A Trio of Dangers, page 13
“She left t’door off t’latch, m’lord. I latched it behind her. No sense leavin’ it open fer jest anybody to come in, m’lord.”
“Very sensible, Alun,” Jespers said. “Did you have any other sight of Anna Cooper? Did she say anything?”
“Why would she say anythin’ if nobody were there?”
“Very true. Thank you, Alun. You may return to your duties.”
“Thank you, Squire. M’lord.”
The two men looked at each other until the heavy door shut behind the groom. Then Jespers shook his head. “That young man was likely the last person to see Anna Cooper alive. Barring the murderer. She was obviously going to meet him.”
“Meeting him at night, long after anyone would see them. If we could find their meeting place, we might glean some clues.”
“Finding that place doesn’t sound like a possibility.”
Over the next few interviews it was not a possibility at all. No one else added anything beyond Mellie’s and Alun’s witnesses. They ran out of servants to interview very quickly. The housekeeper had nothing to add. Penniman sniffed and said that the kitchen maids were the purview of the cook Mrs. Ridges.
Then Maddy stuck her head around the door. A little smile played about her mouth. “Have you finished your interviews?”
Jespers looked up from his notes. “Yes, without discovering enough to help us locate her murderer. Do come in.”
She slipped around the door. Offering a slightly larger smile to Gordon, she came in and planted herself in the exact place that every servant had stood. “I have conducted your search.” When both men looked up, she added, “You needn’t look so keen. I found only one thing.”
“From that look like the cat got into the cream, I’d say that one thing may solve the case.”
“Not quite solve it.” She drew something glittery from her pocket and stepped up to the desk to pool it on Jespers’ notes. A long shiny chain with a pendant on the end. “That chain is gold, I believe, and the locket may be as well. It has a good weight.”
Jespers picked up and popped it open. He showed the interior to Gordon: empty. “No help here.”
“More help than nothing at all. That locket is not cheap.”
“Proof,” Gordon added, “that we are looking for a man of substance.” When Maddy looked her question, he explained. “We had decided that she must be involved with a man well above her station. He swore her to secrecy.”
“Mellie said that. This man may have sworn Anna Cooper to secrecy, but Mellie Robson has no lock on her tongue. Mrs. Ridges was giving her a lecture about speaking out of turn as we came down the backstairs. I quite like your backstairs, Mr. Jespers.” She grinned at her host. “Narrow and dark, the perfect place for a tryst if they were not in constant use by your servants. I had to squeeze up against the wall several times.”
He raised his eyebrows. After a moment, he said, “From that comment, I suppose you mean that her man of substance was not anyone on the Chanfrons estate.”
“Mellie did let slip that Anna once came in chilled to the bone and wishing she had not had to walk so far. Mellie ignored her and went back to sleep. Which means,” she said when they both looked blank, “that Mellie had more time to sleep after Anna had been outside for several hours. She would have had to walk several minutes in the cold night air, but she must not have walked that far. Perhaps a half-hour, no more.”
“That’s still on the estate,” Jespers noted.
“Or just over the boundary.”
“Gilbert’s estate?”
“Or into the village. You can get there in a half-hour’s walk, can’t you?”
Jespers groaned. “You just quadrupled our suspect list.”
“More than that,” Gordon said. “The man doesn’t have to be local. He could have ridden to meet her from much further afield.”
Chapter 11 ~~ Monday, 17th February
The whole district turned out for Anna Cooper’s funeral and interment in the village cemetery.
As the vicar committed her body to the ground, Maddy peeked at the crowd. Who could be blamed for this crime? And the poor woman in Kinver as well?
Maddy believed Gordon’s idea—the murderer was a man of higher station, with more substance than simple laborer, field hand, or servant. If the man had come from Kinver or some other place, she had no way of knowing. She did not even know who belonged in Stour. Looking about to determine who the murderer could be was a futile exercise.
Yet she found herself engaging in the speculation. She remembered Marcus Pierpont’s seeming fascination with the gory details of a court case. His father Stephen appeared calm, but could that be a mask for some kind of derangement? The elder Pierpont had demanded to ride with Mr. Jespers to the pond to view the body. Was Marcus guilty, and his father sought to protect him? Or was Stephen Pierpont himself guilty?
The barrister Hunnicutt stood with head bowed and hands crossed in front of him. His mother stood beside him, also looking around. When her gaze crossed with Maddy’s, it was the young woman who dropped her eyes. After a few fidgety minutes, she looked back up. Mrs. Hunnicutt’s gaze remained on the grave into which the plain coffin had been lowered.
Maddy shivered.
The servants who surrounded the grave genuinely sorrowed.
Rev. Wordsworth was winding up the interment, and she pondered him as the murderer for a full minute before rejecting the notion.
Baron Keyes and his wife were missing. As was Sir Byron Gilbert. They lived beyond Chanfrons’ boundary. She could not see a young woman involving herself with the older baron, but Sir Byron might be considered a catch by a young woman desperate to escape a narrow life in the kitchens.
And her new-found father? Was Simon Jespers guilty of killing one of his servants?
She did not want to believe that. Would he involve himself with a maid? Would he have such rage that he needed to abuse her before he killed her? Yet who could know what anger hid beneath the surface of anyone?
Gordon Musgrove and Jonno were the only men who could not be guilty. Neither had been anywhere near the district when the poor woman in Kinver was murdered.
They warmed up in the vicar’s parlor. While they mundanely passed around tea and biscuits, they discussed violent murder and a rage-filled murderer who abused his victims. Jonno bit into his biscuit with the relish of a youth instead of the control of a young peer. Maddy gave him an arch look then caught Gordon Musgrove also gobbling his biscuit.
“Even I could be guilty of the violation and strangling of this poor young woman,” the vicar said.
She liked that in him, placing himself with everyone else. His office did not convey immunity to a mere mortal. Of course, he could be deflecting guilt. She scowled to herself and sipped her tea.
“What would turn a man to murder?” Jespers asked. “I know of no one who has violent tendencies. That usually develops over many years. I have lived here fifteen years. I would have heard. Torturing animals. Enjoying abuse of others. These are signs of which I would have heard. There have been no such complaints during my time here. What did you say earlier, Musgrove? A twisted game gone wrong? I have heard nothing of such intimate violence.”
Musgrove shook his head. “I have heard rumors. A man in London once explained to me his particular ... .” He paused, looked around the room at the mix of ears attending to him and changed his words. “He had a particular bent. But he said the woman had to trust him completely. Such trust might be easier from a servant used to obedience rather than a young woman used to going her on way, as was the case in Kinver, I believe.”
“Or a wife,” Mrs. Wordsworth injected. “A wife obeys her husband.”
“Or a wife,” he agreed. “A wife will not wish to share such intimate details with anyone. A servant. A wife. We do not know the reason that the young woman in Kinver wants to speak with Mr. Hunnicutt. She must have had certain expectations that allowed her to trust the man who killed her. And a servant would obey if she expected a gain that would elevate her station. Whatever the reason, these two women trusted the wrong man. That very trust tells us that both women knew the man who abused them and killed them. Anna Cooper knew him, and she trusted him.”
“And he betrayed their trust,” Maddy said.
Her new-found father was shaking his head. “We need to narrow our list. We can do that if we can determine who was out alone for several hours on Saturday night.”
The talk became plans to find the murderer through a series of questions. The vicar volunteered to ask in the village. Hunnicutt said that he would ask questions over in Kinver while Jespers said his steward would ask over Chanfrons while he himself questioned the manor servants.
Maddy helped Mrs. Wordsworth carry the tea things back to the kitchen. When the vicar’s wife tied on a voluminous apron, Maddy looked around and realized the kitchen was empty. “Where is your maid and your cook?”
“We have sent them home, along with our gardener, with strict orders to gossip as much as they can about Anna Cooper and the man she must have been involved with.”
“That’s a sneaky order.”
The woman smiled and poured hot water from the kettle into a dish pan. “I knew Anna Cooper, Miss Whittaker. When first she came to Stour, she volunteered several times to help with the little ones. She had a gift of connecting with them. The other girls her age liked her. I had hoped she would settle into the village, but something this fall seemed to unsettle her. She stopped coming to the church. In the past month, whenever I encountered her, she ducked away from me.”
“The past month is when her friend said that she was meeting this man.”
“I should have seen something was wrong and questioned her, but there was another problem that consumed my attention. My weakness in not attending to both problems,” she said and plunged her hands into the soapy water to start washing the cups.
Maddy picked up a clean tea cloth and dried the first cup. “I think this violence is something only a man is capable of.”
“Perhaps she didn’t understand her lover’s needs. Not many women do, and a man—a man may want things that will surprise and shock a woman.”
She gaped at the older woman. “Is that any reason to beat her and cut her? Is that any reason to strangle her?”
Mrs. Wordsworth lifted her hands from the water and rested them on the basin. “No, no, of course not, but if she refused him—.” She saw Maddy’s shock and tried to explain. “I have counseled a few women, with my husband’s blessing, naturally, in how they should submit to their husbands.”
“A man is to shelter his wife. To protect and comfort her, to love her. That is what I have been taught, Mrs. Wordsworth. I have not been taught that the husband will put his wife’s life in jeopardy. The violence done to this woman, that is very wrong.”
“For some men, with the nature of their work or their constricted lives, they must expend their violent needs. They have learned no other outlet.”
“Then they should take up boxing or do some manual labor. Mrs. Wordsworth, did your husband not tell you the condition she was in? She had been beaten. She had been cut, all over. She had rope marks on her wrists and ankles. This man trussed her up to control her and then beat her with a stick or a cane before he took a knife to her. That is just wrong.”
The woman picked up a cup and washed it, rinsed it in another basin, set it on the board, and picked up another cup. “You do not understand; you are an innocent. Some men need such things—.”
“Those are twisted needs, if you ask me.”
Again she washed a cup then another and a third before she spoke. “We never know what drives a certain class of men to such behavior. We can only pray for them and hope our actions ease their burdens. It is a sad cycle of behavior, and I do not condone, but—perhaps I can help their wives understand and suggest some things to help them.”
Maddy goggled at the woman.
Then she heard people coming and hurried to dry the cups.
The vicar and Mrs. Pierpont and Callie came in. “My dear,” he said to his wife, “Mrs. Pierpont has suggested we send food to help the family of the deceased woman.”
She let them talk and slipped away as soon as the china had been washed.
Maddy stewed over the next hour. She wanted to argue with Mrs. Wordsworth. The vicar’s wife was misguided. A woman suffering beatings at her husband’s hands needed to get away from him, not try to understand his needs. No woman needed to allow her husband to mutilate her body. Any kind of sexual game that involved strangling—no. No.
But she was an innocent, just as Mrs. Wordsworth had pointed out.
She couldn’t ask Mrs. Pierpont. She doubted that woman had heard everything that had been done to poor Anna Cooper. And Callie remained at her mother’s elbow. Her ears were truly innocent.
She couldn’t ask her new-found father. For one, she knew he would be shocked by her questions. For another, she would be extremely uncomfortable talking with him about men’s sexual needs.
Maddy cornered Gordon when they returned to Chanfrons. “Walk with me?” she asked as he offered his hand to help her descend the carriage.
He looked at her brother then at Mr. Jespers. “Of course. Are you not chilled?”
“Not that chilled. The garden, I think?”
She felt several pairs of eyes boring into her back as she led the way around the house to the winter garden.
The gravel paths were swept clean of debris. Stone seats and the drained fountain looked as cold as she felt inside after her conversation with Mrs. Wordsworth. The bushes had lost their leaves; their branches looked stark and barren of life.
Maddy didn’t know how to approach her question, so she just tackled him with it. “Do some men use violence when they are—when they couple with women?”
He glanced at the house, and his look caused her to look. She saw someone standing at a downstairs window, watching them. A curtain twitched in a first-floor window.
“Will you answer me?” she pestered when he hesitated longer.
“Lord, Maddy, what brought this up?”
She crossed her arms and just looked at him.
“You have been thinking about the older bruises on the woman?”
She hadn’t known about them. They were proof of some of what Mrs. Wordsworth had said. “He abused her, yet she obviously went back to him. Why would a woman do that? Surely not even love would cause her to accept such abuse.”
“Perhaps she could not escape her life.”
“You sound like Mrs. Wordsworth,” Maddy huffed.
“Ah, your source. I cannot believe she spoke to you about what certain men may require of a woman they are ... coupling with.”
He used her word, pausing to switch it for whatever word he would naturally have used. She wanted to ask him about his word, but she wasn’t going to pursue a rabbit’s trail and not return to her question. “Mrs. Wordsworth would have me think that some men have needs that only violence during coupling can fulfill. She would have me think it is a sad cycle of behavior that their poor wives must accept. You are not violent during coupling, are you?”
“I am not. I am not bent that way.”
“Bent.” She turned the word around in her mind. “Yes, that is the word. Bent. Warped. Any man who thinks violence is associated with love is bent.”
“You do know,” Gordon sounded wary, “that love is not necessary for sex?”
“I am not that naïve, Musgrove. And I warn you now, if ever you rain violence upon me, I will walk away from you. I would rather a willow cottage than abuse from a man who claimed to love me.”
“You need not fear that. I will likely avoid you before that happens.” His words recalled their conversation a few days before. He didn’t smile, though. He gave her words the gravity they deserved. “Some men react with violence first. That is to be deplored, especially when it is used against a woman.”
“Mrs. Wordsworth said that it is to be expected from a certain class of men.”
“Ah. A prejudice, to think that physical abuse is restricted to the lower classes. I have seen a peer of the realm slap his wife and think nothing of it. I know of others who are violent, some in their daily actions, some in their coupling.”
“She tries to help such women understand their husbands’ needs. Understand should not be what she is doing. She should be helping those women find a new place to live rather than finding ways to accept the abuse. Musgrove, violence cannot be a need, can it?”
He stepped a little closer, blocking more of the wind, allowing her to hear him without having to raise his voice. His crossed arms mirrored hers. He ducked his head a little, to look her directly in the eye. “For some men, for the ones who are bent, it may very well be a need. Like a dam, it may burst if it does not find an outlet.”
“He has killed twice inside a month. That dam is filling up fast.”
“That is my worry.”
“But why would Anna Cooper accept his violence? Unlike Mrs. Wordsworth’s poor women, Anna wasn’t married to this man. No one forced her to be with such a man.”
“He must have had a hold on her that we cannot know, not until we discover who he is.”
“But why would a man need to inflict such violence on a woman as part of his needs? It sounds twisted.”
“For the jaded and the corrupt, it can elevate the excitement. He has ultimate power, and some women thrive on ceding complete control. A few houses in London cater to that clientele.”
“You mean brothels, don’t you?”
He glanced at the house. Then he uncrossed his arms. He gripped her elbow and pulled her a step closer. “I do not believe this is a conversation we should have.”
“Who can I discuss this with?” She tossed her head, revealing her frustration. “It would be too embarrassing to talk about this with Mr. Jespers. Jonno is as innocent of debauchery as I am. And Mrs. Pierpont—no.”
“Sexual violence is not what I call debauchery.”
“Oh. See, I do not even know that.”
“Jonno would have been a more appropriate consultant than I am.”
