Yesterday's Promise (39 page)

While their title brought Evy a smile, their words did not.

Evy didn't realize she was standing there staring at the letter in silence until Mrs. Croft addressed her.

“Is it bad news, Miss Evy?”

“Hmm? Oh. No, Mrs. Croft… It's interesting, is all…actually, quite interesting.”
What did Wally know?

Mrs. Croft looked dubious. “Those Hooper twins are double trouble, if you ask me. And that Wally is always poking about where he shouldn't.”

Evy made up her mind quickly. “Mrs. Croft, there's something I haven't told anyone about the afternoon of the storm when I returned to the cottage.”

Mrs. Croft's tufted grayish brows waggled. “Oh? Something worrisome, then, is it, child? If that be the case, then maybe I should set out some tea first.”

No matter the situation, be it lighthearted or serious, Mrs. Croft trusted in steaming black tea with a splash of milk to add the calming touch that hastened wisdom.

A few minutes later Evy joined her in the warm, fragrant kitchen, where the smell of cinnamon wafted temptingly on the air. Simms, the butler, had gone out with his daughter to do the shopping, and Evy and Mrs. Croft were comfortably alone.

Evy sat at the table watching Mrs. Croft pour tea and stack the buttery cinnamon cakes on a pink rosebud platter. It was very much like old times, except Evy was grown and Mrs. Croft had more gray in her neat bun at the back of her head. But Evy's spirits were, nonetheless, in need of as much uncritical acceptance and motherly advice as ever. Actually, it was surprising how little had changed across the years, and yet how shockingly different the circumstances were.

“I'm going to tell you the truth, and if you don't believe me, I don't know who will.”

“Now, of course I'm going to believe you. Why wouldn't I?”

“Because what I'm going to tell you is frightening and sounds daft
at the same time. I trust you know me well enough, Mrs. Croft, to understand I'm not daft.”

Mrs. Croft made a throaty sound and poured Evy's tea, then her own. “You have my full attention.”

“Though this is very distressing, Mrs. Croft, I need to share with you that I did not accidentally fall down the attic steps. Someone
pushed
me—deliberately. There's no doubt in my mind; it was deliberate.” Evy lifted her chin, trying to show calm resolve. “Someone hoped that that shove backward would leave me not merely injured…but dead.”

Mrs. Croft gaped at her, then her cup rattled on the saucer as she lowered both to the large kitchen table. She released a deep breath.

“Child, you
do
know what you're saying?”

“Yes, I know what I'm saying. I lived through it as surely as we're sitting here now.”

Again Mrs. Croft stared at her, her brows wrinkling and her head shaking as she struggled with Evy's bold disclosure of what had really taken place that horrible night.

“I know what you must think,” Evy said quietly, “but I assure you I'm quite sane.”

“I don't doubt it a minute. You've always had a sensible head on your shoulders, not like that frivolous Miss Arcilla. Now if she were telling me this, I'd throw it all out the window with the mop water. But still, Miss Evy, you're positively sure?”

Evy tasted her tea. Somehow nothing tasted as it used to, not even the warm crumpets.

“Quite sure. Someone was in the attic, but I thought maybe it was just my imagination because of the storm. And like a fool, I thought I'd prove my courage to myself by going up there to confront whatever it was. But when I reached the top”—her cup shook a little, and she lowered it quickly and leaned toward Mrs. Croft, who hung on every word—“the door flew open, and some
thing
, some
person
rushed at me like a giant bat. Before I could think or even react, strong hands shoved
me backward down those steps.” Evy's voice dropped breathlessly. “It was horrid,” she murmured, staring at the tea in her cup. Then her gaze rose toward her crutches leaning against the kitchen wall within reach. “I don't remember anything after that. Not even the week you said I spent in my old room at Rookswood. I remember waking several times in the London hospital, then everything seems hazy, until Lord Brewster stood at my bedside.”

Mrs. Croft's wan and distressed face twitched with some inner turmoil. “Oh my, oh my… This is much worse than I thought, than I dared to think. Child, you are
sure
you didn't have nightmares after the fall, so as to make you think it happened like that?”

Evy shook her head firmly. She lifted her cup and drank the sweet, milky tea. “No. It happened just as I've told you. Just as sure as those crutches are leaning there. The result of being shoved down the steps. It's all very real…and terrible.”

Mrs. Croft appeared to accept that, though struggling, perhaps not so much from disbelief, as from horror that it could be so.

“And you don't know who it was?”

“No. Some kind of dark cloak hid the person's head and shoulders. Why, I can't say.”

Mrs. Croft shuddered noticeably. “If that be so,” she murmured, “then it could mean the person expected to be recognized without some kind of disguise.”

“That's what makes this all so horrid.”

“My dear, why didn't you let anyone know sooner?”

“Oh, Mrs. Croft, I didn't know if anyone would believe me,” Evy said, looking down at her teacup.

“We need to bring in the police, Miss Evy, and let them know so they can begin an investigation.”

“No, we can't, not yet. There's no proof. You know as well as I they wouldn't believe me. The first thing they'd say was that I was ill and hallucinating, or something of that insipid nature. ‘Suffering from a bump
on the head, the poor dear.' Oh no, I haven't said anything, and I won't. Not until I can prove it.”

“That's playing with fire, child. Anyone that violent wouldn't wait to strike again if they thought—” The normal pink of Mrs. Croft's cheeks gave way to a sickly pallor.

Evy nodded. “Exactly so. If they thought I remembered. And that's why I haven't said a word to anyone except you.”

Mrs. Croft laid her elbow on the table, a palm to her cheek, and shook her head in dismay. “Yes, we don't know whom we can trust.” She looked up quickly. “Blessed be the day. I'm thankful you're here instead of in that dreadful cottage all alone. We've got to do something to protect you, child. We can't go on taking chances as though it didn't happen.”

“No, Mrs. Croft, I don't think someone was waiting to deliberately kill me. But I do think I'm being watched to see if I'm suspicious of anyone in particular.”

“Well, sure now, but—”

“True, that seems normal. Friends and acquaintances calling to wish me well. But I can't be totally sure of any of them, either.”

“But if someone was waiting for you to come up those steps, then it was deliberate,” Mrs. Croft said as she nervously twisted her napkin in her hands.

“I think I surprised whoever was up there. I should have been at the Allhallows Eve Supper, so I wasn't expected home.”

“I see what you're getting at. Yes, that's for sure. The supper, I'd forgotten that.” She frowned and picked up her cup. “Then someone knew enough about your schedule—for that matter, everyone's schedule—for the evening.”

“Yes. And I interrupted someone's plan by coming back unexpectedly. The storm was so noisy by that time that whoever it was didn't hear me come through the front gate and up to the door. And that's probably why the gate was unlatched. Someone had been in a hurry and
didn't bother to latch it. The window in the parlor was open—that's probably the entry that was used, because the front door was locked.

“When I came inside, I changed out of my wet clothes and made tea before I heard footsteps in the attic. And whoever it was also didn't hear me until I started up the steps—at least that's what I think now.” Evy quickly finished her tea and poured more, her hands shaking a little. She was determined not to panic.

“Until I do think things through carefully,” she said, “it's wise to behave as though I don't remember a thing.”

Mrs. Croft answered with a moaning sound and a shake of her head.

“It had to be a thief.”

Evy dismissed the hopeful emphasis in her voice, but Mrs. Croft persisted.

“It's that no-account newcomer, Jeffords, I'll wager. That man's naught but a thief. I told the vicar so from the beginning, but he's bent on keepin' him around the rectory as a gardener. Trying to help him. Doesn't have all his mind, the vicar keeps saying. So all the more's the reason to be rid of him. Why, Jeffords was caught red-handed snooping ‘round Miss Armitage's cottage just weeks before Allhallows. She chased him away with her broom.”

Evy could see Mrs. Croft was still shocked by what she'd told her and didn't want to believe the worst. It was more comfortable for her to believe something less sinister. Evy didn't fault her for that. At least Evy had finally told someone about what had really happened after all these months.

“We ought to write Vicar Osgood about this,” Mrs. Croft continued. “If it was Jeffords, the Yard ought to question him on where he was that afternoon. He wasn't at that supper, to be sure.”

Evy looked at her with alert interest.

“Yes, everyone was at the supper. Of course!”

“But Jeffords wasn't, is what I'm saying, child.”

“I see what you're saying, but it wasn't Jeffords.”

“Now, how can you go saying so?” Mrs. Croft looked perturbed. Obviously she
wanted
it to be Jeffords.

“Because he has the best possible witness. Me.” Evy turned her lips into a rueful smile. “I saw him wandering the village green on my way to the cottage. There was no way he could have gotten there before me. Besides, the vicar is right, Mrs. Croft. Poor Jeffords is harmless and in need of mercy. I even have my doubts that he was out for mischief when old lady Arm—I mean when Miss Armitage ran him off with her broom.”

“Well, if that's so, then that's that.”

Yes, that was indeed the end of that, but not the end of her interest in what Mrs. Croft had said earlier. “You say everyone else was at the church supper?” Evy asked.

“Well, most everyone, it seems. I didn't exactly nose count, if you know what I mean. I was so busy helping to ladle the soup. But most, I'd say, were there.”

Evy looked at her intently.

Mrs. Croft squinted thoughtfully. “I'll try. Let's see, now. I remember Vicar Osgood and Missus Martha, the Tisdales, the Stewarts. Even Wally's father was there with the boy. The Hoopers was there, so was the Tuckers, the—”

She went on reading off her alphabet of familiar, trusted village names, people Evy had known all her life and had affection for.

Mrs. Croft sighed and drew up her shoulders. “Only ones who wasn't there was the squire and Lady Elosia. That is, Sir Lyle came in late, but Lady Elosia didn't come at all on account of the sudden storm. And Sir Lyle wouldn't have no interest in snooping about your attic. And Lord Anthony Brewster, he was still here in London until, as you said, he called at the hospital, due to that telegraph from Sir Julien Bley.”

Evy nodded thoughtfully. “Well, it is all quite silly and bizarre at the same time.” But someone had been in her attic.

“Just for the sake of eliminating folks, seems to me the squire's a mite moldy when it comes to some things, like Lizzie says. He locks
himself in his library and studies till all hours of the night, even needs to be rung twice by the dinner bell to get him to come to supper. But he's a gentleman, that one. Not much like that scoundrel son of his, Master Rogan. Seems wicked to even suggest the squire would do such a thing.”

Evy agreed. Sir Lyle Chantry was rather elegant and certainly not violent.

“And Lady Elosia—well, she can't get around much faster than me. Doubt if she could even climb them steep steps without huffing and puffing.”

Yes, of course, quite ridiculous to even consider Lady Elosia Chantry.

But whoever it was had been afraid of being recognized, enough to cover his or her face with a blanket. And whoever it was had—and still did have—a desire to kill if cornered.

Evy shuddered.

“I still think we should talk to the police.”

Evy shook her head firmly. “Don't you see? They'll attribute what I'm saying to some deep depression I'm suffering over my injury. And suppose they spoke with Vicar Osgood. He'd have to tell them how depressed I was when he and Martha visited, and that's all it would take.”

Mrs. Croft used her thumb to smooth the frown from between her brows, as though her head ached. “Much as I hate saying it, I think you're probably right. A young woman losing her ability to get around the way she used to, and then a lot of time's passed too. They'd be wanting to know why you just now told them.”

“Exactly, Mrs. Croft. That's just what they'd ask.”

“Then what do we do, child?”

Evy shivered when she heard the fear in Mrs. Croft's voice. She reached quickly across the table and took her hand, so rough and callussed. “We take the initiative. We won't panic. We're going to Grimston Way.”