Free Farthing by Jo Walton

I got dressed and went down, and I met Lord Eversley on the stairs.”
    “That would have been at about eight-fifteen,” Mrs. Kahn said. “I was in the front hall with my mother when Lady Thirkie and my father came down.”
    “Did all the guests go to church?” Carmichael asked.
    “Very few of them went to the early service,” Mrs. Kahn said. “Most of them prefer Matins, at eleven-thirty.”
    So the house hadn’t been almost empty for that hour as he’d been imagining it. What a pity.
    He turned back to Lady Thirkie. “So from one a.m. until just before eight-fifteen, you were asleep in the blue room, and after that you were in church.”
    “Yes…” she said.
    “You didn’t hear anything unusual, either in the night or early this morning?”

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    It took a moment for the significance of this question to sink in. Carmichael could see her understanding it when, several moments after he finished speaking, she actually flinched. “You mean it was there? In the dressing room? That’s where it happened?” she asked, her voice rising.
    Where, Carmichael wondered, had she expected her husband to be in the small hours of the morning? “You mean I was there when the murderer came in? I just lay there, sleeping, while the anarchist killed James? Why, he could have come in and murdered me too!” She began to sob noisily, almost wailing.
    “I’m very sorry to have distressed you, Lady Thirkie, but please understand that any evidence I can find, anything at all, might make it easier for me to find out who killed your husband,” he said.
    “I didn’t hear anything,” she sobbed.
    Mrs. Kahn put her arms around her, wearily. Mrs. Normanby, still by the window, turned and looked at
    Carmichael. “I think you’d better go,” she said. “You can ask any other questions another time.
    My sister is too upset to be any more help to you now.”
    “Very well.” Carmichael wasn’t sorry to leave the stifling atmosphere and the wails. He wanted to talk more to all three women, or he wanted to get more information from them, at least, but he didn’t need to do it immediately. He withdrew to the corridor and stood there for a moment taking deep breaths.
    Where next? Two possibilities immediately suggested themselves: the stables, or the gunroom—male preserves both, where he could be reassuringly free of either feminine wails or feminine ruffles. Laughing at himself, Carmichael strode off in search of Royston.
    7
    Sukey came by at last and tapped hesitantly on her own door. The afternoon had been an interminable drag. The sisters had spent it alternately sniping at and ignoring each other. We’d had a visit from the rather nice, though probably Athenian, Inspector from Scotland Yard.
    Angela had shown almost as much distress that Sir James had been killed in the dressing room as that he was dead at all, though she didn’t quite faint. I opened the door to Sukey with a great sense of relief. If nothing else, I was hungry enough to eat a horse, without even cooking and skinning it. I’d even have eaten the saddle.
    Sukey stood there in one of her dresses that Hugh had once unkindly dubbed “pincushion frocks,” velvet with lace trim. “It’s nearly time to dress for dinner,” she said, in an apologetic whisper. “I was wondering if I could tiptoe in and get a few things. I won’t disturb you.”
    I stepped out into the corridor and closed the door. “I want my dinner too,” I said.
    “I had thought trays,” Sukey said. “Angela can’t possibly appear.”
    “No, she can’t, but I can’t stay in there with her. I don’t think Daphne should either. Honestly, Sukey, trust me. Daphne is absolutely the wrong person to be with her sister now.”
    Sukey frowned and stroked the velvet of her sleeve—I’m sure she does it without knowing she’s doing it, because I once heard her complain about the nap being gone there and saying it was inexplicable.
    Sukey’s rather like a cat in some ways, a slightly