“No more than twenty paces,” I cautioned as we both set off. “He managed to leave quickly, so there should be some indication of the way he passed through.”
I scanned the low hanging tree cover and the ground as daylight overhead continued to fade with the late hour. I found nothing.
Was it possible the murderer had escaped in a different direction?
It was then Lily called out. I immediately backtracked and followed the direction she had gone. I found her standing beside a large oak that had shed most of its leaves with the change of the season.
One of the low branches, thin and only a few feet off the ground, had snapped off. Just beyond was another broken branch, as if something or someone had passed into the tree cover.
“Let’s see what we can find,” I replied as I gathered my skirts in hand and entered the tree cover of oaks and pine.
The forest was thick and dense, and several times our way was blocked. We then found more branches and low scrub that had either been snapped off or pushed back and continued on before coming to a stop once more. We both searched the surrounding tree cover.
“This way, the grasses on the ground appear to have been stepped on,” Lily announced.
I nodded and she pushed ahead. We had gone no more than a few paces when I suddenly came up behind her as she stopped. She held something in her hand.
It was a neck scarf. There were no discerning marks to identify it, yet it did not seem to have been there long as it was not muddied or stained, and not what one expected to find deep in the dense cover of trees.
“It could have been lost when His Highness and his companions were last hunting,” I told her.
“Or by the man I saw that night?” Lily suggested.
“Perhaps.” I carefully folded it and put it in my bag.
We then continued through the tree cover until we reached the high stone wall that surrounded Marlborough House, the grounds, and that forest of trees.
Lily let out a sound of frustration.
“Do ye think the man might have gone over the wall?”
Almost anything was possible, I thought. Still, it would be difficult with the description of the man she had seen fleeing that night with an obvious limp, perhaps from some previous injury, that might have prevented an easy escape.
Or did he possibly have assistance?
“Here!” Lily called out. She had discovered two sets of footprints in the mud on the ground below the wall.
One set was quite large, perhaps from a work boot and deep in the mud. The man wearing it would have been of considerable size.
The second set of prints was somewhat smaller, no doubt made by someone of less height and weight, and one foot seemed to have dragged across the mud.
The man with a limp?
I looked up at the wall. It would have been no difficult task for a taller man of good strength to scale the wall.
An accomplice perhaps who had accompanied the murderer? And then helped him escape?
I took out my notebook and pen.
It was rapidly growing dark as I measured then quickly sketched both sets of footprints that might well not be there after the next rain.
We then made our way back through the forest, that thick hedgerow, and arrived back at the stables as darkness fell.
Lights had come on all along the grounds including the green behind Marlborough House.
One of the house stewards greeted us as we arrived. He looked at us with some alarm, then his expression flattened in that way of royal guards and servants.
Sir Knollys arrived as well.
