Let's Talk of Murder by Joan Smith Page A

ungainly man. Corinne gave a silent groan at the moonish smile that settled on his face when he first clamped his eyes on Fanny Rowan.
    The girl was pretty, no more than that, yet even another woman could see she was a walking temptation to a man like Coffen, who preferred a woman’s charms to hit him in the face. “A buxom, provincial miss,” Prance would have called her. She had healthy pink cheeks and lustrous eyes. A few wanton blonde curls escaped around the edges of her white cap. In her hand she carried a large black book which turned out to be a shiny new Bible . Her swinging hips endowed even the regulation gray uniform and white apron with a touch of seduction. Perhaps it was her small waist, accentuated by a lavish swell of breasts above and flare of hips below, that did it. She was well rounded all over, not yet noticeably more so below the waist than above.
    She looked at them with frank blue eyes and said in a girlish voice, but with an air of pique, “I don’t know you. Why do you want to see me?”
    “Have a seat, m’dear,” Coffen said, rising and showing her to one of the hard chairs. “We don’t want to harm you. In fact, we want to help, if we can. We’re here to ask you a few questions about Henry Fogg.” Her face went blank, as if he had suddenly begun speaking Latin or Greek.
    “You have heard of his death?” Corinne asked.
    “Yes, I heard.”
    “Who told you?” Coffen asked.
    She turned from one to the other as they spoke. She gave Coffen a mutinous glare. “I read it in the journal, didn’t I?”
    “If you say so. I thought you might know who did him in.”
    “No. I don’ t know anything about it. It has nothing to do with me.”
    “We thought it might, you see, because of your—er, situation,” Coffen said.
    “Because I’m enceinte, you mean,” she said, dropping her eyes demurely. “I don’t blame Henry for that. I don’t blame anyone. It was my fault.” Her head lifted and she said in a quiet but not humble or regretful voice, “I listened to the temptation of Satan.”
    “A thing like this is the fault of two people,” Coffen said gently. “Don’t take all the blame yourself. It’s Henry’s as well. Mostly Henry’s, I daresay.”
    Fanny cast a long, sideways look at him from her big blue eyes. Corinne had a distinct impression the girl was acting. The gaze she languished on Coffen was far from innocent, with just the hint of a satisfied smile forming at the corners of her lips.
    “I didn’t say it was Henry who did it,” she said. “I have a passionate nature that I can’t always control, but with God’s help, I am trying.” The eyelids fluttered down for a moment. Then they lifted again, and she said, “I don’t believe Henry’s murder had anything to do with me or my situation. He had many enemies, you know. I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but he was–not a very nice man.”
    “What enemies?” Coffen barked. Fanny drew her bottom lip between her little white teeth and looked frightened.
    “I don’t know! I don’t know anything about it!” she said, flustered now. “But if you think my Papa killed him, well, he would never hurt a flea. And all my friends now follow the teaching of Reverend Morgate, and he abhors violence.”
    “How about your cousin Robert?” he asked.
    “Robert Rowan?” She looked stunned at the suggestion. “Good gracious, what would it matter to him? He cares nothing for me. I only met the man once, at grandpa’s funeral a dozen years ago. He and Papa don’t speak, because of Grandpa’s will. So you see, Henry’s murder has nothing to do with me.” After a moment’s silence, she said in a different tone, “Would you like some tea? We can ring for tea when we’re allowed a visitor. They serve little cakes with it, like a tea party,” she said, smiling like a child.
    Corinne sensed that Fanny wanted the tea herself. She could still pity the girl, despite her cunning way. She was young, and the papa who