The Confession - Charles Todd [108]
“Did you tell the police what you believed?”
“I didn’t feel it was my place to stir up more trouble for the family.”
“If you were willing to consider murder, there must have been someone you believed was capable of it. Who could have wished her dead?”
There were tears in her eyes as she answered him. “That’s just it, you see. I couldn’t imagine it. Not one of the staff, certainly. All of us had been with her for years. Everyone that is but Harold Finley, but he was a quiet, responsible young man. And as for the people in Furnham, why should they want to harm her?”
“What about the family?”
He could see a shocked expression in her eyes.
“Justin Fowler, for one,” he suggested.
“Oh, no, not Mr. Justin.”
“Why not?”
“Poor child, he had nightmares when he first came to us. Mrs. Russell would go in and wake him up, then comfort him. It was terrible. My room was just over his, and I could hear his screams. Some nights she got no sleep.”
“Did her son or Miss Farraday know about this? Were they jealous, do you think?”
“How could they be? Mrs. Russell had put him in a room nearest hers, so they wouldn’t be disturbed.”
“What if they came looking for her, and she wasn’t in her room?”
“I doubt that ever happened. Mr. Wyatt was a deep sleeper. As for Miss Farraday, she never was one to need pampering. An independent little thing from the first time I saw her. I was told she was accustomed to her parents going away and leaving her with the servants.”
“Did you like her?” he asked, hearing an undertone in her voice.
“Not to say didn’t like her. She was such a pretty child, everyone liked her. Still, she wasn’t one to come down to the kitchen and beg a treat, or ask me to sew her ribbons on for her. Little things, but they endear a child to you. She lacked that quality.”
“Why did Justin Fowler have nightmares?”
“I asked Mrs. Russell, and she told me that he had been ill in hospital and I was not to worry, it would pass when he regained his health. But I always wondered, you know, if his father beat him. He had such fearsome scars. Not to speak out of place—but Mrs. Russell told me she was pleased that he had more of his mother in him than his father. I had the feeling Mr. Fowler had a dark past.”
“What sort of past?”
“She never said as much outright, but I gathered Mr. Fowler had been involved with a woman of the streets. It was a reflection on his character.”
“Did he marry this woman? Or live with her?”
“He couldn’t have married her, could he? She already had a husband and a child. It didn’t stop him from taking up with her.”
It was the first he’d heard of a child. Harrison, the solicitor, had assured him there was no issue in the bigamist marriage.
“A child of his? Or by her husband?”
“I should think her husband’s. Which made it all the more shocking that Mr. Fowler should have anything to do with her.”
“A boy or a girl?”
“I don’t think Mrs. Russell knew. You must understand, Mrs. Russell never confided in me, but sometimes she’d be distracted and say things, and I had eyes, I could see some things for myself. When Miss Cynthia showed a partiality for Mr. Justin, she worried that he might break her heart. Then he was off to university, and it all blew over. But sometimes the seed doesn’t fall far from the tree, as they say.”
He was reminded of something. Something Inspector Robinson had said while reviewing the terms of the Fowler wills.
It came back to him then. That Mr. Fowler had supported a charity school in London over the years. An odd choice of interest for a young bachelor reading law.
“Did you keep in touch with the family after the house was closed?”
“Mr. Russell wrote to me once or twice, and Mr. Justin wrote to me before he was sent to France. They were