Chapter Seven
Piers and April went down to breakfast together. But on the first-floor landing, she was distracted by a loud exclamation coming from the open drawing room door. Exchanging glances, she and Piers changed direction and hurried toward the drawing room, almost running into Mrs. Hubble in the doorway.
She had one reticule over her wrist and clutched another in both hands in front of her like a prize exhibit.
“Look,” she said in awed tones. “My reticule!”
Pale lilac silk and embroidered with tiny glass beads, it was indeed the reticule that had disappeared. April recognized it at once.
“Where on earth was it?” April asked.
Mrs. Hubble gestured behind her at the drawing room. “In there. Exactly where I had been sitting. Half-hidden behind a cushion.”
“But we looked behind all the cushions,” April said.
“I know.” Mrs. Hubble’s tone was neutral, but her gaze met April’s steadily.
Am I being accused?
“Bizarre,” Piers said. “You may have noticed that the vanishing candlesticks from the floor above have also made a reappearance. Is everything in your reticule that should be?”
Mrs. Hubble nodded. She had already checked. April knew a resurgence of curiosity as to what had been in the little bag to cause its owner such distress in the first place.
“It’s certainly an oddity,” April said. “But a happy one at least.”
Mrs. Hubble nodded again, smiling faintly, though to April she still looked worried. And suspicious. They walked together to the staircase, where Mrs. Hubble left them to go back to her room. Descending, April glanced at Piers, who arched one meaningful eyebrow.
“Ah, we’re all looking somewhat brighter this morning,” Professor Algernon greeted them in the breakfast parlour, rising politely from the table.
“Most of us,” Piers said, bowing to the ladies. “Good morning.”
Everyone but Fosterson and Mrs. Hubble was already around the table.
“You didn’t run into Katherine, did you?” Hubble said.
“Actually, yes,” Piers said. “She found her reticule in the drawing room.”
Claudia laughed.
“But it wasn’t there,” Meg said. “We all looked.”
“We did,” April agreed. “But it reappeared—like the candlesticks on the floor above.”
“Is someone playing tricks?” Mallory Keith asked suspiciously.
“I don’t see the point of them if they are,” April said, walking toward the sideboard where she helped herself happily to smoked fish, eggs, and toast.
When they were all seated around the table, and Mrs. Hubble was duly congratulated on the rediscovery of her missing reticule, Dr. Hale said, “Where’s Fosterson? Not riding again, is he?”
“I doubt it,” Piers said casually, while April kept her gaze moving from face to face.
She had not discounted any of their guests from suspicion of the attack on Edward, though for most she struggled to imagine a motive.
“He had to sit up most of the night with a patient. Edward, the footman, is gravely ill.”
Alarm was inevitable—no one wanted to be at risk of any contagion.
It could easily disguise a more specific fear of discovery.
A frown tugged at Claudia’s brow and vanished.
Beside her, Dr. Hale lowered his eyelids over an expression April couldn’t quite read.
When he raised them again, he appeared merely curious.
“What is his condition?” the professor asked.
“A severe blow to the head,” Piers said. “He has been unconscious all night.”
“Good grief,” Mal said, startled out of his habitual distraction.
“When did this happen?” Hubb asked.
“During the night,” Piers replied. “At about two o’clock, we think, on the path up to the summer house.”
Hale regarded him with what looked like amusement. “Withy has sniffed out another puzzle. Who smacked the insolent footman?”
Claudia stared at her betrothed. “You’re very light-hearted about a man who could die.”
“I thought he was a mere servant?” Hale drawled, giving April a clear hint of a previous argument between the couple.
Interesting.
“He is still a human being,” Claudia retorted.
“Who is nursing him?” Meg asked calmly.
“The other servants are keeping a watch on him,” Piers said. “Fosterson says there isn’t much they can do right now.”
“Distressing,” Hubb pronounced with some feeling. “Most distressing.”
“It is,” Piers agreed. “For his sake and our own, we need to discover who did this to him.”
“Couldn’t it have been an accident?” the professor asked.
“Unlikely,” Piers said. “But then there are a lot of unlikely things going on in this household. The servants—such as there are—never seem to sleep. Did any of you see Edward, or any of the other servants, last night, after about ten o’clock?”
“He looked as if he was locking the front door when we went up to bed,” Hale said. “Or at least, I assumed that’s what he was doing. He might have been going out.”
“Was he in livery?” April asked.
Hale blinked. “Yes. I’d have noticed if he wasn’t.”
“He was in livery,” Hubble said.
“Were you the last of us up to bed?” Piers asked.
“Yes, though not so long after you. Just before eleven, I think.”
So, between eleven and two, Edward had gone up to his quarters, changed out of his livery and left the house, taking the path to the summer house.
What had he been doing in the three hours between?
Indulging in a cat nap before an assignation?
Or had he some more sinister purpose in going to the summer house?
“Were any of you wakeful last night?” Piers asked. “Did you see or hear anyone moving about the house? Leaving the house? Anyone walking up the side path that leads to the summer house?”
“Slept the whole night,” said the professor ruefully. “Thanks to our—er...lateness the evening before.”
“Must have been nearly one before I went to bed,” Mal Keith said. “Had some thoughts to write down—inspired by something you said, Withy. Made a lot of sense, and it would work brilliantly in my thesis.”
“Did you work in the library?” April asked. “Or in your own room?”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Meg blushing and regretted the question, though she had meant to imply nothing by it. She was merely trying to work out which window he would have been near.
“Oh, my own room. I was ready for bed before the idea fully hit me.”
“Then I don’t suppose you saw or heard anything unusual,” Piers said.
“Never do, old fellow,” Mal said apologetically. “Not when I’m working.”
“True,” Piers agreed. “Anyone else?”
They all looked blank, shaking their heads.
“Do you ever hear any strange noises in this house?” April asked.
Claudia cast her eyes to heaven. “You asked us that before. The answer is still no.”
“Why, did you hear the noises again?” Hale asked.
April nodded.
Piers said, “So did I this time. We think the sounds are travelling through the chimneys, though from where, I don’t know.”
“Do you think it was the sound of someone quarrelling with the footman?” the professor asked.
Piers shrugged. “I don’t know. I heard things earlier this morning, too.”
“Not more falling bodies, I hope,” Hale said tartly.
“So do I, though it didn’t sound much like that.” Piers was drumming his fingers on the table as he sometimes did when deep in thought. With what looked like a deliberate effort, he reached for his teacup instead and changed the subject. “So what was your thesis idea, Mal?”
April, having devoured her entire plateful of food, decided to leave them to it. Excusing herself, she slipped away to the kitchen.
There, she was surprised to discover a stranger of some fifty years seated at the kitchen table with a china cup and saucer in front of him.
From his dress, he was a middling sort of gentleman, from his expression, he was amiable and relaxed.
From the bag on the floor beside him, he was a physician.
Mrs. Riley saw April first and didn’t look best pleased. But then, she rarely did. At least, she rose and so did the doctor.
“This is Dr. Forbes,” the cook said with defiance. “He’s always been the family doctor, and we decided it was right he attend to Edward.”
April decided not to comment on that. “Good morning, Doctor. I’m Lady Petteril. How did you find our patient?”
The doctor shook his head. “In a bad way. I changed his dressing, but I don’t see much else that can be done for him until he wakes.”
“That’s what Dr. Fosterson said. I’d wake him to speak to you, only he didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“A young fellow, I hear,” Dr. Forbes said. “Qualified?”
“With degrees from Oxford and Edinburgh,” April said. “But of course, considerably less experience than yourself.”
Her flattery was deliberate, but the doctor appeared pleased anyway. He reached for his bag, and April elected to walk with him out of the kitchen toward the front door, another attention that he obviously found gratifying.
“What is your impression of Edward, Doctor?” April asked.
“Medically or personally?” he asked with unexpected shrewdness.
“Both,” April replied.
“Medically, I’ve never had to deal with him before.”
“He is not a local man, then?”
“Oh, no. The Temperleys took him on in London a couple of years ago. To my knowledge he has always been a fit and healthy young man, which will certainly stand to his advantage in recovering from this wound. Do you have any idea how it happened?”
“We think he was attacked last night on the path that leads to the summer house.”
The doctor pursed his lips.
“And your personal impressions?” April reminded him.
He sighed. “It’s hardly my place to instruct Sir Dominic or Lady Temperley in whom to employ.”
“This is strictly between you and me, Doctor.”
“Then he is a troublemaker,” Dr. Forbes said bluntly. “Oh, he can be ingratiating and certainly efficient when he wishes, but all too often, his manner borders on insolence. Besides which, he thinks he’s a cut above the country folk and plays fast and loose with the village girls.”
“Which girls?” April asked bluntly.