He shook his head. “No, but she was conscious enough of her place in society that she wouldn’t have settled for anything less than marriage. Even eloping would have been out of character for Lucinda. She would have insisted on a large wedding, to show off a bit. When I considered that, I knew she hadn’t run away.” He paused. “Besides, she never would’ve left all her frocks and jewelry behind.”
“Did she have any enemies?”
“Lucinda had dreams to marry a rich man and move to the biggest house his money could buy. Have fancy balls and exclude half the town.” He shrugged. “Maybe she’d pissed off a few other lasses with her flirting ways, but no one would want her dead for it.”
“Seems like someone did.”
Jamie’s jaw ticked. “I’ve always supposed it was some bastard she’d turned down. Figured he’d just take what she wouldn’t give.” He looked around as if he was still remembering the cluttered bedroom as it had once been. “She deserved more than being dragged away in the night.”
“Lucinda probably never left this room alive.”
He frowned as if that idea hadn’t occurred to him. “What?”
“According to Eugenia, Lucinda went to bed around nine.” Grace set down her oversized bag and took out her makeshift forensic kit. She’d never thought she’d be using any of it again, but she’d kept a lot of her tools. “Her parents werealready asleep down the hall. Around midnight she heard a noise that she thought was her sister sneaking out. In reality, it was probably someone sneakingin. The next morning Lucinda was gone and so were the bed linens, but nothing else. Add it altogether and it sounds like murder, not kidnapping.”
Jamie’s head tilted. “What makes ya think so? We all believed someone had taken the girls to defile them.”
“Then he wouldn’t need the bed linens.” Grace pointed out. “No, the linens tell me that there was a clean-up in here.” She looked out the small window. “This room is on the second floor.”
“Aye.”
“And no one heard the front door open. That leaves this window as our probable point of entry.” She craned her neck down. “It’s a straight drop into the garden. Was it like that back then, too?”
He shrugged. “I suppose. I never climbed through her window, but I donea recall a porch below.”
“Was Lucinda sleeping with anyone but you? This mystery man you were talking about maybe?”
“Probably.” Jamie said easily. He clearly didn’t buy into the “semi-frigid or pizza-tramp” double standard. “She liked to pass a good time.”
“Would she sneak out her window to see him?”
“Scale down the side of the house, you mean?” He actually laughed at that idea. “Lord have mercy,no. Lucinda wasn’t quite so agile.”
“So that means someone came in here.” Grace looked around. “And it means they left the same way. They must have taken her body with them.”
But why?
“Lucinda might not have been dead.” Jamie insisted. “He could’ve just knocked her out and made off with her. Taken her someplace, while she was unconscious.”
“Carryinga live girl out a window is a lot more difficult thanpushinga dead one out the window. It would be easier to rape her here, if that was his plan.”
Jamie winced a bit at that image.
Grace barely noticed. Her mind was back in the familiar rhythms of collecting evidence. She looped her camera around her neck, documenting everything she saw. As hopeless as this assignment seemed, she wanted to do everything she possibly could to solve Lucinda’s murder. Grace was good at her job. (Herex-job.) Maybe there was some scrap of evidence left that she could find.
Only what kind of evidence lasted two centuries?
“DNA and fingerprints won’t help us at a scene this old.” She mused out loud. “Who could we compare it to? Fibers are going to be useless, for the same reason. That’s assuming anything even survived twenty-three decades of cleanings and furniture changes. Window’s new, so we can’t check the lock.” She looked down and blinked. “Hang on.” Grace crouched to examine the floorboards. Some of the planks had been replaced, but, like downstairs, most were original. Her brain went “cha-ching!” “Jamie, was there a rug in here?”
“Why are the living in this town so fixated on floor cloths?”
“Just answer the question.”
He sighed like a martyr. “I donea know if Lucinda had a bloody rug.”
“How can you not know?”
“It was two hundred and thirty years ago!”
