Lady Rights a Wrong Read online

  “What did you observe when you arrived?”

  She forced herself to remember the chaos, the tears, the uncertainty. “Mrs. Price was at the foot of the stairs. Sergeant Dunn and Colonel Havelock were already there, so I sat with Miss Price to see if I could be of any help at all.”

  “Did you know Mrs. Price well?”

  “Not well,” Cecilia answered, though she did feel as if she came to know her more and more all the time now that she was gone. “We had met a few times since she arrived in Danby Village. I did like her.”

  Mr. Lancing frowned. “What sort of person did she seem to you?”

  “She was . . .” Cecilia paused to consider. What sort of person was Amelia Price? What did she really know about her, beyond her public face? “Very energetic, and magnetic. Perhaps not—always practical? Very intelligent.”

  “And she got along with people around her?”

  “I didn’t know her long enough to be able to say. I would imagine that anyone in public life cannot be liked by everyone.” She glanced at Lord Elphin.

  Mr. Lancing gave a discreet little cough. “I should think not indeed. Back to the morning you arrived at Primrose Cottage during the—incident. Did you notice anything odd, out of place?”

  Cecilia shook her head. “I saw that Mrs. Price’s ruby ring was missing, but was told everything else in the household appeared quite as it had when I visited before.” She remembered the papers scattered on the table, the wineglasses. All had indeed looked the same.

  She answered a few more questions, inconsequential things about timing, before stepping down. Mary Winter was called next.

  “Were you close to your mother, Mrs. Winter?” Colonel Havelock asked.

  Mary dabbed at her eyes with a lacy handkerchief. “Not recently, no, I am very sad to say. I don’t agree with her work at all, and it is—was—all she really wanted to talk about.”

  “But you came to visit her here at Danby Village?”

  “Well—yes. She is my mother, after all. She still had a duty to her children, and I had wanted so much to have her more in our lives. Family is so important.”

  Cecilia wondered if that was true. Mary Winter had been apart from her mother for a while; why this yearning for family now, of all times?

  “Was this the first contact with her recently, then?” Mr. Lancing asked.

  Mary’s face twisted. “I—I wrote to her. She didn’t answer.”

  Cecilia remembered those scraps of paper on the table at Primrose Cottage. Could they be from Mary, then? They hadn’t sounded like a search for reconciliation.

  “What did you write to Mrs. Price?”

  “Oh, just expressions of affection. Asking if we could meet soon. Filial devotions, you see. My heart cannot stop loving her, no matter what.”

  Cecilia thought of the letters. Forced to take action . . . hope it does not come to this . . . They didn’t sound like “devotion,” but then no one would admit to threatening a dead woman.

  “Er—quite,” Colonel Havelock said doubtfully. He only had sons; maybe he knew nothing of “filial devotion.” “But you had not seen her in London? Only here in Danby Village?”

  “Yes, that is so. We are so busy in London, you see. Social duties.”

  “And your purpose in seeing Mrs. Price here was only to express your devotion?”

  “Indeed. A vain hope, sadly.” She sniffled and dabbed at her eyes again.

  “When was the last time you saw your mother?”

  “It was the night she—she died.” The sobs came harder. “Though I could not have known it would be the very last!”

  “Indeed not,” Colonel Havelock said kindly. “What did you talk about that night?”

  “Oh—just life things, I suppose. Monty and I called on her at Primrose Cottage after her rally. We spoke of the future, our hopes of seeing each other more often. My hopes that my family could be reconciled. Then we left, I had my cocoa at our lodgings, and I went to bed. It was rather early, but I was quite tired. I was plagued with terrible dreams that night! Perhaps I had a premonition.”

  Cora looked up sharply, and Cecilia wondered if the two of them might come to be rival mediums.

  “And Mr. Winter?” Mr. Lancing asked.

  “He went with me to see Mother. He does urge me to keep the connections with my family, so solicitous of my feelings.”

  “And he retired with you?”

  Mary frowned as if in thought. “No, he usually has a brandy before he retires, and as I said, I was quite tired. He brought me my tea in the morning.”

  “Did your mother seem unhappy in any way that evening? Anxious or melancholy?” Mr. Lancing said.

  “Mother, anxious? Never! She was always as cool as winter snow. I am quite different, you see. I feel things so deeply.”

  Colonel Havelock nodded, and after a few more short questions, Mary was released and Henry Price called. As Mary collapsed in tears on Monty’s shoulder, and he awkwardly patted her back, her father answered a few questions. He looked all that was proper for a purported widower, solemn and serious, careful with his answers, but he could be of very little help. He had not seen his wife for some time and he hardly knew of her activities. He himself had been occupied with his own work much of late and only came to Danby when he heard the sad news. He wanted to be there for his daughters.

  Anne made a little scoffing snort of a noise.

  Mr. Price shot her a narrow-eyed glance. “My wife’s life was not compatible with mine, Colonel, I am sad to say. I knew close to nothing of her friends or activities lately, so I fear I cannot help now. I am sorry it has all come to such a sad place.” He was quickly dismissed, though Cecilia pondered whether or not he was telling the whole truth. Would a man like that really let his wife go on her way, not caring what she did next? And he had arrived in Danby Village shockingly quickly after Amelia’s death.

  Mr. Talbot then took the stand, to speak of the man he thought he saw coming from the direction of Primrose Cottage on the night in question. Yes, he said, it had been too dark to identify him, but he seemed tall and quick, perhaps carrying some sort of sack. Mr. Talbot had been sure to double-lock his shop afterward.

  “Was this possibly the man you saw, Mr. Talbot?” Mr. Lancing gestured to Sergeant Dunn, who quickly left the room and returned leading the thief Georgie Guff. The man looked rumpled and grubby, cringing in the sergeant’s grip, and Cecilia thought he looked like a picture-perfect culprit. When had they brought him in? How did they find him?

  Mr. Talbot adjusted his spectacles and closely studied Mr. Guff. “I could not say. It was rather dark, and I did not get a detailed look. Perhaps he is about the same height and build, or perhaps he is a little too thin.”

  Colonel Havelock consulted his notes. “And it does seem a ruby ring was discovered in Mr. Guff’s lodgings. Along with a Georgian silver wine cooler, which it appears did not come from Mrs. Price’s house.”

  “It weren’t me!” Mr. Guff cried in a shrill, dry tone. “I’m a thief, sure, so nick me for that. But I’m not a murderer, and I never took no lady’s ring!” He tried to wrench away from the sergeant, who gave him a stiff shake.

  Mr. Perkins, landlord of the Crown, rose with a timid wave of his hand. “I feel I must say—I don’t think this man really could have done it, depending on the timing. I saw him drinking downstairs that night, in the snug for hours. He still owes me for three pints. I doubt he would have been in any fit state to see straight when he left, or be at all stealthy. Unless he’s a good actor.”

  “What time did he leave, Mr. Perkins?” Colonel Havelock asked.

  “We had to throw him out after last call. Past midnight.”

  The coroner made a note. “And the deceased died at approximately two in the morning, give or take. So Mr. Guff might have done it, but it’s a faint possibility if what Mr. Perkins says i
s true.”

  Colonel Havelock pursed his lips and shook his head, and Cecilia was sure he must be thinking how easy and convenient it would have been to put all this down to a robbery gone awry, committed by a villain who didn’t even live in Danby Village. But at last he sighed, admitting the web had not yet entirely unraveled. “Indeed. Yet that still leaves the question of how Mr. Guff acquired the ring, not to mention the wine cooler.”

  Guff shook his head, sobbing. “I didn’t take that ring. I do swear it.”

  “And what about Mrs. Price’s torn sash?” Mr. Lancing asked. “Was that perhaps found in Mr. Guff’s rented room, wrapped about the ring or elsewhere?”

  Sergeant Dunn answered. “Nothing like that was found there, sir.”

  “Very well, Mr. Guff is no longer needed here,” Colonel Havelock said. “But he will be held for questioning on the stolen items. Mr. Talbot, you may step down. May we call Miss Nellie Pryde for a few more questions?”

  Nellie looked terribly nervous and trembled as she made her way back to the stand. Strangely, Cora also looked more agitated, her head twisting this way and that as if she looked for something, and Mrs. Palmer took her hand in a gentle grip and murmured in her ear.

  “May we ask you again about your employer’s habits before retiring?” Mr. Lancing asked. “Would she have removed her rings, perhaps to wash, and thus misplaced them?”

  Nellie’s eyes widened like saucers, and Cecilia wondered if she worried that they would try to pin the robbery on her. “She—she did sometimes have a bath of an evening, and would put her jewelry in a little box on her dressing table. Otherwise she wore her rings, and a pair of pearl and diamond earrings, all the time. Along with her imprisonment badge to pin her sash at the shoulder. But that night she hadn’t gone to her chamber. She was still wearing her evening gown when she sent me to bed, with her sash and all her jewelry.”

  “And her other evening habits?”

  Nellie looked confused. “Such as what, sir?”

  Colonel Havelock gave her a patient smile. “It has previously been said that Mrs. Price enjoyed a drink before she went to bed. Was this still a habit of hers?”

  Nellie glanced at Anne, who was carefully studying her gloves. “I—sometimes. She said it helped her sleep; she was often very energetic after a speech. She did know ever so much about wine, especially after we went to France.”

  “She also bought a few bottles of brandy from me,” Mr. Perkins added.

  Colonel Havelock smiled again at Nellie. “Is it indeed possible that Mrs. Price lost her footing on the stairs after an evening brandy? We have been told she’s stumbled before.”

  “I—yes, she had fallen before,” Nellie stammered. “But I don’t think . . .”

  “Fallen before due to an excess of wine?” Mr. Lancing asked, and Cecilia recalled that Mrs. Price’s liver had been found to have scarring.

  There was a loud guffaw, and everyone twisted around to see Lord Elphin laughing in a most unseemly way. Cecilia knew what he and no doubt many others were thinking. Only a drunkard could be such an unnatural woman as to not only seek the vote but urge others to do the same.

  Cecilia glanced at Henry Price, who seemed to be biting back a smug smile. Anne looked appalled and somewhat disgusted, but if at the laughter or at her mother’s behavior, Cecilia wasn’t sure. Mary Winter gave a loud sob and buried her face in her husband’s shoulder.

  “No!” Cora suddenly shouted. “It wasn’t like that at all. I—I did it. It wasn’t Mrs. Price’s drinking. It was me.”

  Cecilia was shocked, and a startled silence fell heavily over the room. Cora adored Mrs. Price! Why would she have pushed her down the stairs? In a laudanum haze, perhaps? Sleepwalking?

  “Miss Black,” Colonel Havelock said slowly, “do you mean to say that you are confessing that you are responsible for Mrs. Price’s death?”

  “Yes. It was me.” She rose to her feet and stumbled to the stand, looking so pale Cecilia feared she might faint. Nellie hurriedly gave her the chair and hovered over her protectively.

  “Did you deliberately push Mrs. Amelia Price down the stairs?” Colonel Havelock asked.

  Cora turned even whiter, and Mr. Lancing quickly passed her a glass of water. She gulped it down. “Not—not deliberately, no. We just had a quarrel, and she—she stepped back and fell. She had not been drinking. She never drank to excess. She was a strong and intelligent lady, a—a perfect leader.” She swayed as if she would tumble out of the chair.

  “Tell me, Miss Black,” Colonel Havelock said gently. “What did you and Mrs. Price quarrel about?”

  Cora swallowed the last of the water and seemed a bit steadier. “I—well, the Union, of course. The Women’s Suffrage Union.”

  Cecilia glanced at Anne and Harriet Palmer, who watched Cora with careful intensity.

  “What about the Union?” Colonel Havelock asked.

  Cora shook her head. “Just what we should do now. How things should be run. An organization cannot stand still. We had different ideas on a few things, you see, and had argued about it before.”

  “And the quarrel turned violent?” Mr. Lancing said.

  Cora flushed. “I—might have pushed her. I don’t remember. I didn’t mean for her to fall!”

  “Perhaps you will show me how you pushed her, which way she fell,” he said. Cora nodded, and Nellie helped her to stand. Mr. Lancing came to stand before her, and Cora thought for a moment before she gave his shoulder a half-hearted shove. Then she demonstrated how Mrs. Price tumbled backward.

  Mr. Lancing took his seat next to the colonel again, and they conferred in low voices. Finally, Colonel Havelock stood and said, “Thank you, everyone. We shall adjourn for the day and hear the jury’s verdict later. Miss Black, you may go.”

  “What do you mean?” Cora cried. “Aren’t you going to take me into custody? This is all my fault!” She swayed and almost fell, until Nellie caught her. Cecilia instinctively leaped up and ran to them, helping Nellie lead Cora back to her chair and pouring her more water. Anne also came to their side, searching through Cora’s handbag for a medicine bottle.

  “We know where you are lodging, Miss Black,” Colonel Havelock said in a very sad tone, filled with pity. “You do not look well. Please, do go home and rest, and we shall speak again later.”

  “I certainly will want to speak to you, as I did not have the opportunity today,” Inspector Hennesy said sourly. “Such irregular doings here, I must say.”

  Cecilia and Anne each took one of Cora’s hands and led her through the shocked murmurs of the crowd, Nellie hurrying behind them. “It wasn’t Mrs. Price’s fault,” Cora said with a sob. “She was not like that. It was all me.”

  “Of course,” Cecilia murmured softly. She glanced at her mother as they passed and saw that, far from the disapproval she thought to see on her mother’s face, Lady Avebury looked concerned. “Don’t worry, Mama, I can find my way back to Danby. Don’t wait for me.”

  “Cecilia, my dear, what are you . . .” her mother began, but the crowd closed between them.

  “You needn’t come with us,” Anne said. They led Cora outside into the fresh air, hoping it might revive her as she sagged against Anne’s shoulder.

  “I don’t mind at all,” Cecilia said. “Better than driving all the way home with my parents and listening to their scolding.” She was sure they would have much to say about “keeping the wrong company” today.

  “I do understand the feeling. Parents are not always the most sympathetic,” Anne answered with a crooked smile. They led Cora down the lane toward Primrose Cottage. For a moment, Cecilia was afraid Cora might break away and run back into the inquest, but in the end she went with them quietly. Cecilia feared she felt too ill to protest.

  At the cottage, Nellie had run ahead, and led them up the stairs to Cora’s chamber. It was a small room at the back of the ho
use, looking out onto the meadow that stretched behind the cottage, plainly furnished but quiet and cool. Nellie turned back the bedclothes and took Cora’s hat and shoes, and Anne and Cecilia helped her sit back against the pillows. Cora lay back with only a small murmur of protest.

  “Nellie, I’ll fetch some tea, if you can help me? Can you sit with her for a moment, Lady Cecilia?” Anne said.

  Cecilia nodded. Anne did seem very good in a crisis, but maybe not as patient as needed to sit at a sickbed. “Of course.” Cecilia put away Cora’s kid boots and hat, took her jacket, and tucked the blankets around Cora’s shaking shoulders. She seemed so different from the efficient Union secretary who had first arrived in Danby Village. What had happened? Had her illness simply become worse? Had something spooked her? “Where is your sleeping draught, Miss Black?” The draught that had made her unable to hear anything strange on the night Mrs. Price died.

  Cora gestured to the dressing table, where Cecilia found a brown, heavy glass bottle next to an ivory-backed hairbrush, a carafe of water, and small scent bottle. Cecilia took a quick sniff—lilies of the valley.

  “But surely I should wait,” Cora said. “They said they would have more questions.”

  “I’m sure they won’t bother you until you have had a chance to rest,” Cecilia said. She measured out a dose into the water and pressed it into Cora’s hand. She drank it down and sank back farther against her pillows. “Miss Black, are you quite, quite sure that is how Mrs. Price died?”

  “Of course,” Cora answered, her voice already turning blurry at the edges. “It was my fault, not hers. The women of the Union must believe that, must remember Mrs. Price as—as she was.”

  Cecilia wasn’t so sure they would. She did not entirely believe it herself. It made sense that Amelia might fall, if she’d had a nightcap too many. But would Cora ever push her? Could she even be able to do that, have the strength for it? And then wait until the inquest to say so? Cecilia was not so sure.