There were three more bedrooms on the same floor. She opened the door of the first. The bed was not made up for a guest, and had only a candlewick bedspread thrown across the mattress and pillows. The room had been dusted regularly, for there was no sign of cobwebbing—it was just an empty room awaiting a visitor. The next room was smaller, and was clearly Mrs. Bolton’s domain. That the housekeeper’s room neighbored that of Rosemary Hartley-Davies was a little surprising—servants were, as a rule, accommodated in the attic rooms. However, when Maisie was a girl working at Ebury Place, the London home of Lord Julian and Lady Rowan Compton, she had been sent to Chelstone to be the general maid, companion, and helper to the elderly Dowager. To enable Maisie to be of assistance if the octogenarian awoke in the night, she slept in a small room on the same floor, rather than a servant’s quarter in another part of the house. Without doubt, Hartley-Davies had not appeared to require any assistance; indeed, as she had mentioned the day before, Mrs. Bolton was old enough to be her mother. Perhaps the younger woman wanted to be close at hand should her former nanny need help.
The housekeeper’s bedroom was tidy, yet filled with small ornaments and mementoes. Maisie began searching through drawers and in cupboards, finding nothing of note. She looked around the room again, and in that moment, she became still. She closed her eyes. She was missing something. There was something else . . . and within seconds she knew what it was. There was someone else in the house. It was as if she could hear their breathing in her mind, and feel it in her own lungs. Someone was in the house. She stepped into the hallway. There was only one more room on this floor. She closed her eyes, again summoning a feeling of protection, and felt herself calm. She approached the room, turned the handle, and opened the door, her first step slow and measured. She looked into the room.
“Oh,” said Maisie. She stifled a gasp.
A pajama-clad man was tied to the bed, a handkerchief bunched into his mouth and secured with a scarf. He had only sockets where his eyes had once looked out onto the world. Maisie had seen soldiers with such wounds in the war, when the eyes had become so filled with shrapnel, there was no other choice for the surgeon but to remove them before infection set in.
“It’s all right, I’m here—help is here.” She rushed to the man’s side and began to loosen the handkerchief, her fingers pulling the fabric away.
“God in heaven, what’s going on. Where’s Rosie? And Mrs. B. And who the hell are you?”
Maisie reached for a glass of water set on the bedside table, topping it up from the adjacent carafe.
“You should drink this first, then I will tell you. Come on, I’ll help.”
“You could untie my bloody hands,” said the man.
“When you’ve had a drink and you tell me who you are. Now then, sip.” She lifted the man’s head and held the glass to his lips. “Slowly—don’t gulp it, or you will be sick. There’s plenty of water.”
The man nodded to indicate he’d had his fill, so Maisie drew back, returning the glass to the tray.
“My name is Robert Miller—I’m Rosie’s brother. Where is she? And will you bloody untie me? I’m not the big bad wolf, you know, and from your voice I can tell you’re hardly Little Red Riding Hood.”
“Calm down, Mr. Miller—a lot has happened, and the police will be here any moment now.” Maisie untied the strips of torn sheeting securing Miller to the bed.
Miller reached forward and grasped her arm, twisting her flesh. “Who the hell are you? I heard a gun, and believe me, I know a gun when I hear it. It wasn’t some motor car backfiring a couple of times on the road. Where’s Rosie?”
Despite his disability, Miller was strong, his grip fierce, though soon he began to fail. As Maisie reached forward with her free hand and dug her thumb into the flesh between his collarbone and his neck, he released her arm.
“Where the hell did you learn to do that?” said Miller.
“Mr. Miller, please help me—we don’t have much time before the police arrive, so I must be brutally honest with you regarding the situation. Your sister and Mrs. Bolton have been murdered. The man who did this to you was most likely the killer, unless two people were involved.”
“Oh God, oh God, not Rosie, not Rose . . .” Miller moaned, holding his hands to his ears as if to banish Maisie’s words.
“I suspect as soon as the killer found you and discovered you were blind, he knew he was safe—but he tied you and stopped you calling out to give himself time.”
“He could have saved himself the bother—takes me all day to move from this bed, and who the hell would hear me? The legs stopped working in good old 1916. Good year for getting blown to pieces, I hear.” Miller began to cough back tears.
In the distance, Maisie could hear the distinctive ringing of the bell on a police vehicle.
“The police are almost here, Mr. Miller. We’ll make sure you’re looked after.”
“Oh God, not back to the hospital, no . . . I couldn’t bear it.”
“I’m sure we can find other accommodation for you. Can I get you anything at this moment? I will have to go down when the police arrive.”
“This is embarrassing—I need help to go to the lavatory. I’ve my own bathroom, just over there. That’s why Rosie gave me this room—because I can’t exactly hobble down the corridor. I feel terrible having to ask, but I’ve been here all night, not knowing what was happening. My wheelchair’s in the corner.”
Maisie collected the wheelchair, drew back the bedclothes, and leaned across, working her left arm under the man’s shoulders. “If you’ve the strength to lever yourself up, I can get you there.”
Having helped Robert Miller to sit up, she lifted his legs to the side of the bed, and supported him as he moved from the bed to the wheelchair. She pushed the chair to the bathroom and helped him to stand again, and to maneuver himself into the lavatory.
“I’m all right from here,” said Miller.