The Dead Queen's Garden (24 page)

S
EVERAL
HOURS
AFTER
midnight, Charlotte rose from her bed where she had been lying awake. I won't wear black, she told her reflection fiercely as she dressed in her warmest and most serviceable dress, her shawl at hand on the bedrail; I won't let myself believe she can have died, not Elaine, not when she is so beloved by all. I will not tempt providence. She's rallied so many times, every time she's seemed on the brink of death, and every time she has recovered once more. It will be no different this time. I'll pretend it's so, for as long as I may.

She knew it was a delusion. At midnight she had opened her window and stood, unheeding, in the freezing cold, to hear the bells. The villagers, under the vicar's ineffectual supervision, rang out the old year and in with the new, and with it her twenty-fifth birthday. The tears fell then as she sobbed out her bitter grief, for no word had come from Dr Perry at the Hall, and she knew that meant her dear friend was beyond receiving even the most loving of visitors.

Charlotte tried to pray but the only line that came into her head seemed a mockery,
‘And joy cometh in the morning.'
With a sob she hoped that her friend was at peace at last, and all pain ceased; a sort of joy, she supposed.

Suddenly she heard a bell, tolling relentlessly. She counted all thirty-one strokes and fumbled for a handkerchief as she crossed again to the window, her limbs dragging with weary sorrow. For a moment her heart contracted, for there, casting a long shadow in the sparkling moonlight, was Dr Perry. Rarely had she seen him astride his serviceable long-legged roan unless he was trotting briskly about his business or ambling along in earnest conversation
with an acquaintance; or galloping off to an emergency as he had the previous evening. This morning the doctor's shoulders were slumped in weary dejection as he rode out from the church and across the green.

As she stared down at him, fighting against the news she had learned from the tolling of the bell, and read in his bearing – denying it to the last – Dr Perry glanced upward to see her
silhouetted
in the window. He stared at her for a long, dreadful moment and then turned his horse towards Rowan Lodge.

Biting her lips, Charlotte caught up her shawl and made her way downstairs to let him in.

Murder Most Welcome

Death is the Cure

Murder Fortissimo

A Crowded Coffin