed it. “Of course not. I may not have spoken the ‘for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health’ bit—not in a church ceremony, anyway—but I feel as bound by it as if I had. You’re not getting rid of me that easily. You’ll have to use one of those half dozen murder methods you keep hinting at.”
“It’s only the thought of how disappointed young Georgie would be that stops me,” he replied, returning the humour and the squeeze of the fingers.
“Must we stand here all night?” Jonty tugged at Orlando’s lapels. “Those stirrings might well stop stirring and we’d have to settle for nothing more exciting than a cup of cocoa.”
“You’re sex mad,” Orlando protested, but he let himself be led up the stairs.
The bed was cool to the skin, the sheets freshly put on that morning and smelling of lavender where they had been in the linen press. Jonty’s flesh proved much warmer to the touch, and smelled of musky cologne.
“You’ve always lightened my darkness.” Orlando pressed his lips to Jonty’s shoulder.
“You’ve lit some candles for me, too.” Jonty snuggled into the caress.
“You’ll never tire of me, will you?”
“Not while you remain such a creature of infinite variety.” Jonty took Orlando’s hand and brought it to his face. “Never change being variable. That’s all I ask.”
Any words Orlando wanted to say—including a simple, “Thank you. I love you”—stuck in his throat. If he spoke, he could well end up dissolving in tears of happiness, and that would put a damper on any romantic activity.
“Come on.” Jonty rubbed Orlando’s cheek. “Let’s not spoil the moment with mawkishness. We love each other; there, it’s said. Actions should speak from now on.”
Jonty made good on his suggestion, which was unusual in itself, his being so loquacious on even the most intimate of occasions. He touched the places that needed to be touched, stroked what needed to be stroked, kissed what needed to be kissed, and generally reduced Orlando to a quivering wreck of pleasure. How could anybody bear to be denied these delights?
The stroking ceased. “Don’t stop,” Orlando encouraged his lover, worried that Jonty had lost the urge.
“I wasn’t intending to, but I’ve cricked my neck. Don’t laugh, it’s agony.”
But Orlando couldn’t help laughing. So typical of their lovemaking, too—the moments of hilarity. “Shall I rub it?”
“Thank you for the offer, but I suspect that would make it worse. As does making me chuckle.” Jonty manoeuvred his head gingerly to one side.
“Perhaps I should kiss it better.” Orlando pressed his lips to Jonty’s shoulder, inching upwards along the line of his neck.
“That’s definitely helping.” Jonty eased his head to and fro, although whether it was to lessen the discomfort or increase his enjoyment—or both—wasn’t clear. “As you’ve just put it, don’t stop.”
Orlando didn’t, pausing only when his lips had found Jonty’s mouth and made mischief there a while. From that point the end was inexorable, the familiar progression from kisses and caresses to bodily union. The ultimate sign of their affection and total trust in each other; the commission of one’s flesh into another person’s possession in the sure and certain knowledge that they’d only use it for mutual pleasure. How many legally married couples could boast of the same degree of satisfaction?
Afterwards, as they lay recovering, eking out the moments together, Orlando listened to Jonty’s steady breathing with contentment. They’d survived war and separation; they could survive anything the world threw in their direction, if they simply remained true to their natures and themselves.
***
Jonty woke with a start, out of a dream in which Peter Pan and the Lost Boys had lured him into their camp with the promise of showing him letters that proved Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, really was the beautiful boy of the sonnets. Once there, they announced that Tinkerbell had declared Jonty the double of Wriothesley as a young man, and as he’d failed to buy the pair of earrings she’d requested, he had to be sacrificed in order to please her. They’d chased him down the road, with the intention of sticking him in their cooking pot. Luckily the porcine noises of the pack in pursuit, and that carried on into his waking world, turned out to be nothing worse than Orlando’s snores. Jonty poked his lover sharply in the side, not just to get him to cease the cacophony, but to wake him. Jonty’s thoughts had crystallised in the night and now he had a theory to share.
“Eh? What?”
“Morning, Orlando, lovely to see you. Only while it might be morning it isn’t getting-up time and, to be technical, I can’t actually see you.” Jonty nestled in closer.
Orlando groaned. “Then why on earth have you woken me? Is the house on fire?”
“No, but my wits are. Atherton. I have an idea.”
“Can’t it wait until morning?” Orlando yawned. “No, don’t answer that. I need to know your idea, now.”
“What if this is neither a double suicide nor murder followed by suicide, nor indeed double murder?” Jonty murmured into Orlando’s chest.
“Say that again, slowly.” Orlando sounded a touch addlepated. Funny how sex seemed to either fire up his wits—among other things—or render him incapable of any logical thought processes at all.
“You really are befuddled, aren’t you? I can remember you being like this the first time we indulged in the pleasures of the double bed.” A frisson of delight crept up Jonty’s spine in fond remembrance. “Although I seem to remember it was a narrow, cold, little college bed.”
“Of which you took up more than your allotted space. Get back to the subject in hand.”
“Only if you promise to listen carefully.” Jonty eased out of the embrace; maybe that would help his lover to regain his wits. “What if we’ve got two separate murders here? Paul Robertson murders Atherton to guard his great secret, but unbeknownst to him the whisky he has a tot of in celebration was already poisoned—by Charles. Paul departs this world and we can haul ourselves from the quicksand surrounding his apparent suicide.”
“That’s remarkable. It could work, because the motives would be in the right places and so would the means. And it would perhaps explain the confusion about whether the poison was in the drink or taken with it. Assuming cyanide stays active in alcohol, naturally.”
“If it doesn’t you could put it in a slow dissolving capsule.” Jonty was certain that there was a clever pharmaceutical way around any problems.
“Hmm. Is that a fact or one of Dr. Panesar’s little gems? And there’s still the issue of those suicide letters. Why would they be on the desk at all if this is murder most foul?”
“Ah. I have an answer to that too. What if Paul let himself be confronted about his great secret? Confessed he’d done wrong and couldn’t continue. Produced the letter, as a sign of contrition. All the time luring Atherton into a false sense of security before he sprung the trap on a man who couldn’t defend himself.” As Jonty had been lured by the Lost Boys. This wasn’t the first time an inkling of a solution had come to one of them in a dream, the subconscious mind achieving what the conscious was struggling with.
Given the pitch-dark, Jonty felt rather than saw Orlando nodding.
“That might just work. Presumably once Atherton was dead Paul cleared away any signs of a struggle, then got out the man’s own suicide letter, forged the signature, and laid it next to his own, to gloat at his triumph.”
“I would imagine so. Then he raises a celebratory tot and hastens his own demise.”
“Sorry to put a blight on things,” Orlando had a smug note in his voice, “but wouldn’t the doctor have called for help when he became ill so suddenly? Or perhaps become distressed and thrash about a bit?”
“Depends how quickly the poison acted and whether Mrs. McGinley was within earshot.” It didn’t seem like a major consideration. “And I suspect everybody was so blinded by those two suicide letters that they never considered foul play. I can’t believe death by cyanide poisoning is a pretty sight anyway, irrespective of whether it’s entered into willingly.”
“Hmm.” Orlando lay quietly for a moment; quiet except for the almost audible whirring of his thoughts. “If Charles Robertson is culpable of his brother’s death, he must have thought he’d got away with it. Our stirring up the muddied waters will have put him on his guard. Things could get dangerous.”
“They could.” Jonty snuggled closer again. “But that shouldn’t put us off.”
“I wasn’t thinking of us so much as the others. Has it occurred to you that we could be putting Wilshire or Mrs. McGinley in danger, since they first saw the bodies and might have an incriminating piece of evidence to share, should we find the right question to ask them.” Orlando shivered, even though they were warmly wrapped in the covers.
Jonty hadn’t thought of that. If anything happened and left innocent blood on their hands, he’d not be able to forgive himself, but what choice did they have? Now that they’d set events rolling, they’d have to follow through until the truth was revealed, and that might be the safest course in the long run. Though it wasn’t just the two people Orlando had mentioned who might be at risk. “Miss Chambers might be in danger too, if she’s kept her notes of what Atherton dictated.”
“Very true.” Orlando went quiet again, for so long that Jonty wondered if he’d dropped off. “Assuming that’s what happened, are we sure it was Charles who did the killing? He seemed a touch too helpful to be a man trying to cover up a crime.”
“Unless he’s extremely clever and has nerves of steel. But I don’t think that’s all you have to say.”
“Are you mind reading again?” Orlando tickled Jonty’s ribs. “Do you remember Wilshire saying that poison was a woman’s weapon?”
“I do. And how we weren’t sure Mrs. McGinley would have used it in the way suggested, so I’m not certain where this line of thought is going.”
“And I remember saying we’d have to look for another woman.”
Jonty tapped his lover’s chest. “You’re never thinking of Mrs. Blackett herself?”
“Of course not. She fails all my categories of motive or opportunity or the like. I was thinking of Miss Chambers.”
“Phyllis?” Jonty was offended at the suggestion. “That seems highly unlikely. I met her, Orlando, and there was never a hint of hidden guilt. Lavinia felt the same, and she’s nobody’s fool. She’s a mother—she can tell when people are lying.”
“Perhaps the lady is a good actress. We’ve come across such women before.”
It was a valid argument, even if Jonty still didn’t like it. “But how would Phyllis benefit from killing Robertson? Unless there’s yet another deep, dark secret related to this case, of which we wot not as yet.”
“We don’t need a secret. And you have the wrong victim. What if Atherton had left her a small legacy? She might have wanted to kill him for that. Robertson was either killed by mistake or to add verisimilitude to the scenario of the double suicide.”
“That still seems awfully far-fetched.”
“What if Wilshire was left something other than the beer money? A combination of legacies?”
“Oh, really! I’ll concede she made a point of saying she and Wilshire were friends now, but the rest is sheer speculation.” Although if those legacies existed, perhaps the theory would have merit. “I’ll also concede that Phyllis Chambers had enough intellect to plan an effective scheme. And Wilshire was in the ideal place, literally tidying away any unwanted signs of murder, ensuring the true facts of the deaths weren’t clear.”
“Precisely. It’s that old locked room thing. One of the most likely explanations, in general, is that the person who first enters the room—and is seen to enter the room by an innocent party, when the occupants are already dead—changed its appearance. They could have planned everything in advance.” Orlando sounded terribly smug now, which needed a stop put to it. “You talk about far-fetched, but the bit in her story about not remembering what was dictated to her that doesn’t ring true.”
“What about those letters, though? Where would they fit in to the great plan?”
“We only have Miss Chambers’s word for how Atherton’s letter was produced and where he kept it. Maybe she forged the whole thing. Maybe she forged both. All Wilshire had to do was leave them where they could be easily found.”
It was possible, but it bordered on the unbelievable. Still, they’d known cases just as peculiar. “I wonder if anybody investigated the fingerprints on those letters? Maybe you should try your kit on them.”
“Perhaps I should. Although chauffeurs wear gloves, and Wilshire would have had them to hand so may not have left a mark at all. And Miss Chambers’s prints would legitimately be on the paper.”
“Hmm. I need to sleep on the idea and see what it looks like in the morning.” Maybe Tinkerbell and the Lost Boys would help him find an answer to that, too. Tinkerbell always struck him as being pretty ruthless.
“Perhaps it’ll get a bit clearer if we get to see the letter Paul left. Or is supposed to have left.” Orlando pulled Jonty closer for a goodnight kiss. “We’re getting there. Light at the end of the tunnel and all that.”
“I hope so.” And with any luck it wouldn’t be an oncoming army of women with poisoned whisky.