CORNERING A KILLER
Author's Note:If you're thinking "It's been so long that I can't remember what this story is about, let alone the critical details of the plot", don't worry. Mrs. Carson is about to explain them to you.
Chapter 17 Reckoning
At Half-Ten
"Well, this is going to be an awkward affair."
Mrs. Carson had found her husband in the Great Hall going over arrangements, as he always did before an event, though perhaps not with his usual ease. They were both moving very stiffly.
"As though we were a pair of pensioners," she had joked when they d gotten up at their usual hour.
"As though we'd been assaulted by a madwoman," he had corrected her humourlessly.
Now, at almost half-ten on Monday morning as they stood alone together in the moment of calm before the room began to fill, she thought she knew what he meant about awkwardness, although she did not quite agree with him.
The group that was soon to gather was a mixed one and Mr. Carson never approved of those. His Lordship, Her Ladyship, and Lady Mary would be there of course. And the Dowager, too.
"I'm not about to miss this!" the old lady had declared emphatically as Carson helped her out of her coat a little earlier. "It's the most exciting thing that's happened at Downton in years!" For once, Carson had been unable to share her zest. The events of the previous day were still too raw for him to see them as entertainment. He did not know how she had even learned of the excitement, although he suspected servant gossip.
Four comfortable chairs were arrayed to the left of the fireplace to accommodate the family. Four more comfortable chairs flanked the hearth on the right. The Abbey guests would occupy these. Neither the Edgertons nor the Sinderbys had left according to schedule. Though they hardly knew what to make of the events they had seen only from the peripheries, all wanted to be in on the explanation. The Edgertons had a direct interest in the fate of their maid, and though the Sinderbys did not have such an excuse, Mrs. Carson supposed she could not fault them for their curiosity.
The awkwardness of which Mr. Carson spoke was a reference to the eight somewhat more utilitarian chairs lined up facing the others. This set was divided five and three. The Carsons, Mr. Barrow, and the Bateses would sit to one side while Sergeant Willis and Inspector Viner sat to their right.
"Why three places for two police officers?" Mrs. Carson asked.
"His Lordship says there is to be another man from Scotland Yard, a Superintendent Dash," her husband replied.
"Because one isn't enough trouble," Mrs. Carson said acerbically. "That's a mean little chair," she observed, pointing to one of the three.
"Lady Mary was quite insistent on it," he said, frowning slightly." I don't know why."
Mrs. Carson thought it unlikely to support either the burly local constable or the rather dense Scotland Yard inspector and hoped that the new man would be of a slighter build.
At sixteen the group was large enough and yet there were some significant absences.
"I believe it is customary to have the guilty party on hand for the exposition," Mr. Carson mused. "At least, that's how it's done in detective novels. But I'm just as glad Miss Braithwaite is locked up."
"That's only necessary for a dramatic revelation. We already know who did it, so we don't need her here. This gathering," she added, with grim satisfaction, "is really about Inspector Viner."
There were others who would like to have been included but to whom the latitude extended to the guests did not apply.
"Mrs. Patmore is in a state about it all," Mrs. Carson admitted. "I told her I'd tell her everything later." Daisy and Miss Baxter would have to settle for second-hand accounts through the footmen. Molesley and Andrew, though not provided with chairs, would be in attendance in the Great Hall in their usual roles. Neither had complained for they, too, were eager to hear the story.
The mere allusion to the downstairs staff made Mr. Carson shudder. Cooks in the Great Hall!
"Why aren't we doing this in the library?" Mrs. Carson asked abruptly. "That's where it all unfolds in the books."
Her husband recoiled again. "Not in the library!" he declared, fixing her with an indignant glare. "We could hardly sit with the family in the library! We should not be sitting with them at all!" His gaze swept the chairs set out for the servants and he came over somewhat distressed. "I don't know that I will be able to sit in His Lordship's presence. Or the Dowager's!"
His fastidiousness exasperated his wife. She wasn't about to stand while the family sat, not in this instance. And she certainly wasn't going to be forced into a position of social inferiority with regard to Inspector Viner.
"If they want to hear my tale," she said determinedly, "then they're going to have to suspend convention and endure the affront. Even," she added, glaring right back at her husband, "the Dowager."
She expected him to let loose with a lecture about propriety and order and the importance of the social hierarchy, or at the very least to level her with one of his patented scowls of reproof. But, as sometimes happened, he surprised her, his glare giving way instead to a smouldering look that made the colour rise in her cheeks.
"It is your tale, love," he said quietly, but with conviction. "Every bit of it." His words reverberated with pride and admiration.
Her face grew warmer with this commendation. She appreciated the praise no less than the endearment that he had slipped in so casually and right here in the Great Hall. "We did it together," she said, in that flat, matter-of-fact manner that she had perfected as a means to derail sentimentality. "You and I and Mr. Barrow. And I'm not at all certain that Mr. Barrow doesn't deserve centre stage."
"It was your little grey cells that put it all together," he persisted, not to be deterred by her modesty. Then he withdrew his watch from its pocket. "I must attend," he intoned. And he reached out to stroke her cheek, catching her unawares for a second time in the space of a minute, before slipping away.
Her smile lingered only until he had disappeared from her sight and then a little line of worry appeared on her brow. Though the assertion of her place in the proceedings hardly indicated it, she was unsettled at the prospect of commanding the spotlight in the exposition, as her husband had put it. He was the showman. She preferred to do her work quietly. But there was no getting around a featured role in the proceedings to come. Mr. Carson deferred to her prominent role in the story and even Mr. Barrow had demurred when they had discussed the matter earlier in the day and she could hardly blame him. No, she had assumed the job of detective in undertaking this inquiry and now she must pay the piper by laying it out before everyone.
She sighed.
Identifying The Suspect
There were a few bumps right at the start.
The police were the last to arrive and the butler of Downton Abbey, in his last formal responsibility for the morning, led them into the Great Hall and directed them to their seats.
"What were the footmen thinking putting out that rickety old thing?" His Lordship demanded sotto voce of his daughter as they moved to their places. "I'll have them set it right."
"They were acting on my instructions," Lady Mary said smoothly, smiling discreetly as Inspector Viner reacted to the precariousness of his chair.
Robert Crawley sighed. "Don't you think that's a bit petty?"
Lady Mary s expression of satisfaction only broadened. "Oh, yes," she said agreeably, and then looked beyond her father to Carson who, coming up behind them, had caught this conversation. She raised an eyebrow at him and he nodded approvingly.
Then the butler crossed the floor to join the other servants, electing to stand behind his wife's chair rather than to sit. It would take more than the events of the past few days to shake him from the social conventions to which he was wedded. As was the case in the servants' hall, the other four were waiting for Mr. Carson to sit before they did. When he did not, his wife, not very surprised by his decision, took her seat anyway and motioned for Anna, beside her, to do the same. Mr. Bates, taking his cue from the butler, positioned himself behind his own wife's chair and Mr. Barrow, who had pride as well, moved to stand beside the valet, behind an empty chair. The presence of the servants and the unusual gesture of their accommodation drew a disgruntled look from Lord Sinderby, but he knew as well as any of them that the servants were at the centre of the story about to be told.
The real source of disruption was Inspector Viner, who might accurately have been described as the chief antagonist. His Lordship had taken his own seat next her Ladyship, and Lady Mary, standing before the fireplace, was about to begin when the Inspector stood up, perhaps glad to abandon his unreliable chair.
"I object to this whole business. If there is evidence to be had in the affair of Mr. Green and the Bateses, I will question witnesses directly and privately."
Lady Mary gave him a withering look and it was clear to those who knew her that she was determined to put the errant officer in his place. "You are here by invitation, Inspector Viner, and will conduct yourself in this moment according to our rules. You may do as you like later."
It seemed that he might not cooperate, but then his Scotland Yard colleague murmured mildly, "I'd like to hear this."
Glancing at the man beside him, the Inspector considered for a moment and then sat. Balancing himself carefully, he crossed his arms and deliberately stared away from the fireplace and his hostess.
"For months past," Lady Mary began, "a dark cloud of suspicion has hung over Downton with regard to the murder of the late and unmourned John Green, formerly valet to Lord Gillingham." She gave no further particulars, having explained the background of the case to the Edgertons and the Sinderbys the night before. "Scotland Yard has had its turn at resolving Green's death and failed, making it necessary for others to take their turn. We are gathered here today that we may learn not only who killed Green, but also how his killer was identified and induced to confess." Lady Mary paused and turned slightly to the right where the staff were assembled. "For that I must yield to Mrs. Carson, the housekeeper of Downton Abbey and the detective who has uncovered the truth."
Mrs. Carson got slowly to her feet, moving with what looked like deliberation but which was in fact simple nervousness. Her gaze traversed the faces around the room, something that did not bolster her courage. Though she had looked forward to putting Inspector Viner in his place, that seemed a greater challenge in the moment. But then her eyes fell on Anna - Anna taking up as little space as possible, her hands folded demurely in her lap, her grey-green eyes that were usually singing but which had been solemn for too long now - and Mrs. Carson remembered what this was all about.
"This all began for me," she said abruptly, "with a certainty. And that was that Anna Bates, who had come under suspicion of murder, had done no such thing." There was an almost incredulous note in her words: Who could ever have thought otherwise! In the looks of affirmation she saw in the faces of the Crawleys, Mrs. Carson found her courage rising yet more. "That certainty resided not in the evidence of facts - motive, means, and opportunity - but in something equally potent - character. And as it seemed that the authorities...," she shot a meaningful glance at the simmering Inspector, "were not about to consider other options, I thought I ... we...," she flashed a quick smile at her husband over her shoulder, "I thought that we might look into it."
"But...where could you start?" Her Ladyship asked in wonder. "Where did you start?"
So she told them about her lists - the one of the women who had been assaulted by Mr. Green (she did not betray Sergeant Willis's indiscretion in supplying this information); the second, all those who were at Downton Abbey for the house party where Green had transgressed (here she was circumspect out of regard for Anna, whose expression tightened when her ordeal was referred to even this obliquely); and the third, the exhaustive itinerary of Lord Gillingham, which drew a map of Green's movements for the three years past.
"How did you get all that information?" Lord Grantham asked, clearly impressed.
Mrs. Carson folded her hands before her. "Well, I knew who was at Downton, upstairs and down. And..." Out of the corner of her eye she saw the constable shifting uncomfortably with a sudden revelation. "...and Lady Mary secured from Lord Gillingham a duplicate copy of the travel diary Mr. Green so assiduously kept."
"What could you have hoped to find?" Her Ladyship pressed, bewildered.
"I didn't know," Mrs. Carson admitted agreeably. "But as Mr. Carson pointed out to me at the time, I couldn't very well go sleuthing up and down the country. Scotland Yard had already done that. I had to work with tools that were within reach. And it's true that examining these lists and comparing them didn't answer questions. Instead, they raised more, the most important of which concerned Edna Braithwaite."
His Lordship rounded on Inspector Viner. "Was she even on your list of suspects?" he demanded.
The Inspector was not easily cowed. "I've yet to hear any reason why she should have been," he responded, with a dismissive shrug.
"I suppose the fact that she actually killed Green isn't a sufficient one," Lady Mary said acidly.
"Begging your pardon, my lord," Mrs. Carson went on, interceding smoothly, "but method has a lot to do with how Mr. Viner came to his conclusions. You see, he came from the outside. We - Mr. Carson and I, and Mr. Barrow, too - we had no choice but to work from the inside."
"We are still in the dark as to how you came up with Edna Braithwaite," Her Ladyship put in, far more interested in the unfolding story than in her daughter settling scores with the inspector. Was she another of ... Green's victims?" She said this as delicately as possible.
"Not at all, my lady. What happened was this." There were minefields all over this story, even more so with such a large audience. But there was nothing else for it but to lay it out and let the chips fall where they might. "In the absence of any new lines of inquiry, we could only re-examine what Scotland Yard had done, considering the other ... victims. We didn't want to find any of the other young women guilty. It was only that we wanted to prove Anna innocent."
Her Ladyship's expression was very sympathetic. It seemed she could appreciate Mrs. Carson's uneasiness about that.
"So, we had Lord Gillingham's travel diary and with it we could pinpoint for ourselves when the other assaults had taken place, because they had been to all but one of those houses only once. The one we couldn't pin down was Chesley Park, because Lord Gillingham had been there a number of times. And this is what I mean about an inside approach, because I'd never have made anything of this information without Mr. Carson."
Again Mrs. Carson glanced over her shoulder at her husband, who bowed his head in acknowledgment.
"Mr. Carson reminded me that I had once sought the name of the housekeeper there and he had written the butler to elicit that information. The usual reason for writing to another housekeeper is to check on the references of an applicant for a job here at the Abbey. But I hadn't followed up on it. I thought it was because I'd hired someone else. And then I remembered that there was someone at Downton Abbey whose references I had not checked."
"Edna Braithwaite," Her Ladyship breathed, and she looked pained. "Because Lady Rose and I made the decision without consulting you."
"Yes, my lady."
"So I brought her here." This revelation unsettled Her Ladyship.
"So what?!"Inspector Viner interrupted. "This is of no consequence."
"Please continue, Mrs. Carson," His Lordship said, overriding the officer. "Tell us why this mattered."
"Well, when we looked at our lists again, we discovered that Miss Braithwaite's brief months of employment at Chesley Park coincided more than once with times that Mr. Green was also there."
"Again, so what?" Viner sneered. "The law deals with facts, Mrs. Carson, not fancy."
"So it does, Inspector," she said coolly, "which is why we didn't trouble you with this information." There was a sarcastic tone to her words. His contempt emboldened her. "And I'll grant you that it didn't sound like anything in itself, but I think that in the investigation of something like a murder you have to take note of odd things, even if they don't seem to relate directly."
"And the odd thing, Mrs. Carson?" Superintendent Dash's question reflected none of his colleague's contempt.
She responded directly to him. "They had met at Chesley Park. They knew each other, better than even a passing acquaintance in the servants' hall as we discovered later. But ... when they were both at Downton that long weekend of the house party, neither of them acknowledged the other."
The superintendent sat back and gave a little nod.
"There was nothing else. So we had to work with what we had. We would have to ask some questions at Chesley Park."
"But ... how?" His Lordship came over perplexed.
He wasn't the only one in the room feeling that way but the guests and the police were letting the Crawleys and their servants play this out together.
Mrs. Carson suppressed a smile. She could tell that His Lordship could not begin to fathom how either she or Mr. Carson had gone abroad in search of clues. "We enlisted some help," she said. "A man who could ask questions and get answers."
"Not someone from Scotland Yard, in other words," Lady Mary interjected.
"Mary." Lady Grantham issued this slight reproof almost inaudibly but it would have fallen on deaf ears no matter had she shouted it from the rooftops.
"We asked Mr. Barrow to do our footwork," Mrs. Carson went on, "and he agreed." If this was a bit of varnish on the somewhat more difficult negotiations that that exchange had entailed it was nevertheless true in its essentials.
At her words Mr. Bates stepped back, visibly stunned. To this point though he had not been exactly stoic, he had affected a professional demeanour. Only those who knew him well would have been aware of the tremendous self-discipline he had to employ to remain impassive in such circumstances, with his wife's greatest ordeal the subtext for all that was being said and the vile Inspector Viner only feet away. Anna, always sensitive to her husband's moods, sat more stiffly in her chair because of the tension emanating from him. And across the room Robert Crawley kept glancing his way, whenever he could tear his attention from Mrs. Carson's narrative. And now, at Bates's abrupt movement, both Anna and His Lordship started, almost as if to go to him. But he recovered quickly, regaining his composure and turning with heightened interest to Barrow whose own dispassionate exterior had remained unruffled.
"Again, we didn't know what it was we were looking for, but...," and now Mrs. Carson turned toward the underbutler, "...we were confident that Mr. Barrow was up to that challenge." She paused. "What happened at Chesley Park is rightly his part of the story. Would you like to tell it, Mr. Barrow?" She thought she ought to give him the option.
Their eyes met. "No. Thank you, Mrs. Carson," he said quietly. "You're telling it so well."
She did not push him. Barrow had known many arduous moments in his life, not least the two years he had spent in the trenches during the war, but the nightmare of the previous day's events was too close to expect more than a façade of equanimity, even from him. So, nodding in understanding, Mrs. Carson focused on the gathering at large once more. The ground was getting ever more delicate. She would have to tread more carefully.
Before she could continue, His Lordship spoke again.
"But how could Barrow inveigle his way into the servants' hall at Chesley Park? You can't just walk in and start asking question."
"I arranged for Barrow temporarily to act as valet to Lord Gillingham," Lady Mary said bluntly. "It all began with him. Or near him, at any rate. Green was his valet."
"You seem to have been quite involved in all of this," Her Ladyship said, with an appraising look at her daughter.
"Only on the peripheries. Please go on, Mrs. Carson."
The distraction had given Mrs. Carson a moment to plan her way forward. "Mr. Barrow inveigled his way into Chesley Park very effectively, if I may say so," she said warmly, with another glance in the underbutler's direction. "And he returned to us with valuable information. But … I hesitate now because what I have to relate involves a few things that would be better left alone were it not for the critical matter at hand." She paused. "Chesley Park has its own tragedies."
His Lordship broke the solemn silence that followed. "Do you mean the death of Lord Bracken, Mrs. Carson?"
She was grateful to him. "To some extent, my lord," she said circumspectly.
He nodded, understanding, and then cleared his throat in an authoritative manner. "Then I must ask everyone present, on your honour, to observe discretion with regard to anything we may now hear of the family or house at Chesley Park." His Lordship's gaze swept the room, encompassing them all.
"I can make no such promise in a murder investigation, Lord Grantham, and you know that very well," Inspector Viner spat.
"Superintendent Dash?"
The officer's attention remained on the housekeeper. "How do you answer that, Mrs. Carson?"
"Only that what happened at Chesley Park is important only is establishing motive, Superintendent. Any case against Miss Braithwaite relies on evidence from elsewhere."
He came over satisfied. "Then I think we may agree to discretion. Tell us, Mrs. Carson, what did you learn from Chesley Park?"
Mrs. Carson's exposure to Scotland Yard had been limited to interactions with Inspector Viner and he had been off-putting to an offensive degree. Superintendent Dash might bring her assessment of the Yard into a more reasonable balance.
"A lot," she said. "Well, three things in particular. The first was the oddity confirmed. Though they had behaved as strangers at Downton Abbey, it turns out that Edna Braithwaite and John Green did know each other from Chelsey Park. And according to some of the servants there, they were quite chummy."
"The second revelation was about Mr. Green." It continued to irk her every time she referred to him in a polite manner when her impulse was to preface his name with the vilest of epithets. "We already knew that he had … attacked … one of the maids there, a young woman named Leah Close."
"She was one of the first to come forward," Viner countered her. "We've spoken to her and she is not a suspect in this case."
"Nor should she be, poor girl," Mrs. Carson agreed, ignoring his corrective tone. "But that was only the obvious motive. What Mr. Barrow learned was that Mr. Green was also blackmailing someone there – establishing an alternative motive, every bit as potent as revenge." In her peripheral vision she noted a slight heightening of the tension in Thomas's bearing. She did not know everything that he had learned at Chesley Park, but she'd made a few educated guesses of her own and concluded that Lord Bracken was not the only one who needed protection.
"Who?!"
She met the Inspector's challenge firmly. "I'm not at liberty to say."
"Then Barrow must be. If blackmail is a motive – and you have presented no evidence, relying only on hearsay - then the target of such a campaign is also suspect and must be properly investigated."
Mrs. Carson did not like bullies and had from childhood responded to them only with resistance. Now she stared at the inspector for a long moment, beginning to believe that Viner was more interested in stirring trouble for as many people as possible than sincerely concerned with getting to the bottom of things. Behind her, Mr. Carson's growl was just audible.
"But I disagree, Inspector. Because, again, this part of the story is only to explain how we came to suspect Edna Braithwaite. What happened at Chesley Park only opened our eyes. The proof of the crime that you have been investigating for more than a year now comes later, from what happened at Downton Abbey yesterday." This was not only the truth but a useful rationalization for concealing other sensitive elements of the story.
"You said there were three things you had learned at Chesley Park, Mrs. Carson?" His Lordship interceded, tactfully drawing them back to the subject.
"Yes. You see the relationship between Miss Braithwaite and Mr. Green confirmed our inclination to suspect her. And the fact that Mr. Green was a blackmailer as well as a … an … assailant raised possibility of another motive for killing him. The third matter was more complicated. It was the insight Mr. Barrow developed into the tragic events at Chesley Park which gave as an inkling as to how blackmail might connect Miss Braithwaite and Mr. Green."
"Might."
"Yes, might, Inspector Viner."
"Tell us, Mrs. Carson. On what grounds might Mr. Green have blackmailed Edna Braithwaite?"
Superintendent Dash's attentiveness to the point smoothed over Mrs. Carson's growing irritation with Inspector Viner. She took a deep breath and, in the momentary interval, her eyes latched on the Dowager who had sat silently through the proceedings thus far. The old woman's glittering gaze was fixed on her. The only person in the room who was more wedded to the suppression of scandal than her Mr. Carson was the Dowager Lady Grantham. Of course, the woman could not know what Elsie was about to relate, but it certainly seemed that she had a sense of the careful balancing act before her.
"Two terrible things happened at Chesley Park and though they were not directly related, the coincidence of their occurring at the same time twisted them together. The first…" and here Mrs. Carson paused, acutely aware of Anna by her side, "…the first was that Miss Leah Close turned up one morning, shortly after the New Year, bruised and battered and …." She drew a breath. "And the second was that the next day Lord Bracken shot himself."
"But surely the one had nothing to do with the other!" Lady Edgerton declared, her tone reflecting horror at even the intimation of such a thing.
Mrs. Carson repressed a sigh of exasperation. It seemed to her that the capacity for self-deception among the upper classes, and especially the women, when it came to the sexual adventures of their kind, was infinite. On the other side of the green baize door a greater realism prevailed.
"Well, they were," she said firmly. "Only the rush to connect them in one way – the wrong way – critically obscured the legitimate tie between them. They – and we – have been paying the price ever since."
"Am I the only one who is confused by this?" demanded the Dowager, staring hard at Mrs. Carson.
"It is confusing, my lady. Let me sort it out for you. You see, the timing is crucial. Both events occurred over the New Year's holiday at Chesley Park. Lord Gillingham, with his valet in tow, was there for the shooting party. The valet found his chance and…."
It was impossible for her to say the words without anger and sorrow creeping into them, for she remembered too vividly a similar night at Downton Abbey when she returned to her office, swept up in the exhilaration of hearing Dame Nellie Melba sing, to find Anna, crumpled and terrified, cowering there in the dark. It had broken the housekeeper's heart. She had wanted to call the police, call the doctor, tell them all upstairs and down of the vile beast in their midst. But she had given in to Anna's desperate, almost deranged pleading on behalf of her husband, a man in whom the current of love and loyalty ran deep and mingled dangerously with the primal instinct to defend those that were his own.
A movement at her side jarred Mrs. Carson and she started, realizing that it was her husband coming to stand beside her. It was hardly an intimate gesture – the stiff cloth of his livery barely touched her arm – but had he flung an arm about her and pulled her close it could hardly have had a more buoyant effect. She took strength from his presence and boldly resumed.
"…and then the next day, Lord Bracken shot himself. These events were not connected. That is, Lord Bracken had nothing to do with the assault on Miss Close. But it is hardly surprising that the family and staff at Chesley Park saw them as cause and effect. They seemed to fit together."
"My God," Robert Crawley murmured.
Lord Sinderby swore an oath. Lady Edgerton gasped, while the eyes of Lady Grantham and Lady Sinderby glistened with empathy.
The Dowager, who was more resolute than all of them, kept her gaze fixed on the housekeeper. "But this was not so."
"No, my lady."
"Your sordid speculations may thrill listeners in the servants' hall, Mrs. Carson, but you are wasting our time here. This has nothing to do with the Braithwaite woman or blackmail."
Mrs. Carson felt her husband go rigid with repressed fury, but she went so far as to put a hand on his arm to steady him. The story would right Mr. Viner's views, if ever she could finish it. "But it does. The family acted immediately on this errant assumption. Miss Close was dismissed …" The Crawleys, all four of them, looked affronted. "… her story untold, no close investigation of the matter pressed."
"Well, naturally," Lord Sinderby said forcefully.
Lord Sinderby was well known to all, so his remark elicited only a few eye rolls.
"But had anyone sought the truth, a different story would have emerged and perhaps other tragedies would have been averted."
"The girl should have reported the attack," Viner said unsympathetically. "They all should have done."
She ignored him. "There is evidence – gathered by Mr. Barrow from both Lord Gillingham and Lord Bracken's former valet – that Lord Bracken was seriously agitated and they both had reason to believe this arose from the complications of a… questionable alliance. Now, I did not know Lord Bracken, but Lord Gillingham and perhaps the family felt that he was somewhat fragile emotionally." Mrs. Carson knew this to be very delicate ground indeed. She pressed on. "He had had a hard war and suffered a number of personal losses, including the deaths of his fiancée and his father. He was … vulnerable, very vulnerable to someone like Miss Braithwaite."
Viner snorted. "To marry the lord of the manor is a commonplace ambition, Mrs. Carson. We need more than that."
This slight on working women antagonized Mrs. Carson, but she bit her lip. She had larger concerns now, for she had come to the heart of it. "We also have a pattern of behavior and it was the revelation of this pattern to Mr. Green that opened the door to blackmail."
"What pattern?"
"Miss Braithwaite wanted to marry up. She said as much to one of the footmen at Chesley Park, to whom she confided that she had hopes of Lord Bracken. But he was not the only vulnerable man in a well-to-do family whom she had targeted. At Chesley Park it was Lord Bracken. At Downton Abbey, it was…" suddenly all eyes were riveted upon her, "…Mr. Branson." She did not pause to let them react. "She had taken an inappropriate interest in him when she worked here as a maid. We…," she nodded to her husband, "dismissed her for it. And when she returned as lady's maid, she returned to her old tricks."
Lord Grantham and Lady Mary were shocked. Old Lady Grantham, Mrs. Carson noted, came over thoughtful.
Her Ladyship's face crumpled in dismay at the role she had played in bringing Edna Braithwaite back into the Downton fold. She pressed her hands to her face in a wave of remorse. "And I road roughshod over your objections. I am so sorry, Mrs. Carson."
"Not without value in the end, my lady. We had learned from Chesley Park that Mr. Green was a blackmailer and that Edna Braithwaite had an Achilles' heel. It would do her no good at all for her ambitions to become widely known. We needed evidence that would bring these two things together and we got it at Downton when we learned that there had been a … conversation … between Miss Braithwaite and Mr. Branson, one in which she set her goals out explicitly, and that Mr. Green was privy to it."
"And you know this how?" Viner asked silkily.
"Because, Inspector, Mr. Barrow was there, too. He heard the conversation and he saw Mr. Green listening to it."
"This hardly seems like the stuff of blackmail, even if your imaginings have foundation. What riches could Green have expected to extract?"
Inspector Viner had clearly seen some success in his career, but Mrs. Carson did wonder at his advancement when he appeared to know so little of human nature. "It didn't have to be much. We already knew from Chesley Park that Green was a petty bully. He'd been blackmailing someone there for paltry sums. As for Edna Braithwaite, when your whole future depends on marrying a man of wealth and status – which is what Edna sought – then there was something vital to protect. Not to mention that, if she were successful, Mr. Green's blackmail demands would have increased substantially."
"I am impressed, Mrs. Carson." This intercession came from Superintendent Dash. "You and your associates uncovered a serous line of inquiry, one certainly worthy of pursuit. But I have to ask – did you make any attempt to bring this to Inspector Viner's attention?"
She faced him squarely. "No."
"Why not?"
"Because we had no evidence, Superintendent."
"I could have told you that," Viner smirked.
"You have told us that. Repeatedly."
"But … what, then?" Lady Grantham asked, sounding a little confused.
"And what connection does all of this have to what happened here yesterday?" Lord Grantham demanded more forthrightly.
"As much as we may all want to know the answer to that question, Lord Grantham, perhaps we ought to pause for a moment." It was Lady Sinderby's first intervention in the conversation and the very novelty of this drew eyes in her direction. She wore a look of concern. "I think Mrs. Bates is on the verge of collapse."
