When Falcons Fall (2 page)

A
picturesque cluster of half-timbered and stone cottages huddled in the shadow of a squat, timeworn Norman church, the Shropshire village of Ayleswick lay just to the southwest of Ludlow, near the banks of the River Teme. Once, it had been the site of the Benedictine priory of St. Hilary, famous along the Welsh Marches as a pilgrimage destination thanks to its possession of an ancient wooden statue of the Virgin, said to work miracles.

But the priory was long gone, its famous statue consigned to the flames and many of the stones from its sprawling monastic complex sold or hauled up the hill to build a grand Tudor estate known as Northcott Abbey. The once-bustling village had sunk into obscurity and now boasted only one decent inn, the Blue Boar, a rambling, half-timbered relic that fronted both the village green and the narrow, winding high street.

Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, stood at the window of his chamber at the inn, his view of the misty green below rippled by the casement’s ancient leaded glass. The impression was one of bucolic peace, of innocence and harmony and timeless grace. But Sebastian knew that all is often not as it seems, just as he knew that those who probe the secrets of the past risk hearing truths they might wish they’d never learned.

He dropped his gaze to the mechanical nightingale he held in his hands. It had been purchased for an old woman Sebastian had never met, by a man who was now dead. And so Sebastian had come here, to the old woman’s village, to deliver her dead grandson’s gift.

He heard the soft whisper of fine muslin skirts as Hero came to slide her arms around his waist and rest her dark head against his. Tall, statuesque, and striking, she’d been his wife for a year now. Their infant son slept peacefully in his nearby cradle, and Sebastian loved both mother and child with a passionate tenderness that awed, humbled, and terrified him.

She shifted to take the nightingale from his hands, wound the key cleverly concealed in its tail feathers, and set the bird on the deep windowsill before them. The nightingale’s gilded wings beat slowly up and down, the jewels in its collar sparkling in the early-morning sunlight as a cascade of melodious notes filled the air.

She said, “Shall I come with you?”

He hesitated, his attention caught by a young country gentleman in an unfashionable corduroy coat who was striding toward the inn’s door. “You don’t think a simple, aged countrywoman might find a visit from the two of us a bit overwhelming?”

“Probably,” she said, although he saw the faint frown that pinched her forehead. She knew that the nightingale was only part of what had brought him to this small Shropshire village, just as she knew that what quickened his pulse and tore at his gut was the possibility that the unknown elderly woman might possess the answer to a question that had shattered his world and forever altered his understanding of who—and what—he was.

An unexpected knock at the chamber door brought his head around. “Yes?”

A spry middle-aged chambermaid with a leprechaun’s face and wild iron gray hair imperfectly contained by a mobcap opened the door and bobbed a quick curtsy. “It’s young Squire Rawlins, milord. He says t’ beg yer lordship’s pardon, but he’s most anxious to meet with you, he is.” She dropped her voice and leaned forward as she added, “I’m thinkin’ it’s on account of the lady, milord. Heard Constable Nash tellin’ Cook about it, I did.”

“What lady?”

“Why, the one they done found down in the water meadows, just this mornin’. Dead, she is!”

He and Hero exchanged silent glances.

On the windowsill, the mechanical nightingale wound down and stopped.

“The young Squire’s a tad new to being justice of the peace, I’m afraid,” confided the chambermaid as she escorted Sebastian down the stairs. “Took over from his father just a few months back, he did. A real tragedy, that; the old Squire died on the lad’s twenty-first birthday.”

“Tragic indeed,” said Sebastian.

The chambermaid nodded. “Drank three bottles of port and then tried to jump his best hunter over the stone wall by the pond. The horse made it, but not the old Squire. Broke his neck.”

“At least the horse survived.”

“Aye. Would’ve been a shame to lose Black Jack. He’s a grand hunter, that Black Jack. Best in the Squire’s stables.” She tut-tutted and shook her head as they reached the inn’s old flagged entrance hall and turned toward the small parlor to the left of the stairs. “Here ye go, milord.”

He found the new Squire Rawlins standing before the parlor’s empty hearth, his hat twisting in his hands. He had a smooth, boyish face reddened across the tops of his cheeks and the bridge of his nose by the summer sun, and looked more like sixteen than twenty-one. Of medium height only, he was thin and bony, with a jerky way of moving, as if he’d yet to grow accustomed to the length of his own arms and legs.

“Lord Devlin,” he said, surging forward as the chambermaid dropped a curtsy and withdrew. “I’m Archibald—Archie—Rawlins, Ayleswick’s justice of the peace. I beg your pardon for intruding on you without a proper introduction, but there’s been a rather peculiar death in the village, and since I know you have experience dealing with these matters I was hoping you might be willing to advise me on how best to go about things. My constable thinks it’s suicide, but I . . . I . . .”

The young man’s rushing tumble of words suddenly dried up.

“You find the death suspicious?” suggested Sebastian.

Archie Rawlins swallowed hard enough to bob his Adam’s apple up and down, and nodded. But Sebastian noticed he didn’t say
why
he thought it suspicious.

Sebastian knew the urge to tell Squire Rawlins that what he asked was impossible, that Sebastian was in town for a few days only and would soon be gone. The last thing he wanted was to get involved in some village murder.

But then he saw the mingled uncertainty and earnestness in the young man’s eyes and remembered the good-humored derision in the chambermaid’s assessment of the village’s new justice of the peace. Which was how he found himself saying, “Hang on while I fetch my hat and gloves.”

“H
er name is—or I suppose I should say
was
—Emma Chance,” explained the Squire as they followed a shady path that led from the far end of the high street, down through a thick wood of oak and beech, to the river. “She’s a young widow—only arrived in the village last Friday.”

“She has family here?” asked Sebastian, treading carefully along a slippery stretch of the footpath deep in the shadow of the trees and still muddy from a recent rain.

Rawlins shook his head. “She was on a sketching expedition through Shropshire. You should see her drawings and watercolors; they’re quite out of the common.”

“How old did you say she was?”

“She told me she met Captain Chance when she was twenty, and was married seven years. So I suppose that would make her twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He died of fever in an American prison just six months ago.”

“Tragic. Who is traveling with her?”

“Well, she had her maid with her.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

It was highly unusual for a gentlewoman—even a widow—to travel without a male relative. Sebastian said, “I take it you spoke with her?”

“Several times. She asked if she could sketch the Grange and I said yes. The original part of the house dates back to the thirteenth century, you know.”

“And did she sketch it?”

“She did, yes. On Saturday.”

“When was the last time anyone saw her?”

Rawlins drew up at the edge of the water meadow and turned to give him a blank look. “I don’t rightly know. I suppose that’s one of the first things I should find out, isn’t it?”

Sebastian narrowed his eyes against the strengthening morning sun as he studied the clump of trees on the far side of the meadow. “It would help.”

A broad, flat area of grassland that lay beside the river, the water meadow was kept irrigated when necessary by a carefully controlled series of sluice gates, channels, and field ridges. The latest crop of hay had recently been harvested, leaving the grass shorn close and the air smelling sweetly of new growth and the cool waters of the slow-moving river. Only a loud buzzing of flies near a far stand of alders hinted at the presence of death.

They crossed the clearing to where a belligerent-looking middle-aged man introduced by Rawlins as Constable Nash stood beside the young widow’s body, his massive arms crossed at his chest. Sebastian remembered what Rawlins had said, that the constable was convinced the woman had killed herself. Constable Nash obviously did not appreciate having his judgment questioned by the new justice of the peace.

What was left of Emma Chance lay at his feet, her head propped against a low log, her bare hands folded at her heart as if she were already in her tomb. Even in death, she was beautiful, her features dainty, her skin flawless, her neck long and graceful, her hair a rich dark brown. A fashionable spencer and hat rested nearby, the fingers of one fine gray glove peeking out from beneath its brim. An empty bottle of laudanum, its cork stopper carefully replaced, was at her side.

“It’s suicide, I tell ye,” said the constable. “Plain as plain can be. She done took off her hat and that fancy little coat thing, laid down, drank the laudanum, and killed herself.”

Rather than answer, Sebastian hunkered down beside the woman’s small, delicate body. Her gown was plain but of good quality and fashionable, its soft, subdued gray appropriate for a widow who’d been in mourning for more than six months. He could see no signs of violence of any kind, although that didn’t mean there were none.

Yanking off one of his gloves, he touched the back of his hand to her cheek. She was utterly cold.

“When was she found?” he asked.

The young Squire cast one quick look at the dead woman, then stared pointedly away, toward the slowly moving waters of the river. “Just after dawn. One of the lads staying at Northcott Abbey was out early looking for birds and happened upon her.”

Sebastian shifted his gaze to the surrounding grass. The close-cropped stalks were visibly crushed in places, but the ground was slightly elevated here and too hard and dry to show the footprints of those who had trod it. And he found himself staring at the dead woman’s feet, just visible beneath the hem of her gown. She wore half boots made of fine soft kid, relatively clean except for some dust on the toes.

He rested one forearm on his thigh as he felt a slow, familiar anger begin to build within him. For a beautiful young widow to be so overcome by a vortex of grief, desperation, or guilt as to take her own life was tragic. But for someone to steal that life away without her consent was an abomination.

He said, “Is there another path she could have taken to get here besides the one we followed?”

“Well . . . I suppose she could have come along the riverbank. But it’s awfully muddy at the moment.”

“Then you were right,” said Sebastian. “She was murdered.”

“What?” bellowed the constable, his features twisting with outraged incredulity. “What’re ye talkin’ about? Why, the laudanum she took is right there.”

Sebastian shook his head. “Easy enough to kill a woman and leave an empty bottle of laudanum at her side.”

Rawlins swatted at a fly crawling across his eyes. “But how can you tell she was murdered?”

“Look at her feet.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Look at your own feet.”

The Squire stared down at his serviceable brown-topped boots, their soles heavily caked with muck from the path through the woods. “There’s no mud on her shoes! That means she couldn’t have walked down here by herself. Is that what you’re saying?”

Sebastian nodded. Judging from the stiffness of the body, he suspected she’d been dead a good twelve hours or more, but he was no expert. If they’d been in London, he’d have asked to have her remains sent to Paul Gibson, a former regimental surgeon who was a genius at teasing out the secrets of the dead.

But they weren’t in London.

“Do you have a doctor capable of performing an autopsy?” he asked.

The Squire swiped at the fly again. “Dr. Higginbottom’s done them in the past. I’ll get one of the men from the village to help Nash carry her there.”

“Is he any good?”

“I suppose so. Although I don’t actually know for certain.” The younger man’s lips parted, his eyes widening as a new thought seemed to hit him. “Oh, Lord, I can’t believe this. Why would anyone from around here want to kill a stranger?”

“Where was she from?”

Rawlins shook his head. “I don’t believe I ever heard her say.”

“I take it she was staying at the Blue Boar?”

Rawlins nodded. “It’s the only place hereabouts suitable for a woman of quality.”

Sebastian rose to his feet. “Perhaps the innkeeper will be able to tell us more about her.”

The keeper of the Blue Boar was a gnarled little man named Martin McBroom. He had bushy side-whiskers and a full head of ginger hair that curled exuberantly and was slowly fading to white. Peering over the top rim of a pair of thick spectacles perched on the end of a bulbous nose, he shifted his watery gaze from Sebastian to the young Squire and back again.

“You’re saying it was Mrs. Chance they found down by the river?” His voice rose to a high-pitched squeak. “Oh, bless us. The poor lady. The poor, poor lady.”

“Where was she from, Mr. McBroom?” asked Rawlins, resting both forearms on the carefully polished counter between them. “Do you know?”

The innkeeper scratched his side-whiskers. “Said she was from London, though I don’t think she came from there direct. You’ll need to be asking that girl she brought with her—Peg is her name. And a sly, worthless thing she is, if you ask me.”

“Is Peg here now?” asked Sebastian.

“Haven’t seen her about, although I suppose she could be in the lady’s chamber.”

“We’ll need to take a look at it, Mr. McBroom,” said Rawlins. “Her room, I mean.”

“Oh, I don’t think I can let you do that.” The innkeeper drew his chin back against his neck and shook his head. “Wouldn’t be proper, it wouldn’t.”

Rawlins leaned into his forearms. “Mr. McBroom, she’s dead. Not only that, but we don’t know anything about her. Unless we find something in her room to tell us, we won’t even know whom to notify about what’s happened.”

“Well . . .” The innkeeper pursed his lips and made a sucking sound. “I suppose you are justice of the peace now.”

The red in Archie Rawlins’s cheeks deepened considerably. “I am, yes.”

“Still don’t seem right, to be letting strange men go through her room. Put their hands on her things.”

The Squire straightened with a jerk. “Mr. McBroom!”

“If it would make you feel better,” said Sebastian, volunteering his absent wife without a second thought, “we could ask Lady Devlin for her assistance.”

The young justice of the peace looked horrified at the thought of involving a real viscountess in a murder investigation. But the innkeeper peeled off his glasses to rub his eyes and said, “That would be better—her being a gentlewoman herself and all. But it still don’t seem right, us poking about in her things.”

“It’s not right,” said Sebastian. “But the fault for that lies with whoever murdered her.”