“Of course. I’m glad to hear you speak so bluntly. It saves time and allows me to be equally blunt.” She gave him a sharp sideways look. “As no holds are barred I’ll tell you that my own suspicions fell originally on a certain female guest. A young lady my son has formed a regrettable attachment to. The girl is his student and a pampered one at that. I know that he spoke of her frequently to Lavinia and to me in glowing terms. Lavinia became suspicious—and who shall blame her?—of his relationship with this baggage and took the bold step of inviting the girl to spend a weekend here in April. To look her over, assess the danger and warn her off. She gave James no warning of her arrangement and the whole business was a disaster. The girl was pretty and intelligent and capable of winning any verbal skirmish Lavinia cared to engage her in. But, more importantly, it was clear to all that she trumped Lavinia on a subject dear to her own heart.”
“Which was horses, I understand.”
“Indeed. Lavinia had established that this girl had a certain way … an ability … with animals. Horses and dogs. During the day, Lavinia took her by the arm and set off on a tour of the estate. Just the two of them. Stables, kennels—we still keep spaniels and hounds and a few herd dogs—and they returned hours later with Lavinia shaken and angry. Now, Commissioner, I looked at the pair of them with foreboding. My blood turned to ice in my veins. I saw disaster ahead. But what I feared at that time was that it would be Lavinia herself who made an attempt on the girl’s life while she had her under her roof. Her reason for inviting her here, Commissioner? Lavinia was capable of such a clumsy manoeuvre.”
Cecily raised a hand to ward off objections that were not voiced. “No, I do not overstate my reaction. She was a woman of sudden rages. I’ve seen her badly mishandle her unfortunate mounts when her pride was at stake. I’ve witnessed her slashing a stable lad in the face with her whip. I know that she was overly harsh in her dealings with the cottagers. Adam Hunnyton and I have, too often, had to step in and repair, reinstate, reimburse … smooth feathers. I knew her to be—we all knew her to be—a cruel, bullying woman with what my dear husband would have called ‘a short fuse.’ I honestly thought she was capable of pushing someone downstairs or out of a window. And her target on this occasion was quite small and easily pushed, poor child. I’m sure no one would seriously blame her if she took steps to protect herself from an onslaught by Lavinia.”
Yes, compared with the Amazon proportions of Lavinia, Dorcas was quite small. In fact she was all the things Cecily was telling him. He could hear no misrepresentation or exaggeration in what she had to say. But was Dorcas a killer? A cunning and ruthless killer who might judge that the world would be a better place without Lavinia’s boots trampling it? Who might devise just such a righteous death under the hooves of an animal she had no respect or love for? Joe was shocked that he had even allowed the monstrous thought to take shape and twitch with life.
At least he was one step ahead of Cecily. He knew where she was heading with her comments. Deviously, disarmingly, towards putting the blame on Dorcas and then cancelling out the consequences. All this hocus pocus had been put on with the aim of taking Dorcas off the scene, if the worst came to the worst, on an accusation of murder. Had Cecily any idea of the girl’s connection with the police officer she was now confiding in? He could have sworn she hadn’t. Their names were in no way connected. Any relationship James Truelove was aware of had been explained to him by the devious Dorcas herself. Joe remembered Truelove had actually had him called to the telephone on one occasion to offer him advice on handling her. “You’ll get the best out of Miss Joliffe if you don’t run her in blinkers, Sandilands,” he’d told Joe briskly. Truelove probably connected him to Dorcas through her closeness to his sister, Lydia, and her family. After all, she’d lived with them in something approaching harmony for eight years. She loved them and they loved her like a daughter. “My guardians,” was her way of referring to Lydia and Marcus.
Perhaps that was the plain truth? Perhaps, all these years, he had been peripheral to Dorcas’s life and not, as he’d fancied himself, central to it? A truly distant but, on occasion, useful uncle?
The thought startled and disturbed him.
Cecily was finding it increasingly difficult to continue but responded to Joe’s concern when he prompted: “I would guess that you felt it your duty to take precautions against an outbreak of violence in the house?”
Her response had been ready to flow. “You’ll think me a fussy, deluded old woman but … but … yes, I posted a footman—Ben, who waited on us just now—at the end of the corridor outside Lavinia’s room that night. I told him to follow her, unseen, if she left her room and, if she went in the direction of the Old Nursery, which is out in the north wing well away from the other guest rooms, he was to alert me at once, even use his own judgement to prevent a catastrophe. He knew he would have had my backing. You will find Ben a trustworthy man with an ability to think for himself and anticipate a command. I shall look forward to hearing your impressions of him.”