“You loved him?” Beth asked, the question very close to an assertion.
Patricia nodded.
“Then I know how you feel, having lost him.”
“No one can,” Patricia replied, staring at the rug. “Mother, especially. My life is over.”
“No, it isn’t,” Beth said. “My first husband, Jesse, was killed, and it was I who found him in the barn. I thought my life was over too. But it wasn’t. I met a wonderful man. And look, I have his baby here inside me.” She took Patricia’s limp hand and laid it upon the fabric of her dress.
Patricia looked down, amazed, then up. “But there’ll never be another man like Caleb.”
“That’s so. And I’ll never know another man like my Jesse.”
Patricia accepted a hanky from Beth and blew her nose. After a minute she said, “The worst part of all this has been not having anybody to tell or talk to. My mother thinks it was puppy love and I shall be over it by the weekend.”
“Did she know about you and Caleb all along?”
“She figured it out soon enough. Caleb talked Papa into letting me take him his breakfast-he was the greatest persuader in the world-and I did so every morning for three weeks. Even on Christmas Day.”
“And you and Caleb got to talking.”
“Yes. Old Bostwick, who fawned about Papa like a lapdog, grumbled when I started staying in there alone with Caleb for an hour every morning. But Caleb somehow swore him to silence.”
“So your father never found out?”
“I don’t think so. If he had, he would’ve been furious.”
“He’s not a man to hold his temper, then.”
Patricia smiled wanly and nodded.
“But your mother guessed and confronted you?”
“Yes. Mothers are like that, aren’t they?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“She and I argued a lot, but I knew she would never tell Papa.”
“Because of his temper.”
“That, and the fact he would blame her. You see how mean and unreasonable he can be, keeping us locked in this house like criminals.”
“For your own protection, I assume, with so much unrest in the streets and all.”
“That’s what he says.”
“Why do you think, if he was so strict with you, that he let you go down there every morning and expose yourself to a man he took for a villain?”
“I don’t know. But I think he may have been getting a bit suspicious near the end, because the night before it. . the night before, just after Mr. MacPherson left, I saw Papa go down to the cellar.”
Beth tried not to telegraph her surprise. Marc had told her that Stanhope was adamant that he had not visited Coltrane after the first few days of his incarceration. “To warn him away from you?” she wondered.
Patricia’s lip trembled again. “I think so.”
“Why didn’t your mother confront him?”
“I heard Papa forbidding her to go anywhere near him.”
Very gently, Beth said, “When did you last see Caleb?”
“I gave him his breakfast that morning.”
“You did?” Well, Papa’s visit the evening before had not borne fruit. Or had it?
“Yes. We had a wonderful hour together. He was in good spirits. He was looking forward to his morning visitor. He told me every day that his friends in Michigan were going to rescue him-and that he would send for me. Then he kissed me.” She tried to weep, but there were no tears left in her. “Now I’ve got to put this stupid hand-me-down dress on and go to the gala tomorrow night, where Papa will parade me up and down like a prize heifer!”
“My advice, Patricia, is for you to go ahead and do as your father wishes. Then on Monday, you can sit down and think about the life that lies ahead of you and what you might be able to make of it. And if it will help, please come into the shop and have tea with me anytime you like. I think you need to talk with someone who can understand your loss.”
Just then the door flew open, and Almeda Stanhope breezed into the room, newly hatted, with Rose Halpenny and her half-dozen bonnets in tow. There would be no more intimate conversation at Chepstow today.
Beth dropped Rose Halpenny off at the shop and took the cutter down to Baldwin House. Robert hid his astonishment at a conspicuously pregnant woman making her way adroitly through the startled clerks in the outer office to the latter’s chamber. There, over a cup of tea and a scone, Beth recounted her conversation with Patricia Stanhope as accurately as she could, while Marc and Robert listened with increasing fascination.
When she had finished, Robert whistled softly and said, “Well, Mrs. Edwards, you have triumphed where no man, however clever he may deem himself, could have. You have produced new facts that put quite a different complexion on Chepstow and its troublesome guest.”
“First of all,” Marc said, taking Robert’s cue, “my suspicion that Patricia and Caleb were more than friends has been confirmed. Mama was objecting but was seemingly helpless. A volatile mixture of emotions, wouldn’t you say?”
“And everyone afraid of the colonel’s temper and prickly pride,” Robert added. “But if he suspected that his daughter was having an improper relationship with Coltrane, he not only hid it very well, he seems to have inadvertently promoted it by allowing her to see him every morning.”
“But he does finally go down there,” Marc said, “the evening before the murder, a fact he deliberately withheld from me.”
“Though the visit had no apparent effect on his daughter’s access to the prisoner,” Robert said, puzzled. “She’s there bright and early the next morning.”
“Maybe he didn’t need to have a showdown with Mr. Coltrane,” Beth said.
Marc smiled. “And I thought I was the detective in the family.”
“You think he took the opportunity to slip the strychnine into one of the snuff boxes?” Robert said, arching a brow.
Marc thought about that. “It’s possible, but consider the disadvantage of that manoeuvre. He knew, I’m sure, that Coltrane never or rarely took snuff until an hour or so after breakfast and in all likelihood saved his first snort for ostentatious display in front of his initial visitor each morning. Stanhope also knew that Boynton Tierney was due at ten o’clock and that Billy and I were scheduled for one o’clock. There were always two or more snuff boxes on that desk. Sooner or later Coltrane would take a puff from the poisoned one, perhaps throwing suspicion on whoever happened to be there at the time.”
“But very risky, eh?” Robert said, taking up the theme. “His own daughter would be there at breakfast. What if Coltrane broke his routine and died a ghastly death right before her eyes? It’s hard to believe he would take such a chance, remote as it might have been, especially when the prisoner was going to be moved to Fort York in three or four days, pending the start of the trial.”
“After which he would be hanged and out of his daughter’s life forever.”
“But if he didn’t go down there to poison Coltrane, and his daughter continued her daily assignation the next morning, why did he go there?” Robert said.
“I intend to ask him, if he’ll see me again.”
“But all he has to do is deny it or invent some plausible and innocent explanation, like taking the fellow some reading material,” Robert said, playing the barrister.
“You’re right. Certainly, if he is involved in some way, it’s proof we need, not speculation.”
“It might be wiser if we let Doubtful Dick loose on him when he cross-examines.”
“I’m looking forward to that.”
“And what about Almeda Stanhope?” Beth said.
“Yes, there’s something we don’t know about her yet,” Marc said. “Is she so much under the colonel’s spell or so afraid of him that she’d let her daughter’s honour be compromised rather than tell him about Patricia’s visits to Coltrane?”
“You’re hinting they did more than kiss?” Beth asked.
Robert blushed and looked out the window.