Cut to the Quick (22 page)

changed back into his riding clothes and gone out in a violent rainstorm.

All in all, Julian did not think a search of people’s clothes would be very illuminating—which was just as well, since Sir Robert probably would not allow it. If someone’s clothes did have a story to tell, it would most likely come out anyway. Each suspect’s wardrobe was cared for by a maid or valet, who would notice if any garment was stained or torn, or mysteriously went missing. Surely any servant who had such information would tell it for one reason or other—moral duty or fear, the desire for importance or the lure of an official reward. Unless, of course, loyalty to the Fontclairs triumphed over all other considerations. Loyalty—that was the bane of the investigation. There was simply no knowing who might not lie to protect someone else from prosecution, or the family honour from disgrace.

*

It might have been loyalty that made the Fontclairs* servants so chary of talking to Julian when Sir Robert was not by. Either that, or they believed he had committed the murder, or connived with Dipper to commit it.

The simplest question was enough to put Michael, the footman, on his guard. “Do you know where Miss Fontclair is?** Julian asked him.

“No, sir.**

“Do you know if she*s in the house?**

“No, sir.’*

“No, you don’t know, or no, she isn’t in the house?**

“She went out, sir.**

“We begin to make progress. Have you any idea where she went?*’ “No, sir.**

“Did she ride or drive, or was she on foot?**

“On foot, sir.**

“I gather she often sits in a spot called the rose arbour.**

“I wouldn't know, sir. My duties don’t take me into the garden.** “Where in the garden is the rose arbour?**

“I couldn’t say, sir. My duties don’t—**

"—take you into the garden. So you said. You might as well tell me, Michael. I’ll just keep asking till someone does.”

The boy looked down from his tall height with a harassed, rebellious face. At last he sighed and gave it up. ‘You go out through the conservatory windows, sir, and down the terrace stairs. You keep going down the main path, till you reach the wilderness garden. The rose arbour is there.”

"Thank you very much.”

Walking stick in hand, Julian descended the terrace stairs and followed the central garden path. It led between orderly beds of flowers, through topiary arches, and past small fountains where tritons sported with water nymphs. But beyond a tall border of hedges, Nature shook off the restraints of pruning and mowing. Rhododendrons grew in charming confusion, apple trees offered their little wild fruits to the birds, magnolia blossoms fluttered against austere birches, poppies splashed colour over the ground. Julian shaded his eyes and looked about him, trying to catch the sight or the scent of roses.

In the end, he found the arbour quite by chance. It appeared suddenly round a corner of his path: an archway of delicate latticework, with a marble bench inside. Roses, pink and red and white, climbed the sides of the arch, dangled from the top, and nestled in the gaps of the wrought-iron trellising.

Isabelle sat among the roses, her dove-grey gown dappled with sunlight, her open sketchbook in her lap. Her bonnet lay on the ground nearby. She must have heard him coming, for she was looking toward him expectantly. It would be no small feat, he thought, to take Isabelle Fontclair by surprise.

“Good morning,” he said. “I came here hoping to find you.” "You have questions for me, I suppose.”

"I did. But seeing you here, with the sun on your hair and the roses clustering round you, I’ve all but forgotten what they are.” “Must you begin again, Mr. Kestrel?”

"I’m sorry. I know you asked me to leave off. But when you sit in the most idyllic spot in the garden, wearing a halo of sunshine in place of a hat, how can you expect me to keep my head? A poet would be driven to frenzy in this place—any man with blood in his

veins would be hard-pressed not to throw himself at your feet. I think on the whole my behaviour’s been a marvel of restraint.”

”1 think you have it in your power to restrain it further. Would you please hand me my bonnet? I only take it off in order to work.” "If you really had an artist’s soul, you wouldn’t do such violence to the landscape as to cover your hair and cast the shadow of a hat brim across your face.”

"This is my favourite place, Mr. Kestrel. Please don’t be so unkind as to drive me away from it.”

"God forbid I should be unkind to you. I’d be kindness itself, if you would let me.’’

"Do you mean to give me my bonnet, or must I get it myself?” He brought it to her. She put it on. The wide brim curved over her brow, giving her rather long face a heart shape. “Thank you.” His eyes fell on her drawing. “Is that the design for Miss Craddock's slippers?”

“Yes. I showed it to her this morning. She seemed to approve of it. Would you like to look at it?” She offered him the sketchbook. "It’s to be white silk thread on white satin.”

It was a pattern of star-shaped flowers—myrtle, he supposed. They looked wonderfully natural, yet were arranged with symmetry and grace. How like her, he thought, to lavish such care and virtuosity on a detail of Maud’s wedding clothes that would hardly be noticed. He suddenly remembered Guy’s conviction that Isabelle had wanted to marry Hugh herself. If that were true, how must she feel, crafting a wedding gift for her successful rival?

"I have to start on them as soon as possible,” she said, "or they won’t be finished in time for the wedding. Unless you think the wedding will be put off, on account of the murder?”

“I couldn’t say. It’s possible.”

She would have taken back the sketchbook, but he asked, “May I look at your other drawings?”

She nodded. He would have liked to sit next to her on the bench, but she did not make room for him, so he stood beside her. He flipped to the beginning of the sketchbook and leafed through it. Her work was very fine. A sense of sun and shadow pervaded her landscapes, without any need for colour. Architectural details of

Bellegarde were drawn with skill and understanding. She captured people, especially her family, with a light, deft touch. One sketch that Julian particularly admired showed the Fontclairs in their drawing room: Sir Robert reading, Lady Fontclair smiling at the colonel across a card table, Lady Tarleton sewing with a look of grim concentration on her face. Hugh was daydreaming, Joanna was looking at fashion plates, and Philippa was building a house of cards. It was as though Isabelle had wanted to portray each person doing something typical of him or her. Elsewhere she had made studies of their faces, showing how the family features varied in each: austere in Sir Robert, stark and dramatic in Lady Tarleton, jaunty and a little weak in the colonel, open and earnest in Hugh. She had exposed, with truth but not without compassion, the contrast between Joanna’s conventional prettiness and Philippa’s thin, plain, lively face.

He opened his mouth to ask a question—then thought better of it. He praised her work, and they talked about her training and technique. “But you didn’t come here to talk to me about art,” she said at last. “If you want to question me about the murder, I’d just as soon have it over.”

“Of course. Miss Fontclair, you’re an artist, and your work shows you have an eye for nuances—for details most of us would miss. It intrigues me that you passed so close to my room at about twenty minutes past five. Of course, the murder might have taken place as much as fifty minutes earlier. It could also have happened within about a quarter of an hour afterward, though in that case the girl and the murderer might well have been in my room by the time you passed by.”

“Aren’t you overlooking the possibility that 1 am the murderer?” He was taken aback. “I suppose I am. Are you?”

“No. But I can’t think of any reason you should believe me.” “You really are the most remarkable woman.”

“Again, Mr. Kestrel?”

“I wasn’t flirting with you—not just then, anyway. I’m impressed, that’s all.”

“Thank you. What exactly is your question?”

“Are you sure you can’t remember seeing or hearing anything out

of the common, from the time you came in through the conservatory windows till you reached your own room?'*

“I’ve been thinking about it ever since last night, but I still can’t remember anything to the purpose. I do think, if there’d been anything out of place, 1 would have noticed. I am observant, and I know the house well. As to hearing anything—I wasn’t really paying attention. If there was some noise in your room, I didn’t notice. I don’t think there could have been raised voices or a struggle. I would have heard that.”

“I have one more question. I’m afraid it’s unpleasant.”

"Your questions do tend to be. What is it?”

"How do you sharpen your pencils?”

Her eyes widened. "You are being thorough, aren’t you?” "Well, it would be a great help to identify the murder weapon. 1 don’t have much hope on that score. If I were the murderer, I should probably have thrown it down a well or buried it under a loose paving stone, or some such thing. Still, I’ve been trying to find out if any knife’s gone missing.”

"My knife hasn’t gone missing. I have it here.”

She opened her sketching box. Her pencils and India rubbers were neatly arrayed inside. In a slot of its own was a knife with a mother-of-pearl handle. She gave it to Julian.

"You use this to sharpen your pencils?” He drew the knife out of its black velvet sheath. The blade was three or four inches long.

"It’s not very practical,” she admitted. "A penknife would be easier and safer to use. Aunt Catherine is always warning me I’ll cut myself with that one. But you see, that knife belonged to my father. It’s one of the few things I have of his. Most of his possessions were sold when he died. He was deeply in debt.”

"Who were your parents?”

"My father was Simon Fontclair, His father and Uncle Robert's father were brothers, so of course Uncle Robert isn’t really my uncle, but my first cousin once removed. My parents died of influenza when I was three, and Uncle Robert and Aunt Cecily took me in. It was very good of them. My father didn’t leave me a farthing. He had all manner of schemes to make his fortune—a half-finished invention,

a plantation in Barbados—but they always came out bluely. He was a weak man,** she finished succinctly, “but he was a Fontclair.” Julian gave her back the knife. “Did you ever leave your sketching box unattended between half past four and six o'clock yesterday?” “No. I had it with me when I came out here to work on my design for Miss Craddock’s slippers, and when I came in, I brought it with me. So no one could have used my knife to kill the girl. Except me, of course.”

He asked frankly, “Miss Fontclair, if you had seen or heard anything that might implicate one of your family in the murder, would you admit it?”

Isabelle met his gaze steadily. “No, Mr. Kestrel, I would not.”

On returning to the house, Julian was summoned to Sir Robert’s office. Sir Robert told him that the search in and around the room where the body was found had turned up nothing of interest— nothing stolen, no sign of a struggle, and no indication of how the girl or the murderer got in. The search was being extended to the rest of the house.

“Have you heard from Senderby yet?” asked Julian.

“No, but he should be coming shortly to report on his enquiries in the neighbourhood.” He added, “The vicar and his wife called a little while ago. They said the news is all over Alderton, and of course it’s causing a tremendous stir. God grant we’ll be able to solve the crime quickly, and put an end to the panic and the morbid curiosity it’s excited.”

I believe he means that prayer sincerely, Julian thought. He really can’t credit that any of his family could be guilty.

Sir Robert handed Julian some large sheets of parchment. “Rawlinson told me you’d asked to see a plan of the house. These are the designs for the new wing, which was built in my father’s time. The architects also made these sketches of the main house and the servants’ wing, though those parts of the house weren’t touched during the renovation.”

Julian spread out the three ground-floor plans on a table: the

servants’ wing, the main house adjacent to it, and the new wing branching off the rear corner of the main house. He laid out the first-floor plans in the same pattern. The house looked odd and unfamiliar, seen from this bird’s eye view. Vast, imposing rooms like the great hall and the great chamber were reduced to small square blocks, while a cubby-hole like Rawlinson’s office looked far larger than it really was.

He said, “I can’t conceive of anyone approaching the front door secretly. There’s nothing but open space around it—the carriage court, the drive and the front lawn. The route through the garden to the conservatory windows provides more cover, but the best way to enter the house in secret would be from the back, through the silver lime grove or the kitchen garden.” He pointed to the small room where the back door was. “I believe you told me this is used as a waiting room.”

“Yes. For tradesmen and other people who have business in the servants* wing.**

“It seems to be just beneath Rawlinson’s office, which is next to my old room. So near and yet so for.*’

Sir Robert nodded. “Anyone standing at the back door could look up at your room, but in order to get inside it, he would either have to scale the wall and climb in through the window, or come in through the back door and go through the servants’ hall, across the screens passage, through the great hall, and up the grand staircase.” “Scaling the wall is an interesting thought. It’s not likely anyone climbed the tree outside the window, since the ground wasn’t disturbed at all. But underneath the window, a few feet away from the wall, is a paved walk, which wouldn’t show footprints or marks made by a ladder. Though it*s hard to imagine anyone being so bold as to set up a ladder in broad daylight, even with all the servants at dinner and the family dispersed about the house and grounds. Besides, if there was a ladder, what became of it? The murderer can*t have used it to get out again, because the window was left bolted from the inside.**