I thought my next half-day would never come. I dreaded what I must do yet longed to have it over, the mystery clarified. The days dragged by, a miasma of fear and gloom permeating every corner of the house. Queries into the death of Sal Billings had gone nowhere. Death by beating by person or persons unknown—all agreed that would be the verdict at the inquest, but as for suspects? As Huntley proclaimed one evening after dinner, the list of suspects could include the whole of North Devon. Which brought an instant challenge from Vanessa, to whom he apologized quite prettily, quickly amending his comment to “any male in North Devon.”
Just to be contrary, I said, “You do not think she might have been attacked by a jealous female?” That brought stares from all four gentlemen in the drawing room, probably from David as well, though my back was to him and I could not see his face.
“You think a woman capable of murder?” Lord Hycliffe asked, clearly startled by my question.
“I have seen women come close to killing each other, my lord. Fortunately, there were always others there to stop the fight.”
“Merciful heavens, Penny,” Lady Emmaline declared, startled out of her customary reverie, “such a strange life you have led.”
“Come now, Penny,” Exmere said, “you saw the body. Surely your eyes told you that only the strength of a man could inflict such damage.”
He was right, of course, so I closed my mouth and said no more. Had I actually proposed a woman as a suspect simply because I felt female capabilities were so often ignored? I feared I had. In some mad rush to defend female strength, I had suggested one of my own sex might be a murderer. Oh, well done, Penny, well done.
Naturally, when my half-day came at last, the mists came with it, shrouding the house in a blanket of grayish white even more intense than the day I had first discovered the cave under the hill. “Oh, miss, y’r not going out!” Cook cried as I helped myself to a lantern.
“Only for a few breaths of fresh air,” I told her. “I spent most of my life outdoors, you know. I feel so confined inside.”
“But ye’ll not go alone!”
“A few steps is all. Don’t worry.” I edged toward the door.
“Miss!” But I was gone, welcoming the fog that swiftly enveloped me, protecting me from being seen. Or followed.
Unfortunately, it did not occur to me that it also kept me from seeing anyone else who might be wandering through the gardens of Moorhead Manor.
Having negotiated the garden paths many times, I found the walled garden with no difficulty, and making sure I kept the satisfying crunch of pebbles under my half-boots, I found my way to the folly with little difficulty. It was equally easy to find the good-sized rock I had borrowed the day before from a gardener’s carefully assembled display and secreted behind a large plant directly across from the folly.
Now came the hard part. I had never actually opened the hidden door, except accidentally. Robert had tried every carving, crack, and cranny and ended up using brute force. Well, why not? I squared my shoulders, drew a deep breath, and shoved the back of the left end of the bench with all my might.
To my astonishment, with a grinding creak the wall beside the bench moved, revealing a gap just wide enough for me to slip inside. Now, at last, terror triumphed over righteous indignation. I had to be out of my mind. Lady Rothbury and Quenton Ridgeway had gone in and never come out. Perhaps the door had closed, trapping them inside? Perhaps someone had closed the door. Deliberately.
Common sense said no one would make a door to a cave that could not be opened from the inside. But . . .
After terming my common sense mere cowardice, I maneuvered the heavy rock into position against the door. There! No need for the butterflies flittering along my nerves. No need for pounding heart and roiling stomach. I was safe. That door was not going to close. I turned up the lantern wick and entered the Stygian darkness.
How far? Robert had not been gone long, so surely . . .
The cold intensified; the stone walls around me glistened with moisture. I shivered. I wanted to think it was only from the chill, but I knew better. I was doing something dangerous. Forbidden. Something that could mean the loss of love. Though that love was all too one-sided, as it became apparent Robert’s interest in me was ephemeral, easily buried under the exigencies of family honor.
I rounded a corner, and my feet simply stopped moving, as if frozen to the floor. From Portugal to France I had seen bodies piled on bodies in bloody, misshapen heaps. But I had never before seen a skeleton. Two skeletons. Entwined in death. I closed my eyes, drew a deep breath, and took a second look. In that moment Papa would have called me “an arrogant little fool” for my presumptions. For Robert was right. This was a sight that should be kept forever private.
I was not naive. No one who lived twenty years with an army could ever be that. I was only eleven the first time I had stumbled across a couple copulating in the bushes. And on the Peninsula—though I never mentioned the sights I’d seen to my parents—I had received a rather broad education on the intimacies between the sexes. Solely as an inadvertent witness, I hasten to add. And just when I thought I’d seen it all, I had been thoroughly shocked one day when I caught a glimpse of two troopers indulging in something extraordinary in an empty stall.
So even in skeletal form I recognized the position. Lady Rothbury and Quenton Ridgeway had been caught in flagrante. Killed where they lay. There would be no telltale pistol indicating suicide, of that I was now certain.
I finally unfroze myself and looked anyway. That, after all, was why I had come. It would be more than foolish to assume I could take one look and be confident I had interpreted the scene correctly.
I searched diligently and found only the one bullet Robert had mentioned. Perhaps Lord Hycliffe had strangled his wife. Or a single bullet had killed them both. There was no pistol anywhere near the skeletal remains, though I confess I did not search the far reaches of the cave.
After crawling around the stone floor on my hands and knees, cautiously circling the pile of bones, I sat back on my heels, blew out a whoosh of air, and attempted to accept the reality of what I found.
Murder. It had to be.
Unless the killer arranged the bodies after death . . .
Thus proving it was murder.
Unlikely. As well as impossibly distasteful. I shuddered.
Why could I not be some flibbertigibbet idiot female without a thought in her head? A female who never questioned the allegedly superior reasoning of the males of the species? A female who minded feminine things—gowns, bonnets, household matters, the latest on dits?
Ha! As if really wished to be such a namby-pamby creature! The truth was, Lord Hycliffe was the most likely suspect by far. Could Robert have followed his mother to her tryst that day? No, I was almost certain he was genuinely shocked by what he discovered inside the cave. Nor could I even imagine him killing his own mother.
But, oh dear God, what to do now?
I finally dragged myself to my feet, picked up the lantern, and headed back down the passage. I had done what I thought was my duty and now realized I was quite likely a self-righteous little twit who should have had the sense to stay out of it.
I rounded the slight bend in the passage and my feet simply stopped moving as I stared into the darkness ahead. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. No swirling mist, no sign of anything but utter blackness.
I kept going even though I knew what had happened. The door was closed. The door that could not have closed by itself.
Sure enough, the passage ended against the unyielding stuccoed wall that encompassed the garden. I pushed, pried, attempted to find some knob to slide. I knew the wall opened out, away from the cave, but nothing I tried—including sheer force, a furious conjuring of will-power, and a hearty application of prayer—budged that door so much as a fraction of an inch.
I had been aware that knowledge of the contents of the cave put me in danger, and yet willfully, blindly, I had come anyway. I fought panic, grasping at the logical. When I did not appear for dinner, a search would be made. And Robert would know where to look.
Unless he decided my silence was more important than my life.
I sat on the stone floor, turned down the lantern wick, and waited. I had left the house at around half one. As much as two hours had passed, but my wait would be a long one. Would the lantern last? Did it matter? I would be as alone with it as without it. And just as dead if no one ever came.
Determined not to be overcome by fear, I forced my mind to the more recent murders. Had Lord Hycliffe done those as well? Or did we have a second madman on the loose?
Could I call the earl a madman? There probably wasn’t a jury in Devon who would convict him for killing an errant wife. No . . . he would be tried by a jury of his peers. In London. And it was likely they too would find him not guilty. So I was what is called “fair and far out” when I sought to know the truth. I’d been headstrong and foolish and was suffering the consequences.
Which still did not explain who killed Mary, Nell, and Sal.
And there, at least, I found the justification for sticking my nose where it didn’t belong. If the next murder could be prevented . . .
Was it possible killing his wife and her lover had precipitated Lord Hycliffe into a madness where he took all women in dislike . . .
He certainly had not treated me so, I amended swiftly. And he cared about Vanessa and was fond of Lady Emmaline. He had treated the Durrant ladies with graciousness, to the point of promoting a match between Robert and Lady Daphne. None of which made sense if he had become a true misogynist.
Misogynist! An understatement for a man who had killed three women.
The Ridgeways, father and son? I could see no reason why either would feel they had to kill a brother or uncle. And it was doubtful they had any knowledge of the cave. And besides, Nell Ridgeway had been one of the victims. Kenrick? He could be vitriolic, but he was also lazy. I could not possibly see him strangling Mary, pushing Nell off a cliff, or most particularly, exerting himself to beat poor Sal to a pulp. Huntley? I’d as lief suspect Allard, the butler.
David?
David had a myriad reasons to hate women, including something I should not know about but did. Frustration. Although there had been some recent improvements, life with Vanessa was never easy. It was not far-fetched to think David had looked for satisfaction elsewhere—he was both charming and stunningly handsome. And if a girl said no . . . Or if she did not, and he was overcome by guilt . . .
I shied away, not liking this train of thought. Devon was a large county. There were all sorts of men out there. The murderer did not have to be one of our own.
Yet I swear as I sat huddled by that elusive door, the bodies in the cave called out to me, demanding vengeance, accusing me of cowardice, of taking the easy way out if I accepted Robert’s dictate about keeping the cave’s contents a secret.
I prayed. To God and, blasphemous as it might be, to Robert to come and rescue me.
The hours dragged by, the lantern went out. Blackness covered me like a shroud. The cold penetrated all the way to my bones. And then I heard it, the creak of the door. I gasped as the sudden influx of cold night air rushed in and Robert’s face was illuminated by the glow of the lantern he was carrying.
He bent down, shoved the rock against the door, and then he was holding me tight, and I was sobbing as if I’d taken all the mists of Devon inside me and had to pour them out before I could say a word. Yet even as he held me, I could feel his anger, and when I had finally reduced my waterfall of tears to sniffs and an occasional hiccup, he let his feelings be known. “How could you?” he said in deadly tones. You betrayed me, endangered your life, and all because of some misguided notion that you know best how to handle the affairs of my family.”
“Did you do it?” I roared back, suddenly reenergized. “Did you shut me in here to teach me a lesson? Leave me frightened half to death in this horrible place because I ignored your order to hide a crime?”
“What?” Robert rocked back on his heels and stared at me. “You think I shut you in?”
“Who else? Do you actually think your father was wandering around in the gardens in the fog? And besides, surely you did not tell him I was with you when you found the bodies?”
“Of course not.” He frowned. “The door must have slid closed by itself.”
“It was propped open with the same rock you just used. Believe me, that rock did not roll away of its own accord.”
“You don’t believe me,” he said flatly.
“Who else knew of the cave? Who else knew I might well investigate on my own, come my half-day?”
“Someone else had to be out here.”
I scrambled to my feet, shaking off Robert’s aid, only to discover my legs were cramped and fear had taken its toll. I would have crumpled where I stood if he had not caught me, pulling me into his side, maneuvering us through the door. Still keeping a tight hold on me, he kicked the rock aside, shoved the door shut with his shoulder, and guided me back to the house.
Déja vu. Except this time he escorted me all the way to my room, where he set me in a chair and built up the fire. “I’ll have a tray sent up from the kitchen,” he told me, “but before that I must reassure my sister who is certain you are the latest murder victim, and then see the search is called off.” He scowled at me and repeated what seemed to have become his favorite phrase. “You are a great deal of trouble, Miss Ballantyne.”
And then he was gone, leaving me at sixes and sevens with absolutely no idea whether I loved him, hated him, or feared him.