Missing Susan (26 page)

As if anticipating her curiosity, the next sentence stated that the shift was subsequently lost before its owner could be identified. “The police obviously didn’t secure the area back then,” Elizabeth muttered. “Mr. Kent again?”

The officers did manage to determine that the shift was not the only missing garment in the case. Mrs. Holly, the village laundress, reported that when she received the washing from Road Hill House on the day of the crime, the laundry list indicated that three nightdresses were sent, but she only found two among the soiled clothing. The missing one belonged to Constance.

When after two weeks the local constabulary had made no headway with the case, Scotland Yard sent down Inspector Jonathan Whicher to take over. Perhaps because of the missing nightdress and the tales of a runaway Constance four years earlier, the inspector fixed his suspicions on the sixteen-year-old girl, but he also thought the nursemaid might be guilty. After questioning both, the nursemaid was let go and Constance was arrested and charged with the murder of her half brother.

She appeared before local magistrates on July 27 and
Whicher’s scant and circumstantial evidence was presented. Perhaps he hoped that under the pressure of a hearing she would confess to the crime, but she did not. She sat with her black-gloved hands folded and listened calmly to her school-friends testify that she had disliked her stepmother and had found her young half brother annoying.

Other witnesses pointed out that the day before the murder, Constance had been playing happily with Savile and that he was making a bead necklace for her, as she had painted a picture for him not long before.

I’ll bet the locals felt sympathetic toward her, Elizabeth thought. A pretty sixteen-year-old whose stepmother mistreated her and whose father was a louse. The police probably came off looking like bullies. “And she didn’t confess,” Elizabeth said aloud. “Interesting.”

The barrister hired by the Kents to defend Constance made short work of the prosecution’s case. How could this frail girl carry a heavy child down the stairs and so far from the house? he demanded. Of the murder itself, he said: “Is it likely that the weak hand of this young girl … can have inflicted this dreadful blow? Is it likely that hers was the arm which nearly severed the head from the body? It is perfectly incredible.”

“I don’t know,” said Elizabeth. “Lizzie Borden was a nice young gentlewoman and she committed two ax murders. Still, I wonder why Constance waited five years to confess. Why did she confess at all?”

Someone tapped her on the shoulder. Elizabeth looked up to see a nervous-looking librarian, apparently uneasy about approaching this patron who kept muttering to herself. “I’m sorry, but we’re about to close for the day.”

Elizabeth gathered up her photocopies, and thanked him for his help. I suppose I’ll have to find another source of information farther along on the tour, she thought. So far she hadn’t found anything to convince her that Constance Kent
was innocent, but the lack of motive troubled her. So did the girl’s winsome smile. Had Constance been a poisoner, Elizabeth wouldn’t have questioned her guilt, but butchering a child? The savagery of the crime seemed beyond the emotional range of that shy young girl who had no other history of violence. But if not Constance, then who? And why?

   That evening in the bar of the Francis Hotel, the tour members gathered around for an evening of beer and storytelling. Emma and Miriam were still absent from the group. Susan and Rowan argued for an hour over the guilt of Richard III in the murder of the little princes in the tower. Susan, citing Josephine Tey’s
Daughter of Time
and Elizabeth Peters’
The Murders of Richard III
, argued the king’s innocence. Rowan quoted a few historians of the era and insisted that Richard was guilty. Neither succeeded in convincing the other.

Finally, Elizabeth MacPherson managed to divert the conversation to her own pet case. “Did you find out whether Road Hill House is still standing?” she asked.

“I asked another crime expert, Kenneth O’Connor, and he assures me that it is,” Rowan told her. “Unfortunately for our purposes, he also assures me that the road is too narrow for our coach. After the King Harry Ferry incident, I am loath to ask Bernard to make risky excursions to unscheduled places.”

“I did some more reading on the case this afternoon,” said Elizabeth. “And I’m still not convinced of Constance’s innocence. How do you explain the bloodstained nightdress?”

Rowan cleared his throat and glanced at the rest of the group. “Perhaps the way Lizzie Borden explained it in her case,” he said.

“Oh,” said Elizabeth, blushing. “Menstrual blood.”

At this point Charles Warren stood up, yawned, and said that it was past his bedtime.

Rowan glanced at his watch. “Perhaps we all ought to turn in,” he said. “We have a long day tomorrow. We’re off to Wales. I am sorry to say that Emma and Miriam won’t be joining us. In view of Emma’s illness, they have decided to fly home.”

“Is she very ill?” asked Frances Coles.

“The doctor thinks not,” Rowan said truthfully. “But she isn’t up to the rigors of the tour. She’d be better off at home in bed.”

“What are we seeing tomorrow?” asked Kate Conway. She had been making sheep’s eyes at him all evening, he noticed uncomfortably. Rowan had immersed himself in double Scotches and ignored her overtures.

“In the morning, Hereford Cathedral,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “But I think the real treat for some of you will be our lunch stop at the Welsh village of Hay-on-Wye.”

“Herbert Rowse Armstrong!” cried Elizabeth, in a tone of voice usually heard in connection with rock stars’ names.

“Yes, Hay-on-Wye does have its local poisoner,” the guide conceded. “He’s the lawyer I told you about, who kept inviting a rival attorney over for tea. The fellow noticed that tea with Mr. Armstrong invariably made him ill. He was canny enough to save a bit of it and have it tested. Lawyers are a suspicious lot, aren’t they? He was right, of course. His tea was poisoned and Armstrong went to the gallows. Actually, though, I was thinking of Hay-on-Wye’s other claim to fame. The village is known for its large assortment of used bookstores.”

“Make it a long lunch stop,” said Susan with shining eyes.

“You may be able to find some more books on Constance Kent,” Rowan told Elizabeth.

“She didn’t write an autobiography, did she?” asked Elizabeth suspiciously. “What ever happened to her anyway?”

“Let us leave that chapter for our next fireside chat,” Rowan said. “I have had enough double Scotches this evening.”

HAY-ON-WYE

S
USAN
C
OHEN WOULD
forever think of Hereford Cathedral as an obstacle on the way to the used book mecca at Hay-on-Wye. She trotted through the morning tour of the Gothic cathedral with ill-concealed impatience, barely glancing at the cathedral’s pride and joy, the Mappa Mundi, a thirteenth-century map of the world. So great was her disdain that she did not even bother to liken the church or its exhibits to any comparable wonder in Minnesota. She fidgeted through the tour of the sanctuary and had to be nudged to remind her to stop tapping her foot while the guide was speaking.

Elizabeth MacPherson, unable to discover any murders, witch-burnings, ghosts, or other sensational items connected with the stately old church, shared Susan’s restlessness. The lunch stop, Hay-on-Wye, had both a famous murderer and used bookshops.

At last, the serious-minded members of the group finished inspecting the Mappa Mundi, the ancient books chained to benches in the library, and the carved choir seats. Rowan, for once, had little to add to the information supplied by the cathedral guide, and the tourists hurriedly resumed their places in the coach and headed for the green hills of Wales.

The A4338, a pleasant road with sweeping views of meadows, forests, and picturesque farms, took them out of Hereford and Worcester—and into the Welsh province of Powys. Only Bernard’s announcement, “Coming into Wales now!” indicated the change of country.

“How very odd,” said Elizabeth, studying the landscape. “Since England and Wales fought bitterly for centuries, I expected some sort of major barrier between the two. A great river, perhaps, or a forbidding chain of mountains. I come from Appalachia, where the customs and the accent are different from the rest of the South, because the mountains kept the cultures separate. But here there seems to be no geographic barrier. How did the Welsh maintain their separate customs and language, and why did they feel so different from the English?”

“I don’t know,” said Rowan. “They were Celts, of course, rather than being Angles, Saxons, Normans, and so forth, but I see what you mean. One would think that they’d have been intermarried out of existence years ago. Emma might have a theory. It’s a great pity she isn’t here.”
For more reasons than one
, he thought sadly.

“Of course, the different regions of Britain do have their individual characteristics,” Elizabeth mused. “Cameron and I have a tea towel at home that says:
There were the Scots, who kept the Sabbath and everything else they could get their hands on. Then there were the Welsh, who prayed on their knees and their neighbors. Thirdly there were the Irish, who never knew what they wanted but were willing to fight for it anyway. Lastly, there were the English, who considered themselves a self-made nation, thus relieving the Almighty of a dreadful responsibility.”
Rowan smiled. “A generalization, of course, but arguably accurate. What about Cornishmen?”

“Much like the Welsh, I expect, judging from the tales you tell of smugglers and wreckers.”

Susan Cohen yawned and looked at her watch. “How long until we get to Hay-on-Wye? Welsh people speak English, don’t they? And the money’s the same?”

Rowan suppressed a sigh of exasperation. “Wales has been part of Great Britain for considerably longer than Minnesota has been a state,” he told her. “You may recall that the Prince of Wales is a close relative of the Queen.”

Susan blinked. “Charles? Is that what that means? I thought him having Wales in his title was just a coincidence; you know, like Mars candy bars and the planet Mars.”

Deciding that a dose of remedial history was in order, the guide turned on his microphone and said, “Perhaps I ought to explain the origin of the royal title. In the late thirteenth century, King Edward the First defeated the Welsh prince Llewellyn and made Wales part of his kingdom. Legend has it that the Welsh demanded a Welsh-born ruler, who spoke no English, to be their prince, and Edward promised them such a prince. At Caernaryon Castle he brought out his own infant son, who met the conditions of the request: he had been born in Wales, and he didn’t speak English—or anything else yet. Since that time, the heir-apparent to the throne has always held the title of Prince or Princess of Wales.”

“Typical of the English,” said Maud. “Phony islands, carbonated lemonade, and now royal impostors.”

“We’ll be coming into Hay-on-Wye soon, Rowan,” said Bernard, making a turn off the main road. “There is a tourist welcome center just south of the village, with a proper car park beside it. It’s the best place to leave the coach if you don’t mind a quarter-mile walk or so into town.”

“Will we be able to see Mayfield?” asked Elizabeth MacPherson eagerly.

“Is that Herbert Armstrong’s house?” asked Rowan. “I don’t know. Would you recognize it if you saw it?”

“I doubt it,” Elizabeth admitted. “I suppose it would be uncouth to ask at the tourist center?”

Alice MacKenzie laughed. “The Chamber of Commerce won’t want to promote their local murderer, I’m sure.”

“How long ago did he live here?” asked Frances Coles with a little shiver. She preferred her murderers to be fictional.

“About 1920,” said Rowan. “Armstrong was a major in World War I. He moved here to become junior partner to the local solicitor, who conveniently died as soon as Armstrong learned his way about the firm.”

“Armstrong was such a stick!” said Elizabeth. “In the picture I’ve seen of him, he looks like a horse with rimless glasses and a mustache.”

“His wife was rather fiercely plain as well,” said Rowan. “Of course, she had money. And he did have a girlfriend, so perhaps he didn’t mind. He wrote cagey letters to his ladylove, hinting that should his wife pass away, he would be in the market for a new missus.”

“I suppose he killed his wife?” asked Alice with a disapproving frown.

“Oh, yes. Arsenic in the champagne. He might have got away with that one, but then he tried to poison the other local solicitor, and he was found out. The man noticed that every time he went to tea with Major Armstrong, he became ill. Armstrong was actually carrying a packet of arsenic when they arrested him.”

“How did he explain that?”

“He said he used it to kill dandelions on his lawn.”

Nancy Warren laughed. “I wonder if I should try arsenic on our dandelions, Charles?”