Chapter Four
Riley was at Scotland Yard early the following morning, comparing notes with Salter.
‘Did you learn anything useful from Ashton’s servants?’ he asked.
‘On the face of it, no. But I saw a few things that surprised me.’
‘Go on.’ Riley leaned back in his chair and pushed a persistent lock of hair away from his eyes. He blinked, his eyes gritty with lack of sleep. The humidity had increased, trying tempers and fraying nerves. Despite the stagnant air the smell of the river seemed to pervade the whole building, mixing with the odours of sweat and over-brewed coffee. The break in the weather Riley thought he sensed approaching in the night-time air hadn’t materialised. Nor had a helpful break in his case.
Salter turned from the window where he had been watching the torpid city. ‘I don’t think your friend Ashton is as well situated as he would like the world to think,’ he said
Riley sat forward, alert to the possibilities such information might reveal. ‘Explain,’ he said succinctly.
‘The house is big, but there are barely enough servants to keep it running. Two have left recently under a cloud and they haven’t been replaced.’
‘Disgruntled servants seeking revenge for unfair dismissal. Danforth will love that theory,’ Riley said wearily, aware that it would have to be investigated. ‘Do we know why they left?’
‘I didn’t enquire. That butler, Farlow, doesn’t miss a trick. He’d likely report straight back to Ashton if I started asking questions like that. Didn’t think you’d want me setting the cat among the pigeons quite yet.’
Riley nodded, aware of just how deeply rooted the loyalty of long-standing servants could be. ‘It might be better to speak to one of the maids about that, on her own.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ Salter tugged absently at his whiskers. ‘The thing is, sir, apart from Farlow, who has been with the family for years, there are just two footmen, a coachman and a boot boy employed in that massive house. That’s it for the male staff. And the coachman ain’t too happy about having to do a lot of the outside work as well as all his other duties.’
‘Ashton doesn’t have a valet?’
‘Farlow does for him and Terrance. The valet was one of the servants who was dismissed.’
‘That does smack of financial necessity.’ Riley himself only employed Stout, who acted as valet, butler and general factotum. Stout engaged a maid and a cook but they only came in during the day and Riley seldom saw them. Riley’s establishment was considerably smaller than Ashton’s, and as a single man his needs were fewer. He valued his privacy, and the arrangement suited him very well. Ashton, on the other hand, was a study in ostentation. Parting with his valet must have been a bitter blow, and as Salter had so astutely remarked, it told them a great deal about the reality of Ashton’s situation. ‘What about female staff?’ he asked.
‘No housekeeper. Just two maids and a cook. No scullery maid. She was the other one as went and wasn’t replaced. There is a lady’s maid who looks after the wife and daughter but she was with Lady Ashton before she married, and presumably her ladyship refuses to part with her.’
‘That’s barely enough staff to keep a place that size running smoothly. We’ll go back there this morning. I’ll speak with Farlow myself and see what’s what.’ He told Salter about his theory with the unlocked gate. ‘I’d like to know which of the footmen went out to call the coachmen into the kitchen for supper. I doubt he’ll admit to leaving the gate unlocked, but still. I also want it confirmed that he unlocked it when we allowed half of the guests to leave, since they left through that gate. I imagine he left it unlocked at that point because he knew others had to be leaving soon after.’
‘And had too many duties to attend to for him to keep running up and down with the key.’
‘Most likely.’
‘Ashton must have married late in life, sir,’ Salter said. ‘I mean, he must be in his sixties but his son has only just turned twenty-one.’
‘This is his second marriage. The first didn’t produce any children. The current Lady Ashton is a good twenty years younger. Her father is an earl, so marrying Ashton would have been a step down for her. He hadn’t received his courtesy title by that point, so it would have been like marrying a commoner.’
‘Shocking!’ Salter cried in mock horror, grinning as he fanned his face with the back of his hand.
‘You have no idea.’
Salter sniffed. ‘Seems to me Ashton’s all show.’
‘You’ve hit the nail on the head, as always.’ Riley stood. ‘Come on, Salter, let’s go and see Doctor Maynard.’
Salter pulled a mournful face. ‘Have a heart, guv. You ain’t gonna make me watch him carve the poor girl up, are you? You know I don’t have the stomach for that stuff. Turns it something rotten, so it does. Weather like this and all.’
Riley laughed as he slapped his sergeant’s shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t do that to you, Jack. I just want to pick Maynard’s brains on the subject of opiates that might dull a girl’s responses without rendering her unconscious.’
‘There’s a mercy, sir,’ Salter replied in a droll tone.
They ran Doctor Maynard to ground in the bowels of King’s College hospital, south of the river in a rundown district away from the sights and bustle of the main city. It was an area where mortality rates were high and the cadavers of the poor were routinely sold to the medical school for research. The heat made the buildings shimmer and blasted back at Riley from the pavements. The pervading smells of sickness and carbolic were especially pungent in the hot weather as they entered the hospital’s main atrium, causing Salter’s face to turn green. Even Riley’s cast iron constitution wobbled a little, but as they descended below ground level to the pathology section they were blessed by cool draughts of air. Riley felt the sweat on his brow drying, and shivered as a last dribble ran down between his shoulder blades.
‘Ah, Lord Riley, always a pleasure.’ Maynard was the only person connected with the police force who used Riley’s title in preference to his rank. But then Maynard never missed an opportunity to ingratiate himself with members of the society to which he aspired to be admitted. ‘You’re here to ask me about the dead girl, I expect. Haven’t done the PM yet. It’s scheduled for later this morning. But I can tell you that she was strangled. No doubt about that.’
‘Indeed, but I would like you to test her stomach contents for signs of opiates.’
‘My dear Lord Riley,’ Maynard said, a touch condescendingly. ‘I am a great admirer of your skills but, if you will excuse me for saying so, I hardly think such a dear, sweet girl was addicted to anything…well, addictive. And even if she was, it doesn’t alter the fact that she was strangled.’
Riley fought back a wave of irritation. ‘What opiates would dull her reactions, in your professional opinion, and how could they be administered?’
‘Ah, I see what you mean. You imagine she was unable to defend herself.’
‘Quite so, Dr Maynard. There were no defensive wounds on her hands or arms—as I’m sure you must have noticed yourself.’
Riley was pleased to see a flush creep across the doctor’s face. Maynard didn’t give a direct response. He was fiercely ambitious, handsome and charming, and would normally find excuses to linger in an establishment such as Ashton House, especially when there were single, well-connected ladies present. Undoubtedly he had been in a tearing hurry to get back to an even more important social engagement Emily’s untimely death had called him away from. Riley would wager ten guineas that it would have involved a young woman who could improve his prospects—rather as young Ashton had seen a similar opportunity back in ’25. Everything came back to status, Riley thought wearily.
‘There could be other reasons why she didn’t defend herself,’ Riley said. He explained about the two lone glasses he had removed from the music room and the suspicious sediment he had seen in the bottom of one of them.
‘More likely a lover’s tryst,’ Maynard said. ‘The servants cleared the room after the recital and closed the doors connecting to the drawing room. I’d imagine some enterprising young buck swiped a bottle of champagne from the dining room along with the glasses and…well, you know. He arranged things in the midst of a soiree so that he could dull Miss Ferguson’s responses. That’s your theory. Hmm, interesting. What makes you think he would take such an almighty risk?’
Put like that, Riley had to agree that it seemed implausible. It wasn’t as though Emily’s admirer could hope to do anything more than steal a kiss. But still, Riley had known jealousy drive men to greater acts of desperation…or folly. Maynard knew the workings of the human body, but the mind and its capabilities would always be a stranger to him.
‘Even so, Maynard. I’d like to discount the possibility of an opiate.’ Under normal circumstances Riley would have cut the meeting short and gone about his business, but the cool of the doctor’s underground realm had him finding excuses to linger.
‘Very well, let me see,’ Maynard leaned his chin on his clenched fist, giving the appearance of a man indulging the whim of a persistent child, his tone laced with syrupy condensation. ‘Opium is out of the question. It is most effective when smoked. It can be eaten or drunk, but the taste is bitter. She wouldn’t have willingly ingested it.’ Maynard stood up and paced, switching to lecture mode. ‘Laudanum is your most likely suspect.’
‘Does it not have a distinctive taste?’ Riley asked.
‘It can be mixed with sugar and eugenol.’
‘Eugenol?’ Salter asked before Riley could.
‘It’s an extract from a combination of clove oil, nutmeg and cinnamon, used in perfumes and flavourings. Mix a few drops with laudanum in, say, a glass of the sweet wine that the ladies favour and whoever drank it likely wouldn’t notice. But it would be a while before it took effect, even supposing that the perpetrator came armed with an appropriately doctored drug.’
If her killer had planned this as the ultimate act of revenge, Emily would have been given her first dose during the recital. He made a mental note to ask whether she seemed lethargic or confused during her time in the grounds. It did seem an unlikely and elaborate means of salving wounded pride, but the fact that the crime was committed in a crowded house reduced the possibility of detection. Even Maynard and Salter, who were paid to be suspicious, seemed to think that Riley was behaving fancifully. Riley preferred to think that he was being thorough. In plain sight, he thought, the words looping through his brain like a repetitive refrain.
‘I will endeavour to establish whether or not our victim ingested any such substance,’ Maynard said, presumably in response to Riley’s sombre expression.
‘Thank you. And while you are running tests, be so good as to see if you can detect any traces of opiates in either of these glasses,’ he said, handing a bag containing the glasses in question to the doctor.
Having received Maynard’s assurance that he would do just that, Riley could no longer delay the inevitable. Before continuing with his investigation, he must first return to Scotland Yard and update Danforth on his progress, or lack thereof. Back into the heat in more ways than one.
Riley was irritated to find the chief inspector prowling around his office, picking up items from Riley’s desk and examining them.
‘Are there you are, Rochester. Where the devil have you been? I have members of the press baying for information and I have damn-all to tell them.’
Riley seated himself behind his desk, straightened the papers that Danforth had dislodged and allowed a short silence to lengthen between them before speaking.
‘Miss Ferguson was strangled,’ he said succinctly.
‘By an intruder?’
Riley refrained from rolling his eyes, unsurprised that Ashton had already managed to place that notion into the limited imagination of his superior.
‘That has yet to be established.’
‘Come, man. You don’t mean to tell me that the gal was strangled by someone at that damned soiree and no one heard a thing.’
‘She was strangled, and no one did hear a thing,’ Riley replied calmly. ‘We have yet to establish who did the strangling.’
With no other option available to him, Riley reluctantly outlined his theory about opiates. Danforth was having none of it.
‘Rubbish! You’re chasing conspiracy theories where none exist. This is a simple burglary, with tragic consequences.’
‘And yet nothing was stolen.’
‘I want this matter resolved. Now. Today.’
Danforth leaned over the desk and pushed his flushed face close to Riley’s, his breath smelling of alcohol, despite the fact that it was only ten in the morning. This wasn’t the first time Riley had cause to suspect his superior of being a drinker. How he managed to support his large family and his habit had been a mystery to Riley on the rare occasions when it had troubled his mind, but things were starting to seem clearer now. His haste to support Ashton’s theory implied financial incentive. Ashton had amassed a fortune and his title by buying people’s loyalty. He had likely decided that it would be useful to have a senior policeman beholden to him some time ago, even if he couldn’t have anticipated having need of his services when a murder was committed in his own house.
Riley cursed Danforth’s morals, feeling justification for the lack of respect he had always felt for his superior’s poor intellect and questionable dedication to duty. The many critics of the department would, he knew, dance gleefully at such a clear case of corruption if it ever came to light, threatening the Detective Department’s entire future.
‘Are we clear, Rochester?’ a red-faced Danforth demanded. ‘I want this cleared up today.’
‘Then give the case to someone else, sir. I will make no rash conclusions until I have established all the facts.’
Danforth hissed angrily. Riley had boxed him into a corner, and both men knew it. The commissioner wouldn’t stand for Riley being removed from the case without good reason. Nor would he be satisfied with a slapdash investigation.
‘Just do your job, man!’ Danforth yelled, marching from the room and slamming the door behind him hard enough to rattle the glass panel.
Riley sighed, fetched his hat and was about to round Salter up so that they could return to Ashton House when a breathless Constable Peterson burst into the room, barely pausing to knock. Riley had sent Carter and Soames to interview some of the elderly people who had attended the soiree and whom Riley didn’t suspect of involvement in the crime. Be that as it may, they might have overheard something significant or seen something that no one else did, and their statements had to be taken.
Sergeant Barton, the veteran desk sergeant in command of the uniformed constables, had reluctantly acceded to Riley’s request for the loan of Peterson and Harper. Barton was one of the Detective Department’s worst detractors. He didn’t see the need for what he referred to as the elitist band that lorded it over everyone else and went swanning around in their gentlemen’s finery. Nothing, in his vociferous opinion, beat good old fashioned uniformed policing. He made a habit of not being helpful—but he was also a wily old front-desk man who’d seen it all and more besides. He knew this was a high-profile case and that he shouldn’t appear to be wilfully obstructive. Peterson and Harper, meanwhile, were happy to escape their thick uniforms and wear something more appropriate to the heat, if only for a day or two.
‘You have been re-examining the grounds, I take it, Peterson, and found something you wish me to know about.’ Peterson nodded, fighting to contain a smile. ‘Sit down, take a moment to regain your breath and tell me.’ Riley beckoned to Salter through the door Peterson had left open, and he joined them. ‘Young Peterson has news for us,’ he said.
‘Something to cheer the chief inspector up?’
Riley sent his sergeant a wry look. ‘One can but hope. Well then, Peterson, we’re all ears.’
‘There was no signs of anyone having come over the walls, sir. Nothing like that. No trampled shrubbery or nothing. Course, what with the hot weather, the ground’s rock hard so there were no footprints to lend a clue.’ He scratched the back of his neck. ‘Seems to me that if anyone did get in, they must have come through from the mews. We concentrated on that area and found this.’
He handed over a button with a ragged piece of green serge still attached to it.
‘Looks like it’s been torn from a sleeve,’ Salter said. ‘Probably a livery, but there’s nothing distinctive about it. It’s just an ordinary brass button. It could have been lost at any time or fallen innocently from one of the coachman’s coats last night.’
‘Even so,’ Riley said, not wanting to puncture the young constable’s enthusiasm. ‘It could equally be an important clue. And it’s the only one we have. Well done, Peterson.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Now then, since you’ve done so well, I have more work for you.’ He produced the list of coachmen that Salter had compiled the previous night, along with the names of their employers. ‘Leave Mrs Ferguson’s coachman to me, but I want you and Harper to interview all the others. Press them for any details they can recall, anything out of the ordinary that occurred while they were waiting around last night. Someone must have seen something.’ Riley held out the scrap of serge. ‘And see if anyone can identify this. I want to know whose household it comes from, and when you find that out, check all the uniforms for torn sleeves or recent repairs.’
Peterson looked delighted to be entrusted with such a responsibility. Riley didn’t have the heart to tell him that it would likely lead nowhere and he was simply being thorough. Danforth would leap upon any piece of evidence that Riley failed to follow through on, especially if it reinforced the mystery intruder theory.
‘Were we ever that keen?’ Salter asked, smiling as he watched Peterson dash off.
‘Were we ever that young?’ Riley glanced at the clock. ‘Right, come along, it’s almost eleven. Mrs Cosgrove is returning to Ashton House to bear Mrs Ferguson company. I am not looking forward to interviewing that particular lady, but needs must. We shall also be interviewing all three of the young men today. Individually.’
‘They’ve had plenty of time to synchronise their accounts,’ Salter pointed out.
‘With Ashton conducting the orchestra. Yes, I’m well aware of that. But still, one of them just might possess a conscience, or even a mind of his own,’ Riley replied. ‘One lives in hope. There again, perhaps one of them will make a slip. There will be a weakness somewhere and we’ll find it. The vital thing about orchestrated testimony is that it must remain in tune. One discordant note and the entire piece loses credibility. Truth is based on interpretation, not facts, Salter. And you can’t interpret something that didn’t happen, can you? Lies sing such sweet songs…’ Riley looked past Salter, out through the window into the haze that hung over the river. The creak of his chair brought him back to the present. ‘Oh, and by the way, I will need you to take Mrs Cosgrove’s formal statement,’ he continued.
Salter looked surprised. ‘She ain’t a suspect, is she?’
Riley laughed. ‘She would be affronted if she thought otherwise. Be that as it may, she’s a personal friend of mine so I’d best not hand Danforth further rope to hang me with, which I will surely do if I interview her myself.’
‘Fair enough.’
When they arrived at Ashton House a short time later the atmosphere was sombre. Farlow let them in, took their hats and informed Riley that his master and mistress were not available. Nor, it seemed, were their children.
‘So they’re in, but they just don’t want to see us, is that it?’ Salter stood in front of Farlow, rather too close to him for comfort, Riley noted with a smile. ‘Hardly the attitude of people who want to find out who murdered poor Miss Emily, is it? Why don’t you go and whisper that in his lordship’s lug ’ole, there’s a good chap.’
Farlow turned a stiff back on Salter, who grinned at Riley. The butler conducted them to the small salon occupied by Mrs Ferguson and Amelia. The former looked pale and fragile, but despite the red eyes and lines of fatigue compressing her elegant face, Riley could see who her daughter had inherited her looks from. Even though he had last seen Emily in death, the resemblance was still unmistakable. Amelia held her friend’s hand as she tried to persuade her to drink her tea. Riley thought that a shot of brandy would be more beneficial but refrained from making the suggestion.
‘Mrs Ferguson,’ Riley said, inclining his head. ‘I regret the necessity to intrude upon you at such a time. You have my deepest sympathies.’
‘Oh, Lord Riley.’ Mrs Ferguson lifted her head, sending dishevelled blonde curls tumbling around her face, and regarded him through tragic eyes that were swamped with tears. ‘Have you discovered who did this terrible thing to my precious girl?’
‘Not yet, I regret to say,’ Riley replied.
‘But he will, Mary. You must have faith. Riley is terribly good and will get to the bottom of what happened.’
Riley sent Amelia a faintly condemning look, hoping that in her effects to console her friend she had not offered her any unrealistic expectations. He took a seat across from the settee occupied by the two ladies. Salter took another chair at the back of the room and pulled a notebook from the pocket of his coat. He licked the end of his stubby pencil and held it poised above a blank page, ready to take notes that only he would be able to decipher. Despite his appalling handwriting, Riley was confident that the record his sergeant presented to him would be a comprehensive and accurate account of what was said. Neat and legible too, despite the initial scribble that only he could decipher.
‘Will you take tea, Riley, and you too, Sergeant?’ Amelia asked. ‘I expect you’re parched if you walked here on such a hot day.’
Both men accepted and Amelia adopted the role of hostess, pouring for them both and handing out cups, chatting about nothing in particular in order to break the uneasy silence that would otherwise have prevailed. Riley used the short amount of time it took for the tea to be served to study Mrs Ferguson. He wondered how she would cope with the tragedy. She seemed to be one of those women who couldn’t manage anything for herself. A beautiful woman who had never had to worry about practicalities.
Until now.
Would she go into decline, or find in her darkest hours an inner strength that she was unaware she possessed? Riley was unable to decide. For now, in her initial grief, it was already obvious that she was channelling all her hopes into his finding an explanation for the inexplicable. Riley sighed, resigned to the pressure.
‘Now then,’ Riley said, crossing his legs at the ankle and making himself appear to the ladies to be as relaxed as he could make himself on what was an excruciatingly uncomfortable chair. A concession to style, Riley suspected, with no thought spared for comfort. ‘I apologise in advance if my questions seem inappropriate, Mrs Ferguson, but in order to discover who committed this terrible crime it is necessary for me to build up a full picture of your daughter’s life. Her friends, her aspirations, that sort of thing.’
‘But…but, I don’t understand.’ Mrs Ferguson raised her glance towards Riley in bewilderment. Her eyes were red and swollen but remained mercifully dry. ‘None of her friends would do anything so wicked. They all loved her.’
‘You were in the drawing room, I understand, and your daughter and the other young people were walking in the grounds.’
‘Yes, the musical part of the evening was over, and so was supper. Everyone was hot. I thought…I didn’t think there was any harm in their all walking out together.’ She sniffed, dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose. ‘How could I have been so neglectful?’
‘No one could have anticipated what happened,’ Amelia said soothingly. ‘You are not to blame.’
‘The dining parlour is across the entrance hallway, where you took supper?’
‘Yes.’ It was Amelia who answered him since Mrs Ferguson was occupied with blowing her nose.
‘All of you?’
‘Well, yes. I didn’t count the numbers and we didn’t sit down to a formal meal. It was a finger buffet, we helped ourselves and just milled around chatting. So I suppose someone might not have been there.’ Amelia looked confused. ‘If you tell me who you think might not have been there, I shall try to remember if I saw that person.’
‘I have no one in particular in mind. I am simply trying to gain a picture of where everyone was.’ Riley put his empty cup aside and shook his head when Amelia lifted the teapot. ‘The doors between the music room and drawing room were open, I imagine, during the recital.’
‘They were. I remember. It helped to create a little through draft, although precious little of it,’ Amelia said. ‘There was really no breeze to speak of at all.’
‘And when you finished supper, the servants cleared the music room and closed the doors?’
‘Yes, I know that had because I looked into it when I was walking outside and remember thinking that the music might never have happened. I know it did happen, of course, because I accompanied Emily on the harp.’
Riley nodded, aware that Amelia was a talented harpist. ‘You didn’t happen to notice two stray glasses left on a side table?’
Amelia shook her head. ‘No. Sorry.’
‘I understand your daughter was considering matrimony,’ Riley said, turning his attention back to Mrs Ferguson, who had recovered what little composure she had previously possessed. He kept his statement deliberately ambivalent in the hope that her response would direct his enquiries in the appropriate direction, uncomfortably aware that he was clutching at straws.
‘Every young men she met seemed bewitched by her.’ Pride glowed briefly in Mrs Ferguson’s otherwise dead eyes. ‘Ask anyone. We were besieged with visitors day in and day out and flowers never stopped being delivered. We ran out of vases to put them in.’
‘Your daughter didn’t accept any of the offers that came her way?’
‘She was waiting for her heart to be touched. Well, all young girls dream of being swept off their feet by a handsome suitor, do they not? I know that I did.’ A hint of pathos clouded her tone. ‘But now…now it’s too late.’ Rivers of tears ran down Mrs Ferguson’s cheeks.
‘Riley,’ Amelia said in a mildly censorious tone.
‘Lord Ashton raised the alarm, I believe,’ he said, happy for either lady to respond.
‘Yes.’ He was surprised when it was Mrs Ferguson who did so, her expressive eyes now flashing with anger. ‘I imagined at first that he had interrupted one of the young men attempting to take liberties, which would have accounted for his anger.’
‘He was angry?’ It was the first Riley had heard of it and the first useful information he had thus far extracted from the grieving mother.
‘I thought so, yes. I definitely heard a lot of shouting before he came into the drawing room to tell us the terrible news.’
Riley sent Amelia a questioning look but she shook her head. ‘I was outside, on the far reaches of the terrace. I heard no shouting. Sorry.’
‘Do you know who he was shouting at?’ Riley asked Mrs Ferguson.
She spread her hands in a helpless gesture, appearing to recede into a corner of her mind where Riley couldn’t reach her. At that point, he knew he would get little more from her, suspecting that she wouldn’t be able to tell him anything useful about her daughter’s private aspirations anyway. His own mother frequently complained that she had been the last to know what secret attachments his three sisters formed when they had been Emma’s age.
‘It’s very important that we know as much as we can about Emily’s thoughts and desires,’ he said softly. ‘All young girls have secrets that they don’t share with their mothers. Would you mind very much if my sergeant went to your house and looked through her things? She might have a journal or letters that will throw light on the identity of her attacker.’
‘Lord Ashton insists that it was an intruder,’ Mrs Ferguson said, appearing to think that Ashton’s word was gospel. ‘No one we know would do such a thing.’
‘That is possible, but by no means certain. Sergeant Salter is unobtrusive and won’t disturb anything. Will you let him look at her room?’ It was vital that Salter get there before Mrs Ferguson recovered her senses, went through it herself and removed anything that she considered to be indiscreet.
‘Well yes, if you think it will help. But I fear it will be a waste of your time.’
‘We were planning to return home and could help to—’ Amelia abruptly stopped speaking when Riley sent her a warning scowl. ‘But that will not be until this afternoon. I expect you want to move things forward immediately.’
‘Stay here for now, ladies, if you will,’ Riley said. ‘Your coachmen are here, Mrs Ferguson. I will have Jute return to your house with Salter and he can show him where to look.’
Mrs Ferguson gave a distracted nod, but Riley was unsure if she really understood what he had just said to her. He felt immense sorrow for the delicate woman who’d had the heart, the entire focus of her life, ripped from it in the cruellest imaginable manner. That fact reinforced his determination to get to the truth. But now wasn’t the time to press her for more particulars. He trusted Amelia to take good care of her until she was strong enough to answer some of his more probing questions.
‘Thank you, ladies. That will be all for now.’
‘She received a telegram from her husband this morning,’ Amelia said in an undertone, walking to the door with Riley. ‘Thank goodness we can now communicate so rapidly with that continent, and that Mary’s cable got through.’
Riley nodded, aware that telegraphic communications had only been established with India earlier that year and was still sporadic in terms of success.
‘I don’t like the man, but he deserved to hear such devastating news before it became public gossip. Anyway, he’s making plans to return immediately to England but offered few words of comfort for his grief-stricken wife. It’s as though he holds her responsible, which is hardly fair, although his attitude doesn’t surprise me.’ Amelia tutted, her green eyes flashing with indignation. ‘The man is quite without heart. Poor Mary is already distraught enough and needs her husband’s support, not condemnation.’
‘All his aspirations rested upon his daughter’s slender shoulders,’ Riley said. ‘I imagine Ferguson has debts that he hoped to clear if only she married well.’
Salter sniffed. ‘I don’t like the sound of him either, Mrs Cosgrove. He was using his daughter like a commodity.’
‘That he was, sergeant. That he was.’
‘At least we can cross him off from the list of our suspects,’ Salter said. ‘He had every reason in the world to keep his daughter alive.’
‘Unless she fancied herself in love and had decided to marry a pauper,’ Riley suggested.
‘You made that suggestion before but we don’t know that she had reached any such decision. And even if she had, how could her father have found out when he’s in India?’ Salter asked. ‘More to the point, he would hardly have arranged for her to be killed in the middle of a society party.’
‘I doubt he’d have been able to, Salter, but you know me. I like to keep my options open.’
‘He does an’ all,’ Salter told Amelia, pulling a hard-done-by expression. ‘I wouldn’t mind so much but half the time his wild suggestions prove to have merit.’
‘He always was too clever for his own good.’ Amelia flashed a disarming smile, which faded with her next words. ‘I think Mary regrets doing as her family asked and marrying Ferguson,’ she whispered. ‘Which probably accounts for the fact that she didn’t insist upon Emily accepting the most advantageous offer that came her way, and gave her time to reach her own decision.’
‘Ashton’s offer?’ Riley suggested.
Amelia shrugged. ‘Presumably so. Anyway, I will remain with Mary and let you know if she reveals anything else. I expect you will want to talk to her again, Riley, once she is in better control of herself.’
‘It can wait. It’s more important that we look at the girl’s things.’
‘I thought so. There’s bound to be a journal of some sort. I have yet to meet a young girl who doesn’t commit all her secret thoughts and aspirations to paper. I know I did.’ Amelia bit her lower lip, presumably to contain a smile, but the translucent glow in her eyes defied her best efforts to remain sombre. ‘I still do, so let’s hope I don’t get murdered or a lot of people could be very embarrassed by my confessions.’
‘No one would be foolish enough to try and bump you off, Amelia.’
Her eyes sparkled. ‘I sincerely hope you are right about that,’ she said as she returned to sit beside Mrs Ferguson.
‘Poor woman,’ Salter said, nodding towards Mrs Ferguson. ‘Doesn’t sound as though she’ll get much support from her husband.’ For a hardened policeman, Salter had a soft heart. ‘What now?’
‘Let’s talk to Jute, the footman we briefly saw last night. I have a feeling that whatever he has to tell us will be more revealing. Then you and he had best hot-foot it over to Chelsea and search the girl’s room. Look for…’
‘A journal, guv. I got that much.’ Salter offered a sardonic smile as they went in search of Jute.