Sheri Cobb South (21 page)

“Yes, well, that brings us to the bad news. Miss Grantham still has it with her and refuses to let it out of her sight.”

“Then she knows it was the target of the search.”

“Perhaps,” her ladyship said thoughtfully, “but I don’t think so. I think her attachment to it is mostly a sentimental one. I fear I have done Miss Susannah a grave disservice. I suggested to Miss Grantham that, if Miss Susannah had indeed wrecked her room as a prank, she might inflict similar damage on the manuscript while her governess slept. I left Miss Grantham with the expressed intention of reading aloud to her charge selections from Miss More’s works in the hope that they may improve her character. I only hope that someday Miss Susannah may find it in her heart to forgive me!”

It soon appeared that Lady Fieldhurst had done her work well. Shortly after the viscountess had returned to her own chamber and the house settled down to slumber, Pickett’s search of the wardrobe was interrupted by the rattle of the doorknob. He started guiltily and scarcely had time to stuff a very dull collection of letters back into the bureau drawer before the door opened to admit Miss Grantham clutching a thick sheaf of papers to her bony chest.

“I suppose I had best leave this with you for safekeeping,” she said, thrusting her burden into his arms before turning and leaving the room without another word.

Alone once more, Pickett looked down at the stack of papers in his arms. Somewhere within these sheets, he was convinced, lay the key to a murder. He locked the door, then sat down on the bed and leafed through page after page of closely written script. At last, having reached the end, he sighed gustily. Whatever else it might contain, the manuscript concealed no cryptic messages or clandestine correspondence. Perhaps he had been wrong after all, and the vicar’s book was nothing more than a ponderous history which no one—aside from its author, at any rate—would care to read.

There was only one way to find out, and, since he had no doubt Miss Grantham would require the return of the manuscript the following morning, he was unlikely to have another chance. Steeling himself for the tedious task which awaited him, he stripped off his coat, waistcoat, and cravat, then stretched out on the bed, propping himself on his elbow, and began to read.

According to the Domesday Book of 1086, the plot of Land we know today as the Village of Kendall was originally part of a much larger Tract granted to one Gerald de Holineside by William I in 1067 as a reward for Military Services rendered during said William’s conquest of these Fair Shores ...

By the time Pickett had waded through fifty pages of the vicar’s stilted prose, his eyes were beginning to glaze over. When a soft knock on the door interrupted his reading, he felt no sense of guilt or urgency, nothing but relief at being granted an unexpected reprieve. However, he was not so forgetful of the need for secrecy as to leave the manuscript lying on the bed in plain sight. He pushed the stack of pages beneath the bed, then unlocked the door to admit his nocturnal visitor. To his surprise and delight, the woman on the other side was not Miss Grantham. Instead, the viscountess stood there clad in a ruffled pink dressing gown, her blond hair tied loosely back at the nape of her neck. Pickett, his brain still fuzzy from the vicar’s tome, wondered with detached interest whether he had in fact fallen asleep over the manuscript, and was now dreaming. If so, he was in no hurry to awaken.

“My lady! You should not be up at this hour,” he protested, stepping aside to allow her entrance nonetheless.

“Nor should you, for that matter,” she replied. “I thought if you had found anything of interest by now, you surely must have come to tell me. Since you had not, I feared you must be in for rather a long night of it and thought you might be glad of some refreshment.”

He noticed for the first time that she had not come empty handed. She carried a black bottle and a long-stemmed glass, both of which she set on Miss Grantham’s small, scarred writing table.

“The ubiquitous raspberry cordial,” she explained. “I fear I have only the one glass. I have been drinking from it, but I dared not send down to the kitchen for another. Or would you prefer to drink from the bottle?”

Pickett, having not the slightest objection to placing his lips where her ladyship’s had once been, assured her that it did not matter.

Lady Fieldhurst dispensed the sweet red cordial into the glass and handed it to him. “Am I correct, then, in assuming that you found no secret messages hidden between the sheets—er, pages?” inquired her ladyship, her gaze shying away from the rumpled, narrow bed.

“You are.”

He took the glass from her hand and drank greedily from it. As the viscountess had said, it was quite good, and at another time he might have smiled at the notion of giving Mrs. Holland his compliments. Tonight, however, he had other, more important matters on his mind.

“What will you do now?” asked the viscountess.

“I’m afraid there’s nothing for it but to read the thing all the way through.”

Lady Fieldhurst was appalled. “In
one night?”

“I’m unlikely to get another chance.”

“Very well.” She settled herself on the uncomfortable straight chair before the writing table. “You can read half, and I shall take the other half. You have only to tell me what to look for.”

Pickett smiled. “You’re very good, my lady, but there lies the trouble. I don’t know myself what to look for—if there is anything at all, which I am beginning to doubt.”

“It sounds terribly tedious.”

“It is.”

“Shall I bear you company, then?” Reading rejection in his eyes, she hurried into speech before he could voice it. “I know you will say that it would be highly improper for me to do so, but surely we have already spent so much time together
tête-à-tête
that such considerations need hardly weigh with us at this late date.”

She colored a little at the recollection that none of their previous assignations had been conducted in a bedchamber, with both of them in various stages of undress. The memory of that kiss in the library hung in the air between them. Still, she made no attempt to withdraw the offer, and Pickett was sorely tempted to accept it. Alas, Duty, that harshest of taskmasters, prevailed.

“I am truly grateful for the offer, my lady, but if I’m to go chasing after mares’ nests, I think it best that I keep a clear head.”

“Why, John!” She rose from her chair smiled up at him, one eyebrow ironically arched. “I think that is quite the prettiest compliment I have ever received.”

Then, having reduced him to stammering incoherence, she exited the room, shutting the door softly behind her.

Pickett, alone once again and more reluctant than ever to spend what little remained of the night reading the vicar’s history, nevertheless stretched out on the bed and picked up the manuscript where he had left off.

Although the book was primarily a history of the parish and its church, there were numerous references to milestones in the life of the principal families. Sprinkled amongst the construction of the bell tower and the casting of its four enormous bells were accounts of the crusading Holineside who never reached Jerusalem, having succumbed to dysentery before ever crossing the Channel; the seventeenth-century baronet, now known as Hollinside, who contrived to lie low during the Civil War and consequently kept his holdings intact; and, not coincidentally, the rise of the rival Kendall family, who took a bolder stand against Cromwell and were rewarded after the Restoration with a barony. Pickett’s eyes burned and his candle slowly melted down to a misshapen lump of wax, but still he plowed on. It was not until he had turned the three hundredth page and entered the eighteenth century (by which time the church had acquired a new organ, and the village had been moved to a new location some distance from the river) that something in the text caught his attention. He sat up, drawing the candle nearer, and read the entry again, taking particular notice of the date: 21 October 1704. He thumbed ahead three pages—no, five—to the events of the following summer, then turned back to re-read the earlier entry.

This was it, then, the secret he had been hoping to find. For this, one man had been killed, and countless others robbed. He glanced at the tiny window, where the black night was already beginning to give way to gray dawn. He must get what rest he could, for it promised to be a very busy day. He snuffed out the candle, collapsed against the pillow, and slept.

* * * *

When Pickett next opened his eyes, the sun was high in the sky. He leaped up with a guilty start and reached for the coat and waistcoat he had tossed aside several hours earlier. At any moment Miss Grantham might reappear, demanding the safe return of her property. Surely, he thought, she was not so familiar with the manuscript’s bulk that she would notice the temporary absence of a few crucial passages. He removed the pertinent pages, folded them, and tucked them into the inside pocket of his coat. A short time later, he assured a grateful Miss Grantham that no intruders had disturbed the sanctity of her bedchamber during the night, then climbed the narrow, uncarpeted stairs to his own attic room. He reached beneath the mattress and removed the notebook and the hollow wooden tipstaff which served as his badge of office. Correctly assuming that the family would still be abed, he eschewed the servants’ stairs leading down to the kitchen and took the main staircase instead. Mrs. Holland, he knew, would have much to say about such presumption, but he had no time for her inevitable tirade; as of today, his career as a footman was over.

He paused when he reached the floor where Lady Fieldhurst’s bedchamber was located. Her ladyship would expect to be informed of his discovery. One might even argue that he owed her an explanation, since it was her summons that had first brought him to Yorkshire. Still, he thought it best to leave her curiosity unsatisfied, at least for the nonce. She had already had one encounter with a killer, which had almost turned deadly when the killer realized the fatal secret was out; better to risk her ladyship’s displeasure than to place her in harm’s way. He continued down the stairs to the ground floor, let himself out the massive front doors, and set out in the direction of the Kendall estate.

He stopped first at the church and, after some stumbling about in the semidarkness of the nave, finally found what he sought on a shelf built into the lectern. He breathed a sigh of relief, for without this final piece of the puzzle, all his other efforts would have been useless. He slipped his prize into his coat pocket along with the manuscript pages, then resumed his errand.

The sunshine of the last several days had given way to heavy gray clouds, and the frequent gusts of wind smelled like rain. As Pickett entered the village, he saw shopkeepers and housewives hurrying about their chores, trying to complete their outside tasks before the weather drove them indoors. It seemed somehow surprising that life for others should go on just as it had before, unmindful of the fact that one of their neighbors would soon hang for what they believed to be no more than a tragic accident. Of course, Londoners were often equally oblivious to the dealings of their fellow men, but Pickett had always supposed that country people kept few secrets from one another. In this case, at least, he could not have been more mistaken; what these people did not know about one of their most prominent families could fill a book—and had.

On the other side of the village, he turned at a scrolled wrought-iron gate and trudged up a tree-lined drive to the elegant redbrick edifice that was the Kendall residence, then rapped on the massive oak door with the end of his tipstaff.

“I’m sorry, sir, but his lordship is at breakfast,” said the footman who answered the door, when Pickett requested an audience with Lord Kendall.

“You may offer him my apologies for interrupting him,” said Pickett, opening his hand to reveal a silver shilling lying in the palm of his hand. Seeing the man was still unconvinced, he added, “I would not ask if it were not important.”

The footman struggled with himself, looked longingly at the coin in Pickett’s hand, and came to a decision. Snatching the coin away as if fearful Pickett would change his mind, he pocketed it and sketched a stiff bow.

“If you would care to wait in the study, sir, I’ll fetch his lordship.”

He led the way to a small, dark room dominated by a cluttered desk at one end, indicated that Pickett might seat himself on the single straight chair backed up against the wall, and went in search of his lordship.

It soon became evident that Lord Kendall was one of those persons who did not appear at his best until sufficient quantities of coffee had been pumped into his system. Stalking into the study with the air of a bear awakened early from hibernation, he looked Pickett up and down for a long moment, then demanded, “Well? Am I supposed to know you?”

Fortunately, Pickett was too accustomed to Mr. Colquhoun’s surlier moods to be intimidated. “We have never met, my lord, although you may have seen me recently at Hollingshead Place,” he replied, bowing. “I have been acting as footman to Lady Fieldhurst.”

“ ‘Acting as’?” echoed Lord Kendall, suspicion now added to belligerence. “A curious choice of words, sir. Am I to understand, then, that you are, in fact,
not
Lady Fieldhurst’s footman?”

In spite of Lord Kendall’s apparent hostility, Pickett could not but be grateful for the man’s quick wits. That, at least, should speed matters along. “Your understanding is correct, my lord. Allow me to introduce myself: John Pickett, Bow Street police office.”

Lord Kendall’s scowl abated somewhat. “Then I gather this is not a social call. How may I be of service to you?”

“I have been reliably informed that you are the local Justice of the Peace. I should like you, in that capacity, to issue an arrest warrant.”

“Very well,” said Lord Kendall, seating his bulk behind the desk and pulling open one of its drawers. “For whom, pray?”

Pickett told him.

“Bless my soul!” blustered his lordship. “On what charge?”

“The murder of Cyril Danvers will do, for a start.”