A faint, inexplicable hint of color tinged the major’s cheeks. “No; did she indeed? Well, well, well.”
“Did you happen to notice if she had one sketchbook with her, or two?”
“I only recall seeing one. But then, she had a canvas satchel with her, so I suppose she could’ve had another in there. Why?”
“We haven’t been able to find the sketchbook she used for buildings and landscapes.”
“No? That’s odd.”
They’d reached the spinney now, a thick stand of young oaks and field maple underplanted with hazel and dog roses and eglantine.
Sebastian said, “Who do you think killed her?”
It was a question he tended to ask essentially everyone he spoke with. But the major’s reaction was definitely curious.
“Me?” Weston stared blankly at him, jaw slack. “Good God; how would I know? She was a pretty little thing. You’re certain someone didn’t try to have his way with her and simply carried things too far?”
It struck Sebastian as an unpleasantly euphemistic way to describe an act of attempted of rape leading to murder. “Why? Have there been instances of that sort around here in the past?”
Weston gave an odd, forced laugh. “Not to my knowledge, no.”
“Mind if I take a look around the grounds of the old hall?”
Weston’s smile faded away into something almost pained. “Whatever for?”
“It might help.” Sebastian studied the other man’s florid, sweat-slicked face. “Why? Is there a problem?”
Weston gave another of his oddly nervous laughs. “No, no, of course not. There’s a gardener named Silas—Silas Madden. Lives in the old grooms’ quarters over the stables and also functions as a sort of caretaker. He might try to run you off, but just tell him we spoke.” He hesitated a moment, then smiled again as what looked like genuine amusement flooded his face. “They say it’s haunted, you know. The old house, I mean.”
“By your wife’s father?”
“No, from before that. The daughter of the previous owners, the Baldwyns. Threw herself off the roof. She was their only child, and they died themselves not long afterward, of grief. Or at least, that’s the way the story goes.”
“Why? Why did she do it?”
“The usual: unrequited love.” Weston rolled the last word off his tongue, lingering on the “l” and vowel sounds in a way that made a mockery of both the word and the emotion it stood for.
Sebastian felt his skin crawl. “What does the ghost do?”
The major’s smile altered, became something faintly derisive. “Flits across the empty windows. Trails her icy fingers down your cheek. Alternately shrieks with laughter or sobs hysterically. Or so they say. I wouldn’t know: I’ve neither seen nor heard her. There are those who say she started the fire—knocked over a candle left unattended.”
“So how did the fire actually start?”
Weston stretched out his upper lip as he used a splayed thumb and forefinger to smooth his flowing mustache. “Oh, it was an untended candle, all right—knocked over by a windblown drape when the window was carelessly left open. But the ghost makes a much better story, don’t you think?” And he smiled again, as untroubled by the thought of a grief-stricken girl plunging to her death as by the memory of his dying father-in-law’s frantic shrieks on a wild, storm-tossed night.
Chapter 17
Major Weston was still standing in his drive, smiling faintly after them, when Sebastian drove away.
“So what did you learn?” Sebastian asked Tom.
Tom let out a scornful snort; in his own way, the tiger could be quite the snob. “It’s a right shabby establishment, that one. Ain’t but one groom, two ’acks, a showy ’unter that probably ain’t got no bottom, and a mare t’pull the gig.”
Sebastian turned the chestnuts onto the narrow, overgrown track that curled around the spinney toward the ruins of Maplethorpe Hall. “In other words, Major and Mrs. Weston are living in considerably reduced circumstances.”
“Ain’t they just. According to Andrew—’e’s the groom there—the only reason they ain’t in the poor’ouse is because Mrs. Weston got her da to change ’is will right afore he died. Seems ’e left everythin’ tied up so’s the major can’t touch none of it. It’s Mrs. Weston what controls things now.”
“Interesting.”
“Andrew says the major don’t like it at all, though there ain’t nothin’ ’e can do about it. ’E don’t cotton to all the ready she wastes on her gardens, neither. Andrew says they’ve ’ad some right royal rows ’bout it.”
“Her gardens are lovely.”