“How could he help but? I mean, it ain’t like she was tryin’ to hide. He walked right by her. Reuben said the Reverend mumbled somethin’ about a sick parishioner. So he seen her, all right.”
“Did he see Reuben?”
“I don’t rightly know.”
Hero watched Becka Dickie pluck at her skirts again. The woman hadn’t come right out and said she suspected Benedict Underwood of having killed both her son and Emma Chandler. But the implications were obvious.
“I’ve always felt right sorry for Mrs. Timms,” Reuben’s mother was saying. “Just like I did for Rose Blount. A woman shouldn’t have to turn herself into a whore for her own cousin, jist to have a roof o’er her head.”
“How do you know she’s not willing?”
Becka Dickie stared at Hero with unblinking, wise eyes. “Ye talk to Rachel Timms. Ye’ll see.”
Hill Cottage lay just to the north of the churchyard wall, tucked into a slight dip in the slope. Built of whitewashed fieldstone with a roof of lichen-encrusted slate, it was small and doubtless dark inside, with its front shutters closed even at midday, as if against prying eyes. Once, the cottage might have boasted a garden. Now there were only a few scraggly, half-dead rosebushes and some forlorn-looking poppies struggling to survive in a patch of dirt scratched nearly bare by a flock of dispirited-looking chickens.
Hero rapped with one gloved fist on the worn door, then stood listening as the sound faded away into windblown silence. She waited, then knocked again. She could feel the other woman standing—breathless, wondering, afraid—on the other side of the door’s weathered panels.
“Mrs. Timms?” said Hero softly. “Are you there? I need to speak with you. It’s about the young woman who was killed in the village last week. Mrs. Timms?”
Silence.
“Blast,” whispered Hero under her breath. She was turning away when the door was suddenly yanked open about a foot and then stopped.
A painfully thin woman appeared in the gap. She looked to be perhaps ten years older than Hero, with a long, oval face and the sallow complexion of someone who’d once lived in a fiercely sunny climate but now rarely ventured out of doors. Her pale blond hair was already lightly touched by gray and unfashionably secured in a tight roll at the nape of her neck. Her dove gray gown was plain and threadbare, the hand gripping the edge of the door reddened and chapped by work. There was nothing about either her appearance or her manner to suggest the kind of woman who regularly received furtive midnight visits from a forbidden lover.
“Good morning,” said Hero. “I’m sorry for disturbing you. I’m Lady Devlin.”
“I know who you are,” said Rachel Timms, her voice well-bred and cultured, but timid, breathy. “What makes you think I know anything about the woman who was killed?”
“May I come in, please?”
Rachel Timms’s nostrils flared on a quickly drawn breath, her chest jerking as she struggled to choose between two equally frightening prospects: to risk being seen with Hero on her doorstep or to invite her inside. And Hero found herself wondering if anyone besides Benedict Underwood had entered Hill Cottage since Rachel Timms’s arrival here five or six years before.
“It’s important,” said Hero.
She thought for a moment that Rachel Timms meant to close the door in her face. Then she stepped back and opened the door wider.
“Come in—quickly, please.”
Chapter 52
The Reverend Benedict Underwood was inspecting that year’s crop of small, unripe apples in the ancient walled orchard beside the vicarage when Sebastian walked up the lane toward the church. Sebastian had just spent the last half hour listening to Hero’s account of her meeting with Rachel Timms, an experience that left him hard put to maintain his equanimity.
“Looks as if you should have a good harvest this year,” he said, his head tipping back as he surveyed the trees’ gnarled, heavily laden branches.
The vicar’s face settled into his habitual, benevolent half smile. “Yes—God willing.”
“I’m sorry I was unable to attend yesterday’s funeral,” said Sebastian, looking out over the low wall that separated the orchard from the churchyard. Because this was the favored south side, the weathered, lichen-covered gravestones were thick here.
The vicar winced. “I heard about what happened to Reuben Dickie. Poor wretched soul. He was always carving little wooden animals for the village children, everything from sheep and horses to foxes and deer. He was amazingly talented at it.”
“I’d wondered what he did with them,” said Sebastian as the two men turned to walk between the rows of old fruit trees.
Underwood glanced sideways at him. “Any idea who could possibly have done such a thing?”
“We have a few theories.”
“Oh?”
“It seems Reuben had a habit of wandering at night.”
The vicar nodded sadly. “I know. He wasn’t supposed to, but . . .” He shrugged.
“It’s very likely that he was killed because of something he saw.”