Chapter Twenty
It was another hour before the group called it a night and the Murder Tourists—still wildly flattered to have been considered suspects, albeit briefly—retreated to the Sleepy Hedgehog, presumably to rehash the evening’s developments in greater detail.
Arthur informed Georgie that he would speak to Lexington about gaining access to the evidence—including the all-important letters—from the other murder investigations.
“Will you be wearing clothing for this conversation?” Georgie asked, unable to help herself, and Arthur shot her a repressive look.
“Should I ask you and Fletcher-Ford the same thing?” he asked, and Georgie, annoyingly, blushed.
“I knew there was a romantic subplot in this book!” Miss de Vere called over her shoulder smugly as she departed.
Sebastian glanced at Georgie, and she wondered what he saw in her face, but he said nothing more than a casual “Shall we?” and offered her his arm.
They were quiet on the walk down the high street to the edge of the village, the only sound their footsteps on the cobblestoned streets, and it was not until they reached the long gravel lane that led to Radcliffe Hall that he said, quite casually, “What are you thinking?”
Georgie glanced at him.
“You get a little wrinkle just here”—he reached out with an index finger to gently press the space between her eyebrows—“whenever you’re deep in thought.
” They drew to a halt, the night quiet around them, the moon just peeking out from behind a cloud.
He was handsome in the moonlight, but in a less shocking, golden sort of way than he was in the daylight, when he drew the eye and seemed to somehow emanate his own light.
Here, the angles of his cheekbones were more pronounced, his eyes shadowed, and she could see the evening stubble on his face.
He looked… rougher. More raw. She liked this version of him, one that felt different than the man the rest of the world saw by day.
She pushed these thoughts away and said merely, “I suppose I’m trying to come to terms with the fact that… you might have been right.”
“It does happen once a decade or so, darling Georgie.”
She rewarded him with a small smile but pressed on.
“About the murders being connected, I mean.” She paused, her mind still turning over the day’s revelations.
“Either Mr. or Mrs. Penbaker sent at least one of the letters that prompted someone to commit murder—if Arthur and Lexington find that they sent the others, too…”
“But why would they do it?” Sebastian asked, shoving a hand in his pocket as they walked. “Don’t mistake me, I will cherish forever the memory of you telling me I’m right—might have it embroidered on a pillowcase, actually—”
“Sebastian.”
“But,” he continued, undeterred, “what do the Penbakers stand to gain from turning Buncombe-upon-Woolly into a Murder Village?”
“Murder Tourists,” Georgie said without missing a beat, and he blinked at her.
“Think about it. Who has a perfect motive to commit all the murders in the village? The man who has spent years trying to draw more tourists to Buncombe-upon-Woolly, without success—until the murders started! It’s precisely what he wanted.
Or, perhaps, his wife, who has seen his fruitless struggle, and who thinks he might stop all of his unhinged schemes once and for all if the tourists actually come? ”
“But wouldn’t they have worried that a crime spree would have the opposite effect?”
Georgie shook her head. “I don’t think so. Remember what Miss Halifax said? About how Mr. Penbaker became obsessed with Agatha Christie novels after she introduced them to him? That was about a year ago—just before the murders started. The timing makes perfect sense.”
She turned and started down the drive toward Radcliffe Hall, Sebastian deep in thought beside her. They walked in silence for a few minutes, and Georgie did not break it, allowing him to catch up to the conclusion she’d arrived at.
“But,” he said, as they drew close to the front door, “arrests have been made in all those cases. You helped solve most of them, as you pointed out to me, when I first raised this theory.”
“I know,” Georgie said, with a note of suppressed triumph. “Because they didn’t get their hands dirty by committing the murders themselves—I think they simply gave the killers a… nudge, of sorts.”
“With the letters,” he said, comprehension dawning.
“With the letters,” she confirmed.
They’d arrived at Radcliffe Hall; rather than entering through the front doors, Georgie led him around the house, through the kitchen garden, and in through the kitchen door.
The kitchen was quiet and gleaming; on the counter was a plate covered with a napkin, complete with a scrap of paper labeled Sebastian in Mrs. Fawcett’s careful script, and Sebastian whipped off the napkin with a triumphant cry to discover a few shortbread biscuits, a fat slice of Victoria sponge, and a cheese-and-pickle sandwich.
“She watched you eat a half dozen sandwiches not three hours ago,” Georgie said, incredulous, as Sebastian began inhaling the biscuits.
“Mrs. Fawcett understands that I cannot work on starvation rations,” he informed her.
“Come on—bring the plate and follow me,” she said, leading him toward the kitchen staircase.
Originally intended for the servants the Radcliffes could no longer afford, now used by the family, the kitchen staircase allowed one to ascend its narrow, rough-hewn steps to the top floor without passing through the main rooms of the house.
Once they emerged on the top floor, they walked down the hallway to Georgie’s room, where they were greeted by Egg, who raised her head from her tartan cushion, spotted Sebastian, and immediately commenced the sort of mournful howl masquerading as a bark that only the floppiest-eared of dogs can manage.
“Egg, for heaven’s sake.”
Sebastian wasted no time in sinking to a crouch, which Egg took as the invitation it was; fortunately, she was so eagerly trying to butt her head beneath his chin that she ceased her barking.
Georgie pressed her ear to the door for a moment, listening intently, but did not hear the sound of any other doors opening, or footsteps on the stairs; she didn’t fancy being interrupted at the moment, because she had Important Murder Business to discuss with Sebastian.
She turned back to find him still in a crouch, stroking Egg’s ears and watching her with a far more guarded expression than she normally saw on his face.
She suddenly realized the intimacy of their situation in a rush—in her bedroom, late at night, alone.
In an attempt to dispel her own discomfort, she crossed to her desk and clicked on the electric lamp that sat there, then switched on the lamp on her bedside table as well.
In the warm incandescent glow, the room lost a bit of its air of moonlit romance, though the fact still remained that they were in a literal turret, of all things.
Georgie walked to the casement windows and eased one open, allowing cool night air to waft into the room.
She stood for a moment, staring at the green hills, dark and shadowy under the night sky, which seemed to be clearing of its earlier cloud cover, a few bright stars popping into view.
She turned in time to catch Sebastian watching her, his expression unreadable, his hand on Egg’s head having stilled.
“What is it?” she asked, a bit uncertain. She felt suddenly oddly conscious of her own body, in a pair of worn wool trousers and one of her oldest jumpers, her hair no doubt in disarray.
“I like watching you think,” he said simply, his eyes steady on hers.
“Trying to work out how to do it yourself?” she asked, but there was no acid to it, and he smiled slowly; it was akin to watching the sun edge its way above the horizon. He climbed to his feet after one last loving pat for Egg, then walked toward her, his steps deliberate.
“What’s the rest of your theory?” he asked, coming to a halt with scant inches left between them.
“My… theory?” Her voice was the slightest bit breathless.
He reached out for her hand and ran a thumb down her palm. She felt it like a brand on her skin.
“About Penbaker.” He held her hand loosely in his. “If Mrs. Penbaker killed him, why would she have done it?”
His proximity was making it difficult to think. This was an alarming new development, since they were in the business, for two more days, of solving mysteries together, and that did require both proximity and, ideally, the ability to think clearly.
“Unless,” he said thoughtfully, “Penbaker’s death itself truly wasn’t suspicious. He may really have died of a heart attack. After all, if he was masterminding the murders in the village, then it doesn’t stand to reason that there’s a separate killer out there who would wish him dead.”
“I suppose,” Georgie agreed reluctantly, her gaze moving restlessly around the room, landing on one of the books in a haphazard stack on her bedside table. A Dictionary of Poisons. There was a copy of it on display at the murder exhibition, Georgie had noticed.
The murder exhibition that Mrs. Penbaker was responsible for.
The murder exhibition that featured a poison garden, no less—with ample opportunity for her to clip something from it.
There were any number of poisons that could induce cardiac arrest like the council chairman had suffered, of course…
but that got back to Sebastian’s question: Why would Mrs. Penbaker have poisoned her husband?
Unless…
Georgie looked at Sebastian, her heart pounding in her chest.
“Unless,” she said, her mind racing, still trying to consider the possible options in her head, “it was, in fact, Mr. Penbaker behind all the murders—but without his wife’s knowledge. What if she worked it out somehow and decided to put a stop to it?”