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“Well, you might have taken to your bed dressed, which isn’t good news,” Clementine grumbled because it pointed to the fact that Sally had indeed taken ill suddenly. “This gets curiouser and curiouser, especially because I know that if you had taken ill so swiftly you would most likely have hurried next door to ask Mrs Saunders to fetch the doctor. You cannot have taken ill so swiftly that you didn’t get the chance to get help yet managed to stumble upstairs, could you? Of course, the vicar didn’t actually say where you had been found.”
Clementine was assaulted with an unusual mix of excitement that she was right to suspect something strange had happened, confusion driven by the fact that she didn’t have any answers yet, and downright terror at the thought of what it all might mean. Had Sally been murdered? That was what she was looking for, if she was honest. Signs of ‘foul play’ was quintessentially murder, Clementine knew. She was just reluctant to say that single, condemning word aloud. It seemed ridiculous because she instinctively rejected all possibility of Sally having been killed in cold blood. There had to be a reasonable explanation for an otherwise healthy person to have died so suddenly. But something niggled away in the back of Clementine’s mind and refused to be ignored.
“Well, your clothing isn’t here. I will have to find out from Mrs Saunders if you were wearing it this morning when she found you,” Clementine muttered. “For now, I think I will search the rest of the house and try to find out where you died.”
Despite this reasonable plan of action, Clementine was compelled to check in the cupboard beside the fireplace. Her hand visibly shook when she tugged the door open, but she had no idea why she should be so afraid. She hesitated when she found Sally’s cloak hanging within. That wasn’t unusual in any way, but the mud on the sodden material, and the small puddle of water gathering in the bottom of the cupboard was.
Clementine opened her mouth to speak but then realised that she had nobody to talk to. Closing her mouth with a snap, she studied Sally’s boots, which were dry and neatly polished, just as Sally would have worn them.
“So, where did you go in your cloak last night but without your boots on then?” Clementine whispered.
She studied the cloak again, but it was most definitely not her imagination. There could be no other explanation for the muddy, wet fabric. The cloak had been worn last night, not long after, or during, the rainstorm Clementine herself had made sure she avoided when she had left for home a little earlier than planned at six o’clock.
“My cloak was just like this last night, but mine has been dried before the fireplace. Now why would you not dry your cloak, Sally?” she whispered. “This is not something you would usually do. Nobody knowingly puts a cloak away while wet.”
Clementine contemplated the possibilities. The only theory she could come up with for Sally not taking the time to dry her cloak was that she had been ill and hadn’t felt well enough to bother with it.
But that doesn’t explain why you then took the time to polish your boots. If you were so ill that you couldn’t fetch help you should have been too ill to go upstairs to hang your cloak up.
Scratching her head in consternation, Clementine studied the contents of the rest of the closet but nothing else seemed untoward. Curious now, Clementine rummaged through the rest of Sally’s belongings. Several long moments later, she took one last look around the room.
“There is no dress, Sally. So, what did you wear when you went out last night? Did you die still wearing your dress? If you did it would still have been wet this morning when you were found, just like your cloak, wouldn’t it? If you had gone out, what did you wear on your feet because I know you only had one pair of boots, and they are in your bed chamber, neatly polished and bone dry. If you wore your boots, why did you polish them into a high shine yet not feel well enough to dry your cloak? If you wore your cloak, why would you not then wear your boots, especially when you went out in the rain?”
Placing her fists on her hips, Clementine spent several minutes trying to come with a credible explanation, but without knowing what Sally had been wearing when she had been found it was impossible to know if she was allowing her imagination to run amok and seeing shadows where there were none.
“I need to speak with Mrs Saunders,” she decided eventually.
When Clementine eventually turned to leave, something very faint and very furtive creaked loudly in the silence of the house. Clementine was certain she had just heard the faint rustling of clothing that accompanied it. Her stomach lurched sickeningly when she realised that she was not alone in the house. She waited for a few minutes more and willed herself not to panic. It might have just been the house settling or adjusting given how cold the place was.
Clementine almost convinced herself that she was all alone in the property when the faint creek of something sliding against wood broke the silence. It was swiftly followed by a clatter of something together with what sounded like the dull thud of a footstep.
“Now who would that be then?” Clementine breathed.
Should she stay where she was and pretend that she wasn’t there, or should she go downstairs and challenge whoever was down there? Clementine struggled to know what to do. She wanted to go and see who was there, if only to quell her curiosity, but fear compelled her to stay where she was. She tried to listen and guess what the other person was doing down in the kitchen, but all she could hear was her own heartbeat.
“I need to do this,” she whispered, not least because of how guilty she would look if the person downstairs also came up to Sally’s bed chamber to check everything was all right, and found Clementine trying to hide in there.
Determined to be brave, Clementine squared her shoulders, sucked in a breath, and tugged the door open. She began to shake as she crept on cautious tiptoes across the landing. A part of her felt foolish for being so clandestine, especially because it added to how guilty she looked being there in the first place. She was, after all, in the house of a newly deceased person, albeit a good friend as was. Now, though, she was an intruder who really had no purpose being there.
But neither does anybody else.
It was instinctive to want to call out and ask if Dolly was there, but Clementine didn’t want to frighten the woman if it was. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, Clementine peered down the length of the hallway. Her nerves jangled worryingly to the point that the small hairs on the back of her neck began to tickle the collar of her dress. Edging out into the hallway, Clementine paused when the very faint scrape of something being moved again broke the silence.
Is someone tidying up?
A huge weight of relief flooded her at the thought that it might be Mrs Saunders after all, only for that relief to be followed by panic because Clementine knew she now had some explaining to do.
I cannot tell the woman that I suspect Sally has been murdered. Seeing as I was the last one to speak to Sally alive, I think, it is probably best that I don’t then get caught creeping around her house. I may as well hand myself over to the magistrate for a crime that may not have happened and be arrested for something I didn’t do.
While everything within her was compelling her to just leave, curiosity made Clementine stay where she was. She wanted to know who else was in the house but didn’t have the courage to call out to them and ask. Instead, she crept into the study and peered through the window that overlooked Mrs Saunders’s house. At first, she didn’t see any movement, but as the minutes ticked by, the silver-grey h
air of the elderly woman moved past the window. Mrs Saunders was at home.
“It isn’t you then,” Clementine whispered. “I wonder if it is Dotty in the kitchen?”
By the time she reached the doorway again the noise coming from the kitchen was even more audible and quicker, as if whoever was moving about was doing so much faster than before. So much so, Clementine could make out the sound of a chair scraping across a floor and the dull thud of a drawer sliding shut almost simultaneously. She returned to Sally’s study and picked up a heavy candlestick from the small table beside the fireplace before retracing her steps. This time, before she could talk herself out of it, Clementine made her way cautiously and quietly to the kitchen doorway. She paused with one hand on the latch while she tried to think of what she could say to whoever was on the other side. Before she could push the door open, she contemplated the front door. Freedom was just an open door away. Again, Clementine wanted to just leave. Common sense urged her to take the chance to escape while she could.
If only I can get my feet to move.
