Chapter Twenty-Five
Lady Mary
This time, there was blood. A lot of it. There was no question in my mind that Mr. Taylor had died from the knife in his chest.
I angled my head and inched forward. It looked to be one of the dinner knives. Not that we’d needed such a sharp blade since Cook Clem had begun preparing our meals for us. The roast lamb we’d eaten last night had practically fallen from the bone.
A footman stood near the body, holding an oil lamp in one hand. Dusk was coming on, but from the way he wrapped his palm around the glass cover, I figured he wanted the lamp more for warmth than light. He cleared his throat as I neared.
I pressed my lips flat. I wasn’t planning on touching the body, although now that I thought of it, I wouldn’t mind checking the man’s pockets. But I could hardly complain about the footman’s vigilance. After all, I had been the one to tell him to stand guard.
“Lady Mary.” Mr. Ryder stepped out onto the terrace, a slight frown creasing his face. The last of the sun’s light turned the white hair at his temples a soft honey. “The constable has arrived.”
Constable Adams followed him out, wearing an even larger frown. “Has returned, is more like. I was just sitting down to a spot of tea when I got the message. Now I don’t know if I’ll even get back home for supper.”
“There’s plenty to eat here.” I stepped back as the constable knelt beside Mr. Taylor’s form. “You will be fed.”
Ryder extended his hand back toward the sitting room. “Perhaps we should leave the constable to his work.” The man couldn’t keep the judgment from his voice. Ever the moralizer.
I ignored him and leaned on my walking stick to watch Constable Adams. I’d decided to keep a cane with me even indoors.
With a killer among us, one never knew when it might come in handy.
“That’s one of the dinner knives,” I informed the constable.
“Miss Smith found his body about half past three. No one saw Mr. Taylor alive since he went up to his rooms around noon.”
Constable Adams raised an eyebrow.
“I might have asked around a bit while waiting for you,” I said. “There was precious little else to talk about.”
Ryder snorted behind me.
“So a roughly three and a half hour window for him to be killed in.” Adams rubbed his jaw. “You don’t suspect poison was involved in this one, do you?”
“I do not.” I pointed at a bunching of fabric in Taylor’s jacket. “Can you check his pockets, see if he carries anything?”
Constable Adams did just that, slipping his fingers into the jacket’s pockets before unbuttoning it to expose the waistcoat. He pulled a broken bit of a lead pencil and two quid from those pockets.
“Was it all that you hoped for?” Ryder asked.
I glared back at him before pointing again at the body. “What of his hands? Do you see any scrapes or bruises to indicate he fought his attacker?”
Adams lifted one hand, then the other, each pale and pristine.
“The only marks on him are the bruises on his face, which I presume Mr. Evans inflicted.” The constable’s shoulders rounded.
“His killer might also have left some, but I don’t see how we’ll ever pick out which bruises came from where.
I should have stopped Mr. Evans when he hauled this man off. Now it’s only muddied the waters.”
“You couldn’t have known.” I patted the young man’s shoulder. “I’ll have a maid ready a room for you in case you want to stay the night.” By the time he questioned everyone in the house again, it could well be early morning.
Mr. Ryder followed me back into the sitting room. “Why do you take it upon yourself to investigate?” he asked in a low voice. “Constable Adams seems… competent.”
I chafed my hands together. A large fire had been built, and the heat of it warmed the room, removing some of the chill that clung to my gown.
“He is young and inexperienced. And we are staying in the house with someone who has killed two people.” At least, I hoped it was one person who had killed two people and not two separate murderers.
“I believe it behooves us all to discover who has done this as quickly as possible.”
Mr. Ryder sighed. “There are others—”
“Men, you mean.”
He dipped his chin and studied me. The feeling wasn’t quite pleasant. Taking a step closer so no one would overhear, he said, “It isn’t wrong, the impulse society has to protect the fairer sex from unpleasantness. From harm.”
“No.” It wasn’t wrong. I enjoyed a chivalrous act as much as any woman. “But sometimes men’s idea of protection is to keep women coddled, unaware of the hazards life presents, which only puts us more in danger. And some women aren’t as delicate as you seem to think.”
He looked like he had more to say on the subject.
As I didn’t want to hear it, I inclined my head and went over to where Mr. Evans and Miss Smith stood huddled together.
The attorney had planted himself firmly between Miss Smith and everyone else in the room, essentially becoming a barrier between her and the other guests. One of whom had killed again.
Miss Smith, at least, appeared to appreciate the attorney’s protective impulse.
I exhaled through my nose. I already knew I was a bit different from most women. I’d accepted it. “We should talk,” I said to them.
Mr. Evans looked at the rest of the room. No one appeared to be watching them, but he still lowered his voice. “Now?”
“No, after the next person is murdered.” Perhaps he didn’t deserve the edge in my voice, but I was too frustrated to hide it.
Miss Smith laid her hand at the base of her throat. “You think there will be another?”
Mr. Evans frowned at me, and I relented. “Most likely not, but I still think we need to discuss what we know. Let’s go to the library.”
We filed out. The empty grate almost made me regret my decision to leave the sitting room. I tugged my shawl higher on my shoulders. “Now. Each of you tell me what you did and saw from noon today until you found the body, Miss Smith.”
Mr. Evans went to the fireplace. He added some coal from the bucket and picked the flint up from the mantel. “I went to Perrin’s office to read through more of his files. Then I went to lunch. After, I joined the group in the sitting room.”
Miss Smith wandered to the window. In the gathering dark, there wasn’t much to see outside, yet she still stared.
“Much the same. I went to my room before luncheon, then the sitting room after. I saw Mr. Taylor briefly when I first came back from the shooting field. I thought he was headed to his room, as well.”
Mr. Evans kindled the fire, and I took a chair near the warmth. I pressed the tip of my walking stick into the thick rug. “It’s Katherine, yes? May I call you Katherine?”
At the woman’s nod, I continued. “What took you outside to find Mr. Taylor’s body?”
“The dog.” Katherine rubbed her arms. “He needed to go out, and he found Mr. Taylor.”
The dog. I checked my ankles, surprised he wasn’t nipping at them now. Someone must have trapped him down in the kitchens.
“And neither of you noticed anything strange?” I asked. “Did Mr. Taylor say anything to you after you and he…talked, Henry?”
He arched an eyebrow at my use of his given name but didn’t correct me. “Nothing except he was going to make me pay. And that shooting his gun in Miss Smith’s direction was an accident.” He rested his forearm on the mantel, examining his fingers. “I don’t know that I believed him.”
“He obviously didn’t kill Perrin.” Katherine paced across the room. At their continued silence, she paused. “Right?”
I hesitated. “I believe you are correct. I think there is only one killer but that Mr. Taylor could well have been up to mischief of his own. But why kill him? As Perrin’s secretary, could he have known something, the same something that got Perrin killed?”
Henry grimaced. “As his attorney and someone reading through all the earl’s paperwork, I suppose I must be on guard now, too.”
Katherine twisted her hands together. “I followed Lord Havenstone,” she blurted out. “When he left the sitting room this afternoon, I followed him.”
Henry narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
I nodded approvingly. “What did you learn?”
She went to the fire and held her palms out to the flame. “I thought he might go to Perrin’s rooms to search for something, but he went downstairs instead of up.”
My chest tightened. Why hadn’t I thought of searching Perrin’s rooms? It should have been one of the first acts I’d taken.
“I saw him turn the corner into the hallway to the kitchen, but when I got down the stairs, he’d disappeared.
” Katherine lifted her shoulders. “The assistant cook and a few maids were in the kitchen, but the storage rooms were empty. He might have gone out the door from the store room, or he could have gone up the stairs at the other end of the hall. I’d thought he might have gone down to get something from the medicine pantry, that he might have been looking for another poison. But perhaps he went to get a knife?”
I tapped my chin. “What time was this?”
“Perhaps twenty minutes before I found Mr. Taylor’s body.”
That didn’t leave much time for Havenstone to find Mr. Taylor and kill him. I thought it more likely someone had taken a knife from the dinner table on a previous night. Which would mean Mr. Taylor’s murder had been premeditated. “Why was Taylor out on the terrace? It wasn’t for a garden stroll.”
“That section of terrace seemed to be a favorite of Taylor’s when he wanted a private conversation.” Henry looked down at Katherine, his nostrils flaring.
She held up her hands. “He wasn’t meeting me.”
“I didn’t say that he was.”
I sagged back into the chair. “It all depends on timing. When was Taylor killed? If it was after lunch, was there anyone missing from the sitting room who could have done it?” My mouth twisted.
“Besides me.” I hoped the constable didn’t think a woman of my…
mature age could have the strength to stab a virile young man.
I might have, if I took the secretary by surprise, but I still hoped no one else would believe it.
Being a suspect in a murder investigation was most bothersome.
Henry ran his hand up the back of his head. “I think everyone was in the sitting room after lunch until Lord Havenstone and Miss Smith left, but someone else could have slipped out, I suppose. I can only say with certainty that Mr. Smith never left the room.”
“Of course my father didn’t do this.” Katherine crossed her arms.
“I think Taylor was killed before lunch.” I shot Katherine an apologetic look. “Sorry, my dear, but that keeps your father as a suspect. There are many people unaccounted for from when we all left the shooting field until we all showed for our midday meal. It makes more sense he was killed then.”
“And his body was outside, mere feet away, the whole time we conversed and laughed in the sitting room?” Katherine paled. “That is a horrible thought.”
Horrible or not, I suspected it was the truth. But it wasn’t the idea that a body had lain so nearby as the guests had relaxed by a warm fire that bothered me most.
It was the idea that the killer had relaxed by that fire with a smile on his or her face, knowing Taylor’s body grew cold just outside.