Nooks & Crannies (18 page)

Barnaby and Oliver were missing from the breakfast table, but the electricity was present and accounted for. The lights of the dining chandelier and the side table lamps seemed too bright, though. Falsely bright, as though they were posing as comforts and failing terribly.

“Good morning, Tabitha,” Edward said. “Hope you're ready for another proper tuck-in. Cook tried to serve us in courses again, but I told her to just bring the lot.”

“Oh,” said Tabitha, approaching a chair slowly. She heard her father's words from just two days ago:
Don't say “oh” like an idiot.
But by the time she was finished remembering those words, the moment to say a few more of her own had passed.

The same elegant slab of wood where they'd had a pleasant dinner followed by celebratory conversation was once again piled with food. Still standing, she listened while Edward presented the trays of sliced melon and grapes, baskets of muffins, hard-boiled eggs, spiced mushrooms, poached eggs on toast, and porcelain bowls filled with sweet buttered peas. He took a breath and then pointed to boar sausages, beans, and hot cereal, which sat next to a platter of steaming beefsteak.

Edward made a grand gesture toward the final dish. “That one's deviled lobster. Told you that noise from the kitchen last night could have been a death scream. Poor bloke. Tasty, though.”

Tabitha surveyed the feast before her but found that she had little appetite. Nor, it seemed, did Frances, who was sitting across from her, blank-faced. The foul little Wellington hadn't even the energy to sneer at anyone, not even an empty-plated Viola.

“Hello, Tabitha,” Viola called. “Sit next to me?”

Tabitha was taken slightly aback. Why was Viola being so very nice to her? Did she consider Tabitha to be a charity case? It was only when Pemberley moved in her pocket that she remembered to answer. “Yes, thank you.” She sat.

Viola smiled, then let out another series of sneezes.

“Oh . . . are you still feeling ill?”

“No, just itchy. I was doing better, though. Those sneezes came out of nowhere.” She held up a hand to protest when Edward offered her a sausage. “I'm not terribly hungry.”

“You can't let circumstances allow you to lose your health, Viola,” Edward said, scooping a pile of beans onto his toast. “Got to keep your strength up.”

“That's right,” Oliver said, entering the room. His steps were slow. His hair had been combed, but one or two strands refused to stay down. He took a seat next to Tabitha, looking around the table warily. “Sorry I'm so late,” he added, looking at the clock. “Agnes had to come twice to fetch me. Good morning. Or simply morning, I suppose.”

“It's good so far.” Edward nodded, reaching over to pour Oliver some juice. “No dead people and no accidental stabbings from paranoid women of title,” he joked. “I say, have you all heard of Elizabeth Bathory, also known as the Blood Countess? Nasty woman. Liked to torture young girls in particular. Used blood to keep her skin young, which is a silly sort of thing. Soap would've been fine, don't you think?”

Nobody answered, but Viola looked distinctly ill.

“Do you know that one of her servants once stole a
pear
, and Elizabeth Bathory had her beaten so badly that the poor Countess had to change her shirt? Was standing too close and caught the blood spray. Around ten pints of blood in the human body, you know.” Nobody responded, and Edward reached for another sausage.

Frances, who had managed a bite of toast, finally gained her strength and scowled. “Are you as stupid as your bum is big? You'd do well to show some respect to the Countess. Not that you could ever deserve one hundred thousand pounds.”

Cook entered, snorting either at the comment or the lack of eating. “Something the matter with my food again? The boys are the only ones eating?” She snatched Tabitha's empty plate and began loading it. “All this other nonsense aside, you're lucky this food is even here. Drivers to the cottage seem to have raided my kitchen. Nearly half my eggs and tomatoes were gone this morning, and I'm only three days into my order week. We'll make do, I suppose, for as long as we need to. Here you go, miss.”

Tabitha managed a smile. “Thank you. We've all been rather rattled by poor Mary's death, I suppose.”

“Agnes and I have been rattled as well,” Cook said. “There was a loud scuffling and shouting in the kitchen last night.”

So it wasn't a dream.

“Stop talking,” Frances ordered. “Do your business and be gone.”

Cook whirled on Frances with a full fork. “I've had quite enough out of you, miss. In case your pretty ears and pretty eyes were removed from your pretty head last night, there was a death that took place.” She flung four fat sausages onto Frances's plate.

“Oh, no, thank you,” said Viola, placing both hands over her plate before Cook could drop eggs onto it.

Cook frowned and put the eggs back on the table, grabbing a tray of melon instead. “Maybe the awful noise last night was Phillips's beastly dog,” she said, slipping fruit slices on Viola's plate. “Or else it was just a nightmare. I suppose none of you heard anything.” She halted, eyeing them each in turn.

Edward and Frances shook their heads.

“I heard it,” said Tabitha.

“I may have heard something,” said Viola. “A yell and a crash of some sort. But I'd been dreaming of terrible riots in a poorhouse, so I just assumed it was part of the dream.”

Oliver looked around. “Um . . . has Barnaby been down yet? Please say yes. Please say he's in the loo.”

The Countess glided into the room before anyone could reply to Oliver, locking eyes briefly with Cook, who was suddenly in a hurry to return to the kitchen. She looked remarkably rosy-cheeked and well rested and was wearing a black gown with matching gloves. “Greetings, children. The interviews shall begin shortly. Where is Barnaby Trundle?”

“Not here yet,
Grandmother
,” Frances said, her gaze glued to the Countess's multiple bracelets. “If you ask me, he's rather lazy and not at all suited to being in a household of such quality. No sense of class structure whatsoever.”

“Well, I shall certainly take that into consideration when conducting his interview.”

The door flew open and Agnes rushed in, her maid's hat slightly askew and her apron crooked. She slid into the table and collided with a bunch of grapes, barely missing the Countess.

“Careful, idiot girl!”

The poor maid could barely open her mouth, let alone speak, and Tabitha felt immensely sorry for her. She knew from experience that it's exceedingly difficult to communicate when you're busy processing a verbal attack.

“Well?” the Countess demanded. “Out with it!”

Still unable to speak, Agnes flapped her jaw uselessly, her eyes watering with panic.

Tabitha touched her hand, thinking it might calm the young lady into words. “Thank you again for the water this morning,” she said. “It was very kind.”

“B-B-Barnaby,” Agnes whispered.

“Yes, where
is
Barnaby Trundle?” the Countess repeated.

Agnes jerked her hand back wildly. She fell to her knees, staring Tabitha directly in the chest. “He's missing! He's been taken! The manor's spirits have claimed him for their own and there'll be no getting him out ever and he's been turned to a ghost himself and I swear I heard the poor child moaning away when it happened but I thought it was a horrid dream so I did nothing!” It all came out in one large burst that left her chest heaving considerably.

“He's
missing
?” asked the Countess.

Phillips arrived, out of breath. He held a short leash on the large, mean-looking hound from the previous night. “I've just finished looking, madam. There's not a trace of him anywhere. Burgess here couldn't find the boy, and that was after sniffing his bedsheets. He was in the kitchen for certain. Burgess seemed frustrated to no end and kept going in circles as though Barnaby had disappeared.”

“What do you mean, disappeared? Why is no one making sense? What was he doing in the kitchen?” The Countess marched to the serving door and pushed it open. “
Cook! Cook!
Stop burning things and get in here this instant!”

“The boy is gone,” Phillips said, still breathing hard. “Burgess is completely reliable. He could track a thick wallet in a crowded square . . . .” He stopped talking, turning red.

Tabitha eyed him with curiosity. He looked flustered from the search, uniform slightly askew and properly matching black shoes shifting up and back along the floor with anxiety or nerves.

Cook entered the dining room, glaring at the Countess while her mouth curved up in a frozen smile. “And what can I do for you now, Your Ladyship? Make you a special dish?”

“Ghosts!” Agnes clutched at Cook's apron. “The spirits have taken Barnaby!”

“Have they, do you think?” Viola said, likewise clutching at Tabitha's sweater and nearly squeezing Pemberley's head off in the process. “Have they taken him?”

“I couldn't say,” Tabitha replied.

“I could,” said Oliver, distinctly whiter than he'd been minutes before.

All eyes turned to him.

Oliver focused on the table as he spoke. “He came into my room last night, to see if I fancied a late snack. Said he couldn't sleep. I let him go downstairs alone.”

There was a brief silence, followed by soft, breathy whimpers from Agnes. Unease filled the room like an invisible fog, wrapping around each child in a stealthy manner until they were all paralyzed.

“Interviews begin shortly and will each last 30 minutes to an hour,” the Countess said, her voice weak and cheeks paled. “Barnaby, it seems, will be forfeiting his chance to be my heir due to his pointless decision to hide himself. The boy is frightened of me for some ridiculous reason and is clearly trying to remain out of sight until his mummy and daddy arrive. Nobody's been snatched. Burgess will sniff Barnaby out eventually.” She cupped one hand around the absurdly large diamond, emerald, and sapphire peacock brooch on her chest. “There's no one here, other than us.” She turned to leave, but paused at the door. “No one at all.”

Another beat of quiet pulsed through the room.

“Edward Herringbone,” the Countess said, “come to my study in ten minutes. The rest of you, find a way to amuse yourselves. Keep to the lower rooms and Phillips will find you when it's your turn. The order will be Edward, Frances, Viola, Oliver, then Tabitha.”

While the others wandered the manor's parlors, drawing room, and gallery, Tabitha waited her turn in the library, gently petting Pemberley in her skirt pocket, occasionally knitting a bit of scarf, and attempting to whistle. The sight of the books helped her to relax, and she let her eyes drift over the shelves until her heartbeat became slow and steady once again.

She was used to cruelty, so the Countess's rather callous behavior didn't put her off nearly as much as it did the others. And she was shaken and saddened by Mary's death and Barnaby's disappearance, that was true, but there was a nagging feeling that all could be explained if she could just put the pieces together. She tapped her finger to her temple. That sort of thing appeared in Pensive novels and always seemed to help the tapper, though Tabitha was uncertain why. Perhaps it jarred the area of the brain assigned to clue retention.

Having had a few hours of what Inspector Pensive would call
observance of character
, Tabitha found the Countess's indifference to her maid's demise most curious, and it led her to wonder at the history between the two.
It's dreadfully difficult being charitable to those you don't like,
the Countess had said. But why would she need to be charitable at all in those cases? Perhaps Mary Pettigrew had been a family maid, passed down from a previous generation, and therefore deserved a hint of special consideration.

Oliver walked into the library with his hands shoved deep in both pockets. He glanced around the room. “No rogue kidnappers here,” he joked weakly. His face was paler and more drawn than it'd been the night before. “Hullo.”

Tabitha stopped pacing and pulled her hand away from Pemberley. “Oh, um. Yes, same to you.”
Stop being awkward.

“Know what you'll be saying to the Countess?”

“No,” Tabitha said, smoothing her skirt and taking a seat.

Oliver sat beside her. “You don't talk very much, do you? You're rather quiet and shy.”

Tabitha couldn't help but smile and think of her conversations with Pemberley. “Not really.”

Standing in a fidgety manner, Oliver plucked a book from a shelf and flipped through it without glancing at the pages. “I once got mad at my parents and threatened not to speak to them ever again.” His eyes crinkled. “How long do you think I lasted?”

Tabitha shook her head.