‘Will you be all right here by yourself for a few moments while James and I take Sir Montague through, Cousin Cassandra?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I murmured. I mopped at my eyes and smiled bravely until they had gone, then I dug my notebook and pencil out and began to jot down questions.
James came to fetch me after about ten minutes. ‘We’ve been pushed out,’ he said. ‘Probably a good thing – it shows he doesn’t think our involvement suspicious. Garrick’s bringing the carriage round and Luc’s giving Bromley a bit of a bracer.’
The bracer turned out to be a gold sovereign accompanied by strict instructions to answer the questions he was asked by the Magistrate, but not to reveal that he and James had found the body first, not to speculate and to come to Albany if he thought of anything else.
‘I thought of something,’ I said. ‘Could he hear anyone coming to the patients’ door? Was there a knocker or a bell and was it audible in the residential part of the house?’
‘There was a bell, I asked,’ Luc said. ‘And yes, it rang in the house as well. But if someone knocked, it couldn’t be heard on that side.’
I made a note against the query in my book. ‘And was there an appointments book?’
Again, Luc nodded. ‘On the desk in the inner office. I looked through. Nothing for last night or this morning. Other appointments had names against them, all quite open, it seemed.’
‘No numbers, like the coded book?’
He narrowed his eyes, thinking. ‘No, nothing like that.’
I went back to the calculations I’d been making. I wanted my incident boards.
We got back to Albany, trooped into the sitting room and Garrick went in search of the boards I had used last time, when we were looking for an abducted young woman. He set them up, found me thumb tacks and paper then went off muttering about food, which sounded good to me.
‘Right, I said, pen poised. ‘What we need is a timeline.’
Chapter Four
‘I’m pretty sure that George cannot have killed Philip,’ I said, dividing a sheet of paper into two columns. ‘If we believe Mrs Kentish and Dora, and I can’t pick up any hint that they are lying to us – why should they? – he came home at nine in the evening seeming tired or depressed and wasn’t seen or heard again. The landlady finds him dead at eight in the morning. We see him stiff and cold at nine thirty. There was no sign in the room that he did anything except set up the rope and chair and write that short note.’
I wrote times down the side of the page at half hourly intervals and filled in what we knew for certain. ‘The doctor must have been killed this morning and late enough for only the slightest trace of rigor to be present when James found him. It seems impossible to me that George could have left the lodging house, made his way to Talbot’s surgery, killed him late enough to account for the lack of stiffening, got back into his own rooms and hanged himself early enough to be fully in the grip of rigor himself.’
There were nods of comprehension and agreement so I pressed on, working it out as I went. ‘Besides the matter of rigor, I can’t believe he was still alive at six when the maid took up the water. She must have been up before that, heating it, getting ready for the day. Surely she’d have noticed someone else moving about in the house, coming and going through the front door.’
‘But why did George kill himself?’ James demanded, shoving one hand through his hair as I filled in what we could in the column for Doctor Talbot and pinned the sheet up. ‘It’s a relief that he didn’t murder Philip, but that makes the note even less understandable.’
Garrick came in and began setting plates of food on small side tables within easy reach. ‘Possibly the mention of the doctor’s name in his note was simply a cry of anguish directed to the friend who could no longer help him because of the gravity of the situation,’ he suggested.
‘Come and join us.’ Luc waved a hand at a chair, then picked up a chicken leg and chewed on it thoughtfully.
Garrick set out wine bottles and glasses and took the remaining seat with a nod to Luc. I found myself wondering, yet again, what the background to their friendship was.
‘I think we need to brainstorm this.’ I pinned up a fresh sheet and went to stand by it, pencil in hand. They stared at me blankly. ‘We take it in turns saying the first idea that comes into our heads. We don’t criticise each other’s ideas. I write it all down then we stand back and see what has emerged. Trust me on this, it can work.’
More blank stares.
‘Right then. I’ll start. George was suffering from a mental breakdown because of pressures at work. His suicide had nothing to do with Philip.’ I wrote down George/work pressure/suicide/no connection to PG.
‘Whatever it was he’d done led to the Doctor’s murder,’ Garrick began, catching on to the idea. ‘No, that can’t be right – he’d have warned his friend before he killed himself.’
‘Don’t edit what you’re saying,’ I said and wrote down, George’s action >PG’s murder.
‘George killed himself before his enemy could get his hands on him,’ James offered. ‘So the enemy kills Philip instead.’
‘Talbot spurns someone who kills him out of jealousy.’ Lucian was leaning forward intently now, elbows on knees. ‘Perhaps George precipitated it by saying something to the murderer.’
‘They are both being blackmailed.’ That was James again. I was writing frantically to keep up. ‘George hangs himself, Philip won’t pay up, threatens the blackmailer who therefore kills him.’
‘Doctor Talbot is the target all along. The killer wants to destroy him, somehow forces George to hang himself then kills Talbot after taunting him with this.’