Death at the Abbey (10 page)

Her boot connected with something solid. She would have thought it was a tree stump except it wasn't as hard as that. In fact, there was something familiar to it. She knelt down once more to inspect what was half buried under the leaves, brushing them aside until she found—

Violet staggered backward, and let out a loud gasp that sent the ravens scattering out of the trees in a burst of screeching and cawing. They couldn't possibly be any more startled than she was.

9

L
ying before Violet was the body of another man. She blinked in disbelief. Who was this? Who had left him so carelessly in the woods like this, in a shallow grave where he might be preyed upon by animals and made to suffer the chill and rain? For certainly he had not covered himself up.

Although still trembling, once she had sufficiently recovered from her shock and choked down her outrage, Violet fully uncovered the body and began an inspection of the man. He was of larger than average height and build, and probably in his late thirties, considerably older than Burton Spencer. His clothes were worn but fit well. There were what appeared to be paint smudges on the right thigh of his trousers.

She held up one of his hands. It was rough and calloused. “Sir, I am guessing you are one of His Grace's hardest-working outdoor men.” She rubbed the gray hand between her palms. Rigor mortis had passed. She leaned over and slowly sniffed the air around him, trying to separate out the telltale odor of decomposition from that of rotting leaves. It was impossible to be certain, but she thought that this man, like Spencer, had been dead no more than three or four days.

She had an idea. “Will you allow me to open your shirt, sir, to see if you are bruised like Mr. Spencer?” Violet unbuttoned the black-and-white-striped shirt and pulled it back, exposing his chest and shoulders.

There was no bruising on the man's chest, but what was this on his right shoulder? She bent to take a closer look. Why, it was a tattoo, and an odd one. It seemed to be a hill with a tree growing out of the top of it. What in heaven's name did it represent?

Violet had more immediate concerns. First, how had the man died? With a knot of dread in her stomach, she reached her hand behind his neck, gently probing the back of his head. There was definitely a mass of crusted blood.

It seemed likely that he had died by the same hand that had killed Spencer. How were these two murders related? Did the two men know each other, beyond both presumably serving as estate workers? Had the colonel actually murdered them? Or was the colonel perhaps involved in one but not the other?

Another thought occurred to her. What if this was the murder the colonel had actually witnessed? Spencer's body had been discovered first and so she had simply assumed he was the one to whom Colonel Mortimer had referred. And the colonel had never been summoned to identify the body, so that assumption had remained in place.

Had Violet's mental accusation of the colonel been completely off the mark? She checked his neck for marks of strangulation. Nothing. Nevertheless, she needed to report this.

“Sir, forgive me, but I'm afraid I will have to leave you alone once more while I go to fetch help. I promise that you won't remain here long.”

She rose, and her first thought was to go to the duke right away, for surely he would want to summon the police this time. Her second thought, though, was to continue on her original mission to the colonel's cottage. She would report the body to him and see what his reaction was. After all, the corpse could not be helped now, and it might be illuminating to witness the colonel's reception to the news.

Colonel Mortimer's reaction to her visit, however, was unlike anything Violet could have ever expected.

 

The colonel's cottage was larger than any of the others around it, although it shared their thatched-roof styling. Like the others', its exterior was immaculately groomed. The duke must be spending inordinate sums to maintain the complicated landscapes surrounding the main house and all of these outbuildings.

As Violet raised her hand to knock at the door, she wondered who lived in the surrounding homes, other than Mr. Reed, the estate manager. Widows, orphans, other displaced relatives? Perhaps more of the estate's crucial employees?

The door opened, and Colonel Mortimer appeared from behind it. His condition was even more dreadful than when she had met him in Portland's quarters. Violet self-consciously pressed a hand against her reticule, to make sure she still felt the outline of her knife inside, should something go awry.

“Colonel? I'm Violet Harper, the under—”

“Yes, I remember.” He stood back and pulled the door farther open, so Violet stepped in. A lone gas lamp burned in the room, which was full of the overstuffed furniture, patterned rugs, and bold floral wallpaper that were currently popular. The cottage lacked any framed photographs, but more than made up for it with shelves full of liquor bottles and glasses.

She supposed she should credit him for not hiding his tippling.

“I've discovered a body,” she said without preamble as he shut the door behind her, enveloping them in murky shadows. Violet felt that the cottage wanted to cry out in its loneliness.

The colonel raised an eyebrow, which framed one of a pair of bloodshot eyes. “I know this, Mrs. Harper. We just had a funeral for Mr. Spencer.”

Liquor fumes from his breath settled over Violet like a noxious miasma, confirming her suspicion that he was drunk.

“I don't mean Mr. Spencer, Colonel. I mean to tell you that I've found a second body.”

The colonel weaved back and forth. “I didn't find it this time.”

“No, Colonel,
I
found it. It's a man whom I think is probably a work—”

“I didn't have anything to do with it, either.”

Was Colonel Mortimer telling her something specific, or was he merely rambling in his intoxication? One thing for certain, his pair of bloodshot eyes conclusively proved to Violet that the glass eye was not his. But was it true that he'd had nothing to do with this second murder? Perhaps she should try to set him at ease with her visit.

“I must confess to you, sir, that I found a broken glass eye, and I was certain it belonged to you, except that both the day I met you and at this moment, your eyes have been particularly red, so I know it cannot be yours.” She reached into her reticule and pulled out the two broken pieces.

To her surprise, the colonel roared with laughter after a mere glance at them. “Of course it's mine, madam.”

“But—”

“Care for a nip? I'm dry as the Sahara myself.” He went to one of the laden shelves and searched through the bottles. Violet wasn't sure if he was looking for a specific type, or merely a bottle that was at least half full. He finally selected a bottle of dark liquid. He held it up for Violet's approval.

“No, thank you,” she demurred politely.

“Are you certain, madam? It's rum made from the finest molasses Barbados produces. No? Very well, then.” The colonel poured himself a generous glass of it and sniffed appreciatively before taking a gulp.

Was Violet going to have to wait until he drained the glass before he explained about the glass eye? “Sir, you said that this belongs—”

“Ah yes, just a moment.” The colonel left the room with his glass.

Violet planned to count to ten, and if he didn't return by then, she would simply have to leave and report the death to Portland. The body was, after all, still lying inelegantly in the copse.

Colonel Mortimer returned, though, before she reached the number six, with his drink in one hand and a glass-covered tray in the other. The tray reminded her of her own portable glass cases, which she used to exhibit mourning pins, bracelets, hairpins, and handkerchiefs to her customers. However, Violet had never seen a display such as what the colonel now held.

The tray was divided into twelve compartments lined in satin. Each compartment but two held a different glass eye. Despite herself, Violet put a hand to her chest. “Oh my,” she breathed, as ten eyes of varying pupil width and iris shade stared up at her.

The colonel laughed again, enjoying her discomfort. “Quite a collection, eh? There is an ocularist in Munich who makes them for me. Look at this one,” he said, putting down his rum to open the case and take one out. “See the yellowing in the white portion here? Makes it look jaundiced, doesn't it? I wear it when I'm not well.”

The colonel put that one away and set the case down next to his glass. “When I have a little nip or two, my eye can get a bit bloodshot, so I always insert this one”—in one fluid motion, the colonel popped out the prosthetic in his left eye, presenting the piece with its red lining around the iris to Violet like a gift—“so that others are not disconcerted when they don't match. Clever, isn't it?”

As Colonel Mortimer spoke, Violet was fascinated by the fact that his eye socket wasn't completely empty, but that there was still muscle moving about in it. So that was why his glass eye wasn't a ball to fit inside the cavity, but was more like a plate to fit over what remained behind his lid. However, she was being distracted from her real mission here.

“Yes, but I remind you that there is a body in the woods between the rookery and the house, someone who needs to be recovered from where he lies. Perhaps I should have gone to His Grace—”

“No, no, I will accompany you and alert whoever is appropriate.” The colonel was suddenly—and remarkably—recovered from his sotted state.

“There's one more thing, Colonel. I should tell you that I found the glass eye near the body.” Violet hoped her revelation would startle him if he was the guilty party, but he was nonchalant.

“I must have lost it when I witnessed the attack. I remember waking up the following morning and having to put in a new one, but I didn't attach any significance to it.”

Violet's mind worked furiously as she led the colonel back to the grove of birch trees. If what the colonel said was true, then perhaps this second body really was the victim of the murder he had witnessed, which meant that Burton Spencer was—what? An independent attack? Had Spencer witnessed the first murder and put himself in mortal danger as a result? She thought about the condition of the second body. She would have to estimate that it had been there no more than three or four days. Rigor mortis was gone, but with the cool October air it had not gone into any serious decomposition. If only—

“Mrs. Harper, is this the place?” the colonel said, interrupting her flow of rambling thoughts. She looked up and realized she was about to march straight past the trees and on to the rookery.

“Yes, of course. Let me show you where the corpse is. I presume a man such as yourself is not squeamish about these things.”

“I should say not,” he huffed, blowing more liquor fumes over her as he indignantly straightened his jacket.

Violet moved into the underbrush, with the colonel at her heels.
Let's see, another ten feet in this direction, then straight across from the bramble of thorny blackberry bushes, and then—

Wait, was Violet confused? She stepped off again, concentrating harder on her position relative to the birches. Yes, this was the right spot.

“Mrs. Harper?” the colonel asked.

This was simply impossible. Was she on the verge of losing her mind? Had she not just inspected the body of a man with a tattoo on his shoulder?

And yet . . . the body was gone.

10

“I
—I don't understand,” Violet protested in disbelief. “I just inspected this body not an hour ago. What could have possibly happened to it? Bodies don't just get up on their own, despite what mystery novelists would have us believe.”

“Have no fear, dear lady, I have been the victim many a time to visions that were not real.” Colonel Mortimer offered an expression of sympathy, which only served to irritate Violet.

“I am never in a polluted state,” she snapped. “And I did not have a vision. There was a dead man here. I saw him, I touched him, I spoke to him.”

Mortimer looked at her sideways. “You spoke to the body? Did it answer? Perhaps you are more in need of rum than you think.”

Violet resisted the urge to disparage the man, who she knew meant no harm. However, she was as tense as a mouse in a room full of tabbies. Where was the tattooed man? Who or what had moved his body? Was it possible that someone else had come across the body and hurriedly reported it to the duke? Perhaps it was lying on the dining room table at this very moment, waiting for her to formally attend to it.

Yes, perhaps that was what had happened.

The colonel pointed up. “Evening is settling in. Perhaps you were confused by what you saw, Mrs. Harper. In the shadows, a deer might have looked like a human being.”

Violet was aghast. She had cared for hundreds—perhaps thousands—of bodies in her lifetime as an undertaker, and he thought she could mistake a wild animal for a human being?

“Sir, the body had the tattoo of a hill with a tree in the center of it located on his shoulder. I hardly think England's deer population is visiting the docks to have tattoos drawn on their shanks.”

The colonel frowned. “A tattoo, you say? Of a treed hill? Perhaps it was actually a volcano? Hmm, this is interesting.”

“It is? How so?”

The colonel seemed unwilling to share his thoughts, though, and reverted to his previous theme. “People make mistakes all the time when there isn't strong sunlight to provide clarity on the situation. No doubt you simply had what His Grace refers to as ‘an episode.' ”

Her pounding heart and uneasy stomach didn't think so. And the colonel had certainly been insistent that
he
had not made a mistake in the dark, with only one good eye to back up his assertions. However, the first thing to do was to check on whether the body was at the house. She took a deep breath to regain her calmness. “Colonel, I apologize for disturbing you during your . . . private time . . . for no apparent reason.”

“No apologies necessary. I think you may have been confused. I
did
witness a murder here, but it was just the one, not two of them. I may be an old one-eyed warhorse, but I am not a lunatic. I know what I saw.”

Yet he thought Violet had mistaken a deer for a human, which would make her a complete Bedlamite. Regardless, she didn't know what to make of his assertion at this point. She needed to find Portland right away.

“May I walk with you back to your cottage?” she asked.

“Perhaps it might be wise if I went on my own. Otherwise, I might find it gone when I arrive.” The colonel chuckled at his joke, offending Violet in that he not only didn't seem to care that there might be another dead estate worker but also was mostly concerned with having been vindicated in witnessing a murder.

As he walked away, Violet realized that he didn't have his cane with him, and was moving quite well—despite an occasional drunken stumble—across the expansive lawns of the estate. With the colonel ambling back to his bottle, Violet walked back toward the house, and it occurred to her that the colonel almost seemed happy by what had just happened.

She waited until he was long out of view before heading to the house, but she didn't have far to walk before she came upon yet another unusual sight, which was becoming only too common at Welbeck Abbey. The duke was out walking along a gravel path in the rear garden, wearing his typical brown overcoat and ridiculously high hat. Despite the mild day, he once again carried an umbrella over his head.

None of that, of course, surprised Violet anymore. What did was the young woman in a hooded cloak walking about ten feet in front of him, carrying a lantern that was far too big for her to handle. Light from the lamp well illuminated Portland's path, as it swung unsteadily from the chain in the girl's hand. Violet was instantly reminded of the Brothers Grimm tale of Red Riding Hood, except that here the girl carried a lantern instead of a basket.

Presumably the duke was not the wolf.

There was no time to worry about that for the moment. Violet rushed up to Portland, causing him to exclaim aloud at her sudden appearance. “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, what do you mean by sneaking up on me like that, Mrs. Harper?”

“My apologies, sir, but there is an urgent matter I must discuss with you.”

Portland waved at the lantern carrier. “Molly, wait a moment. I see that my walk is to be disturbed this evening.”

Without waiting for him to grant her leave to continue, Violet plunged in. “I saw a body earlier—another body—in the copse near the rookery. I went to Colonel Mortimer's cottage and had him accompany me back to the body, but when we returned, the corpse was gone. I am wondering if perhaps someone else found it and brought it to the house.”

“You say you found yet another body on
my
property? That is impossible. No, I refuse to countenance it.”

Why was it that most members of the upper classes believed that the world could only operate in a manner that pleased them, and that it wouldn't dare do otherwise?

“It may seem unimaginable, Your Grace, but it is so. May I presume you have no such body inside the house?”

“Of course not. Mrs. Harper, why did you summon the colonel instead of me?” Portland asked.

Violet bit her lip indecisively. This was an excellent question. On reflection, it was precisely what she should have done instead of trying to vindicate her suspicions of the colonel. “I—I—know that you are close friends, and believed he might know if such a thing had occurred. I didn't wish to disturb you any more than I already have.”

“I see.” Portland's tone was penetrating, even in the shadows.

Violet was a terrible liar and she knew it. It was best to move the subject along. “Your Grace, it is imperative that we find this body. What if it is one of your workers?”

He nodded. “That would be a grave circumstance, indeed. Why don't you show me the location where you found him? Perhaps in the setting sun it was easy to mistake his location. With Molly illuminating the area, we'll find him for sure. Molly?”

The girl came forward with her lantern, and once again Violet led the way back to the grove of birch trees. Once again, there was no body, despite the good Molly's best efforts to shed light everywhere.

In fact, the more Violet thought about all of the mysterious doings at Welbeck Abbey, the darker it all seemed.

 

After a half hour of searching the relatively small area, even Portland had to admit there was no one there. “Perhaps the man you found had fallen down in a drunken stupor, but woke up and left before you returned.”

Yet someone else questioning her abilities. “Sir, I have been an undertaker for many years. I am confident in knowing when someone is deceased.”

“No, I think there is merit to my suggestion. Sometimes men can be so insensible from too much liquor that they do not wake for days. You had the misfortune of him waking in that narrow space of time in which you sought out the colonel. Besides, in your profession, do you not use bell coffins to accommodate such situations where mistakes are made?”

Violet cringed at the reference to the possibility of an undertaker not recognizing the signs of death, having recently experienced just such a situation, but avoided responding to his sardonic comment. She realized that the only way to convince Portland that there was actually another dead body on his estate was to somehow produce it. Which she intended to do, only she had to figure out how to find the poor man. For now, perhaps she should bring up another of her suspicions.

“Sir, speaking of the colonel, I feel obligated to tell you that shard I found in Aristotle's craw was a piece of one of Colonel Mortimer's glass eyes. I presume you knew he wore one.”

“Of course. He told me that he lost his eye in a hunting accident several years ago. Poor man, he's had the most unfortunate luck.” He motioned to Molly, who began walking back toward the house, with Portland ten feet behind her. Violet fell into step with him.

“Be it that his luck is lamentable, I have my concerns about his . . . trustworthiness.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

How should Violet characterize it? “I find something suspicious in his statements and behavior regarding Burton Spencer's death.”

“Mrs. Harper, come now. George is a trusted friend. I have known him for decades and can state positively that he would never, ever do anything that would cast dishonor upon his person. Why, we fought together in the Burmese War against General Bandula, who had fighting elephants and who—”

“Yes, Your Grace, I remember. The colonel was instrumental in ensuring you weren't strangled by a python.” It was dark now, and getting quite chilly. It was time for her to return to her quarters, to sit by the fire that was surely waiting for her, to sip a glass of sherry, and to think.

Portland might trust Colonel Mortimer implicitly, but Violet didn't. Even if he weren't guilty of murder, there was still something off about the man.