Nor was that a suitable topic for contemplation. Sir John’s reasons for taking a vacation had all concerned his hostess, and were unsuited to a gentleman of his occupation, dignity, and age.
Abruptly, he returned to an awareness of his surroundings. Looming up ahead of him was a leap consisting of four strong rails, more than five feet high.
“Throw your heart over and your horse will follow!” called Lord Dorset from behind him. Sir John didn’t especially appreciate this advice, but it was too late to act otherwise. He appreciated the advice even less when, on the far side of the leap, he landed in a deep muddy lane.
Sir John checked and turned back. Lord Dorset, who had followed him over the leap, had dismounted to inspect one of his horse’s legs.
Dickon released the horse and straightened. “The damned screw has strained a tendon. Naturally, it must be right in the middle of a run. There’s nothing for it but to take him home. I wish you joy of your hunt.”
After murmuring condolences, Sir John watched Lord Dorset lead his animal into the trees. He, and his horse, had a trek ahead of them. Greenwood Castle lay some distance away.
Sir John dismissed the luckless Earl from his mind and set out to rejoin the hunt. He had no wish to attempt the rail leap from the uphill side and therefore proceeded in a leisurely manner to circumvent it, as much for his own sake as for his horse.
A fifteenth century Duke of York had claimed that hunting diverted a man’s mind from unwholesome notions and pursuits. Sir John feared it would take more than a brisk ride after a fox to divert Dulcie from hers.
According to Voltaire, a man should be judged by his questions rather than his answers. Samuel Johnson averred that curiosity was, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last. Sir John tried to imagine what the Duke and Voltaire and Samuel Johnson might have made of the present-day Lady Bligh.
Himself, he could not help but recall the adage that curiosity was fatal to felines.
A gunshot interrupted his reflections. He turned his horse and rode in the direction of the sound.
The direction in which Dickon had set out.
In the distance, he heard men’s shouts, the neighs of startled horses, the barking of hounds.
If he didn’t miss his guess, and Sir John seldom missed a guess, that shot had nothing to do with foxes and everything to do with Dulcie’s favorite nephew.
Dulcie would never forgive him if Dickon had been murdered. Overlooking the fact that he was among those who had, at one time and another, contemplated murdering the Earl of Dorset, Sir John touched his heel to his horse’s flank. Better that he determined the source of that gunshot before the hunt bore down upon them. Not, of course, that the Chief Magistrate of Bow Street would engage in any action meant to circumvent the law.
At least, Sir John hoped he wouldn’t. His notions of right and wrong tended to take on several shades of grey when members of Dulcie’s family were involved.
To his relief, he found Lord Dorset alive and on his feet in a copse thick with shrubs and trees. Dickon had tied his horse’s reins to a tree limb. The horse didn’t appear happy at this circumstance. Save for that strained tendon, Sir John suspected the beast would have taken to its heels.
Sir John wished he might take to his. In one hand, the Earl held a dueling pistol, and in the other his musket. “
You
fired that shot?” demanded Sir John.
“I expected it would bring you.” Dickon gestured with his musket. “You might want to take a close look, and quickly, before the crowd arrives.” The Chief Magistrate dismounted, keeping firm grip on his own horse’s reins. The Earl stepped to one side.
Sir John bent over the figure sprawled on the ground. Blood matted the fallen man’s auburn hair, its source a neat little hole between his eyes.
“Dead,” said Dickon. “I’ll wager he has been for some time.” With one boot, he nudged a horseshoe. “I found this, along with the dueling pistol, beside him on the ground.”
Hoofbeats pounded up behind them. Men’s voices scolded as horses drew back hard against the reins, unsettled by the smell of human blood. Word spread quickly among the crowd that a man was down.
And not just any man. The huntsman spoke for them all. “ ‘Tis Master Connor, rest his soul. The devil’s claimed its own.”
A conference was underway in the Castle’s Long Gallery, a narrow room with windows on three sides, and on the inner wall a fireplace. Scattered about its length were a miscellany of antique chairs, benches and chests. Ancestral portraits adorned the wood paneling. A Jacobean hall screen extended from the floor almost to the ceiling at one end of the room.
Lady Bligh was seated on a gilt painted sofa with brass claw feet, Casanova stretched across her lap. Her hair was ginger, her gown peach, and her expression grim.
“The hunt harked to Dorset’s signal,” said Sir John, who was uncomfortably ensconced in a high-backed chair ornamented with thistles in full bloom. “No one saw anything out of the ordinary en route. Or will admit to seeing anything, at any rate. By the time he was discovered, Connor Halliday must have been dead a minimum of two hours, which means that he was shot about the time we joined the meet. In all the confusion, any evidence was destroyed.”
“If evidence there was.” Hubert turned away from a portrait of the third Baron’s favorite mistress, a lively-looking lady with a naughty twinkle in her slightly protuberant blue eyes. “The man
could
have shot himself.”
“An awkward way to do it, don’t you think?” Lady Bligh commented. “I believe a shot to the temple is generally preferred.”
Sir John rubbed his own temples. “The pistol found beside the body hadn’t been fired. Connor Halliday didn’t die by his own hand.”
“Dueling pistols come in pairs. If you found one pistol at the scene, the murderer most likely carried the fatal weapon away with him.” Dulcie stroked Casanova in a practiced manner that caused the cat to squirm in an excess of ecstasy. “As would be obvious to anyone with a modicum of common sense.”
Sir John ignored this suggestion that his own common sense might be lacking. “How did
you
pass the morning, Humboldt?”
“Or, to be precise, the fateful hour?” Humbug might have posed for a portrait himself, so dazzling were his checked trousers and wasp-waisted coat of bright primrose. He arranged himself artistically on a robustly carved oak bench. “After our cozy family breakfast-party dispersed, I proceeded to the village. I see that you are curious as to why I should have done so. You don’t consider me one to thrill to bucolic delights.”
“What I consider you,” the Chief Magistrate uttered wrathfully, “is beside the point. Continue, if you will.”
“Witness me eager to be of service.” Hubert smoothed one flawless cuff. “Now, where was I?”
“In the village,” said Lady Bligh. “Don’t make me wish you had stayed there.”
“Dear aunt, I shan’t allow you to take a rise out of me! Especially when I know you wish no such thing.” Bluebeard, who had been blending nicely with the monkey, bird and fruit-embellished mantel frieze, opened a curious eye. “Coxcomb,” he observed.
“Feather-duster,” parried Hubert, and returned his attention to Sir John. “It is the festive season, after all. I felt in need of some holiday spirit and good cheer — of which, you may have noticed, there is precious little here! Good cheer I found in plenty; there’s to be a cockfight this afternoon. The holiday spirit was provided by Abel Bagshot, who has in his cellar some fine old ale. By the bye, Dulcie, since when have you taken on the role of Lady Bountiful? The man waxed positively ebullient about a Patent Warm-Air Stove.”
The Baroness awarded her least favorite nephew a sharp glance. “Keep to the point.”
“Anything to oblige you, dear Dulcie. From the inn I wandered around the village for a time — what amount of time I cannot guess, due to the quality of Abel’s ale — and then returned to the Castle, where I found the two of you exchanging confidences. There. That is the whole. How fortunate that I’m not in need of an alibi.” Came a pregnant pause. “Ah, I see that I
am
in need of one. I don’t imagine that either of you would care to inform me why I should come under suspicion? I thought not. If you mean to discover the whereabouts of everyone who might possibly have shot Connor Halliday, you will have a busy time of it, Sir John.”
That much, at least, was fact. “I didn’t say that you were under suspicion,” the Chief Magistrate snapped.
“You didn’t say I wasn’t,” Hubert retorted. “Which isn’t surprising, considering our previous association, though I might point out that to allow oneself to be prejudiced by past indiscretions is fatal to the deductive process. From all accounts, scores of people wished Connor Halliday ill. Even some of us! Happily, we are all accounted for. Dulcie and Austen and Livvy were here; Jael took herself off to explore the tinkers’ camp; I was chatting with Abel Bagshot; and Dickon was most providentially with you at the crucial time.”
Dulcie flicked open her snuffbox. “People are already saying that Connor was shot by his brother’s ghost. Although one is inclined to wonder how a ghost managed to hold a gun.”
Sir John refused to be distracted. He repeated, “The tinkers’ camp?”
Hubert shrugged. “I gather, kindred spirits. The tinkers are a free and restless people. Like Jael, they thrive best when allowed to range afar.”
Sir John saw no purpose in continuing a discussion destined to range in that manner. “Can it be possible, Dulcie, that you have nothing to say?”
“I’m thinking, John. One of us must.” Having put the Chief Magistrate in his place, Lady Bligh continued: “A man doesn’t go out for an early morning ride with a dueling pistol in his possession unless he means to meet someone he has reason to distrust.”
“Pistols at dawn?” asked Hubert. “Bravo, aunt! However, I must most reluctantly remind you that Mr. Halliday’s reputation would not inspire many people to meet clandestinely with him. You
do
have your work set out before you, Sir John! Any one of the fox-hunters could have fired the fatal shot, then joined up with the others. It would be damned unusual if everyone set out on time.”
“In that case, why was the shot not heard?” Dulcie paused to take a pinch of snuff and sneezed, thereby disturbing Casanova, who thudded to the floor, considered his options, then draped himself across Sir John’s boots. “Fortunate that Connor wasn’t shot with a musket. Since this is hunting country, practically every villager has one.”
“This is poaching country also,” Hubert reminded her. “Or it was before Connor brought in his man-traps. He might have done well to remember that poachers often kill forbidden game simply so they may have food to eat.”
Lady Bligh chose to ignore her nephew’s unprecedented compassion for his fellow man. “No one could have predicted which way the fox would leap, or that Dickon’s horse would suffer an injury, causing him to take the shortcut through the copse. I’ll wager the corpse wasn’t meant to be found so soon.”
Hubert tented his fingers together. “I can see it now. Connor Halliday setting out armed with a dueling pistol to confront his brother’s ghost.”
“Ghost. Ghostie, ghostie, ghostie!” Bluebeard stretched out his wide wings.
“Yes, my darling, ghostie,” said the Baroness. “Now hush.”
“Shut your bone box,” agreed Bluebeard and, in perfect imitation of his mistress, sneezed.
Sir John didn’t believe in ghosts. He
did
believe Hubert Humboldt had gone to the village, but remained unpersuaded that Humbug had spent the entire morning there. The Chief Magistrate was unlikely to forget that the Honourable Hubert had enjoyed a successful career as a highwayman until the memorable occasion when he’d waylaid Sir John’s own coach. If not for Dulcie’s intervention, and the tarradiddles spun by Jael, the erstwhile Gentleman would have danced the sheriff’s waltz. Instead he had emerged unscathed, to receive from a doubtless deranged relative an inheritance that replenished his perennially empty purse and made it possible for him to take his
inamorata
on a brief sojourn abroad.
If only they’d remained on foreign soil. Instead, they had returned to interfere with his well-earned vacation. Life, decided Sir John, was sometimes most damnably unfair.
Moreover, he wasn’t fond of cats, especially the cat currently threatening the welfare of his footwear. Cautiously, he tried to shift his position. Casanova dug in his claws.
“The thing was bungled,” Dulcie announced. “The second pistol should have been left beside the body, the pistol from which the fatal shot was fired. Odd, is it not, that the culprit should have been sufficiently familiar with firearms as to inflict so neat a wound, and at the same time so unfamiliar as to be unaware that a shot fired at close range leaves a different appearance than one fired from afar?”
“Definitely a theory!” applauded Hubert. “In which case the loss of the horseshoe was another oversight,
if
the horseshoe was lost at the same time, which remains open to doubt. All you need do is discover the owner of those pistols, Sir John.
And
determine why Connor Halliday allowed his murderer to get close enough to shoot him between the eyes.”
“Indeed!” said the Chief Magistrate, scathingly. “Easy enough to learn who made the piece, certainly; far less easy to discover who owned the thing when any identifying marks have most likely been filed away. A man’s not apt to commit cold-hearted murder with a pistol that can be easily traced. Once we
do
discover the owner, we will probably also discover that the pistols were stolen from him.” He cast a fulminating glance upon his hostess. “A quiet country holiday!”
“Dear John.” The Baroness rose gracefully, leaned down as easily as a woman half her age, and scooped Casanova up into her arms. “I could hardly foresee that such an event as this would cut up our peace.”
Sir John suspected that Dulcie foresaw more than she chose to share. Still, he said, gruffly, “For me to blame you because someone saw fit to put a period to Connor Halliday’s existence would be the outside of enough.”