She stopped and turned, as everyone did when Alex used that particular quiet tone of voice. “I’ll serve you in a moment,” she said. “Or call the other girl.”
“I believe it’s you I’m here to see,” Alex said, still leaning casually on the bar. “I’ve been sent here on a certain private matter by Mr. Martin Forsyth.”
The woman’s eyes widened, and I knew instantly she was truly Alice Sanders. “I have nothing to say to you.”
Alex shook his head. “I’m not the police,” he said, his voice so low no one could overhear. “I’m Mr. Forsyth’s cousin, Alex Manders, and this is my wife. Mr. Forsyth has authorized me to act on his behalf.”
Alice looked from Alex to me and back again, her features going hard. “Martin Forsyth’s cousin is dead, or so I heard.”
“It’s a common misunderstanding,” Alex said easily. “I’m not dead. Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”
Alice glanced at the other serving woman, then at the bartender behind the bar, and quickly brushed her palms over her apron. “Meet me out back,” she said. “I don’t have long.”
She disappeared into the kitchen. Alex and I sipped our pints for a few more minutes—I was disappointed to let mine go, as it was bitter and delicious—and left by the front door before walking around the building to the back of the pub. The wind was blowing cold and angry now, sweeping mercilessly off the water, and Alice was huddled next to the kitchen door, her arms crossed over her ample chest, the scarf in her hair flattened to her head, her features set in a hard scowl.
“I said everything I have to say to that man,” she said as we came in range. “I’m owed money, and that’s all. If you’re here to negotiate a lower price, I’ll not listen.”
Alex had put his hat back on, and he maneuvered closer to the wall to avoid the gusts that would blow it off again. “I’m not here to negotiate,” he said in a flat tone he had not used inside. “I’m here to ask how you know it was your husband who died in those woods.”
“It was him. He left that morning, and he wouldn’t say where he was going, and then that girl died and they found a body. He never came home again. It was him.”
“Not good enough, Mrs. Sanders. Not for a thousand pounds.”
She hesitated. “He was mixed up with the Forsyths. That’s all I know.”
“How could he be mixed up with the Forsyths?” Alex asked. “He hadn’t worked for them for years, and Martin Forsyth was at the Front.”
“He told me,” she snapped. “The Forsyths owed us. That horrible old woman dismissed him, and he had no references. When he came home from the war, there were no jobs, and no one would take him. He wrote Martin for money as a fellow soldier, but Martin said no. They could have given us something. We have a little boy.”
“And how, exactly, was he mixed up with the family?” Alex asked again.
She paused. “He wouldn’t tell me all of it. He was very down after Martin wrote that letter—it got bad. He drank too much, stayed out all night. I didn’t want him around our son. Then one night he came home with a smile on his face, though he was still drunk. Said that he’d won, that the Forsyths would be the making of us yet.”
“The making of you? What does that mean?”
“I guessed it meant money, but George was cagey about it. He said he had one task to do, and then we’d have more money than we’d ever thought possible.”
“What was the task?” I asked.
Alice Sanders looked at me, taking in my decent clothes and my new hat and gloves, and looked away again. “He never said.”
“But you know.” I stepped closer to her.
“I told you, he never said.”
I stepped closer again. A queer sort of anger was rising at the back of my throat at the thoughts that were crossing my mind. “You know,” I said, the wind carrying my words away, over the ocean. “Someone paid him to kill Frances Forsyth, isn’t that it? Someone offered him a lot of money for it. You knew it then, and you know now. You even condone it.”
“I didn’t know then,” Alice shot back at me. “I only knew when she died. That was when I figured it out. You can look down your nose at me all you like, but at least I don’t belong to a family that would pay someone to kill one of its own.”
“No,” I said, fighting anger. “You belong to a family that would do the killing for money.”
“It was a mercy.” Alice Sanders’s voice was cold as ice. “She was mad anyway. What kind of life was she ever going to have? She couldn’t marry, have children. She’d just end up in an asylum, like the rest of them do. What kind of life is that? My George would have done it quick and painless, and she’d never know a thing. A mercy, like putting a dog down, and we’d have money for our son.”