“He married again, though, didn’t he?”
Mrs. Lewis’s face hardened. “That Cynthia is another story. I don’t know what made him marry her, and I don’t want to know. He had the local doctor deliver her rather than deal with her himself, and — She stopped. “The less said about that, the better.”
“What made her an invalid?” Lisa was scrubbing the big wooden table, and suddenly her mind flickered to another wooden table with dark stains on it. She felt cold. Where had she seen it? Try as she might, no more would come.
“She was feeling so sorry for herself,” Mrs. Lewis was saying, “that she took to her bed, though I wouldn’t have said the baby meant that much to her. If you’re to be a companion to her, you’ll find out all you want to know and more, soon enough.”
“He doesn’t sound as if he even likes her.”
“The doctor doesn’t suffer fools easily. He can’t toss her out to sink or swim, which might be the saving of her, so there she sits, a great greedy lump, no good to anyone.” They turned off the lamps in the kitchen and dining room. Mrs. Lewis said she would check to see if everyone was upstairs and turn off the other downstairs lights. She handed Lisa a holder with an unlit candle.
“That’s in case you want to get up in the night.”
So Mrs. Lewis thought she would be wandering around at night, did she? She wasn’t one of Eric’s town sluts, to rush to his bed at first opportunity. As she climbed the stairs she could see the light was out in the upper hall, and she wished she had lit the candle.
“Lisa!” Eric’s whisper came out of the darkness.
“For heaven’s sake, Eric, what are you — ”
She was cut off by his mouth on hers, warm, insistent. Without thinking, she responded, allowing him to pull her against him. She became very aware of the feel of him, of his hand on her breast.
“Come on,” he whispered urgently, pulling her down the hall.
She set her heels. “No. Let go, Eric, I’m not going to fall into your bed like all the others. Let me go!”
Eric swore. “Dammit, I’m not trying to rape you. You know I love you.”
“I know nothing of the kind. If I ever make love with you, it’s not going to be by sneaking around in the middle of the night.”
“Oh damn! Here comes Mrs. L. Goodnight, love,” and he was gone.
She felt her way along the dark hall to her door and entered. Amy had lit the fire much earlier, and the glowing coals left produced enough light so that she undressed without needing the candle. She didn’t even think of Eric before dropping into the darkness of a deep sleep.
The next morning was dappled with scudding clouds from the rain that had come during the night. Lisa came downstairs early, but found the remains of the men’s breakfast that they had left to go to the stables.
“Well?” Mrs. Priddy eyed her in a none too friendly fashion when she went to the kitchen to get her own meal.
“I just want a couple of eggs and some bread to cook for my breakfast,” she ventured.
“Hmpf! Well, at least you’re not too good to do for yourself, my lass,” Priddy said grudgingly.
“Mrs. Priddy, I’m no happier about my position in this house than you are, I’ll have you know. But I can’t go back to the farm, and Aunt Sarah’s niece Hallie hasn’t room for me. So here I am, and lucky to have a place to lay my head. If I can make myself useful, I shall.”
“No call to go on so.” Mrs. Priddy capitulated entirely. “Ay don’t go along with wat they be saying in the village, or Ay’d be gone along with the rest of them.”
“Thank you,” Lisa said with feeling as she put the eggs on to boil. “I’ll not soon forget this, Mrs. Priddy.”
She was sitting at the kitchen table having a second cup of tea with Priddy when Mrs. Lewis came in with a piece of clothing over her arm. “Since none of the ladies in this house ride, there isn’t even a sidesaddle, but here is a divided skirt of Carrie’s she brought when she first came here with Mr. Stephens and they used to walk.”
Down at the stables she found the little black mare Twinkle saddled for her.
“I don’t know about your riding astride,” Eric said with a worried look. “Have you ever ridden before?”
“I think I can manage,” she said sweetly. “Why shouldn’t I ride astride?”
Eric shuffled his feet and for once was at a loss. Jarrell gave a snort of laughter. “Well, Eric? Aren’t you going to tell her she’s going to have irrepressible sexual desires if she sits astride that horse?”
Eric turned red. “Well, I always heard ... ” He trailed off in complete confusion.
“Why, Eric Jarrell, I declare I think you’re sweet to be so concerned.” Her sugary tones turned to outright amusement. “If it were all that simple, don’t you think riding would be more popular with the ladies? Only a man could think up such a lot of drivel.”
Jarrell laughed out loud and neatly mounted Cleo as she danced impatiently nearby. Eric came toward Lisa to help her up, but she mounted the mare as if she had been bareback and had her feet in the stirrups before Eric had time even to approach her. Even Jarrell looked surprised.
Lisa smiled demurely. “Eric, dear, do you suppose you could mount your horse so we can get started?”
Eric suddenly smiled hugely, leapt on Christian, and they trotted out of the stable yard, Christian prancing sideways as was his way at the beginning of a ride. Lisa found Twinkle to have a tender mouth and even gaits. After the giant, half-trained draft horses, she was a joy to ride, quick-footed and responsive.
Once on the road, they broke the horses into a steady, ground-eating canter. The wind off the heather, still damp from the night’s rain, was fresh and soft, and a multitude of birds could be heard celebrating the morning. Lisa could not stay sad, with the heath about her and a good horse under her. She felt a sense of freedom that came close to floating, and she wanted the ride to go on forever. As long as she cantered down the soft dirt track, partially grown with grass in places, she was safe. The bereavement, the fear, the suspicions, the uncertainty as to her future, all were left behind.
All too soon they came to Toby’s farm, where Annie, gaunter than ever, came out to meet them.
“Annie, I’m so sorry Rob’s dead. He was always good to us,” Lisa said.
“God’s will,” Annie replied. “Ay’m sorry as well about John and Sary. They was good folk and didna deserve such. Those be false and cruel tales they be carrying in the village. Happen you’d not ’ave found us a day or so later. Ay no would feel safe alone ’ere, and the two of us couldn’t never make it go.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Ay’m going ter my sister in Dunwiddleston till Ay kin find sommat ter do, and Toby, ’e’s going ter the granite quarries.”
Lisa’s indrawn breath was a protest. Men aged fast in the quarries, and what chance would a simple boy like Toby have?
“Mrs. Murray,” Jarrell said, “what would you think of Toby’s coming to work at Hartsite? We need someone to see to the horses, and Lisa says he’s good with them.”
Annie turned and called toward the barn, “Toby! They want ter talk ter you!”
Toby appeared from behind the barn, a mallet in his hand.
“ ’E was putting the wheel on the cart. We’ll sell horse and cart in the village when we’ve took our things there,” Annie explained.
Jarrell got off Cleo and threw the reins to Toby. “Get on her,” he said.
Toby let her sniff his hand, then rubbed her neck while crooning to her in a low voice. She butted her head against him. Then she stood dead still while he gathered the reins in one hand and vaulted on her, walking her off. They trotted, cantered, then walked again, Cleo arching her neck and playing with the bit against the light pull of the reins.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Jarrell muttered. “Even Eric can’t do as well with her.” He turned to Annie. “Well?” he asked. “Would he work for us in spite of the bastard children, abortions, illici
t lovers, and murderers within our walls?”
“Ay never paid no mind ter all that talk,” she said simply. “Folk with nothing ter to have busy tongues. Ay’ve known Lisa ’ere since she were a little tike, and she were allus good ter Toby when most ’ad no use fer ’im. She never kilt nobody,” Annie ended firmly.
“And you, Mrs. Murray?” Jarrell asked. “How would you like to work for us as well?”
“ ’Appen that’d be all right,” she answered calmly, though Lisa knew how much the offer meant to her, to be independent instead of a drag on her sister, who barely made ends meet as it was.
When Toby had dismounted, Lisa ran up and threw her arms around him. “Oh Toby, I’m so glad! You and Annie are like family, and you’re all I’ve got left. When can you come?”
“We can be there tonight,” Annie said. “There’s nothing keeping us ’ere.”
Eric was scowling, but Jarrell said, “You can keep your horse at Hartsite if you don’t want to sell him. We don’t have a horse for heavy hauling, and if we can use him from time to time, it will pay his keep.”
“Dr. Jarrell,” Lisa said. “Would you mind if we went to the farm again as long as we’re this close? I know you said you’d see to the animals, but I’m worried about Tommy. Could I take him back with me if we can find him?”
“I had all the stock moved to a farm near Dunwiddleston until you decide what you want done with them. The farm is leased land, so there’s no problem about that. I doubt anyone bothered with the cat, though. Certainly we can go if you like.”
At the lane she couldn’t help expecting Tippy to come barking out with his tail wagging. She put the thought firmly out of her mind. Already the stone buildings looked desolate, and grass was springing up in the yard.
“Is there anything you want from the house while you’re here?” Jarrell asked.
She shook her head. “It would only remind me of how they died. I don’t even want to go in the house. If Hallie wants any of it, she’s welcome.”
Lisa went down to the barn and called Tommy. At first she was afraid she was going to have to leave him, but at the last minute he came bounding across the field of rye stubble and rubbed against her legs, purring.
“Poor old thing, you’ve missed people, haven’t you?” she asked him, picking him up in her arms.
She handed him to Jarrell, who spoke to him and rubbed him under the jaw when he tried to get away, none too sure he liked being on a horse with a strange man. She took him back after she mounted and they set off for home. If only, she thought, every day could hold such simple, satisfying solutions to problems.
Nonetheless, she wondered what the police were doing.
6
Mrs. Lewis met them on the drive once more. “The police are here. They want to talk to Eric and Lisa.”
“I’ll get off here,” Lisa said, “and they can begin with me.” She handed Tommy to Mrs. Lewis and got down from Twinkle, giving her reins to Jarrell.
The men stood when she entered the drawing room. “This ’ere is Detective-Inspector Wren from Burresford, Miss.’E ’as sommat to ask you,” Ames began.
Wren was a large, bulky man with a bald head that he wiped often with his handkerchief. He had shrewd blue eyes that seemed to dissect whatever they lit upon and a rather charming smile.
“Why don’t we go out on the back terrace?” Lisa suggested. “Unless you’ll be too cold, that is.”
When they were settled, looking out over the large garden that all but masked the stables beyond, Wren cleared his throat. “There are a couple of points I’d like to go over with you, Miss Price. To begin with, neighbors of Henry and Harriet Price state that the night of your accident you ran out of the shop pursued by Price. He called out to stop you, and said that you were a thief. Estimated times vary, but apparently that was before ten o’clock. And that was the last anyone saw of the Prices. The horse race that resulted in your being knocked down took place at 11:30. What we want to find out is what happened during that hour and a half.”
“I’ve told you, I don’t know,” Lisa shook her head.
Young Jarrell arrived for the race around 11:20, but before that he was not seen in any of the taverns around after nine o’clock, when the bet was made. He said he had to sober up a bit and get his horse. We know he got his horse a little after eleven, which leaves the period from nine to eleven unaccounted for.”
“You’ll have to ask Eric that,” Lisa said.
“Ah, but I’m asking you now. Could you and Mr. Jarrell have spent that time together? You parted company rather violently with the Prices; wouldn’t it have been natural for you to return with Mr. Jarrell at least to get your belongings?”
“I don’t remember,” Lisa said woodenly.
“Well, I remember very well,” Eric said as he came out on the terrace, “and I never saw this girl before she landed on the street in front of me during the race.”
“Then you wouldn’t mind telling us what you did with your time between nine and eleven of that night.”
“I was very drunk, but no so drunk I didn’t know that to race in that condition would be foolish. I went down to the river and tried to walk it off, dousing my face with water from time to time.”
“You didn’t see anyone there?”
“Not a soul. It was raining if you’ll remember, and I came back soaking wet. Only a drunk or a fool would have been out walking around in it. It had stopped by the time I got back.”
Wren looked thoughtfully at Eric for a moment. “There has almost surely been foul play where the Prices are concerned. The cash box was open and empty and lying on the counter. The neighbors said he was beside himself when the girl here got away; but that as far as they knew, the two of them went back inside the shop, him puffing and wheezing badly, and that they never left again. We’ve searched the premises and can find no trace of them outside of the blood in the storeroom. Our next move is to do some digging around where John and Sarah Price were buried. If that yields nothing, then we’ll be coming here.”
“Why are you so sure I had anything to do with it?” Eric demanded “I never laid eyes on Lisa in my life before that race.”
“It’s been my experience, Mr. Jarrell,” Wren said, wiping his head with his handkerchief, “that coincidences are truly very rare in real life. For instance, you both say you’ve only spoken to each other for a few days since the girl regained full consciousness, and yet you are on a fond, first-name basis. You were both seen in Burresford the night Henry Price and his wife disappeared, and you, Mr. Jarrell, could have gone out to John Price’s farm after returning here.”
“I should be angry,” Eric said calmly, his eyes a flat grey as hard as slate, “but the whole business is so ludicrous I can’t take it seriously. I never met John and Sarah Price, nor even knew they existed.”
“And Henry and Harriet Price?”
“Nor they either.”
Wren sighed. “We’ve a good deal more footwork to do, I can see that. What’s needed is to put Mr. Jarrell in the neighborhood of the Prices’ shop and to give him a motive, which is where we think the young lady here comes into it.”
“Then I’m sure you’ve lots to do, and I know we’ve lots to do, so good day to you both,” Eric said levelly.
Wren looked at him expressionlessly for a moment, then put on his hat and left around the house by the drive, trailed by an uncomfortable Ames. Eric and Lisa heard the horse and buggy start up from the side of the house where they had been hitched, and the sound of clopping hoofs gradually became swallowed by distance.
“I don’t like it,” Jarrell said at the dinner table shortly after Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Stephens had already eaten, so the three of them had the dining room to themselves. Priddy had outdone herself with a roast of pork basted with a tangy sauce whose ingredients Lisa couldn’t even guess at. There were apples roasted with cinnamon on the side. Priddy had never learned to cook like that in Dunwiddleston, Lisa thought. She wondered whether it had been Mrs. Lew
is or Mrs. Stephens who had trained her.
“But how can he possibly prove what never happened?” Eric asked confidently.
“Wren seems like anything but a stupid man,” Jarrell replied. “What I don’t like is his telling you exactly where his case is weak. He had a reason for doing it, and I wish I knew what it was.”
Lisa was not so far removed from her harsher, earlier life that she didn’t relish the food, but the two men might as well have been eating gruel for all the attention they paid to it. Eric might have resented Jarrell bitterly at times, but he turned to him readily enough for advice, she noted.
“Oh, he was just thinking out loud,” Eric said casually.
“You don’t get to be a detective inspector by thinking out loud to those you hope to catch,” Jarrell snapped. “Now once and for all, Eric, tell the truth. Were you or weren’t you where the police would like to place you?”
“I don’t even know where the blasted people lived, so how do I know if I was near there or not?”
“Well, God help you both if you were together in Burresford and won’t admit it. Someone is sure to have seen you.”
Lisa suddenly lost her appetite. She looked at Eric, who was playing with a piece of apple on his plate. He grinned. “If I had, you can be sure Lisa would have remembered it.”
Even Jarrell laughed. “There’s nothing we can do about any of it at the moment,” he observed, “so we’ll just have to wait and see. Lisa, how would you like to meet Cynthia this afternoon?”
Jarrell took Lisa upstairs after dinner to a part of the house she had never seen before. “That is my room.” He indicated a closed door. “And that is Cynthia’s.”
He knocked, then opened the door without waiting for an answer. On a large bed with a white ruffled canopy and a green counterpane lay one of the fattest women Lisa had ever seen. She had on a tent-like yellow nightgown with long sleeves, but her moon face, with its two little eyes buried in fat, sat on a neck that was nothing but tolls of blubber. She had long blonde hair that was really quite beautiful, but it looked almost obscene on the obese creature.
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