His head snapping up, William lurched back against the chair as if Miles had slapped him across the face. “No!”
“Are you certain about that?” Miles spoke almost entirely without emotion.
“Of course I’m certain. I didn’t kill him.”
“How did you get that bruise on your face?”
William’s lips became a tight, thin line, and, if possible, he turned even whiter.
Eva went closer to him. “William, it’s no good to keep silent or to lie. It only makes matters look worse for you. How did you come by that bruise?” She already knew the answer, but she wouldn’t put words in his mouth. She hoped he would find them himself.
When the ticking of the clock became loud and jarring, William clenched his jaws and then slowly relaxed them. “Mr. Ripley hit me. That first morning.”
“Why?”
“Because I complained I was hungry. Couldn’t help it. He didn’t let me eat my breakfast. Isn’t that right, Miss Huntford?”
She nodded. “It is. He pulled you away from the table before you had a chance to finish.”
“How did it make you feel when he hit you?” Miles glanced at his fingernails as he made the query.
“Feel? Mad. A bloke gets smacked in the face, he sees red, doesn’t he?” His mouth snapped closed again as he realized the significance of his words. Eva bit her bottom lip.
“Mad enough to react in violence?” Miles asked.
William shook his head. “No. I never touched him. I swear. You think I wanted to get the sack and go back to my parents, who can’t afford to feed the two little ones still at home?” He slumped lower against the vertical slats on the back of the chair. “I’ll get the sack now, though.”
“We’ll see,” Lady Phoebe said softly.
“All right.” Miles tilted his chin as he scrutinized William’s face with a cold expression that would have chilled Eva’s blood had he turned that gaze on her. “Tell us exactly what happened that next morning. Where you were, what you saw.”
William swallowed. “I ate my breakfast right quick and went out extra early. We were continuing on the hedge, Ripley trimming and me raking up and tossing the cuttings in the cart. But then Ripley, he sent me back to his shed for another pair of shears. The small ones for doin’ the fine work.”
That raised a frown on Miles’s brow. “Are they something a head gardener would have with him whenever he set out to sculpt a hedge?”
“Usually, yeah.”
“Then why wouldn’t he have brought them when he set out to work that day?”
“Dunno. Forgot, I suppose.”
Eva sensed an important fact had just been disclosed and exchanged a glance with Lady Phoebe.
Miles continued. “So when you left to get the shears, everything seemed normal?”
William nodded.
“And when you returned with the shears?”
William fell forward, landing with his elbows on his knees. For one awful moment, Eva feared he’d be ill. “He was on the ground. There was blood. And someone standing over him.”
“Did you see who it was?” Miles leaned down lower to speak in William’s ear.
He shook his head. “He wore a cap and had a scarf pulled up over his mouth and nose. But he saw me—”
Miles interrupted him. “Where exactly were you?”
“I’d come around the far end of the hedge, the end farthest from the hothouses.” His voice was tight, choked with suppressed tears. “I’d cut across the formal gardens from the shed. Went fast so the family wouldn’t come upon me if they were outside.”
“So this person had disguised his face,” Miles recounted. “And this cap. What did it look like?”
“Typical. Tweed. Brown, I think.”
Eva and Lady Phoebe exchanged another glance. As they had suspected, the cap belonged to the murderer. Miles spoke again.
“If you couldn’t make out the face, why are you afraid this person will come after you?”
“Because when he saw me, he stared hard and pointed at me. It was a warning. That’s when I ran and kept going until I practically got lost in the forest.”
“What can you tell me about the individual? Height. Weight. Anything at all.”
William gave a halfhearted shrug. “I dunno. Average, I guess.”
“On the slim side, or portly?”
“Slim.” William frowned in thought, then nodded. “Yeah, slim. Clothes were loose, baggy.”
“Describe them, if you can.”
Another shrug. “Brown pants, maybe corduroys. Striped shirt. Blue stripes. Maybe green. Sun wasn’t really up yet.”
“Was he tall? Or medium height? Think about the person in relation to the hedge. Which is about, what?”
“Ten feet,” Lady Phoebe supplied, and William nodded.
“So in relation to the hedge,” Miles went on, “was this person tall or short, or as you said, average?”
William once more let his head fall into his hands. “I don’t know. Please, can’t I go?”
“No, William, you can’t go.” Miles spoke harshly. “You must think.”
Shaking his head, William mumbled, “Average. Like me, maybe.”
One thing Eva now knew, as did they all: the killer could not have been the barrel-chested, towering Joe Murdock.
Miles eased his tone. “Where have you been hiding?”
When William didn’t reply, Eva said, “That was you, wasn’t it, that day in the gardener’s cottage? We surprised you there, and you ran into me in your haste to flee.”
William’s head came up, his expression genuinely puzzled. “No. I wouldn’t go there. It’s the first place anyone would look. I’ve been mostly at the old gamekeeper’s cottage, and in a corner of the stables. Trevor never even knew I was there,” he insisted, referring to the head groom who now also tended to Lord Wroxly’s Rolls-Royce and Lady Phoebe’s Vauxhall.
“Then . . .” Eva trailed off. With a sickening lurch inside her, she acknowledged that the person who ran into her at the gardener’s cottage could have been no other than the killer, perhaps there to root out any evidence that might link him to Stephen Ripley.
What if Eva had gone there to collect Stephen’s cap alone? What if she or Lady Phoebe had gone in pursuit after the individual knocked her down? Those questions—and the likely answer—sent chills rippling down her spine.
“William, if you feared for your life, why did you run away?” Lady Phoebe asked. “You could have come to us for protection. My grandfather would have seen to your safety.”
William turned his face to her. “Could he have protected me from being blamed for Mr. Ripley’s death? From being arrested? I was afraid of that, too. Still am.”
Miles leaned back and regarded William down the length of his nose. “As it is, you are going to be arrested.”
Eva felt a protest rising inside her, but she kept quiet.
Presently, Miles went on. “Keenan Ripley is still the chief constable’s main suspect, but I can’t let you go, not with so many questions left dangling. The problem is, what to do with you. There’s only one cell at the station, and it’s occupied.” He sighed. “The only alternative is to have you sent to Gloucester.”
Fear burgeoned in William’s young eyes. This time, Eva couldn’t help herself. She knew a youth like William would rarely have strayed beyond Little Barlow’s borders in all the years of his life. “Is it really necessary to send him so far away?”
Lady Phoebe spoke up before Miles could reply. “No, it isn’t. I’ve an idea.”
CHAPTER 15
“Thank you again, Grampapa. The constable didn’t like the prospect of sending someone as young and inexperienced as William to Gloucester to be dealt with by the police there. And thank you, too, Grams.”
Earlier, Phoebe had found both her grandparents in the Rosalind sitting room, enjoying a nightcap before bed. She had explained to them this latest development of Constable Brannock having found the gardener’s assistant an
d taken him into custody. She told them of how the constable had enlisted Vernon and Douglas, along with Josh, and together they had set their trap. She had even told them how Josh, fearing for his friend’s life after learning of the murderer’s warning gesture, had been bringing William food to keep him from starving. She explained it in such a way as to exonerate Josh of all blame and rather make him look the hero. Neither Grampapa nor even the more stoic, often stern Grams could conscience one friend leaving another to brave danger and the elements alone. They had agreed that, at least for now, neither Mr. Giles nor Mrs. Sanders needed to be any the wiser concerning the missing food items. They would be happy enough that no further thefts would occur.
What Phoebe had left out was her and Eva’s roles in the trap they had laid, and how William had held her with his forearm against her throat. All participants had agreed this was something no one needed to worry the earl and countess with. Now, after checking with Eva that William had been secured with no further ado, she had returned to the Rosalind sitting room to fill them in on the accommodations made available for William. Ordinarily he shared a room with Josh belowstairs, but not presently.
“He’s upstairs, in one of the unused rooms in the male servants’ wing. At the very end of the corridor, farthest from the staircase and away from the occupied rooms.” Phoebe referred to the servants’ quarters on the second floor beneath the attic. In the past, all the servant bedrooms had been occupied by two or sometimes more individuals, but since the war there were far fewer servants at Foxwood Hall.
“Need we post a guard at the door?” Grams’s thin silver eyebrows drew inward with concern. “Are we in any danger? Might he escape?”
“The constable doesn’t believe so,” Phoebe said. “Apparently they had a long talk and William has promised to stay put.”
Grams wasn’t reassured. “Can he be trusted to keep such a promise?”
“It was never a matter of trust, Grams. He ran and hid because he was frightened.” That much was mostly true. William had been frightened for his life, yes, but also that he might be blamed for Stephen Ripley’s murder. She decided not to mention that now. “He’s safe here, so he has no reason to try to run again.”
“But what if it turns out he’s the murderer?” Grams had apparently decided to pursue all possibilities and would not be satisfied until she had explored them all.
“I don’t believe the constable would have agreed to keep him here if he thought the boy could be a danger to us,” Grampapa calmly observed. “It would seem that unanswered questions prompted him to hold on to William rather than leave him at his liberty, but if Constable Brannock believed William capable of murder he would have sent him to Gloucester. Or he would have set Keenan Ripley free and put William in his place at the police station here.”
Grams’s spine relaxed a fraction. “I suppose you’re right, Archibald. But, Phoebe, I don’t want you going anywhere near that bedroom. Not for any reason.”
“In the male servants’ wing, Grams?” Phoebe gave a light chuckle. “You needn’t worry, that’s not an area of the house I tend to frequent.” Indeed, a door stood between the male and female servants’ wings, secured by a sturdy lock, the key to which Mrs. Sanders kept on her person at all times. Not even Mr. Giles possessed a key to that door. And the only other way into the male wing was by a staircase that climbed directly there from a landing right outside Mr. Giles’s office, and which bypassed the first floor altogether.
Grams’s shrewd gaze proclaimed her full awareness that there was more to the story than Phoebe was telling them, but that she, Grams, would keep quiet for now to prevent Grampapa from worrying.
Phoebe kissed them each good night and made her way along the corridor to her bedroom. Outside her door, she remembered what Eva had said to her earlier, before all the excitement had occurred. That made her glance across to Julia’s room. It had grown rather late and with all that had happened, Phoebe’s comfortable bed beckoned in a way that was nearly impossible to resist. But Eva had appealed to her to reach out to her sister, and she doubted sleep would come easily if she didn’t first make an effort.
Earlier at dinner, Julia had seemed more at ease than usual. She had even taken an interest in discussing with Grams an addition to the curriculum at the Haverleigh School. The new lessons, intended to introduce sixth-form students to the political sciences, had actually been Phoebe’s idea, although Julia seemed to have forgotten that detail. No matter. Only last month, the U.S. government had granted all of its female citizens over the age of twenty-one the right to vote, and Phoebe felt it was just a matter of time before England did likewise, rather than the current voting privileges extended only to women over thirty who were married or owned property in their own right.
The subject gave Phoebe the perfect opportunity to knock on Julia’s door now and continue the discussion. Julia answered with a distracted-sounding “Come in.”
Phoebe found her sister examining her reflection in her full-length mirror. She stood in profile, her hands smoothing the fabric of her nightgown against the roundness of her belly. “Am I fat?” she abruptly asked Phoebe’s reflection in the mirror. The question startled Phoebe, but she pretended otherwise.
“You’re expecting a child.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“No, you are not fat.” Phoebe went to sit in a chair near the fireplace. “You look like a mother-to-be five months gone, which is exactly what you are.”
“Most expecting women begin to swell right about now, and keep on swelling through to the end. And I’m not talking about their stomachs.” Phoebe heard no plaintiveness in her sister’s voice, only curiosity.
“Well, I don’t see any evidence of that happening to you. Except for your belly you’re still as svelte as a fashion model.”
“Do you think something could be wrong, then?”
Phoebe had fallen right into that trap. She sighed. “No, Julia, I don’t think anything is wrong, but of course I’m not the correct person to ask. When do you see Dr. Hayward next?”
“Dr. Hayward.” Julia waved a hand in dismissal. “What does a man know about how a woman should feel?”
“I should think a physician knows a great deal about that.”
“I’d prefer a midwife.”
Phoebe blinked in surprise. “You would?”
“Of course. But it would never be allowed. Grams would have the vapors. Not that Grams has ever had the vapors, but something like that would send her over the edge. I don’t like physicians. I never have.”
Phoebe regarded her. Even in her nightgown, her hair down, the little makeup she wore washed away, Julia maintained a sophisticated, aristocratic beauty, in stark contrast to Phoebe’s own rather ordinary looks. That was how Phoebe thought of her eldest sibling: a cool, often indifferent society beauty. Not for the first time, she wondered what else simmered beneath Julia’s impeccable façade. “I wouldn’t have guessed this. I’d have thought you wanted the most modern methods of childbirth. A midwife certainly doesn’t fall into that category.”
Julia pried herself away from the mirror. She reclined on the chaise longue and put up her satin-clad feet. “Perhaps not, but what does a man know about giving birth? I mean really know. I know it’s going to hurt more than anyone but another mother can imagine.”
“Are you . . . are you afraid?”
Julia shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t know. I haven’t much choice in the matter. And anyway, I’m not the first woman in this condition. I suppose if others can do it, I certainly can.”
It made Phoebe smile to see a bit of Julia’s stubborn confidence return.
Julia regarded her with a puzzled look. “Did you want something?”
It was on Phoebe’s tongue to bring up the political science lessons planned for Haverleigh. But she had only meant to use that as an excuse for knocking on Julia’s door. Somehow, they’d fallen into a conversation without help, a rare occurrence for them in recent years. “No, n
ot really. I wasn’t sleepy yet.” This, of course, was a lie, but Julia didn’t need to know that. “So I thought I’d see how you were doing.”
“Hmm.” Julia looked her up and down. “Did Grams send you?”
“No, Grams did not,” Phoebe was able to say truthfully.
“Well . . . I’m glad you came, because there is something I’d like to discuss with you.”
Yet another surprise. She kept her features even. “Go on.”
“It’s about the baby. He’ll need godparents.”
A tide of elation brimmed inside Phoebe. She reached out a hand. “Oh, Julia.”
But Julia wasn’t looking. She was inspecting her manicured fingernails. “I’m thinking of asking Amelia to be godmother. What do you think? Is she too young? Is it too much to ask of her?”
Phoebe’s delight receded like an outgoing wave, the force of it strong enough to whisk her feet out from under her if she hadn’t been sitting. Her hand fell to her lap. She forced herself to swallow past the doughy lump that had formed so suddenly in her throat, and to answer Julia in a steady voice that betrayed no other emotion than approval. “I think Amelia will make the perfect godmother for your child. I can’t think of one better.”
Julia nodded vaguely, her eyebrows knitted. “I can’t for the life of me think of a proper godfather. Certainly not Ernie Shelton.” She shuddered, having referred to her late husband’s cousin and heir—until, that was, Julia’s child entered the world, assuming it would be a boy. Ernie had made no secret of his resentment of Julia’s very existence and that he prayed nightly for her to give birth to a girl.
“No, not Ernie,” Phoebe agreed, happy to move past the subject of godmother. A name came into her mind. Theo Leighton, the man Julia should have married if only the family hadn’t needed Gil’s money to help keep Foxwood Hall solvent. Although a marquess, Theo had little fortune of his own, it having been squandered by his elder and now deceased brother. Phoebe often wondered whether, if Julia did produce the Annondale heir and thus acquired greater access to Gil’s money, she would marry Theo after all.
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