“What? Here.” He lifted them.
“Turn out your pockets.”
“Dash it, Anne. What are you on about?”
“Whoever it was carried a knife.”
“A knife? And you thought it was me!”
“Well—here you are. What am I supposed to think?”
“You’re frightened, so I’ll overlook it. Any other idea who it might have been?”
“I don’t know, but I think maybe ... Oh, you won’t like it.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Dalby.”
“Jude? Why would you think that?”
“Because we argued. He accused me of taking something from his room.”
“What?”
“I...” Anne licked dry lips, fearing he wouldn’t believe her. She said only, “He would not say. But he even searched my things.”
“The devil he did.” Jasper frowned and reached for her hand. “Come, let’s get you inside. I want to have a word with him.”
Jasper helped her down from the tomb chest, and together they ducked and emerged into the open. She looked around, half expecting to see her pursuer lurking nearby. She felt uneasy but much less terrified now that Jasper was at her side.
“Where were you the last few days?” Anne asked. “No one seemed to know. We were worried.”
“London. I’ll tell you everything later.” He picked up the lantern he’d evidently set down to climb into her hiding place, then turned to her. “Here, take my arm. Good heavens, you’re trembling. Let’s get you into the warm.”
Reaching the churchyard door, he held it open for her. As they passed through it, light from his lantern shone between the trees to a bench on one side ... and a figure seated there.
Anne cried out. Jasper swore and whirled around, free hand up, ready to fight off an assailant.
For there on the bench sat Jude Dalby. Mouth ajar. Eyes open and unseeing. An arrow in his neck.
Jasper looked from his cousin to the woodshed, where the arrows were kept, brow furrowed in thought or disbelief. Then he turned back to her. “Go into the house,” he said, his tone commanding. “Tell Toby to lock the doors. I will go and find the constable.”
He handed her the lamp. “Take this. I’ll be fine without it.”
Stunned, Anne nodded vaguely and turned toward the house. She took several steps along the curving path toward the side door she and the physicians regularly used.
Behind her, the churchyard door latched with a clank as Jasper departed.
Anne hesitated and turned back, morbid curiosity and confusion drawing her. She had believed Mr. Dalby a killer. Yet now he had been killed.
As she retraced her steps to the bench, she realized it was partially concealed from view by the trees and the woodshed. Rounding a broad tree trunk, she looked again to assure herself he was still there. It was too terrible to be true.
Lifting Jasper’s lantern, Anne forced herself to look again at Jude Dalby, struggling to grasp that this destroyer of women’s lives had been destroyed.
By whom? One of the women he had betrayed? An enraged father, brother, or ... uncle?
Or one of the family? That left only Katherine and Jasper that she knew of. Or someone from his late wife’s family, like her brother, Mr. Palling?
