“I saw him all right,” Mary said complacently.
“Where, Mary? Where?” Auguste was fuming that he had not questioned her closely earlier.
“Don’t know exactly,” she said doubtfully.
“Walking towards the Hall?”
“Doom’s what I saw, Mr. Auguste. Doom. I have the sight, you know.”
Auguste tried to cling on to his patience. “Did you see him through your window, Mary? Or did you see him in a vision?”
“That’s right. Both of them.” She nodded vigorously. “I often gets the sight, especially after a drop of cowslip wine.”
“She might not be as dotty as she sounds,” Egbert remarked, when Auguste relayed what he had gleaned from the servants’ hall, including Mary’s “evidence.” “You were right. Alfred Wheal wasn’t at home last night. He’s now admitted having travelled here yesterday in order to appeal to His Lordship’s better nature, then thought better of it and decided to leave it until today, so he stayed overnight in the village pub. This morning he heard the gossip about the murder, got worried, and turned up at the Hall’s lodge telling the local police he’d travelled up from Sussex. They thought nothing of it, as they knew a telegram had been sent to his home.”
“Nevertheless, he could not have killed the earl,” Auguste pointed out, “because he would not have been permitted to enter the room. Even if His Lordship had relented and allowed him to do so, he would have been facing him, talking to him, and Wheal’s most certain method of murder would have been to strangle, not drown, him.”
“True enough. My money’s on that footman then. Nasty piece of work, if you ask me. The earl wouldn’t worry about him, so James goes back to do him in and then screams out that His Lordship’s dead.”
“But if it’s true that the housekeeper told James she had not been into the room, and if James himself is not lying, then Hargreaves could have killed the earl. If Mrs. Parsons did enter the room, she could have killed him and then scuttled away when James saw her.”
“A pretty stew indeed and we’re in one all right,” Egbert said gloomily. “Pity having to rule out Wheal. He had motive all right — or thought he did. He’s been raising hell ever since he found out about the will. Her Ladyship was very amused. But there’s no doubt that if he entered that room the earl would have been on his guard, not in a position to be pushed face downwards into the stew.”
“There’s one way he could have got into that room unnoticed,” Auguste said thoughtfully.
“And how’s that?”
“There were spare liveries and wigs in the livery room. If His Lordship had thought it was just the footman coming in—”
Egbert groaned. “Don’t tell me. Been down this road before. Remember how you used to tell me no one looks twice at a postman in uniform? You’re suggesting that to the earl all footmen looked the same. He would have thought it was James.”
“Yes,” Auguste said simply. This theory fitted and yet he realised he could not wholly believe in it. Mary had probably seen Alfred Wheal... She had the sight...
He and Egbert walked out into the neglected gardens, lit by the September sunshine. Roses struggled for survival and bushes fought for air, spilling over onto the ill-kept lawns. There was nothing like the smell of autumn, Auguste thought, and nothing to compare with a Kentish September, full of the rich promise of harvest. Fruit ripening on the trees, dropping onto the lush grass, spiders’ webs shimmering with dew where the sun had not yet caught them...
Spiders’ webs. Surely that was the clue? His excitement grew as he grasped what could have happened.
“It was the countess,” he said to Egbert, once he was sure he was right. “She had been driven to desperation by the actions of her husband and took matters into her own hands. As she saw it, she would be able to arrange life as would make her happiest. She knew Mary had foreseen that she would be able to do so. The earl was going to leave his money to his wife — money that would buy her more tiaras and allow her to keep her spiderbrusher.”
“She’s off her chump, Auguste. Sure you haven’t joined her?” Egbert said caustically. “Any proof?”
“Some. The earl would have let none of the other four steal close enough to him without suspecting something amiss. Only his wife, whose presence and well-being he totally ignored, could have turned so speedily and fatally on him. Like the sixth countess, she was the spider in the web.”
“It was Her Ladyship, wasn’t it?” Mary asked, as he walked with her to her cottage much later that day.
“You knew all the time?” Auguste asked her.
“I have the sight,” she said proudly. “But I didn’t believe it, not at first. You don’t see it clear all at once. You see the web first, and then you sees the spider lady. It was just how the sixth countess did it. She trapped him in the dairy and pushed him into the butter vat. You’ll find the gloves her present Ladyship used in her room, stuffed in her jewel box, all stained with stew.”
“Do you mind very much, Mary?”
“I can’t brush her away, can I?” she said sadly. “She’s stuck fast in my heart.”
“Even though she murdered her husband?”
A pause, then: “Ah well. They say spiders eat their husbands, don’t they?”