I shuddered, but forced myself to keep looking.
The wound was on his left temple and the side of his head, and it wasn’t difficult to put together what had happened.He had opened the door, perhaps because someone had knocked.That someone had whacked him on the left temple with something—most likely a right-handed attacker—and Alfie, taken aback by the attack as well as the force of it—had swung to his right and staggered, as he had fallen away from the door and into the room.From the position of his arms, and the fact that his face was mostly intact, he had likely been alive at least long enough to catch himself before face-planting into the hardwood floor.His nose looked straight and there wasn’t any evidence of a nose bleed, so it didn’t seem to be broken.
But once he was on the floor, someone had taken another whack at him, unless I was mistaken.I’m no kind of expert (even if I have seen more than my fair share of deaths from broken skulls), but it did appear as if there might be two different areas of impact.One on the temple, likely the first blow, enough to break the skin and cause a knot, and then another a bit further back, deeper and more fatal.That was where the skull had caved in and where most of the blood was coming from.From all I knew, there might have been more wounds, too, but I wasn’t about to go any closer to make certain of it.
I looked all over the floor, but there was no sign of the murder weapon.Whoever the killer was, he (or she) hadn’t left it behind when he fled.If, indeed, fleeing was what he had done.More likely, he had simply shut the door behind himself—or herself—and had walked calmly downstairs and out of the carriage house and… where?To the stables?Back to the Hall?Elsewhere?
It was difficult to imagine that anyone other than one of the residents could have done this, although it wasn’t impossible.Alfie likely had friends as well as enemies in the village.Coming here to kill him would have been a risk, but someone might have done it and gotten away without being observed.Someone had managed to kill Doctor Meadows without anyone seeing, and this was no different.
But at least Alfie hadn’t killed Doctor Meadows.Or if he had done, someone else had returned the favor.
Could Alfie have been paid to kill Doctor Meadows?And when the person who hired him had showed up to pay for the murder, he had killed Alfie instead of handing over the money?
It didn’t seem likely, frankly.Alfie wasn’t the type of person one would hire for a murder, nor did he seem like the type of person who would take the job.Not only did he have a job already, and one that likely paid all right, but he was young—younger than me by a year or so, I’d wager—and fresh-faced.Too young to have partaken in the war.Someone with no experience with killing.
I eyed the blood again.How long did it take for blood to dry on a wet and cold November day?Long enough that Alfie had been lying here when Christopher and I made our way down to the village this morning, or had he been hit later, when we’d been upstairs packing our bags?
Had anyone seen Alfie at all today, other than his murderer?
None of the servants had seemed worried about him not being there for tea, so perhaps it wasn’t an unusual occurrence.
It was at this point that I heard the door downstairs open and close again.There was the rustling of fabric and the thumping of feet on the dirt floor of the carriage house.
“It’s us,” Tom’s voice called up, just as I began to worry that the murderer was back and that I would need to prepare to protect myself.I breathed out and relaxed again.
He bounded up the stairs two steps at a time and nodded to me.“Pippa.”
“Tom,” I said, and stepped back as best I could in the narrow space.“I didn’t touch him to make certain, but he looks dead to me.”
Tom’s eyes flickered over the body.“I would agree.Livor Mortishas set in.He’s been lying here for several hours.”
“That’s what we thought.”I flattened myself against the wall as he squeezed past.“I haven’t gone any closer to him than this.I can’t see a murder weapon anywhere, but I think he was hit at least twice.”
Tom nodded, as he squatted down beside the body.Christopher drifted into the doorway behind me, eyes fixed on what was happening.
“I had Tidwell ring up the Little Sutherland constabulary,” Tom added, presumably directed at me, since Christopher would have been there when he did it.“Why don’t you go downstairs and wait for them, and instruct them where to go?It shouldn’t be long before they get here.”
Neither of us moved.“Me,” I asked, “or Christopher?”
He flicked me a look.“Both of you, if you don’t want to watch me examine the body.”
There was no part of me that wanted to watch him examine the body.“I can do without that, thank you.”
“Shouldn’t someone stay with you?”Christopher wanted to know.“Just in case.”
He didn’t say in case of what, but then we both—we all three—knew that he wasn’t worried about anyone attacking Tom, or Tom doing anything he oughtn’t do.Christopher simply didn’t want to leave Tom before he had to.
“I’ll go,” I said.“You can stay here.Although… may I borrow your jacket?”
“Of course.”My cousin shrugged out of it and draped it over my shoulders.
“Thank you.”I stuffed my arms through the sleeves.“Who else knows about this?Should I prepare for the entire population of Sutherland Hall to be gathered outside the carriage house?”
“His Grace, Duke Harold, and the Earl and Countess of Marsden were still in the drawing room when Kit found me,” Tom said.“Everyone else had left.”
There wasn’t likely to be anything to worry about, then.Uncle Harold wouldn’t care enough about Alfie to come out to see what was wrong, and Laetitia’s parents didn’t know the footman.
“Be sure to intercept any of them that do show up, Pippa.I don’t want anyone else up here that doesn’t need to be.Or in the carriage house, either.”
