by Blythe Baker
“Alastair and I were in love,” she said, her voice thick. “For a long time, we met in the ruins behind my room. Alastair wanted to be with me. He told me.”
“You two were seeing each other in secret?” I asked.
Hester wavered. “It was difficult. Alastair’s family—his mother, especially—had expectations, and Alastair was afraid of not meeting them. So, we were waiting for the right time to announce our love.”
“How long did this go on?” I asked.
Hester puffed out her chest like she was proud of herself. “Since the day I started working for his family. Our feelings were undeniable.”
In that time, how many other women had been lead by Alastair to believe he loved them? He’d broken the heart of Samuel Rigby’s daughter, Jenny. According to the admission of both of his parents, he had flirted with almost every woman he ever came into contact with.
So, were his feelings for Hester real or, on her end, imagined?
“In all your time together he never spoke of marriage?”
Even in the darkness, I could see her raise her upper lip. “Things were complicated, I told you. We were planning to run away together. Alastair told me that once he became less dependent on his family for financial support, we would leave the castle and be together. He loved me.”
“If he loved you, then why did you kill him?”
“Because of you!” she screamed, charging towards me.
I stumbled out of the way, narrowly missing being tackled by her, and caught myself on a tree trunk.
Hester spun around, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Her eyes were open wide enough that I could see the whites. She looked like a wild animal. “He told me last week that his mother didn’t want him to wait any longer. She wanted him to settle down with a lady from a respectable family. He explained that he could never marry a maid in his parents’ household. If we were together, he would have to forsake his entire family, and he wasn’t ready for that. He couldn’t do it. He said he hoped I could understand. And I did. I understood perfectly.”
Hester lifted the knife and twisted it in her hand, staring at the blade. “I understood that he had been manipulated.”
“What?” I asked, not following. “Don’t you mean he manipulated you?”
She shook her head. “No, Alastair was himself with me. His true self. It was with everyone else that he lied. But when we were together, even though it had to be secret, he told me the truth. I knew him like no one else did.”
“Then why did he end his relationship with you?” I asked, hoping to break Hester out of whatever kind of hold Alastair had over her.
“Because of you,” she said again through gritted teeth. “His parents were pushing him to make a match, and he went along with it. He would have done anything to make them happy.”
“Why kill Alastair, then? Why not his parents? Or me?”
Hester reached up and pulled at her hair, tugging until I thought she would pull it out. She paced back and forth, moving like a caged animal. “Because there always would have been someone else. Another woman. Another person to please. And I would always be a servant.”
Hester was insane.
That would have been true regardless, considering she’d murdered an innocent man, but watching her pace in the woods, her face coated in drying mud and wearing a stained white dress, I knew she was a madwoman. Truly.
She was not capable of rational thought. I couldn’t fathom how she had seemed so normal to me before this moment.
“If I wanted Alastair to be mine forever, then I had to kill him. I had to make sure his soul would be bound to mine, and death was the only way to do that,” she said, shaking her head and waving the knife around erratically.
Then, suddenly, she stilled.
After so much movement, seeing her go perfectly still made my blood run cold.
She slowly looked up at me, her red hair an angry halo around her face, and she raised the knife. “And then the beautiful Miss Alice Beckingham arrived.”
Hester growled, sounding more animal than human. “Alastair smiled at you and fawned over you, and you didn’t even care. I could tell from the moment you arrived that you would never love him the way I did,” she said. “He would have been miserable in a match with you. So, I saved him from that fate.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You saved him?”
She nodded slowly, her eyes pinned on me. “I saved him from the expectations of his family. Now, he only has to wait for me to meet him on the other side.”
“You still love him?” It was part question, part statement. “Then why dress up as the weeping woman in white?”
Hester tilted her head to the side and shook her head. “What are you saying?”
“Your costume,” I said, waving an arm at her flowing dress. “Why did you pretend to be the woman from the legend?”
“I’m not pretending,” Hester hissed. “I am the weeping woman.”
She twirled in a quick circle, the knife held above her head, before she stopped and pointed the blade at me. We were still several paces apart, but it was closer than I was comfortable with.
“Didn’t you listen to the story, Miss Alice?” she asked. “The weeping woman lives in the castle forever. She and her lover spend eternity together.”
I wanted to ask whether Hester had listened to the story before. Because her version was not at all how Samuel Rigby explained it.
“People will talk about me and Alastair for centuries,” she whispered, placing one hand over her heart and looking up at the sky. “They will remember our love story for ages.”
Pity washed over me all at once.
Hester was sick. Sick and confused. Her heart and mind had been broken, and she needed help.
In an instant, she slashed the knife out in my direction, her eyes wide and wild again. “I had to stop you before you told anyone about the dress. I knew you were in my room, touching my things. My journal. I had to stop you.”
Hester knew I went to the ruined part of the castle. She knew I found the dress and the ring and the door to her room. She had no idea that I had thought all of those things were evidence against someone else. She had no idea that I suspected Samuel Rigby of the crime.
“I couldn’t let you tell anyone,” she said. “Not until I was ready.”
“Ready for what?” I asked.
She looked at me and smiled, her teeth shining in the moonlight. “Ready to join my beloved.”
Before I could really process what she’d said, Hester hurled herself at me.
Once again, I avoided being tackled, but I was not as lucky when it came to the knife. She slashed out at me, dragging the blade across my sleeve and slicing open my forearm.
I felt warm blood dripping down my arm immediately and hugged my arm to my chest.
“You don’t have to do this, Hester,” I said, holding up my other hand in surrender. “No one else needs to die.”
“Yes, they do,” she said, charging at me again.
This time, I was ready.
I slipped my hand into my coat pocket and pulled out the antique gun I’d grabbed from the display case on my way out of the castle. Little had I known that first day when Charles Barry drew my attention to Lord Drummond’s antique weapon collection, how badly I would soon have need of the means to defend myself.
I held the gun up.
Hester’s eyes went wide when she saw it, and she dove for the ground just as I pulled the trigger.
The shot rang out, a puff of smoke shooting into the air. Wood shards from the tree behind Hester exploded.
I hadn’t been sure the weapon was loaded. As Hester rolled across the ground, trying to get back to her feet, I realized how bad things could have been had it not.
She jumped up, and I leveled the gun at her chest. “Don’t make me shoot, Hester. I don’t want to kill you.”
Her hair had twigs and grass tangled in it, and the dried mud on her face had started flaking off, leaving bits of pale w
hite skin peeking through.
Unexpectedly, she dropped her knife and ran past me into the woods.
The last thing I saw was a flutter of white dress disappearing into the tree line.
17
My run back to the castle was a blur. By the time I got there, my coat was snagged and torn and the blood from the slash on my arm had soaked through my sleeve and spread to my skirt. I looked half-dead.
The first floor was still dark and quiet, so I ran up the stairs and down the second-floor hallway. I went directly to my mother’s room.
I knocked once, but then quickly pulled the door open and moved inside.
My mother gasped as she sat up in bed, hugging the sheets around her chest. When she saw it was me, she ran a hand across her forehead.
“Alice, you frightened me.” Then, she looked at me. The room was dark, but the sound of my heavy breathing filled the space. “Are you all right?”
“It was the maid,” I gasped. “Hester killed Alastair. She cut my arm. She is in the woods.”
My mother slid to the side of her bed, lit the candle on the bedside table, and walked over to me. There was no panic or fear in her face. She didn’t look startled or surprised. She simply looked determined.
“Where is she?” she asked, grabbing my arm, wincing only slightly when she pulled back the sleeve and saw the cut.
I was relieved at how shallow the gash was. The way it burned, I’d expected it to be more severe.
“She ran into the woods just beyond the stables. I don’t know where she went after that. I ran back to the castle.”
“What were you doing out—?” she started before shaking her head. “We need to send for a doctor and alert the police.”
Grabbing onto my uninjured arm, she pulled me into the hallway toward Lady Drummond’s room. Lord Drummond answered the door quickly as though he had been standing on the other side waiting for this. When I looked past him into the room, I could see the lights were still on. No one had been sleeping.
My mother explained the snatches of story I’d offered her, and Lady Drummond clapped her hands over her mouth.
“Hester?” She turned to me, saw my arm, and then gasped again. “We have to send for a doctor.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Lord Drummond said. “But first, I’ll lock the downstairs doors.”
“Oh, yes,” Lady Drummond said, looking around frantically. “Yes, lock the doors.”
Gordon’s bedroom door opened a few doors down, and I saw his auburn hair stick out around the frame. “What is going on?”
His mother gave him only the barest information, which caused him to turn to me, wide-eyed, before he was sent to assist his father.
One by one, the doors in the hallway opened, everyone once again awakened by a disturbance in the corridor. Vivian Barry took one look at my arm and led me immediately to the nearest washroom for fresh water and towels. I would never have suspected it, but she had a great deal of common sense in such matters. Soon my arm was cleaned, bandaged, and feeling much better.
After my injury had been seen to, I drifted downstairs to find everyone had gathered in the largest sitting room. Because of the chill in the air, we all ringed the fireplace, although the warm flames had long burned away to smoldering embers. While we sat in the flickering lamplight awaited the arrival of the doctor, and more urgently, the police, I looked at the faces gathered around me. It struck me that our party looked eerily similar to the night when Alastair Drummond had been killed. We had all collected in the same spot then, too. Only a great deal had happened since.
Nobody seemed eager to break the somber silence, until Samuel Rigby spoke up from where he stood in the open doorway of the sitting room. “I should have told everyone of my suspicions against that young maid. It was wrong to keep them quiet.”
“You didn’t know,” I said, trying to ease his conscience. I was sure he would feel better if he knew I had suspected him of the crime.
He smoothed down his mustache with two fingers and pulled his dressing gown tighter around his middle, the legs of his striped pajamas peeking out of the bottom. “I had no proof, but the position of the maid’s room next to the unused portion of the castle gave her the best access to Alastair’s room, since it was positioned just across from the door that opened onto the stairway. I posited that she could have used the ruined passageway on the night of the murder to get down to Alastair’s room without anyone seeing. After stabbing him repeatedly and leaving him for dead, she could have exited his room through his window, clambering down the tree along the outer wall, before climbing back into the castle through the kitchen window. Then, while everyone’s attention was at the other end of the hallway where the dying Alastair had staggered out from his room seeking help, she could have come up the back staircase and returned to her room without anyone seeing her.”
“That is likely what happened,” I said. “But again, you had no proof, Mr. Rigby.”
He pressed his lips together, shaking his head, and I knew I would not be able to dissuade him of his responsibility in my injury.
“I never would have suspected Hester,” Lady Drummond admitted. “I knew the girl had a fancy for Alastair, but many of the maids did. He was a very handsome boy.” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat to continue. “But I didn’t think she had any delusions of being his wife. Had I known, I would have dismissed her at once.”
We all fell silent again, each lost in our own ponderings.
The sun had not yet risen when a pair of policemen arrived at the castle, coming only minutes behind the doctor who had been sent for. Both the police and the doctor were the same men who had been to the castle only a few nights before, after the death of Alastair. It was strange how similarly events had repeated themselves, only this time at least no one had died.
After a quick examination by the elderly doctor, who swiftly pronounced me fit, my private interview with the police was brief. I explained all that happened the night before, concluding with how I had narrowly escaped with my life before my would-be murderer had made her escape.
Upon taking their leave, the police assured Lord and Lady Drummond, as well as the rest of us, that a search for the dangerous maid would begin immediately.
After that, all any of us could do was wait.
The castle inhabitants did not have long to await events. Shortly after sunrise, word reached us that the young maid, Hester, had been found. Or rather, her body was found, floating in a lake at the edge of the estate. To all appearances, she had taken her own life, rather than face whatever lay ahead.
In one of Hester’s pockets, an object was found – a heavy ring, sized for a man, with Alastair Drummond’s initials etched across the surface. Whether it had been given to the girl as a gift or stolen by her was impossible to know.
Lord and Lady Drummond received the news somberly. As for me, I was too numbed by my recent ordeal to feel anything but sadness at the tragedy that had been Hester’s short and confused life.
Weariness weighing on me after the long night I had experienced, I sought solitude. I found my way to the sitting room and took the chair closest to the fire so that I could stare into the flames. I’d changed out of my ripped, ruined clothes from the night before and into a pair of silk pajamas with a dressing gown over the top. It wasn’t appropriate clothing for roaming the castle by daylight, but I was in no mood to care about appearances.
I hadn’t slept, and now my exhaustion crept over me like frost spreading over the ground. I leaned back in the chair and rested my hands over my stomach.
“You were determined to prove you weren’t the murderer, weren’t you?”
I looked up to see Gordon standing next to my chair, his hands in his pockets, a thick vest pulled over his long-sleeved shirt.
“Is that why you think I wanted to unmask Alastair’s killer?” I asked.
He smiled sadly. “I’m not sure why else you would care so much.”
“Call it curiosity.”
“I call it stupidity,” he said, sitting down in the chair next to me. “You could have been killed.”
I wanted to ask him why it was that he cared so much, but I kept that question to myself. “But I wasn’t.”
Gordon ran a hand through his auburn hair. The flames brought out even more of the red in it. “I’m still sorry I accused you.”
“Please don’t apologize again,” I said in all sincerity. “I have forgiven you.”
“That is well, but it may be awhile before I forgive myself.”
I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “I wouldn’t have taken you to be the remorseful type.”
“I’m not usually,” he admitted. “Though, I will feel even worse if my blunder keeps us from remaining friends.”
I gasped, and Gordon looked at me, alarmed, before he realized I was teasing. He rolled his eyes, and I laughed.
“I also wouldn’t have taken you for the friendly type,” I said.
Gordon sighed and pressed his hands onto his knees as he stood up. “I stand by what I said the day I met you, Alice Beckingham. You are far more interesting than the people around you. And that is the kind of person I’d like to be friends with.”
He started to walk away, and I called after him. “Fine. We can be friends.”
His mouth turned up in a smile on one side. “Are there any conditions?”
“Yes. The next time we meet, you’ll have to come to London,” I said. “I’m not returning to Scotland for a long while.”
He shook his head and walked away, but before he left the room, I thought I heard him say we had a deal.
18
By midday, Sherborne Sharp had left the castle.
For a moment, I was surprised he’d chosen to slip away without so much as a farewell, but then again, given that he was a thief, sneaking away seemed to be his specialty.
It seemed unbelievable to me that only a few short days before, finding the handsome Sherborne nosing through my mother’s jewels had been the most shocking thing I’d seen. Since then, I’d witnessed a violent death, solved a murder, and nearly been murdered myself. In the face of all of that, a small theft hardly warranted a footnote.
