Chapter Fourteen #2
“You probably noticed more than you think.”
His voice startled her by its nearness right behind her, where he had clearly crouched down again to take in, as nearly as possible, the same view. She felt his breath on her hair, the warm brush of his knee against her leg, his arm touching hers as he raised it to the same position.
For an instant, she couldn’t breathe, cast back to another time when she was fourteen years old, and he had just returned from his first term at Oxford.
She had run to find him as usual and discovered him perched on the rocks on the bank of the river, fishing.
Supremely casual in his shirt sleeves, one knee under his chin, his untidy black hair fallen across his cheek, he had seemed to shine in a beam of sunlight.
His once-boyish shoulders had filled out, as though the rest of his body had finally caught up with the length of his legs.
The sight had winded her, tied her tongue so that she couldn’t even call out to him as she had intended.
In that moment, something had changed in her easy friendship with him.
Some wonderful, terrible awareness. Not that he had treated her any differently, and so she’d got gradually used to him again, though that awareness had never truly gone away.
She’d never been sure whether she was glad that he’d come home less after that, for she hadn’t trusted those feelings.
She still didn’t.
She jumped up, out of his way. Not that he was paying any attention to her. He was scratching around in the gravel again.
“Ah,” he said at last, and lifted his hand to show a small, round lead ball held between his finger and thumb. “From a pistol, I’d say, although a fowling piece is possible too, if it had just one ball loaded into it. Someone sure of their marksmanship.”
Kate shivered. Distractedly, Rupert pocketed the ball, gazing up at the windows again.
“Did you smell the powder?” he asked. “Ater the shot was fired?”
Surprised, she thought back to the terrifying moments between the shot and her bolting back into the house. “Actually, no. Does that mean it was fired outside, from some distance away?”
“Perhaps. Or you just weren’t in the right place to smell it inside the house. We’re not getting very far, are we? Were there lights in any of the windows?”
“Not on the ground floor, though I thought I saw something move at the next window to the left there.” She frowned. “I didn’t look up. Why didn’t I look up?”
“Because you forgot to be careful.” He pointed up to the first floor with his raised hand. “Is that the library window?”
She nodded. “All these long windows are the library… Actually, there might have been a faint light from there. A few of the guests were working late in there. Lord Chadbon was in his study, at least by the time I got to him.”
“And how long did that take you from the moment of the shot?”
“I don’t know. Three or four minutes, maybe. Long enough for him to have sped there from somewhere else close by. That window, at the right-hand side of the library, belongs to the morning room, and it’s right next to his study.”
“Did you hear windows opening or closing?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t hear anything. Even after the shot.”
“Are the bedchambers on the second floor?”
“I’ve already asked Mrs. Thornfield, who has rooms looking out on this part of the garden.”
“And?”
She pointed to the windows from left to right. “Mr. and Mrs. Newman, Mr. and Mrs. Otteridge, and Sir Colin Nye has that single window on the corner. He has windows to the front as well.”
“A decent shot could have hit you from any of those, even using a pistol. Though I imagine the noise of it would have disturbed everyone.”
“People could have heard the shot in the library, but like Chadbon, they probably assumed someone had dropped a box of glass with a clatter.”
“Which implies the shooter was more distant,” Rupert murmured, straightening to stare to the left and right. He turned to face behind. “There is cover in all directions. You wouldn’t necessarily have seen anyone in the dark. But they could see you clearly by your lantern.”
She shivered, the stark knowledge of her exposure, her near death, resurging. Just as last night, she felt very alone. Rupert threw an arm around her shoulders in a brief, brotherly hug. Stupidly, it made her feel better.
“We’ll find this villain, Kate,” he said, releasing her. “And quickly. But you have to be careful. No more wandering about in the dark.”
She swallowed. “I didn’t write to Lord Winster.”
Although she felt his gaze on her, she kept her face averted.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You knew this would happen, didn’t you? That Dinah’s killer would try to stop me?” She forced herself to meet his gaze at last. “That’s why you told me to write to your father. So that I would stop asking questions.”
“I was never easy about your doing so,” he admitted.
“But yesterday evening I suddenly seemed to see it through the killer’s eyes.
Whoever he is, he knows what you’re doing.
He knows the questions you’re asking. Either you’ve already got too close to the truth or he knows you will, and he has nothing to lose.
One murder or two, he can only hang once. ”
“But why hang in the first place?” she burst out. “Why was it so important to kill Dinah?”
Rupert began to walk toward the lawn, and she fell into step beside him. “Because she had—or the killer thought she had—some power that threatened him.”
“Unless she was a blackmailer—and there is no sign of such wealth among her possessions—how could she threaten any gentleman? Even Kit Carver. Elizabeth Gibb seems too proper to even acknowledge the existence of a mistress, so neither of them had a reason to kill.”
“Reason,” Rupert said thoughtfully. “Perhaps we’re assuming too much reason.”
“Meaning our murderer could be mad?”
“Or at least reasoning differently to you and me.”
Kate thought about that. “Even so, a maid, surely, can only threaten the position of another servant. No gentleman—or gentlewoman—would take her seriously enough.”
“Unless they were dicked in the nob.”
She blinked at him. “Dicked in the…? Is that thieves’ cant?”
“Sorry. So your money’s on Kemp?”
“He is always there immediately after the crime and he does seem terribly focused on propriety and discipline. I don’t think Dinah was disciplined. She shirked and she dreamed and she loved too freely.”
Rupert’s glance was startled. “That’s actually rather a good description.”
“I feel I’ve come to know her in the last few days.”
“She did dream,” Rupert said. “That’s what first drew me to her. She never accepted that domestic service was all she would ever see. She wanted to experience everything. But even so, she had a practical streak. She knew the difference between fantasy and reality.”
“Meaning she always knew Carver would never marry her, and though she loved him, she would have settled for Jack Irwin?”
“She had to live and look after her child. But Kemp didn’t know about the child, did he? So why would he even think of killing her? How did he know she had done something so improper?”
Abruptly, Kate thought of Rupert crouched so close to her that she could feel him, and her breath caught. “He seized her to prevent her crying out. She must have been very close. He could have felt the swell of the child.”
“But why seize her in the first place?” Rupert argued. “Why was he lying in wait for her?”
“For amorous reasons? Or because he suspected she had stolen the dagger? She cleaned the study, after all, and would be the first under suspicion.” She sighed.
“Though he denied to me that he had noticed the dagger was missing. And Chadbon says Kemp does not bother the maids. He does seem very proper in his own behavior.”
Rupert tugged his ear. “Also, if he is so unbalanced about protecting the Chadbon name and reputation, why would he risk a murder on the premises? Let alone two.”
“It was you who brought up the subject of madness,” Kate pointed out. “I don’t know how such people think, never having met a madman. Apart from you, of course.”
“I am merely eccentric. For a curate.”
She looked him up and down. “A dandy, you mean, in those unmentionables.”
Rupert grinned, thrusting out his leg to admire the shade of his pantaloons. “Bang-up, aren’t they? I ran out of staid clothes.”
“I expect Mr. Bancroft was glad to see you back, whatever your dress.”
“He was, actually, bless him.”
“Mrs. Bancroft?”
“Not so much,” Rupert admitted. “But then, she thinks I’m after her husband’s living and will turn them both out of the vicarage. Look, here’s a useful bench. If we had a pencil and paper, we could make lists of our suspects and find out who was provably where at the times of both crimes.”
“Like this?” Kate said, dragging her folded notes from the pocket of her cloak.
He smiled and took them from her as she sat down on the bench. “Never just a pretty face, were you, Kate?”
“No,” she said starkly. It had taken a lot of work to get Gilbert to see that. And then Chadbon and others.
Rupert was scouring the pages. “Oh, excellent. You’ve corroborated most of what Lewis told you about those who left the drawing room round about the time of Dinah’s murder.”