Chapter Three

“M r. Grey,” Constance drawled, walking toward him. “Looking for a little light reading before bed?”

Since one of his hands was inside an open drawer, her sarcasm was more than justified. He did not, however, look particularly put out, let alone guilty.

“Why? Are you?” he asked, with apparent politeness. He removed his hand from the drawer, though he didn’t trouble to close it.

“I’m not the one caught with my fingers in the—er…pie.”

“Only because I got here first.”

He was still fully dressed, and quite as elegant as he had looked earlier in the evening. Even so, Constance was not foolish enough to go too close. He was too large, and his very stillness radiated danger. She had caught him prying, poking around in a private drawer that might even have been locked. The fact that she had indeed intended to do exactly the same did not stop it being crime against hospitality and gentlemanly conduct—a transgression quite as unforgivable as her own false pretenses.

He must have been well aware of that, yet the candlelight flickering over his face from both sides revealed no embarrassment.

She set her candle down on the desk. “What did you find?”

The tiniest spark of surprise glinted in his dark eyes. “Nothing of great interest to me. Perhaps it is to you. What are you looking for?”

“You first,” she said politely.

His teeth gleamed in what looked like a genuine smile. “You have style, Mrs. Silver. Would you not prefer to join forces than work against each other?”

“Since I don’t know what you are working toward, I cannot say. What is it you suspect of our host?”

“What makes you think I suspect him of anything?”

She lifted her brows. “Solomon Grey has no need to steal anyone’s petty cash. You have already admitted you seek information. At least tell me if you have found what you are looking for.”

There was a pause. “Not yet. You? Shall I move over?” He actually stepped aside to give her access to the open drawer, but even as she speculated whether or not to accept the improper offer—after all, so far, all the wrongdoing was his—his gaze shifted beyond her.

A frown flickered, and he brushed past her so swiftly she had no time to move aside. The echo of distinctive scent teased her senses, half remembered, wholly intriguing.

She found herself following him to the window.

“Did you see that?” he breathed.

“What?”

“Something glinted outside. Then a shadow vanished into the trees.”

“I don’t see anything,” she said, truthfully. “No lantern lights.”

He did not answer, merely strode back to the desk, snapped the open drawer shut, and snatched up the nearest candle—hers—before making for the door.

Intrigued, Constance fetched the remaining candle and hurried after him.

Without blundering into any furniture, they got to the French windows of the drawing room. Constance unlocked them as she had seen Mrs. Winsom do, and again he brushed past her, either from rudeness or for her protection. She reserved judgment as to which.

He set off purposefully along the garden path toward the trees. She hurried with him. Her candle flickered out, but it made little difference. The full moon seemed to flood them with light, making the familiar landscape new and different and more than a little uncanny.

Country noises were different to a town’s. Constance had known both the dangerous, dark alleys of the London slums, and the street-lit, well-patrolled streets of Mayfair. She survived well in either, because the threats were always distinctly human. Here, her imagination ran riot.

The shadows were new. Night creatures scurried and called in the distance. Trees loomed, menacing from above, reaching out with their branches and whispering leaves. Hedges hid unknowable, lurking risks. The air seemed thick with generations of ghosts stretching back to a time beyond history. God knew she did not belong here.

She stumbled over a root. Grey, who had not appeared to be paying any attention to her, caught her hand to steady her, and she was rattled enough to grasp it as they moved on.

He seemed to be following his nose, entering a copse only briefly before reemerging at the other side of the house, beneath the terrace where they’d had tea that afternoon. The formal garden, whence Randolph had tried to entice her, smelled strongly of rosemary and pine and flowers she couldn’t name—or perhaps it was the perfume of long-dead women.

And when did I become so ridiculously fanciful?

Pull yourself together, Constance Silver…

“I still don’t see anyone,” she breathed.

“Neither do I.” His low voice seemed to vibrate through his fingers into hers, reminding her she still hung on to him. Nor was she ready to let him go.

He halted, peering ahead and then to either side. His breath hitched, and then he set off toward the swing beyond the pond and the weeping willow.

“What?” she whispered. “What do you see?”

“Something glinted again. Something that shouldn’t be there…”

She saw it then, too, and he was quite right. The blade of a large, bone-handled kitchen knife should not have been in the garden, beneath the swing. It most certainly should not have been buried between the shoulder blades of a man.

The danger was human, after all. She walked forward quickly, barely noticing that her hand was freed. They crouched together by the fallen man and Constance seized his wrist, feeling for a pulse.

His skin was not warm, though it lacked the icy coldness of death. She searched frantically for any positive sign of life but could find none.

“He’s dead,” Grey said. “And not for very long.”

Shifting position, he lifted the dead man’s shoulder, enough to let the moon shine down on his face. Their host, Walter Winsom.

*

The Reverend Peter Albright strode into his marital bedchamber a worried man. The strength of his anger with his father-in-law made him doubt his calling, and he needed Miriam’s gentle strength. In fact…

But Miriam was not in their room.

The lamp was still lit, but her nightgown was neatly folded on her pillow.

He felt deflated, let down, even jealous, that she should be with her mother or her sister rather than with him when he needed her.

Hastily, he changed into his nightshirt, flung his robe about him, and paced the room until she came back.

She entered quietly, as though afraid of disturbing him.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

She jumped. “Goodness, you startled me! I thought you must be asleep by now.”

“I was waiting for you.”

“Mama is a little distraught,” she said carefully.

So am I! “You could have told me you were going to see her.”

She blinked. “How could I do that, Peter? You left the room almost as soon as we got here. Where did you go?”

That was the thing about Miriam. She always did as he asked, never quibbled, was the perfect, obedient wife. Except when he was being unreasonable, which he was. He drew in his breath. “Sorry. I am a little on edge. I needed a few moments alone to calm down. I need to talk to you.”

“Now?” she said, trying to smile. She looked tired and strained. Pregnancy was taking its toll on her.

He managed to smile. “No, tomorrow will do. You are too tired. Come to bed.”

*

Solomon stared at the dead man and lowered his head slowly back to the ground.

Walter Winsom lay on his front, both arms out as if he had tried to save himself from falling. He wore his evening coat, stained now with the damp, sticky darkness of blood, a small, irregular patch around the obscene knife sticking out of his person.

One side of his face was visible, his eye wide open in apparent surprise. Solomon sat back on his heels, inevitable pity and outrage mingling with his sense of frustration. Another door had closed, and in such a way that suspicion remained.

Who would murder a blameless man, and why?

A kitchen knife in the back was no accident, no act of self-defense.

Beside him, Constance Silver stared too. She had been feeling for a pulse that would never beat again and still held the dead man’s right hand. With a strange, blind look, she touched it to her cheek. Her eyes glistened in the moonlight. Something very like a tear trembled at the corner of her eye.

“What is he to you?” he blurted.

She blinked, laying Winsom’s hand back where it had been. Her smile was cynical, which somehow made it no less beautiful. “Not what you are thinking. I’ll rouse the household.” She rose quickly, and he with her.

He caught her hand. “Wait. Go back to your room. I’ll wake the servants.”

She widened her eyes at him. “Why? Afraid I’ll implicate you?”

She could, too. The body was still warm, implying the murder was recent, probably occurring while they had blundered about the garden. Which made his blood run cold. All the same, the alternative was even more chilling—that it had happened before either of them entered the library. Constance could have killed him then. And in her eyes, if she were innocent of the crime, so could he.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid you will implicate me.”

Their eyes met. There was no fear in hers, just speculation. “Guilt or chivalry?” she murmured. “And would I ever know?”

“Go,” he said, before he changed his mind.

A moment longer she hesitated, then flitted away around the house to the drawing room window.

Alone, Solomon hastily rifled through the man’s pockets, and found nothing at all. But his gold watch remained in his waistcoat pocket, and his jeweled sleeve buttons in his shirt cuffs. Unlikely it was a robbery.

Solomon rose. For the first time it struck him that the fingers of the dead man’s left hand were curled. He walked around the body and crouched again to investigate. Winsom was clutching a square of fine, embroidered cloth—a lady’s handkerchief. Solomon pocketed it and rose once more.

On impulse, he walked toward the nearest side of the house, trying the locked side door and then the French windows of the dining room, which were also locked. As were the front door, the orangery door, and the kitchen door.

Constance had, fortunately, left the drawing room door slightly open for him. He went in, closed it, and set off for the kitchen.

He found a boy asleep on a makeshift bed, close to the kitchen stove, and roused him without fuss. “Go and wake Richards and the housekeeper and Mrs. Winsom’s maid. Tell them there’s an emergency and they must come to the drawing room immediately. They needn’t bother about proper dress.”

Fuzzy with sleep, the boy still jumped up to obey, pulling on his own clothes, and lurching off toward the stairs with the candle Solomon gave him. Solomon followed more slowly, back upstairs and across the hall to the drawing room. He paused only to light a lamp on the way, and then another in the drawing room.

It was going to be a long night.

*

Alice Bolton was surprised to discover she had been asleep, even if only for a moment. She had expected to lie awake for hours, yet she clearly hadn’t, for her husband joining her in the marital bed actually woke her.

She kept her breathing even, so Thomas would not know he had disturbed her. She was not ready to talk to him, though she did wonder where he had been. Not quarreling with Walter, she hoped. More probably, he was answering a call of nature. Or poring over yet more figures from the wretched bank.

But then, it seemed Thomas was not the only member of the party up late. Alice could hear footsteps and whispers in the passageway, and then surely, distant hooves from outside, as if someone were riding away from Greenforth in the middle of the night. Unusual but not alarming.

She closed her eyes again, hoping her even breathing would carry her back into the arms of Morpheus. It almost had when the wailing started, a terrible, drawn-out shout of grief followed by an almost continuous howl.

“What on earth…?”

“It’s Deborah,” Thomas said irritably from the pillow next to her. “No one else would ever make a racket like that. Shouldn’t you go to her?”

Alice tried to keep the distaste out of her voice. “Presumably Walter is there.”

“Even Walter can’t be expected to deal with a hysterical woman all by himself.”

His words were petulant and uncharacteristically sarcastic. Oh yes, he knew something…

Alice rose with exaggerated patience. With an air of great generosity, he lit the lamp for her. She donned her dressing down, tying it at her waist with unnecessary force, before wordlessly snatching the lamp from him and leaving the room.

It was not difficult to trace the howling. Nor was she the only other member of the household up. Servants and guests milled uselessly in the passage in varying stages of dress and undress, wavering lights from candles and lamps flickering over white, frightened faces.

“What is it?” Alice demanded of Peter Albright, resplendent in a deep purple, frogged dressing gown. “What ails Deborah? Is Walter with her?”

“Walter is not with her,” Peter said, his voice sad and rather self-consciously portentous. “He will never be with her again. Or with us.”

She had to reach out with her free hand to grasp the wall, as though the world had tilted impossibly. “ What? What do you mean? Speak plainly, for God’s sake.”

“It is my sad duty to tell you that the lord has seen fit to—”

“My father is dead,” said Miriam Albright from her mother’s bedroom doorway. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “My father is dead. Where is Ellen? Does she know?”

Alice moved forward blindly, mostly to get away from everyone else, even if it meant walking toward the dreadful noise of the widow.

Deborah’s maid, Wilson, was with her, sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to talk calmly through the wailing while she held her mistress’s hand and stroked it helplessly.

At least Deborah had the luxury of grief. Alice had not. She could not give in—she had to think through it, behave as she ought.

Deborah sat upright, eyes tight shut, thrashing her head from side to side against the positive froth of pillows behind her, her heels drumming rhythmically against the mattress. She was clearly oblivious to her maid or anyone else. Without compunction, Alice pushed the maid aside and sat down, taking Deborah by both shoulders and pinning her to stillness.

“My poor Deborah, you must stop that noise,” she said firmly. “You have children who need you. What will Ellen think if she sees you like this? Hears you like this?” The whole house must be able to hear her, from attic to kitchen.

The howling cut off like a tap. Deborah opened her eyes and stared into Alice’s. Abruptly, she fell on Alice’s neck, weeping silently, and at last Alice too could give into tears. The two women held each other, united in grief, until Miriam came in with Ellen. Both girls were white with shock.

Quietly, Alice rose and left the room. At least the passage was now empty. She walked slowly back to her own room.

Thomas was standing by the bed in his nightgown. “What the devil is going on?”

“You had better get dressed,” Alice said prosaically. “Walter is dead, and the magistrate—or at least a constable—is on his way.”

“Don’t be silly! He can’t be—”

“I assure you he can,” she interrupted in a small, hard voice she barely recognized as her own.

“Dear God, how? What—” He broke off, scowling. “In any case, no one will come out in the middle of the night unless it is the doctor—”

“I assure you they will when they hear he died with a kitchen knife in his back.”

*

Constance felt utterly dazed, as though the floor had vanished beneath her feet and she was falling. Which was ridiculous. Although it was some years since she had witnessed violent death, tonight was hardly the first time she had done so. And she had known Walter Winsom a mere two days, so she was hardly entitled to grief.

Mrs. Bolton calmed the widow. The daughters clung to each other. Randolph stood alone in the passageway, staring at his parents’ bedroom door. In his dressing gown, white and still, he looked suddenly much younger than his twenty years, like a child in need of comfort.

Constance was suddenly ashamed. She had lost a possibility that in the grand scheme of things meant nothing. Randolph and his sisters had lost their beloved father, and in such a brutal, incomprehensible way. Impulsively, she went to Randolph and took his hand.

He turned his head and looked at her, blinking.

She squeezed his fingers. “Bear up, Randolph,” she whispered. “You must be strong now, for your family.”

Being strong, taking on responsibilities, was the only way she knew how to cope with grief. And her words did seem to reach him, for a spark of determination penetrated the bewildered glaze of his eyes.

She left him and went downstairs to deal with the servants, one of whom was in hysterics and frightening the others. By the time she had settled them to make tea and be useful, a white-faced constable and a half-dressed footman had brought the body into the house and placed it on one of the long supper-room tables next to the ballroom. The local doctor was there, talking to Solomon Grey and looking as shocked as everyone else. Constance asked him to call on the widow after he had finished with his other duties.

She then returned to the servants’ hall to send them back to bed for the few hours that remained of the night. Richards, the once-haughty butler, and Mrs. Farrow, the housekeeper, seemed to have wilted, which was probably scaring the lesser servants as much as the murder of their master. The pair sat silently together at one end of the table, the others in huddles whispering or weeping according to their natures.

At sight of her, the whispering stopped, and everyone looked at her in mingled hope and alarm. They were not used to their realm being invaded by those from upstairs, and yet they desperately needed some kind of direction.

“I think you should all retire now,” Constance said to Mrs. Farrow. “The family will need you and the staff quite desperately in the coming days.”

It seemed to be the right thing to say. Mrs. Farrow squared her shoulders and sent the maids off to bed. Richards blinked several times, then rose to his feet and jerked his head at the footmen.

On her way out, Constance heard movement in the kitchen and went in. To her surprise, the constable had not left the premises. He was with the stout cook and Solomon Grey, and in his hand, he held the bone-handled knife Constance had last seen in Mr. Winsom’s back.

For an instant, she felt queasy, until she reminded herself sharply that she was not really a refined, delicate lady. Grey saw her first, but acknowledged her with no more than a twitch of the eyebrows before his attention returned to the cook, who made a grab for the knife in the constable’s hands.

“Of course it’s mine,” she snapped, “and I’d like to know what it’s doing in your grubby mitts, Johnny Barker!”

Constable Barker snatched it out of her reach. “Sorry, Mrs. Corben, but this knife is evidence. You can have it back after the coroner says so.”

The cook grasped for the back of the nearest chair and almost fell into it. “You mean…the master was killed with my knife? Oh, dear God!”

“No one’s suspecting you of such a foul deed, Mrs. Corben,” the constable assured her. “But we will need to know exactly when and where you last saw it…”

The cook moaned, realizing for the first time that she might be suspected of this hideous crime.

Constance knew how she felt. If the knife had come from this kitchen, then surely it was someone in this house who had committed the murder.

Why had she not thought of that before? This was no random act of city violence, no opportunistic robbery by a passing stranger…

She realized Solomon Grey was gazing right at her.

She met his gaze, wondering what violence he had seen before, and what he had done.

And then she wondered about everyone else.

“I couldn’t find it last night,” the cook said hoarsely. “It wasn’t in its usual place in that drawer right there with my other knives. I used it preparing dinner during the day, and when I went to carve the meat, I couldn’t find it.”

So the knife had vanished the day or night before the murder. The day everyone but Grey had arrived. The attack had been planned. Somebody, surely somebody in this house, had stolen the cook’s knife from the kitchen in order to kill Walter Winsom with it.

Slowly, Constance turned and walked out to the stairs that led to the baize door separating the servants’ quarters from the family’s.