The Murder Stone

by Charles Todd

  Somewhere in the house a board creaked, as if someone had stepped on it.

  Francesca felt exposed, alone and with nothing but the dog to stand between her and whatever it was that had awakened him.

  Tomorrow night, she promised herself, I shall take Simon’s pistol to bed with me! I swear I will—

  But bullets won’t stop ghosts. . . .

  Tyler began to move down the steps, his arthritic legs stiff. Francesca followed him. It was better than standing alone in the darkness at the head of the stairs like a cornered animal.

  The dog had been taught not to bark. But the growl was steady and ominous, and she could see that he was hunting whatever it was that had caught his ears.

  He paused at the landing, head swinging toward the back of the house. Then he went down the remaining steps intently, his paws padding silently, his tail rigidly straight.

  Francesca, one hand in his collar, matched him stride for stride, her heart beating heavily now and her breath coming shorter. What would she—they—do, if there was someone beyond the door at the back of the stairs? Or standing silently in a dark room, unseen until she had turned her back—

  She shivered at the thought. One of the vultures come back to search—for what?

  When Tyler scratched at the paneling, she reached out for the knob of the door to the kitchen passage, and they both went through, into the pitch black void beyond.

  Relying on the dog’s senses and not her own, Francesca let him lead her through the darkness, toward the servants’ hall, the pantry, the kitchen. All the doors to either side of her were shut. Ahead lay the last but one, closing off the small stone-flagged space where gardeners and grooms could leave their muddy boots and hang their heavy coats on pegs before meals. Even as she reached for the knob, a draft swept under the frame and across her feet—and then was cut off.

  Someone had silently opened and closed the outer door just beyond, the one that led into the kitchen garden. Francesca hurried after the intruder.

  The square panes of glass showed moonglow over the vegetables and the cutting garden, touching the tops of trees in the lawns, crowning them with pale, cool light.

  Nothing moved out there, no one lurked in the shadows that she could see. All the same she opened the unlatched door and let the dog out into the garden. He disappeared for a time, down the path that led to the stables and the drive.

  And then he came back again, tongue lolling, apparently satisfied that he’d seen the villain off.

  “It was your imagination all along,” she reproved him halfheartedly. And heard the nervous edge to her voice.

  She considered waking Bill and asking him to search the grounds, then changed her mind. What could he do, an elderly man alone out in the darkness? An army could be concealed among the trees or hidden in the deep shadows of the shrubbery. And a faint wind rustled the grass like a thousand tiny feet racing across it.

  Who had been walking in the night? Ghost or human?

  Yet the draft across her feet had been real . . .

  And in the house where she had lived so comfortably for most of her life, she now felt afraid.

  It was the fault of those vultures at the funeral, she told herself. They’d brought their discontents and hungers and accusations into River’s End. They’d stirred up doubt and uncertainty, like old dust.

  Walking with Tyler back to the stairs, she said accusingly to the ghosts of her cousins lingering there, “And not much help you are, either!”

  Her voice echoed through the house.

  There was a torch that had belonged to Robin in his room, and Francesca went directly there to fetch it. With its beam to guide her, she quickly searched the house.

  Her grandfather’s study was her last stop. The scent of Francis Hatton’s pipe tobacco lingered, reminding her too strongly of him. Breathing it in was like bringing him back again. . . .

  Here, too, there was nothing out of place, nothing missing as far as she could tell. The beam of the torch swept around again—and this time picked out something on the carpet. It was the pot of autumn crocuses that her housekeeper had brought up that very morning—yesterday morning, it was now. It had fallen from its stand and lay upside down on the floor, damp earth scattered around it.

  Francesca searched the bits of soil carefully for footprints, and found none.

  Ghosts left no prints—

  But the dog sniffed suspiciously at the earth, then moved on to a cabinet of curios that her grandfather had built into the wall beside the hearth.

  The glass door was ajar, but whether Mrs. Lane had left it so after cleaning or someone had opened it tonight Francesca couldn’t say. The contents appeared to have been untouched: souvenirs of Hatton family warriors over the generations, from a sword used in the Scottish uprisings to the pathetic trophies her cousins had sent home to their grandfather during the brief months they had served in France. Simon had promised, going off to war, that he’d fill the cabinet shelves with glory, but there had been no time . . . no time.

  Remembering the missing box that the gruff man at the funeral had been searching for, she made certain that there wasn’t an empty square on one of the shelves—she wouldn’t put it past him to come again to search.

  But all was as it ought to be.

  With a sigh she closed the door, only to see it open again a little as if the latch was not as strong as it usually was. Shining the torch on the workings of the bolt, she thought she could detect fine lines, scratch marks, as if someone had used a penknife on it. One of her cousins? In the days when the doors were locked and they were forbidden to play with the cabinet’s contents? Drawn to the surveyor’s tools, Peter had begged often enough to be allowed to use them. . . .

  She left the spilled pot for Mrs. Lane to clear away. As she mounted the stairs, the clock struck four. Francesca paused to count the strokes. Freddy had adored the Westminster chimes, and at the age of three had been discovered in the middle of the night sitting just where she was standing now, absorbed in the clear musical tones. He had, Mr. Gregory confided to their grandfather, perfect pitch. A rare gift . . .

  The dog, beside her, wagged his tail as if encouraging her to return to bed.

  Still ill at ease, she threw the torch’s bright beam up the staircase and followed it with Tyler at her heels.

  In another part of the house, the roof creaked, and she almost leapt out of her skin. But that was a common enough sound. It was her nerves that were betraying her now.

  For the first time since her grandfather’s illness, Francesca locked her bedroom door for what was left of the night. And was glad of the dog’s snoring presence by her bed.

  She dreamed of London and the choking smoke of the engines roiling through the cold station. A train had come in, and she was moving through a carriage, the walking wounded packed together in the compartments, the stretcher cases lying along the corridor wall. They were from the Somme, someone told her, and were very bad. Blood soaked bandages and faces were drained of color, pinched with pain.

  There was nothing she could do for them—the pots of tea were empty, the trays of biscuits gone. But she found a flask of dandelion wine in her pocket and began to hold it to the lips of first one man and then another, moving resolutely through the carriage. Behind her someone said, “She’s killing them!” She didn’t care, she could see that the wine was comforting the wounded. Their eyes were grateful. The flask was empty when she reached the last man in the carriage; there was nothing left for him. Someone said, “He won’t make old bones. It’s a pity.” She lifted the man’s head into her lap, watching him trying desperately to drain the last drops from the flask into his mouth. Nothing came.

  And she looked down at him, wanting to tell him how sorry she was. How—

  The gray face of Richard Leighton stared up at her, accusing and bitter.

  Francesca cried out, waking herself and startling Tyler into a drowsy yelp.

  Mrs. Lane was dismayed to find her precious bulbs scattered on
the study carpet.

  “He did like autumn crocuses,” she said, carefully lifting the root systems to set them neatly back in the pot. “But that stand has always been unpredictable. I should have remembered . . .”

  Francesca said nothing about what had happened in the night. Watching Mrs. Lane, she said, “Has it? What a shame! Mrs. Lane—I’ve been thinking. It really isn’t wise of me to stay alone in a house that isn’t locked. Even with Tyler for company. I’ve dug out the keys. I doubt if you’d want to carry that around with you,” she added, holding out the heavy brass key to the front door. “I shall leave it on a hook behind the frame where no one will see it. But this key fits your pocket, as well as the door by the kitchen.”

  The housekeeper raised worried eyes. “I’ve said from the start, Miss Francesca, that you oughtn’t stay here on your own! But the alternative, to close up the house, would be such a shame. And Mr. Lane needs me to do his breakfast for him, or I’d sleep in myself—”

  “No, no, there’s no need. But it quite startled me when Tyler woke up so suddenly in the night. Poor old thing, he must have heard the stand overturning, crashing to the carpet, and thought Grandfather had come back. And as I lay there, it struck me as rather silly to latch all the windows each night—and leave the doors unlocked! Wouldn’t Robin have had something to say to that!”

  “Yes, he was ever the practical one!” Mrs. Lane sighed. “It was a bad night, all round! You won’t have heard, but Tommy Higby, who lets out the cows for old Mrs. Stoner, was nearly killed this morning, close to dawn! There he was, minding his own business, you know, talking to the cows the way he does, and there was something brushed past his shoulder, and one of the cows fell dead, shot in the head! And Mrs. Handly’s daughter, she had twins, one born yesterday at five minutes to midnight, and the other born ten minutes after midnight. I’ve never heard of twins born a day apart.”

  She finished brushing up the earth from the floor and got heavily to her feet. “How will I ever remember a key, Miss Francesca?” she asked as her mistress set the plain iron key into the palm of her hand. “Like as not, I’ll walk out of a morning and forget to bring it! Perhaps if you advertise for a companion—”

  “I don’t want a companion,” Francesca told her firmly. “I’ll be right as rain. And you need only to tie a knot in your shawl, and it will remind you until you’ve become used to the idea of locking the door.”

  Still doubtful, the housekeeper went about her duties. Francesca stood there in the study, looking up at the books that ran round the room, their spines stiff and colorful behind the glass of the doors. How often had she watched from a cushion by the fire as her grandfather sat by the hearth reading—

  “Ghosts don’t knock over flowers in a pot, do they, Grandfather?” she murmured. “Tell me they can’t!”

  When Francesca went down to the village in search of the rector, she found everyone she met eager to tell her about the close call that Tommy Higby had had, and how the cow had fallen dead at his feet without so much as a sigh.

  William Stevens was on his hands and knees, crawling behind the dark green drapes that hung behind his desk. He looked up, grinned with embarrassment, and with some difficulty rose to his feet, his hand on the back of his chair for balance.

  “Sorry! I’ve lost the last good nib for my pen! Wretched thing popped out and vanished like a wicked soul!”

  “You should use a fountain pen,” she told him, smiling in return.

  “Good heavens, no! They leak. It’s good to see you. What brings you into the village at this early hour?”

  “For one thing, news of Tommy Higby and his cow.”

  “It will pass into folklore, mind my words. The Spotted Calf, in another generation, will become Tommy Higby’s Cow.”

  “Now there’s a dreadful thought. I’d heard firing, you know. This last week. I thought it was a farmer after stoats.”

  “And probably was this morning, only in the haze the wretch missed his mark and got the cow instead. He’ll go home and behave himself, now, and remember next time not to drink too much, keeping himself warm on his night watches.”

  Francesca took the chair across from the rector’s desk, and said abruptly, “Someone told me yesterday that I looked a little like Mr. Leighton. Dark, brooding shadows in my face. Is it true, do you think?”

  “Lord, no! That is, ought I to see such a thing?”

  “No, that’s the point.”

  He grinned. “They do say, you know, that one grows to look like one’s dog and one’s enemy. You have a choice—Tyler or Leighton.”

  “He has a way of setting my back up. Worse than my cousins ever could!”

  “Leighton said as much of you to me yesterday. And claimed it was his fault.” Considering her again, Stevens said, “One can come to love one’s enemies, you know. It isn’t unheard of.”

  She grimaced. “Yes, well, in the Christian sense, perhaps!” Then she added ruefully, “I sometimes forget that you’re a churchman.”

  “He’s a good man, Francesca. Solid. Fought in France and earned a medal for bravery, was wounded and sent home.” It was as if he were testing her. His eyes were hooded as he turned the pen in his hand, shielding his thoughts.

  “Yes.” As if that excuses everything . . . she added silently. “But you’ve already told me he may not have long to live.” The words brought back vividly the dream she’d had in the night. Wincing, she looked away.

  “There’s that, too, of course.” He dug through the cluttered drawer of his desk and found a worn nib. “Well, you won’t be called on to render Christian duty in Leighton’s quarter. I expect he’s leaving this morning. He told me he was coming along to say good-bye.”

  Surprised, Francesca asked, “Why? I mean, why is he leaving?”

  “He didn’t say. It was as if something was on his mind.” The rector pulled out his watch. “He’s late.”

  “Changed his mind most likely,” she said acerbically. “I for one will be glad to see him gone.” Rising from her chair, she asked, “Any reports in the Valley of housebreakings?” It was the question that had brought her here.

  “Housebreakings? Not that I have heard. Why?” There was concern in his voice as he accompanied her to the door. “Has there been trouble at River’s End?”

  “Tyler was restless in the night. It reminded me that I live alone.”

  “And I remind you in turn that you are always welcome here. I owe your grandfather for many things, not the least his interest in keeping the church roof over our heads!”

  “I’m fine. Tyler misses Grandfather terribly, and any noise in the night makes him lift his head in the hope he’s come back.”

  “Trying for you, I should think!”

  “Yes—and no. Thank you for your invitation, all the same. It’s appreciated. I’ll send you Grandfather’s fountain pen by Mrs. Lane. He’d like to see it put to use again!”

  With that, Francesca said good-bye and left. The rector stood watching her walk down the hill toward the bridge. She turned to wave, and would have sworn she glimpsed a speculative shadow in his eyes.

  She strolled back to River’s End, enjoying the early morning. The dawn mists had vanished, and the sun warmed the earth, giving the autumn air a quality that she loved, almost tangible where the beams fell golden through the trees.

  I don’t want to go back to London—

  The thought came unbidden. Her first reaction was that it had been unconsciously prompted by her dream. But it wasn’t the first time she had said as much.

  The dead here she knew. They were her family. And the dying men in stuffy trains were strangers she could no longer bear to send on their journey uncomforted. She hadn’t recognized how much of herself had been shut down emotionally until she had reached this Valley and realized that she had no strength left for her grandfather’s suffering. . . .

  There was such a thin line between surviving and enduring.

  She looked up at the house as she came up the drive,
thinking how small it had seemed with the cousins running amok along the passages and down the stairs. Now it seemed enormous, and so pitifully empty.

  Rather than bring Mrs. Lane to unlock the heavy front door, Francesca chose to walk round to the kitchen door by way of the formal gardens on the south front, her shoes whispering through the leaves strewing the path. How long before the gardens would have proper care again? How many years before able-bodied men could work here and bring the beds back to their former glory?

  There had been a heavy dew on the lawns, and she held her skirts out of the wet as she crossed the grass and turned toward the back of the garden.

  I need Harry’s teasing—or Freddy’s music—to cheer me up, she thought, paying heed to where she put her feet. Even Simon’s wars would be—

  She broke off, staring at the place where the Murder Stone had lain half buried for as long as she could remember.

  There was a body lying there now, still and limp and, from what she could tell at such a distance, quite dead.

  CHAPTER 12

  Shouting for Mrs. Lane, Francesca ran heedless of her skirts toward the man lying on his right side, his head on one arm, his face out of sight.

  But she was already certain of his identity, and she heard herself exclaiming furiously, “Why couldn’t you have gone home to die! You’ve brought nothing but trouble—”

  She reached him and stopped short, staring down at a mask of blood, black now, and already attracting flies.

  Leighton lay there without moving, and instantly, training took over. She reached down a hand to feel his throat beneath the collars of his coat and his shirt.

  There was a faint pulse, but the flesh was cold.

  He was alive, but in dire need of medical help.

  Francesca knelt and attempted to turn him. He flopped over on his back like an unwieldy sack.

  She spun around and ran to the house. Mrs. Lane wasn’t in the kitchen, and calling her name, Francesca finally found her in one of the bathrooms, scrubbing the floor.