“I did not realize—”
“You have the mind of Minney.” Mrs. Eustace winced as she lifted her shoulder up and down, seeming to test the level of pain. “Leah!”
From the top of the stairs, a young maid leaned over the banister. “Mrs. Eustace?”
“Prepare a basin of warm water and hurry it to my attic bedroom. And set out my other dress. Be quick about it too! I am in no temperament for your humming and dawdling.” She turned back to Eliza. “I had not made it a mile from the church when a wheel came off the carriage. Unfortunately, we were going fast enough that the carriage upturned and rolled once—and Mr. Eads, who was driving, quite busted his head open.”
“How terrible. Is he—”
“We waited alongside the road for an hour before someone happened by. A pony cart, no less, and with Mr. Eads being injured, I was forced to walk alongside the entire way back.”
“Is your shoulder injured?”
“Everything is injured, I think. Leah!”
The girl appeared again. “Mrs. Eustace?”
“For heaven’s sake, where is the butler?”
“Gone to see his ailing sister, methinks.”
“Of all the times. Well, finish up there and then hurry down to greet the doctor upon his arrival. Direct him to Mr. Eads’ room above the stables. Clear?”
The girl answered and disappeared again.
Mrs. Eustace turned to Eliza once more. “Did you see anything as you left church this morning? You remember, of course, where we left our carriage.”
“Yes, but I saw nothing. Why do you ask?”
“It is just that when I was coming out of church, I thought I saw a figure lurking thereabouts. I had supposed him to be a servant, one who had missed services, but when I approached the carriage, he was gone.” She shook her head. “I hardly know what I am saying. Perhaps it was nothing.”
“I am certain it was.” After all, who would wish to harm the housekeeper of Monbury Manor?
The woman was unpleasant, true.
But certainly not unpleasant enough to risk killing.
If Mamma could see him now, she would have another crying spell.
Probably need smelling salts too.
But time was of the essence, and Felton had already asked both Papa and the vicar if they’d heard the two names Eliza had given him. Both had smiled, shaken their heads, and seemed unfamiliar with even the sound of them.
Which could mean only one thing.
If Mr. Brough and Mr. Gastrell had ever been anywhere about the village of Lodnouth, they were not cricket-playing or churchgoing fellows.
The Jester’s Sunlight, the closest establishment to the village port, wore its age like an elderly woman trying to cover her wrinkles with white makeup and rouge. Indeed, this newest job of yellow paint did nothing more than highlight the fact that the walls were old and weathered, the bowed window was missing some glass, and the chimney was so black that heaven help a chimney sweep who tried to clean such a mess.
Sidestepping a raggedy man lying with his feet in the path to the door, Felton entered the building and blinked against so much smoke. Ghastly smell, this. Half body odor, half dead fish…and something else he couldn’t quite identify. Almost a flair of sweetness, but it wasn’t like anything he’d ever inhaled in the kitchen back home.
In one corner of the room, a group of dirty fishermen crowded around one table where a mismatched pair arm wrestled. A cheer went up when the bigger man won.
Felton approached the bar.
“Weel.” A red-cheeked, round-faced woman sidled next to him. “Ye just dinnae know what sort of birkie might walk in, eh, Swabian?”
From the other side of her, with his head hung over a dented tankard, an older man only nodded.
