“Did you see her come back?”
“No. But then, I spent the rest of the day weeding the kitchen garden on the other side of the cottage.”
“She was alone?”
“She was, yes.” Her face lifted to his, her unusual, faceted blue eyes dark now with some emotion he could not name. “I hear Constable Nash is saying she killed herself.”
“She didn’t.”
“So certain?”
“Yes.”
“She was a stranger. Why would anyone from around here want to kill her?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet. Who do you think could have done it?”
She gave him a wary look, as if she suspected him of trying to lead her into a trap. “Me? What do I know of such things?”
“You know the people around here.”
He thought she might deny that anyone in the village could be a killer. Instead, she looked thoughtful a moment, then said, “If anybody did it, I’d say it was probably Reuben—the Widow Dickie’s simpleminded son.”
Sebastian recalled one of Emma Chance’s portraits, of a round-faced, vacuous-looking man with small, wide-set eyes and a mouthful of oddly spaced teeth. “What makes you suspect him?”
“He’s always creeping about, peeping in folks’ windows—particularly if it’s a house with women living alone. He ain’t right in the head.”
“Where would I find him?”
“He hangs about the village green most of the time. Likes to sit on the step of the pump house—although the truth is, you never know where he’s gonna pop up.”
Sebastian doubted that anyone simpleminded could be either cunning or resourceful enough to carefully stage a murder to look like suicide. But he knew that people often treated the simpleminded as if they weren’t there—as if they couldn’t hear what was said or see what was done, or remember it.
Which meant that Reuben Dickie sounded like someone Sebastian ought to speak to.
Chapter 8
Roofed with lichen-encrusted slate, its paving stones worn shiny by centuries of passing feet, Ayleswick’s pump house stood near one corner of the village green. Its sides were open, the roof supported by dark old beams that rested on weathered columns of large, square-cut stone blocks.
A short, squat-looking man sat on the pump house’s single step and whistled tunelessly as he carved a piece of wood into a quadruped of an as yet indeterminate species. The man had lank, greasy brown hair and a wide, flat face that remained emotionless as he watched Sebastian walk toward him.
“I know who you are,” said Reuben Dickie as Sebastian drew up before him.
“Do you?”
“Aye. Yer that grand London lord come to town with the pretty lady—the tall one with the baby. Heard about you, I did.”
“Did you hear I’m helping Squire Rawlins with this recent murder?”
Reuben’s tongue darted out to lick his lips as his gaze slid sideways. He said nothing.
Sebastian studied the man’s small, oddly shaped eyes and flat nose. He looked to be somewhere in his late thirties or early forties, although the hands wielding the knife with expert care were as small and short fingered as those of a child.
After a moment, Reuben thrust out his lower lip and said, “Heard Constable Nash tell the smith she killed herself.”
Sebastian squinted off across the green, toward the gentle hill that rose above the village to the north. He was becoming seriously annoyed with the village’s talkative constable. “She didn’t, actually.”
Reuben nodded and kept whittling. “Constable Nash ain’t near as smart as he thinks he is.”
“The lady drew your picture, didn’t she?”
Reuben slanted a wary look up at him. “How’d you know that?”
“I saw it, in the sketchbook she left in her room. It was a picture of you sitting here, at the pump house.”
He gave a quick, unexpected smile. “She drew it last Saturday. I was sittin’ here whittling, and she said, ‘Do you mind if I sketch you?’ And I said, ‘No.’ So she did.”
“Did you happen to see her yesterday?”
Again, that vague shadow of wariness darkened the man’s eyes. “I s’pose I did.”
“Where was that?”
“Well, it must’ve been when I was sittin’ here, don’t ye think? Saw her go in and out the Blue Boar a time or two. She was sketchin’ all the old buildings hereabouts—the church and Maplethorpe Hall and the Grange.”
That caught Sebastian’s attention. “She drew Maplethorpe Hall?” According to the vicar, Maplethorpe was the ancestral home of the Baldwyns, the family whose tomb she’d been studying when he first came upon her in the churchyard.
Reuben looked up and blinked, as if puzzled by Sebastian’s interest. “Aye. Why?”
“When was this?”
“I dunno. But Major Weston could tell ye. He lives in the old Dower House, ye know.”
“And who lives at Maplethorpe?”
Reuben Dickie gave an odd, breathy giggle. “Ain’t nobody lives there now. Not since it burned.”