Murder Most Malicious Read online

  “My, my, yes, he’ll be back.” Lady Cecily spoke to no one in particular. She used her knife to scrape food around her plate with an irritating screech. “He must return soon, for isn’t there an announcement Henry and Julia wish to make today?”

  Lady Allerton leaned in close and, with an efficiency that appeared to be born of habit, slipped the knife from between her aunt’s fingers. “You asked that this morning, Aunt Cecily. And no, there is no announcement just yet. Why don’t you eat something now?”

  “No engagement yet?” Lady Cecily looked crestfallen. “Why is that? Julia dear, didn’t Henry ask you a very pertinent question last night?”

  Julia finally looked away from the window as if startled from sleep. She blinked. “I’m sorry. Did you say something?”

  “We were all very tired last night, what with all the Christmas revelry.” Grams’s attempt to sound cheerful fell flat. In the old days the house would have been filled with guests, but first the war and then the influenza outbreak that sped through England in the fall heavily curtailed this year’s festivities. The Leightons might be second cousins, but they would not have been invited to spend the holiday at Foxwood Hall if Grams hadn’t held out hope that Father Christmas would deliver a husband for Julia. The war had left so few men from whom to choose. “Henry and Julia shall have plenty of time to talk now things have calmed down. Won’t you, Julia?”

  “Yes, Grams. Of course.”

  Phoebe doubted her sister knew what she had just agreed to. Fox sniggered.

  “If you don’t stop being so snide,” she whispered to him behind her hand, “I’ll suggest Grampapa send you up to the schoolroom where you belong.”

  Fox cupped a hand over his mouth and stuck out his tongue before whispering, “Then you should stop impersonating a beet every time Lord Owen enters a room.”

  “I do no such thing.” Good gracious, if Fox had noticed, was she so obvious? She sucked air between her teeth. But no, Lord Owen was paying her no mind now, instead helping himself to thick slices of cold roast venison and responding to some question Grams had just asked him. She relaxed against her chair. Lord Owen was a passing fancy, nothing more. He was . . . too tall for her. Too muscular—good heavens, his shoulders and chest filled out his Norfolk jacket in the most alarming ways. Approaching his late twenties, he was too old as well. And much too . . .

  Handsome, with his strong features, steely eyes, and inky black hair that made such a striking contrast next to Julia’s blond.

  Yes, just a silly, passing fancy....

  “Well, now, my girls.” Grampapa grinned broadly and lightly clapped his hands. “I believe it’s time to hand out the Christmas boxes, is it not? The staff will want to be on their way.”

  “Yes, you’re quite right, Grampapa.” With a sense of relief at this excuse to escape the table, Phoebe dabbed at her lips and placed her napkin beside her plate. “Girls, shall we?”

  Amelia was on her feet in an instant. “I’ve so been looking forward to this. It’s my favorite part of Christmas.”

  Julia stood with a good deal less enthusiasm. “Not mine, but come. Let’s get it over with.”

  Eva could finally feel her fingers and toes again after trekking across the village to her parents’ farm. Mum had put the kettle on before she arrived, and she was just now enjoying her second cup of strong tea and biting into another heavenly, still-warm apricot scone.

  Holly and evergreen boughs draped the mantel above a cheerful fire, and beside the hearth a small stack of gifts waited to be opened. Eva eyed the beribboned box from the Renshaws. She wondered what little treasure Phoebe and Amelia had tucked inside.

  Mum huffed her way into the room with yet another pot of tea, which she set on a trivet on the sofa table. “Can’t have enough on a day like today,” she said, as if there had been a need to explain. “As soon as your father comes in from checking the animals we’ll open the presents.”

  “I think they’re lovely right where they are,” Eva said. “It’s just good to be home.”

  “It’s a shame your sister couldn’t be here this year.”

  “Alice would if she could have, Mum, but Suffolk is far, especially in this weather.”

  “Yes, I suppose. . . .” With another huff Mum sat down beside her, weighting the down cushion so that the springs beneath creaked and Eva felt herself slide a little toward the center of the old sofa.

  A name hovered in the air between them, loud and clear though neither of them spoke it. Danny, the youngest of the family. Eva’s chest tightened, and Mum pretended to sweep back a strand of hair, when in actuality she brushed at a tear.

  Danny had gone to France in the third year of the war, just after his eighteenth birthday. Not quite a year later, last winter, the telegram came.

  “Ah, yes, well.” Mum patted Eva’s hand and pulled in a fortifying breath. “It’s good to have you home for an entire day, or almost so. I’d have thought we’d see more of you, working so close by.”

  “Tending to three young ladies keeps me busy, Mum.”

  “Yes, and bless them for it, I suppose. It’s a good position you’ve got, so we shan’t be complaining, shall we?”

  “Indeed not. Especially not today. But . . . I hear you huffing a bit, Mum. Are your lungs still achy?”

  “No, no. Better now.”

  The door of the cottage opened on a burst of wind and a booted foot crossed the threshold. A swirl of snowflakes followed. Eva sprang up to catch the door and prevent it swinging back on her father, who stamped snow off his boots onto the braided rug and unwrapped the knitted muffler from around his neck.

  “Everyone all right out there, Vincent?” Mum asked. She leaned forward to pour tea into her father’s mug.

  “Right as rain.” He shrugged off his coat and ran a hand over a graying beard that reached his chest. “Or as snow, I should say.”

  “Come sit and have a cuppa, dear. Eva wants to open her gifts.”

  “Oh, Mum.”

  They spent the next minutes opening and admiring. Eva was pleased to see the delighted blush in her mother’s cheeks when she unwrapped the shawl Eva had purchased in Bristol when she’d accompanied Lady Julia there in October. There was also a pie crimper and a wax sealer with her mother’s initial, B for Betty. For her father Eva had found a tooled leather bookmark and had knitted him a new muffler to replace his old ragged one.

  From them Eva received a velvet-covered notebook for keeping track of her duties and appointments, a linen blouse Mum had made and embroidered herself, and a hat with little silk flowers for which they must have sacrificed far too much of their meager income. But how could she scold them for their extravagance when their eyes shone so brightly as she opened the box?

  Mum gripped the arm of the sofa and pulled to her feet with another of those huffs that so concerned Eva. “I’ll just check on the roast. Should be ready soon. Oh, Eva, you’ve forgotten your box from the Renshaws.”

  So she had. “There’s something inside for you, too, Mum.”

  “You have a look-see, dear. I mustn’t burn the roast.”

  “All right, I’ll peek inside and then I’ll come and help you put dinner on, Mum.”

  She picked up the box and returned to the sofa. Her father grinned. “So what do you suppose is in there this year?”

  “We’ll just have to see, won’t we?” She tugged at the ribbons, pulled off the cover, and set it aside. The topmost gift was wrapped in gold foil tissue paper. The card on top read: To Eva, with fondness and appreciation, from Phoebe and Amelia. She carefully unrolled the little package and out tumbled a set of airy linen handkerchiefs edged in doily lace, each adorned with its own color of petit point roses: a pink, a yellow, a violet, and a blue. Eva didn’t think there were such things as blue or violet roses, but her heart swelled and her eyes misted as she pictured the two girls bent over their efforts, quickly whisking away their gifts-in-the-making whenever Eva entered their rooms.

  “Look, Dad. See what the
girls have for me. Aren’t they perfection? And here’s a fifth, with a tag that says it’s for Mum.”

  He craned his neck to see. “Look a mite too fine for the use they’re meant for.”

  Eva chuckled and glanced again into her box. “And here’s a card. . . .” She took out a simple piece of white paper, folded in half. She unfolded it. “It reads, ‘For the Huntfords, for their pains.’ Odd, there’s no signature.”

  “Isn’t that jolly of the Renshaws to remember your mum and me.”

  “I’ll bet it’s a bit of cash, like last year. Let’s see. . . .” Eva bent over the box to peer inside. The breath left her in a single whoosh.

  “Well? What’s next in that box of surprises?” Dad leaned expectantly forward in his chair. “Evie? Evie, why do you look like that? Surely they haven’t gone and given us one of the family heirlooms, have they? Evie?”

  “I . . . Oh, Dad. . . . Oh, God.”

  “Evie, we do not blaspheme in this house,” her mother called from the kitchen. She appeared in the doorway, drying her hands on a dish rag. “Eva, what on earth is wrong? You’re as white as a sheet of ice.”

  “It’s . . . it’s a ring,” she managed, gasping. Her hands trembled where they clutched the edges of the box. Her heart thumped as though to escape her chest. “A s-signet ring.”

  “That’s lovely, dear. So why do you look as if you’ve just seen a ghost?” Her mother started toward her. Her father’s rumbling laugh somehow penetrated the ringing in Eva’s ears.

  She held up both hands to stop her mother in her tracks. “Mum, stay where you are. Don’t come any closer.”

  “Why, Eva Mary Huntford, what has gotten into you? What sort of signet ring could make my daughter so impertinent?” The sullenness in her mother’s voice mingled with that incessant ringing. A wave of dizziness swooped up to envelop Eva.

  The room wavered in her vision. “One that’s still attached to the finger.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Vernon delivered his message in a whisper near Phoebe’s ear. She sprang to her feet, drawing the attention of the other ladies in the second-floor Rosalind sitting room, so named for her great-great-grandmother, who had furnished the room to reflect the pinks and reds of the rose garden in summer. “Excuse me, everyone. I’ll . . . er . . . be back.”

  “Phoebe,” Grams called after her.

  “Where on earth is she going in such a hurry?” Lady Allerton said as well, but Phoebe didn’t stop to explain.

  She couldn’t, not without alarming ladies Allerton and Cecily. Grams was aware of the macabre developments that brought the servants home hours before they were expected. Several of them were directly affected and word had quickly spread among the rest. Grampapa had explained to Grams, and she in turn had brought Phoebe into her confidence. This had been too much to bear alone, even for stoic Grams. Grampapa, meanwhile, was telephoning all over the village and nearby inns for any sign of Henry.

  She repressed a shudder and traveled the corridor a brisk clip. With Vernon following close in her wake, she made her way to the back of the house and down the service staircase. Eva, her eyes wide and her face blanched of color, stood shivering at the bottom.

  “Milady, I’m so terribly sorry Vernon disturbed you. I asked him not to, but—”

  “He was acting at my request, Eva. I wished to be notified immediately if you returned to the house.”

  Vincent Huntford, the bearded, burly man beside Eva, placed a calloused hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Perhaps we should have gone straight to the Chief Inspector’s office rather than burden poor Lady Phoebe with this.”

  Phoebe shook her head. “No, Inspector Perkins is already here. So I am to understand you also found . . .”

  Eva’s eyes opened wider still. “Do you mean there were others?”

  “Several. Phelps and Dora, and two of the shopkeepers in the village to whom Grampapa sent gifts.” A sudden queasiness tempted Phoebe to find the nearest seat. Instead, she drew herself up straighter. “Tell me what you found. Was it in your Christmas box, too?”

  “A finger,” Eva whispered through quivering lips. “A severed finger with a signet ring.”

  “I see.” Not for the first time since this began, a chill swept through Phoebe. “The inspector will need you to help identify the . . . the . . . victim.”

  “I know exactly who it is.” Eva’s next words confirmed Phoebe’s own suspicions. “Lord Allerton.”

  Eva preceded her father and Lady Phoebe into the jarred goods pantry, where she had deposited that dreadful Christmas box. She loathed involving Phoebe in the sordid details, wished she could prevent the girl from peeking inside. After all, she had just divulged the contents of the box, so what was the point of looking, really? But Lady Phoebe had that determined set to her chin and there would be no deterring her.

  Her father drew the box to the edge of the counter and lifted the lid, whereupon Lady Phoebe rose up on her toes and glanced in. A second later, she turned away and reached for Eva’s hands.

  Her face was pale. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You’ve no reason to be sorry, my lady.”

  “To have your holiday ruined by this . . .” Lady Phoebe let out a breath. “I think you and Mr. Huntford had better come upstairs. The inspector will want to speak to you both.”

  A few minutes later, Lady Phoebe knocked on the morning-room door. Ranged along the corridor were others staff members—Josh the young hall boy, Dora the scullery maid, and Lord Wroxly’s valet, Mr. Phelps. Phoebe had mentioned two of the villagers as well, but Eva saw no sign of them. Perhaps the inspector had already interviewed them in their homes.

  Apparently, Inspector Perkins and his assistant had set up for questions in this relatively small room set back from the main part of the house, and where there would likely be fewer distractions. He glanced up as Lady Phoebe led Eva and her father across the threshold. Her father held the box, his face slightly averted as if the contents gave off a vile odor. Which perhaps they did. Eva didn’t believe she’d drawn a full breath since first opening it.

  “My lady’s maid discovered a gruesome surprise in her box as well,” Lady Phoebe said with an authority that belied her nineteen years. “I thought you might wish to see her.”

  Had Eva been wrong to leave the new handkerchiefs at home with Mum? Were they evidence, too? She didn’t care. She wouldn’t hand over the gifts her girls had labored over especially for her.

  Her girls. She often thought of them that way despite being only seven years older than Phoebe.

  Douglas, the young under footman, sat at the table across from Inspector Perkins, his right hand tugging at the left cuff of his livery coat. The inspector’s assistant, a young man and a stranger to Eva—rare in a village like Little Barlow—sat to his employer’s right, a pencil poised above an open notebook. He wore the blue woolen tunic of a constable; his high-domed helmet sat on the table beside him.

  Inspector Perkins spoke quietly to Douglas.

  “All right, lad, that’ll do for now. I’ll send for you if I have further questions.” He looked up at Eva. “Have a seat, Miss Huntford. Ah, Mr. Huntford, nice to see you. Well . . .” He let out a bark of a laugh. “Not nice. Surely not, with such business afoot.” He gestured to the chair Douglas had vacated and the one beside it.

  “Do you wish me to stay?” Lady Phoebe whispered to Eva.

  “No, it’s all right, my lady. How is Lady Amelia? When I think of her setting your lovely gifts on top of that horrible thing, it’s almost worse than the thing itself. What if she’d seen it?”

  Lady Phoebe placed a manicured hand over Eva’s. “She didn’t. The boxes were up on a shelf and she slipped our present inside right before Julia and I tied the lids closed with ribbon. None of us ever thought to glance inside.”

  With that Phoebe stepped out and closed the door behind her, leaving Eva and her father to face the inspector’s questions. Five minutes later she began to feel as though she were running round and rou
nd the hedge maze with the exit nowhere in sight. The inspector asked myriad questions several times each, as if he couldn’t remember her answers from one moment to the next despite his assistant jotting everything down. Had she seen any strangers in the house recently, either above or below stairs? Did she talk to anyone on her way to her parents’ farm? Had she left the box unattended anywhere for any length of time as she crossed the village? Had she argued with anyone recently?

  Did he think the daily squabbles above and below stairs could result in this kind of act? If so, there wasn’t a safe manor house in all of England.

  She studied the chief inspector’s eyes with their webbing of red lines and surrounding pockets of flesh. A pocked nose shot through with tiny purple veins completed the picture. It wasn’t hard to guess how he had spent Christmas Day—with his feet up in front of a hearth fire and a bottle of whiskey close at hand. It was no great secret that Isaac Perkins liked his spirits, but in a parish that hadn’t seen a major crime in over a hundred years, no one saw much reason to complain.

  Until now.

  “Inspector Perkins, I don’t understand why you don’t examine the ring itself. If you do, you’ll see that it belongs to Lord Allerton.” She gulped and continued lower. “As does the finger, one can only assume.”

  “Lord Allerton?” Inspector Perkins exchanged a look with his assistant. The assistant, a man about Eva’s age with a curly mop of dark red hair and bright blue eyes that marked him most likely of Irish or Scottish descent, merely kept writing in his notebook. The inspector looked back at Eva. “Are you certain? I was to understand he’s not been in the house all morning.”

  “Yes, and there could be a very significant reason for that. Look at the ring.” Eva tried to smooth the frustration from her voice. She gestured at the still-closed box sitting in front of her father. “The A on the signet is as clear as day. Who else could it belong to? It would also explain why no one has seen Lord Allerton. Because he’s . . .”

  Her throat ran dry. Her father reached over and rubbed her shoulder gently. Inspector Perkins stretched an arm over the table, a wordless request for the box. Her father complied and pushed the thing across the surface.