In their indignation over their friends’ being tarred with unwarranted suspicions, they, and very likely all others, had forgetten that Kitty was indeed poor Kitty; Kitty was dead. No longer able to walk under trees with a man by her side, to wake in his arms, filled with a soft urgency that blossomed into bliss.
She had it all, and Kitty had nothing.
Poor Kitty, indeed.
“We have to find out who the murderer is.” She looked up, looking ahead. “Surely we must be able to do something to help Stokes.”
“Can we?” Charlie asked. “I mean . . . will he let us, do you think?”
“He was at the funeral.” Simon paced by Portia’s side. “He was watching everyone, but he’s guessing where we know enough to be sure.” He caught Portia’s eye. “Perhaps we should offer our services?”
She nodded, determined. “We should.”
“But before we do that”—they’d reached the lake path; Charlie came up beside them—“we’d better head back to the house and put in an appearance at the wake.”
They did. The gathering was held in the drawing room, curtains half-drawn. With a meaningful nod to them both, Charlie went to talk to James, standing a little apart, a glass in his hand.
Simon and Portia circulated; few of the local gentlemen had come back to the house—the company was primarily composed of the houseguests. Portia stopped to chat to the Hammond sisters, subdued and somewhat crushed. Simon left her and moved on, eventually coming up beside Stokes.
The “gentleman from Bow Street” was hanging back by the wall, consuming a pastry. He caught Simon’s eye. “Lord Netherfield suggested I attend.” He took another bite, looked away. “Seems a nice old codger.”
“Very. And no, I don’t think he did it.”
Stokes grinned, and met Simon’s gaze. “Any particular reason for thinking so?”
Thrusting his hands into his pockets, Simon looked across the room. “He’s of a type and a generation where stooping to murder someone as essentially powerless as Kitty—Mrs. Glossup—would be seen as very bad form.”
Stokes munched on the pastry, then quietly asked, “Does ‘very bad form’ still matter?”
“Not to all by any means, but to those of his ilk, yes.” Simon met Stokes’s questioning look. “To him, it would be a matter of personal honor, and that, I assure you, matters to him very much.”
After a moment, Stokes nodded, then pulled out a handkerchief and dusted his fingers. He didn’t look up as he said, “Do I take it you’re willing to . . . assist me in my inquiries?”
Simon hesitated, then replied, “Perhaps in interpreting any facts you might find, attaching the correct weight to anything you might hear.”
“Ah, I see.” Stokes’s lips curved. “You’re a very old friend of Mr. James Glossup, I hear.”
Simon inclined his head. “Which is why I, and Miss Ashford and Mr. Hastings, are all eager the murderer—the real murderer, whoever he is—be unmasked.” He met Stokes’s gaze. “You’ll need us to get anywhere. We need you to get a result. A fair enough bargain, to my mind.”
Stokes mulled it over, then stuffed his handkerchief back in his pocket. “I’ll be conducting interviews all afternoon—I haven’t yet spoken to all who were here. Then I’m going down to the gypsy encampment. I doubt I’ll be back before dinner, but perhaps we can talk when I return?”
Simon nodded. “The summerhouse—it’s down by the lake. You can’t miss it. It’s private, and no one else is likely to wander that far at dusk. We’ll wait for you there.”
“Agreed.”
With an inclination of his head, Simon moved away.
He, Portia, and Charlie decamped to the summerhouse the instant tea, served as soon as the gentlemen returned to the drawing room, had been dispensed with. Normal custom having been observed, most guests retired to their rooms, although a light still burned in the billiard room; with the library inhabited by Bow Street’s best, it had become the gentlemen’s retreat.
Stokes had spent all afternoon interrogating the rest of the houseguests, then disappeared. There’d already been a curious tension in the air, as if the desperate fiction that the murderer was, of course, one of the gypsies was already wearing thin; Stokes’s unexplained absence only ratcheted that tension one notch tighter.
Beside Simon, Portia walked down the lawns and onto the path around the lake, puzzling, as she had since quitting his bed that morning in great measure restored to her customary spirits, over why Kitty’s murder had come about.
“You have to admit Stokes was mightily brave to specifically interview Lady O.” Charlie followed in their wake, frowning as he ambled.
“He seems very thorough,” Simon replied.
“And determined.”