Winterset (20 page)

“It didn’t matter what you wanted. Or what
I
wanted!” Anna cried. “There was only one course of action. We could not marry.”

“It didn’t have to work out the way you envisioned. We could have talked about it, decided what to do. Perhaps we could have done something.”

“What?” Anna flung her arms wide. “It doesn’t matter how rich or powerful you are, or how clever. There was nothing to be done. Nothing could take away the madness in my family. Nothing could have changed the terrifying possibility that lies within my body. How could anything have been any different? There was no way that we could be together. You had to build a life without me. I had to build a life without you.”

“An empty life,” Reed retorted. “A life without love.”

Anna drew herself up. “Whatever you call it, it is my life. I worked very hard at driving you out of my heart. I cannot allow myself to love. Never again.”

“I marvel at your ability to turn your feelings on and off at will,” Reed told her. “I, unfortunately, was never able to.”

Anna looked at him for a long moment, then said tightly, “I did what I had to do.”

She turned and strode away. Reed stood, looking after her. This time, he did not follow her.

The following days passed in a haze of misery for Anna. She did not see or hear from Reed. She presumed that before long she would hear that he was moving back to London. She had driven him off, just as she had done three years ago. It would have seemed, she thought, that once would have provided all the pain she should have to endure.

She went about her daily tasks, searching out every little thing that she could do to busy herself, and though she did them somewhat numbly, at least they kept her mind from returning again and again to the thought of Reed. The nights were much worse, for when she went to bed and extinguished her candle, there was nothing to stave off her thoughts, and soon she would turn her face into her pillow and cry.

Anna wanted to continue to look into the killings, but she was unsure how to go about it. Obviously, she could not go back to Winterset and help Reed look through the records there for former servants. Beyond that, she was not sure what to do. Frankly, she could not tell that their investigation into the killings almost fifty years ago had any relevance to the two killings that had taken place recently.

However, she had no idea how else to proceed. She had talked to Estelle’s roommate and to her family, and she had come no closer to discovering the identity of the mysterious man Estelle had been meeting. Nor could she think of any way to discover who had killed the young farmer a few days later. Had the killer specifically meant to kill Frank Johnson? Had he seen him at the tavern and followed him home? Or had he lain in wait at the footbridge and simply killed the first person who happened by?

It seemed to her that he must have intended to kill a farmer in order to make the murders like the ones that had occurred in the past. Therefore, he must have known that Johnson worked the fields with his father and brothers.

Anna experienced a shiver down her back at the thought. For the killer to have known that Frank Johnson was a farmer would indicate that he must be someone local, not, as she had hoped, someone from another village who had ridden over to see Estelle. The second killing, she thought, also made it more unlikely that it was Estelle’s lover who had killed her—unless, of course, he had set out to kill a maidservant and had taken up with Estelle with the intention of killing her.

That idea brought another shiver. It all seemed too horrible to contemplate. Whether the killer was cold and meticulous, choosing his victims—taking up with Estelle, following the Johnson boy home—or someone who prowled the area at night, killing whoever happened to cross his path, Anna could not imagine how anyone could do what he had done. He must be mad, she thought.

That idea brought her back to her uncle. Anna could not bear to think that he had done it. He was her flesh and blood; she loved him even though he no longer was the man she had known and loved as a child.

There was no wickedness in him, of that she was certain. But she was less certain that he was incapable of killing someone if he was in the grip of one of his delusions. He heard and saw things that other people did not, but they were as real to him as the events in Anna’s life were to her. If the “Angel Gabriel” told him he must kill Estelle, wouldn’t he do it? If he thought the Johnson lad was one of the Queen’s assassins, might he not fight him?

On the other hand, the fact that the killings so closely mirrored the original killings seemed to Anna to indicate that Uncle Charles could not be responsible. How could his fogged brain have been up to the task of planning murders to resemble the old ones?

Anna prayed that she was right, that the killer could not be her uncle. If he was, then she and her family were ultimately responsible for those poor people dying, for they had hidden and sheltered her uncle, and allowed him to live freely instead of locked up in an asylum.

As she was pondering these matters one morning, it occurred to her suddenly that she knew a person of very sound mind who had been alive at the time of the original killings—Nick Perkins. So that afternoon, taking a meat pie from the cook, she drove the long way around to his house—she still could not face walking over the footbridge on the way there.

He was working in his garden, as he usually was, and he stood up with a smile when he saw her. “Miss Anna. What a pleasure to see you.”

“Thank you.” She smiled, climbing down from the trap, and handed him the pie. “A little something for your table from Cook.”

“Your presence is gift enough,” he told her with a twinkle in his blue eyes. “But I’ll take the pie, anyway.”

“I cannot imagine how you never came to marry,” Anna said teasingly. “A charmer such as yourself.”

“Ah, now, Miss Anna, mayhap I was just too crafty for the matchmakers.”

In fact, Anna had wondered more than once why the old man had not married and grown old with children and grandchildren around him. Even in old age, his was a handsome face, and Anna could well imagine that when he was young, he had had the local lasses swooning over him. When she was younger, she had dreamed up several romantic tragedies to account for his single state. In more recent years, it had seemed to her less romantic and more sad that the man had grown old alone.

Leading her inside, Perkins put the pie away and brewed a pot of tea for them. “How are those two young rascals? Bright as tacks, they were, and good with their hands, too. I didn’t worry about letting them have the dog.”

“I haven’t heard from them. They have gone back to London, you know. Their sister did not feel it was safe to have the children around here with all that has happened.”

Nick shook his head somberly as he brought the teapot to the table and poured the golden-brown liquid into their cups. “Bad business, that.”

“Yes, it was. Very bad.” Anna took a sip of tea, then said, “Nick…”

“Yes, miss?”

“You were here, were you not, forty-eight years ago? When the first murders happened?”

He glanced over at her. “Aye, I was.”

“What do you remember about them?” Anna asked.

“What do you want to know about those for? They’re long past. It’s better to leave the dead buried.”

“But someone won’t let them,” Anna countered. “Have you heard the details of the current murders? The first was one of our maids, and the last was the son of a farmer. They were slashed with what looked like claws. Just like the murders forty-eight years ago.”

“It couldn’t be the same person,” Nick said flatly.

“No. I think it’s clear that someone is imitating him. But perhaps the answer to these murders lies in those old ones.”

“I don’t see how,” he said with a shrug.

“Did you know the people who were killed back then?” Anna asked.

“I knew Will Dawson. He was an old man. He didn’t deserve for his life to end that way.” Perkins’ usually cheerful face was grim.

“No one does. So you didn’t know the servant at Winterset?”

He shook his head. “No. Oh, I’d seen her once or twice, I suppose, but I didn’t know her.”

“Who do you think killed them?” Anna asked.

“Everyone said it was the Beast,” he replied.

Anna cocked an eyebrow at him. “Surely you don’t believe that.”

“It would take a beast to do those things.” His eyes slid away from her.

“Was there no one they suspected?” Anna persisted. It seemed to her that Nick, usually such an open, even talkative person, was being peculiarly vague with his answers.

“The girl’s fiancé,” he replied. “But when Dawson was killed, they let him out of jail. He couldn’t have done that one.”

“But no one else?”

“I never heard that there was.”

Anna looked at him with narrowed eyes. She could not shake the feeling that her old friend was holding something back from her. “Did you never suspect who it was?”

“I had no way of knowing,” he replied. “I didn’t spend much time worrying about it. It was harvest, and I had a lot of work to do. And then the murders stopped, so…”

“Isn’t it peculiar, though? How the killer just stopped after two? Why did someone kill those two and no one else?”

“Mayhap he left the area,” Perkins suggested. “More tea?” He lifted the pot.

Anna nodded, with a little sigh. When she had thought of Perkins, she had been so sure that he would be able to tell her something useful. He must have seen her disappointment, for he reached over and patted her hand, a more familiar gesture than he would normally have made.

“Don’t worry about it now, Miss Anna.” He smiled at her. “It was all a long time ago. Just let it lie.”

“I can’t. What if there’s some connection to the present murders?”

“Someone is imitating them, that’s all. Finding out what happened back then, even if you could do it, wouldn’t tell you who’s doing it now.” He stood up. “By the way, seeing that you’re going back to Holcomb Manor, would you take this liniment to the head groom? I promised to make him up a new bottle.”

“Of course.” Anna accepted the change of conversation, even though she could not understand why Perkins seemed so reluctant to talk about the matter. Perhaps, since he’d known the farmer who had died, the incidents held too many bad memories for him.

She left a few minutes later and drove home, mulling over her conversation with Perkins. When she stopped the horse in front of her house, she wished that she had left Nick’s cottage several minutes later. The squire’s carriage was in front of their house.

There was no way she could sneak in without being seen, so Anna put on the best smile she could and walked into the drawing room. Kit, looking rather beleaguered, glanced up at Anna’s entrance and smiled with relief.

“Anna, dear.” He stood up, giving her his seat in a straight-back chair positioned between Mrs. Bennett and her daughter, Felicity.

Mrs. Bennett beamed at Anna, and Felicity giggled for no apparent reason. Anna saw that they had brought Miles with them this time. He was slouching on the sofa beside his sister, looking bored, but he rose at Anna’s entrance and bowed deeply over her hand.

“Oh, pray don’t leave us, Sir Christopher, just because your sister has returned,” Mrs. Bennett said with a little laugh. “We should love to chat with both of you. Isn’t that right, Felicity?”

“Oh, my, yes,” Felicity replied inanely, letting out another giggle.

“I am sorry. I offer you my deepest apologies, but I have a great deal of work waiting for me at my desk,” Kit told her. “I am afraid I must leave Anna to entertain you.” He left the room as quickly as politeness would allow.

“Such a responsible gentleman,” Mrs. Bennett said warmly, with an approving smile at Kit’s back. “You see, Miles, how he attends to his estate. One day your father will no longer be with us, and you will have to assume his duties. You could have no better model than Sir Christopher.”

Miles cast a dark look at his mother. Anna suspected that this was an argument he had heard more than once from her.

Mrs. Bennett turned to Anna, leaning forward confidingly to say, “I cannot get Miles even to accompany his father round the estate. That boy.” She cast an affectionately exasperated glance at him. “He would rather work on his poetry. Isn’t that right, dear?”

“Mother, I am sure that Miss Holcomb doesn’t want to hear about our family matters,” he said, with an agonized look at Anna.

“He’s right,” Felicity agreed unexpectedly. “It’s horribly boring, poetry.”

A flush stained Miles’ cheeks, and he shot his sister a furious glance. Anna hastily put in, “I am rather fond of poetry myself.”

“Of course you are,” Mrs. Bennett said, smiling at her. “Such a smart girl you are. La, Felicity and I are such featherheads.” She said this happily, as if such a character trait would endear them to Anna.

Anna murmured some response, not sure exactly what was appropriate to this remark. Mrs. Bennett, however, did not notice her hesitation. She was already plowing ahead with her typically one-sided conversation.

“I am sure you are sorry to see Lady Kyria go,” she said. “Such a lovely woman—and not at all high in the instep, as one would think she would be. Wouldn’t you say so?”