by Rhys Bowen
We sat on our horses, not moving, just staring at the green grass as it merged into black water.
“You don’t think . . . do you?” someone ventured to say at last.
“Not possible,” someone retorted. “The master knows this area like the back of his hand. He warned us himself to stay clear of the bog, didn’t he? He wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it.”
“And yet his horse was found up here,” someone else pointed out.
“Well, there’s no sign of him now,” the second speaker declared. “My bet is that he tried to jump too big a wall and the horse threw him, then took off on its own.”
“That’s what I’d surmise too,” another rider said. “Let’s divide up and search the entire area.”
We were divided into teams of two and set off in different directions. After an hour or so of combing the wild and rocky terrain, calling futilely, we assembled again, with disappointing results. Nobody had seen any trace of the man.
“Of course he could have been knocked cold and is lying among the bracken,” someone said.
The big man who had organized the search shook his head. “He wouldn’t be out cold for a couple of hours, surely.”
“Then he could have recovered, realized he’d lost his horse and made his way down to the road on foot, hitched a lift and gone home.”
“Yes. Perhaps he did that,” several voices agreed. Everyone seemed eager to prove that their worst fears had not come true. Lady Hawse-Gorzley assembled us and we made our way home, hardly saying a word.
* * *
AS WE RODE Darcy urged his mount closer to me. Snowflake was too tired to protest by now and allowed her stablemate to come up beside her.
“It’s one rum do after another, isn’t it?” he said. “They said you were the one who found the horse, is that right?”
“I did. Up by that bog.” I shuddered. “I only hope he didn’t come a cropper there. Not an end I’d want for myself.”
“If he got stuck, why didn’t he yell?” Darcy said. “Sound carried rather well today. I could hear the hounds when they were miles away.”
“That’s true,” I said. “And I was up there, quite close to him. I would have heard.”
“You don’t gradually sink into a bog and do nothing,” Darcy said. “Surely there would be some sign of a struggle.”
“Not necessarily. I’ve known a bog to swallow a Highland steer in a few minutes, although the poor thing did bellow a lot. By the time we reached it it was too late and nobody could do anything.” I shuddered at the memory of it, watching those terrified eyes as the huge beast finally disappeared beneath the surface with a horrid sucking sound.
“Everyone said he was a good rider, and he certainly knew the area well,” Darcy said. “What would have made him go near the mere he’d warned us against?”
“Something could have spooked his horse,” I said, and I told him the story of the white flapping thing that came up at me and how it had taken a while to regain control of Snowflake.
“A swan, you think?” Darcy nodded thoughtfully. “They can be quite aggressive, I know, but when a man is riding his own horse, he should be able to calm it down right away.”
“There was one other thing,” I said. “I saw Wild Sal up there. She looked like a pale flapping thing too. She stepped out right in front of my horse and stopped me from going in the direction of the bog. She showed me the right way back to the road.”
“Wild Sal, eh? What was she doing wafting around on the high moor?”
“Doesn’t she have a cottage somewhere up there?” I asked.
Darcy shook his head, smiling. “This village is too much, isn’t it? Wild women and village idiots and aged spinsters . . . it’s almost like a caricature of ye olde English village. Hard to believe it’s real.”
That’s it exactly, I thought. It’s hard to believe it’s real. Even harder to believe that every day somebody dies.
“You know what they’d say, don’t you?” I turned to him. “They’d say it was the Lovey Curse taking a person every day until the end of the year.”
“Now that,” Darcy said with a smile, “is definitely hard to believe.”
“It’s not funny, is it really?” I said, swallowing back the lump in my throat. “I mean, every day somebody dies. It’s as if a giant hand is hovering over us, waiting to snatch up the next victim.”
Chapter 24
STILL DECEMBER 26, BOXING DAY
We reached Gorzley Hall and I gladly handed Snowflake back to her groom. She aimed a parting kick at me. Those who had not taken part in the hunt greeted us with enthusiasm, wanting to know if we’d killed a fox. Of course they hadn’t heard about the master and we had to tell them.
“Do this many accidents usually happen in this part of the world?” Mr. Upthorpe demanded. “I’d always thought the countryside was a quiet, boring sort of place. If I had this number of things going wrong in my factories, they’d shut me down.”
“I assure you that our corner of the countryside is usually most peaceful,” Lady Hawse-Gorzley said. “Why don’t we all go up and change and then meet for sherry before lunch in the library?”
When Queenie had run a bath for me I had her return Bunty’s jacket before she could somehow ruin it. Then we went down for a late lunch.
“You’ll find we are eating simple meals today,” Lady Hawse-Gorzley said. “It’s Boxing Day, you see. The servants are allowed to spend the day with their families.”
The simple lunch was quite adequate: a hearty soup, then more pasties and cold meats and game pies, followed by a large sherry-laden trifle. I would have liked to visit my grandfather to tell him about this latest occurrence, but Lady Hawse-Gorzley asked me to run a skittles tournament in the ballroom and thus keep everybody happily occupied until teatime.
“Dashed glad you’re here,” she said to me, drawing me closer to her. “Frankly, I rather wish that I hadn’t invited them for this long. Seemed like a good idea at the time, with the hunt and the Lovey Chase and the Worsting of the Hag and all that. But ten days of them—not only feeding them but entertaining them, too. It’s a bit much, isn’t it? And they are such a frightfully dreary bunch. No concept of entertaining themselves.”
I noticed that the colonel limped off for an afternoon snooze while Johnnie and the Sechrests had not reappeared after riding their own mounts back to their respective homes. However, the rest of them had a good cutthroat game of skittles and today made short work of the rest of the Christmas cake at teatime.
We were just finishing the last crumbs of food when Sir Oswald came in, still dressed in his “mucking out the pigs” outfit.
“Damned police fellow has shown up again,” he said. “Wants to talk to young Georgiana.”
“Me?” I think it came out like a squeak.
“I’ve put him in my study.” Sir Oswald gave me a commiserating smile.
I went through and found Inspector Newcombe sitting there. He rose to his feet as I came in.
“Oh, good afternoon, my lady,” he said, “and please forgive me for calling you ‘miss’ last time. Slip of the tongue, I’m afraid. And I’m sorry to disturb you on Boxing Day, but I wanted to ask you some questions about the man who disappeared during the hunt today. I’m told you found his horse, up by Barston Mere.”
“I did,” I said. “It was just wandering aimlessly and it had obviously hurt itself, because it was lame in the left foreleg.”
“Did you see what happened before that? Where he might have fallen off?”
“No, not at all. He passed me some time before and my horse was being so antisocial that I rather lost touch with the rest of the hunt and found myself alone with no idea where I was. Then my horse was spooked by a horrible flapping noise and a big white thing came at me. I suspect now it might have been a swan on the lake, but at that point I didn’t even know that I was near any water.”
“So you saw no trace of where he might have fallen?”
I shook my head.
>
“Nobody else anywhere near?”
“Well, yes. I saw the woman they call Wild Sal. She stepped out in front of my horse and told me I was going the wrong way and set me on the right path down. If she hadn’t appeared, I might have ended up in the bog.”
“Ah,” he said, nodding.
“You think that’s what might have happened to the master, don’t you?” I asked.
“My men have been up there with dogs, scouring the moor all afternoon, and have not found a trace of him,” he said. “Now I’ve looked at the horse and its foreleg is quite badly cut. And what’s more, there were bits of bracken caught in its mane, so I have to assume it fell at some stage. And the other strange thing—the cut is quite a clean one. Not a skinned knee, which would have happened if it had clipped the top of a wall.”
He looked at me, waiting for me to say something. “And we found some traces of blood between two Scotch pine trees.”
“I saw that row of trees,” I said. “I wouldn’t have ridden between them myself. Too many branches sticking out at odd angles. But if the master did—” I paused. “A clean cut, you say. Is it possible that somebody put a trip wire between those trees? They say he was rather reckless—so somebody might have guessed that he’d take that route—a shortcut really.”
Inspector Newcombe was staring at me, frowning. “If that’s the case then we’re looking at a deliberate act of malice, if not of murder.”
I nodded. “I fear so,” I said.
He gave a deep sigh. “Until now I kept telling myself that these deaths were just an unfortunate string of accidents. But now I had better face facts and admit that there is either a deranged killer or a clever one, or both, operating on my turf. And I’m buggered—I mean, I’m dashed—if I can understand what the motive could be.”
I paused before I said, “You don’t possibly think that Wild Sal might have had anything to do with it, do you? She stopped me from going where the master had gone. Did she know that there was a trip wire waiting for me?”
The inspector brightened up considerably. “You know, you may be right. There’s one thing I’ve just remembered. I went to look at the place where that van drove off the road yesterday—and I did see some footprints in the snow nearby. Bare feet, they were. And I commented to the lads and one of them said, “Oh, that’s just the crazy woman who lives in Tiddleton. She runs around barefoot all year.” He paused as his brain processed the next step. “And you say she stepped out right in front of your horse? What if she stepped out right in front of that van? He’d swerve to avoid her and on that icy road he’d plunge straight down into the river, wouldn’t he?”
“In which case I should mention one more thing, or rather two more things,” I said. “The first time I met her, she gave me a sinister warning. She told me to watch my step or I’d come a cropper. I took it to mean slipping in the snow, but it could have been more than that. She could have been warning me to keep my nose out of her business. And one of the Misses Ffrench-Finch told me that she’d found out that Sal came to their kitchen door on the night their sister died. She was asking for food and the cook felt sorry for her and let her in. Maybe she had a chance to slip upstairs and turn on the gas then.”
The inspector got to his feet. “Right you are. You’ve put my mind at rest, Lady Georgiana. A good little head on your shoulders, that’s what you’ve got. Well, I’m off right now to find that woman and bring her in. Then finally I may be able to have one peaceful day with my family over Christmas.”
He left with an almost jaunty spring to his step. I didn’t feel so jaunty; in fact, I felt sick inside. Had I just condemned Wild Sal on entirely circumstantial evidence?
It was in a pensive frame of mind that I went back to join the house party. If Wild Sal really was the killer, had she warned me to mind my own business or was she warning me that I was on her list? In which case how did I get there? I tried to analyze that list of people who had died, but I could find nothing in common among them, however hard I tried. If you had wanted a random cross sample of people you’d find in a country village, they would be that cross sample.
I was in no real mood for fun and games but Lady Hawse-Gorzley had rallied everyone while I was being questioned and had a makeshift stage set up for the pantomime. The performers were already getting into their costumes and were all laughing and joking as if nothing untoward had happened. I was glad I didn’t have a part to play and tried to look jolly as Darcy, Monty and Badger made everyone laugh as the stepmother and two ugly sisters. Ethel proved to be a witty fairy godmother and frankly stole the show. Nobody remembered their lines but everybody but me seemed to have a good time and they all declared they were famished by the time we changed for dinner.
The cook had certainly not stinted with the food she had left for us. The main part of the meal was a big turkey curry, with all the accompaniments, preceded by a spicy lentil soup and followed by a whipped cream dessert that slipped down wonderfully. I thought the curry was most tasty. The Wexlers and the Upthorpes eyed it suspiciously, never having eaten curry before. The colonel took one bite, then turned to his wife. “Call this a curry?” he said. “Where we live a good curry is hot enough to singe your eyebrows—you ask the memsahib. Our cook, Mukergee—splendid fellow, been with us forever—he’s a Bengali and he thinks all English are sissies because we can’t take it any hotter.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but this is plenty hot enough for me.” Mr. Upthorpe wiped his brow. “You’re welcome to your foreign food, Colonel. Give me a good English roast meat and two veg any day, that’s what I say.”
“I enjoyed some fine curry lunches when I stayed with my friend the viceroy in Delhi,” the countess declaimed when silence had fallen. “I must say, I miss them and I find this a real treat.”
Lady Hawse-Gorzley beamed. “Thank you, Countess. It’s nice to know that one’s planning is appreciated, and I know that Cook will be delighted with your compliment.”
After the men had had their port and cigars and joined the womenfolk for coffee it was suggested that we play sardines and I was sent off to hide. I chose the linen cupboard and squeezed under the bottom shelf. Almost immediately the door opened and somebody squeezed in beside me.
“Finally we get a chance to be alone together,” Darcy whispered, nuzzling a kiss at my neck.
“How did you find me so quickly?” I whispered back.
“Have to confess I cheated. I saw which direction you were heading and I remembered your fondness for linen cupboards. And I’m not wasting any more time talking,” he added before kissing me. It was cramped and awkward and utterly blissful. I’m not sure how long we were alone together before the door opened again and another figure slipped in beside us. “Found you, you little minx,” said Johnnie’s voice. “You can’t get away from me this time. I have you trapped.”
“I should point out that’s my waist you are grasping, not Georgie’s,” Darcy said. I giggled as Johnnie hastily moved away.
“Well, I never did,” he muttered. “How did you find her so quickly, O’Mara?”
“Let’s just say I have good instincts,” Darcy said, “and I see now that those instincts were right and I needed to protect her from cads like you.”
“It’s a Christmas party game, old chum. Only a bit of fun, what?”
Their talking was overheard and soon more and more people crowded into the cupboard until the door would no longer close and the game was declared over. Darcy winked at me and held me back as we trooped down the stairs. “Next time we need not try too hard to find anyone,” he whispered, “and nobody will notice we’re missing.”
I have to confess I didn’t need much persuading, and when the others scattered around the house Darcy and I ducked into Sir Oswald’s study and picked up where the last kiss had ended.
“It’s been so long,” Darcy murmured.
“And whose fault is that? I’ve been stuck at Castle Rannoch. You, on the other hand, were seen entering the Café Royal recently.”
“Do you have your spies on me?” he laughed. “I did go to the Café Royal. I had to meet a man who had a small assignment for me. As it happened I turned it down. Sailing a little too near the wind for my taste.” He looked at me with sudden longing. “I wish I could find a normal, everyday sort of job and make a decent living, enough to support a wife and family.”
“You’d be bored in a normal, everyday sort of job.” I tried to make light of it.
“I’m serious, Georgie,” he said. “You know I’d ask you to marry me if I could support you. I’m trying as hard as I can, but there are no jobs for fellows like me—I don’t even have the connections to be sent out to the Colonies.”
“I know, it’s hard,” I said. “I feel the same way. Fig doesn’t want me around and refuses to let me stay alone at Rannoch House and I’ve nowhere else to go, unless I marry the next prince or count that my royal kin produce for me.”
“Maybe you should,” he said. “I can’t expect you to wait for me forever.”
“Darcy, you know I couldn’t. If I can’t marry someone I love, I’d rather stay a spinster. Perhaps I’ll take up a wicked life like my mother.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “You’re not the type, my darling. You’ve inherited your great-grandmother’s moral barometer . . . although after that display the other night, I’m not so sure anymore. Would you have invited the lecherous Johnnie into your bed if he’d escorted you upstairs?”
