by Rebecca King
Myles sighed and threw his cousin a dark glare.
Beatrice didn’t blink. Instead, she began to butter her toast as she shook her head sadly.
“So, you have resorted to clubbing them and bringing them home now, have you?” she murmured with a rueful sigh.
Barnabas snorted, and lifted his broadsheet so nobody could see his face.
Myles glared at his aunt balefully.
“It was an accident, and too dark to see until it was too late,” he argued.
Beatrice laughed out loud. “Oh, dear, that is good even for you, dearest,” she murmured and threw Estelle a sly look. “When Barnabas told you to go out and find a wife, he didn’t mean hunt one down and drag her home on the roof of your carriage, my dear. This is the great outdoors, I’ll grant you, but you need to have a little finesse. No wonder she looks a little dazed.”
Estelle fought a smile and took a sip of the steaming tea at her elbow while she composed herself.
Myles felt his cheeks heat, and struggled to contain his grin. He shook his head but refrained from answering.
“Running her over and dragging her home, I ask you,” she chortled.
“It was an accident, alright?,” he replied in exasperation. “I brought her here because she was injured.”
“Where did it happen?” she asked nobody in particular.
“In the village,” Myles replied without thinking.
Beatrice grinned even more. “You mean, you ran her over in the village and brought her here because she was injured?”
“Yes,” Myles hissed.
“When you ran over her in the village?”
“Yes.”
“The village that has a doctor in it?” She smothered a laugh and lifted the heavily buttered toast as she pushed away from the table. She wagged a finger in Myles’ face and began to hum the wedding march as she turned toward the door. Before she left she levelled a rueful look on Estelle, who was struggling to hide her astonishment, and winked. “Brace yourself, my dear. Welcome to the mad house.”
As if to emphasise her sentiments, a scream suddenly ricocheted through the house.
“Good Lord, who in the devil’s name is that?” Barnabas growled as he shoved away from the table.
Isaac and Myles launched to their feet. Estelle’s appetite disappeared in an instant as she watched the men race toward the door. Aware that she was going to be left alone in the room at any second, she stood up and hurried after them.
“Stay close,” Isaac warned her gently.
Myles heard his cousin’s overt worry for Estelle and threw him a warning look. The possessiveness that hit him upon witnessing Isaac’s concern over her made him scowl in bad temper, more at himself than Isaac. He should be the one to look after her because he was the reason she was in the house in the first place. But now wasn’t the time to raise the issue, not when such a cacophony was ensuing somewhere in the deeper regions of the upper floor from the sound of it.
“Where in the devil is it coming from?” Barnabas called as he ran down the hallway.
“Upstairs somewhere,” Myles replied, overtaking his father to race up the stairs two steps at a time. On his way, he threw Isaac a glare and pointed to Estelle. “Stay with her.”
“Oh, do shut up,” Beatrice cried as she hurried after Barnabas and Myles, albeit in a rather more sedate fashion. “Doesn’t she know what time it is?”
Nobody answered her. The sound of booted feet running along the hallway upstairs drew everyone’s attention. Myles and Barnabas paused at the top of the stairs and watched a frazzled looking Cranbury appear, heavily panting, before them.
“S-sir, come quickly. There’s been a murder,” the man gasped before he raced away again.
Myles threw a look at his father and, Estelle temporarily forgotten, ran for the source of the unrelenting screams.
CHAPTER TEN
The closer he drew to the sound of the hideous wailing, the more Myles’ stomach sank. As soon as he turned into the corridor he knew who the maid was crying over. Once inside the room, he forcibly turned the hysterical maid away from the cause of her distress and shoved her roughly toward Cranbury.
“Get her downstairs and into the kitchen, and calm her down a bit,” he ordered. “Just make sure she stops that noise.”
Myles then turned to face the body, only vaguely aware of his father in the doorway.
“Is he-?” Barnabas gasped, his chest heaving with exertion.
Myles studied the polished handle of the knife sticking out of Gerald’s back and nodded jerkily. “Dead. Yes, I am afraid so.”
Even so, he knelt beside the body and felt for a pulse. Although Gerald’s body was still warm there was no sign of life.
“Murdered?” Barnabas murmured blankly, unable to comprehend the evidence before him. “Gerald?”
“It looks like it,” Myles whispered. “I doubt he did this to himself.”
He closed his mouth with a snap when he realised his father didn’t deserve his sarcasm, especially when he had just found his brother dead. Heaving a sigh, he scowled at the door, his thoughts on Isaac and Estelle, who hovered just outside.
“What is it?” Isaac asked when Myles appeared in the doorway.
Isaac took one look at Myles' face and pushed his way into the room. He stared at his father for several silent seconds. While Isaac absorbed the import of what had happened, Myles beckoned to Estelle. He didn’t want her to witness the gruesomeness of the bedroom but didn’t want her outside in her hallway by herself either. He tried to reassure himself that when she reached him, he drew her against his side in case she was upset. In reality, she brought about calmness to his shaken world he desperately needed.
“It’s my uncle, Gerald,” he whispered.
“I am sorry,” she murmured softly. She tried to keep her gaze away from the body but was drawn to look at it anyway. One glance was all it took. She closed her eyes on it with a shudder and stepped closer to Myles’ reassuring presence. “Is there anything I can do?”
Myles shook his head. “I don’t think so. It is too late for anybody to save him.”
Estelle nodded. There was not much else she could say right now. To utter inane platitudes was awkward given she hadn’t met Gerald before, and therefore didn’t know him. What could one say when the body had a knife sticking out of his back?
Silence fell amongst the grief-stricken while everyone came to terms with the tragic events of the morning. In the end, it was Isaac who broke the growing tension.
“Who would do this?” he hissed. His fists were tightly clenched; a testament to his rage. He kept his back turned to everyone and surreptitiously wiped his eyes before he turned to stare out of the window while he tried to control his anger and grief.
“Damn it,” Barnabas cried when Isaac couldn’t continue. “Why? Why would anybody want to do something like this?”
“I don’t know,” Myles replied, for the first time in his life completely lost for words. “I don’t understand.”
Barnabas slumped onto the edge of the bed, his face as blank as his emotions. He stared down at Gerald’s lifeless body, his thoughts locked on the mysterious letters everyone had received that had lured them to the house.
“If only he hadn’t answered it,” he murmured sadly.
Myles looked at him. “Answered what?”
“The letter.”
Myles froze and stared at him.
Isaac whirled around and glared at his uncle, his face a mix of confused emotions changed his classical features constantly between gut-wrenching grief to wild-eyed fury supported by a wary glaze of confusion.
“If someone has brought us all together to pick us off one by one then they are going to have a fight on their hands,” Isaac seethed. “How could anybody do this?”
“I don’t know,” Barnabas murmured, his voice hardening. “But we will find out.”
“Look at him! He has been murdered,” Isaac shouted. Suddenly, a thought popped into his hea
d. His eyes widened as he stared at his uncle. “They have to still be in this house somewhere, don’t they?” he whispered.
Myles opened his mouth to speak but was prevented from saying anything when Isaac turned spiteful eyes on Estelle. “You are a new face here.”
Myles stepped forward. “Now, it isn’t fair to cast aspersions without facts,” he snapped.
“I will damned well cast any aspersions I want to, cousin, especially seeing that nothing like this has ever happened to anyone in this house before. This woman turns up and suddenly one of us dies. It’s a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
Estelle began to shake her head but didn’t get the chance to speak before Myles stepped in to defend her.
“Estelle was knocked over by me last night, Isaac. I ran her over with my curricle. She got chased out of the Whispering Woods by some people in cloaks,” Myles explained. “You know that.”
“Did you send the letters?” Barnabas interrupted.
Isaac glared at him, outraged at such a preposterous idea. “Of course I bloody didn’t. What the Hell do you take me for?”
“Well, someone sent them. I certainly didn’t, and neither did Myles seeing as he got drawn back here all the way from London. Beatrice had plans as well so she couldn’t have sent them,” Barnabas explained. “So did your father, so he wouldn’t have sent them either. That leaves you.”
“Estelle wasn’t anywhere near the house and has been injured herself. She is here because it isn’t safe for her to be in the village,” Myles said but was unsure who he was talking to because Isaac wasn’t listening, and Barnabas and Estelle knew that already.
“We have to assume that someone wanted Myles and Beatrice back for a reason, most probably the same reason they wanted Gerald here as well,” Barnabas warned. “Unfortunately, that makes you suspicious, Isaac. You knew what everyone’s plans were because we all talked about them the week before last as a matter of fact.”
“Don’t be so bloody ridiculous,” Isaac snorted, the contempt in his voice leaving nobody in any doubt as to his sentiments.
“I am not accusing you,” Barnabas hastened to add when the look in Isaac’s face became coldly furious. “I am just suggesting that everyone in this house could look suspicious if one considers them too closely. Now, I agree that Estelle’s appearance today does look convenient given what has happened but we need to look at everybody, including the servants, not just a few.”
Isaac opened his mouth to argue but knew his uncle was right. “He is my father,” he lamented after several moments of silence. “I don’t understand it.”
“We will find out who did this,” Myles assured him. “Storm or not they will go to Bodmin.”
Isaac glared at him with dazed eyes. “But how? How do we go about finding out who stabbed my father in the back? What a cowardly thing to do. I mean, fighting with someone is one thing. Doing something reckless with your own life is another. But to stab someone while their back is turned is the most cowardly act of spite I think I have ever known.”
“I agree, but there are more of us than them, and I use the term ‘them’ meaning one person as opposed to two or maybe three,” Barnabas warned.
“It is also safe to say that whoever did this could still be in the house,” Myles warned.
“We need to search it.” Isaac stormed across the room and almost reached the door, but Myles stopped him.
“You two go, I will stay here with the body,” Barnabas sighed. He wanted to stop them from going, just so he knew everyone was safe, but common sense prevailed. The house had to be searched and there were no fitter or more capable men that Isaac and Myles. “Just stay safe. I don’t want any more deaths in this house.”
“Lock yourself in and don’t answer the door to anybody,” Myles ordered.
Before he left both he and Isaac scoured the room for clues. Once he was assured there was nobody lurking beneath the bed or in the adjoining dressing room, Myles turned to leave. “You need to come with us,” he said to Estelle.
“Yes, stay with us,” Isaac murmured.
There was something in his eyes that warned Estelle he still didn’t believe she was innocent. She almost hoped they would find the killer because it would then prove her innocence. However, she also began to pray that they wouldn’t find anybody. She didn’t want to come face to face with someone that cold-blooded.
“Alright,” she replied quietly.
Keeping her gaze averted from the body, she turned to the door and stepped back out into the hallway. Once there, she waited for Myles and Isaac to join her. She didn’t want to go with them but if it helped to prove her innocence then she would. It hurt, more than she cared to admit, that Myles might think her capable of such a dastardly crime as murder. If accompanying him on a tour of the house in search of the real culprit helped ease his doubts about her then she would do it.
Besides, if you are honest, you want to stay with Myles, a small voice warned her, and she knew it was right.
Estelle jumped nervously when the lock on the door clicked quietly behind them. She tugged her shawl tighter around her shoulders with a shiver. To her disappointment, Myles didn’t slide an arm around her waist like he had in the bed chamber. Instead, he issued her with a stern look.
“Don’t wander off. I don’t like taking you with us but there is nowhere else you can be safe right now,” Myles warned.
Isaac hissed a frustrated breath through his teeth. Myles glared at him.
“I know you think she did it but consider the facts, Isaac. Estelle couldn’t possibly know our whereabouts to get those letters to us, could she? Besides, I am sure someone could confirm she was in the village only yesterday, so she couldn’t have been in Crosskey, or London where those letter’s arrived.”
Isaac didn’t look convinced but didn’t argue any further. He issued Estelle a menacing glare that warned her of dire consequences if she didn’t follow his instructions to the letter.
Estelle wanted to protest her innocence but suspected she was just going to make a bad situation worse still, and so wisely remained silent.
Cranbury chose that moment to appear at the end of the hallway, his face a mask of uncertainty and worry.
“Call the staff together and keep them together. Someone is responsible for this. Nobody enters or leaves this house, do you understand? I want this house locked tightly until we can find out who did this,” Myles instructed; his voice harsh.
Cranbury nodded and wordlessly hurried off to carry out his instructions to the letter. Myles knew the whole house would be thrown into chaos but, as far as he could see that was good because it meant everyone would be increasingly vigilant and would question anything that was even the slightest bit unusual from now on. He wanted them to contemplate where they had been this morning, and what each other had done. That way, if anybody had seen something but not really considered it all that important they might tell someone, and the culprit would be found sooner.
“This is a big house,” Estelle said. “How do we search it?”
“We start at the top and work down,” Isaac snapped.
“Look, I know you are upset about what has happened but don’t take it out on our guest. Estelle is, just like everyone else, innocent until proven guilty and, as such, is to be considered a guest in this house, just as you are, Isaac. I would ask you to behave with better decorum. A lapse in manners in whatever circumstance is unacceptable,” Myles warned darkly.
It was the first time he had ever dressed his cousin down in such a way. He regretted it, especially in front of a guest, but it had to be done. He ignored the niggling doubt which began to form in the back of his mind that Isaac had a point, and turned toward his cousin.
“We all stay together while we do this. If you don’t think you can be civil, go back to your room, close the door, and stay there. I am sure you will hear the commotion if we find somebody,” he ordered.
“I am coming too,” Isaac argued.
“Just
don’t do anything rash if we find somebody,” Myles warned. “They need to go to prison for this. As far as I am concerned they can swing from the hangman’s gibbet.”
“Well, we won’t find them standing here in the hallway, now will we?”
“Wouldn’t it be better to start to search downstairs?” Estelle murmured suddenly.
She hated to interrupt, especially when tensions were running so high, but the words burst forth before she could stop them. “I mean, if someone committed such a heinous crime, wouldn’t their instinct be to run for freedom? They would go downstairs and try to get out of the house, wouldn’t they?”
Myles shook his head. “I can understand your logic, Estelle, but we are trapped here. Whoever killed Gerald only had to look out of the window this morning to know that.”
“So they trapped themselves here as well?” Estelle frowned. She shivered and looked about her warily.
Myles took great comfort from what he suspected was her instinctive response. He shared a look with Isaac, who had also seen her fear, and softened his stance.
“So he, or she, could do it again?” she whispered, her voice full of trepidation.
“I am afraid so,” Myles sighed.
“We need to be armed,” Isaac said. Now that he had started to calm down a bit, logic had resurfaced and he realised just how foolish he had been. To wander off into the darkest corners of the house to find a murderer with no way to defend himself was tantamount to suicide.
“Let’s go and get the guns out of my study. Then we can start to search,” Myles suggested, in no way eager to search the house unarmed himself.
“I think we need to g-”
“Look, while we are talking the killer is hiding,” Myles interrupted. “We need to get this done, and quickly before someone else is killed. Because all of the staff are downstairs, we need to search the empty rooms at the top of the house and then work our way down. When we have searched downstairs we can then start to question the staff and find out where everyone was this morning.”
Thankfully, nobody else argued so they made their way down to his study to arm themselves with a weapon each and a pocket of shot.