Enter Pale Death(99)

“They were probably observed by Goodfellow, the resident snake-in-the-grass.”

“Another opportunity for blackmail and extortion. Unto the next generation.”

Joe asked the next question with care: “Do you think James Truelove drowned her in the moat?”

“No. I believe she was killed. Deliberately held under. But not by James. I don’t make this assertion on a basis of character. I was the one who laid out her body, you see, sir.” The calm features seemed suddenly to crumple in sorrow. “She had no one else. Drunken mother, father left home years before. She looked on me as family—her auntie perhaps. I wasn’t going to leave her to the ministrations of frightful old Bella in the village with her dirty fingernails.”

“No police to take charge?”

“Not in those days. A quick resolution was all everybody wanted. Sir Sidney made all the arrangements. Even the Chief Constable did as he was told by Sir Sidney.”

“What did you notice about the state of the body?”

“That she was about three months pregnant and just beginning to show. It was the ankles that told me what I wanted to know. There was a circlet of bruises where no bruising should have been. He’d grabbed her by the ankles and yanked them upwards, pushing her face under the water.”

“He?”

“Goodfellow, of course. He had the gall to say he’d found her body. They tell me it’s often the one who discovers the crime who did it. But you will know better than I. One of the footmen was crossing the drawbridge at the time he raised the alarm. Albert could swim and he leapt in and helped Goodfellow pull her out.”

“Either one of them could have tugged her by the ankles to draw her to the side?”

“I checked. I asked the footman to show me exactly how they’d handled the body. No one touched her ankles. Albert confided that he could have sworn that Goodfellow was already wet before he jumped in.”

Joe let out a sound like a kettle coming to the boil. “Sheeesh! Even Inspector Lestrade would have sorted this one out in ten minutes! If he’d been alerted!” He calmed himself to ask, “Did you find anything unusual when you tidied out her room?”

“You assume—rightly—that I took responsibility for doing that myself. Yes, I did. I found a ten-pound money order in her drawer. Six months’ wages! Only one way she could have come by such a sum, and one purpose. I worked it out. I said nothing. Just gave it to the Reverend Easterby for the church orphanage.”

“Which brings me back to my original question, Mrs. Bolton. Saying nothing?”

Anger flashed and the features were suddenly stern again. “Why don’t you answer your own impertinent questions? You seem to have all the answers you want stuffed up your sleeve! You’re not interested in hearing what I have to say. You just want me to confirm your suspicions.”

Joe flinched and waited in silence.

“I’m a good person, Commissioner. I try my best always to think of others and not my own personal satisfaction. I think things through. I’m sure you do too and know what I’m about to say. It would have been easy to shout and point accusing fingers and call upon the police, the vicar, Sir Sidney. The best I could have hoped for was that I should be believed. And that would have brought about the very worst reaction. If Adam Hunnybun had found out for certain that James had ruined the girl he loved, retribution would have followed. That’s the sort of man he is. No one crosses Adam. He would have killed James and Goodfellow, handed himself in, been found guilty and gone to the gallows smiling. The Trueloves would have been publicly disgraced by association. The family was on its uppers at the time. An event of this nature would have sunk the boat. A whole household of servants as well as owners would have been cut loose to seek work elsewhere in a county that could offer them none. Farms and great houses were being sold off, businesses going bankrupt, staff being turned off the land every day. Not as bad as things are today, but bad enough. I looked about me and decided that these were people and this was a situation worth saving. I swallowed my outrage, my pride, even my craving for justice and kept silent. Phoebe would have understood.”

“What were your feelings when Mr. Styles gave you the news that the villain had shot his own head off?”

“Relief and gratitude, followed by guilt that I should have such unchristian feelings. But I don’t wallow in vengeance. I agree with the poet Juvenal, who tells us that revenge is the pleasure of a tiny and feeble mind. A rather unexpected sentiment for a Roman but he has many wise things to say. In my long years, I’ve never observed that satisfaction in revenge grows with time. It diminishes over the years, like all painful emotions, to an embarrassing twinge of memory. A momentary dyspepsia of the spirit. I get on with life, sir. Doing my best for the family and my fellows. Retribution I leave to a Higher Authority who is not obliged to suffer the consequences here below.”