Chapter Six
Beagles, for all their virtues, were not much use in a crisis.
“Egg, be quiet,” Georgie muttered, her palms and knees stinging from where they’d borne the brunt of her landing on the cobblestoned path leading away from the Shorn Sheep.
This had no effect other than causing Egg to bark even more loudly, and Georgie sighed.
Suddenly, from behind her, there was the sound of running footsteps, and she somehow knew who it would be without even glancing up.
“Oh, no,” she groaned, and the footsteps skidded to a halt beside her. From this vantage point, she could see a pair of extremely well-shined shoes.
“Are you delirious? Or concussed?” came Fletcher-Ford’s voice, slightly breathless, and he was suddenly crouching beside her, his trousers maddeningly uncreased, a hand extended.
Georgie took it, wincing at the rub of his skin against her scraped palm, and he helped her to her feet with a hand beneath her elbow.
“I’m not concussed,” she said sharply, glancing up at him as she rose. He was looking at her with an expression of undisguised concern. “What are you doing out here?”
“I happened to glance out the window in time to see you topple,” he said, letting go of her elbow and leaning down to offer a reassuring pat on the head to Egg, who immediately ceased barking.
“Traitor,” Georgie muttered, casting a baleful look at her dog. Egg licked her hand by way of reply.
“Should you sit down?” Fletcher-Ford asked now, still looking concerned, and Georgie shook her head.
“I’m fine,” she said, unable to suppress a wince at the jolt of pain the shaking caused to shoot through her head. She began to turn, then stumbled. Instantly, Fletcher-Ford’s arm was at her back, steadying her.
She cut him a look. “This is… intimate.”
“It’s how I lure all my women,” he said cheerfully, not loosening his grip. “Wait for them to get clubbed about the head and then rush in to cradle them as they recover their senses.”
“So you admit that the only women who would welcome your advances are the ones who have recently sustained head injuries,” she said, and he frowned, as if trying to work out where exactly he’d wandered into a trap.
She took advantage of his distraction to struggle out of his grip and put a healthy bit of distance between them. She braced her hands on her hips, the full impact of the events of the past two minutes finally landing with her.
“I was attacked!” she said, interrupting some monologue on Fletcher-Ford’s part about the number of non-concussed women he’d lured to his bed over the years.
“Someone hit me in the back of the head!” She glanced around wildly but saw no one other than a cluster of—she groaned internally—Murder Tourists, who were watching this series of events with some interest; clearly her attacker had already fled.
“I knew there was something strange going on here. A perfectly healthy member of the local government doesn’t drop dead without explanation, and now that I’ve started asking questions, someone is trying to silence me!
” Even though her head was throbbing painfully, she couldn’t prevent a thrill from coursing through her at this realization.
She was right to be suspicious! She had been right to write to Fitzgibbons! And now…
She sighed.
Now she only had Mr. Fletcher-Ford to assist her.
Fletcher-Ford, for his part, was looking vaguely apologetic, which naturally caused her to direct a suspicious eye toward him—he did not seem the sort of man to be overly familiar with that emotion.
“Why do you look like that?” she demanded, and immediately his expression smoothed into something blander; it was a neat trick, and watching him perform it caused something to niggle at the edges of her mind, some half-formed thought that she didn’t have the time to consider too carefully at the moment.
“It’s only,” he said, his tone still somewhat apologetic, even if his face no longer was, “that you weren’t attacked.”
“Excuse me?”
“No one attacked you,” he repeated.
She raised her fingers to pinch the bridge of her nose. “I know we don’t know each other well—”
“Yet,” he interjected with a winning smile, and didn’t quail in the slightest under the look she leveled at him, which was exceptionally annoying since there was no one in the entire village—including her own family—on whom that look wasn’t at least somewhat effective.
“But,” she continued, deciding that ignoring him entirely might prove to be the best (only?) way to deal with this man without entirely losing her sanity, “I promise you I’m not the swooning type.”
“A shame, that,” he said regretfully, shaking his head sadly. “I’m told I do an impressively manly spring-and-catch maneuver when ladies swoon in my presence.” He looked at her hopefully. “Are you certain you don’t want to try swooning, just to experience it?”
“My point is,” she said determinedly, “I did not suddenly faint without provocation.”
“Of course,” he agreed, solemn as a vicar. “I should have spoken more clearly—bit of a problem of mine—”
“You don’t say,” she muttered.
“You weren’t attacked by a person,” he continued blithely. “You were attacked by a roof shingle.” He nodded his head to the right; Georgie followed his gaze and saw that there was indeed a rogue roof tile lying in the dirt, cleaved neatly in two as though it had fallen from a considerable height.
“Oh,” she said blankly.
“I don’t doubt the severity of your injury,” he hastened to reassure her in a soothing tone that made her want to collect said roof tile and bash him over the head with it. “But unfortunately, I don’t think there’s someone in your fair village trying to do you in.”
This was irritating. It was not that Georgie wanted a would-be assassin to be lying in wait for her, but it would have been gratifying.
She huffed out a frustrated breath. “Fine. In that case, I’m grateful for your help—though it really wasn’t necessary—but—”
“I was hoping I might change your mind,” he said, cutting her off so smoothly that he somehow managed to make it seem as though he were doing her a favor—preventing her from saying something foolish or unreasonable—by doing so.
“I know you’re not convinced I can assist you, but I believe that I can.
” He was looking directly at her now, his expression considerably more focused and less affably vacant than Georgie had seen it at any point in the few hours of their acquaintance thus far.
“Mr. Fletcher-Ford,” she said, trying to keep her tone pleasant; the past year’s worth of dealings with the local police force had taught her the importance of remaining patient whenever a man tried to explain something to her, but she was extremely resentful of the fact that she’d had to develop this skill at all.
“I’m certain that your work with Mr. Fitzgibbons has been most, um, enthusiastic—”
“You think I’m a mindless idiot who will get distracted by the next skirt that passes,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“I don’t think I would have phrased it like that.”
“I believe you did, not five minutes ago,” he said, with a smile so appealing it should possibly have been illegal.
“I’ll offer you this: Give me a week to help you solve this mystery, and at the end of that time, if we haven’t sorted things, I’ll pop back to London and sell Fitzgibbons a real song and dance about the dastardly crimes gripping a cheese-filled village, and how fame and fortune will undoubtedly follow whoever gets to the bottom of it.
I can be quite convincing when I want to—I could have him on the next train, I’d wager. ”
“I don’t think—”
“One week,” he said. He was once again looking at her very intently as he spoke, despite the fact that they were standing on a public street with a curious beagle sitting at their feet.
“I know you don’t think much of me, but I’ve been employed by Fitzgibbons for nearly five years now, and I practically—well—” He broke off, shaking his head and looking frustrated, for reasons Georgie didn’t understand.
“I’ve more experience than you might expect,” he finished after a moment.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked; if there was one thing she’d learned of late, it was how to tell when someone was trying to keep a secret from her.
He extended his hand. “Give me a week, and see if you can work it out—you’re the detective, aren’t you?”
And Georgie—unable, and a bit unwilling, to argue with that—reached out, took his hand, and shook it.
Unfortunately, Georgie’s accident meant that their tour of the village was clearly at a close, and the event she had been dreading could be delayed no longer:
It was time to introduce Sebastian Fletcher-Ford to her family.
This would be happening even sooner than she’d planned, because while Dr. Severin—who had been hastily summoned by a telephone call from Harry the barman—examined Georgie’s head and then cleaned and bandaged her scraped knee, Fletcher-Ford had taken the liberty of phoning Papa, who was now on his way to collect them in the Radcliffe family motorcar.
“I’m perfectly capable of walking,” she said for at least the third time.
“Of course you are,” Fletcher-Ford agreed, hands in his pockets as he leaned against the wall outside the Shorn Sheep, looking around. At least the Murder Tourists had vanished while Georgie and Fletcher-Ford were inside the pub.
“It was just a knock on the head and a fall,” she continued.