“Enough.” He sighed quietly, still unwilling to believe. “We agree that Frances was murdered at least,” he said. “Let us agree on our list of suspects.”
“Very well,” I said. “It must begin with the people in the house that day. So the list starts with Dottie.”
“Add the servants, though I’m not sure what the motive would be.”
Something about those words triggered a thought in the back of my mind, a memory like an itch, but I could not recall it. “The man in the woods,” I added.
“He wasn’t in the house,” Alex reminded me.
“We don’t know that. It isn’t impossible, especially if he had an accomplice in either the family or the servants. Was Robert home that day?”
“Yes,” Alex replied. “He wasn’t in the house when it happened, but he arrived home soon after. He’d been at a neighbor’s.”
“Did he take the motorcar?”
“No, he walked. He was visiting the Astleys, half a mile away.”
“Does he usually walk to the Astleys’?” Robert had taken the motorcar every time he’d visited friends since we’d been home.
“I have no idea what Robert usually does.”
“Did anyone ask the Astleys about it?”
“As a matter of fact, I did,” Alex said. “I thought it rather convenient that he came walking up the back lane from the trees barely twenty minutes after his daughter died. So I visited the Astleys myself. Robert was there. You’re not the only one with a basely suspicious line of thinking.”
I ignored that. “Did the Astleys recall exactly what time he left?”
“No, not exactly.”
“So he could have done it, left the house, and come back twenty minutes later as if innocent.”
“Yes. I don’t like to think it, but without a firm timeline, it’s possible.”
“And you?” I asked. “Where were you exactly when it happened?”
“In the motorcar, on my way home from this very village,” Alex replied. “I arrived only minutes after it happened. One of the maids saw her fall, and was screaming.” He glanced away, his jaw hard. “It was me who took charge of the body.”
He would have had to look at her, dead on the flagstones, and cover her up until the police came. It did not bear thinking of, but I had to be hard-hearted. “That’s our list of suspects, then,” I said. “Dottie, Robert, the servants, the man in the woods, you. The only person we can rule out safely is Martin, because he was in France.”
“No,” Alex said. “We cannot rule out Martin.” He glanced at me. “If you can be cold, then so can I. If Martin wished his sister dead from his hospital bed in France, then he could have hired someone. He certainly had the means.”
“That makes no sense,” I said. “He loved her.” But I remembered Cora telling me that Martin had burned all of the letters Frances sent to him at the Front during the war. Why would he do that?
“Love and murder go together more often than you think,” Alex replied. “And you have left out one other person. By coincidence, here he comes now.”
I looked ahead. Approaching us through the rain was a familiar figure, his shriveled arm pinned into the sleeve of his mackintosh. “That’s Mr. Wilde.”
“Yes, it is.”
I had no chance to ask Alex what he meant, as Mr. Wilde was close enough to hear. “Mrs. Manders,” he greeted me. He turned to Alex. “Mr. Manders. What a pleasure to see you home from the war. Mrs. Forsyth telephoned me this morning with the news.”
“That was quick of her,” said Alex.
“I am closely concerned with the Forsyths’ business.” I wondered at the distinct coolness between them as Mr. Wilde turned to me. “Mrs. Manders, you look well this morning. I quite enjoyed our dance last night. You dance elegantly.”
David Wilde was shorter than Alex, darker of complexion, and older—though the gray in his hair exaggerated the effect, and I had felt for myself his strength when I’d danced with him. With his deformed hand clad, as before, in its gray glove at the end of his sleeve, he looked distinguished, though I noticed that the villagers around us did not look at him as they passed. I recalled how tipsy I’d been in his grasp the night before, his one hand on my waist.
“Thank you,” I said. “You were very kind.”
“You seem to be having a leisurely morning,” Alex said to Mr. Wilde. “Not particularly busy today?”
“I find taking walks refreshing,” Mr. Wilde replied. “My days are very quiet, as I have explained to Mrs. Manders.” He bowed slightly, the tilt of his head almost sarcastic. “It’s good to see a true, honest-to-goodness war hero come home, Mr. Manders. I wish you good day.”
“What in the world did I just witness?” I asked Alex when he was out of earshot again.
“How much do you know of David Wilde?” he asked in return, his expression blankly grim.
“Hardly anything.”