“Yes, it is hard to stab someone with the blunt tip of a straight razor, isn’t it? Slashing, yes. But puncture wound? No, I wouldn’t have thought so.”
“Well, this is rubbish,” Elizabeth declared. “If I were going to confess to a crime, I believe I’d endeavor to know more about the circumstances than this poor girl did.”
“Perhaps she was doing her best,” Rowan pointed out. “Some of it may even be true. If the child had been killed in the nursery, she could have carried him down as she described and inflicted the postmortem injuries to divert suspicion from the household. And I suppose that such an act might prey on her young mind as much as an actual murder.”
Elizabeth was silent for a few minutes, contemplating the evidence. “She had no reason to lie,” she said at last. “If she was admitting to murder, she might as well tell how it really happened. Since she got it wrong, we can assume that it was because she didn’t know what actually occurred on the night of the murder. She was taking the blame for somebody else.” She sighed. “You’re right, Rowan. Your version is the only one that makes sense. Daddy is fooling around with the nursemaid, when the child wakes up and starts to cry. In trying to hush the boy, Mr. Kent accidentally smothers him, and then-perhaps with Constance’s help-he takes the child to the privy and cuts its throat to make the killing look like an outside job. Constance may be guilty as an accessory after the fact, but she didn’t kill the child. Why didn’t the authorities realize it at the time?”
“It was an unsolved case of four years’ standing,” Rowan reminded her. “I don’t suppose they wanted to look a gift horse in the mouth. I myself think that there was a certain amount of religious hysteria involved in her confession. Since the crime, Constance had been living at Brighton in a religious institution, and it was to the minister in charge that she first confessed. Why not? The crime had blighted her life anyway. What marriage prospects would she have with her family under perpetual suspicion of butchery? And what else could she hope for in that era? Not a job as a governess, surely?” He smiled at the absurdity of it.
Elizabeth took back the crime book and turned to the end of the chapter. “What happened to Constance? It says here that at her trial she was condemned to death, but that sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. I wonder how Mr. Kent felt about that.”
“A regrettable but necessary sacrifice,” said Rowan, in his best imitation of a Victorian patriarch.
“She served twenty years, then was released from prison. Oh, damn! This book says that no one is certain what became of her after that. That’s not fair! I want to know.” She looked suspiciously at the guide. “You know, don’t you?”
Rowan shook his head. “No, but I suspect that the answer is known these days. Scholars of Victorian crimes are like bloodhounds, and that’s just the sort of puzzle that would send them off baying through the courthouses on three continents.”
“I don’t have time to do that,” said Elizabeth, frowning.
“Here,” said Rowan. “Give me one of those mawkish postcards you’re always buying. Yes, that one of Glastonbury will do.” He pulled out his fountain pen and wrote on the back in his nearly legible scrawclass="underline" Please send information on final whereabouts of Constance Kent to Dr. Elizabeth MacPherson, c/o Mountbatten Hotel, Seven Dials, London. He addressed the card to Kenneth O’Connor in Yorkshire. “There,” he said cheerfully. “That will give you something to look forward to at journey’s end. Kenneth will know the answer to this, if anyone does.”
“Last night as sad I chanced to stray,
The village death-bell smote my ear,
Thy winking aside and seemed to say
‘Countess, prepare-thy end is near.’ ”
– TRADITIONAL ENGLISH BALLAD
on the death of Amy Robsart
CHAPTER 14
OXFORD
THE GROUP SPENT one night at Ruthin Castle in North Wales, where they attended the regular Friday night medieval banquet, learning to eat soup with their fingers and gaining a new appreciation for the beauty of Welsh singing. Since they had to leave at ten the next morning (“Before the shops even opened!”), they were unable to form much of an opinion of Wales. Frances noted that bad carpeting seemed to be endemic among the ancient castles of Britain, but otherwise the company found it a pleasant and picturesque place. It did not have the aura of a thirteenth-century castle, though. Centuries of renovations probably accounted for that. It seemed no older nor more impressive than Moretonhampstead, nine hundred years its junior.
Rowan Rover, who was not well-versed in Welsh law, decided to refrain from any questionable activity until the party again crossed the border into England.
Another long drive on Saturday took them south again, with a stop to tour Powys Castle, and finally to the Shropshire town of Shrewsbury, where Frances would at last walk in the footsteps of the fictional Brother Cadfael. Rowan Rover had the weekend off, as was his custom, and he bade them farewell at the train station, promising to see them Monday morning for the journey to Oxford.
They checked into the Lion Hotel, an old coaching inn on the summit of the town’s old street, Wyle Cop. Former guests at the seven-hundred-year-old establishment had included Charles Dickens, and Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale. Such real celebrities, however, paled beside Shrewsbury’s true celebrity: Brother Cadfael, who never existed at all. In his way, though, he was as much a local dignitary as was Jack the Ripper in the East End. The bookstores and curio shops sold Brother Cadfael dolls and hand-drawn maps, and the Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, his erstwhile home, featured an entire rack of Brother Cadfael paperbacks in the back of the sanctuary itself.
Susan was extremely amused by that. “That’s great!” she said with a laugh. “Ellis Peters has become a local industry. Boy, I’ll bet Joan Hess wishes they’d sell her books in the Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas! Wait till I tell the fans back home.”
Elizabeth, whose interest in fictional crime was minimal, had to have all this explained to her twice, but she went along uncomplainingly on the one-hour Cadfael walk, provided Sunday morning by a knowledgeable city guide. (The shops were all closed, of course.) Susan, who had read all of Ellis Peters’ work several times, was being her usual tiresome self, embellishing all the guide’s remarks with plot summaries of each of the books. At one point Alice MacKenzie was heard to murmur that a reenactment of a Brother Cadfael murder wouldn’t come amiss. She was looking pointedly in Susan’s direction at the time.
That afternoon, many of the group took walks of their own along the Meole Brooke (now called the Rea Brook) or up to the castle overlooking the River Severn. The weather was still more warm and fair than anyone had a right to expect in an English autumn. By now they were quite spoiled by their good fortune and were taking it for granted.
Elizabeth spent the afternoon writing more letters and examining her map to see what real murder sites lay on tomorrow’s route. She had found Shrewsbury disappointingly peaceful and law-abiding. As she looked over the names on the map, one quite near Oxford struck a familiar chord: Cumnor.
“Amy Robsart!” whispered Elizabeth. In addition to her true crime addiction, she had taken to reading the novels of Sir Walter Scott, as an homage to her newly adopted homeland. In Kenilworth she had discovered a sixteenth-century mystery that seemed to implicate Queen Elizabeth herself. Her latter-day namesake took her collection of crime books out of her suitcase and began to search for an account of the mysterious death at Cumnor Place. In the third book she found an article on it, and soon she was happily engrossed in real medieval intrigue.