Anne Perry - A Dangerous Mourning

least endeavor to be charming, and that she would do. Her mother had frequently told her she would never be beautiful, but if she smiled she might make up for a great deal.

It was an overcast day with a hard, driving wind, and most unpleasant.

She took a hansom from Queen Anne Street to Vere Street, and alighted a few minutes before three. At three o'clock precisely she was sitting in the spare, elegant room outside Oliver Rathbone's office and becoming impatient to get the matter begun.

She was about to stand and make some inquiry when the door opened and Rathbone came out. He was as immaculately dressed as she remembered from last time, and immediately she was conscious of being shabby and unfeminine.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Rathbone." Her resolve to be charming was already a little thinner. "It is good of you to see me at such short notice."

"It is a pleasure, Miss Latterly." He smiled, a very sweet smile, showing excellent teeth, but his eyes were dark and she was aware only of their wit and intelligence. "Please come into my office and be comfortable." He held the door open for her, and she accepted rapidly, aware that from the moment he had greeted her, no doubt her half hour was ticking away.

The room was not large, but it was furnished very sparsely, in a fashion reminiscent more of William IV than of the present Queen, and the very leanness of it gave an impression of light and space. The colors were cool and the woodwork white. There was a picture on the farthest wall which reminded her of a Joshua Reynolds, a portrait of a gentleman in eighteenth-century dress against a romantic landscape.

All of which was irrelevant; she must address the matter in hand.

She sat down on one of the easy chairs and left him to sit on the other and cross his legs after neatly hitching his trousers so as not to lose their line.

"Mr. Rathbone, I apologize for being so blunt, but to do otherwise would be dishonest. I can afford only half an hour's worth of your time. Please do not permit me to detain you longer than that.'' She saw the spark of humor in his eyes, but his reply was completely sober.

"I shall not, Miss Latterly. You may trust me to attend the

clock. You may concentrate your mind on informing me how I may be of assistance to you."

"Thank you," she said. "It is concerning the murder in Queen Anne Street. Are you familiar with any of the circumstances?"

"I have read of it in the newspapers. Are you acquainted with the Moidore family?"

"No-at least not socially. Please do not interrupt me, Mr. Rathbone. If I digress, I shall not have sufficient time to tell you what is important."

"I apologize." Again there was that flash of amusement.

She suppressed her desire to be irritated and forgot to be charming.

"Sir Basil Moidore's daughter, Octavia Haslett, was found stabbed in her bedroom." She had practiced what she intended to say, and now she concentrated earnestly on remembering every word in the exact order she had rehearsed, for clarity and brevity. "At first it was presumed an intruder had disturbed her during the night and murdered her. Then it was proved by the police that no one could have entered, either by the front or from the back of the house, therefore she was killed by someone already there-either a servant or one of her own family."

He nodded and did not speak.

"Lady Moidore was very distressed by the whole affair and became ill. My connection with the family is as her nurse."

"I thought you were at the infirmary?" His eyes widened and his brows rose in surprise.

"I was," she said briskly. "I am not now."

"But you were so enthusiastic about hospital reform."

"Unfortunately they were not. Please, Mr. Rathbone, do not interrupt me! This is of the utmost importance, or a fearful injustice may be done."

"The wrong person has been charged," he said.

"Quite." She hid her surprise only because there was not time for it. "The footman, Percival, who is not an appealing character-he is vain, ambitious, selfish and something of a Iothario-"

"Not appealing," he agreed, sitting a little farther back in his chair and regarding her steadily.

"The theory of the police," she continued, "is that he was

enamored of Mrs. Haslett, and with or without her encouragement, he went up to her bedroom in the night, tried to force his attentions upon her, and she, being forewarned and having taken a kitchen knife upstairs with her"-she ignored his look of amazement-"against just such an eventuality, attempted to save her virtue, and in the struggle it was she, not he, who was stabbed-fatally."

He looked at her thoughtfully, his fingertips together.

"How do you know all this, Miss Latterly? Or should I say, how do the police deduce it?"

"Because on hearing, some considerable time into the investigation-in fact, several weeks-that the cook believed one of her kitchen knives to be missing," she explained, "they instituted a second and very thorough search of the house, and in the bedroom of the footman in question, stuffed behind the back of a drawer in his dresser, between the drawer itself and the outer wooden casing, they found the knife, bloodstained, and a silk peignoir belonging to Mrs. Haslett, also bloodstained."

"Why do you not believe him guilty?" he asked with interest.

Put so bluntly it was hard to be succinct and lucid in reply.

"He may be, but I do not believe it has been proved," she began, now less certain. "There is no real evidence other than the knife and the peignoir, and anyone could have placed them there. Why would he keep such things instead of destroying them? He could very easily have wiped the knife clean and replaced it, and put the peignoir in the range. It would have burned completely.''

"Some gloating in the crime?" Rathbone suggested, but there was no conviction in his voice.

"That would be stupid, and he is not stupid," she said immediately. "The only reason for keeping them that makes sense is to use them to implicate someone else-"

"Then why did he not do so? Was it not known that the cook had discovered the loss of her knife, which must surely provoke a search?" He shook his head fractionally. "That would be a most unusual kitchen.''

"Of course it was known," she said. "That is why whoever had them was able to hide them in Percival's room."

His brows furrowed and he looked puzzled, his interest more acutely engaged.

"What I find most pertinent," he said, looking at her over the tops of his fingers, "is why the police did not find these items in the first place. Surely they were not so remiss as not to have searched at the time of the crime-or at least when they deduced it was not an intruder but someone resident?"

"Those things were not in Percival's room then," she said eagerly. "They were placed there, without his knowledge, precisely so someone would find them-as they did."

"Yes, my dear Miss Latterly, that may well be so, but you have not taken my point. One presumes the police searched everywhere in the beginning, not merely the unfortunate Percival's room. Wherever they were, they should have been found."

"Oh!" Suddenly she saw what he meant. "You mean they were removed from the house, and then brought back. How unspeakably cold-blooded! They were preserved specifically to implicate someone, should the need arise."

"It would seem so. But one wonders why they chose that time, and not sooner. Or perhaps the cook was dilatory in noticing that her knife was gone. They may well have acted several days before her attention was drawn to it. It might be of interest to learn how she did observe it, whether it was a remark of someone else's, and if so, whose."

“I can endeavor to do mat.''

He smiled. "I presume that the servants do not get more than the usual time off, and that they do not leave the house during their hours of duty?"