“I do,” she said. “It looks less weathered.”
“Once, long ago, that was a doorway. Unsuspecting enemies would break down what appeared to be an unguarded door and charge up what they thought was a stairway to the main part of the house. In the gloom, instead, they would be met by a sudden drop, and many of them would fall to their deaths down this pit. It is called a murder hole. I don’t know of any other like it in all of England, and so I preserve it.”
“Oh,” she said. She stepped forward and turned to face him, taking in a deep, shuddering breath, forcing her stomach to settle. “And do you practice that story, with just that gloomy intonation, to frighten young women? Or to impress them with your melancholy fascination?”
He laughed out loud and stepped forward into the light of a high window above the gloomy pit. “I would never try such a trick on you—for you, my lady, are indomitable.”
“That’s not true, but I have seen your tricks and am therefore wary. I do think I should go now, my lord. I will see you at dinner.”
“Let me drive you back—you should not walk so far, for I expect you to dance this evening after dinner. Nothing wears off a heavy meal quite so well as a country dance or two.”
“I won’t take you out of your way, sir,” Anne insisted, stepping away from his troubling touch. “Though he is staying at Ivy Lodge, my coachman, Sanderson, is at the castle today mending a spring on my carriage. If you will loan him an equipage—the pony trap will do—he can drive me and bring the trap back.”
Darkefell merely nodded. He couldn’t very well refuse such a request.
***
“You’ve spent some time in the castle stables now, Sanderson—what’s your impression of young Jamey?” Anne sat up next to her coachman in the pony trap as the burly man gloomily handled the reins. Such a vehicle was beneath his dignity, and he drove only because she asked. “Is he capable of murder?” She had absolute reliance on her driver’s astute opinion as well as his discretion.
Sanderson shook his head. “Naw.”
“That was my thought. But if Cecilia was carrying his child, and that threatened his position, then he may have. Men have killed for less.” She thought for a long moment and sighed. “But I don’t really believe that. He would not have planted those items I found where she lay. This was a deed of deliberation, not passion.”
“Had no chance.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“He had no chance, milady. Yoong Jamey were gambling th’noight of th’maid’s morder, with t’other lads in th’castle stable. Playin’ hazard.”
“Hazard—they were playing dice! You’re sure of this?”
“Aye. Two of t’other lads say so.”
She blessed her surly driver’s gift for drawing others out while he said nothing himself. She had not had to direct him as to what she needed. “So, she could not have crept back out to meet him, and that eliminates him from Cecilia’s murder.”
“Aye.”
“Which leaves me still with the possibility that this murder is connected to the other two deaths of young women. Or wholly unrelated. Those most intimately connected with Cecilia and, thus, most likely to have reason to harm her, are Jamey, Ellen—jealousy will make a young woman do many awful deeds, though killing your competition seems a little extreme—and… well, I must include Lord John. He entered the great hall quickly after I came to the house after finding Cecilia, but still… I think he would have had time to kill her and return to Ivy Lodge. Lydia is firm in believing he doesn’t care for her as he used to, and the young man does seem to be mired in unusual gloom. What if he has some dark side to him that she is only beginning to suspect?” She bit her lip as she thought. “And I cannot forget Mr. Boatin.”
Sanderson was silent.
“I like Mr. Boatin,” Anne said, staring off at the landscape without seeing it. “But after all he has suffered in his life, can I really say that his calm exterior is the true one? I’ve known people who seem, on first meeting, to be one way, only to show their true selves at some later date. If he was in love with Cecilia and she led him on, only to take up with Jamey… again, jealousy can be the motivation for murder. And he was with her just before her death—that we already know.”
“Aye.”
“But I don’t want it to be him, Sanderson.”
“Aye.”
“Nor do I want to think it could be Lord Darkefell. But he’s a deep man, Sanderson, one whose depths I have not begun to plumb,” she said, thinking of his gloomy delight in the “murder hole.”
She mustn’t concentrate too much on the marquess—as fascinating as he was, he seemed to expect her to fall desperately in love with him. Ridiculous man. She noticed that they were in a part of the estate she had not yet seen; the gravel lane from the castle to Ivy Lodge wound through a lovely park. “How pretty this part of the property is,” she said, delighted at the glades of young trees and drifts of spring blossoms arranged for the most picturesque display. Someone had planted clumps of Holland bulbs, and they burst forth in the vernal sunshine.
He was silent.
“Stop!” she cried. As the pony trap pulled to a quick halt, Anne stared into the wooded glade. She had seen movement. Of course, that was not unexpected; there were probably deer and other creatures afoot. But… no, it was not a deer. She saw something slinking through the underbrush. “What is that?” she asked, pointing.
“Don’t see nuthin’, milady.”
She had forgotten how myopic he was. “Stay here!” she commanded as she shrugged out of her cloak and scrambled down from the pony trap. She lifted her skirts and sprinted across the grass toward the shady copse, but just as she approached, she saw the animal streaking away through the trees so quickly, it was a blur of gray and white. Panting, she put one hand against a tree and rested. The animal was gone. But she was fairly sure that it was the same creature she had seen from the tower, slinking away from the hut on the hill as Lord Darkefell and Lord John approached.
Oh, how her poor feet ached! She limped back to the gravel drive and climbed back up into the pony trap. “It must have been a dog,” she said as Sanderson set the vehicle in motion again with the merest click of his tongue against his teeth and the slightest of movements.
“Not any kind I ever seen,” he said.
“Exactly my thoughts.” She looked over at him. “How well do you see, Sanderson?”
“Well ’nuff when it suits me, milady. It cooms and goes.”
His vision seemed remarkably bad when having good vision would require effort on his part, yet remarkably acute when he wished to make a comment on something in the distance and for driving. Despite Sanderson’s faults, though, he suited her.
“Find out for me, if you can, anything about Edward Carter and his ne’er-do-well son, Neddy. Carter was the gamekeeper for the last marquess and lives in a hut on the side of the hill about a half-mile distant.”
“Aye, milady.”
Back at Ivy Lodge, Anne stormed Lydia’s bedroom, plunking herself down by her friend’s bed and waiting. Lydia was sleeping, or rather, pretending to sleep. This had gone on long enough.
“What was going on with Cecilia, Lydia?” she said loudly. “Who did you suspect was the father of her child? I know you, my girl—Cecilia was at one time dear to you. You would not keep her out of a cemetery plot just for a moral lapse. Something personal prompted your pettiness.”
Lydia’s eyes flew open, and she leaped up, very awake for someone who was supposedly napping. “If I had known,” she cried, pounding her fists on the silky bedcover. “If I had only known… oooh! Traitor!” She broke into tears, great, heaving, choking sobs.
Anne, genuinely concerned, hopped up on the bed, taking Lydia in her arms and soothing her with little noises and words: “Hush, Lydia, don’t cry. No, it’s all right, my dear, really. I didn’t mean to upset you… hush, now.” She pushed Lydia’s curls back off her forehead, and the girl, her head on Anne’s shoulder, wept as if her hear
t was broken.
Once she had calmed, her lovely blue eyes reddened and tear trails marred her creamy skin, Anne, her arm still around her friend’s shoulders, said, “My dear, you know me. Trust me. Tell me what has been worrying you.”
Lydia sat up straighter and moved out of her friend’s protective embrace. Biting her lip, she gazed at Anne and said slowly, “All right. But I’m frightened what you’ll think.”
“You must trust me!”
“I do, but I know you, Anne. You won’t bend for anyone. If… if someone I l-love has done something…” She trailed off and looked confused.
Anne felt a trill of concern in her stomach. What was Lydia going to tell her?
The girl looked away, composed herself, and then looked back at Anne. “John doesn’t love me any more.”
“I told you, Lydia, that’s nonsense. He loves you. The night I arrived, he was there, worried to illness about your swoon.”
“No, you don’t understand. He’s just pretending now for everyone else’s benefit.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Everything was grand while we were alone,” she said, her eyes misty and unfocussed. “He was attentive, kind, l-loving. But then we came back here.” Her tone held such loathing. “And his mother… she picked away until I felt I was not good enough for her son. It was awful. I felt… I felt as though John was looking at me differently, that he was seeing me as his mother does, a silly girl, a child with no sense. I’m not like you, Anne, with brains and sense and logic.”
“Lady Darkefell doesn’t seem to like me much either, my girl, so there you have it. You cannot let your mother-in-law’s behavior worry you.”
“But it’s not just that. John… he stopped… stopped coming to my room after a while.” Lydia looked away, and a pretty blush mounted her soft cheeks. “And then… he was seen kissing Cecilia.”
Anne’s stomach twisted. The vision of the poor dead girl being carried in by the marquess, her throat savaged, dripping with blood; the sense she had in the dark of death: it all came back. Had Lord John been the father of her unborn child? Did he kill her to keep it a secret? But wait—“You said he was ‘seen’ kissing her… you didn’t see him yourself?”
Tears dripped down her face and off her chin, and she shook her head. “Of course not. He’s too careful for that.”
“So who told you about it?”
“One of the maids saw it and told Therese, Lady Sophie’s abigail. She told me.”
“And you believe her?”
“I didn’t believe Therese, but I asked the maid, and she admitted she had seen it. She told me when and where.”
“When did you hear this?”
“The day before you arrived. It’s why… why I was so distracted and told no one you were coming. I was upset! I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. I can’t seem to think!” She broke down in tears again, great gusty, heaving sobs.
Anne watched her with a dispassionate gaze. So when Lydia asked her to come to Yorkshire, she had not known about her husband’s indiscretion with the maid, though she had felt something was wrong with John. “John was seen kissing Cecilia—what did you say to her about it?”
“N-nothing,” Lydia said on a choked sob. “I didn’t know what to say! She did my hair the next morning, and I kept trying to figure out how to say it, but Cecilia had been so different toward me in the last weeks, and I… I was afraid. Afraid of what she would tell me.”
“And you haven’t asked him?”
“No.”
That was Lydia, Anne thought, afraid to hear the truth in case it was unpalatable to her. “So which maid told you she saw your husband kissing Cecilia?”
“Ellen… Henderson, I think her last name is.”
Ellen, Cecilia’s competition for the attention of young Jamey, the groom. Much seemed to come back to those two young women. After her conversation with Lydia, Anne went in search of Ellen, but Mrs. Hailey told her that the maid had a half day off—they rotated half days off through the staff so not too many would be off on the same day—and had presumably walked to Hornethwaite, her usual destination. A conversation with her and an exploration of what she actually saw would have to wait until the next day.
***
Dinner at the castle was a formal affair. The magistrate and the reverend and his wife were once again invited, as was Mr. Grover.
Anne tried to imagine why the neighbor would attend, since he despised the marquess. The answer, of course, was his friendship with Lady Darkefell. He was attentive all through dinner to the aloof marchioness, while Darkefell watched, his dark eyes hooded by half-lowered lids, his lips permanently twisted in the sardonic expression she was beginning to understand. All of the cruelty, baseness, and villainy he had seen in his life had made him cynical about humankind, if she understood him correctly. Cynicism was a tempting path; she fought against it on a daily basis. There was much to criticize in human behavior and little to laud, but it did no good to focus on the debased among humanity.
The ladies moved to the castle drawing room after dinner for a languid half hour of conversation, but Lydia was withdrawn, and Lady Sophie kept darting glances at the doorway through which they could expect the men. It was left to Anne and Mrs. Sydney, the reverend’s wife, to keep up the conversation. Anne learned all about the woman’s many children and several grandchildren, and even some gossip about village affairs. If they had been alone, Philodosia Sydney would have been an excellent source of information, for a reverend’s wife heard many tales, but Anne could not question her with everyone there.
It was going to be a long evening.
***
Darkefell sat in his favorite chair in the library, where he and the other gentlemen had repaired after dinner. The book-lined walls and leather furnishings, soft lamplight and carpeted floor, gave a sense of cocooned warmth. Tanner handed around port and cigars, neither of which he liked much. John kept darting him glances, for though John didn’t know what his older brother had to do that night, he seemed to feel something in the air. Finally, appearing too restless to stay still, he got up and moved to a window, shoving aside the draperies and staring through the glass.
The reverend and Mr. Grover spoke in hushed tones about Spottiswode’s arrest. Mr. Sydney had been to see him, and it appeared the fellow was beginning to have regrets about his confession.
“What did you say just now, Mr. Sydney?” Darkefell asked. He set aside his unlit cigar and untasted port.
“William Spottiswode is now claiming it was the drink that was talking, not him. He says he was seized by the devil, and it whispered in his ear, forcing him to mouth untruths,” the little man said with a perplexed frown.
“Merely the regrets of a man who now knows how much trouble he is in. The hangman’s noose will cure him,” the magistrate said.
“May I remind you, Pomfroy,” Darkefell said, “that you were quite ready to hang my secretary not too long ago.”
“But Mr. Boatin did not confess, did he, my lord? William Spottiswode did. And I say, no matter how much a man drinks, it does not make him believe he killed a woman!” He glanced around the room, the dim light from the oil lamps creating gaunt shadows on his ascetic face.
Mr. Grover merely appeared troubled but stayed silent. Mr. Sydney, though, shook his head and said, “Gin is an awful thing, sir. Is it gin he has been drinking? I read a tract that said women in London ignore their children and resort to all manner of perversion once introduced to its seductive influence. The devil’s brew! It leads to madness.”
“I don’t know about gin,” the magistrate said, “but I have come upon him more than once with a bottle of wine clutched in his grimy hands. And he would never say where he got it. Stolen, most likely. I took stock of my own cellar after that, I can tell you.”
Darkefell sighed. The conversation served only to remind him of what he had to do that evening. He had been planning on putting it off, but it wouldn’t serve. “John, may I see you for a m
oment? If you will excuse us, gentlemen, we have family business. I’ll leave you to your port, and please join the ladies as soon as you wish.” With such a disparate group as Grover, Sydney, and Sir Trevor, they would find relief in the ladies’ company, he had no doubt.
“What is it, Tony?” John asked as he followed his older brother out of the room.
“I’ll tell you in a few moments. Just come with me.” He strode down the hall to the door of the drawing room. They were, of course, in the modern wing, so the hallways were wide and well lit with lantern sconces every few yards. He entered and saw his mother sitting alone, as usual, apart from the clustered women, and he beckoned her. She rose smoothly and approached him. Lady Anne, ostensibly in a conversation with Mrs. Sydney, noticed Lady Darkefell leave, but she would never guess what their family meeting was about.
“What do you wish?” his mother asked in a whisper in the dim hallway.
“Come,” he said. “I need to ask you and John a question.” He led the way to a small office where Osei awaited them. The secretary heightened the wick, and the pool of light cast over the table expanded. His mother and brother, both with expressions of trepidation mingled with dread, approached. Darkefell had a cloth bundle on the table, and at a word from him, Osei unfolded the bundle.
His mother gasped. “Where did you find that?” she asked.
That was the confirmation he sought, even though he didn’t need it. “It’s yours, isn’t it, Mother?”
“Yes, of course, but where did you find it? And what is that dark staining?”
He watched them both. John had been silent but appeared bleached of color. “John? Do you recognize this?” He pointed at the item.
“I suppose,” he said. “But I don’t know what this is all about. What did you bring us here for? Lydia’s not feeling well, and I should see how she’s doing.”
Darkefell shifted his glance between his mother and brother. Both eyed the item on the table—a long wooden stake with a handle—that had been plunged, he believed, into Cecilia Wainwright’s throat before her slender neck was savaged to make the assault look like an animal attack. Or that of a werewolf. It was a dibber, used to poke holes in the earth for planting bulbs and tubers. On the handle were the initials S. D., for Sophie Darkefell.
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