When Falcons Fall (27 page)

He was turning away when another memorial caught his eye, this one small and heartbreaking in its brevity:

S
HELBY
W
ILLIAM

B
ELOVED SON OF
L
EOP
OLD AND
G
RACE
S
EATON

2
N
OVEMBER 1797 TO 16
A
PRIL 1798

Sebastian stared at that pitiful memorial, conscious of an upwelling of empathy for the beautiful, self-contained woman who had buried her infant son within months of losing her husband.

He searched the surrounding memorials, wondering if she had lost other children, but found no evidence of any. In her seven years of marriage, Grace Seaton had given birth not to three, but to four children: Crispin, the son and heir, followed by two girls, Georgina and Louisa, and then, finally, a second son.

And three months later, Leopold Seaton was dead.

Sebastian tilted back his head, his gaze on the mellow blues, greens, and reds of the stained-glass window above the altar. The land and wealth of noble families were traditionally entailed, thus enabling the family’s fortune to pass virtually intact from eldest son to eldest son on down through the ages. Failing a son, both land and titles would pass instead to the nearest male in the paternal line, be he a brother, nephew, uncle, or distant cousin. Any noblewoman left widowed without a son was generally to be pitied, for her home and her husband’s wealth would all pass to some distant relative.

As a result, most wives were anxious to bear not just one healthy son, but two. “An heir and a spare,” they called it. And shortly after the birth of his “spare,” Lord Seaton had died.

A coincidence? Possibly. But a murderous woman unwilling to tolerate her lord’s philandering any longer might well wait until after the birth of a second son before putting an end to her husband’s straying once and for all.

It was past time, Sebastian realized, that he learn more about the death of Leopold, Lord Seaton.

Wednesday, 11 August

T
he next morning dawned cool and blustery, with thick clouds that hung low enough to obscure the mountains to the west. With Archie at his side, Sebastian rode out to the old stone bridge where Leopold, Lord Seaton had died.

“I was still a small boy when it happened,” said Archie, reining in at the edge of the weathered fieldstone bridge that spanned a small rivulet some hundred yards from Northcott Abbey’s gatehouse. “But I still remember listening to my father talk about how Lord Seaton’s brains were splattered all over the bridge. It made quite an impression on me.”

“I would imagine it did,” said Sebastian, his mount moving restlessly beneath him as he studied an ancient stand of oak thickly undergrown with witch hazel that encroached close to the road here.

Archie’s eyes crinkled with a faint smile of remembrance. “For years, I couldn’t pass the bridge without looking to see if I could spot some trace of all those splattered brains. Somehow I always managed to convince myself that I did.” Archie’s smile faded as he squinted up at the roiling clouds overhead. “You really think Seaton’s death could somehow be connected to what’s happening now?”

“The timing is interesting,” said Sebastian. “Sybil Moss died on Midsummer’s Eve in 1797. Less than seven months later, Hannah Grant was found floating in the millpond. And just two weeks after that, Lord Seaton falls off his horse at one of the few places between the Blue Boar and home where he’s guaranteed to do himself some serious damage. You don’t find that suspicious?”

“When you put it that way, yes. It’s damnably suspicious.”

Sebastian said, “Do you know if there was an autopsy?”

“I doubt it. M’father was always ranting and raving about the parish rates. He wouldn’t have paid to hold an inquest if it hadn’t been required.”

“I gather the inquest’s verdict was death by misadventure?”

Archie nodded. “Seaton’s horse—a sweet-tempered white mare named Cleo—was declared a deodand. Liv Irving bought her. Rode her for years.”

Under English common law, chattel found to have been involved in a death was known as a deodand and had to be forfeited, whether it was a horse, a cart, a boat, or tree. All deodands passed to the Crown and were usually sold, although owners could pay a fine equal to their value to keep their property. It was less common now than it had once been. But Sebastian wouldn’t be surprised if Archie had had to pay to keep his father’s hunter, Black Jack. For some reason, Lady Seaton had evidently not chosen to do so.

Archie’s face had taken on a flat, empty look, as if his thoughts were suddenly far, far away.

“What is it?” asked Sebastian, watching him.

Archie swallowed. “If you’re right—and I’m afraid you may very well be—then that’s three murders my father missed: Sybil, Hannah, and Lord Seaton. Three!”

Sebastian was tempted to say
, There may have been more.
But he kept that possibility to himself.

“My God,” said Archie, his voice rough. “Poor Hannah Grant was buried at the crossroads with a stake through her heart!”

“Whoever is doing this is clever—clever, and devious enough to make most of his murders look like suicides or accidents. Under the circumstances, your father’s mistake was easy to make.”

Archie shook his head, his eyes narrowed and hard. “I want to find him. Whoever’s doing this, I want to find him, and hang him.”

Sebastian remained silent. He’d told Archie his suspicion that Leopold Seaton’s death might be linked to the other murders. But he’d yet to divulge the rest of his thinking. It was all still speculation, too unproven.

He shifted his gaze to the crenelated sandstone gatehouse that guarded the entrance to Northcott Abbey’s long, stately drive. The big house itself was out of sight, hidden by the heavy late-summer canopy of the plantings that dotted the estate’s rolling, expansive park. And he found himself thinking about the family that had lived here, carefully hiding their religious faith generation after generation, on down through the centuries. What did that sort of pervasive, inescapable fear do to people? he wondered. What would it be like, living endlessly with that level of distrust and suspicion and duplicity? All while gazing down on the crumbling ruins of the priory from which your wealth had been seized?

He said, “Was Lady Seaton a Catholic before she married?”

Archie looked puzzled but answered readily enough. “She was, yes. I understand she’s related to the Nevilles and Howards.” Both were famous Catholic families who had managed to maintain their wealth and power despite their religion. “Why?”

Sebastian shook his head. “Just wondering.”

Archie gathered his reins, then hesitated. “Have you ever not caught a killer?”

“Not one I wanted to catch.”

“But . . . what if we never figure out who’s doing this?”

“Then I suspect he’ll eventually kill again,” said Sebastian, and saw the color drain from the young Squire’s face.

H
ero was writing up some of her interview notes at the table in the private parlor when a timid knock sounded at the door.

“Come in,” she called, expecting Mary Beth, the chambermaid.

The door opened to reveal a slight, white-haired old woman, her heavily lined face swollen and twisted with grief. “Beggin’ yer ladyship’s pardon fer disturbing ye,” said the woman, wringing her hands nervously before her. “McBroom, he told me to take meself off, so I nipped up the back stairs when he weren’t lookin’.”

Hero paused with her quill still in her hand. “May I help you?”

The woman bobbed an awkward curtsy. “I’m Becka—Becka Dickie. Reuben’s mother.”

Hero rose to go to her. “I am so sorry for what happened to your son. Please, come in and sit down.”

The Widow Dickie’s eyes widened. “Thank you kindly, milady, but it wouldn’t be proper for me to sit, it wouldn’t.”

“Nonsense. I insist.”

It took some work, but the old woman finally allowed herself to be coaxed to a seat beside the empty hearth while Hero gave the bell a sharp tug and ordered a tray with tea and toast.

“Did you have something you wished to tell Lord Devlin?” she asked, settling opposite the woman. “I’m afraid he’s not here at the moment.”

The Widow Dickie shook her head. “It was ye I was wantin’ to see.” She hesitated, then pushed on. “It’s about me Reuben. He wasn’t supposed to go out after dark, you see. The old Squire, he said he’d clap Reuben in the stocks every day for a week if the poor boy ever so much as stuck his nose out at night again. But Reuben, he never was real good at doin’ what he was told.”

Hero waited, and after a moment, the old woman started up again, her voice hushed, ragged.

“He was out the night that pretty lady was kilt. Come back real spooked, he did. Wouldn’t tell me what’d happened. But whatever it was, it scared him bad.”

Hero leaned forward in her chair. “You think he might have witnessed her murder?”

Reuben’s mother plucked at the worn, stained cloth of her dress. “I dunno. To be honest, milady, I have wondered, ever since they found her dead. You see, Reuben was scared, but he was also excited—the way he’d get when he had a secret. He did like his secrets.”

If Reuben had seen Emma Chandler’s murder, it would have been a dangerous secret to keep, thought Hero. It might very well have ended up getting the simpleminded man killed.

“He’d gone out the night before too,” Reuben’s mother was saying.

“Oh?”

Silent tears began to slide unchecked down the old woman’s cheeks. “Was out most the night, he was. Didn’t come back till the sun was up, which was right foolish of him—and so I told him, ye can be sure of that.”

“Do you know where he would go at night?”

She shook her head. “He’d just wander. Sometimes he’d tell me things he’d seen, but not always.”

“Did he tell you what he saw Sunday night?”

“I know he was by the pack bridge at dawn, because he told me he come upon that lady down there. Paintin’ a picture, she was.”

“Yes,” said Hero. “Reuben told Lord Devlin he’d seen her there.”

The Widow Dickie nodded. “The thing is, milady, I don’t think Reuben told his lordship that was the
second
time he’d seen her that mornin’.”

Hero found her attention well and truly caught. “It was?”

The old woman shifted uncomfortably in her chair, not quite willing to meet Hero’s gaze. “I don’t like to be carryin’ tales, ’specially not about a man of God, but . . .”

“Yes?”

The Widow Dickie gripped the arms of her chair with gnarled, work-worn hands. “The Reverend’s got this cousin, ye see. Rachel Timms is her name. She’s a widow, she is. Her husband, he was kilt in the war some years back. The vicar, he’s got this little cottage tucked into the side of the hill, just above the churchyard; Hill Cottage, it’s called. The old sexton used to live there, but Nash, he’s got his own cottage, so he don’t need it. So when Mrs. Timms’s husband was kilt and she had no place to go, the Reverend, he let her come and live at Hill Cottage.”

“That was very kind of him,” said Hero, not quite certain where any of this was going.

“He did the same for another cousin of his. Maybe eight years ago, it was. Rose Blount was her name.” Reuben’s mother chewed on her lower lip. “Only, she died after a few years.”

Hero studied the older woman’s age-lined, troubled face. “Mrs. Dickie, what are you trying to tell me?”

The old woman met her gaze squarely. “Rose Blount died in childbirth, milady—her and the babe both. She never told nobody who her baby’s father was. But, thing is, from the first week the vicar brought her here, my Reuben, he was telling me how he’d see the vicar sneakin’ over there to her cottage in the middle of the night when there weren’t nobody else around. And then, after she died, why, the vicar, he didn’t let more’n a few months go past afore he’s got his cousin Rachel livin’ in that cottage, and Reuben tells me the vicar is visitin’ her at night too.”

Hero felt her stomach tilt with revulsion. “Are these women actually his cousins, do you think?”

“Oh, yes, milady. I truly believe they are. Everybody thinks he’s such a fine, generous man, lettin’ ’em live in Hill Cottage fer free. But there ain’t nothin’ kind or generous about it, and he ain’t lettin’ ’em live there for free, if you get me drift?”

“Do you think his wife knows what he does?”

The Widow Dickie snorted. “How could she help but know? You ask me, she don’t mind the way things are one bit, so long as it keeps him outa her bed.”

“How many people in town know about this?”

“As to that, I can’t say. There may be some as suspects it. But ain’t nobody gonna talk about it—him bein’ the vicar ’n’ all. I’ve argued with meself for days, thinkin’ maybe I should tell somebody what me Reuben seen. And now me boy’s dead, and I can’t help but wonder if . . .” She swallowed. “Maybe if I’d spoke up sooner, Reuben would still be alive.”

“I don’t exactly understand what this has to do with the death of Emma Chandler,” said Hero.

“But that’s just it, milady. The churchyard is the first place Reuben told me he seen the pretty lady early that morning, even before the sun come up. She’d walked up the hill from the Blue Boar and was standin’ by the lych-gate when the Reverend left Rachel Timms’s cottage.”

“Did Reverend Underwood see her?”

“How could he help but? I mean, it ain’t like she was tryin’ to hide. He walked right by her. Reuben said the Reverend mumbled somethin’ about a sick parishioner. So he seen her, all right.”

“Did he see Reuben?”

“I don’t rightly know.”

Hero watched Becka Dickie pluck at her skirts again. The woman hadn’t come right out and said she suspected Benedict Underwood of having killed both her son and Emma Chandler. But the implications were obvious.

“I’ve always felt right sorry for Mrs. Timms,” Reuben’s mother was saying. “Just like I did for Rose Blount. A woman shouldn’t have to turn herself into a whore for her own cousin, jist to have a roof o’er her head.”

“How do you know she’s not willing?”

Becka Dickie stared at Hero with unblinking, wise eyes. “Ye talk to Rachel Timms. Ye’ll see.”

Hill Cottage lay just to the north of the churchyard wall, tucked into a slight dip in the slope. Built of whitewashed fieldstone with a roof of lichen-encrusted slate, it was small and doubtless dark inside, with its front shutters closed even at midday, as if against prying eyes. Once, the cottage might have boasted a garden. Now there were only a few scraggly, half-dead rosebushes and some forlorn-looking poppies struggling to survive in a patch of dirt scratched nearly bare by a flock of dispirited-looking chickens.

Hero rapped with one gloved fist on the worn door, then stood listening as the sound faded away into windblown silence. She waited, then knocked again. She could feel the other woman standing—breathless, wondering, afraid—on the other side of the door’s weathered panels.

“Mrs. Timms?” said Hero softly. “Are you there? I need to speak with you. It’s about the young woman who was killed in the village last week. Mrs. Timms?”

Silence.

“Blast,” whispered Hero under her breath. She was turning away when the door was suddenly yanked open about a foot and then stopped.

A painfully thin woman appeared in the gap. She looked to be perhaps ten years older than Hero, with a long, oval face and the sallow complexion of someone who’d once lived in a fiercely sunny climate but now rarely ventured out of doors. Her pale blond hair was already lightly touched by gray and unfashionably secured in a tight roll at the nape of her neck. Her dove gray gown was plain and threadbare, the hand gripping the edge of the door reddened and chapped by work. There was nothing about either her appearance or her manner to suggest the kind of woman who regularly received furtive midnight visits from a forbidden lover.

“Good morning,” said Hero. “I’m sorry for disturbing you. I’m Lady Devlin.”

“I know who you are,” said Rachel Timms, her voice well-bred and cultured, but timid, breathy. “What makes you think I know anything about the woman who was killed?”

“May I come in, please?”

Rachel Timms’s nostrils flared on a quickly drawn breath, her chest jerking as she struggled to choose between two equally frightening prospects: to risk being seen with Hero on her doorstep or to invite her inside. And Hero found herself wondering if anyone besides Benedict Underwood had entered Hill Cottage since Rachel Timms’s arrival here five or six years before.

“It’s important,” said Hero.

She thought for a moment that Rachel Timms meant to close the door in her face. Then she stepped back and opened the door wider.

“Come in—quickly, please.”