CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Two Lies and a Truth
“I know you dare not, you must not speak to me.”
Bury, Charlotte, The Diary of a Lady-in-Waiting
When Adam reached the Pooles’ house and asked for William Considen, he was not taken to the library. Instead, he was shown upstairs to the family rooms and a sunny, well-aired apartment with dark paneling and sturdy furnishings. William Considen was on his feet and gripping the edge of a round table to help hold himself upright.
“So. You’ve come for me now.” The words fell from him, heavy and rough.
“I am here to ask if you will speak to me about your brother-in-law’s murder,” said Adam.
Considen gave a snort, which turned into a cough. He pressed a handkerchief against his mouth. When he pulled it away, Adam saw specks of red on the white muslin.
“Sit,” said Considen curtly as he lowered himself into a round-backed chair. “What do you want to know?”
“Where he was the morning he died.”
“We’ve told you, he wasn’t home. He spent the night at the White Swan.”
Adam said nothing.
“Are you calling me a liar, sir?” Considen demanded. “Are you calling my sister a liar?”
Adam said nothing.
Considen curled his fingers around his handkerchief. There was blood on his lip, Adam noted, and specks on the table. Whatever ailed him, it was squeezing him more tightly now. And yet something was missing. He was sure of it.
“Will you tell me about that morning?” Adam asked.
“No, I will not,” Considen growled.
“Very well.” Adam bowed. “I thank you for your time.” He turned to leave.
He was almost to the door when the other man spoke.
“Wait.”
Adam turned.
“Sit down.” Considen was wiping his hands with the kerchief now and dabbing at his mouth. “Please.”
Adam did as requested.
“I don’t remember what it is to be healthy, you know,” Considen told him. “Not really. I’ve been ill for so long. But once, I was as good a man as any.” He held up his hand to show Adam the scars. “I held my own in a race or a fight. Whatever was called for.
“When Melora eloped, I argued with our parents that they should forgive her and should welcome her husband. I tried to remind them his only crime was being born without family. But they refused to listen, and I thought I had done all I could. I had a future of my own to attend to. I had been hired by a manufactory in Manchester and was learning the business of wool trading. I was set to be rich. And then it all fell apart.”
Adam waited.
“The manufactory failed, and I was forced to come home and stay there. Invalid. Infantilized. Stowed in a back room, my father barely able to look at me. When Melora came home, we clung together, for the sake of her broken heart and my broken life. She swore she’d find us a way out. And she did.”
“Poole?”
Considen nodded. “I was part of the bargain—my bed and board, my endless doctors. Trips to Switzerland in the summer for the pure air and yet more doctors. She stayed with him and did everything he asked, and tried her best to get him received into society on a sound footing. But none of it was enough. She knows how the world works. She must have known it would fall apart eventually. Who was she, after all? A disgraced daughter of a failed family who had sold herself to a universally detested man.” He shook his head. “But she kept on. She said she would not let either of us fall into poverty again.”
Adam waited.
“All this is to say, yes, she lied about where Poole was that morning, and I lied to help her, and Letitia lied because . . . Well, I don’t know. I choose to believe it’s because she likes Melora, at least a little. Melly certainly tried to be a friend to the girl and help her be what her father wanted while holding on to some part of herself . . .” His hand tightened around the bloody kerchief again.
“But we all did it because we knew that no matter what happened, it would not look good for Melly to have a second husband dead on the doorstep.”
There are better lies you could have told, thought Adam. But he remained silent. It was plain Considen was lonely as well as grieving. He wished to talk, and Adam was content to let him.
“I told Melly it would not really delay any inquiries. We quarreled over it. She reminded me of how long she had cared for me, and begged me not to ruin all her hard work. The care of me and Letitia and the children was all she had, she said. Her only proof that the world had not beaten her.”
“Will you tell me what happened that morning?”
Considen stared down at his hands for a long moment. What was missing? Adam let his gaze wander, looking for the thing out of place.
“Poole came home that night and ate a hearty supper,” Considen said. “He was in an excellent mood. He even joked with me that I might this time be sent away to Switzerland for good.” He snorted, then coughed.
“His sense of humor had an edge to it,” Adam remarked.
“Oh, yes. And a sharp one,” Considen agreed. “He quizzed Melora about the progress of the plans for Letitia’s wedding. Said she must make sure everything was the absolute best. She warned him the bills were mounting, and he told her not to worry. It was all taken care of.”
So she knew they were spending beyond their means, and so did he.
“I wasn’t able to sit at the table any longer than that. I went . . . I was taken to bed. I slept some and then woke in the small hours, as I frequently do, and I went downstairs. I spend so much time shut up in one room.” He glanced about him. “Sometimes I can no longer bear it. It was perhaps five o’clock. The dawn was just beginning. Poole bounced down the stairs, bustled out the door without sparing me a word, and was gone. We never saw him again.” He dragged in a deep, ragged breath. “That, Mr. Harkness, is what happened that morning.”
“Did you wake a servant to bring you downstairs?” Adam asked him.
“No. I still have that much life in me, especially after a rest.”
“And how did Mrs. Poole spend the rest of her morning?”
“She and Letitia spent it closeted with a modiste, to order her wedding clothes. I was in here, for the most part, until you arrived.”
“What of the maid, Judith?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Judith. The chambermaid. She was most devoted to Mr. Poole, I believe. Do you know where she was that morning?”
“You can’t suspect that slip of a girl of having anything to do . . . Do you think he was . . . God! What a mind you must have!”
Considen was not the first man to make that observation. Before Adam could say as much, the door opened, and Lizzie, white faced and uncertain, appeared on the threshold.
“If you please.” She bobbed her curtsy. “A gentleman downstairs for Mr. Harkness.”
Considen frowned. So did Adam, but he got to his feet, and his host waved him away.
Inwardly, Adam cursed the interruption. Considen would send for his sister at once, he would tell her the whole of their conversation, and she would . . .
She would plan. She would decide. She would insist on what was to be said.
But then he looked past Lizzie, down the stairs, and into the foyer and saw who was standing there, and every other thought left his mind.
Because it was George Littlefield, looking as sick and grim as if the world had come to an end.