CORNERING A KILLER

Chapter 1 The Green Problem

But I'm not free. And I never will be while the death of Mr. Green goes unsolved. It's going to hang over me for the rest of my life.

Anna's words haunted Elsie Carson. The affair of Mr. Green's death had not intruded overtly into their lives for months, but Elsie had eyes, didn't she? The burden wore on Anna. She maintained a veneer of her sunny disposition, always attentive to the joys and concerns of others, smiling coyly at Mr. Bates when she thought no one was looking, and ever-efficient in the performance of her duties. But it was only a veneer. Her troubles showed themselves in the dullness of her complexion, in the sombre note to her characteristic quietness. She was fading away.

She broke her silence on this only rarely and had done so earlier today in the housekeeper's sitting room. Mrs. Carson had been telling of waking up in the early hours of the morning to find little George Crawley in the sitting room of their cottage. It made Elsie wonder about the vigilance of the latest nanny, whose oversight George had escaped. He'd gone on a dawn stroll down the gravel path to the cottages, heading confidently for the one occupied by the Carsons. Mr. Carson had promised to show him how to cast for fish and the boy was eager for his first lesson.

"Gave me a start!" Mrs. Carson said, laughing now. "We took him back and Nanny had the good grace to be sheepish about it. And then it was too late to go back to bed, and Mr. Carson was so relieved that we hadn't locked the door and wasn't it a good thing that the child had found us rather than getting up to some mischief, and on... Needless to say, we lost some sleep over it." She'd thought Anna would be amused by the story, especially by the idea of Mr. Carson debating the implications of this childish adventure at great length. Instead, tears formed in those great sensitive eyes and two of them slid onto her cheeks.

"What is it?" Mrs. Carson asked solicitously, reaching out to take Anna's hand.

"Mr. Bates and I, we've wanted a child for so long, Mrs. Carson," Anna said softly. "But should we even be thinking about such a thing now?"

"And why not?"

"Because it's not over. Mr. Viner, Scotland Yard, Mr. Green...it's not over. And it won't be until they've solved the murder. And...I don't think they're really trying. They're still just waiting for some...misstep on my part, so that they can come and get me again."

Mrs. Carson did not think this was quite the case, but she understood how Anna could feel this way. And what could she say to that except to offer a blustering denial that would only exacerbate Anna's despondency. Instead, she put her arms around the younger woman, offering what solace there was to be had in a comforting hug.

But the picture of Anna's misery stayed with her, so that when they retired to their cottage at the end of the day, she did not pay complete attention to Mr. Carson's musings. And once she was changed into her nightclothes, she wrapped her flannel robe about herself and curled into the rocking chair by the sitting room fire instead of getting into bed.

He noticed her inattentiveness, of course. In the evenings, in their cottage, he had become accustomed to being the centre of her world. Perhaps it wouldn't always be so. Perhaps such things wore off as months of marriage turned into years. But he rather hoped the bloom wasn't off the rose quite yet. He fell silent and finished his own nightly routines before returning to her side. The rocker was an awkward piece of furniture. He could not sit beside her in it and approaching it was hazardous if it was in motion. It defeated any effort to offer comfort without posing a danger to the comforter. But he was determined to try.

"What is it, love?" he asked gently, trying not to intrude too abruptly on her quiet meditations. "You've not been yourself for the better part of the day."

Despite her deliberations, she was distracted by him. Here in their own home, he was a different man than he was up at the Abbey . All rigid formality and arm's length propriety for most of the day, he shed the hard shell of his professional position like a man taking off a coat once the door to their cottage was closed and the world of Downton Abbey shut out by it. Then he became a tender, affectionate, and solicitous husband. In her mind she was calling it his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde act. She found his Mr. Hyde persona a little exasperating, as she was confident that a slight thaw in his demeanour wouldn't bring the whole firmament crashing down upon them. But when she recalled the emotional depth of his Dr. Jekyll face, she was more accepting of his behaviour. He did not seem to be able to find any middle ground. And while the formal butler could be vexing, the loving husband was really quite a joy to be around. And he wasn't going to have to live this double life forever.

"I've been thinking about Anna and Mr. Green," she said abruptly.

He grimaced. "Why? What an unpleasant preoccupation."

"It is," she agreed. "But the problem of Mr. Green continues to trouble Anna and I'm troubled by that."

Deciding to risk having his toes trod on by the rocker, he stepped to her side and put his hand lightly on her shoulder. "Of course you worry about her, Elsie," he said, an acknowledgment of her particular affection for that young woman. "But the case against her has lapsed. There's not been any movement on it for months."

"No, there hasn't. But that doesn't mean it's disappeared, Charlie. And as far as Anna's concerned, it's left her in limbo. She and Mr. Bates can't really get on with their lives while living under the shadow of that uncertainty."

"Hmm." He didn't like uncertainty. And while it was hardly the same thing, he'd known some uncertainty last autumn as he had contemplated raising the question of marriage with Elsie. His concerns about her had been entirely groundless, but the not-knowing had preyed on his mind. How much worse must this be for the Bateses when the possibility of life imprisonment hung over Anna's head like the sword of Damocles? Mr. Carson did not really think it would come to this, could not really imagine Anna being successfully prosecuted, but he had some capacity for empathy, especially for those things that distressed his wife. There was, however, a practical element to this.

"But there's nothing you can do about it, love," he said quietly.

She had put a hand up to cover his. She loved touching him and regretted that he shied away from even these innocuous gestures when anyone else was present."Come here," she said, getting out of the rocker and leading him by the hand across the room. If he was going to stick by her side like that, then they might as well move to the sofa where he could be comfortable, too. He sat and she curled up beside him, drawing her feet up under her as he put his arm around her.

"I've just been wondering about that. What we could do." She started chewing on her bottom lip, a habit that suggested thoughtful consideration or, sometimes, agitation.

"But what's it got to do with you? This is a criminal matter, after all. The police are dealing with it."

She rolled her eyes. "Not very well."

"I have confidence in British justice." He uttered this declaration in a voice that suggested there was no room for disagreement.

"How can you say that?" she demanded, sitting up abruptly and turning a little so that she could look him more directly in the eye. "British justice sent Mr. Bates to jail for a crime he didn't commit! British justice arrested and imprisoned Anna for a crime she didn't commit! And the sainted Scotland Yard inspector isn't out there turning over new rocks, Charlie! He's just waiting for something to give so that he can re-arrest Anna!" She wasn't quite as convinced as her words suggested that Anna was right about this last point, but as far as she was concerned British justice was on the defensive.

Mr. Carson did not want to argue with her. He never wanted to argue with her which was not, in truth, something that could always be said about her with regard to him. He chose to sidestep the delicate topic and emphasize instead a more practical aspect. "Even so, there's nothing you can do about it," he repeated.

She was silent for a long moment. This, after all, is where he had interrupted her thoughts earlier. "I'm not so sure about that," she said finally. And then she turned an alert gaze on him.

He could see the ideas swirling in her eyes and he shifted just a little as a sense of unease seeped over him. 'What do you mean?" he asked cautiously. His Mrs. Carson was a woman of action and he saw a glint of determination growing there.

"Well," she said slowly, waiting for the specific ideas to coalesce in her head, "we could make our own inquiries."

With some effort, he managed to contain his incredulity. "You are completely out of your depth here, Elsie. The killer is out there somewhere, not here at Downton Abbey. The suspects might be legion. After all, we have no idea how many other women Green assaulted, who they might be, or if, perhaps, someone hated him enough to kill him for some other reason." He shook his head. "There's nothing you can do, love." Maybe if he said this often enough, she would accept it.

But she was, if anything, stubborn. And his skepticism fueled her determination. "Well, I think we can," she said boldly, reintroducing the plural pronoun. He was going to play a part in this whether he wanted to or not.

He recognized her resolve for what it was and, this not being a matter that might affect the welfare of Downton Abbey, he surrendered to her will. And as his eyes fell on a book on the side table, a different perspective occurred to him. "Shall we be like characters in a novel by Mrs. Christie then?" he asked, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

She smiled at him, pleased by his compliance and amused by his allusion. He had recently read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Mrs. Christie, her fifth novel, and Elsie was herself halfway through it. "Who do you want to be then?" she asked, with tongue in cheek. "The funny foreigner or the dim military sidekick?"

He frowned. "I think there was a married couple in one of the others. A better match, I think. So, what exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Holmes?" Now he was mixing allusions, but it didn't matter. She got the point.

"Well, I think there are three lines of inquiry we might pursue," she said immediately.

"Three? Good God, but you think fast."

She did and she was proud of it. "We can only work within our own bailiwick, but we can still ask questions that take us beyond it. "

"As in?"

"Well, Sergeant Willis has been privy to the Scotland Yard investigation. So a conversation with him might shed some light. He would know what other suspects there were, or have a list of the women they know Mr. Green assaulted. It would be useful to know whether there are any other question marks on the inspector's list."

Mr. Carson was intrigued, but he was also a little sceptical. "So what do we do? Invite him over for dinner, ply him with alcohol, and take advantage of his inebriation to pump him for the information?"

Mrs. Carson heard the slight note of sarcasm in his voice and chose to ignore it. "Not exactly," she said lightly. "You have him down to the pub of an evening, have a few drinks, and ask the right questions."

"Me?"

"Well, do you think he's going to cough up any of the details for me? He's not a very bright man, our Sergeant Willis, but he's a man's man. To him I'm just a little woman who can make a pot of tea and that's about it. You, on the other hand, are a man of importance in the village. You can use your position at Downton to influence him."

"That sounds a bit unethical, Elsie."

"You're asking him questions he can refuse to answer, Charlie. You're not trying to bribe him. Sergeant Willis will defer to you and you don't have to do anything against your nature. Just use your natural authority to squeeze it out of him."

"And when am I supposed to do this? In case you've forgotten, I work in the evening."

She sighed. "I know that. But not every evening. The Granthams are going out for dinner with the Trevelyans next Tuesday. We can spare you then."

"But I'd rather spend the evening with my wife!" he said with some vehemence. They did not get very much time alone together except at the very beginning and end of a day, which gave him little opportunity to play the role of husband that he resolutely ignored during their working hours.

She stared at him with a determined look. "Then work efficiently so that you'll still have time for her." She reached over to stroke his face, smoothing away the expression of dismay there. "I don't give up time with you lightly, Charlie."

"I know," he said. Then he shook his head. "As much as I would like to see Anna proven innocent, it's a dirty business punishing any young woman for such a transgression against her honour."

"Even if she did kill him?" Mrs. Hughes asked, curious to know what he would say.

"Even then," he said heavily, though not without some qualms about flouting formal justice.

She reached over and stroked his face. He had a good heart, this man.

He smiled at her touch. "What's the second thing?"

"Well, we could ask Lady Mary to ask Lord Gillingham if he could make up a list of the places - other country houses, estates - that he'd been with Mr. Green. I don't know why I'm continuing to address him so respectfully, the evil man. Wherever Green has gone, there's a possibility of additional victims. And maybe Scotland Yard hasn't been quite as diligent about uncovering them as they should have been."

"Oh, love," he said with a bit a resigned sigh. "That's like looking for a needle in a haystack. Maybe Lord Gillingham won't remember very many. Or any. Maybe he'll overlook the crucial one. Maybe Green was killed by someone with a different motive. And even if you do find some additional suspects, you can't go off investigating them. You have neither the time nor the means."

"I know," she admitted. "I know. But I want to do something, Charlie. And every little bit of information helps."

"And the third thing?"

She took his free hand, flattened it out, and began absently tracing the lines of his palm. "I'm going to make a list of the employees who were here when Mr. Green came to Downton. There's unlikely to have been another victim in the same place. And I don't think that anyone who works here is a killer," she said swiftly, noting the alarm that lit up in his eyes, "but...well, this is something that is within my jurisdiction. So I ought to look into it so that I can check everyone we know off the list."

They sat in silence for a moment as Mrs. Carson reviewed her ideas to make sure that she hadn't left anything out. Only gradually did she become aware of the fact that Mr. Carson was staring at her. She turned toward him with a little smile on her face, just pleased that he was so close by and that he found it within himself to support her in what would probably be a wild goose chase. The look on his face caught her off guard. This hadn't been a romantic conversation, and yet there was that smouldering gaze that spoke to her with an eloquence he never managed with mere words.

"Charlie?" She was not quite certain what was going on in his mind.

"You could be running Scotland Yard," he said emphatically. "And if you were, this case would have been solved long ago." His chest was heaving a bit with the magnitude of his admiration. "You're brilliant," he added.

She didn't think that was entirely so, but she was not about to contradict him on that. And now that she'd established a practical plan to address the problem that had been worrying her half the day, she felt a sense of exhilaration. She leaned over him, gripping the collar of his pyjama shirt in both hands, and kissed him, a long, slow, deliberate effort that prompted him to an enthusiastic response. Wrapping his arms around her, a thought that had become almost a fixture in his brain over the past three months flashed through his mind: How lovely it is to be married!

Cornering a Killer / 2015