Rules of Murder

by Julianna Deering

“Don’t be silly,” Drew said. “What are you going on about?”

  “I saw him . . .”

  Madeline hurried up the stairs to them.

  “Shh, Anna, it’s all right,” he soothed. “Whatever it is, it’ll be all right.”

  Lights were coming on all over the house.

  “Let’s go down into the parlor and sort this all out,” Drew said, keeping his voice low.

  Dennison, in his robe and slippers, was waiting for them at the foot of the stairs. “Is there some trouble, sir?” The look in his eye was a harsh censure of the maid’s lack of decorum.

  “Everything’s all right, Denny,” Drew said. “Please go up and see to it that everyone goes back to bed. We’ll look after Anna here. She’s just had a scare.”

  “A rodent of some sort, sir?”

  “Very likely, yes.”

  “It wasn’t a rodent, Mr. Dennison,” the girl protested.

  “Thank you, Denny,” Drew said. “That will be all.”

  “Very good, sir.” Dennison bowed. “Miss.”

  Drew hurried the girls into the drawing room and shut the door. “Now, Anna, tell me exactly what you saw.”

  “I told you, Mr. Drew—I saw him! Mr. Lincoln!”

  “Don’t badger her.” Madeline helped the girl to the window seat and sat her down. “Just take your time and tell us what happened.”

  Anna took a shuddering breath. “I was finishing up the laundry, putting the linens in the upstairs bathrooms. That’s usually Beryl’s job, but she was up in the missus’s sitting room and listening to the wireless. Mr. Parker said he didn’t mind her doing it; it was what Mrs. Parker would have wanted. But I don’t know that I wouldn’t feel all peculiar-like up there now at night. I mean after, you know. It just wouldn’t seem right.”

  “So you were upstairs,” Drew prompted.

  “I was up in the back hall, putting away, like I said, and I heard something behind me. So I turned around and wasn’t anything there. So I go on, listening and not hearing anything, until I heard someone creeping about. I called out because sometimes Tessa, she does the washing up, and sometimes, bless her, she has pain all down her leg and has to walk it off before she can sleep, so I called out, ‘Tessa, is that you?’ But it wasn’t Tessa. So I called out again, ‘Is someone there?’ and the hall went dark.” Anna’s voice quavered. “Black as pitch it was, and then . . .”

  “Then . . . ?”

  “Then I saw him!” She burst into tears. “It was Mr. Lincoln, sir. I know it was.”

  Madeline slipped into the seat beside her, putting a comforting arm around the girl’s shoulders. “It’s all right, dear.”

  Drew paced in front of them. “Now be reasonable, Anna. You know it couldn’t have been Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln is dead.”

  “Oh, but I saw him, Mr. Drew. He was lurkin’ down at the end of the hallway, down by the door to the lumber room. And then . . . then he just wasn’t!”

  “Mr. Lincoln couldn’t possibly—”

  “He was lurkin’!”

  “Did you see his face?” Madeline asked.

  “Oh, no, miss. I couldn’t see his face because he didn’t have a head!”

  This brought another torrent of weeping.

  “Shhh. Don’t think about that now,” Madeline said.

  “No, you must think about it now, and sensibly.” Drew pulled a chair over and sat so he could look into the girl’s face. “If he didn’t have a head, how could you know it was Lincoln?”

  “It was because he didn’t have a head,” Anna insisted, her chin quivering. “It couldn’t be no one else, not after what was done to him in the greenhouse. And after what Mr. Peterson seen.”

  “You mean the poacher?”

  Anna sniffled. “He says poacher. There are others would say different.”

  “Did Peterson tell you more than he told me?”

  Anna dropped her eyes. “Not as such, Mr. Drew, but I could tell from what he didn’t say. He said the man was all in black. Sounds to me it could have been evening clothes. What poacher goes about in evening clothes?”

  “Just because he wore black, that doesn’t—”

  “And Mr. Peterson said he couldn’t see his face. Nor tell what color of hair he had. Well, how could he of a man without any head? And what’s a poacher doing at the greenhouse, I’m wondering, except he’s Mr. Lincoln haunting the very place he was murdered?” She shuddered. “Now we’re sure to be plagued with spirits and groanings and tappings in the night.”

  Three soft taps broke the silence, and Anna stifled a cry.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Drew.” Mrs. Devon poked her head into the room. “Mr. Dennison said I should come look after Anna, if you’ve done.”

  “Yes, I think so, Mrs. D.” Drew helped Anna to her feet. “Go along with Mrs. Devon now. We’ll see to things down here. And if you think of something you didn’t tell me about, anything at all, you come tell me right away.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Drew. Thank you, sir.”

  “Come along, dear,” Mrs. Devon said. “We’ll go and have a nice cup of tea and see if that doesn’t put things right.”

  “It was awful, just awful.” Anna clung to her as they left the room, her voice still low and frightened. “I tell you, Mrs. D, he was lurkin’.”

  Drew shut the door after them and sighed. “So much for our lovely evening out.”

  “It was still a lovely evening,” Madeline assured him, slipping her slender hand into his. “You don’t suppose she really saw something, do you?”

  “Not likely she and Peterson both dreamed it all up. Not on the same day. But we did check the house already.”

  “I can’t help feeling a little unnerved now.” Shuddering a little, she nestled against him. “I suppose poor Anna could have just imagined it after the excitement this afternoon, couldn’t she?”

  “True, she could.” He held her tightly, just for an instant, and then turned her face up to him. “Are you going to be all right on your own tonight? Shall I send Mrs. Devon to stay with you?”

  “No, that isn’t necessary. I wish . . .” She pressed her face against his shoulder, and he lifted her chin once more.

  “What did you say, darling?”

  There was an extra touch of pink in her cheeks. “Don’t think badly of me, but I . . . I wish you could stay with me. I know you shouldn’t and you can’t, but I wish you could.”

  Again he sighed. “I wish I could, too. No need to pretend otherwise. But best not play with fire, no matter how innocently it starts.”

  “I know.” She stroked her fingers down the line of his jaw. “No matter how tempting it is.”

  “Besides,” he added, “I wasn’t figuring on you discovering what a cad I am at least until our silver anniversary.”

  “You never give up, do you?”

  He grinned. “Do you want me to?”

  She laughed, but there was a touch of longing in it. “You could still see me to my door, I suppose.”

  “That I certainly can.” He tucked her arm under his. “And I can put a chair in the hall and watch it all night if you’d like.”

  “What if someone comes in through the window?”

  “Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose I’ll have to roust Nick out of his bed and get him to spend the night in the garden watching it.”

  “Where is he, anyway? I thought he’d be the first one down when Anna screamed.”

  “The man sleeps like a stone. Shall I go to his room and fetch him down?”

  She laughed. “How about I just lock the door and the window and let both of you get your sleep?”

  “Well, all right, but there’s not much thrill in that. Come on then.”

  He accompanied her upstairs, and she left him at the door with no more than a peck on the cheek and a wistful glance.

  Maddening.

  Fourteen

  The morning dawned bright and clear, and the sunshine gilded Farthering Place with a normalcy that was most welcome. The night before,
once he had made sure Madeline was securely in her room, door locked, Drew had made another search of the house. In deference to the peaceful slumber of the other residents, it wasn’t as thorough as he would have liked, but he saw no sign of anything untoward. He had even taken a peek into the lumber room at the top of the house, but it had obviously not been disturbed for some time. Not since Christmas at the very least. In the darkness, he had also managed to upset a Grecian urn on a hallway table, wake one of the footmen, and only very narrowly escape a thrashing. Once everyone’s identity was sorted out and the contrite footman had returned to his bed, Drew had gone to his own.

  Now he found himself rather eager to take Madeline into the village for Sunday services, another comfortingly ordinary event to counterbalance some of the recent unsettling goings-on at home. She had on a trig little frock made of some sort of gauzy material the color of Mrs. Beecham’s dog roses. It was modest enough, showing just a fetching curve of calf and turn of ankle over dainty pink slippers, but it was still undeniably attractive.

  Mason positively beamed as she walked between him and Drew, her arms linked in theirs, her eyes smiling up at them both.

  Drew pressed her hand and looked away from those shining eyes. She might not forgive him if it happened that he was the one to prove her well-loved uncle a liar, thief, and murderer. He might not forgive himself. But the case was such a muddle yet. There was precious little evidence against Mason or anyone else.

  The service itself was blandly forgettable. Old Bartlett, the vicar, had stumbled through the homily, expounding on a verse in the book of Revelation, the message to the church at Sardis: “I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.” Drew couldn’t really follow the tenuous connection the vicar was trying to make between the verse and his experience with fox hunting, but Madeline seemed to glean something from it. Perhaps, as she had said the night of the party, the Scripture had force in and of itself.

  He considered the possibility that someone who was thought to be alive, alive to conscience and to honor, could in actuality be dead. Who really was as he seemed to others? His father hadn’t been. Neither had Constance. And Mason?

  He glanced at Madeline as she joined in the closing hymn. No doubt she would need the stalwart assurance it promised if he were to destroy her faith in her uncle, and it was hardly likely she would turn to Drew himself for comfort under those circumstances. There had to be someone else worth suspecting, someone else with a name for honesty who was at heart a murdering scoundrel.

  “. . . thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.”

  He could think of little else over the midday meal.

  “You seem a bit off your feed, old man,” Nick observed as Drew picked at his half-eaten lamb chop. “Something on your mind?”

  “Oh, just things.” Drew forced a smile and took another bite of potato.

  “Don’t you like your nice courgettes, Mr. Drew?” Mrs. Devon asked as she cleared away the plates for the next course. “Mr. Peterson brought them in just today. You couldn’t ask for better than that.”

  “No,” Drew said, managing another smile. “No, you couldn’t.”

  “Peterson’s a good fellow,” Nick said, “and an honest man of the soil, God bless him.”

  “Hear, hear!” Mason lifted his glass in a toast, and, laughing, Madeline and Nick joined him.

  An honest man. Drew had always known the little gardener to be plainspoken and honest. He had denied meeting Lincoln, but was that strictly the truth?

  Drew decided to slip away for a quiet walk after lunch. Soon he found himself at the gardener’s cottage, a neat little thatched house with roses growing round the door. Madeline would have thought it perfect, too. Peterson ought to be finished with his Sunday dinner by now. Drew rang the bell, and soon the door opened to reveal a stocky little woman of middle age in an apron that looked as worn as she did.

  Drew removed his hat. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Peterson.”

  “Mr. Drew. What a surprise.” Mrs. Peterson turned to call to her husband. “It’s Mr. Drew from up at the house.”

  Peterson hurried to the door, struggling into his coat and smoothing down his shaggy hair.

  “Mr. Drew! Come in, sir. Come in. I was just sleeping off the Sunday roast.”

  “Sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. Peterson, but I was wondering if I might have a brief word with you.”

  “Certainly, sir. Sit yourself down. Bring the gentleman some tea, Mother.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself, Mrs. Peterson. I’ll be only a moment.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, taking Drew’s hat from him and laying it on a doily-covered side table. “I can have the kettle on in two ticks.”

  “I’m most awfully grateful, to be sure. Perhaps another time.”

  “Just as you say, sir. I’ll get back to my washing up then and leave the talk to you menfolk.”

  “Sit yourself down,” Peterson repeated, showing Drew to a faded armchair near the hearth. “Do forgive the mess. We wasn’t expecting no company.”

  He snatched up his newspaper, the only discernible mess in the spotless little room, and folded it up before seating himself in the straight-backed chair in the corner.

  “You should have sent for me to come up to you, sir, instead of coming all this way.”

  “‘All this way’ is little more than across the back lawn,” Drew said, smiling. “I don’t like to bother you on a Sunday, but I really must ask you about something, and I hope you won’t think it impertinent of me.”

  “Don’t suppose I’ll know till I’m asked, will I, sir?”

  “I suppose not.” Drew was glad for the other man’s good humor and hated the prospect of spoiling it. Well, there was nothing for it but to ask. “I’d like you to tell me about Opal.”

  Peterson’s expression turned solemn, guarded. “What do you want to know?”

  “Where is she, for a start.”

  “I dunno. She left home over a year ago. Not a word since.”

  “Why did she go?”

  Peterson made a disgusted, huffing sort of sound. “Who knows with girls today? Nothing’s ever good enough for them. They have to be swanning up to London and heaven knows where with bobbed hair and skirts hardly long enough for a child of six and faces painted up like circus clowns. She went because she wanted to is all I know. Said she fancied taking up the stage. Takes her fine ways from the cinema nowadays, I expect. Can’t look like a decent girl no more. Now it’s got to be Greeta Garbo and Marilyn Dietrich and that brassy Harlow girl or that Lucy Lucette having everybody chasing about looking for her. Well, if they find her, they can have her, I say, and welcome. And Opal as well.”

  “I understand she was friends with Mr. Lincoln awhile back.”

  Peterson shrugged. “Might have been. All I know is she never talked about who she went with, not to me. She certainly never brought him home to supper like any respectable girl would do.”

  “Did they quarrel?”

  “I wouldn’t know. All I know is she were moping about for a week or two, then she were off. Not so much as good luck and goodbye to them as raised her all these years.”

  “You may as well tell him the truth, Arwel. He’s sure to find it out in time.” Mrs. Peterson stood slump-shouldered in the doorway to the kitchen, the platter from her best tea service wet and shining in her hands, along with a dish towel to dry it. “What’s done is done.”

  “I can’t tell you much more anyhow, Mr. Drew.” Peterson’s voice was suddenly humble. “Girls are such silly creatures, and no amount of warning seems to keep them out of mischief. Yes, she were walking out with Lincoln. I told her it warn’t no more than a fancy of his that wouldn’t last the month, but she wouldn’t hear it. Well, I were wrong about that. It were nearly three month before he went his way, but not before he’d ruined her for good and all.”

  “And she went up to London after that?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And she
never brought him home to meet you?”

  “No. Thought she might once, but he never turned up. The roast were burnt black.”

  Drew nodded and then turned to Mrs. Peterson. “Pardon my asking, but I must know. Because of the case, you see. Was she . . . was she in trouble?”

  Tears sprang to the woman’s dull eyes. “No, thank God. She would have told me, I know she would. But I thought she would come back by now. Or at least write.” She made a little sobbing noise, and Peterson went over and put his arm about his wife’s shoulders.

  “Now, Mother, buck up. Buck up. If she’s decided to go on, we’d ought to let her be. We can’t make her stay forever.”

  “I know, I know.” She blotted her face with her dish towel and then took an uneven breath and dredged up a quavering smile. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Drew. I shouldn’t let things get the better of me, I know I shouldn’t.”

  “Not at all. Not at all. I must beg your pardon for bringing up such a painful subject.” Drew stood and took her hand, the one holding the dish towel. “If there’s any way I can be of help, Mrs. Peterson, do let me know. Promise?”

  She closed her eyes, nodding a few times, and made a little curtsy. “It’s too good of you, Mr. Drew, I’m sure.”

  “We’ll see to our own, sir,” Peterson said. “No need to trouble yourself, but thank you.”

  Drew picked up his hat from the tiny side table. “Well, if there’s nothing more then—to do with the case, I mean—I suppose I’ll be off.”

  Mrs. Peterson’s eyes filled with tears once again. “You don’t think our Opal would have anything to do with murder, do you, Mr. Drew?”

  “No, no,” Drew assured her. “Not in the least. I just had to know about Lincoln, you see? If we know the sort of man he was, we’re more likely to find out why he was killed and by whom.”

  “Oh, yes, of course.” She sniffed and blotted her face again. “You . . . you won’t be telling anything about this, will you, sir? I mean, to anyone not in need of knowing. I don’t mean the police and such, if they were to ask.”

  “You may rely on me, to be sure.”

  “Mr. Drew,” Peterson said, “as you’re here, I’d like to show you something as might be of interest down to the shed.”