Chapter Twelve #3
Truth be told, he was more worried about his nibs. Who the devil locked a parson up, let alone one like Grande? At any rate, Salter was aware he wasn’t at his best right now, being more than a trifle bosky.
He’d retreated to his bed mostly to give his nibs some privacy with the gentry mort. But the devil was in it that as soon as his head touched the hard pallet, even dragged into the whirling pits of drunkenness as he was, everything else in him seemed to sharpen.
The girl, whom his nibs called Kate, did not talk like a lover. Neither did he. In fact, they seemed to be talking about murder, and Salter didn’t like that at all.
Was it possible the chaplain now needed him?
No wonder he’d asked Salter about what he’d seen from that garden wall. The other trouble was, Salter had lied.
He couldn’t actually remember what he’d seen, or what he’d done.
Not after throwing himself at that high wall and almost ripping his remaining arm out of its socket to haul himself up.
He remembered the unlit glass room and the shadow behind the tree next to the wall, and then the air seeming to rush into his ears.
After that, it was all a blank until he woke up in the disused barn half a mile away from the big house.
He suspected from his bruises that he’d fallen from the wall, though on which side of it was anyone’s guess. Since it was so important to his nibs, Salter stopped listening to the chatter and tried desperately to remember what he’d seen.
Was the shadow the girl who’d died? Or her killer?
Squeezing his eyes shut, he willed a girl’s face and figure onto the shadow.
But she looked too much like the alewife at the local inn.
He tried to see it as a man instead and couldn’t.
In fact, no matter how he tried, he didn’t seem to have seen enough to recall the person at all.
“Salter didn’t do it,” his nibs said.
What if I did?
The words smacked into him from nowhere, appalling, shocking, and not even unbelievable. He’d killed a lot of people. He’d sacked towns in wartime. He wished he couldn’t remember Badajoz… Was it really possible Mr. Grande had been banged up for something Salter had done when boozy?
Surely not. He had no reason and he certainly couldn’t remember doing it.
Then again, he couldn’t remember not doing it. From the effort of hauling himself up to the wall to his wakening with a thick, aching head in the barn, he remembered nothing at all. He had no idea how he’d got from one place to the other.
Jesus, now he’d never sleep…
But he did. Even knowing that waking up would be worse.
*
Kate had plenty to think about on her way back to Chadbon Court in the rain. Talking about everything with Rupert had helped her see the subjects of her investigation more clearly, to think about it all in slightly different ways.
Yet, oddly enough, his sudden volte-face on informing Lord Winster was not the relief it should have been.
Because she knew it was not what Rupert wanted.
It was just what he regarded as safest for her, because he knew she would not let the matter drop.
He did not seem to have realized that even once she’d written to Winster, she would carry on.
She had begun this largely for Rupert, but by this stage she could not let it go, whether Rupert walked free or not.
First thing tomorrow, she would write to the marquis—and hope the mail coach could get through where the Chadbons’ guests could not. She would have to word the letter very carefully.
And then she would call on Dr. Paxton and Remington to discover what or whom they had seen while out and about on Tuesday evening. And then she would ask a lot more questions of Kemp, Newman, and Otteridge.
She found she was glad of the rain. With luck, it would keep the road under water and the Chadbons’ guests at the court for another day.
Which meant, hopefully, that Rupert would not be sent to a proper prison either.
Though surely news of his incarceration by the magistrate could not be suppressed forever. It was bound to trickle out.
Almost to her surprise, she discovered Chadbon Court looming out of the rain. She had forgotten to shield her lantern.
Never mind. I have a perfect right to take the air in any weather I like.
They already thought she was mad for riding this morning, after all.
Nevertheless, she felt curiously exposed as she walked brazenly across the lawn toward the side door.
She imagined the curtain moved at one of the ground-floor windows, that a dark, shadowy figure lurked there…
Hastily, she reached for the latch on the side door, but it didn’t budge. It had been locked.
Oh, drat you, Grissy! Are you asleep? It was not even very late.
Irritated, she stepped back and picked up a handful of pebbles from the gravel path, meaning to hurl them at her bedchamber window, which was at the front of the house. But as she bent, something exploded and she cried out in startlement.
At the same time, the lantern shattered.