When she didn’t immediately go on, Letitia opened her mouth—Christian grasped her wrist and silenced her again. She shot him a weak glare but desisted. Grudgingly.
“So I heard Letitia ranting.” Hermione picked up her tale. “Then I heard her slam the study door and storm up the stairs and into her room. I thought, after that, that I’d be able to fall asleep.” She paused. “I was just dozing off when I heard Randall and another man talking—I couldn’t hear the words, I never can, but I could hear the rumble of their voices. I tried to sleep, but couldn’t, then I heard a thud. A heavy thud.
“I listened, but the voices had stopped. I told myself it was the door shutting, or something like that…only I knew it wasn’t. I know the sounds in that room, and I’d never heard a thud like that—sort of soft but heavy.”
Christian asked, “Did you notice the time?”
She shook her head. “My candle was out. I kept trying to fall asleep—I don’t know for how long. I kept imagining what that thud might be. I actually thought it might be a dead body. In the end, I knew I wasn’t going to sleep until I knew, so I got up to go and see. I thought that the worst that might happen was that Randall might be at his desk—he often worked late. If he saw me, I was going to say I couldn’t sleep and was heading to the library for a book. But I had to dress—I wasn’t going to get caught by anyone in my dressing gown.”
“Did you hear anything while you were dressing?” Christian asked.
“Or going downstairs?” Letitia put in, trying to hurry things along.
Hermione frowned. “No—not until I was on the landing. I didn’t use the main stair, but the one in my wing. It comes down in the corridor past the study. When I reached the landing, I heard the study door open. I hadn’t taken a candle—I could see well enough—so I crouched down on the landing and looked through the banisters.”
She glanced at Letitia, then at Christian. “I saw Justin come out of the study. I didn’t see his face—he turned and looked back into the room, then he walked on to the front door.” She paused, caught by her memories. “I would have called to him, but he seemed…strange. Stunned, I suppose, now I know what he’d done. Even then, I suspected something bad had happened, so I didn’t say anything, just watched him open the front door and walk out, then he pulled the door closed behind him.”
Straightening in her chair, Hermione paled, but met Christian’s eyes gamely. “I waited a little, everything was quiet, then I crept down the stairs and looked into the study. I didn’t go in—I could see enough from the doorway. I…I thought Justin had killed Randall. It was so horrible…but I’d never liked Randall—never liked that Letitia had had to marry him no matter how much she pretended it was a love match. And, well, he was dead now—that was obvious. But I didn’t want Justin to be caught, so I thought…the only thing I could think of doing was to lock the door and slip the key back inside. I hoped it would look like the key had fallen out of the lock later—perhaps while they were beating on the door. I knew no one could possibly think Randall had taken his own life, but I thought having the door look like it was locked from inside would at least confuse things.”
Christian grimaced. “In that you succeeded, but Mellon knew Justin had called to see Randall and later left.”
“But I didn’t know that,” Hermione said. “Justin might have just arrived and Randall had let him in—I couldn’t tell. Anyway, the key was in the lock, Randall usually kept it there, he sometimes did lock the door—so I locked the door, slid the key back inside, and went back upstairs.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t get any sleep, though.”
Christian could imagine. He considered, matching Hermione’s story with Justin’s, then he looked at Letitia, frowning in concern at Hermione, then at Agnes, who was patting Hermione’s hand.
For her part, Hermione seemed relieved. It was she who asked, “So what will you do now?”
Both Letitia and Agnes joined her in fixing inquiring gazes on him.
Deciding no harm could come of sharing his deductions, he glanced at the door, confirmed it was shut, then in a voice that wouldn’t carry, said, “I believe what happened was that after Letitia left Randall—while Justin was reading in the library after having dismissed Mellon—someone else called on Randall, someone he was expecting, given Mellon didn’t hear the doorbell. His visitor was someone he knew, someone he trusted. That person sat in the chair by his study fire and they shared a glass of brandy.”
“So the person was almost certainly a man,” Letitia pointed out. “Very few women drink brandy.”
He inclined his head. “So this man and Ran
dall chatted amiably—Hermione heard no shouting. Then Randall rose, headed for his desk, presumably to fetch something—and the man picked up the poker and hit him on the head. Randall fell, dead. His murderer dropped the poker, then—presumably via the front door—left the house.”
All three of his listeners were nodding.
“So,” he concluded, “our next step is to learn who the friend Randall entertained that night might be. And to confirm, if we can, how he got into the house, and how he left it.”
All three women’s expressions grew determined.
“And whoever he is,” Hermione said, “he’s Randall’s murderer.”
Letitia was pleased Christian had shared his thoughts so freely—without her having to drag them from him—but what she now wanted to know was how he proposed to learn who Randall’s mysterious friend-cum-murderer was. However, not wanting to encourage Hermione to think she could play any role in their hunt, she waited with what patience she could muster until Hermione and Agnes retired.
The instant the door shut behind them, she swung to face Christian, once more seated beside her on the sofa in her parlor. “How—”
He pulled her into his arms. Into a kiss. Not a scorching one. One she might, if she’d put her mind to it, have resisted.
But she didn’t resist. Instead found herself melting into his embrace. Mentally cursed, but by then it was too late.
He kissed her until her wits had long flown, until she was breathless, and achy, and thinking of things she’d had no intention of thinking about—sins she’d had no intention of committing—until he’d kissed her.
When he lifted his head and looked into her eyes, his heavy-lidded with the passion and desire that always—always—lay between them, she could barely marshal one coherent thought. And that one…