Chapter 11
Eleven
Rafe
Leaving his kitchen staff to clean up after breakfast, Rafe lifted five-year-old Daphne to his shoulder and rested a hand on Daniel's small back. “Come along. It's a bonny day for walking. You can tell me what you're learning as we go.”
The children usually rode up to school in the carriage with Kate and her two, but the carriage hadn’t arrived.
If Fletch and Kate hadn't shown up by the time Rafe returned to the inn, he'd have to ride out to see what was wrong.
Fletch was quite capable of burying bodies in a potato patch if required.
Rafe preferred to believe the break in domestic routine had simply slowed them down.
Or Kate had shot the grouch and was dithering over how to dispose of his corpse.
“Oliver wants to dissect a bunny, but Mama says we are to give them to a lady who feeds them.” Daniel recited his grisly report with the matter-of-factness of any eight-year-old with no concept of dissect.
Rafe smiled proudly that the orphans had learned to call them Papa and Mama after only a few months. They’d never really known their soldier father. Their mother had been bed-ridden, and they’d mostly been raised by a careless nanny. So perhaps it was easier for them to adjust than most.
“You’re giving the bunnies to Mrs. Ross?” he asked his wife, admiring her efficiency in dealing with the problem.
Walking beside them, Verity straightened Daniel's curls. She hid her love of fashion and color under a schoolteacher’s black, but she wore a colorful blue shawl and her frilled cap sported matching ribbons. “We are.”
Rafe recalled that Mrs. Ross raised conies—for fur and meat. The children didn't need to know that. They’d just had a horrid experience of the world as a cruel place. They needed time to feel safe.
The carriage bearing the Morgan family and Fletch finally rolled up the drive and stopped at the tower entrance just as Verity ushered Daphne and Daniel inside. While the younger pair ran upstairs, she waited for Kate's two, blew Rafe a kiss, then followed them up to her schoolroom.
Kate clambered down without Fletch’s help, nodded curtly at Rafe, and, without a word, marched up to the portico and into the manor, carrying her sewing basket.
Rafe snorted and watched Fletch attempt to turn the carriage around, one-handed. “Worn out your welcome already?” he called when his friend didn’t bother greeting him.
“Look for a man with buckshot in his boots.” Fletch continued torturing himself by making a too-tight circle.
“Hugh showed up last night?” That was alarming.
“Someone took his valise.” With the carriage finally turned in the right direction, he drove off.
Damn. Rafe went in search of Captain Huntley.
The village wasn’t an official anything and probably had no legal right to even elect Hunt as magistrate, but they had.
For all Rafe knew, Hunt could appoint himself as he’d appointed Rafe as bailiff.
It wasn’t as if anyone would naysay the man with money and means.
The good people of Gravesyde were eager for the return of law and order after years of abandonment.
He caught the one-eyed captain before Hunt had retreated to the roof cistern.
“Does that partner of yours intend to leave that clock disemboweled on the stairs much longer?” Hunt asked, changing course and leading Rafe to the old study.
“Fletch was out at the Morgans last night, apparently shooting up Hugh’s boots, if I am translating correctly.” Rafe waved off the offer of tea and paced rather than take a seat. “I’d like to interview Miss Jameson more thoroughly, if one of the ladies might accompany me. Has she returned to work?”
“That’s Lavender’s purview. Talk to her.
Do I need to set the hounds tracking this lunatic?
” Hunt was a big man, not much older than Rafe, but he wasn’t shy about taking a chair.
He’d been badly injured over two years ago during the American war with British invaders and had learned to rest when he had the chance.
“Not if he’s using well-traveled roads. The hounds would never find a scent.
The countryside is littered with vacant hovels.
He could be in any of them. I’ve had men patrolling the lane and keeping an eye on Kate’s tenant house, but no one has reported seeing him.
I should have sent more than Fletch last night, but I didn’t think Kate would accept armed guards. ” And Fletch would have been insulted.
“I can’t imagine this Morgan person returning to the manor, but I don’t think like a Bedlamite. I’ll step up patrols around the perimeter. Anything else I can do?” Leaning back in his chair, Hunt waited, not necessarily patiently.
“The patrols are a sound idea. I’ll have to figure out how to deal with Kate. She’s unlikely to let Fletch stay another night.” Rafe bowed briefly and lumbered off for the sewing workshop.
The plethora of women made him uneasy. They were spread out at tables across the ballroom, taking advantage of the light from the two-story medieval windows for the close work, using the middle of the room for cutting, mending, and button making, and the inside wall for fabrics and racks of old clothes.
Lavender had created a factory without machines.
One of the older women hobbled over to greet him. “I need to speak with Miss Jameson. Is she about?”
“Miss Vivien, you mean? Her older sister has joined us. I thought her a widow, but she goes by Jameson too.” The woman’s pudgy chins folded up in disapproval.
“The one who fell down the stairs.” Rafe wasn’t about to sort proper titles and names. The women could pick nits all they liked. He needed to find a madman.
“Miss Vivien. She’s back in Miss Marlowe’s office.” She led the way through the tables of workers to the tower entrance in the front corner near the windows.
At least the ballroom was large enough for the tables to have generous space between them so Rafe didn’t have to fear jarring scissors or needles.
The same couldn’t be said of Lavender’s office.
She had a desk of sorts there, piled high with papers, but she also had curtained dressing rooms, tables of books, bolts of fabric, and half-finished garments on dress forms. What had once been a medieval fortress, probably housing soldiers, was now a feminine maze to be navigated.
Kate was there, jotting notes while Lavender pinned fabric to a form.
The vivacious, black-haired Vivien Jameson, along with another woman, who appeared to be an older, worn-out version of the young seamstress—the newly-arrived sister?
—were seated, examining the fashion books scattered on a table.
None of them paid him much attention, until Lavender glanced up.
Rafe had begun to see the ladies of the manor as his assistants when it came to domestic issues. He relied on their knowledge of propriety and more.
The young modiste eased her way around the tables. “May I help you, Sgt. Russell?”
He called up the proper address he’d just been given. “If I might, I'd like to speak with Miss Vivien about yesterday's incident. Is there somewhere we might speak privately?”
An authoritative miss with the command of her powerful male ancestors—despite her feminine frippery—Lavender gestured at her helpers. “Kate, take Viv up to the next floor with Sgt. Russell. You should be safe with him.”
The dark-haired, older woman he assumed to be Mrs. Jameson raised her oxen-slow head in protest. The chiseled cheekbones of Miss Vivien were concealed by weight and sagging skin in the sister.
Lavender, the young, fair-haired descendant of pirates and earls, quelled any objection with a sharp look.
Kate led the way. The black-haired seamstress limped along on a stick, holding up her bandaged foot.
Rafe followed up the rear, wanting to object to the victim climbing stairs, but there really was no other choice unless she preferred hobbling half a mile of halls to find an empty room.
There was nothing private about Lavender’s busy workshop.
The next floor had been set up as a perfumery by a relation of Hunt's French cousins. The perfumer was even younger than Lavender but had put together what appeared to be a professional laboratory.
“Sofia is out overseeing the new rose beds,” Kate explained, indicating the empty room. “Patience is eager to return to supervising the orchard and gardens, but Meera has told her she and the babe must rest a while longer.”
The title of Earl of Wycliffe had been lost because the mighty Wycliffes had no direct male descendants. Which meant the manor was now run by female descendants—and their spouses. Having seen the war-torn continent where women had to work to survive, Rafe saw nothing wrong with this arrangement.
“Miss Vivien, please, take a seat, I'd just like a better idea of what happened yesterday.” Rafe waited until she found a bench to perch on. “Now tell me where you were on the stairs when you were attacked.”
She pointed at the stairs they'd just traversed. “On the stairs.”
Behind the girl, Kate rolled her eyes but poked through beakers without interrupting.
“Where on the stairs? Did you just come out of the sewing room? Were you going up or down?”
The girl tossed her artfully arranged side curls. “I don't see where that matters. He pushed me. I fell down.”
Rafe had little patience with deliberate stupidity. “If you are accusing someone of pushing you, it matters,” he retorted. “Where on the stairs were you standing when you were pushed?”
He'd tried to ask these questions yesterday, but she'd been wailing too hard to interrogate. The implication that she was pushed opened a whole world of woe. He wanted to be certain she hadn’t just fallen and decided to be dramatic.
She sniffed, wiped her eyes with a lace hanky, pouted, then finally replied, “I'd just left Miss Marlowe's office, I think. I wanted to look outside.”
Shirking her duty or spying? Rafe doubted he'd get an answer. He waited. She didn't continue.
“The only way you can look outside is by the door on the ground floor, the window on this one, or Arnaud’s studio. Were you going up or down?” Kate asked impatiently.
They’d found the girl on the stairs between this floor and the lower one. Rafe waited with interest.
Miss Vivien looked startled by the question, as if she'd forgotten Kate’s presence. She shot a glare over her shoulder but answered. “I was here and on my way down, like poor Ana Marie. I could have been killed!”
“Did you see this person?” Rafe demanded, still not seeing how anyone but Arnaud could have been behind her.
“No, he pushed me and I fell! It was dark,” she insisted.
“You were near a window,” Rafe remonstrated. “It wasn’t completely dark. Mrs. Marie was on straight, dark stairs with an armful of linen and no way to break her fall. You were on curved stairs, nothing in hand, and could catch yourself on the curve of the wall or the handrail.”
“Someone pushed me. Hard,” she insisted, offended that he didn't take her seriously. “I am bruised all over. I may never walk properly again.”
Kate uttered a snort of exasperation.
“Are you sure it was a man?” Rafe asked, appreciating Kate’s patience in not beaning the ninny.
That stopped whatever protest she meant to utter. Mouth still open, Miss Vivien considered the question. “I don’t know.”
“And where did this person go after pushing you?” Rafe told himself she was little more than a child and had probably never been so frightened. Some people never grew out of their helplessness.
She frowned. “Upstairs? Back the way he came? Maybe he's still in here!” She glanced around in fright.
The stairs were narrow. If she'd been sprawled awkwardly as Ana Marie had been. . . There was a chance the miscreant hadn't tried to leap over her to reach the exit but had returned upstairs. But where would he hide?
Rafe needed to find out who had been in the upper and lower halls yesterday and the day the maid died. He'd not wanted to believe them more than accidents, but now—
Curse all the demons in hell, they might have a murderer on their hands.