Page 22 of Winterset

Anna stiffened, her hands clenching at her sides. Estelle!

CHAPTER SIX

Anna was not sure why she was so certain that the body they were speaking of was the maid Estelle, but she was. She felt suddenly weak in the knees, and her concerns of a few moments earlier fled her mind. Turning, she hurried over to where her brother stood with Lady Kyria and Miss Farrington, and slipped her hand through his arm. He glanced down at her, his hand going protectively over hers.

“Do you know what’s happening?” Anna asked Kyria, who shook her head.

“I just heard someone say they’d found a body.”

At that moment Rafe McIntyre came up beside his wife, sliding a supporting hand around her waist. She leaned into him a little, casting him a grateful glance. “Who is that man?” Kyria asked, nodding toward Reed and the others.

“The constable,” Anna replied. “I think he must have come to fetch Dr. Felton.”

“Oh, dear, how awful,” Rosemary Farrington gasped, looking pale.

“What if it’s Estelle?” Anna asked her brother.

“Who?” Kyria asked. “Who is Estelle?”

“We don’t know that it is she,” Kit protested. “It could be anybody.”

“She is one of our maids,” Anna explained to the others. “She has been missing the past few days. Everyone thought she had run away with a man, but…”

Anna cast another look toward the door. Dr. Felton and the constable were no longer there, and Reed was walking toward his sister, the rest of the party falling around him, clamoring with questions. When he reached his sister, he said quietly, “I am sorry to spoil your party, my dear.”

“Never mind that,” Kyria said, shaking her head impatiently. “What is going on?”

“Apparently a body has been found.”

“Where was it?” Anna asked, her mind going again to the woods and the strange feeling she had had there the other day—though surely the body could not have been found there, for she had seen nothing.

Reed shook his head. “I’m not sure. I believe the constable said something like Hutchins’ farm. I think a farmer found her.”

“Sam Hutchins?” Kit supplied. “He is one of our tenants. I mean, one of my uncle’s tenants.”

“Yes, I got the impression it was on de Winter land.”

“Do they know who it is?” Kit asked, and Reed shook his head.

“He did not say. Only that they needed the doctor to examine the body.”

“Miss Holcomb is afraid that it might be one of their servant girls,” Kyria explained.

“Estelle Akins. She left the house several days ago. We thought she had gone off with someone.” Distress filled Anna’s voice. “We should have looked harder. Done something more.”

“Now, Anna, you don’t know that the body is Estelle’s,” Kit pointed out. “Nor do we have any idea what happened. And how could we have known? She obviously left the house on her own.”

“I know. It’s just—” Anna thought again of her feeling in the woods that day. She had known something was wrong; she had felt it strongly. No one would have believed her, she supposed; she scarcely believed it herself. But she could have pushed the issue, she thought; she could have sent the men out searching farther afield than she had.

Yet even as those thoughts went through her head, she knew that she would not have thought to send the men as far away as Hutchins’ farm, where the body had been found. The “vision” she had seen—or felt, or whatever one called it—had been in the woods.

Anna looked at Reed and asked, “What happened?”

Again Reed shook his head. “I’m not sure.”

“There were claw marks,” said the squire from behind them. “I heard Wright say there were claw marks on the body.”

Anna’s eyes widened, and her mind went immediately to the dog that the twins had found, its side slashed. Her eyes went to her brother. There were gasps from several of the guests, and the vicar’s wife said in a horrified whisper, “The Beast!”