Frances kept her eyes on Mrs Antrobus but heard Cornelius utter a groan. She pressed relentlessly on. ‘Your guilt of the other two murders – or possibly three, as I suspect that Mr Henderson’s Aunt Lily was hurried to her death so she could not reveal what she saw – cannot be proved, but it might make a difference to your fate if you were to confess to them. Will you do so?’
Both Frances and Harriett looked at Sharrock. ‘I can’t make any guarantees,’ said the Inspector, ‘but if this lady was to confess to a catalogue of crimes so horrible that no one would think a woman would even be capable of them, then she might well be able to convince a court that she is someone who can’t tell right from wrong.’
Harriett rose gracefully from her chair and went to sit at her desk, then took a fresh pen, ink and a sheaf of paper. ‘I will write it all down.’
‘Does Miss Doughty have it right?’ Sharrock asked her.
Harriett smiled calmly. ‘She does, except in one respect. Robert did not blackmail me concerning the location of Edwin’s body. He himself did not know where it was, and neither do I.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Cornelius. ‘Is your husband dead?’
‘I expect so, yes,’ said the would-be widow, without a trace of emotion.
He looked appalled. ‘You seem not to mind.’
‘I mind not knowing.’
‘I think I might be able to guess at what happened,’ said Frances. ‘Since Mr Barfield was unable to walk fast on his injured leg, he would have found it hard to commit murder in the street or in any place where his victim could run away. He had to get him in a small space, a hotel room perhaps, but Mr Antrobus didn’t trust him enough to agree to a private meeting. Barfield attacked him on the train, didn’t he? And he was very strong in the arms and upper body, so he would have prevailed. Did he throw Mr Antrobus from the train?’
Harriet nodded, her pen moving smoothly, without pause. ‘So he said.’
‘And you both simply had to wait and hope that the body was found, but it never was.’
‘That can’t be right,’ objected Sharrock. ‘The track was searched, but nothing was found.’
‘You were looking for a man who might had fallen from the train,’ Frances reminded him. ‘If he was pushed by someone very strong the body might not have landed on the track.’ Frances searched the bookcases in the room and found a directory with a railway map. ‘Did he say whereabouts on the journey it happened?’
‘Robert was always a coward in such things,’ said Harriett disapprovingly. ‘He was still very shaken when he came to see me and confessed that he had not thought to make a note of the location until it was too late. All he could tell me was that the train had been travelling for at least half an hour out of Bristol and had not yet arrived at Reading.’
‘I suppose fifty miles of railway is better than a hundred,’ grunted Sharrock. ‘It’ll be a long job, mind.’
Cornelius was visibly trembling as he went to stand by Mrs Antrobus, who continued to write unconcerned. ‘And is Charlotte innocent? Tell me that!’
The pen flowed swiftly on. ‘She is innocent of murder.’
‘And the other thing? Please tell me she is innocent of that also!’ he begged.
‘You must ask her yourself. She will tell you the truth.’
Frances saw her kind uncle’s face crumple with grief.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
So,’ said Dr Goodwin, when Frances paid him a visit a week later, ‘they have found the body at last.’
It was a happier occasion than when they had last met, and she, the doctor and young Isaac, who had been released when the charge of murder against him was dropped, were enjoying a pot of tea and some fancy cakes topped with strawberries.
‘They have. The railway men made a thorough search of the line between Bath and Reading, and the police interviewed the farmers. One man with a farm near Didcot had found a hat lying in his field and assumed that it had been blown from the head of a gentleman looking out of a train window. He still had the hat and wore it to church. Mr Antrobus’ hatter was able to identify it. Some bones were found in a deep ditch where the body must have rolled out of sight.’
‘No wisdom teeth, I assume?’
She smiled. ‘Not one. The inquest opened this morning, and the remains have been formally identified as those of Edwin Antrobus. Of course his widow is now in no position to contest the will.’
Dr Goodwin signed the conversation to Isaac, who replied.
‘Isaac says you are the cleverest lady in all Bayswater,’ Goodwin translated. ‘You will also be pleased to hear that he has recently had a very affectionate interview with his mother. Poor lady, she has suffered much, and he has been a great comfort to her.’
‘I was hoping,’ ventured Frances, ‘although this will make no difference now, if you could enlighten me on a number of things. In particular your dealings with Mrs Antrobus.’
‘Ah, yes,’ he said thoughtfully and refreshed his teacup.
‘If you are in any doubt about how much to tell me, my advice is – everything.’
Isaac tapped his father on the shoulder and signed anxiously. Goodwin made a reply. ‘My son hopes that you will not accuse me of anything,’ he told Frances. ‘I have reassured him that I have nothing with which to reproach myself.’
‘I am quite certain that you do not.’
Goodwin sipped his tea thoughtfully and put the cup down in a calm and deliberate fashion. ‘I will conceal nothing from you Miss Doughty, a vain exercise, as so many others have found to their cost. On my last professional visit to Mrs Antrobus, she appealed to me to make her husband understand that her illness was of the ears and not the mind. As she requested, I spoke to him again, but he adamantly refused to believe it. His grounds were that she had always attributed the illness to the noise of a firework display, but he was certain that this was untrue. He said that she had imagined noises to be loud before then, and he had persuaded her to attend the display with him to prove that it was all in her mind, but soon after it began she said that the noise was too much and retired indoors. There was one firework that exploded close to the ground, but she was not present at the time and he had told her about it afterwards.
‘I suggested to Mr Antrobus that even if the fireworks were not the cause of her hyperacusis it could have been another event that she had not realised was harmful at the time. I described the kinds of noises that have resulted in ear pain for my other patients and he denied she had ever been subjected to any of them except one. The sound of a gunshot.
‘As I said it a look passed across his face, like that of a man who had seen a ghost and was struck with horror. I thought that he must have taken her shooting and had discharged a gun close by and suddenly saw that her affliction was his own fault. I asked if he went shooting, and he said no but his late uncle had. I tried to question him further but he was obviously distressed and would tell me no more.
‘The next day I received a letter from Mrs Antrobus asking if I might meet her at Kensal Green. I did so and we discussed my conversation with her husband. She mentioned the death of Mr Henderson and admitted to me that she had been in the room when he had shot himself. She said she had been so frightened that she had rushed out of the study and hidden in the bathroom. Her husband, she said, was now accusing her of having shot Mr Henderson in order that he might inherit his fortune. She told me that her husband treated her cruelly and she almost wished that he would suffer some accident and expire but providence had not granted her wish. She said that all she wanted was to be happy and share her fortune with a man who would be kind to her. She wept a great deal, but I have seen her weep many times before, and I believe she may do it at will, without emotion. I have encountered people before who have this singular ability.’