Chapter Twenty-One #3
Hugh winced, lowering himself to sit on the edge of the dining table. “I should have left a note. I’ll apologize properly
to the others tomorrow.”
She patted his cheek fondly, and he felt all of eight years old again. “See that you do.”
Keyes was a woman whose soul was joined with sharp angles rather than tender curves, but she was ruthlessly uncompromising
in her love. That she expected much of him only made him want to strive harder to reach those heights, and he regretted disappointing
her.
Having apparently satisfied herself that he was fine, her expression hardened.
Hugh looked to her, alert. “What is it?”
“We received a delivery while you were out,” she said.
“The letter from Mrs. Silver’s sister?” he asked.
Mrs. Keyes shook her head. “Not yet. I expect it’ll be a few days more before you have an answer on what Gallia knows about
the poisoning.”
Hugh rubbed at his neck. “If not that, then what?”
“It’s best you see it yourself,” Mrs. Keyes said. “It was left at the gate. Celine and I carried it into the scullery.”
That same cold dread he’d felt at seeing Viola’s door ajar returned.
Mrs. Keyes picked up one of the candles that had been left on her wife’s worktable. Her gray silk wrapper, the one she’d insisted
on keeping for nigh on a decade, gave her the appearance of a specter as she moved through the kitchen’s ominous darkness.
Hugh followed close behind, steeling himself as she opened the door into the cool, dark scullery.
Somehow, it was worse than he’d thought. And what he had imagined had been quite bad.
“It couldn’t have been another explosive?” he groused. “Or a venomous snake? Whatever happened to mysterious, threatening
missives?”
“It’s a lost art,” Mrs. Keyes agreed solemnly.
The body had been laid out with care on the ground, placed on a bedsheet and respectfully covered with another, as was the usual custom in Foxcourt House.
This was, sadly, not the first body to have landed on their doorstep.
It was not even the first to have been dragged off and hidden from guests in the scullery.
Hugh knelt, seizing the top sheet. Blood had seeped through the white cloth and stuck to the face as it had dried. His mind
had always worked quicker than his hands; he knew who it was before he lifted the shroud.
The sight of the Roach’s battered face struck him square in the chest. Whoever had done this had been at Stratford for hours,
judging by the bruising and swelling. They had tortured him. Whether it had been enough to break the man mentally, to crack
open his deep vault of secrets, was another question entirely.
“Was he one of yours?” Keyes asked.
Hugh nodded. As the pain relented, a numbness replaced it.
Another one, he thought.
“Is there family to contact?” she asked.
“No.”
The Roach had no family. He’d believed wholeheartedly in Uncle Giles’s demand that a man’s first and only love be his country.
As a spy, he had been unparalleled. Even Hugh had admired his relentlessness and his ability to see any job through. He had
envied it as much as the praise Uncle Giles had lavished on the other man.
“Cleaning up should be uncomplicated then,” Mrs. Keyes said softly. “You know where the lye is. I’ll leave you to it—unless
you’d like for me to stay?”
“No,” Hugh said. “I’ll take care of it.”
And not with the lye. Their garden already had too many bodies buried in it. Stratford deserved better.
“Tell Mrs. Silver I said good night, won’t you?” he said.
“I shall if she’s still awake,” Keyes said. “You know how little this sort of thing bothers her.”
If only, Hugh thought, listening to her shuffling footsteps fade, he could reach that same peace with death.
He drew a hand over his face. Another one.
He shoved the rising emotions back down, steeling himself. Exhaustion ran deep to his bones, but he couldn’t be careless.
He owed it to the Roach to handle this as quickly and methodically as possible.
“I knew tonight was too easy,” he muttered, drawing the sheet fully off the man. He’d known Glenmoor would hear about Reddy’s meeting and have accounted for that. What he hadn’t expected was for the duke to make the man who’d been tracking his secretary for months.
Another one. Lost to the labyrinth of blood and misery Hugh and Glenmoor had erected over the years. Another one.
Nine in total now. His uncle had told him not to count, but how could he not remember them? They’d trusted him with their
lives, and all of them had paid dearly for it.
He began his examination at Roach’s feet, removing his boots, searching his pockets, his hands, his arms, his chest. But the
message had been in the very first place Hugh had looked.
Someone had taken the Roach’s eyes and cut out his tongue.
He fell back, resting an arm against his knee as he stared down at the poor bastard. In the darkness his sight flickered,
and, for a moment, the shadows painted his face onto Stratford’s.
No. Enough. Stratford had lived alone, and, in the end, he had died alone. But at least—at least there was no collateral damage. No wife
or husband to mourn him. No children to struggle without his income. There was no one to care that he was gone, to suffer
his absence.
His uncle had been right. That solitude was for the best. Every time Hugh made a move now, he had to weigh it against how
it would affect the others, what would happen to the household if he was gone. They were his responsibility as much as this
role was. As much as Eleanor was.
And Viola.
He pressed a fist against his forehead. If he hadn’t been so busy making calf eyes at her, if he hadn’t been bumbling about
the garden gathering a posy like a besotted idiot, he would have given Reddy’s complaint about the Roach not making their
meet more than a passing thought.
There could be no more distractions now.
“That is a very bad end.”
Hugh twisted around at Reddy’s somber voice. His friend’s face leeched of color as he stepped inside the small scullery, leaning
down to have a closer look. “And here I thought he’d done it to annoy me.” He only had to look at Hugh to know the answer
to his next question. “Glenmoor?”
“I thought you went home hours ago,” Hugh said, rising. At least he would have help moving the body.
“I did,” Reddy said slowly.
Hugh was too on edge not to pick up on the reluctance in his friend’s voice. It sawed at his already fraying nerves, even before he saw the small, pale bundle tucked beneath his arm.
“Is that the morning edition?” he asked, reaching for it at once. Reddy’s unusually serious expression sent alarm bells clanging
in his skull.
He shook the paper open, quickly scanning over the columns.
“Really, it’s not—well, it’s bad, but not disastrous,” Reddy began. “If you can get to the palace . . .”
Hugh scarcely heard the rest of his words over the blood roaring in his ears. The black print distorted, twisting on the page.
“Fuck,” Hugh muttered. “Fuck!”
He shoved the broadsheet at Reddy and ran for the back door.