Kitty, Mélanie had to admit, was excellent with the children. She pulled out a book of fairy tales and read to them and had even Catherine laughing as she did various voices and added fanciful embroidered details.
"Children are resilient," Roth said, as he and Mélanie left the schoolroom where the children were with Kitty and Miss Bentley.
"Wonderfully so. They'll manage if their mother recovers. If she doesn't—" Mélanie frowned down the passage. Scenes from her own childhood danced in her memory. "One learns to cope. But the scars remain."
Roth nodded. He was raising his own sons without their mother. But losing both parents was very different from losing one.
"There's little more to be learned here today, I think," he said. "I've questioned all the household, and we've searched thoroughly. But I'll stay until the guards Malcolm engaged arrive." He hesitated a moment, gaze going to the door of Annabel's bedchamber. "One gets to know a victim in the course of an investigation. So often I'm filled with regret that I couldn't do more. To have the victim alive, and in danger, gives one hope. And adds to the fear of failing."
"You're not the sort who fails, Jeremy."
"We all do, sometimes. Difficult to untangle the threads of an investigation. Sometimes the pieces aren't there."
They moved to the stairhead and started down the stairs to hear voices from the passage below. Bridget and Gregory and a woman's voice Mélanie didn't recognize. Mélanie and Roth reached the first-floor landing to find a tall woman in a lavender traveling pelisse and bonnet standing with Bridget and Gregory. "But I don't understand. Annabel just—"
She broke off and looked up at Mélanie and Roth as they descended the last of the stairs. She had blue eyes and light brown hair and delicate features that bore a marked resemblance to Annabel's own. "Who are you and what's happened to my sister?"
Bridget's gaze darted to Mélanie. "Mrs. Durbridge. Mrs. Larimer's sister. " It wasn't usual for servants to introduce the upper orders to each other, but convention had fallen by the wayside, as so often happened in investigations. "Mrs. Rannoch and Inspector Roth."
"I've just come from Shropshire," Mrs. Durbridge said. "I hear my sister is ill? There's a doctor here?"
"I'm afraid your sister was attacked," Mélanie said. "I'm so sorry, there's no way to say this easily, but we have every hope she will recover. Perhaps we could go into the sitting room. Bridget—"
"I'll make more tea," Bridget said.
"The children—" Mrs. Durbridge took a step towards the stairs.
"They're fine," Mélanie assured her. "They're upstairs with Miss Bentley."
As they moved to the sitting room, Roth exchanged a quick look with Mélanie, ceding it to her to tell the story. A matter of both class and gender, perhaps. Mrs. Durbridge sat bolt upright on the edge of the settee and listened in silence, blue eyes wide with shock, straight brows knotted with concentration. "Dear God. Someone broke into the house—"
"Your sister may have let the attacker in," Roth said. "Though he—we believe it to be a man—appears to have jumped from the sitting room window."
"So you think it was someone she knew." Mrs. Durbridge gripped her hands, still gloved, tightly together in her lap. Her voice held a note of horror, but not, somehow, the shock Mélanie would have expected.
"Do you know if your sister had any enemies?" Mélanie said.
It was a usual question of relatives in an investigation and usually met with flat denial, even if the person in question had in fact had a number of enemies. But Mrs. Durbridge's brows drew tighter together. She pulled off her gloves and then reached up to tug loose the ribbons on her bonnet. "I came to London because I had a letter from Annabel. I don't make the journey often. My husband is a vicar, and there are so many things to be done in the parish, fêtes and bazaars and visits to the hospital. And if it's not that, one of our four children always seems to be recovering from an illness or sprains an ankle or breaks an arm."
"I only have two," Mélanie said. "But I know precisely what you mean."
Mrs. Durbridge lifted her bonnet from her head. She had honey brown hair, several shades paler than Annabel's, and smooth where Annabel's was wavy. "Our youngest is getting over the mumps, but my husband insisted I come when I got Annabel's letter last week. She asked me to promise Tom and I would look after the children should anything happen to her."
Mélanie exchanged a quick glance with Roth. "Did she say why?"
"No. It was so odd. Annabel was always a very sensible person, for all she's much more adventurous than I am. When Philip died she didn't seem particularly concerned about the children only having one parent left. I couldn't make out if she was ill or feared some danger, but Tom and I agreed something was wrong and I needed to talk to her. If I'd come sooner—"
"People always say that when there's a tragedy." Mélanie leaned across the tea table to put a hand on Mrs. Durbridge's arm. "One can never know what might have happened. The important thing is you're here now. And we have every hope that your sister will recover. We need to learn who did this to prevent any further danger to her or her children."
"Yes, but—"
Mrs. Durbridge broke off as Bridget came in with the tea. She asked Mélanie to pour and then took a grateful sip of the sugar-laced tea Mélanie gave her. "Annabel could always take care of herself. I used to tell myself that, which was reassuring because she would take risks I never would, from climbing the trees in Mr. McTavish's orchard to slipping into one of the squire's parties uninvited to going off to Lisbon in the midst of a war. I always suspected more than half the reason she married Philip was because he was a soldier and offered a life of adventure." She bit her lip.
"It's all right," Mélanie said. "It's the sort of detail we need to know. And you must know your sister better than anyone."
"Not really." Mrs. Durbridge curled her hands round her cup. "I mean, when we were girls I suppose we were confidantes, in a way. We were the only two in the nursery and schoolroom, after all. But it's more than ten years since she married Philip and went to live abroad. And even when they returned to England, we didn't see them that much. They were in London and we were in Shropshire. We wrote regularly, but our lives were so different. Annabel and I were always so different. I used to think it was because our mothers —" She broke off.
"Mrs. Larimer is your half-sister?" Mélanie said in the silence that followed.
"No." Mrs. Durbridge set her cup down, as though suddenly afraid it might burn her. "From my earliest memories she was my sister. We shared a nursery, the world knew us as sisters. We called our parents Mama and Papa. I was fifteen before I learned the truth, and I've trained myself not to speak of it. And in truth, I told myself it didn't matter. That Annabel was my sister in every way that counted. But I think you need to know. Because it could have something to do with whatever's happened to her." She clasped her hands in her lap. "Mama told us when I was fifteen and Annabel fourteen. Annabel was actually the daughter of my mother's cousin Catherine. Neither of us had ever met Catherine, because she had died young, but we knew she and my mother had been very close, almost like sisters. She always referred to her cousin as our Aunt Cathy. Aunt Cathy had made a very advantageous marriage to a young barrister with prospects. He received a knighthood before they had been long married. She died only a few years later. What we didn't know was that she had died in childbirth." Mrs. Durbridge hesitated a moment. "She already had three children, but this baby was not her husband's."
Mrs. Durbridge clasped her hands together. Her fingers closed on her own wedding band. "It's a common enough story. She had an unfortunate indiscretion and the baby could not possibly be her husband's. She went away to have the baby in secret. My mother went with her, with the plan for Mama to bring back the baby as her own. Which she did. She said Papa knew about the plan, and they both thought of Annabel as their daughter from the moment she was born."
"Did your mother know who Annabel's biological father was?" Mélanie asked.
"No. At least she told Annabel and me she didn't know, though there was money he had provided for her, which Annabel came into on her twenty-first birthday. When Mama told us the story, Annabel was quite grown up about it and said his identity didn't matter because she knew who her father was. Later I asked her if she really meant that. She said she knew who her real parents were and she hoped I didn't mind sharing them. To which I said, 'Rot, of course you're my sister.' Then Annabel said she was sorry she hadn't met the woman who gave birth to her, but she didn't think much of a man who got a young woman with child and abandoned her, so perhaps it was as well she didn't know the man who had fathered her. We didn't talk about it much after that. Mama made it clear we weren't to speak of it outside the family. She didn't want gossip to hurt Annabel's prospects. Once, a couple of years later, when Annabel was having one of her rebellious moments, Annabel said perhaps she was more like her biological parents than anyone credited. But even then I don't think she really was trying to find her father. She never asked any questions that I knew of."
"What about her mother's husband?" Mélanie asked. "How much did he know?"
"According to my mother, he didn't know any of it," Mrs. Durbridge said. She drew a sharp breath. "She said he was busy with his work and thought Aunt Cathy and Mama had gone off to the country. He went on to a very distinguished career. He's chief justice of the common pleas now."
"Sir William Collingwood," Mélanie said. "I didn't realize."
"He's in London and moves in different circles from us, but we saw him occasionally growing up. He remarried after Aunt Cathy died and has quite a large family, but his three older children are our cousins." Mrs. Durbridge drew a breath. "Though, of course, they're actually Annabel's brothers and sister."
"Do they know the truth?" Mélanie asked.
"No. At least Mama said they didn't, and they've never given any indication that they do. Annabel said she couldn't think of them as anything but cousins."
"Was anyone in your aunt's biological family left who might know about Mrs. Larimer's parentage?" Roth asked. "Parents, siblings?"
Mrs. Durbridge reached for her tea. "Aunt Cathy's mother—Annabel's grandmother—had died when Aunt Cathy was young. Her father was still alive when Annabel was born, but not by the time Annabel learned the truth. Aunt Cathy had one brother, our Uncle Clarence. Mama said he didn't know about Annabel. Annabel said he already felt like our uncle so it didn't really make a difference. I did once or twice catch her asking him more about Aunt Cathy. But from his manner on answering her, I'd swear he didn't know. Doesn't know."
"Do you have any reason to think she might have been wondering about her father more recently?" Mélanie asked.
Mrs. Durbridge's brows drew together. "No. She hasn't said anything about it. But then, I hadn't seen her since July. Do you think her parentage has something to do with why she was attacked?"
"You did," Mélanie said. "It's why you told us."
Mrs. Durbridge took a quick sip of tea. "It's a secret. The one secret I knew Annabel had."
"Were there others you suspected but weren't sure of?" Mélanie asked.
Mrs. Durbridge's shoulders straightened, pulling at the seams of her pelisse. "That's an odd question. Why should I suspect my sister had secrets?'
"I think we all wonder it from time to time about the people we're close to. A fleeting thought, perhaps, but then, in the wake of a tragedy like this, those imaginings gain substance."
Mrs. Durbridge curled her hands round her cup. "I told you Annabel and I were very different. She married Philip and went off to follow the drum. Or at least to live abroad. I married a curate who was fortunate enough to become a vicar. Of course we shared babies and colic and scraped knees and fevers and we wrote to each other about all those things. But I don't know a great deal about her life since she left home."
Mélanie reached for her own tea. "Philip Larimer died some time ago. Do you have any reason to think your sister had been interested in another man in that time?"
Mrs. Durbridge drew a breath, but she did not, as Mélanie half expected, protest that her sister "had been a respectable woman." "If so, she didn't confide in me. When we were girls we shared those sorts of secrets. But when one is grown up things become more complicated."
Mélanie exchanged a look with Roth, then got to her feet and retrieved the letter Malcolm had found. "My husband found this concealed in a picture on Mrs. Larimer's desk. Do you have any idea who might have written it? Or when?"
Mrs. Durbridge scanned the letter quickly, frowned, read it again. "You think she received this recently?"
"We have no way of knowing when she received it," Mélanie said. "It could go back to before her marriage. Or even during her marriage."
Again, Mrs. Durbridge did not betray the shock she might have. "It's not Philip's handwriting. But I suppose you already know that. As a girl, she was smitten by a young officer stationed in the village. I don't think this is from him either." She smoothed the paper. "I said I thought Annabel married Philip at least in part because he offered a life of adventure. Or seemed to. She wasn't unhappy. She was fond of him. But I don't think her affections were engaged the way mine were when I married Tom. The way mine are." She flushed, fingers gripping the letter.
"There are many reasons for marrying," Mélanie said. "And whyever one marries, one's affections can proceed in different ways afterwards."
"She never told me—" Mrs. Durbridge drew a breath. "She never put it into words or in her letters. But a few years after she went to the Peninsula, she made some comments about being unexpectedly happy. Then, about a year ago, we were watching our daughters play and she said her hopes for Catherine were different now. That she had a glimmering of what marriage might be if one loved the person. She wasn't talking about Philip, but she also wasn't talking about the present. I almost asked her if there had been someone in the Peninsula. There was a time when I would have asked her. But being apart all those years leaves its mark, however much one writes. And confidences seem more weighted as one grows older." She looked from Mélanie to Roth. "Surely if it was someone in the Peninsula—"
"Many people in the Peninsula are back in London now," Roth said. "I fought there myself."
"Yes, but what she hinted at was definitely in the past. At least, it seemed to be a year ago when we spoke." A spasm of horror crossed Mrs. Durbridge's face. "You think she was attacked by a man she loved?"
"It could have been because of their involvement without his being the attacker," Mélanie said.
"It's a dreadful thought. But, on the other hand, if it was someone connected to her father—why attack Annabel because of whoever had fathered her?"
"That would depend on who her father is," Mélanie said.
"I've always assumed her father was married," Mrs. Durbridge said. "Though I suppose he may not have been, at least, not then. Aunt Cathy wasn't in a position to marry him. I could see his wanting to keep the secret, but why would he or anyone attack Annabel over it?"
"There could be any number of reasons," Roth said. "If her father knew about her, there could be an inheritance involved. You said he settled money on her."
"Yes, but he never met her or our parents."
Mélanie leaned forwards to refill the teacups. "You don't know that for a certainty. They didn't know his identity, but if he settled money on Annabel, he very likely knew or guessed what had become of her. He could have received reports, could even have managed to see her without any of you knowing who he was."
"Good God." Mrs. Durbridge stared at the muslin subcurtains as though the gauzy depths might reveal some clue to the man who had fathered her sister.
"Even if he never met your sister, he may well have been aware of her," Roth said. "He settled money on her, so he must have been a man of some means. It's certainly possible he also left her an inheritance. In which case, his other heirs may have seen her as a threat."
Mrs. Durbridge stared at him. "You mean her half-brothers or sisters."
"Perhaps. If her father had other children."
Mrs. Durbridge shook her head. "I can scarcely make sense of this happening to Annabel at all. And if it was done by someone connected to a man she loved, or her biological father—"
"Very often crimes are committed by someone close to the victim," Mélanie said. "But there could be other reasons." Such as Annabel's having been an agent, but Mélanie wasn't quite ready to share that with Annabel's sister yet.
Not until she learned what Malcolm had learned from Harry.