The Deathly Portent (15 page)

Tillie’s characteristic laugh sounded. “It does sound unlikely. But her friend was obliged to shoot it, remember, and as she expressed it to me, she is convinced Duggleby as good as killed her Toby.”

Francis thought this over and entered a caveat. “But didn’t you envision a type of mind with cunning enough to conceive of using that witch girl as a scapegoat?”

He had not yet met the widow Radlett for himself, but Tillie’s lively description had given him a pretty good notion of the sort of woman she was.

His wife was regarding him with her brows raised. “You are becoming exceptionally adept, my dearest. I cannot be other than relieved you opted to work in tandem rather than against me.”

Francis laughed out. “In that case, I am tempted to take to myself the find Pilton made in the smithy, if only I had not been brought up to be truthful.”

An expectant gleam lit her eyes. “A find? Why did you not tell me before? What was it?”

“I was distracted by Ryde’s arrival, to tell the truth.”

“But what has been found? The rope?”

The impatient note was marked, and Francis was conscious of a twinge of something akin to jealousy. Ridiculous. As if he craved his wife’s attentions. He hastened to answer.

“Not the rope. The hammer.”

Tillie shuffled round on her stool to face him. “Not the very one used?”

“We think it probable.”

“But where was it? Not in the forge itself?”

Francis resisted the urge to tease. “Yes, my clever one, it was just where you suggested, buried in the embers.”

“Was it burnt?”

“The handle had burned away, but the head is only minimally damaged.”

Tillie was silent for a space, running her hand absently across the bristles of her hairbrush in a way that Francis found distinctly unsettling.

“What are you thinking?”

“That this murderer is too clever not to have known the fire could not burn long enough to melt the head. Could there be some other reason for throwing the hammer in the fire?”

A memory hit Francis. “What about this? Had the metal not been partially eroded, Meldreth said he might have found traces of blood, skin, and hair upon the hammer.”

Tillie’s head shot up. “Dear me, Fan, but that is genius!” Mischief leapt into her face, and Francis’s heart warmed. “Either I am growing slow or your quickness is accelerating.”

“Wretch!”

Seizing a pillow from her side of the bed, he threw it at her. She caught it deftly, planted a kiss on its smooth covering, and threw it back. Francis batted it away as it threatened to upset his glass, but he softened the rejection by raising his brandy in a silent toast.

Tillie smiled at him and turned back on the stool to resume her interrupted labours with the hairbrush.

For a few moments, Francis sipped in silence, running over the discussion in his mind in a bid to distract himself from the sensuous sight of his wife’s ministrations upon her hair.

He suspected it would fall to his lot to interview the landlord of the Cock and Bottle, while Tillie tackled the wife. He hoped she would prime him first, for he had little dependence upon his ability to think on his feet without some
prompting. Tillie was a natural at gaining the confidence of her fellows. Indeed, Francis suspected it was owing to her handling of Mrs. Pakefield that the landlady had placed her best bedchamber at their disposal.

It was admittedly clean, of a good size, and adequately furnished, if with little attention to taste and fashion. The walls were whitewashed, the bed-curtains a faded and aged brocade, the woodwork polished but plain. In a word, it was not at all in the class of accommodation to which Francis was accustomed.

Not that he was unable to rough it, as he had hastily assured his darling wife when she expressed anxious doubts. He had not spent years at soldiering without learning to forgo luxury and make do. But he was not fooled for a moment, well aware that Tillie’s conscience was plaguing her.

Francis had instantly seen through her spurious welcome of Ryde when she’d come upon them outside the Blue Pig. If he was any judge, Tillie had been altogether vexed to see the groom, fearing she would be obliged to depart from Witherley, her investigations unresolved.

“I am not so hard-hearted,” he had whispered in her ear, secure in the knowledge that he had already made his arrangements with the groom.

The relief in his bride’s face had made it all worthwhile at the time. But Francis was beginning to have doubts. He had not liked the sound of her conversation with the shopkeeper.

“Do you rate Uddington as your primary suspect?”

The hairbrush stilled. “He has the means at his disposal to have carried it out, and he has motive enough.”

Francis knew that tone. “But?”

She ran the brush through and set it down, turning to look at him again, a troubled crease between her brows.

“He struck me as too honourable a man.”

Francis emitted a derisive sound. “Too high-minded to kill?”

“No, he might do that. But to point the finger at Cassie
Dale? He is not a man who fears death. I think he would expect to pay his dues, had he done it.”

“But you can’t discount him, Tillie. From what you’ve told me, the other possibilities are negligible. Uddington is all you have.”

Tillie’s gaze was steady. “So was your brother all I had, to begin with.”

“Point taken.”

Discomfort at the memories sent Francis back to sipping at his glass. The evidence against the marquis had been overwhelming, but not for a moment had Tillie thought of abandoning the hunt for another suspect, indifferent to any danger to herself. Only now she was his bride, beloved and too precious to risk. A sliver of regret attacked him. Why had he not taken advantage of Ryde’s arrangements?

The groom had driven up just as he was returning from the smithy, having endured a trying half hour demonstrating his find of the hacked-off beam to the vexatious Lord Henbury. He’d been in a mood to shake the dust of Witherley from his heels, but Ryde had brought disappointing news.

“Williams fears it will take several days to get that axletree mended, m’lord.”

After an abortive ride to Atherstone, the coachman had found a blacksmith at Nuneaton. It appeared the coach must limp at a snail’s pace to the smithy there, where the body must be removed from its moorings in order to get at the offending part.

“If the blacksmith can’t do it himself, and he won’t know until he sees it, he may have to send for a new tree from the coachmakers at Coventry.”

Francis had cursed fluently, but when Ryde told him of the rooms booked at a hostelry at Nuneaton, he had weighed the notion and rejected it.

“We will remain here, Ryde. Since we must wait in any event, I cannot have her ladyship chafing elsewhere with nothing to occupy her while events in this village are in train.”

Upon the groom’s astonished look, Francis had briefly enlightened him as to the current state of affairs. Ryde’s dour disapproval amused rather than angered him.

“You may as well accustom yourself, Ryde. I have a suspicion this may not be the last incident of this nature in which your new mistress interests herself.”

He then expressed his relief that the groom had brought their luggage and asked him to have it conveyed to a bedchamber, once he had arranged with the Pakefields for the Fanshawes to stay.

“There will be no difficulty, for I imagine our remaining here is not unexpected. Then you had best go back to Williams and let him know where we are. Tell him to come for us when the coach is ready. There is little point in your kicking your heels there either, so I suggest you stay at Nuneaton tonight and rejoin us tomorrow. And hire the gig for the duration. We may need it.”

Now Francis repented a little of his hasty decision as a riffle of unease disturbed him.

He saw that as he was ruminating, Tillie had left off her dressing gown and doused the candles in the candelabrum. The chamber was now illumined only by the single candles in holders at either side of the bed. In the lesser light, his wife’s slim body as she moved towards the bed, clad only in her nightgown, was sinuous and alluring.

Francis was gripped with a sharp attack of dread. As she slipped in beside him, he set down his glass. Turning, he took hold of Tillie and pulled her close.

“I wish you will take care, my darling. I fear you may have made of this man Uddington a dangerous enemy.”

P
lagued by nightmares, Cassie had slept badly. In between bouts of restless dreaming, she had begun to feel her bruises. Yesterday she had kept to her cottage, Mr. Kinnerton’s instruction in mind, and not entirely because Tabby was as stolid as a gaoler in refusing to let her venture forth.

Towards evening yesterday, Sam had returned from reconnoitring to gather news. Cassie was relieved to see through the window his burly form approaching, but when he entered the cottage, his broad-featured face was eager. It appeared there was a stranger in the village who was going about questioning everyone, and had even gone to take a look at Duggleby’s body.

“By all accounts, this here Lady Francis is acting for Justice Henbury,” said Sam. “Not as I’d take notice of nothing Will says, only I met Doctor Meldreth and he said it an’ all.”

Cassie eyed him, stirred by a memory. “A woman with a gaze that might read into your very mind?”

Sam glanced at Tabitha and came frowning back to Cassie. “How am I to answer that, Miss Cassie?”

Drawing a breath, Cassie tried to reassemble the picture of the woman she’d met at the smithy. “I cannot otherwise describe her. She is not handsome, I think.” Struggling, she tried to find words that might help. “High cheekbones. A painter might make much of her face, though I cannot. But the eyes, Sam. A gaze so clear one might drown in it, if there were not so much kindness in her voice.”

Tabitha clucked her irritation. “As if poor Sam could tell who you meant by such a tangle. And I’ve no notion who it is, neither.”

“No, for I met her in the smithy,” said Cassie, turning on her. “You wouldn’t come in.”

“And I’d be a deal happier if you hadn’t gone in,” Tabby retorted unabashed. “But why did you think it’s the same as Sam spoke of?”

“Because she said she would help me. She said she would find out the truth. And I believed her.”

“Seems as she’s doing it,” said Sam, “if as it’s the same female.”

“Whom has she questioned?”

Sam shrugged. “I can’t tell that, Miss Cassie. But what I do know is that there Reverend rung a peal over Farmer Staxton’s boys.”

Something clutched in Cassie’s chest. “For throwing stones at me?”

“Aye. Seems as Mr. Kinnerton ain’t nowise as quiet as he makes out.”

“I hope he thundered at ’em,” said Tabby vengefully.

Sam shook his head. “He spoke quiet-like, as I heard. But what he said made ’em squirm like they’d beetles in their breeches.”

Cassie could not imagine what words could accomplish such a feat, but as Sam had no exact knowledge of just what had been said, he was unable to enlighten her. When she asked from whom he had his information, he said it had come from Staxton himself.

“He were laughing fit to bust hisself, saying he was wishful as he’d thought of speaking so to his sons years back, for no amount of birching had served to curb them boys.”

Astonished and incredulous, Cassie wished she might speak to Mr. Kinnerton herself to find out just what had occurred. Never had anyone, not even Lady Ferrensby, taken on her enemies. And how could it be that the gently spoken man who had given her succour should prove so stalwart a champion?

Yet these reassurances failed to appease the demons of the night. It was hard to believe, in the loneliness endemic to the curse of her unnatural skill, that there could be any permanence of peace in her turbulent life.

But the morning brought a resurgence of hope when Mr. Kinnerton’s housekeeper appeared at her door. She was a willowy dame, with a manner as redoubtable as it was forthright. She had come, commanded by her master, she said, to enquire as to Mrs. Dale’s health.

Cassie could have wept. She invited the woman inside and bade Tabby make them both a cup of the precious tea reserved for special occasions. Lady Ferrensby kept her caddy supplied, but Cassie, hating the charity upon which she was forced to depend, took care to eke out the tea that she might not be too much beholden.

“You serve a kind master, Mrs. Winkleigh.”

The woman flushed. “Yes, and I’ll stay and serve him whether he likes it or no.”

Intrigued, Cassie eyed her. “Why should he not like it?”

Mrs. Winkleigh sniffed, shaking out her petticoats as she took one of the chairs opposite to where Cassie was seated on the other side of the table.

“Well, he don’t dislike it. Only when I complained of the place being small and stuffy, as anyone might who came from the Kinnerton family home—not that I mind, I was only saying—all Master Aidan said was that I needn’t stay if
I didn’t wish to.” She sniffed again. “I speedily put him in his place, you may be sure.”

Astonished at anyone having the temerity to put the Reverend Kinnerton in his place, Cassie demanded enlightenment.