Winterset (11 page)

Kyria cast him a sideways glance. “I looked around the room this evening and saw that neither my brother nor Miss Holcomb were there. A few minutes later, she came sliding back into the room from the terrace, her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling, a certain expression on her face, as if she’d just barely saved herself from falling off a cliff. I don’t know why Miss Holcomb turned him down three years ago. But I think I can definitely say that it is not the case that she does not want him.”

She smiled her cat-in-the-cream smile at Rafe. “Maybe they just need to be thrown together until finally they figure out that they belong together.” Her smiled curved up even more as she said, “After all, that’s what happened with us.”

Then, with a giggle, she pulled away from him and ran lightly up the rest of the stairs. Rafe, grinning, went after her, taking the stairs two at a time.

A
nna met Dr. Felton with a subdued smile, extending her hand to him. “It was very kind of you to come here today, Dr. Felton.”

She gestured him toward the couch, and she and her brother sat down on the pair of blue velvet chairs that faced the sofa. It was the afternoon following the party, and she had been waiting anxiously all day for news about what had happened the night before. When the butler had announced Dr. Felton, she had been filled with a combination of relief that she would at last find out and dread that the body must indeed have been Estelle’s, for why else would the doctor have come straightaway to tell them?

“I wanted to tell you myself,” Felton said.

“It was Estelle?” Kit asked. “You identified the body?”

“Yes,” the doctor answered. “I was fairly certain as soon as I saw the body, but her father identified her, too.”

“I feel terrible,” Anna murmured. “We should have done something more. Looked farther afield for her.”

“I am sure you did all you could,” Felton said comfortingly.

“We thought she had run off with a man,” Anna explained. “And all that time, she was dead!”

“We had no reason to think otherwise,” Kit told her. “You mustn’t blame yourself. By the time we became aware that she was missing, she was probably already dead. Why else would she not have come home? Even if we had searched in the right place and found her, we could not have helped her.”

Anna turned toward Dr. Felton. “Is that true? I keep thinking, what if she had fallen or something, and she was lying there all this time….”

“No, you must not worry yourself about it. Sir Christopher is right. There was nothing you could have done for her. She had been dead for several days—doubtless she was already dead when you were searching for her. It was no accident. She was murdered.”

“Oh!” Anna had known in her heart that such was probably the case, but still the words hit her like a blow.

Murder was something that happened in London and other far-off places, not right here at home. And not to people one actually knew. Anna had seen Estelle every day for years now; she had come to work for them when Anna was only twenty-two. She had spoken to her often, had given her remedies for her toothaches and catarrh. She remembered again that day in the servants’ hall when she had seen Estelle return, and the grin that had touched Estelle’s pert face when Anna had protected her from the housekeeper.

“I knew,” she said, her voice sinking almost to a whisper. “I saw her come in one morning from the outside, and I realized that she must have been out all night. But I didn’t tell Mrs. Michaels, because I hated to get her into trouble. If only I had, she probably wouldn’t have been able to sneak out again. And she would still be alive today.”

“Or Mrs. Michaels might have let her go right there and then for moral turpitude,” Kit reminded her. “In which case, she would probably have been in exactly the same place.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Anna agreed. “Still, I cannot help but feel…responsible somehow.”

“You take too much upon yourself, Miss Holcomb,” Dr. Felton assured her. “I doubt very much that there was anything you could have done to prevent this.”

At that moment the butler appeared silently in the doorway, and when they looked toward him, he said, “Lord Moreland is here, Sir Christopher. Shall I show him in?”

“Yes, of course,” Kit answered.

Anna’s stomach tightened. She did not want to deal with Reed today; she was in too much turmoil already. But there was nothing she could do about it now. She could scarcely stand up and flee the room just as he walked in.

The butler returned with Reed, announcing him with a certain pride. It was not often that they had titled guests. Reed took in the room at a glance, nodding to Kit and the doctor, and bowing over Anna’s hand. Her heart sped up at his nearness. She could not help but think of those moments in his embrace last night, the feel of his lips on hers, of his hand sliding up her body.

“How do you do, my lord?” Anna said tightly, steeling herself to conceal her reaction to him.

“I am well, thank you. I came to see how you were faring after what happened last night.” Reed’s eyes looked on hers for a long moment, then went to the doctor. “I take it that the girl turned out to be Miss Holcomb’s maid?”

Dr. Felton nodded. “Yes, I was just informing them. It appears that she was murdered.”

“Do they have any idea who did it?” Reed asked as he took a seat beside Dr. Felton on the sofa.

The doctor shrugged and glanced toward Kit and Anna. “I understand that she had been sneaking out to meet a man….”

Anna nodded. “That is what she told Penny—the maid who shared her room.”

“Obviously this man must be the most likely suspect,” Kit said. “A lover’s quarrel, perhaps, gone terribly wrong.”

“But what about the marks?” Anna asked, turning toward the doctor. “They said there were claw marks. Could it not have been that she was attacked by some animal?”

Dr. Felton frowned. “Yes, there were claw marks—” He glanced at Anna, hesitating. “This is a most gruesome subject. I hesitate to tell a lady…”

“No. I want to know,” Anna said firmly. “I have to know what happened to her.”

“There were claw marks in several places—her arms and chest, her face, her throat. Her throat, particularly, was torn. She died from exsanguination—a loss of blood. Most of it had soaked into the ground.”

Anna felt a little queasy at his words, but she did not ask him to stop. She nodded. “Then it
was
an animal? Could she not have been going to meet her lover and been attacked by—”

“It did not resemble anything I have seen done by an animal,” Dr. Felton said grimly. “It would have had to be a very large animal. The scratches—” He hesitated again, looking at Anna uncomfortably. “They were fairly deep and spaced rather far apart—not nearly close enough together to be a dog or even a wolf—if there still are any wolves in this area. I have not heard of any. And dogs are much more likely to bite and tear as they fight, not use their claws.”

“What could it have been, then?” Reed asked.

“I would have said something much larger, some sort of animal that one would find only in the London Zoological Park—a lion, say, or a bear.”

The others simply looked at him. Finally Kit said, “It doesn’t seem very likely, does it?”

“No. That is why I’m more inclined to think that it was murder,” Dr. Felton said. “I suspect it was the work of a man.”

Anna paled even more and said, “With claws?” She glanced toward Kit, and he shook his head slightly. She turned back to the doctor, saying “But a man would not have—”

“No. Not claws. I think it merely resembled that. I would be inclined to say some sort of instrument—a gardening tool, perhaps. There is one, I’m not sure what you call it as I’m not much of a hand in the garden, but it looks something like a small rake, less than a foot long, with tines that curve down.”

“Oh, yes,” Anna said. “I know what you mean. It is a cultivator. One breaks up the earth with it before one plants. Of course. I can see how it would look that way.”

“I cannot take credit for the idea, I’m afraid. It was my father’s,” Felton said.

Kit and Anna looked confused for a moment, then Kit said, “Oh, from the killings before…”

“The ones fifty years ago?” Reed asked. “I had wondered about those. Were they that similar?”

Kit nodded toward the doctor. “You had best ask Dr. Felton. He is the expert on the Beast of Craydon Tor murders.’”

Reed turned surprised eyes toward the doctor, who looked no more than five or ten years older than himself. “But surely you were not alive then.”

Dr. Felton smiled. “No. My father was the physician here at that time. He was young, had only been a doctor a few years when they happened. I was born a good many years later in his life. However, he kept all his notebooks from his practice, including the ones that he made regarding the two victims in those killings. He left them to me when he died a few years ago.” He shrugged, looking faintly embarrassed. “I have always been somewhat fascinated with the Beast of Craydon Tor from the time I was a boy. Of course, back then, I believed wholeheartedly in a magical beast, part man, part animal, doomed to live that way eternally by a vengeful witch. Of course, those murders were part of that lore. I collected what writings I could find on the Beast, and several years ago, one of my older patients gave me a box of clippings she had collected on the subject—newspaper articles and such about the murders.”

“I see. So you have the definitive library on the subject?”

“Yes, I do.”

Reed looked at him speculatively. “I must say, I would be rather interested in looking at some of those articles.”

Felton looked surprised, but said politely, “You are welcome to come look at them if you wish.”

“Thank you. I will take you up on that offer. My sister and brother-in-law and I were speculating on the murders last night after everyone left.”

“Yes, I imagine it caused quite a stir at the party,” Felton commented.

“Oh, yes, no one talked of anything else after you left,” Anna told him. “The party ended soon after, needless to say.”

“What happened in the original murders, if you don’t mind my asking?” Reed asked the doctor. “Everything everyone said last night was rather, um, speculative.”

“You mean, there was a lot of wild talk about the Beast,” Anna said tartly. “People are willfully superstitious.”

“I was rather surprised to find that the vicar’s wife believed in the legend so enthusiastically,” Kit commented.

“I find it not that unusual for someone who has faith in God to also have faith in a good number of other things,” Reed said dryly. “And,” he added, “in all fairness, even I have to admit that I have seen some events that have shaken my disbelief in things magical or legendary.”

“Well, there was nothing magical or legendary about the murders forty-eight years ago,” Martin Felton put in. “When one reads the articles and books and such, they are written in a lurid way that sounds as if they were eerie and otherworldly, but once you have seen the drawings of the bodies in my father’s notebooks and read his notes, it is hard to view them as anything other than cold-blooded murders.”

“Who was killed that time?”

“The first was a servant girl, and the other was an old man, a farmer. Both had similar disfiguring marks upon them, as if a giant cat had scratched them. But the man actually died from a deep puncture wound in his back, and amid the cuts on the girl’s throat, there was the distinct slice of a knife.” Felton glanced over at Anna. “I am sorry, Miss Holcomb, I forget myself. This is not fit conversation in front of a lady.”

“No, please, Dr. Felton, go on. I am fine,” Anna assured him. “I am made of sterner stuff than that, I think. I, too, would like to learn what happened. I have heard about the murders since I was a child, of course, but no one ever really explained them properly.”

“The culprit was never found, was he?” Kit asked.

“No. When the servant girl was killed, it was assumed that her fiancé had probably done it. He was arrested, but he was a tapster in the tavern, and there were a good number of witnesses who had seen him there, at least until closing. Then the second person was killed in the same way while the fiancé was still in jail, so they released him. No one could ever find any connection between the two victims, and there were no witnesses, no proof of anything. They never found who did it, and there were no more murders…at least, until now.”

“But it could not possibly be the same person,” Kit said.

“No, I wouldn’t think so. I mean, the murderer could still be alive, if he was fairly young at the time, but he would be quite old—at least in his seventies, I would think. It seems unlikely that he would have the strength to subdue a healthy young woman,” Felton responded.

“It would seem to me that whoever did it must be imitating the original murders,” Reed said. “Wouldn’t you think? That it is someone trying to make everyone believe that this Beast is the culprit.”

“That would seem reasonable,” the doctor agreed.

“But it tells us nothing useful about the killer,” Kit pointed out. “I mean, all we know is that he had heard about the original killings, which could be almost anyone in the area.”

“It would seem most likely that the killer was the man she was sneaking out to see,” Anna said. “Kit was saying so earlier.”

“It makes sense,” Reed agreed. “They quarrel about something. He kills her, then tries to cover it up by making the claw marks.”

“Yet it seems unlikely that he would have been carrying a gardening tool or whatever he used to make the marks when he was going to a rendezvous,” Anna pointed out.

“True,” Reed agreed. “That would make it seem premeditated.”

“It would not be the first time someone chose murder to get rid of a lover whom they no longer wanted,” Dr. Felton mused.

For a moment they were all silent, considering the doctor’s words. Then Dr. Felton said, “I should go back to the village. I have stayed too long, I fear. There will doubtless be patients waiting for me at the surgery.”

He rose, and the others stood up with him. Anna thanked him again for bringing them the news about Estelle, and Kit offered to walk the doctor out. Reed and Anna were left alone in the drawing room, and they looked at each other awkwardly.