Hero waited until the tea was poured and Mrs. Underwood passed her a cup before saying casually, “So why did Sybil kill herself?”
The vicar’s wife looked up from stirring her own tea, one arched eyebrow cocked. “Why do you think? Got herself in the family way, of course.”
“And she killed herself over it?” said Hero incredulously. An unmarried gentlewoman who found herself with child faced endless shame and social ruin, while for a housemaid it could mean instant dismissal followed either by a descent into prostitution or slow starvation and a wretched death. But the consequences were typically not so dire for a simple cottager’s daughter. “Did her father turn her out the house?”
Agnes Underwood shrugged. “Who knows? One assumes so. I mean, why else would she throw herself off the cliffs of Northcott Gorge?”
“There was never any suggestion at the time that someone might have pushed her?”
“Good heavens, no. What makes you ask such a thing?”
“It is possible, isn’t it?”
“No. I mean, who would want to push her?”
“The man who got her with child, perhaps?”
Agnes Underwood fingered her teacup, her features pinched and twitching with the turbulence of her thoughts. But she remained silent.
Hero said, “Nothing came out at the inquest?”
“Of course not. The verdict was felo-de-se, although the Reverend was able to argue successfully that the girl wasn’t in her right mind when she committed the act. He’s very compassionate, you know—some might say too much so. If you ask me, she should have been buried at the crossroads, naked and with a stake driven through her heart. Wicked, wicked thing.”
It was with effort that Hero kept the distaste provoked by her hostess’s remarks off her face. “And the other girl?”
“That was the blacksmith’s daughter, Hannah. Hannah Grant. Drowned herself in the millpond, she did.”
“Was she likewise with child?”
“I assume so.”
“Surely there was an autopsy?”
“No. There was no need. It was quite obvious that the silly girl had drowned, so why waste parish funds? The old Squire was very careful about such things. Parish rates are quite high enough already.”
“So it is possible she could have been murdered as well.”
Agnes Underwood gave another of those humorless laughs. “Dear Lady Devlin, what a thing to suggest.”
“If she wasn’t known to be with child, then why was she thought to have killed herself?”
“Love sickness, the silly chit.”
“She was in love? With whom?”
“Who knows? Kept it a secret. Probably some married man, I’m afraid. She was as pretty and flighty as Sybil, so it was no surprise when she came to a similarly bad end.”
Hero took a slow sip of her tea. She suspected that any attractive young woman who laughed and enjoyed the attentions of men would be condemned as “flighty” by the vicar’s wife. “Precisely when did these deaths occur?”
Mrs. Underwood screwed up her face with thought. “Well . . . let’s see. It was before Maplethorpe burned, so it must have been ’ninety-six or ’ninety-seven.”
“Had any other young women died under similar circumstances before that?”
“Well, there was Marie Baldwyn. Threw herself off the roof of Maplethorpe Hall, she did. But that was before my time. And I believe the family succeeded in convincing the coroner’s jury that she had simply slipped and fallen to her death.”
“What about in the years since then?”
“Good heavens, no. Two were quite enough, thank you. Three, if you count Marie Baldwyn.”
“Four if you count Emma Chandler,” said Hero. “Whoever killed her also tried to pass that death off as a suicide.”
The vicar’s wife looked vaguely affronted. “Surely you don’t mean to suggest that there’s any sort of connection? It’s been years!”
“So it has.” Hero took another sip of her tea and smiled. “I had a second purpose in visiting you this evening. I was wondering: Do you have a copy of Debrett’s Peerage?”
Agnes Underwood settled back on her seat, obviously too relieved by the shift in topic to be puzzled by it. “Why, yes.”
“May I borrow it? As well as any histories of seventeenth – and eighteenth-century Scotland and Wales the vicar might have?”
“Of course.” She waited expectantly to have the request explained to her.
But Hero simply smiled, said, “Thank you,” and left it at that.
Later that evening, Hero sent Jules Calhoun up to the Grange with a message for Archie Rawlins.
Then she settled down beside her sleeping son and opened the vicar’s books in search of Guinevere Stuart Gordon.
Chapter 31
Saturday, 7 August