“My dear Mrs Huntly!” he cried, bounding across the room in four or five long strides, and bending to one knee at Annie’s feet. She offered him her hand and he took it in both his own, holding it for several long seconds. “I came the instant I heard. This is the most appalling news! He was perfectly well when the Vestry broke up yesterday afternoon, quite his usual self, and now— It is hard to believe. Is it true? He is dead… murdered?”
She nodded. The concern in his eyes, the warmth of his hand, the horror in his voice… in some strange way, these woke her from her stupor more effectively than the soft words and gentle restraint of Judith and Mr Popham and the servants. Yes, he was dead. He had been murdered. Some wicked person had attacked him for unfathomable reasons.
“Why would anyone do such a thing?” she said.
“Why indeed?” he said, his face filled with bewilderment. “Was it a footpad? A highwayman? Was anything stolen from him?”
“I cannot say. Sir Leonard did not mention such a thing. He was shot. In the chest. That is all I know.”
Judith said, “His purse was still in his pocket, and his watch, according to Sheffield, the valet. He has been sitting beside his master’s body all night. He is very distressed, poor man, although that may only be because he must now find a new employer.”
“Tell him that I shall write him a good reference, and pay him his year’s salary, if that is worrying him,” Adam said. “I am sure Mrs Huntly will allow him to stay here until he has secured a new place. I will ask around, and see if I might hear of something for him.” He rose and pulled a chair nearer to Annie. “It is a disappointment to hear that there was no robbery.”
“Why so?” Annie said, rather startled.
“Because the alternatives are worse,” Adam said. “If the cause was not robbery, then it must have been a personal matter — revenge or a quarrel of some sort. Or else some madman is going about the countryside shooting people at random. Either option is worrying.”
“It could have been a robbery that went wrong,” Annie said tentatively. “Perhaps someone pointed a gun at Mr Huntly and ordered him to hand over his purse, and Mr Huntly refused.”
“As he very well might have done. He was not a man to submit tamely,” Adam said. “One might imagine the scene — there was a struggle, the gun went off and the would-be robber ran away in a panic.”
“Surely it must be so,” Annie said. “Who would kill Mr Huntly by intent? No one has a reason to want him dead.”
Adam started to say something, but then clamped his mouth firmly shut. Annie had never seen him like this before, anxious and uncertain. He had always seemed such a jolly, almost flippant person, but beneath the frivolity was a sensible, not to say serious, young man. How old was he? Younger than her husband, certainly. Perhaps about her own age. How strange it was that her mind should wonder about that now! Her husband lay dead in his own bed, and she was concerning herself with trivia. She should be praying for her husband, and considering her own future.
“What will happen now?” she said, frowning.
“There will be a funeral, and the reading of Rupert’s will,” Adam said. “Have you notified his solicitor?”
Annie shook her heard. “I have no idea who that is.”
“The name will be amongst his papers. A bill or a letter, most likely. We should have a look for the will itself, too. He might keep it here.”
“Mr Popham mentioned the funeral, but I have no idea what to do,” Annie said.
“Of course you have not,” Adam said gently. “Mr Popham should not have mentioned such a thing to you. You may look to me to settle such matters, as Rupert’s nearest male relative.”
“Of course,” Annie said. “Thank you. But… but what will happen to me now? Must I leave here? Go back to my uncle?” Her heart sank at the prospect. To return to Guildford and become the poor relation again, just when she thought she had secured her future… it did not bear thinking about. She would spend the rest of her life counting bottles in the cellar, dependent on her uncle’s charity. Dispiriting thought.
“Why ever should you leave?” Adam said, puzzled.
“Because it is yours now. Willow Place is yours.”
Judith laughed, and Adam smiled broadly, with a return of the light-heartedness which had characterised him previously. “Well now, Mrs Huntly… Cousin Annie… that rather depends.”
“Does it? On what? The will? I understood the estate to be entailed.”
“So it is. Entailed on the male heirs of the body.” He paused, looking at her intently, but his eyes were twinkling.
“It depends on you, Annie,” Judith burst out. “Or rather, on what happens next spring.”
“Next spring? Oh!” Annie gave a little chuckle of surprise, then blushed. “Of course, and if it is a boy—”
“He will inherit Willow Place,” Adam said, with a soft smile.
“And if it is not, then you will inherit,” Annie said, responding with a sudden smile of her own. “What a strange position to be in, not to know. All our futures are dependent on a child not yet born.”
“It is a good position to be in, I think,” Adam said. “A child is always a shining beacon of optimism. However miserable or difficult the present, there is always hope for a better future with a child. My felicitations, Cousin Annie.”
9: Questions
Annie did not have time to ponder too deeply about the ‘miserable or difficult present’ Adam spoke about, for he asked if he might look for the will at once. Judith went away to check on her daughters, who were having their afternoon nap, so Annie took Adam through to the hunting room, and he began to search through Mr Huntly’s desk. It was strange to see another man sitting in that chair, and yet it was not as unsettling as Annie would have expected. It brought home to her fully for the first time that her husband was dead. Her life as a wife was ended, and now everything would be different.
“Why is it called the hunting room?” Annie said, gazing around the room with new eyes.
“The hunting room? Is it?” Adam said, looking up briefly. “I believe it is marked as the library on the plans.”
“It seems it has always been known as the hunting room, however.”
“Because it is where one hunts for things,” Adam muttered, closing another drawer and shifting to the other side. “Ah, these are bills that I should deal with. You will not mind if I take them? Oh! Why are these in here? There are two letters addressed to you, cousin.”
“Of course. Yesterday’s letters. Thank you! One from Mama and one from Lavinia. I should tell them what has happened. What about my husband’s relations? To whom should I write?”
He gave her a quick smile. He had such a warm, reassuring smile! “You may leave the Huntlys to me. Rupert’s mother in Ireland, and Aunt Dempster in Grantham, who brought him up. Apart from that, there are a few cousins to notify, but no one close, apart from myself. It is a fortunate thing that I live near enough to be of some assistance to you. If you write your letters now, I shall myself see that they are collected by the London mail.”
For a while, they worked in silence, Adam rooting through drawers and cupboards, while Annie scratched away with her pen, informing her mother, two distant aunts, a cousin and Lavinia that Mr Huntly was dead. The letters were brief, for she felt no need to mention murder or guns. To her surprise, her hand was steady, the script as neat and even as always.
Adam gave a sigh of exasperation. “There is nothing here. No will, no letter from a solicitor, no safe where such documents might be kept, at least not in this room. There might be something in his bedchamber.”
“He is there,” Annie said. “Rupert. His body. In his room.”
“Oh. I should pay my respects, I suppose. Poor fellow. I had my differences with him, but I never wished him any harm. I shall ask Mrs Cumber if she is aware of a safe. His valet might know something, too. Is he still in the house? He has not left yet?”
“I believe so.” A moment’s hesitation, then
she went on, “I suppose I should have done this… looked through his desk and so on.”
“Better for me to do it,” Adam said.
“Because you are a man?” she said, with a touch of acid in her tone.
He looked up at her with his eyes brimming with amusement. “Not at all! I have never subscribed to the preposterous notion that ladies are too fragile to deal with anything more practical than embroidering a fire screen. However, one never knows what might turn up in a man’s private papers, so it is better for a wife if someone else looks through them first.”
“I hardly think my husband had any dark secrets.”
He looked thoughtful. “Yet someone shot him through the heart yesterday.”
There was no answer to that.
~~~~~
That evening was peaceful. After the comings and goings all day, all the brisk, business-like men had left and although Sir Leonard and the coroner both promised to return the next morning to continue their enquiries, for a few hours Annie and Judith had the house to themselves. They dined in near silence, using the furthest end of the table from Mr Huntly’s distressingly empty chair, and then moved through to the peacock chamber. Most evenings, Judith had disappeared to tend to her daughters after dinner, but tonight she returned after checking them, sitting with some needlework in her hand, a shift for one of her daughters.
Annie sat, hands neatly folded in her lap and let her mind wander wherever it would over the events of the last two days… that sudden, violent quarrel with Rupert… Judith’s intervention… the striking of the clock, which had propelled him from the house… the long, fearful hours awaiting his return, gradually becoming clouded with a different worry… and finally the shocking news of his death. Murder… such an ugly word.
She had been asked a score of times that day how she felt, and always she had answered mechanically that she was well… everything was perfectly all right. Yet she was not at all sure what she truly felt. Relieved, mostly. She need not fear that her husband would punish her for her defiance. Guilty, because of that relief. Glad that Judith would not have to leave. Sorrowful that the long, happy marriage she had envisaged was now lost to her. Bereft, because the structure of her life, imposed by her husband, was now swept away. She had not yet learnt to love him, and many of his restrictions had chafed, but he had given her life a purpose that her uncle, for all his talk about ‘my little apothecary’ could never provide.
But now she had a new purpose… a new life growing inside her. She had noticed the signs but never dared to allow herself to hope. She had never mentioned the possibility to anyone, not even her husband, and perhaps he had died unaware that he might become a father before too long. Somehow, keeping the secret inside herself had also kept it nebulous, a formless hope for the future. Now that it had been brought into the open, acknowledged and talked about, it had become real. She was with child.
There were still uncertainties, of course. It might yet come to nothing, or it might be a daughter. Then Adam would inherit Willow Place, and she would have to leave. She and Judith would both have to leave and finds homes elsewhere. Or one home… they could live together, sharing a little cottage somewhere. Judith had no money, but Annie had a settlement so there would be a jointure. She had four thousand pounds, and her mother’s three thousand, in time. The income from that would be enough for two widows of a practical bent to live upon. But until then, they would stay at Willow Place.
That reminded her of something curious. “Judith, why do you live in the attics above the kitchen wing?”
Judith looked up from her sewing with a smile. “To keep out of your husband’s way. He made it very plain that we might stay on here only if we were not constantly underfoot, the girls in particular. ‘I am not fond of badly-behaved children,’ he told me. When I suggested that he might find mine rather well behaved, he said, no, all children were badly behaved, and it was merely a matter of degree. I could not afford to leave, so I made very sure the girls were kept out of his sight and hearing.”
“You need not keep them away from me, however. Is there some more commodious accommodation that would suit you better?”
“You do not wish us to leave, then? It was your husband’s express order that we should go, and I should not like you to go against his wishes if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“It was wrong of him to tell you to go,” Annie said at once. “As your brother-in-law, he had an obligation to ensure you are provided for. Your husband clearly expected the estate to support you, since he made no provision for you otherwise. You have the right to stay here, if you wish it, or else to have an income enabling you to live independently. When — or if — I have to leave, I hope you will come and share a home with me, but until then, it is very much my wish that you and your daughters should stay on at Willow Place.”
Judith threw aside her sewing, tears glistening in her eyes. “Annie, you are so kind to me! Thank you! A thousand times thank you! I have wanted so much to be a friend to you, but…” She stopped chewing her lip. “No, I will not speak against the dead.”
“You may always speak freely with me, I hope,” Annie said. “Rupert came between us, I know that. I too hoped we could be friends, but his actions kept us apart. He was always by my side, and you were kept busy with household tasks. Some days I only saw you at breakfast and dinner. But now… I am very glad you are here, Judith. Move to better rooms, if you wish, and I will tell Mrs Cumber to engage another housemaid so that you need not spend your days dusting and sweeping. We shall keep each other company, shall we not?”
Judith could only nod and smile through her tears.
~~~~~
The second day after the murder was as busy as the first. Sir Leonard and Squire Thornton came again, with more questions for the servants. The coroner returned with the physician and another gentleman, a military man, and all five of them spent more than two hours conferring over Mr Huntly’s body. Adam, too, returned to continue his search for the will, or at least the name of a solicitor who might hold it.
Quite late in the day, not long before the dressing bell for dinner, all five gentlemen asked to speak to Annie. Judith was with her, and she asked Adam to join them too, for she felt that as the heir presumptive, he ought to know everything that was going on.
The coroner spoke first. He had invited the major, as an expert in the effects of gunshot wounds, to examine the deceased with some care. This examination had established that Mr Huntly had been shot from a distance of some two feet. There were also two distinct wounds. This precluded any possibility that his death might have been either an accident, or the result of a close struggle.
“Someone deliberately took a pair of loaded pistols to that place, came upon Mr Huntly, shot him twice and then left without removing his purse, pocket-watch, fob or silver-headed cane,” the coroner said. “There was no sign of a struggle or anything untoward on the footpath where he died. There were a few patches of mud under the trees, and his footprints may be clearly discerned as he walked towards the village and then returned later. There was no attempt to evade his attacker.”
“Did the fellow who shot him leave any footprints in the mud?” Adam said.
“Unfortunately not,” Sir Leonard said. “There was just such a mixture of damp patches and dry as to permit the assailant to approach without leaving any mark. But there is one thing that may be said with confidence. The villain was able to approach within two feet of Mr Rupert Huntly without causing any alarm in that gentleman. There are no hoof prints anywhere along the lane since the last spell of rain, so the assailant was on foot, and could not have taken Mr Huntly unawares. It appears that he stopped when approached, and was then shot without him making the slightest effort to defend himself or to run away. We must conclude, therefore, that he knew and trusted his killer.”
There was a long silence as they all digested that piece of information.
“Mr Huntly was a newcomer to this neighbourhood,” Annie said, much puzzled.
“He had never been here until his brother died six months ago, and had few acquaintances hereabouts.”
“So we are aware, Mrs Huntly,” Sir Leonard said. “Nor could we find that he had conducted any business dealings here, or incurred any gambling debts. There is no reason that we can find for any neighbour to quarrel with him.” There was a slight emphasis on the word ‘neighbour’.
Another long silence prevailed in the room. No one moved.
At length, Sir Leonard went on, very slowly, as if the words were being squeezed out of him, “I understand that you quarrelled with your husband, Mrs Huntly. The servants report raised voices.”
What was he saying? That she had killed her husband? But that was—
“Ridiculous!” Adam spat, jumping to his feet. “Are you suggesting for one second that a gentle lady like Mrs Huntly left this house armed with two loaded pistols, waylaid and shot her husband and then returned here as if nothing had happened? That is the most insulting suggestion I have ever heard!”
“I suggest nothing,” Sir Leonard said, his face darkening. “My advice to you, Huntly, is to keep out of this, for your own sake. Mrs Huntly, did you kill your husband?”
“Of course not!”
“Then you will have someone who can vouch for your presence here that afternoon?”
“I… am not sure…”
“She was with me,” Judith put in quickly. “We sat in the butler’s room in the kitchen wing for hours. Mrs Cumber will tell you. She knows we were there.”
Sir Leonard turned on Judith at once. “And you also quarrelled with the deceased, did you not? He threatened both of you with dire penalties when you argued with him. Is it not so?”
Now it was Judith who jumped to her feet. “Oh, so we rigged this up between us, did we? We scuttled away to the servants’ quarters, bribed Mrs Cumber, no doubt, to pretend we were there, while we stole out to shoot Rupert. Oh, for Heaven’s sake!”
She stormed away to the window, and stood there quivering with indignation. Adam stole across the room to her side, whispering something to her.
The Apothecary (Silver Linings Mysteries Book 3) Page 9