I imagined Miss Judson giving him her steely, unwavering glare, and I held my breath, waiting for her retort. But the silence from Father’s office had gone so cold and solid that it hurt to listen to it. What was taking her so long?
“Well, sir, whatever you think best, of course,” Miss Judson finally said. What did that mean? I heard Father’s chair scrape back.
“Miss Judson, by tomorrow morning, I would like to see your revised lesson plan for Myrtle on my desk, as well as arrangements for her to spend more time with girls her own age. There is more to life than criminology, for heaven’s sake. It’s time she learns that.”
v
The next morning was pale and rainy, a gloomy drizzle ruining any remaining evidence in the lily gardens. Redgraves was locked up tight, no movement at all from any of the household still left. And no sign of Peony, who must be cold and starving. I paced before the window, restless and discontent.
The schoolroom door swung open, revealing Miss Judson with a breakfast tray. “There,” she declared, dropping the tray unceremoniously on the counter. “The morning Tribune. Let this put an end to all this ‘murder’ business.”
I scurried over to grab the paper.
“I should make you eat something first,” she said. Breakfast in the schoolroom could only mean I must still be in trouble. Mindful of her lecture from Father, I picked up a piece of toast and sat dutifully at the workbench.
Once fortified with toast and tea, we read the paper together. There was nothing at all on the front page (which also thankfully failed to feature disturbance at local murder trial: prosecutor humiliated), so we flipped to the obituaries. And there we found a few sparse lines about Minerva Faye Wodehouse, 79, Swinburne, who:
. . . died at home of natural causes Wednesday morning. Survived by her niece, Miss Priscilla Wodehouse, Boston, and a nephew, Mr. Giles Northcutt, Swinburne. Private funeral to be held this Saturday, 5 August, at St. Agnes Chapel. Condolences may be sent to the family home at 16 Gravesend Close. No flowers, please.
“That’s it?” Miss Judson sounded sad. “No flowers?”
“Natural causes? What rubbish!”
“It doesn’t even say anything about her gardens, or her life. They might as well have said ‘Another spinster dies alone. Yawn.’ ”
“Miss! Focus, please! They’re about to bury her,” I said. “We have to do something before it’s too late.”
“Do what, exactly?”
“Prove it was murder, of course!” I waved my toast in frustration, scattering crumbs in an arc.
Miss Judson was still studying the obituary, her mouth pressed thin. “We’ll need something stronger than the suspicions of a twelve-year-old girl and her governess, I’m afraid,” she finally said.
“Then you believe me?”
She returned my gaze steadily. I decided she was considering her conversation last night with Father, which I wasn’t supposed to know about. “Always.”
I let out a breath. “We don’t have much time,” I said. “The first thing we’ll need to do is get our hands on the Police Surgeon’s report. The Coroner can’t have written the death certificate without it.”
“That’s not going to be easy.”
I tapped my fingers against the newspaper. “Oh, but I have a plan. One even Father will approve of.”
5
Actus Reus
A crime requires two elements: mens rea (Latin for “a guilty mind”) and actus reus, “the guilty act.”
—H. M. Hardcastle, Principles of Detection
Later that day I Observed Trudy through the window, hanging the wash in the side yard. It wasn’t Redgraves’s normal laundry day, so I went down to see what she was up to.
“Mistress needs clothes for her funeral,” Trudy explained with a teary sniff. I felt a stab of sympathy for the maid, doing this task by herself, so I dug in and pulled a damp nightie from the basket. The nightgown was trimmed in delicate white lace, with tiny pearl buttons and an M monogrammed in white.
“Oh, Trudy, this has a stain.” There was also a small tear at the wrist, where some lace had torn free.
She glanced over, shaking out an armload of wet linen. “I can’t get them out. I washed it twice with hot water and castile soap, but they won’t budge.”
There actually was something ominous that hot water would not wash out of a nightgown—but I didn’t think this particular stain was blood. It was too pale, for one thing, with a distinct yellowish hue. “It’s pollen,” I said.
“Mmm,” Trudy agreed. “It got on all her clothes.”
“On her nightgowns, though?” I studied it more closely. The stains were all over, around the hem, on the cuffs, smeared across the back. I just hadn’t noticed them at first, among the wrinkles and lace. It looked like Miss Wodehouse had been kneeling among the flowers.
Or like she’d been pushed—knocked to her hands and knees in the dirt. In the lily garden, in the middle of the night, in her nightgown.
“Was she wearing this on the night she died?”
She nodded. “It were allover mud, too, but that washed out. Like the bathroom.”
She’d got ahead of me. “There was mud in the bathroom when—when you found the Mistress?”
Trudy gave another tragic sniff. “It took ages to mop up after.”
I wanted to ask about the footprints, too, but the expression on her face was so doleful I was afraid she’d fall right to pieces. I held tight to the nightgown. “Can I keep this?” That sounded morbid. “Borrow it for a while, I mean? I want to study these stains, maybe show it to the police.”
She looked shocked. “Oh, no, Miss Hardcastle! She’d never want that. Those common men touching her . . . personal things!”
“My father then? Would that be all right? He’s very discreet.”
Her mortified expression softened a bit. “All right,” she said. “Mr. Hardcastle will know what to do.”
I carefully folded the gown, protecting the stains and the embroidered identification. I didn’t tell her that I had no intention of sharing this evidence with my father, who would only pooh-pooh it and insist that I return it to Redgraves at once.
“Thank you, Trudy. You don’t know how much this means.”
But I did. Now I knew that two men had been in the lily garden on the night Miss Wodehouse had died—and so had Miss Wodehouse.
v
I pondered Father’s words to Miss Judson as I prepared my next move. It was Friday, my one and only chance to get my hands on Miss Wodehouse’s post-mortem report before her funeral. I was therefore—naturally—spending it primping before the mirror in my bedroom.