Free Airs and Graces by Roz Southey

coming.
    ‘I have Mrs Fletcher with me. We’ve been reading the will.’
    We went into the inner office, a room lined with books and boxes; dust motes floated in the sunlight. Mrs Fletcher, in her severe cap and neat practical dress, turned a look on me so expressionless it was daunting. We sat down, Armstrong cramming himself into the small space beneath his desk.
    ‘To reiterate,’ he said, ‘Samuel Gregson left all his property to be divided equally between his children, with arrangements made for the upkeep of his wife should she outlive him. There are three surviving children, two sons, in Exeter and London, and Mrs Fletcher.’ He nodded at her in acknowledgement. ‘There are strictly four surviving children but of course Alice cannot profit from her murderous acts.’
    ‘Assuming she did kill them,’ Mrs Fletcher said.
    Armstrong said sharply, ‘The inquest has come to that verdict.’
    ‘The jury were fools,’ Mrs Fletcher said contemptuously.
    Which was tantamount to saying that Armstrong was a fool. I hurriedly intervened. ‘Why do you believe your sister may be innocent?’
    ‘Look at the evidence! Alice is a slight girl who has never done a day’s work in her life, yet she’s supposed to have killed four people in a particularly brutal manner.’ She lifted her head in the face of Armstrong’s obvious annoyance. ‘It’s plain someone else was involved. Obviously, she disturbed a burglar and fled in fear.’
    ‘And what happened to this burglar?’ Armstrong said.
    ‘He ran off when he heard the child’s screams. With the money, and whatever else was stolen.’
    This was patently not the first time the subject had been raised, and was, I suspected, the reason I was here. ‘There is nothing to suggest anything else was stolen,’ Armstrong said, with an obvious effort to be civil.
    ‘ I will be able to tell you if that’s true,’ Mrs Fletcher said, ‘when I’ve had a look at the house and its contents.’
    ‘I have already said—’
    ‘My mother had some jewellery which would attract a thief.’
    ‘The watchman who searched the house said the jewellery was still in your mother’s room,’ I pointed out.
    She smiled grimly, the sun catching her hard profile. ‘My mother had some trinkets which are no doubt still there, but she also had more valuable pieces, inherited from her mother.’
    ‘The house must be inventoried,’ Armstrong said firmly. ‘I will send one of my clerks to do it. Moreover, your brothers must be informed of what has happened before anything can be moved.’
    ‘And in the meantime the house could be broken into and the jewellery stolen!’
    ‘No one is to be allowed inside that house,’ Armstrong said sharply. ‘I have it in trust for all the beneficiaries.’ He turned to me. ‘You, of course, may go in and out of the property as you see fit, Mr Patterson, but Mrs Fletcher does not have my permission to do so.’ He glared at her. ‘I trust I make myself plain.’
    Mrs Fletcher’s mouth set in a long hard line. Dust motes floated around her head. She held Armstrong’s gaze for a long moment, then got up. ‘Good day, Mr Patterson,’ she said, and swept out.
    Armstrong leant back, sighing. ‘Just like her father – he was headstrong, would never be guided. Forgive me, Patterson, but I thought it best we confront the issue directly. Else she’d be at your door trying to sweet-talk you into letting her see the shop and you’d not know whether it was appropriate or not.’
    ‘I quite see your point.’ I hesitated. ‘You say you knew Gregson well. Would you describe him as a violent man?’
    Armstrong pursed his lips. ‘Argumentative, certainly. He never raised a hand to me, or to anyone else in my presence, but a man will often behave differently in the bosom of his own family.’ He was being remarkably frank; I suspected he wouldn’t have said so much if he’d not already had some concern over the matter. He looked at me from under his bushy