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Hetty watched the innkeeper’s mouth move but couldn’t bring herself to respond. What could she say? She felt Wally shift uncomfortably beside her and turned to look at him. The worry on his face almost made her cry and, for a moment, she felt the world swim around her alarmingly.
“Are you sure it’s Simon?” Hetty demanded with a frown. Her defiant look almost challenged the innkeeper to deny it. To her horror he merely looked apologetic.
“Unless the gossips have it wrong, it’s him. I checked his room this morning and he isn’t there, so I can only assume that it’s him.”
“His name is Charlie,” Hetty told the innkeeper. Her stomach dropped when he nodded.
“Aye, that’s the one. Tall bloke with dark brown hair and grey eyes.”
Hetty nodded, and felt a pang of longing so deep that her hands began to tremble.
“I have seen him with your brother a time or two,” the innkeeper declared. “They drank here a few times.”
“They are friends,” Hetty assured him.
The innkeeper nodded.
“Is Charlie’s horse still here?” Wally asked with a frown.
The innkeeper threw them a cautionary look. “Yes, but I don’t see what use it is going to be to him now. You know how ruthless Meldrew is. He will have them swinging from the gallows within days.”
Hetty shivered. “Are you sure it was him? Charlie?” she gasped, unable to believe that someone as passionate and gentle, and as ruggedly handsome as Charlie, was a cold-blooded killer.
“Go and see his room for yourself, if you don’t believe me,” the innkeeper shrugged.
“We will do,” Wally sighed.
He and took the key off the man and escorted Hetty upstairs.
Although she knew that the innkeeper was right, she still hoped that he had his facts wrong, and they would find Charlie tucked up safely in bed with Simon in a chair next to the fire.
Wally pushed the door open, and took a quick glance into the room before he stood back to allow Hetty in first. She glanced up as she passed but knew, even before she looked inside, that the room was empty.
It smelled of the soap Charlie used, and brought forth a wave of emotion that was so intense that Hetty struggled to breathe beneath the force of it. She wandered aimlessly into the room and studied the neatly made bed. A shirt lay haphazardly draped over one of the bedposts but, apart from that, the room looked like nobody had been there for days.
“Damn,” Wally growled as he studied the empty room.
“What do we do now?”
“I don’t know,” her brother sighed.
Hetty spied a bag beneath the bed and bent down to pick it up.
“What are you doing?” Wally scowled when she began to search through drawers.
“If the innkeeper is right, he will want to let the room out again. We need to take Charlie’s possessions with us. He can fetch them from ours when he re-appears.”
When Wally didn’t object, Hetty began to empty the drawers of Charlie’s possessions. Wally helped but there were really very few personal belongings there, and it didn’t take long to put everything into the bag.
“There isn’t much, is there?” Hetty sighed as she placed the bag on the bed.
“He is only a visitor to these parts though, Hetty,” Wally reminded her. He nodded to the bag. “We will keep his things with us until we can find out what is going on.”
“Wally?” Hetty called when she opened a drawer up beside the bed and found a large gun nestled inside.
“Now, what would he need that for?” Wally murmured with a scowl as he studied the wicked object.
“I don’t know, but didn’t the innkeeper say that Blagmire had been shot?” Hetty asked.
