“It’s a ruin?”
“Aye. Ain’t nothing left but a few blackened walls.” He tipped his head to one side. “Didn’t ye know?”
“No, I did not.” Sebastian propped one boot on the low step and leaned an elbow on his bent knee. “I’m afraid there’s a great deal about Ayleswick that I don’t know. Perhaps you can help me with that. I would imagine you know everyone around here.”
“Pretty much,” said Reuben, grinning with pride.
“What do you think happened to Emma Chance?”
The smile slid away from the man’s broad, childlike face. “How would I know?”
“I imagine you must see and hear a great deal, sitting here all the time, watching people. I suspect most of the villagers don’t realize just how much you see.”
“They think I’m an idiot.”
“I don’t think you’re an idiot.” Reuben Dickie looked much like certain other mentally deficient men and women Sebastian had known in the past. But in Sebastian’s experience, the intellectual capabilities of those so afflicted could vary widely, and he suspected Reuben Dickie’s abilities were better than most. “Do you live with your mother, Reuben?”
“Aye.” He nodded to the picturesque row of half-timbered houses that ranged along the eastern side of the village green. “Our cottage is the one on the end.”
Sebastian studied the ancient house’s fanciful facade, its timbers enlivened with quatrefoils and cusps and carved faces. “You and your mother live alone?”
“Oh, no. I got a brother, Jeb. He’s not like me; he’s real smart, he is. Works as a carter. Hauling a load of timber to Wales, he is. He’s my little brother, but he takes care of me. Looks out for me, he does.”
Sebastian straightened. “If you think of anything you saw or heard that might be helpful, you will tell me, won’t you?”
Reuben grinned up at him. “I can do that.”
As Sebastian walked back across the green toward the Blue Boar, he was aware of Reuben watching him, the knife and block of wood held slack in his hands. There was something about the man that unsettled Sebastian, although he could not have articulated it. Reuben Dickie had grown up an outcast in his own village. Mentally slow and physically different, he would have been the butt of children’s pranks and a target for the taunts of the cruel his entire life. There were some who managed to retain their equanimity and good humor in the face of such relentless torment. But most grew sullen and resentful, and he suspected Reuben fell squarely into the latter category.
Yet there was something else about the man that troubled Sebastian, and he realized now it had something to do with the sly gleam in Reuben Dickie’s eyes when he spoke of the tall, pretty lady with the baby.
Hero.
“You can’t seriously think that poor, slow-witted man killed Emma Chance?” said Hero.
She was sitting at the table in their private parlor, thumbing through Emma’s sketchbook while Simon played with a stuffed lamb on the nearby hearthrug.
“I think it’s a possibility, yes,” said Sebastian. “And not simply because Jenny Dalyrimple suspects him. I think he’s hiding something.”
“But . . . He could never have come up with the idea of carrying Emma’s body down to the water meadow and leaving a bottle of laudanum at her side.”
“No. But his clever brother, Jeb, might have done it. He ‘takes care of’ Reuben, remember?”
Hero sat back in her chair. “You don’t think it’s possible that Emma could have reached the water meadows by a different path than the one you and Rawlins followed? One that wasn’t muddy?”
Sebastian shook his head. “According to Archie, there’s a path that runs along the river, but it’s muddy in both directions.”
She went back to turning the sketchbook’s pages, studying the various portraits.
He saw her forehead crease with a frown. “What is it?”
“Have you noticed that almost all these portraits are of men? There are a few women, but not many.”
“No, I hadn’t noticed.” He moved to look over her shoulder. “But you’re right. Maybe she simply found men more interesting to draw.”
Hero grunted and flipped back to the beginning of the notebook. “She also wrote the names of some of the people she drew—but not others. She named Archie Rawlins and Reuben Dickie, but not Martin McBroom . . .” She paused at one of the rare sketches of a woman: a young woman with thick wavy hair framing a strong-boned, familiar face. He wasn’t surprised to read the neatly printed caption. Jenny Dalyrimple.
Hero looked up at him. “Did she tell you Emma Chance had drawn her portrait?”
“No. No, she didn’t. But then, perhaps she didn’t know it. Neither McBroom nor Rawlins did.”
Hero studied the sketch in silence for a moment. “She looks a lot like Jamie Knox.”