She raised her eyebrows at this declaration. “You can use words. Fine, I’ll come.” She glanced at Lavender for permission, bobbed a curtsy, and followed him through the whispering ladies.
Miss Jameson wasn’t present. Where was she off to now? Annoyed, Kate would have stopped to ask, but Fletch barreled through the enormous space as if hounds were on his heels. She had to pick up her skirt to run after him.
A shriek echoed in the distance.
“Outside?” Fletch raced down the hall for the portico exit.
“Tower,” Kate called after him, recognizing the muffled echo and panicking about the children using those stairs. They often screamed in delight after school, enjoying the echoes. This was not a scream of delight.
Outside, every man within hearing distance was running toward the manor. The thick tower walls had once muted cries. Now, the newly-installed windows not only let in light, but opened to the fresh air and released sound.
Fletch reached the cellar door first. “Not locked. Stay back.”
Rafe was supposed to have locked it. He must have caught the madman first and taken him to the captain.
“You have only one good arm, fool man,” Kate shouted. Seeing Henri running from his peddler’s cart, she waved at him to follow Fletch. He would have done so anyway, but it made her feel better for not following.
A dark head peered from one of the open tower windows: Arnaud—the artist who worked in the studio at the top. “We need a woman. She’s fallen and injured her foot.”
Being the only woman in the yard, Kate waved acknowledgment. Who had fallen? The schoolteacher? Verity and sometimes Arnaud’s shy cousin were the only women who normally used this outside entrance.
Gingerly, Kate stepped down into the dark tower’s cellar. She disliked the enclosed, winding stairs and generally entered through the manor, but she couldn’t leave someone hurt in the stairwell. No one waited in the dark cellar. Only light from the narrow windows illuminated this first set of stairs.
Listening to the murmur of voices above, she distracted herself by admiring the gas sconces the captain had somehow engineered to light the enclosed stairwell on this level. In relief, she found Fletch waiting on the landing. Wisely, he didn’t grab her arm again. Henri must be above with the screamer.
“Who?” she asked, hurrying past the formidable soldier.
“The ninny who took your silks,” he replied, staying on her heels.
Good thing, or she might have turned around and gone back down.
Miss Jameson? What on earth had Vivien been doing on these backstairs? Eavesdropping?
Eight
Fletch
Fletch frowned. Two healthy women falling on stairs. . . required explanation. Were treads coming loose? Not on these stones. Was someone spilling liquid?
The instant Kate arrived, the tavern owner and the artist abandoned the landing to reassure the children in the schoolroom, leaving Fletch in the small space with two women. Uncomfortable, he edged up against a wall, having no notion of what to do while waiting for the physician. It wasn’t as if he could lift the injured female with his bum shoulder.
Deciding Kate had the weeping miss in hand, Fletch examined the narrow stone stairs. The stairwell spiraled along the side of the tower, so it was not possible to see up or down more than a few steps.
“He pushed me, he did,” the dark-haired ninny cried. “Wanted to kill me like poor Ana Marie!”
Fletch jerked in surprise. He had thought the maid's death accidental. Why was she calling the death murder? Who would want to kill an impoverished maid? What had caused her to even think that?
Not that Fletch meant to interrogate a weeping pea-goose. He ran down to greet Rafe when he finally arrived with the physician. Now he could ask sensible questions of a sensible man. Although his first one went straight to the ninny’s fears. “She says someone pushed her. Did Hugh Morgan manage to see the captain?”
Rafe shook his head and practically growled. “Hunt was on the roof, working on the cistern. The chap was hurting, so I locked him in a stall and went in search of Meera.” Rafe nodded toward the physician climbing up to tend the fallen seamstress. “He was gone when I returned. Someone removed the bar.”
“Then Morgan could have done this?” Fletch sought any signs that a bloody, muddy lunatic may have come up the stairs, but dozens of small feet had left their mud on the solid stone. He needed to climb over the women on the landing and hunt higher—although how the lunatic could have climbed to the top of the tower. . .
Rafe looked as dubious as Fletch felt. “You think Morgan ran from the barn to the tower? But he’d have to climb from the bottom. Doesn’t one have to be above to push? Given the shape you left him in, I'd think it more likely that he fell on her and ran, but that means he had to have climbed to the top first. Maybe looking for Hunt? And when he couldn’t reach the roof, he turned around? That’s a lot of climbing for someone in his condition.”
“My knife must have slipped,” Fletch muttered. “I thought I took a hole out of his middle.”
“He's a short man. Most likely squirmed and you hit his ribs. He’d cleaned himself up somehow but wasn’t in great shape. Or I didn’t think so.” Rafe studied the narrow, enclosed stairs as Fletch had done.
