Betrayal of Innocence (A New Adventure Begins - Star Elite Book 1)

by Rebecca King

  “We aren’t going to get any reliable information out of him anyway, even if he does know anything. I don’t think a magistrate will put much weight on anything he has to stay,” Niall sighed.

  Oliver nodded. “Which means that if he has witnessed something we can’t put him before a judge. He wouldn’t cope with being questioned.”

  As they wandered down the street, Justin had the distinct impression they were being watched, and glanced over his shoulder. His gaze immediately fell on Reuben, who was peering cautiously at them from around the corner of the church. It wasn’t a shifty-eyed look of someone who had something to hide. It was the kind of look a child would give an adult when they were playing hide and seek. Shaking his head, Justin turned around and focused on more important matters, like searching the farm. He knew that if Vanessa saw him and his men heading toward the farm she would be inclined to follow them, if only to make sure they did the job properly. The last thing he wanted or needed right now was the distraction of a delectable female he couldn’t touch hovering nearby.

  “I need to get out of here,” he groaned as he led the men back through the woods toward the track that would lead to the farm.

  “You certainly don’t do countryside, do you?” Niall muttered around a laugh.

  “Wait a minute,” Oliver growled quietly several moments later.

  Everyone stopped. When Oliver didn’t speak, they turned to face him to see what had bothered him. Minutes ticked past. Oliver turned to face the path they had just walked. It was empty, but Oliver tugged at his ear to warn the men he had heard something, or someone, behind him.

  One by one, the men melted into the trees, and fanned out. In a wide arc they circled around until they converged on the path several feet behind Oliver, and in doing so searched the trees to flush out anyone behind them. Justin could only hope it wasn’t Vanessa.

  It wasn’t.

  It was Reuben.

  “Now what are you doing here?” Justin growled.

  Reuben let out a small screech and jumped out from behind a bush when Phillip silently appeared behind him. He looked at the men in panic. Without uttering a word, he spun on his heel and stumbled off. Niall went to grab him only for Justin to lift a hand in warning.

  “Just leave him. He is probably curious to know what we are up to. We are the strangers we have told him to keep an eye out for,” he sighed.

  “Is everyone in this damned village so odd or have they saved it all for us,” Niall murmured minutes later when they arrived at the bluff overlooking the farm.

  From their position they could see down into the farm yard and had a perfect view of three sides of the house. The men watched the milk maid look down the path toward the cart track. Assured she was alone, she removed a key from her pocket and unlocked the front door to the house. Once it had closed behind her, the men looked at each other.

  “Now why would an employee have a key to their boss’s house?” Niall growled.

  “What is she doing in there?” Justin grunted.

  “Well, there is one way of finding out isn’t there?” Oliver led the march down to the farm yard. They moved so swiftly nobody would have seen them from the farm house. The maid certainly didn’t. Not even when they converged on the front and back doors of the property. Thankfully, she hadn’t seen fit to lock the door behind her.

  Justin entered first, swiftly followed by Phillip and Aaron. They stood in the doorway to the sitting room and watched the milk maid rifle quickly through a dresser drawer for a moment. Lisa was so intent on what she was doing she didn’t notice she was no longer alone. Rather than interrupt her, Niall went to let Jasper and Callum into the house. They began to search the rooms for Geraldine’s belongings, just in case there was something Justin had missed when he had searched earlier.

  Justin kept an eye on the maid. When she had finished searching the last of the drawers, she slammed it closed with a heavy thud and whirled around to look at the other items of furniture in the room. It was then that she looked up and saw the men watching her. She recognised Justin immediately.

  “What are you doing in here?” she demanded stoutly.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Justin replied. “Breaking and entering is illegal, you know. So is rifling through your boss’s belongings when you know he is not around. Does he know you are going through his things?”

  “Who are you? Get out of here at once,” the maid replied.

  “I am afraid that until we can contact the owner of this property and ask her if she has given you permission to be in here alone to rifle through her things, you are going to have to go to the magistrate to explain your behaviour,” Justin warned.

  “I haven’t taken anything,” Lisa blustered hastily.

  Justin knew from the way her fists clenched that she had intended to. There was an angry glint in her eye that was almost panicked, as though she had something to hide. He suspected he knew what it was, but it had nothing to do with Geraldine.

  “Does he know you have been stealing from him?” he asked casually.

  At first, he wasn’t sure the maid was going to reply.

  “I haven’t taken anything,” she repeated. “You have got nothing on me.”

  “But you were going to,” Oliver challenged.

  “Prove it,” she snorted.

  “We don’t have to,” Justin replied. “You have to prove to the magistrate that you weren’t here to steal anything.”

  “You have no authority to make me go to the magistrate,” the maid snapped. “Now get out of this house or I shall have you arrested for trespassing, whoever you are.”

  “We are working for the magistrate,” Oliver informed her. “We have permission to go anywhere we please given we are investigating the disappearances around here.”

  The maid snorted. “That’s over in Derbyshire.”

  “Have you not heard about Jemima?” Justin snapped.

  “She was a nincompoop,” the maid retorted flatly.

  “She has vanished,” Justin explained.

  “What do you mean ‘was’?” Oliver asked carefully.

  “Nothing. I didn’t mean anything,” the maid replied swiftly. “She is a nincompoop. What of it?”

  Oliver looked at Justin who nodded. “It sounds like you know Jemima well.”

  “I have lived near the village all of my life. Everyone knows everyone around here. You can’t do anything without someone gossiping about it,” the maid informed them in disgust.

  “It sounds like you are annoyed about that. Do you often do something the gossips talk about?” Justin had no doubt that Vanessa’s assessment of the woman’s character was accurate. As he spoke, he was sized up by an assessing gaze that considered everything from his wealth to how good he would be between the sheets. He had the distinct urge to tug at his collar and step back but had no intention of being cowed by any woman, especially some milk maid.

  The maid suddenly grinned unrepentantly. “They don’t understand people like me, dear,” she chortled.

  “I am sure the magistrate will,” Oliver warned.

  Immediately, the maid’s mirth died. She squinted at Oliver with such menace that even Justin had to blink at the swift change in her demeanour.

  “I don’t know anything,” the maid warned.

  “But you were about to dismiss Jemima as a nincompoop. She has disappeared, does that not mean anything to you?” Justin countered.

  “It could so easily have been you who was taken,” Oliver added. “Would you expect people to decide not to look for you because you are a milk maid?”

  “Of course not,” she replied around a half-laugh.

  “What’s your name?” Niall asked, speaking for the first time.

  The maid’s gaze slid over Niall in much the same way as it had Justin. Whatever Lisa saw in Niall she apparently liked because she sashayed suggestively across the room toward him with a sly smile upon her lips. Niall, unimpressed by the tawdry spectacle, shook his head and turne
d away. Apparently, defeat didn’t sit well with the maid, who threw him a glacial glare.

  “Are you going to get out of my way so I can leave?” She demanded of Justin.

  “No,” Justin replied without preamble.

  “I shall scream,” Lisa threatened, her eyes narrow with spite.

  “Well, you could scream but out here nobody will hear you.” Justin’s voice was nonchalant.

  “The only place you are going is to the magistrate until we can find out from the owner of the house if you have permission to be here,” Oliver informed her.

  “I do.” The maid removed a key from her pocket. “I have a key. See?”

  “Doesn’t mean you have been given it to use yourself,” Justin said.

  “It means you know where the owner hides a key and have decided to help yourself while she is away,” Oliver added.

  “Curtis owns this house,” Lisa snapped.

  “Really?” Justin’s brows lifted. “Are you certain about that?”

  “Curtis is, and he won’t mind me being here,” Lisa replied. She looked craftily at them. “What are you doing in here anyway? Curtis doesn’t know you are here, does he?”

  “We are looking for Geraldine,” Oliver informed her.

  “And Jemima,” Justin added.

  This made the maid’s gaze sharpen. “Well, Jemima is always a bit forgetful. That do goodie has probably wandered off to help someone and decided to stay there for a while. One can hardly blame her wanting to get away from that lot for a bit.”

  “People are worried about her,” Justin replied patiently. “We understand from people who truly know her that it is completely out of character for her to disappear at all, ever.”

  “Well, I can’t help you. We don’t spend much time together, see?” The maid smirked as though she would enjoy corrupting the innocence of someone like Jemima.

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Justin mumbled lifting his brows at Oliver.

  In that moment, Jasper and Callum appeared at the end of the hallway. Both men shook their heads.

  “Where is Geraldine?” Justin asked, turning his attention back to the young woman before him. To his disgust, she had sidled closer while he had been distracted. Oliver quickly side-stepped to block any route out of the front door and lifted his brows at her when she scowled at him.

  “How should I know? I don’t care if she leaves her husband.”

  “Were they arguing before she disappeared?” Oliver asked smoothly.

  Lisa shrugged. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “We are asking if you heard them arguing?” Justin replied.

  “They don’t get on very well. He did his thing and she liked to do hers. He had no interest in those silly paintings of hers. She would spend hours doing them and put them up on the blasted walls. He was always grumbling about them,” Lisa replied with the confidence of someone who knew what they were talking about.

  “Were badly did they argue?” Oliver asked.

  “How should I know?”

  Niall snorted. “Well, you seem to have access to the house. You don’t seem to miss much. Besides, you seem to know where to look for whatever it is you are after.”

  The maid sighed and glared at him balefully for a moment.

  “What were you looking for?” Justin asked.

  “It’s nothing,” she replied dismissively. “It isn’t there anyway. Curtis must have moved it.”

  “Curtis? That’s an awfully familiar way to speak about your boss, isn’t it?” Niall chided.

  “I have known Curtis all of my life,” Lisa retorted.

  “How well?” Justin shot back.

  Lisa smirked unashamedly. “It’s a small village,” she replied nonchalantly.

  “Recently?” Justin asked.

  Silence followed.

  Justin shook his head. “Did Geraldine know you were servicing her husband?”

  Lisa shrugged.

  “Permit me, if I may, to say that it looks odd to me that you are rummaging around in a house that has been stripped bare of all trace of the owner’s things, the owner who has only recently vanished. Not only that, but you have admitted to having an affair with her husband. Now if I was a suspicious man, I would be inclined to believe that you and Curtis had something to do with Geraldine’s disappearance, and you have both stripped this house of any trace of her knowing she wasn’t able to ever come back,” Justin murmured. “Seeing as I am a suspicious person, I am afraid we are going to have to warn you that you are will now be arrested on suspicion of having murdered Geraldine Bennion nee Clarkson.”

  The maid blinked and glared at Justin as though he had lost his mind. “I haven’t done anything like that. We had a tryst, that’s all, and only a few times when she was out doing her stupid paintings. That’s all.”

  “What are you looking for?” Justin demanded with a nod to the drawer she had just slammed closed. He knew it contained nothing more than masculine paraphernalia women would usually be uninterested in.

  Lisa fell silent.

  “Well, seeing as there is nothing of Geraldine’s here, and you haven’t found anything in there of any use to you, I think we should consider that you are after money,” Oliver warned. “So we can add stealing to trespassing, breaking and entering, and murder, together with attempted theft.”

  He knew it was a tall order to get any of that to stick but needed to worry the maid into telling them everything she knew, if only so they could rule her out as having murdered her lover’s wife.

  “You need to be aware that you are going to gaol to think over your answers. We will come and question you. Until then, give me the house key. You have no business being in the property, let alone going through things that belong to a woman who is presumed dead,” Justin intoned.

  A low mewling sound from behind him made him go cold. He whirled around, and mentally groaned when his gaze fell on Vanessa. They had been so intent on questioning the maid they hadn’t noticed the arrival of Vanessa and her father.

  “Vanessa,” he growled solemnly, taking a step toward her.

  Vanessa stared at him with wide eyes. She couldn’t think; couldn’t breathe. While she had suspected that her sister had been murdered by a person, or persons, unknown, she hadn’t truly wanted to believe it. To hear Justin admit that it was most probably the case was horrifying. She struggled to absorb the import of his words at the same time that they struck a wound deep within her she wasn’t entirely sure would ever heal.

  “Is it true?” she whispered around a huge lump in her throat.

  Justin sighed. “It is looking that way.” He couldn’t bring himself to lie. “I am sorry, Vanessa.”

  “Who?”

  “We have to suspect the husband for now, with Lisa,” Oliver warned her. “They may have been in cahoots, or one of them carried out the act in the heat of the moment. Whatever the case, there has been an association between Curtis and the milk maid which can only call into question their involvement in Geraldine’s disappearance.”

  “The odds are she hasn’t been kidnapped with the others. The circumstances are different, you see. Besides, the other women’s things are still at their homes. Only Geraldine’s have been removed. You are quite right to be suspicious of the fact that Curtis has removed her personal possessions without even knowing where she is or what happened to her,” Justin reasoned.

  He didn’t think about what he was doing when he saw huge tears begin to trail down Vanessa’s pale cheeks. It was instinctive to step forward and hold her. Resting his cheek on her soft hair, he waited until the worst of her sobs had subsided.

  “I didn’t do it,” Lisa gulped from the doorway. It was clear from the panic in her eyes that she was starting to understand just how much trouble she was in. “I swear. I didn’t harm a hair on her head.”

  “It doesn’t look that way to us, and it won’t to a magistrate. You have to prove your innocence and will have to stay behind bars until we can find Geraldine,” Oliver warned.
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  Justin tugged Vanessa into a side room while the men guided a clearly stunned Lisa out of the house.

  “It’s murder, isn’t it?” Vanessa whispered, needing him to confirm it.

  “Yes, it is,” Justin warned. “Until your sister appears alive and well, I am afraid we have to believe she has been killed. I wish it could be any other way.”

  “Where is she? Geraldine, I mean? What do you think they have done with her?” She hated to talk about her sister as though she was no longer alive but knew she must. It was foolish to cling on to false hope.

  In that moment, she couldn’t think of anything other than the fact that Justin was there, keeping her steady in a world that had started to shake uncontrollably. She was glad he was there, and clung to him just as tightly as he was holding her.

  “How do you deal with this every day?” she whispered suddenly.

  “It is a part of my job,” Justin sighed. “It doesn’t get any easier, but it does help when I don’t know the people who are murdered. They aren’t people to me, Vanessa, just names, and for my sanity, they have to stay that way. It is people like you who are affected by things like this. It is part of the reason why I do my job. To stop things like this happening so people like you can go about your lives undisturbed.”

  “We are going,” Niall interrupted quietly from the doorway.

  Justin nodded, but made no move to go with them.

  When everyone had gone, Justin looked down at the woman in his arms. He was a little surprised at just how much it had felt like second nature to hold her when she was upset. It was the first time he had ever done anything like it, especially when he was at work, but he hadn’t stopped to think. There was a connection to the woman before him he had never felt with anyone before. He just had absolutely no idea what to do about it.

  “We need to search those outbuildings,” Justin warned. “Why don’t you go home? I would take you but the sooner we can get the buildings search the sooner we will know one way or the other. I don’t want you to do this, Vanessa. It is best you stay out of the way. The men are on alert now, so you are likely to end up at the wrong end of a pistol if you unwittingly disturb them. Go on home to your father. As soon as I know something, I will come and tell you.”