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.”