The Hyde Park Headsman - Anne Griffin Perry [177]
“Of course it does! There are servants. How can you explain your—”
“All right,” Emily interrupted. “Yes. I see. Then it has to be after the servants have retired, or in a place where they will not go. What about the garden somewhere? After dark you can be certain the gardener will not be working. A greenhouse or potting shed?”
“Excellent,” Charlotte agreed. “How does one persuade him to go to the greenhouse after dark?”
“To show him something….”
“What about if one had heard a sound?”
“Send the footman,” Emily answered.
“Oh yes, of course. I don’t have a footman.”
“You don’t have a greenhouse either.”
Charlotte sighed with a brief second of regret. If they had been able to keep the new house, she might have had one. She might even have had a male servant in time. But that was all unimportant now.
“Then one lures him into the greenhouse,” she reasoned, “by saying that there is something special to see. A flower which blooms at night and has a remarkable perfume.”
“Is one on blossoming terms with a husband one is about to murder?” Emily grimaced.
“Then something else. I don’t know … something amiss that the gardener has done? Something extravagant you need to speak to the man about, or his permission to dismiss him and employ someone else?”
“All right. You get him to the greenhouse, have him bend over to look at whatever it is, and hit him on the head as hard as you can with whatever comes to hand. At least in the greenhouse there will be plenty of tools one could use. Then what?”
“Leave him,” Charlotte thought aloud. “Until the middle of the night, when you can return, to take off his head….”
“Suitably dressed,” Emily interposed.
“Dressed?”
“In something that will not show the blood!”
“Oh.” Charlotte wrinkled her nose with distaste, but she realized it was an extremely practical remark. “Yes, of course. It would have to be either something she could dispose of entirely, or else something that was waterproof and from which it would wash off.”
“Like—what? What can you wash blood off without leaving a stain?”
“Oilskins?” Emily asked dubiously. “But why would she have oilskins? It’s not the sort of thing one keeps. I don’t have anything remotely like that.”
“Gardener’s?” Charlotte thought aloud. “And then she could pass as a gardener going across the park.” Her voice rose in excitement as memory returned. “And there was a gardener seen in the park, wheeling a barrow! Emily! Maybe that was the murderer—wheeling Aidan Arledge’s body from his house to the bandstand?”
“Then was it Dulcie, or Landon Hurlwood?” Emily asked.
“It doesn’t matter!” Charlotte replied urgently. “If it was Hurlwood, he can’t have done it without her knowledge. She’s guilty either way. Arledge must have been killed in his own greenhouse and taken to the park in his own wheelbarrow!”
“Then we must prove it.” Emily stood up. “Knowing it is no use if we don’t prove it.”
“We don’t know it. It’s only a guess,” Charlotte argued, rising to her feet also. “We have to prove it to ourselves first of all. We’ll have to see it—find the place. There must be some stain of blood still there, if we know where to look.”
“Well she’s hardly going to give us a tour of her greenhouse, if she’s cut her husband’s head off there, is she!” Emily responded.
“No, of course not.” Charlotte took a deep breath and plunged on. “We’ll have to go at night, when she won’t know.”
“Break in?” Emily was incredulous, her voice rising to a squeak. Then as quickly the horror vanished from her face and a look of daring and enthusiasm replaced it. “Just the two of us? We’ll have to go tonight. There’s no time to lose.”
Charlotte gulped. “Yes, tonight. We’ll—we’ll go from here, as soon as … well, about midnight, I suppose?” She looked at Emily questioningly.
“Midnight is far too early,” Emily said. “She could still be up at that hour. I often am.”
“You are not in mourning. She’ll hardly be out dining or dancing.”
“We should still leave it until one o’clock at the earliest.”
“Oh—well I dare not return home. Thomas would …”
“Of course not,” Emily agreed. “We’ll have