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She hurt.
All over.
Her head most of all.
Her eyes when light struck them.
Her side.
Her head.
Her whole body.
“She’s coming back to us,” a man said. “She was extremely lucky that she didn’t fall all the way, not even the whole flight.”
Lucky. I don’t feel lucky. Then she remembered the stairs and that strong shove. Yes, I am lucky.
She flinched when someone lifted an eyelid. Light flashed, and she cringed. Mercifully, they released her eyelid.
Isabella wanted to sink back into oblivion where nothing hurt, but she couldn’t.
The presence beside her moved. Another took its place. “Bella? Bella, open your eyes.”
Anyone besides Madoc she would have ignored. For him, she strained and opened her eyelids to mere slits.
“That’s my sweet.”
“Hurt,” she complained.
“I know. You’re okay, sweet. Nothing’s broken, and you weren’t out long, thank God. You fell down the stairs.”
“Pushed.”
“What?”
She didn’t feel like saying it again. “Pushed.”
“Dammit. Who? Wainwright, get in here. She says she was pushed.”
“No,” someone—that first voice interfered. “She needs to rest. I’m going to give her something for pain as soon as she’s alert.”
“Get her awake only to knock her out? I don’t think so, Doctor.”
She recognized the inspector. The first voice must be Dr. Venture. She wanted Madoc. “Madoc?” she whispered.
A warm hand immediately gripped her cold one. “I’m here, Bella. I’ve got you. Who did this?”
“Didn’t see.” Her eyelids fluttered. She got them open to fill her gaze with Madoc. “Didn’t see,” she said more strongly. “I saw my sketch. The rolled one.”
“We found it,” Wainwright said. “Whoever pushed you must have planted it to set a trap. Callaway’s working to find out who was unaccounted for.”
She closed her eyes and turned her head. She hissed as even that small movement hurt.
“She needs something for pain,” the doctor insisted.
“No.” She breathed. “Don’t. . .knock me out.”
“I have to agree with her,” Wainwright said. “Just dull the pain. Miss Newcombe, I’ll come back to you in half an hour. Captain, keep her safe.”
“I won’t leave her side, Colonel.”
When he left, a needle stabbed into her arm, a minor pain compared to all the others. Gradually, pain slackened its grip, but she felt like she was sliding off whatever she was on. Muzzy-headed, she tried to keep track, but at some point Madoc became Gawen, became Cecilia, then became Madoc again. She remembered Wainwright coming back. She didn’t remember his questions or her answers. A window got black. The doctor returned. She knew because he flashed light in her eyes again then jabbed her again. She didn’t care. She lay still, clutching Madoc’s hand, soaking in the warmth emanating from his body, close to her but not quite touching, and eventually she sank back into blackness.
. ~ . ~ . ~ .
Tuesday, 30 December
Another needle jab woke her. She flinched away and shut her eyes tightly. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
“I think she’s back with us,” Dr. Venture said.
“Bella?”
For Madoc, she opened her eyes.
He leaned over her. “Bella my love. Thank God.”
She tried to lift her hand. It hurt. She persevered and touched his chin before letting her hand drop back to the soft mattress. He closed his eyes briefly then slid off the bed. “Stay,” she asked.
“I’m not leaving. Can she get up?”
“Take it slowly,” the doctor allowed. “No long expeditions. Negotiating the stairs will be difficult, but she can manage it if she wants to. It might be interesting when the person who pushed her sees that she’s still lucid.” He picked up his black medical bag. “If anything hurts more than anything else, a sharp pain or any swelling, ring me immediately. Miss Newcombe, I might claim you as a medical success if I’d done anything.”
“Doctor, thank you.”
He nodded and strode out. Madoc folded his arms. “I warn you now, so don’t even ask. We’re not going downstairs.”
“May I sit up?”
He was leaning her against pillows when Cecilia burst in. “Yes! You’re awake.”
“And lucid, according to Dr. Venture. But starving.”
“I’ll tell the kitchen,” Madoc offered. “Do you have a preference?”
“A boiled egg, dry toast, marmalade. And coffee, lashings and lashings of coffee.”
“Stay with her, Cecilia. She’s stiff and slow.”
“No one will drag me away.” She re-positioned the vanity chair beside the bed. “I’m glad you’re back with us.”
“Help me to the bathroom, Cess. I want to wash.”
“Madoc wants you to stay in bed.”
“I want to wash,” she insisted.
Their progress was slow. The bathroom with its tiled floor and porcelain and the weak sunshine through the uncurtained window chilled her.
“He didn’t leave your side,” Cecilia said as Isabella splashed water on the floor and didn’t care. “I would call him frantic until you came around the first time.”
“Do I remember seeing you last evening?”
“I came in to collect a few things. Madoc wouldn’t let anyone in the room but Gawen and Dr. Venture. Not even Inspector Wainwright. Very protective.”
Isabella supposed that funny flip of her heart shouldn’t cause a glow. “Extreme.”
“Cautious. Wisely so. What happened? He told the inspector that you said you were pushed.”
“I had sketched the murder scene, but I lost it. Or someone took it.” She stared into the mirror. Dark circles made her eyes look sunken. A bruise colored one side of her face, all along her cheek and jaw. More bruises covered her arms and torso and legs. “Anyway, the stolen sketch was on the landing. When I bent to pick it up, someone pushed me.”
“Lucky girl.”
“Very much so.” Moving slowly, she washed her bruised body and legs.
“Did anyone pick up that sketch?”
The memory was fuzzy, but it did surface. “Inspector Wainwright did. What have I missed?” But she shivered as she asked it.
“Look at you, covered with chill bumps. I’ll bring your nightgown and robe, then I’ll freshen up your bed.”
Madoc returned before she had finished washing. When she emerged from the bathroom, shivering in her flannel gown, he hovered outside the door, and the maid was coming with her breakfast tray.
“You should have waited for me.”
“Not likely,” she retorted then hissed when shutting the door twinged several sore muscles. “Let me walk. The soreness will work out faster if I move.”
He did help her onto the bed which Cecilia had re-made. She had also sacrificed her pillow. The maid positioned the tray over her legs, poured coffee from a vacuum flask similar to the one that the men took for the shooting party. Madoc buttered her bread. Not finding anything else to do, he dropped into the side chair while Cecilia took the vanity chair, and Isabella began working her slow way through breakfast.
“What time is it?” she asked when Madoc poured her second cup of coffee.
“Around 11. Feeling better?”
“Almost like my old self. What have I missed?”
“More interviews but with fewer people.” Cecilia played with the fringe on her scarf. “People who don’t have alibis for the murder. Like me.”
Isabella paused with her last bite of toast inches from her mouth. “You didn’t commit the murder, Cecilia.”
“Apparently I could have if I’d fooled the maid and Gawen by being dressed for the day but pretending to be asleep.”
“And what reason would you have to kill Tommy Gresham?”
“Confession time.” She dropped her gaze. Her hands twisted the scarf’s end.
Isabella remembered a similar stressed action last October, when Cecilia had confessed her husband’s involvement in stealing the dig artifacts. “If you don’t want to tell us—.”
Her gaze lifted. “I’ve told Gawen. Wonder of wonders, he has apparently decided past sins are to be forgiven. He says my unhappiness with Nigel was the root cause. He may very well be right. Logic applied to an emotional problem.” She shrugged then flattened her hands on her thighs, smoothing down the wool hounds-tooth skirt. “The day that I saw Greta in London, the day she invited us there, I also saw Tommy, not a half-hour later. He wanted 500 £s.”
“500—why?”
“He had evidence of an affaire I had last spring. He threatened to reveal it to Nigel’s attorneys. Doing so would make me as guilty of adultery as Nigel was, and a judge might delay our separation and divorce even longer.”
“You don’t have 500 £s,” Isabella said slowly. She finished her toast.
“No, I don’t. But I could have raised it, from my family or a couple of old friends or by raiding Nigel’s bank account. But my lawyers thought it would show my intent to sever all connection with him by not drawing on his monies. That’s one reason I was happy to let you share the flat, Isabella. You help cover the expenses.”
“Blackmail,” Madoc gritted. “Gresham wanted blackmail. Did he not realize your family cut the strings when you initiated the divorce action?”
“He didn’t care. He wanted his 500 £s. He said I had friends who would give it to me, and I could give it to him here. But once we’d arrived, he wanted me to wait. I didn’t push because I still don’t have it. Then, on Sunday after church, he told me to give it to him. To bring it to his room by 4 a.m. But he wasn’t in his room at 4 a.m. or at 6.”
“Because he’d gone to the pub where Buxton’s niece was,” Madoc supplied.
“I thought he would ask for it later in the morning, and then—well, I thought he’d not only ruin things with the judge but also with Gawen.”
“Oh, Cecilia.” Isabella shook her head. No wonder she’d been weeping.
“I know. Then, he’s murdered, Madoc has called Scotland Yard, and a trained inspector will discover the blackmail and the planned meeting and that I didn’t have the money and the reason for the blackmail, and I’ll be sunk. Straight to the bottom of the ocean, that’s me.”
Madoc propped his elbows on his knees. “What friends?”
“What?”
“What friends did Gresham think had money enough to give you 500 £s? Not us. Gawen’s more flush than any of us, but even he would have trouble scraping up that amount. And Gresham wanted it inside of a week. What friends did he expect you to get the cash from?”
“I have wealthy friends,” she protested, but her hands were back to smoothing her wool skirt. “Old friends. Good friends. With money.”
“I haven’t seen or heard of them since we came back to London.”
“I have friends,” she insisted.
He let it drop only to pursue another track. “How did Gresham know about this affaire?”
She twisted in her chair. “This was foolish. We—he and I had the affaire. Last spring.”
Isabella’s cup clattered onto its saucer. “More than foolish. Cecilia—.”
“I know. But I was deeply unhappy. And for a fortnight, I thought Tommy made me happy. Then I realized it was just the excitement of sneaking around.”
“And you confessed all of this to Col. Wainwright?”
“Yes. Your inspector friend. But he already knew about my affaire. Somehow.”
“Mr. Gresham kept a notebook that they found.”
“Or someone else found the notebook and used this information on Cecilia to direct attention away Selena Buxton. Whichever it was, Wainwright released her this morning.”
“I missed more than a lot,” Isabella complained. “Selena Buxton was arrested?”
“Detained. But Wainwright brought her back this morning.”
“What cleared her?”
“I understand someone in the village gave her an alibi for a quarter till nine. She didn’t fit the timeline. Those pistol shots that were close to the house happened just after 9 o’clock. And Wainwright decided she wasn’t the murderer for a couple of other reasons, ones he didn’t share, by the way. He did want me to tell you that the rolled sketch is not substantially different from the drawing you gave him.”
Isabella pushed the bed tray away. “Something’s off with both those drawings. If I could figure out what—.”
Madoc placed a heavy hand on her knee. “Don’t, please. One attempt on your life is all I can stand.”
“Who is the inspector focusing on now that Selena Buxton is cleared?”
“When I came up, he was questioning Mrs. Buxton, with Buxton breathing fire that he would dare suggest his wife could commit any crime.”
Cecilia snorted. “I’m surprised that woman can keep three thoughts together, let alone all the steps needed to commit murder.”
“Steps?”
“Get a gun. Make sure it’s loaded. Plan a meeting.”
“You think Gresham was meeting someone?”
“He had to be. If he left Selena’s bed early then stayed by the pond, that tells me he was waiting on someone.”
Madoc nodded, agreeing with Cecilia’s logic. “What other steps, then, would Mrs. Buxton not be capable of?”
“Get to the meeting without her husband aware. Make sure no one would see. Shoot him. Get away still unseen. Act as if nothing happened. She’s not capable of all that.”
“Why is she not capable?”
“Oh Bella, you are naïve. I’m glad you are, but you do need to be a little more awake to the world. Maureen Buxton is an addict. Cocaine, I think.”
“I am naïve. I never would have guessed.”
“It’s in that pink compact in her purse. I’m surprised you haven’t seen her wet her finger, dip it in, then touch it to her tongue.”
“I’m blind to things like that, remember? I saw none of the signaling between Marilyn Hunstead and Harry Jervis.”
“I like her innocent to the world.”
“Not when it makes her gullible. And I left out a step: the murderer had to ditch the gun. They’ve not found it, have they? That’s my part told.” Cecilia seized the breakfast tray. “I’ll take this out, shall I? Stay abed, Isabella. It’s safer. I need you as a flat-mate, remember? To have enough money to pay any blackmail.”
“What will you do when I go off with Madoc?”
“That’s not for months yet. We’ll look for miracles between now and then.”
