Normally, I enjoyed my days off, relishing the time for a longer morning walk, taking a second cup of tea into the library and sitting near the corner windows to catch the odd ray of sun. On this Monday, however, the heavy feeling from the day before remained. I pulled on old trousers and an even older pair of trainers—my others hadn’t survived the outing with Gavin—and a thin shirt topped with the stretched-out navy cardigan that had been my mum’s and—before that, my dad’s—topping it off with my heavy coat.
On our brief bird outing, Thorne and I made our way through the formal garden, emerging into the native landscape. We stood, hands in the pockets of our coats, and watched redwings in the holly, feasting on the berries, and after that we walked down to the massive oak that stood at the corner of the near field and observed a handful of rooks acting as gleaners in the wheat stubble.
Returned to the Hall, I made my second cup of tea and headed for the corner chair in the library. The window faced south, and so this late in the year, the morning sun fell at a slant into the room and outdoors across the hedges, casting deep shadows as if they were drawn with pen and ink. No one came in the library in the morning—it was my secret space, a haven.
But today, my kingdom had been invaded.
I made a futile attempt to back out the door without Isabel seeing me, but she turned, coffee in hand, and said, “It’s all right, Julia, you aren’t disturbing me. Come sit.”
I skirted the room and approached her. She sat low in the chair with her legs crossed, and clasped her coffee to her chest, a ray of sun setting her hair aglow. She wore a pumpkin-colored high-neck sweater, earth-toned leather trousers, and deep brown boots up to her knees—the picture of the well-dressed countrywoman.
“I used to come in here every morning,” she said.
“Yes, it’s lovely,” I said, lowering myself onto a bench up against the wall, as it was the only other seat available near her.
“Don’t stay too long, Julia.”
“Sorry?” Was she turfing me out a moment after inviting me in?
“This place—Hoggin Hall—it’s depressing and cold. It will suck the life out of you.”
She continued to gaze out the window as I thought back past the unpleasantness of the last fortnight to the first few weeks after I’d moved into the Hall. The cozy kitchen talks with Thorne and Sheila. The dinners when Linus had insisted we ask Vesta and Akash—and I had asked Michael, too, when he wasn’t off with Rupert and the production crew. We’d had game nights, and even Thorne, Sheila, and Nuala had been persuaded to join us. Those happy moments came back to me as I watched Isabel and realized that some people carry this life-sucking ability about with them wherever they go. I wondered was she ever happy.
She continued to gaze out the window. “I remember sitting here, watching Cecil and Adam play spies in the hedge. Such energy those boys had. They would stalk Thorne as he walked through the garden on his way to the orchard. I watched you and Thorne out there earlier.”
“We often go for a morning walk.”
“You’re quite close to the staff at the Hall, aren’t you?”
“Yes, and why not? As you pointed out, I am one of them.”
She responded with barely a flicker of an eyelid. “No matter what Linus said to you—what he may have promised you—he and I agree that the well-being of our son is of the utmost importance. Cecil will be the Earl Fotheringill.”
“Of course he will,” I said. “That’s a given, isn’t it?”
The slow look she gave me out of the corner of her eye seemed to name me a key figure in the conspiracy to oust Cecil and replace him with some future spare Fotheringill heir. “Someone,” she said, “has gone to a great deal of trouble to make Cecil look bad over this business here at the Hall.”
“This business? You mean Freddy Peacock being murdered—because you know that’s what happened, don’t you? He was poisoned. Shortsighted of Freddy, wasn’t it? He should’ve considered what that would do to Cecil’s reputation.”
“This young man’s death is a tragedy, of course.” Isabel set down her coffee and turned to me. I could see tears in her eyes and her forehead wrinkled into a frown, something I hadn’t thought possible. “But his death shouldn’t drag others down with it—you wouldn’t let that happen, would you, Julia? Even if it meant someone close to you were responsible?”
I couldn’t speak, I was so shocked. I knew what she meant. She was pointing the finger at Linus—accusing him of killing Freddy to eliminate the blackmailer.
And now lounging round the Hall on my day off had been taken away from me. I took my cup back to the kitchen and told Sheila I was going out—a long walk round the estate to clear my fusty head.
“And your breakfast?” she asked, knowing I’d had none.
“I’ll eat a good lunch.”
“You’ll take a sandwich—we’ve ham. I’ll leave it for you here.”
I took longer than I thought upstairs, as I received a text from Beryl: “Contractions started and stopped.” I rang and talked with Bee for a moment as she paced her bedroom.
When I stopped by the kitchen for my sandwich, Sheila had her arms full of linens. She sighed. “I hope we won’t need to begin scheduling the laundry—Lady Fotheringill beat me there again today. She seems to spend her days in the shower or washing clothes—it’s an odd fetish to come on her so late in life.”
“How long do you think she’ll stay?” I asked in a whisper, looking over my shoulder to the door.
Sheila shrugged an answer and left.
Tucking the sandwich and my field glasses into my bag, I walked out into the chill sunshine. Just outside the yew arch that marked the bottom of the formal garden, I paused and considered where to go. But my feet had already decided, and I struck out on the footpath that led through the wood and across the field to Adam Bugg’s orchard.
No smoke rose from Addleton’s chimney—I could see the red door of the gamekeeper’s lodge between tree trunks as I stayed on the footpath through the wood. I suppose it should be called the agent’s lodge now. Not far out of the wood, I reached the spot where I’d found the dead sparrow hawks. I looked back; Addleton lived quite close. He had said he’d been out on the estate the day before—most likely when the poisoned bait had been laid out—and he’d seen nothing.
More than a week after I’d found the dead birds, I saw no sign of my discovery in the brown grass. Dad told me that after they’d removed the birds and the bait, the area had been flushed with water—if it were the pesticide he suspected, it broke down quickly in soil and so would do no harm. It had done quite enough harm already, hadn’t it?
At the orchard, I walked down a row of young, vigorous trees to find Adam up a ladder in the middle of lichen-encrusted branches on a tree so gnarled and twisted I expected it to come to life like in a fairy tale.
“Good morning,” I called up to him.
“Hiya, Julia. Your day off?”
“It is—and you?”
“No, I’m on in the library for the afternoon. I like the schedule—gives me mornings out here.”
“This tree’s been around for a while,” I said, patting its cold, mossy trunk.
“Sweet Alford,” Adam replied as he climbed down and pulled off a red knit cap, shaking bits of dried leaves and twigs off it before stuffing it in his jacket pocket. His black eye had aged to the shade of a green woodpecker. “From Devon, eighteenth century. This one was planted about a hundred years ago, I’d say, but it still bears. It’s worth keeping, even if it does get a bit of scab. I’ll need to work on it this winter.”
“How did you get interested in apples?” I asked.
“Thorne used to work this orchard—at least part-time. Thirty years ago, when Linus inherited, he took on a load of debt and the entire estate had to tighten its belt. Thorne doubled up—for years he worked as butler and kept the orchard going. He’d bring me along, so I as much as grew up here.”
“And Cecil, too, before Linus and Isabel divorced?”
“Yeah, when she’d let him,” Adam said as he tucked secateurs in his belt and picked up a pair of loppers. “It’s never a good idea to be friends with the hired help, according to Lady Fotheringill. At least not after the age of five.”
I walked down the row toward the shed with him, dodging low-hanging branches and avoiding a few rotting fallen apples. “Did you know about Freddy blackmailing Cecil?”
He stopped. “You want to know if I think Cecil could’ve killed Freddy—no, he couldn’t. We grew up together, Julia—he’s like my brother.”
This didn’t exactly allay my fears that either or both had been involved in Freddy’s death. Families stick together, after all. “You and Cecil were arguing,” I said, and blushed at the revelation of my spying. “I saw you outside the Hall a few days ago—on my way into the village.”
He nodded. “We had a disagreement—he never should’ve given in to Peacock’s demands. He knows that now, of course.”
“You didn’t care much for Freddy, did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” Adam replied, as he paused to lop a broken stem off a branch. “He was a leech, feeding off others. He took advantage of people’s weaknesses.”
“And he had taken a fancy to Louisa.” My heart thumped at my audacity.
Adam’s eyes burned. He ran his hand through his cropped hair. “So now you think I’m the one who topped him?”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t need to say it—I can see it’s what you’re thinking.” He jerked his head, pointing the way. “Come on, then.” He took my wrist and dragged me along. In a panic, I realized I’d told no one where I was going. I had half a mind to break and run, but knew I wouldn’t get far if he wanted to overtake me. And running would make it look as if I was scared of him. And I wasn’t. Not much.
When we reached the shed, he opened the door and released my arm. I stepped back and he shook his head and walked in ahead of me. I peered in, dim light filtering through windows thick with dirt. Sacks and bags, bottles and jugs—all coated with grime and attached to each other by years of cobwebs—lined the filthy shelves. In the corner, long-handled tools, some half rotted away, stood in a tangled, upright heap.
“I’ve been meaning to clean this out since I started here five years ago. But I haven’t yet—I only reach in for what I need and shut the door. I wouldn’t use any of that rubbish in any case,” he said, nodding to the chemicals. “Not for birds or for people.”
“I wasn’t accusing you,” I said. “But the poison must’ve come from somewhere—and why not an abandoned shed where all this”—I gestured to the shelves—“has been forgotten?”
We stood in silence for a moment. I searched for a way to ease his mind—and mine, too. “Do you see much of Mr. Addleton?” I asked. “He doesn’t live all that far away. He helped on Cider Day, didn’t he?”
“Yeah. He had come out the day before, too, for a look round—counting trees, asking me questions, poking his head into the cider house and the shed. Getting to know the tenants, he said. Wanted me to clean out the shed so we were in line with all the new EU regulations for chemicals.”
He hung the loppers from a peg, and when he turned, he caught me peering closely at the shelves. I blushed and looked away.
“You go on and look,” he said.
“No,” I said. “I really only came out for a walk and thought I’d stop.”
“Well, you don’t mind if I keep working?”
“Not at all.”
Adam headed for the cider house, but I stayed in the shed. Lots of people had the opportunity to nip into the shed on Cider Day and make off with the poison that killed Freddy. But the sparrow hawks were already dead that morning, so it must’ve been someone who’d come by another day.
I pulled out my key ring and switched on the tiny torch I carried—a gift from Rupert, who didn’t want me stuck in a dark place—and began scanning the shelves. Product names weren’t the same as the actual chemical name, and so I floundered searching for something that might contain the chemical Dad had mentioned: mevinphos.
“Looking for something?”