When Falcons Fall (28 page)

T
he Reverend Benedict Underwood was inspecting that year’s crop of small, unripe apples in the ancient walled orchard beside the vicarage when Sebastian walked up the lane toward the church. Sebastian had just spent the last half hour listening to Hero’s account of her meeting with Rachel Timms, an experience that left him hard put to maintain his equanimity.

“Looks as if you should have a good harvest this year,” he said, his head tipping back as he surveyed the trees’ gnarled, heavily laden branches.

The vicar’s face settled into his habitual, benevolent half smile. “Yes—God willing.”

“I’m sorry I was unable to attend yesterday’s funeral,” said Sebastian, looking out over the low wall that separated the orchard from the churchyard. Because this was the favored south side, the weathered, lichen-covered gravestones were thick here.

The vicar winced. “I heard about what happened to Reuben Dickie. Poor wretched soul. He was always carving little wooden animals for the village children, everything from sheep and horses to foxes and deer. He was amazingly talented at it.”

“I’d wondered what he did with them,” said Sebastian as the two men turned to walk between the rows of old fruit trees.

Underwood glanced sideways at him. “Any idea who could possibly have done such a thing?”

“We have a few theories.”

“Oh?”

“It seems Reuben had a habit of wandering at night.”

The vicar nodded sadly. “I know. He wasn’t supposed to, but . . .” He shrugged.

“It’s very likely that he was killed because of something he saw.”

Underwood blinked and said again, “Oh?”

“Mmm. Perhaps the night Emma Chance was killed, although his death could also be linked to something he saw late the previous night—or, more accurately, something he saw early that morning.”

“You mean, Monday morning?”

“Yes.” Sebastian kept his gaze on the vicar’s bland face. “As it happens, he and Miss Chandler both saw you leaving Hill Cottage shortly before sunrise.”

Underwood bent to pick up an unripe apple that had fallen amongst the roots of the tree beside them. He tossed it up and down for a moment, as if considering his response. When he looked over at Sebastian, he had his faint, concerned smile firmly back in place. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Indeed? Do you imagine your visits to Rachel Timms a secret? They’re not. Oh, no doubt some of your parishioners think you a good, generous man for lending a hand to your indigent female relatives. It would probably never occur to them that their own vicar fathered the child whose birth killed Rose Blount. I wonder: Did your cousins know what they were letting themselves in for when they took up your seemingly generous offer to come live in your cottage? Somehow I doubt it. But once they were here, you had them at your mercy, didn’t you?”

The vicar’s smile was still eerily in place, but his eyes were hard and glittering with righteous anger. “Are you somehow imagining Rachel unwilling? Believe me, you flatter her. She’s a widow, not some silly shrinking virgin. Rose was the same. Eager enough to spread her legs in exchange for a roof over her head.”

Sebastian thought about the desperate woman Hero had described to him—frightened, isolated, shattered, and ashamed, betrayed by one she’d trusted. His hands curled into fists, and he had to force himself to unclench them.

“It still feels like rape,” Rachel had told Hero, shoulders shaking with her quiet sobs. “He’s been doing it to me three nights a week for over five years now, and every time, it still feels like rape. But it’s not, you know. I’ve never fought him; never told him no. How can I? I’ve nowhere else to go. He’s turned me into his whore, but I let him do it. There isn’t a day goes by I don’t think of killing myself. But my father was a vicar too; I understand that God has sent this trial to me, and the penance for my weakness and sin is that I must endure it.”

To which Hero had replied, “Have you thought about killing him?”

Rachel’s gaze flew to meet Hero’s; then she looked away and gave a quick, jerky nod. “God help me, I have, yes. But even if I did somehow escape hanging for it, Ayleswick would then have a new vicar. So I would lose Hill Cottage anyway—and burn in hell for all eternity for what I’d done.”

Now a small rabbit showed its head amongst the tall grass at the edge of the orchard, and Underwood chucked the green apple at it. The rabbit disappeared.

Sebastian said, “In a little over a week, three people have been murdered in Ayleswick. And you had a motive to kill at least two of them.

Underwood swung to face him, his mouth sagging open. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, but I am. You see, we now know why Emma Chandler was here in Ayleswick. It had nothing to do with a sketching expedition and everything to do with discovering who out of a list of seven men raped her mother twenty-two years ago. Your name was on her list—”

“Are you mad?”

“—and we now know you’re the kind of man who has no qualms about forcing himself on unwilling women. All of which leads to the obvious conclusion that Emma somehow discovered you were her father, and you killed her to shut her up. You killed her, and then you staged her death to look like a suicide—complete with a poetic verse cut from your own bloody copy of
Hamlet
tucked into her dead hand.”

“Don’t be preposterous. Why would I then leave my book lying around where it could be found?”

“I don’t know that you did. It’s possible you thought you’d hidden the book or disposed of it in some way. Only, Reuben Dickie found it—probably because he saw you hide it. That’s why you killed him: because you were afraid of what else he might have seen.”

The vicar stared at him, chest jerking with the agitation of his breathing, his jaw set hard. “But this is ridiculous! Utterly ridiculous.”

Sebastian said, “I also wouldn’t be surprised if you killed Sybil Moss all those years ago, as well—either because you were worried your parishioners might find out you’d fathered the child she was carrying, or because she refused your unwelcome advances and you were afraid she might tell someone about how you’d tried to force yourself on her. Her and Hannah Grant both.”

“Good God. What sort of monster do you take me for?”

Rather than answer, Sebastian found his gaze drifting down to the picturesque, deceptively peaceful-looking village curled around the base of the hill. The wind was scuttling the clouds overhead in a way that sent shifting patterns of shadow and light chasing each other across the broad green and the ancient, half-timbered buildings that edged it. Fifteen years before, the Reverend had successfully convinced a coroner’s jury that Sybil Moss hadn’t been in her right mind when she supposedly killed herself. Had it been a gesture of disinterested kindness or of guilt?

He’d been unable to do the same for Hannah Grant.

“You’re wrong,” said Underwood. “You hear me? You’re wrong.”

Sebastian brought his gaze back to the pale, sweat-slicked face of the man beside him. “If you killed Emma Chandler and the others, I will see you hang for it; make no mistake about that.”

Underwood was shaking now, an odor of sour sweat rising from his cassock. “But I didn’t. I swear to God I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill any of them!”

“Then I suggest you pray to him for salvation—if you have any reason to believe he’ll listen to you,” said Sebastian, and turned to walk off and leave him there, standing rigid and unmoving in the tall, drying grass of the old orchard.

F
or any man, let alone a man of God, to take advantage of his impoverished female relatives’ vulnerability to satisfy his lust was as despicable as it was repellent. There was no doubt that Benedict Underwood was a vile human being who conceivably had a motive to kill everyone from Sybil Moss to Reuben Dickie.

But that didn’t necessarily make him guilty.

What it did was explain why a killer would use Underwood’s edition of
Hamlet
, and why he wouldn’t destroy the book after cutting it up. Given Underwood’s rape of Rachel Timms and Rose Blount, there was little doubt that those four simple words sliced from the vicar’s book,
The rest is silence
, would be enough to see the Reverend hanged should he ever go on trial for Emma’s murder.

But for some reason he couldn’t have explained, Sebastian still wasn’t convinced. And the nagging certainty that he was still missing something drove him back to the private parlor at the Blue Boar. Opening Emma Chandler’s two sketchbooks on the room’s large, central table, he stood staring down at them, his fingers curling around the table’s edge. He kept coming back to the idea that the key to what had happened to Emma Chandler lay in the pattern of her movements on that last, fatal day. And as he turned the pages of her sketchbook for what must have been the hundredth time, he realized it wasn’t just one thing he’d been missing, but two.

Half an hour later, he was still staring at Emma’s last sketch when Hero came in from taking Simon for a walk. She brought with her the scent of fresh country breezes and sun-warmed ripe grain, and paused in the doorway to watch him in silence for a moment.

“You’ve figured something out,” she said.

“I have indeed.” He spun the sketchbook with the drawings of the priory around to face her. “I don’t know why I didn’t grasp the significance of it before, but think about this: Unless Emma’s killer took off her gloves for some inexplicable reason, then she must not have been wearing them when she was killed. So what does that tell us?”

When visiting, a gentlewoman generally removed her gloves only to eat. But according to Hiram Higginbottom, Emma had been killed several hours after her last meal.

Hero looked puzzled for a moment. Then enlightenment dawned. “She would have to take off her gloves to sketch! That means she was killed while she was drawing something. But . . . what?”

“Whatever it was,” said Sebastian, “she obviously never had a chance to actually begin sketching it. Nothing has been torn out, and the last drawing in her book is of the priory, and it looks finished to me.”

“You think she really did go back to draw Maplethorpe Hall again for some reason? And the smugglers killed her?”

“That’s what I was thinking, at first. Except—” He broke off to flip back through the sketchbook. “Look at this: she drew six pictures of the Grange, five of Northcott Abbey, but only three of St. Hilary’s Priory. Why?”

Hero came to stand at his side. “Perhaps she was more interested in the Grange and Northcott Abbey because either of them might have been her father’s home, whereas the priory was simply an attractive ruin.”

“Perhaps. Except I remember thinking when we were at the ruin what a beautiful, inspiring site someone with her talents must have found it. She’d already drawn one of these three pictures by the time Lady Seaton claims to have seen her at two o’clock. Yet according to the miller’s wife, Emma didn’t leave the priory and climb back over the stile until five. In other words, it took her three hours to do the last two sketches.”

Hero began turning the pages of the book.

He said, “How long do you think one of these sketches would take?”

“If they were detailed renderings, she could have spent days on one. But they’re not. They’re just quick, loose impressions. And if she did six similar sketches of the Grange—plus a portrait of Squire Rawlins—in one morning, then surely she didn’t spend an hour and a half on each of these last two drawings.” Hero raised her gaze to his. “What are you suggesting, Devlin?”

“One of three things: Either she went someplace else after she left the priory but before she climbed over that stile at five o’clock—”

“Someplace like Northcott Abbey, you mean? A second visit no one has told us about?”

He nodded. “Either that, or the miller’s wife was wrong about when she saw Emma climb over the stile.”

“I was under the impression Alice Gibbs was quite certain about the time.”

“She was. And we all simply accepted her testimony without question. But she could have been wrong. It’s even conceivable that for some reason I can’t begin to imagine, she’s lying.”

Hero untied the ribbon of her hat and pulled it off. “You said there’s a third possibility.”

His gaze met hers. “The third possibility is that the miller’s wife didn’t see Emma that afternoon at all, because Emma never left the priory alive. In other words, she died there.”

Alice Gibbs was hoeing a row of beets when Sebastian turned his curricle into the short lane that led to the neat stone cottage beside the mill. She straightened slowly, one hand self-consciously smoothing her skirts as she watched him hop down from the carriage’s high seat.

“Milord,” she said, bobbing a curtsy. “If it’s Miller Gibbs you’re looking for, I’m afraid he’s gone off to see the smith about getting a shaft fixed.”

“Actually,” said Sebastian, “you’re the one I came to see, Mrs. Gibbs. I wanted to ask about the evening you saw Emma Chandler—or Chance, as she called herself. I understand you were out in your garden?”

“Yes, milord. Pickin’ some radishes, I was, when Mr. Flanagan stopped by to talk about our Henry.” The miller’s wife beamed with maternal pride. “Doin’ ever so well with his studies, is our Henry.”

“That must make you very pleased.”

Her smile widened. “It does, yes, ever so much, milord. Never learnt to read or write meself, you see. So I can’t tell you what it means to me, seeing my boy catchin’ on so quick.”

Sebastian turned to glance up the narrow, leafy lane toward the coach road, a distance of some two to three hundred feet away. He himself could have identified someone at many times that distance. But then, his vision was uncommonly acute.

“You must have very good eyesight,” he said.

Alice Gibbs laughed, her face rosy and full cheeked. “Me? Och, no, milord. Anybody in town can tell you I wouldn’t recognize me own husband if I was on one side of the church and he was on the other. I wouldn’t have known it was Mrs. Chance at all if Mr. Flanagan hadn’t told me.”

“Oh?” said Sebastian, still smiling pleasantly. “What did he say?”

She thought about it a moment. “I reckon he said somethin’ like, ‘There goes that widow what’s been drawing all the old buildings hereabouts. She must’ve been sketching the priory.’ And I said, ‘She picked a lovely day for it,’ and we talked a bit about the nice spell of weather we’d been having.”

“And then what?”

If she found the question odd, she didn’t show it. “Well, he’d just been tellin’ me how he had a meetin’ at half past five, so then he said he’d best be hurrying along.”

It was a detail Sebastian had heard before, but he hadn’t paid any attention to it. Now it struck him as blindingly significant, as if Flanagan had gone out of his way to make certain the miller’s wife remembered the time.

She was still smiling broadly, eager to be of assistance and proud of her ability to tell him what he wanted to know. He said, “The village is lucky to have Mr. Flanagan.”

“Och, aren’t we just. He’s ever such a kind, scholarly man.”

“Exactly how long has he been here?”

“Well, let’s see. . . . Must be more’n two years now. He come right after poor old Mr. Coombs passed away.”

“Mr. Coombs was the previous schoolmaster?”

“He was, yes, milord.”

“And he died two summers ago?”

“More like that February or March, it was.”

In other words, thought Sebastian, just months after Lucien Bonaparte was sent to Shropshire. Aloud, he said, “How did he die?”

“Something hit his stomach, it did.”

Sebastian found himself wondering if what hit the unfortunate Mr. Coombs’s stomach had been poison. Someone had obviously been making Ayleswick-on-Teme an extraordinarily unhealthy place to live for quite some time now.

He bowed his head and touched his hand to his hat. “Thank you for your assistance, Mrs. Gibbs. You’ve been most helpful.”

“Anytime, milord. Anytime.”

He’d almost reached the curricle when a thought occurred to him, and he paused to turn back and ask, “Could you see Miss Chandler well enough to tell what she was wearing?”

Alice Gibbs laughed as she reached down to pick up the hoe she’d dropped. “I could see that, milord. Had on a light gray cloak, she did.”

There’d been a gray cloak hanging on one of the hooks in Emma’s room at the Blue Boar. But she hadn’t had it with her when she was found. She hadn’t even been wearing her spencer, which was folded up beside her. “Bit warm for a cloak, wouldn’t you say?”

“It was, indeed. I remember thinkin’ she must’ve put it on that morning, worryin’ meybe it was gonna come on to rain again.”

“That must be it,” said Sebastian.

She smiled at him again, totally oblivious to the fact that she hadn’t actually seen anything she claimed to have personally witnessed.