Chapter Eight #2
Sebastian cleared his throat; Georgie suppressed a sigh, fearing what was to come next. “The truth is, Severin, old chap, that Georgie here has been fretting something awful over Penbaker’s death, ever since that knock on the head yesterday.”
“Has she?” Severin asked.
“It made her reflect on… mortality, I suppose,” Sebastian said with a sad shake of his head.
“How quickly death can come for us all. We were talking about your erstwhile council chairman’s tragic death last night—how you never know what day might be your last, don’t you know?
—and she began to wonder if perhaps there wasn’t more to it. ”
There was something oddly transfixing about him as he spoke; his handsome face; wide-eyed, guileless demeanor; and the smooth, soothing tone of his voice made it difficult to turn away from him. She risked a glance at Severin and saw that his expression had softened.
Sebastian gave her a brief, small nod, and she tried again. “When Mr. Penbaker fell ill,” Georgie said, leaning forward in her seat as Severin’s gaze flicked back toward her, “was there anything about his condition that made you think it could be something more serious? Something like—”
“Poison?” Severin finished for her, then scrubbed his hands over his face in a gesture that conveyed extreme weariness.
“Christ, I thought I was setting up a practice in a quiet village and that nothing at all interesting would happen here. Never seen so many dead bodies in my life.” He shook his head ruefully.
“Mrs. Penbaker rang me the afternoon of her husband’s death because she returned home from a meeting to find him unwell—he was complaining of dizziness and chest pain, and by the time I arrived he’d suffered cardiac arrest. I was unable to revive him, as is often the case with heart attacks—they happen very quickly, often with little warning.
It’s a tragedy, but I found nothing unusual in it. ”
“Hmm.” This was nothing more than what Georgie had already heard through the grapevine of village gossip, but she had hoped that hearing the tale directly from Severin would help her uncover some new, overlooked piece of information.
“Had Mr. Penbaker complained of feeling unwell prior to that day?”
Severin paused, his brow furrowing slightly. “He had other complaints, but nothing that seemed unusual for a man of his age—he had terrible aches in his joints, for example, and he drank a particular tea that I blended for him to help with that. But otherwise, he seemed in fairly good health.”
“How did Mrs. Penbaker seem when you arrived?” Sebastian asked; he’d spent the entire time Severin was speaking gazing idly around the room, not seeming to pay attention to the matters being discussed, but he’d now glanced up and was looking steadily at Severin.
“As you’d expect,” Severin replied. “She was distraught. It was all the more startling, since she strikes me as a woman who is very collected.” He shook his head with an unhappy twist of his mouth.
“It is always difficult when a spouse is present during these sorts of events, no matter how unhappy their marriage.”
Georgie blinked at this last, almost thoughtless addition. “Did you not think theirs was a happy marriage?”
Severin glanced at her for a moment, seeming to weigh his words, then said, rather carefully, “I have not lived here long, Miss Radcliffe, so you’d likely be better able to answer that question than I would.
But based on my few encounters with them…
no, I would not have said that the Penbakers had a particularly loving marriage. ”
Georgie glanced quickly at Sebastian, and just as quickly away again. Severin did not miss this.
“I don’t know what you think you’re investigating,” Severin said, “but if you’re in search of a murder victim, I think you’re wandering down the wrong path.”
“Thank you,” Georgie said gravely. “I do appreciate it when men tell me that I’m wrong.”
To his credit, Severin flashed a smile of genuine good humor at that. “Fair enough, Miss Radcliffe. Good luck, then, I suppose.”
In short order, he showed them to the door and bid them farewell. As soon as the door closed behind them, Georgie turned to Sebastian. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Probably not,” he said. “Unless you, too, are thinking that it has been positively ages since we ate that porridge—”
“It has been an hour at most.”
“—and therefore we’re overdue for a midmorning scone?” His eyes were wide and hopeful.
Georgie did not roll her eyes, which she thought a promising sign of personal growth. “I was thinking,” she said impatiently, “that we need to work out a way to speak to Mrs. Penbaker next, without raising her suspicions.”
“But first, may we acquire a scone?” he asked, offering her his most blinding smile.
“Only if you promise never to smile at me like that again,” she said coldly, and he laughed—a genuine, surprised laugh—as he followed her down the lane toward the high street.
And as they walked, she wasted at least ten seconds informing herself, quite sternly, that she did not like the sound of that laugh at all.