Page 81 of Corpse in the Canal

“I’ll come back in an hour or so,” he promised.

Solomon closed his eyes. The laudanum she had just given him would be making him sleepy. “Do you think Owens knows who did it?”

“I don’t think he wants to know. It’s one thing, someone shooting Percy—who may, after all, have deserved it, according to some—but this makes life too uncomfortable.” His eyes snapped open. “I don’t want you looking, Constance. Stay away from that wood until…” He trailed off as though losing his train of thought.

“Dr. Owens was right about one thing,” she said. “We have stirred someone to drastic action, but it’s not against strangers. It must have been against something we’ve asked or found out…”

She thought about that while she held Solomon’s hand and watched him drift off to sleep. It was easier to concentrate on the case than on those excruciating feelings when Solomon first fell and she’d thought he was dead. But there was also the warning to be considered. Whether the shot had been intended purely to warn them off or to kill, it imbued everything with a sense of urgency. Time was running out to find the killer before whoever that had been tried again to get rid of the people trying to send him—or her—to the gallows.

She wished she had her notes to help order her thoughts. In their absence, she went over in her mind everything they had learned and who had told them what. And a picture was emerging.

Percy had ridden from London, bypassed his own home, and dodged through the woods to make for Dare Hall unseen, no doubt with mischievous intent, to call it no worse. There, near the top of the hill, he had been shot, probably loaded onto the murderer’s vehicle, and wheeled down to the canal, some time before five o’clock, when West had flooded the lock chamber for Fred Baines’s boat.

Everett had been out and about but didn’t appear to have much motive. George West had more motive but had been at the lock. Adelaide might well have motive. No one saw her at her books all afternoon. She could have gone for a walk and run into Percy and been obliged to defend herself. It made the most sense, except Constance was inclined to believe her. She just wished she knew what the woman was keeping back. And what had Mrs. Harvey been about when she had been seen that afternoon?

They now had another chance of witnesses, of course. Who had an alibi for the shooting of Solomon?

After a couple of hours of listening to every tiny change in his breathing and staring at the bandage around his head for signs of any more blood leaking through it, she found she no longer feared his sudden death. So when David entered the room, she gave him her chair beside the bed and put on her hat and coat.

“Where are you going?” David asked, frowning.

“To the wood. The shooter might have left a clue.”

“Percy’s killer didn’t,” David pointed out, frowning with sudden alarm. “You shouldn’t go alone.”

Constance widened her eyes and batted her lashes. “I’m no threat, am I? I’m just his wife, the secretary.”

David grinned. “There’s nothing ‘just’ about you, Constance. Why don’t you wait until later, when I can come with you?”

Because it will be dark, because even longer will have passed, because it’s going to rain very soon, because one of us has to stay with Solomon. She smiled. “I shan’t be long.”

She slipped out of the house without anyone else challenging her and walked down toward the canal. As she came to the place where Solomon had fallen, her heart rose into her mouth, like an echo of the panic that had consumed her then. She had seen and heard nothing threatening, except that half-glimpsed movement at the corner of her eye as she’d been distracted by David’s approach, the instant before the shot sounded. When Solomon woke, she must ask him if he remembered anything about those moments…

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. There was no one around in any direction, but only the trees provided any cover. Standing exactly where Solomon had been, she touched her temple, imagining the trajectory of the bullet, then followed it toward the trees. She walked quickly, searching constantly for any movement about, any splash of color, or glint of metal…

Foolish. It was cloudy. And in any case, the shooter would have fled long since. Surely he would not dare come back, for fear of the constable or the magistrate… In fact, Constance’s note to the Harveys had said only that there had been an accident and that Solomon was injured, not how it had happened. It hadn’t been a conscious decision, just an instinct to give no information to anyone, as if everyone were a suspect. He’d know now, of course. Word would have gotten out.

As she walked, she alternated between searching the ground and searching ahead. She looked back frequently to make sure she was still following roughly the correct angle to where Solomon had been standing. She kicked up the leaves to see if they had been used to cover any kind of trail.

Had Solomon heard something that had drawn his attention? The cocking of a gun? The crackle of leaves as someone moved through the wood? The shooter, surely, could not have been so very far back to have hit Solomon. Another inch to the right…

She would not think of that. It chilled her blood. Already, she held her arm across her stomach as though protecting the unborn baby inside her, the baby she had so inexplicably feared. It seemed she had just been growing used to its presence, worrying too much, as though she and Solomon had no room to love their child as well as each other. Now that seemed almost laughable. This miracle within her was everything, and not just because it was partly Solomon. Somehow, it had become a beloved being in its own right.

It even comforted her. She would not risk the child by walking into danger, so there could be none. She certainly felt none.

She paused and glanced back again to the spot where Solomon had been standing, and as she moved, a splash of color caught her eye. Almost at the path, stuck through a sharp, broken twig at about the level of her hip, was a piece of fabric.

She went toward it and crouched down. From here, there was no clear shot to where Solomon had been. Trees were in the way. But it could have been torn off as the shooter fled back toward the path afterward… Or before, as he had stalked his prey.

He. She glanced back at the piece of fine, blue-patterned woolen cloth. No, this had not come from a man’s garment. It was from a woman’s gown, and she had seen the color and the pattern before.

“Adelaide,” she whispered.

Adelaide, who had been so breathless when she greeted them on the doorstep of Dare Hall. Almost as though she had been running… She could easily have made it back to the house ahead of David’s gig, though not without rushing.

Constance snatched the torn cloth from its twig and straightened. She had thought she might try to speak to their other suspects, West and Everett, to establish where they were when Solomon was shot. Now, she only had one, desperate, urgent thought—to get back to Dare Hall, where she had abandoned Solomon.

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