She was being watched.
Holding herself very still, she glanced around the water meadow, her gaze raking the reeds down by the river and the tangled undergrowth of the stand of alders and willows that pressed in close. She was not a fanciful woman, but she profoundly regretted not bringing her pistol with her. She was searching about for a stout stick when a vague rustling drew her attention to a nearby patch of blackberries.
“Hullo,” she said, recognizing the short, squat man barely visible through the brambles. “It’s Reuben, isn’t it? Reuben Dickie?”
“Aye, ma’am.” He stepped reluctantly from behind the blackberries, obviously discomfited to have been seen. And she wondered how often he did this—watched people quietly, without their knowing.
“Why were you watching me?” she asked with a smile. She hoped the smile didn’t come off looking as tight and forced as it felt.
He touched his forelock and bobbed his head. “Didn’t mean nothin’ by it, ma’am.”
“Do you come here often?”
“Sometimes.” He sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. She realized that his other hand gripped a small book, elegantly bound in blue leather. But he was holding it awkwardly against his leg, as if anxious to hide it from her view.
“You have a book, I see,” she said, still smiling.
“What? Oh, aye, ma’am.” His small eyes slid away.
“Where did you get it?”
“Found it, I did.”
“Oh? Where?”
“I dunno. Just found it.”
“When?”
“When? Few days ago, I reckon.”
“It looks like a lovely book. May I see it?” She held out her hand, and though he hesitated, she kept her hand out and gave him a stern look.
He stumbled forward and surrendered the book.
Somehow she knew, even before she saw it, what she would find engraved in gold lettering on the spine.
Hamlet. William Shakespeare.
She opened the book to the last page with hands that were not quite steady. Where the final words of the play should have been was now only a gaping hole. The last sentence had been neatly sliced away by a knife.
“Where did you say you found it?” Hero asked again, flipping to the inside front cover.
“I dunno. Always finding things, I am. Things other folks throw away.”
“You think someone threw this away? It’s a lovely book.”
“Well, they must’ve, else how would I have found it?”
“Only you don’t remember where?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Was it around here?”
“Oh, no, ma’am.”
“How can you be certain, if you don’t—”
Hero broke off, her attention arrested by the owner’s name written in a small, cramped script on the flyleaf.
The Reverend Benedict Ainsley Underwood.
“I had no idea it was missing,” said the Reverend, staring down at the small, leather-bound volume in his hands. “You say Reuben claims to have found it?”
“You think he might not be telling the truth?” asked Hero.
They were seated in the Reverend’s book-lined study overlooking the churchyard. An ornate ormolu clock on the mantel ticked loudly in the sudden silence. The Reverend cleared his throat. “Let’s just say that Reuben sometimes invents his own truths.”
“He also claims not to remember precisely where he found it.”
“Yes, well, that doesn’t surprise me. There’s nothing wrong with Reuben’s memory. But if he thinks he might be in trouble, he is not above playing up his mental deficiencies for sympathy.”
“Why would he think he might be in trouble?”
The vicar exhaled a long, pained breath. “Some years ago, when he was younger, Reuben . . . Let’s just say he had a habit of roaming at night and peeking into people’s windows, especially cottages with pretty young girls. The old Squire, he told Reuben he was going to put him in the stocks if he was caught doing anything like that again—forbade him ever to be out after dark, in fact. But I’m afraid he does still go out at night, probably far more than anyone realizes. I wouldn’t be surprised if he found the book on one of his illicit midnight sojourns and that’s why he won’t admit to remembering anything.”
Hero thought about the night she and Devlin had seen Reuben on the village green, and the way his brother, Jeb, had come out to coax him back inside.
The vicar ran his fingertips along the small book’s spine. “It’s disconcerting—frightening, even—to think that poor young woman’s killer could actually have been here, in my house . . . stealing my books. . . .”
“When do you think the book was taken?”
“I’ve no idea. It’s been several years since I last read Hamlet. It could have been gone for some time without my knowing it.” He rose to inspect a shelf that Hero saw contained a row of several dozen small, similarly bound volumes. They must have been tightly packed in before, because the space left by the missing play was not obvious.