Phoebe’s assessing glance roamed up and down Nick’s length not once, but twice. She nodded, and glanced back out into the hallway, where Douglas and Connie were busily carrying empty platters and dirty dishes from the back stairs to the scullery. She said quickly, “A third pair of eyes might be useful. Will you two please dress warmly and meet me in the garden in a few minutes?”
“What do you think this is about?” Nick asked once Phoebe left them.
“It must be about the footprints Lord Allerton left the morning he disappeared. There is nothing else out there that could be connected to the case. Though with last night’s snowfall, I can’t imagine what could have been revealed that we haven’t seen already.”
She was soon to revise that opinion. She and Phoebe went out the library doors as usual, while Nick exited through the service courtyard and made his way along the perimeter of the garden past the fountain. Eva understood. For Phoebe to have invited a visiting valet out for a walk would be seen as exceedingly odd, not to mention inappropriate, by the family. But by the time he joined them beyond the footbridge, they were far enough away that anyone happening to look out would probably not even notice the trio out walking together, or if they did it would appear as nothing more than happenstance.
At the sound of the snow-laden branches creaking with the breeze, Eva shivered and tried to hunker deeper into her coat. “What is this about, my lady?”
“I’m sorry to bring you out into the cold,” she replied. Her lips curled in a cunning smile. “Haven’t you noticed? Mr. Hensley, you were too far away until now, but, Eva, haven’t you looked down at all?”
Eva did look down, scanning the snow at their feet. “I only see a new accumulation of snow, my lady, which has all but filled in the footprints.”
“All but,” Phoebe repeated. “Come closer.”
She crouched and gestured for them to do the same. Nick flashed Eva a curious look and then they did Phoebe’s bidding, Eva beside her and Nick a respectful few feet away.
“Well? Do you see now?”
“I’m not sure what I’m looking for, my lady.”
Before Eva had quite completed the statement, Nick spoke in a voice devoid of inflection. “They’re not the same. One set leading away from the house is . . .”
“More labored, as if someone had difficulty walking out, but somehow lightened their burden for the trip back.” Phoebe sat back on her heels, tucking her burgundy wool skirt around her legs. “It’s a very subtle difference, and I only noticed it today because the new snow filled each set of prints in differently. See how the outgoing prints are farther apart and heavier, as if each step cost an effort? On the trip back, the steps are closer together, implying a faster gait. It’s almost as if two men of slightly different builds made each set.”
Eva considered this, her gaze following both trails to the edge of the wood. “You mean one man walked out and another walked in?”
“Or one man walked out carrying a bundle and returned lighter,” Phoebe corrected her.
“But returned from where?” Nick stood and continued trekking toward the treeline. Eva helped Phoebe to her feet and they followed. Once they passed through the birch copse, Nick thrust aside evergreen branches, releasing a powdery shower of snow. “The trail goes cold here at the edge of the forest.”
“I don’t believe it does.” Phoebe gave her skirts a shake to dislodge the snow from her hems. “Just because a trail isn’t obvious doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”
“So what do you suggest, my lady? Hounds?”
“No, Mr. Hensley, I’m afraid we no longer have hounds on hand. The last of the ones that didn’t go to war died over a year ago and my grandfather hasn’t had the heart to bring any new dogs onto the estate. Hunting was something he and my father used to do together, you see.” She paused, and a gust of wind rattled through the trees to echo the hollow sadness Eva felt on her mistress’s behalf. As quickly as the wind dropped, however, Phoebe seemed to recover from the memory. “I do believe that on closer inspection, we might be able to detect minute signs of a trek through the woods. Crushed undergrowth, broken branches, and the like.”
The possibility seemed doubtful to Eva, until she remembered something. “Nick, you were once a gamekeeper’s assistant, right here at Foxwood. In fact, wasn’t it your job to see to the hounds? Perhaps you remember a few tracking techniques.”
“That was a long time ago.” He looked uncomfortable and slightly embarrassed. “But I suppose it’s worth a try.”
“Wait a moment.” Phoebe crossed the treeline into the frigid shadows and went still.
Eva hurried to her. “My lady? What is it?”
“Gamekeepers, hounds . . .” She whirled about to face Eva and Nick. “Constable Brannock and his men will never find him in the house, because he isn’t there. We need to check the gamekeeper’s cottage.”
Eva’s stomach sank at the thought of trekking through the woods for such a distance in this weather. “But didn’t Constable Brannock say his men already searched there?”
“Yes, he did.” Phoebe raised her chin in defiance. “But if he was telling the truth rather than merely attempting to placate me, they obviously must have missed something. It only makes sense. The gamekeeper’s cottage is the only building on the estate no one ever uses. Where better to hide a body?”
Phoebe led the way at a brisk stride, or as brisk as icy, rutted ground, tangled brambles, and sharp rocks would allow. She heard Eva and Mr. Hensley thrashing through the dormant vegetation behind her, but she didn’t slow down for them. Her lungs felt as if frosty daggers stabbed at them by the time she broke through into the well-manicured clearing of the stable yard. Here, beyond the shelter of the forest, snow once again blanketed the ground in fresh drifts. A hodgepodge of human and horse tracks littered the way between the stable doors and the closest paddock, where the remaining groom exercised Grams’s carriage team and Amelia’s sweet, aging Blossom daily.
Several buildings inhabited the clearing, slate-roofed and constructed of creamy Cotswolds stone. Phoebe entered the main stable and welcomed its relative warmth. A moment later, Eva and Mr. Hensley stepped into the building behind her.
Though far less pungent than in the old days when the stalls were fully inhabited, the odors of horse and hay still had the same steadying effect on her now as then. As if she entered another world where war and strife and sadness simply didn’t exist. How she had loved spending hours here, feeding, brushing, even mucking—when Grams wasn’t about. And then mounting Stormy and flying round the paddock and, again when Grams wasn’t about, along the riding lanes that wove through the forest.
“My lady, surely you don’t believe Lord Allerton is somewhere here?”
She started at the sound of Eva’s voice. Quickly she wiped a coat sleeve across her eyes before the others could glimpse the moisture that had gathered there. “No, but it doesn’t hurt to ask if Trevor saw or heard anything that night.” She called out the groom’s name. “Are you here?”
“I am, my lady.” Once only a groom’s assistant, Trevor Reeve, the new head groom, walked out from the office adjoined to the tack room. Like so many of the others remaining on the estate, Trevor was young, no more than eighteen, Phoebe guessed. Before the war he had been a shy, pale boy, rail thin, who always seemed much more at home with the animals than people. Though he had filled out to a man’s proportions, that last hadn’t changed, and he removed his cap and held it awkwardly in his hands. “Would you like the carriage?”
“No, nothing like that, Trevor.” Phoebe walked down the center aisle to him, pausing to stroke Blossom’s nose along the way. “I’m wondering if you noticed anything unusual yesterday morning.”
“Something related to Lord Allerton’s disappearance, my lady?”
Shy perhaps, but not unobservant. “Yes. Could someone have passed through here that morning or the night before? Do you lock up each night?”
“All doors are always locked at night, my lady
. The one you entered through, the outside door to the office, and the big ones that open onto the main drive.” He used his hat to point to the opposite end of the building. The horses were led out to be exercised through the doors through which Phoebe had entered. The other set of doors led out to the expansive, cobbled courtyard where, in the old days, motorcars and carriages would deliver the family and their guests for the great hunting parties held each autumn. Phoebe could almost hear the rumble of engines, the clopping of hooves, and the hurrying feet of the footmen as they served refreshments before everyone mounted up and the eager hounds were loosed. She wondered, would Foxwood see such happy activity again? Or had those old traditions died along with so many others during the war?
“My lady?” Eva touched her arm and Phoebe jumped.
“I was remembering . . .” She smiled weakly. “Never mind. So you say the doors are always kept locked at night, Trevor?”
“Indeed, my lady, I explained to the police—”
“So they’ve been here, then?”
“They were here with their search party,” Trevor told her. “They turned the place upside down early this morning, but found nothing.”
She thanked Trevor and led the way through the building and out the main doors. The courtyard showed signs of footprints and motorcar tracks beneath last night’s fresh fall of snow. The search party, of course. If anyone else had come through here, all signs of the direction he might have taken had been obliterated. Phoebe started down the tree-lined lane that connected the stables and gamekeeper’s cottage to the main house.
Eva and Mr. Hensley followed in her wake, and she could sense both their curiosity and their doubts. Where the lane forked, she followed partially obscured footprints and once again entered the woods. They walked for several minutes, picking their way over branches and rocks strewn across the once-wide and manicured path. It struck Phoebe how quickly nature had taken over this once frequently traveled route. Another couple of years and there might be no path left at all.
The cottage stood in a small clearing framed by a thick growth of trees. The branches were no longer tidily trimmed as they had been previously, and hung over the cottage in places and even scraped the roof. The place lay eerily silent except for the light screeching of wood against slate, reminding Phoebe of the ghost stories Grampapa used to tell her and Julia when they were young, before death had stolen their mother away. After that no one told ghost stories at Foxwood Hall.
She examined the clearing. Low mounds of snow tufted the ground and showed signs of a recent trampling. “Well, it does appear as if Mr. Brannock’s search party has been here. Still, let’s have a look inside,” she said, and turned around to realize she had been talking to herself. Eva and Mr. Hensley hadn’t caught up to her yet.
The cottage comprised small living quarters for the gamekeeper and an equipment room, each with their own entrance but connected from inside. It was to the latter she headed first. She strode to the oak door and tugged. The latch jiggled but held stubbornly in its locked position.
“Oh, hang it.” She kicked lightly at the door. “I should have thought to ask Mr. Giles for the keys.” She had never thought much about locked doors in the old days. The servants had always known the family’s plans ahead of time and made all the necessary preparations.
How naïve—and oblivious—she and the family had been then.
She turned and this time saw Eva and Mr. Hensley negotiating the last bit of trail. She hadn’t realized she had walked so fast and felt a little pang of guilt as the other two trod none too quietly through the brush and into the clearing. Eva panted from the exertion and Mr. Hensley appeared to be favoring his right leg.
“Are you all right, Mr. Hensley?”
“Yes, fine, my lady.”
“Nick, I didn’t realize you’d hurt yourself,” Eva exclaimed. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“I’m fine, Evie. What ails my leg happened a while back.”
“Oh.” Eva appeared to understand his meaning. “The war . . .”
“It rarely pains me anymore. But the cold combined with the walk . . .”
“I’m so sorry,” Phoebe was quick to say.
He nodded and, apparently dismissing the subject, joined her at the shed door.
“It’s locked,” she told him, resisting the urge to deliver another, harder kick to the solid panels. She would only succeed in bruising a toe. “I’m sorry I dragged you both all the way out here for no good reason.”
“Well, as long as we’re here . . .” Mr. Hensley gave the door a tug as she had, though much more forcefully. Upon receiving the same result, he studied the lock, then looked about him. “You say no one ever uses the cottage anymore?”
“That’s right,” Phoebe replied.
Mr. Hensley nodded. “We need a sturdy rock.”
Eva returned to the edge of the woods and toed the snowy ground with her boot. Then she stooped. “How is this?” With both hands she hefted a rough stone about the size of a wood used in lawn bowls.
Mr. Hensley smiled as he took the rock from her. He hit the latch once, again, and a third time. Clanging filled the air and made Phoebe cringe. She was glad they were far enough away from the house that no one would hear them.
On his fifth try, Mr. Hensley was rewarded with the crack of metal breaking; a piece of the latch thudded to the ground. Phoebe clapped her gloved hands. “You did it, Mr. Hensley.”
“I can only hope I won’t be apprehended for breaking and entering,” he said wryly.
“You won’t. Now . . .” Phoebe pushed and the door creaked open several inches. A waft of musty abandonment poured out from the murkiness within, making her nose tingle and her throat itch. “That’s dreadful. They can’t have been in here long.”
“Who can’t have?” Eva asked.
“The search party. If they had conducted a thorough search, the place would have aired out, at least somewhat.” She thought of the inadequate search the inspector conducted of Henry’s bedroom. “They must have been in and out in a matter of moments. And they could easily have missed something.” She drew a breath. “Let’s go in.”
Eva stepped up beside her. “Would you like me to go first?”
“No, I should go first,” Mr. Hensley offered.
“This was my idea, and I dragged you both out here.” Phoebe stepped boldly across the threshold into the nearly black storeroom. “We’ll need to open the curtains.”
CHAPTER 11
Dust clouds billowed when Eva parted the heavy burlap curtains on the room’s two windows. Light struggled to penetrate the panes, begrimed inside and out from years of neglect. She coughed and fanned at the air. “That doesn’t light the room much, does it?”
“Enough to serve our purposes.” Phoebe stood before a long glass-fronted case mounted to one wall. “The rifles have all been moved up to the house, along with anything of value that was out here. But as for the rest . . .” She sniffed the air. “It’s horribly dank in here.”
“Yes, but not putrid, my lady.” Eva refrained from explaining further, but Phoebe’s tightened features indicated she understood the reference to a decaying body.
“No, you’re right about that,” she said. “Still, we should look about. After all, the freezing temperatures would forestall the . . . the rotting of the . . .”
Corpse. Eva cringed. Good heavens.
One half of the room contained crates piled high and pushed up against the wall, stacked folding chairs, and a dusty mound of folded blankets. “There’s nowhere on this side a body might be concealed,” Eva said. “The crates are all too small.”
“Not unless . . .” Phoebe’s lips flattened. “Unless our culprit didn’t stop at Lord Allerton’s fingers, if you catch my meaning.”
For all their euphemisms, there seemed no avoiding being distastefully blunt. But then, there was nothing gentile about what happened to Lord Allerton. With a hand pressed to her stomach, partly due to a vague queasiness and partly in a
futile effort to shield herself, Eva approached the array of storage containers. She squinted to make out details and leaned down closer to examine surfaces. “No fingerprints in the dust,” she announced with relief. “Nothing here looks as though it were disturbed in years, neither by the inspector’s men nor by the killer.”
They scanned the rest of the room. Several cages of various sizes occupied a corner. Eva knew these had been used by the gamekeeper, part of whose job it was to release the quarry in the desired area so the earl and guests might enjoy their day of riding, picnicking, and the triumphant climax of watching the hounds corner a poor, beleaguered fox against a tree or outcropping. Eva shuddered at the image that conjured.
“Are you all right? Cold?” Nick began unbuttoning his woolen overcoat.
Eva stopped him with a hand over his, imagining she could feel the warmth of his skin through their gloves. “No, it isn’t that. This may seem silly coming from a farmer’s daughter, especially when that farmer raises cattle for the local butchers, but anything to do with hunting always makes me sad . . . and a little angry, I’m afraid.”
“I agree.” Phoebe crouched beside a trunk on the less cluttered side of the room. “I loved the riding and being outdoors, but I always returned home before the others closed in for their pretend kill. At least they ultimately spared the creatures’ lives. They only terrified them, the poor dears. Of course mallards and geese were another matter.” She fingered the trunk’s clasp. “This doesn’t appear to be locked.”
“Allow me to help you with that, my lady.” Nick crossed the room to her but hesitated before lifting the lid. “Please go stand with Eva, my lady. Just in case.”
She looked about to argue, but instead nodded and moved away. She reached for Eva’s hand, and even as Eva sucked in a breath she felt Phoebe stiffen and do the same. The lid whined in protest.
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