The Truth About Love (21 page)

Sir Godfrey halted. He frowned fiercely at Barnaby. “I don’t believe we need to delve deeper into that, sir.” He glanced fleetingly at Jacqueline, then met Barnaby’s gaze. “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you you’re a guest here. No point creating unnecessary distress—a sad occurrence, but there’s nothing more to be done.”

With that deliberate and emphatic verdict, Sir Godfrey nodded curtly, and departed, Lord Tregonning beside him.

Astounded, Barnaby stared after them.

When the door shut, he turned. “What the devil was that about?” He looked at Gerrard, then transferred his affronted gaze to Jacqueline. “The bounder behaved as if
you’d
killed Thomas! Why on earth would he think that?”

Gerrard felt the stiffness go out of Jacqueline; with a helpless gesture, she sank unsteadily down; he eased her back onto the chaise. “Because,” he said, his tone lethal, cutting, “too many people hereabouts believe Jacqueline killed her mother, so why not Thomas, as well?”

“What?”
Barnaby stared at him, past incredulous. Then he looked at Jacqueline. “But that’s ludicrous. You couldn’t have killed your mother.”

Gerrard fleetingly closed his eyes and thanked the gods for Barnaby. Opening them, he saw Jacqueline, color returning to her cheeks, staring at his friend. She’d been taken aback when he’d seen her innocence, but for someone with no real connection or interest in her to so clearly declare it…she was dumbfounded.

Gerrard voiced the question he knew was in her mind. “Why do you say that—why ludicrous? Why couldn’t Jacqueline have killed her mother?”

Barnaby almost goggled at him. “Have you taken a good look at the balustrade on the terrace?”

“It’s a stone balustrade, the usual sort of thing.”

Barnaby nodded. “The usual thing—solid stone, a ten-inches-wide stone top, waist-high to a man, midriff-high to a woman of average height, which I understand Lady Tregonning was.

“A woman of average height”—Barnaby bowed to Jacqueline—“couldn’t push, tip or bundle another woman of average height, and, as it happens, greater weight, over such a high
and wide
barrier. It would be as close to impossible as makes no odds.”

He looked at Jacqueline, consternation and the beginnings of horrified comprehension dawning in his eyes. “When I say you couldn’t have killed your mother, I mean it literally. She had to have been lifted bodily to the top of the balustrade, and then pushed, or more likely thrown, over. I don’t think you could physically have managed it, not alone.” He hesitated, then asked. “They don’t
really
believe you did, do they?”

It was Millicent who answered. “Yes, they do.”

B
riefly, Millicent explained to a flabbergasted Barnaby how matters had fallen out at the time of Miribelle Tregonning’s death.

“And so they all took it into their heads it was Jacqueline.” Millicent humphed. “I never subscribed to such nonsense, but by the time I learned of it, it was the general belief. Most of those in the area regard the notion as unproven fact.”

Barnaby was appalled. “Unproven facts aren’t facts at all!”

Given his belief in the application of logical deduction in solving crimes, Barnaby viewed the making of conjecture into fact as akin to heresy. Gerrard listened as Barnaby questioned, and Millicent elaborated, describing the way local sentiment had evolved, how the notion of Jacqueline as her mother’s murderer had taken root in so many minds.

It was frighteningly simple, yet the outcome was devastating. He glanced at Jacqueline. Not only devastating, but difficult to remedy.

She said little. She appeared to be listening; he wasn’t sure she was. Treadle brought in the tea tray and Millicent poured. Jacqueline accepted a cup and sat back, sipping. Barnaby and Millicent continued their discussion, moving on to consider how to rectify the situation. Jacqueline listened to that, but there was nothing new, nothing she hadn’t already thought of; he watched as her mind turned inward, and her thoughts slid away.

She’d just learned that a young man she’d cared for, and who had cared for her, had been brutally murdered. Even though she wasn’t looking at him, watching her face Gerrard sensed, not her thoughts, but her emotions.

Sadness, and more, too many swirling feelings for him to distinguish; one part of him, the polite gentleman, recoiled from intruding on her grief, another part, the painter, noted and cataloged, while the private man wanted to gather her in his arms and comfort her, to soothe and reassure.

He blinked; looking down, he set his cup on its saucer. He couldn’t recall such an impulse to comfort afflicting him before, not with such poignant force, with such sharp and clear empathy. Empathy was a necessity for an artist, yet it had never before had such a personal edge.

Never pressed him so keenly to act, to share the burden if not make it his.

From beneath his lashes, he glanced at Jacqueline. If he acted, how would she respond?

He hadn’t forgotten that moment in the studio, dramatically interrupted though it had been. They’d moved on, taken a definite step forward together, so where did that leave them—he and she, and what lay between them—now?

She finished her tea. Without glancing at him, she rose. When both he and Barnaby rose, too, Millicent broke off and looked up; Jacqueline smiled fleetingly, distantly. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll retire for a while. I’m rather fagged.”

“Yes, of course, dear.” Millicent set down her cup. “I’ll look in on you later.”

With a nod, a wan smile and a fleeting glance at him, Jacqueline turned to the door. Gerrard watched as she walked out; he didn’t like the empty look in her eyes.

He turned back to Millicent and Barnaby.

Barnaby caught his eye. “I’m off to walk the path Thomas must have followed.”

He nodded. “I’ll come with you.” He needed air, and he needed to think.

Leaving Millicent in the drawing room, they walked out onto the terrace. They retraced the route Thomas and Jacqueline had taken more than two years before, then went on, turning down the path along the northern ridge, confirming that all Jacqueline had said was true; she wouldn’t have known if someone had met Thomas at the junction of the paths, nor could she have gone so far with him, not with her mother expecting her back.

They walked on through the gardens of Demeter and Dionysius, Barnaby speculating that, if the crime had been committed along the path, given Thomas’s height, it would have occurred at the steepest stretch, where the path dipped into the Garden of Hades. Using Gerrard as a model, Barnaby concluded the murderer was at most three inches shorter, a man Thomas had known well enough to be comfortable having close at his back.

Barnaby pulled a face. “I must engineer a meeting with Lady Entwhistle. Mothers always know who their darlings are consorting with. She’ll know who Thomas considered a close friend.”

They rounded a bend in the path and looked up at the spot where Thomas’s body had lain. “Looks like they’ve taken the body away.” Only Wilcox and Richards remained, the former leaning on a shovel.

Barnaby led the way up the steep slope, clambering over the thick roots of the cypresses clinging to the incline.

Wilcox and Richards straightened as they neared and touched their caps. Gerrard nodded in greeting.

Barnaby dusted his hands. “I was just wondering…you were both here when Entwhistle disappeared, weren’t you?”

“Aye.” Both men nodded.

“Do you recall any gentleman being near the gardens about the time Entwhistle left the house?”

Wilcox and Richards shared a glance, then Richards volunteered, “We’ve all been scratching our heads, trying to remember. Near as we can recall, young Mr. Brisenden was out walking along the cliffs, like he often does. Sir Vincent Perry, another local gentleman, was here calling on Lady Tregonning and Miss Jacqueline—he left the house when young Entwhistle arrived, but he didn’t come to get his horse until sometime later. Howsoever, he often walked down to the little bay—not the cove in the gardens, but the one down past the stables—before he came to fetch his horse. As for others…” Richards looked at Wilcox, who took up the tale.

“Both Lord Fritham and Master Jordan often walk in the gardens—we’re never sure when we’ll see one of them about. And there’d a’ been plenty of local lads out that day—fishing, hunting, it were the season for both. While they don’t normally come into the gardens, they sometimes cut through. Everyone hereabouts knows the paths over the ridges, and how they connect. Fastest way from Tresdale Manor lands across to the cliffs to the north.”

Barnaby pulled a face. “Why would any local lads want to kill Entwhistle? Was he well liked?”

“Oh, aye—very amiable young gent, he was.”

“We was all hoping he and Miss Jacqueline might marry—everyone knew that was the way things were heading.”

Barnaby’s gaze sharpened. “So there’s no known reason for anyone to kill Entwhistle, other than, just possibly, jealousy over Miss Jacqueline?”

The two older men exchanged a glance, then nodded. “Aye,” Richards said, “that’s true enough.”

Gerrard looked down at the mound of freshly turned earth. “Did you find anything more?”

“Not anything from the poor lad, but”—Wilcox pointed up the slope—“I’d be surprised if that rock there wasn’t what had done for him.”

To the side some yards upslope lay a heavy rock, roughly rectangular and close to the size Barnaby had postulated.

Barnaby scrambled up and across. He hefted the rock, using both hands, then glanced at Gerrard. “This would have done the trick.” He looked around. “That suggests he was killed here, or close by…” Noticing Richards and Wilcox exchanging looks, Barnaby stopped. “What is it?”

“Well.” Richards waved around them. “There aren’t many rocks hereabouts, not big ones like that. It’s the trees knit the bank together—the soil’s not all that rocky.”

“Only place you find rocks like that is up top of the ridge.” Wilcox pointed up the slope. “Up there, it’s all rocks, just like that one.” He indicated the rock Barnaby set down. “We was thinking if young Entwhistle and the blackguard who killed him had climbed to the ridge, then when Entwhistle was struck down, well, he’d roll down to here, most like, and the rock with him.”

“Easy enough then to cover him with old cypress needles.” Richards kicked at those underfoot. “There’s always a carpet of them here. In time, he’d become just part of the bank.”

“Nothing much for my lads to do up this way,” Wilcox added. “The trees look after themselves, and the needles don’t need to be raked.”

Gerrard stared up at the ridge; it rose to a point, an outcrop of weathered rock that crumbled away to the edge of the sea cliffs. “Why would any gentleman go up there?”

“Ah, they all do. A bit of a scramble, it is, but all those who grow up hereabouts know—from there you can see the blowhole. When the sea’s turned just right, it’s a grand sight.”

“Aha!” Barnaby’s eyes lit.

It didn’t take much persuading to get Richards and Wilcox to show them the way—the only way—up to the top of the ridge. From there, it was apparent that the head gardener and head stableman’s conjecture had merit; a body falling down the slope would indeed land amid the cypresses.

“And,” Barnaby said, his eagerness barely contained as, parting from Wilcox and Richards, they strode back to the house, “it accounts for the one point that stumped me—how did the killer bend down and pick up a huge rock without Entwhistle noticing?”

Gerrard glanced at him. “The killer would still have had to pick up the rock, even if they were standing on the ridge…” He broke off as a picture of two men on the ridge formed in his mind.

“Yes, but it would have been easy.” Barnaby’s voice held a note of triumph. “One, Entwhistle was absorbed, watching Cyclops. Two”—Barnaby caught Gerrard’s eyes—“Entwhistle wasn’t standing. You saw the area—what’s more natural if you were chatting with a friend and looking out into the distance than to sit?”

Gerrard’s mind raced. “That means the killer doesn’t have to be tall.”

“No—any height at all.” Barnaby frowned. “Damn! That increases our list of suspects dramatically.”

“But he still has to be a he—a man.”

“Oh, yes. The size of the rock—and there’s a good chance it was that very rock—makes that certain. Even with Thomas sitting down, a woman would have had difficulty picking it up—and with a lady, Thomas would have noticed. More, manners would have ensured if she stood, then he would have, too. No.” Barnaby shook his head. “It couldn’t have been a woman.”

They reached the steps to the terrace; with a fleeting grin, Gerrard took them two at a time.

“What?” Barnaby asked, eyeing that grin.

Gerrard glanced at him. “There’s another, even more definitive reason why the murderer wasn’t a lady.”

Barnaby scrunched up his face, cudgeling his brains, then sighed. “What?”

“Getting onto the ridge—we only just managed without serious damage.” Gerrard pointed to a scuff mark on his boot, and a smudge on his trouser leg. “As Wilcox said, it’s a scramble. No lady in a tea gown could have managed it, then returned to the house
without
being in the sort of state that would have created a furor. Everyone would have remembered that.”