by Emily Claire
Diana scowled. “You haven’t any idea what you’re talking about.”
“She never does, and yet, that never stops her,” Lydia said. She took Diana’s arm and pulled the younger woman in close. “Never mind her. I’ll protect you.”
“At least someone has my best interests at heart,” Diana said, clasping Lydia’s arm. “You’re far too nice to be Izzy’s friend, Lydia.”
“That’s why she’s my friend,” Isabella said. “As a good Christian woman, she feels it’s her duty to keep me from straying into deep and irreparable indecency.”
Lydia scoffed. “I would never take on such a Herculean task.”
Arm in arm, Lydia and Diana marched past Isabella and toward the butter-yellow sitting room. They halted abruptly to avoid bumping into Lady Huntington, who had stopped in the doorway.
Lady Wycliffe cleared her throat. “It’s dark,” she announced, irritated.
At that moment, a housemaid scurried toward them from the other end of the corridor, a white apron wrapped over her blue-flowered muslin dress and a lit candle flickering in one hand.
“My apologies, Lady Wycliffe,” the girl said, bobbing a quick curtsy. “The one as was supposed to stoke the fire and light the candles went to bed with a cough, and nobody told me, my lady. I’m terribly sorry. If you’ll give me just a moment—”
Lady Wycliffe gave her a single, tight nod. “On with it.”
The maid rushed into the dark sitting room, her figure barely illuminated by the candle’s glow and the pale moonlight slanting in from the windows. She set her candle on an end table and crossed the dark room to the fireplace while Lady Wycliffe complained in a low tone about how difficult it was to find good help these days.
“It will be freezing in there.” Isabella shivered. “The servants should have kept the fire going during dinner.”
“It’s fortunate we have shawls, then,” Lydia said cheerfully.
From within the room, a thump and a cry sounded. Lydia stood on her tiptoes and peered over tall Lady Huntington’s shoulder to see what had happened. The maid, now a heap on the floor in front of the dark fireplace, winced.
“Are you quite all right?” Lady Wycliffe demanded.
“Yes, my lady,” the maid said, in a tone that said she wasn’t quite. “Only…”
She scrambled to her feet and backed up, then reached for her candle and held it over the thing on the floor that had tripped her.
Icy cold washed over Lydia.
A body lay in front of the fireplace on the carpet that had once been yellow and was now stained with darkest red. Smears of black crusted the man’s face, and congealing blood gleamed in the candlelight as it puddled beneath his neck, where something had stabbed him clear through his soaked cravat.
A knitting needle stood like a flagpole from his chest, the metal ringed by so little blood that it scarcely marred his cream-colored waistcoat.
Worst of all, his eyes stared at the ceiling, blue and as unseeing as glass.
“It’s the curate,” the housemaid stammered, staring down. “It’s Mr. Stewart. He’s… My lady, he’s dead.”
4
Lady Wycliffe clutched at her chest. Her mouth opened and closed with no more than a soft wheeze. Lady Huntington stood frozen to the spot, her face devoid of color.
The world pitched and reeled around Lydia; her stomach wobbled, and her knees fought against the gravity that threatened to overwhelm them.
A moment later, Diana screamed. With her face so close to Lydia’s, the sound was earsplitting. Even so, Lydia didn’t so much as flinch. What was there to do but scream? Diana’s horror echoed in her bones.
Awkwardly, she stumbled past Lady Huntington and into the sitting room. She didn’t want to be any closer to the body, but she couldn’t remain standing with her legs as limp as the asparagus at dinner. She fumbled for the nearest chair and clung to its yellow back, relying on the wood and upholstery to keep her upright.
“Damnation,” Isabella said, and for once, her mother didn’t warn her to mind her language.
They stared. The lacquered chinoiserie clock on the mantelpiece ticked the seconds by, and Lydia fixed her gaze on its dark silhouette so as to avoid looking at the slowly congealing pool of blood beneath Mr. Stewart’s neck.
After more long ticks than Lydia could be bothered to count, Isabella cleared her throat. “I’ll fetch the gentlemen,” she announced.
This couldn’t be right.
Mr. Stewart couldn’t be dead. He was a curate. He wasn’t the kind of man to be murdered while the rest of them were eating dinner. That didn’t happen to curates. Not here, not in the country, not on a perfectly ordinary Thursday night.
The room pitched again.
Murder. This was no natural death, no sudden fit or heart attack.
Lydia’s gaze flickered down again to the stab wounds and the dreadful implement rising from the man’s chest. The needle gleamed with the light of the housemaid’s candle, shining much as it had in the sunlight that afternoon.
Yes, that had been only this afternoon, and that was her knitting needle.
Lydia ripped her attention back to the clock, but only for a moment. Then she stared at Mr. Stewart again, and this time, she couldn’t stop.
The blood on his face wasn’t from the stab wound; it seemed to have poured from his nose. There had been a struggle, then, a violent one. His cravat had come half untied, and his clothing was rumpled, more evidence of what could only have been a furious battle for his life. Smears of blood dotted the fabric of his cravat. It was difficult to tell in the dim light, but it seemed there was at least one dark patch on his deep-brown trousers, too. A bloody handkerchief lay on the floor next to the body, a tiny white flag drawing attention to the hideous reality before them.
Lydia’s stomach heaved. She was going to be ill. She lowered her forehead to the back of the chair and rested it there as she tried to breathe.
But no, that wasn’t any good. Avoiding the sight somehow made it worse. She resumed staring.
Her father would be devastated. He was fond of the curate, who had delivered sermons and chopped wood for their family with equal dedication. Mr. Stewart was a generous, hardworking man who hadn’t hesitated to pitch in wherever he was needed, regardless of whether the task at hand was better suited to a gentleman or a servant. He had been kind, too, offering to read in the evenings while Lydia and her mother sewed and the vicar worked on one of his jigsaw puzzles.
Now he was dead, splayed on the carpet in a pool of gore with Lydia’s knitting needle stabbed through his heart and his eyes open in what could only have been shock.
Lydia couldn’t bear his eyes.
She let go of the chair and stumbled forward. Relieved at last to let her legs do as they pleased, she crumpled to the floor. Carefully, gently, she closed the curate’s eyes.
It was a strangely intimate gesture. In all the time he had spent with her family, Lydia had never touched his face. She had dreamed of doing so now and then, usually late at night when she’d been alone with her thoughts. She had imagined brushing a hand across his cheek or moving a stray lock of hair from his forehead. Like a silly fool, she had sometimes dared to hope that, perhaps, in time, he would come to see her as no man ever had.
No hope of that now.
Footsteps and male voices emerged from the corridor behind her. Quickly, she picked up the curate’s handkerchief and tucked it into a pocket of her gown. She would wash the blood out and give it to her father as a token to remember the man. It was the least she could do.
“What happened?” Sir Charles asked, voice weaker than usual.
Lydia glanced over her shoulder at him. A moment too late, she realized how strange she must look, kneeling next to a corpse. She couldn’t move, though, not yet. Quickly, she closed her eyes and offered a whispered prayer over the body. It seemed necessary, and it was all she could offer now.
Isabella touched Lydia’s shoulder. “Come away from there, darling,” s
he murmured.
Lydia obeyed, though her legs were scarcely able to support her over to one of the chairs. She sank into the seat, then held a hand out to the housemaid, who still stood over the body with the candle in her hand, her face pale and her lips trembling.
“Come sit with me,” Lydia ordered softly.
The girl frowned at her, then glanced at Lady Wycliffe.
Isabella cleared her throat. “Yes, Bridget, sit. Whatever propriety we might have observed up to this point seems superfluous.”
Relieved, Bridget lowered her candle and collapsed onto the chair nearest to Lydia.
“Mr. Buxton, give us some light,” Isabella said.
She was clearly the only person in the room capable of taking charge at this moment, and everyone else seemed glad to obey. Mr. Buxton quickly took the flame from Bridget and proceeded to light the other candles in the room. Mr. Pemberton crouched next to the curate’s body and examined it, and Sir Charles stood over the corpse and stared.
“What the devil happened?” he repeated.
“We haven’t the faintest idea,” Isabella said. “He was like this when we got here.”
“Nobody’s been in this room for hours,” the maid offered in a small voice. “Several of the maids have colds, and Mrs. Morton sent two of them to bed this afternoon, so nobody came to light the fire.”
“It would seem our servants are entirely unprepared to deal with illness in their midst,” Lady Wycliffe said. “The room was dark, and Bridget quite literally stumbled over…” Words failed her, and after a moment, she waved her hand in the curate’s general direction. “Over this.”
A long silence followed. The clock seemed deafening.
“I suppose someone had better fetch the undertaker,” Sir Charles said at last.
“Along with the constable, I think,” Mr. Pemberton added, his gaze roving across the dead body as if he intended to memorize everything about it. The laugh lines at the corners of his eyes were gone, and the hollows beneath his high cheekbones seemed eerily deep in the candlelight.
Lady Wycliffe pressed a handkerchief to the back of her neck. “What do you suppose the constable is going to do?” she demanded. “It isn’t as if we have the criminal here to hang. Whatever vagabond committed this abominable murder must be long gone by now.”
“Even so, it had better be done,” Sir Charles said with a decisive nod. “Bridget, tell my valet to fetch the constable and the undertaker. Pratt’s the only one I trust with such a task.”
“Don’t speak about this to another soul,” Lady Wycliffe added quickly.
Bridget, still pale with shock, got awkwardly to her feet and stumbled from the room. Lydia felt for the girl; she couldn’t imagine trying to run to the other end of the house right now.
“The news is going to travel whether she talks or not,” Isabella remarked once the maid was gone. “We’ll never keep something like this quiet.”
“Nor should we,” Mr. Buxton said. “If there’s a murderer in Lanceton, everybody ought to know.”
“Oh, could you all stop saying murder?” Diana cried, and promptly burst into tears. She rushed to her mother’s side. Lady Wycliffe patted her daughter on the back as she dissolved into sobs.
Through it all, Lady Huntington stood, face expressionless and pale. Lydia’s heart ached; outside of Lydia and her family, Lady Huntington had probably known the curate best. Their work together on behalf of the girls’ asylum had been going on for months, and now...
“I’d better go inform Cooper,” Sir Charles said, as much to himself as anyone else. “He’ll need to make sure this gets cleaned up.”
Mr. Pemberton straightened. “I’ll stay with the body until the constable arrives. The rest of you may as well clear out. There’s nothing we can do for him now, poor chap.”
“I’ll escort the ladies elsewhere,” Mr. Buxton volunteered. He was as pale as Lady Huntington, even green; the sight of the blood seemed to have turned his stomach. He did his best to usher them all from the room, though Lydia hung back to give the curate’s body one last look.
Mr. Stewart hadn’t deserved such a horrific fate. He had been good, and honest, and kind, and now he was dead. It wasn’t right.
“Come along, Miss Shrewsbury,” Mr. Buxton said kindly, taking her arm.
She looked up and tried to focus on his face. His blue eyes swam before her. They were the same color as the curate’s. Her stomach churned, and she let herself be led away.
By the time the ladies and Mr. Buxton had all gathered in the lavender morning room and arranged for a fire to be laid, Lady Wycliffe’s nerves had caught up with her.
“I never suspected Mr. Stewart was in the house,” she said, pacing in front of the fireplace. Lydia wished she’d stop; her relentless back and forth was dizzying, and Lydia wanted nothing more than to sit in silence and lean toward the warmth of the fire. She needed heat right now—heat and light, to stave off the relentless gloom of the scene they had just left.
“When could he have arrived? And why did he go to that sitting room, when we were all clearly gathered in the Rose Room before dinner? The servants should have taken him to the Rose Room. They knew that, or at least they should have known that, although it seems as if our servants have lost their sense of responsibility today.”
“You’re being too hard on them. It sounds as if winter colds are ravaging them down there.” Isabella leaned back against the deep-purple sofa. Next to her, Lady Huntington sat as stiff as a statue, her gaze unmoored.
Lady Wycliffe was not interested in listening to reason. “It’s unforgivable that he should have arrived only to be taken to the wrong room and murdered.”
“Oh, Mama, stop!” Diana exclaimed, pressing her fingers to her ears. “I can’t bear it!”
Mr. Buxton offered Diana his handkerchief, and she blotted at her eyes before dissolving into a fresh wave of tears.
“Do you think it was one of the servants?” Isabella asked.
Lady Wycliffe’s head whipped toward her eldest daughter. “No servant at Hollybrook House would be capable of such a thing. They may be incompetent, but we are not the sort of estate to provide refuge for criminals.”
“I suppose everybody thinks that until a criminal reveals himself,” Isabella retorted.
“Isabella, stop,” Lady Wycliffe said in the long-suffering tone only a mother could properly wield.
“Did it happen while we were in the Rose Room?” Lady Huntington asked so quietly that Lydia couldn’t tell whether she was speaking to the room at large or only herself. She wrung her skirt in her lap, crinkling the heavy gray silk. “Or was it during dinner?”
“I can’t abhor the thought that a man should have been murdered under my roof while we were dining,” Lady Wycliffe declared. “I shall never eat again.”
This remarkable pronouncement made, she fell silent and paced with increasing fervor.
“It would be strange if nobody had seen Mr. Stewart come in at all, wouldn’t it?” Isabella murmured.
“What reason would any of us have had to venture to the sitting room once we had dressed for dinner?” Lady Wycliffe demanded. “All our guests were instructed most clearly that we would mingle in the Rose Room before the meal. I myself only stopped in at the nursery for a moment beforehand to bid Charlie a good night. I can only thank heaven the nursery is nowhere near the entry or the site of that ghastly murder.” She shuddered, though Lydia wasn’t sure whether the gesture stemmed from maternal concern or mere self-consideration.
“I mean it would be strange if nobody saw him,” Isabella said. “Surely Cooper answered the door when he arrived, and someone must have led him to the sitting room. Perhaps the murderer himself did it.”
Lady Wycliffe wrung her hands and kept pacing as if determined to wear a hole through the carpet.
When no one else spoke what Lydia could see was the obvious conclusion, Isabella did it. “We’ll have to question Cooper and all the servants. Charlie’s nurse, too, and the you
nger girls’ maid if she wasn’t in the bedroom with them all evening.”
“Heavens, Isabella, why must you harp on about the servants so?” Lady Wycliffe asked.
“I think it’s a fine idea,” Mr. Buxton said. He had seemed full of a take-charge spirit moments before, but now, seated next to Diana on a loveseat with her hands enfolded in his, his face rivaled Lady Huntington’s for paleness.
Lydia examined him closely. Whoever had killed Mr. Stewart must have been at least as tall and strong as Mr. Buxton. The force required to drive a knitting needle clear through to a man’s heart had to be significant.
Although perhaps it wouldn’t be so difficult, Lydia mused, if one managed to drive the needle between the ribs. In her youth, even Lydia herself had helped her family’s cook prepare meat dishes, and surely killing a man with a knitting needle wasn’t so very different from deboning a chicken?
Abruptly, Lydia closed her eyes. Mr. Stewart was not a chicken. Moreover, the depravity necessary to murder a curate could not be compared with anything that happened in a vicarage kitchen. She knotted her fingers tightly together in her lap and tried to gain a hold on her unruly thoughts.
“It’s a horrible thing,” Mr. Buxton said, breaking the silence. “A death of this kind is shocking enough, but for the poor fellow to be Mr. Stewart…” He trailed off and shook his head.
“Did you know him?” Lady Huntington asked.
“Not well, not yet,” Mr. Buxton said. “I’ve enjoyed his sermons since being back in Derbyshire, and he was always full of generosity whenever I spoke with him after services. His reputation in the community seemed spotless.”
“It was.” Lydia’s pale fingers, laced together, reminded her eerily of the bones of a ribcage. She averted her eyes. “He was a man of astonishing decency.”
Diana gave way to another round of sobs. The sound was beginning to fray Lydia’s nerves; much as she sympathized with Diana’s emotions, listening to another person cry did not provide nearly the same relief as doing it oneself.