“One, no one is watching it, so anyone can come and go. Two, hiding places. The Hall is huge with multiple exits and empty rooms.” He nodded at the cart in front of the house with the team still attached. “Three, that covered cart is the best way anyone could have removed the women without being seen.”
Aghast, she stared from the cart to the dark, looming fortress of her nightmares. “Does that mean the troupe is helping Hugh?”
“Or Hugh simply stole the cart. Lunatic, remember?” He halted the carriage by the overgrown hedge.
“And we’re to simply walk up and knock on the door?” Was this how men survived, bullying their way through life? Kate shivered in terror. It was all very well to renounce fear, but when faced with Armageddon. . .
“With you here, I’m reconsidering my approach,” he said, as if thinking aloud. “But no, it does not necessarily mean the actors are helping. Hugh may be implicating them, which is not as insane as it seems. Or he could just be reacting in panic.”
Fletch was plotting, not rushing in with weapons drawn? Kate had to quell her own violent desire to throttle Hugh, or run away, screaming, and start listening.
“The carriage’s hood blocks sight of you from this angle. If you’ll slip out on your side, you can follow my sentry and work your way to the rear by hiding behind the hedge. Once I drive up to the front, any scoundrels inside are likely to flee out the rear. If they do so with hostages, the ladies won’t recognize my soldier. We can hope, if you show yourself, they will realize help has arrived.”
She’d almost forgotten that the surly clockmaker had been an officer once. She heard the soldier he had once been in his clipped, curt orders. She almost replied “Aye, aye, sir.” She appreciated that he hadn’t said, “If the ladies are still alive or conscious. . .”
But with that fear fully embedded, she had to face this dreaded tomb without Fletch’s stalwart accompaniment. She had to face the Hall alone, not knowing who was friend or foe. Her pistol was useless.
She could have stormed her own home without flinching, but the wretched Hall. . . That had not been in her plan, if she’d had a plan. Which she hadn’t.
If all she had to do was hide in the bushes and show her face. . .
Swallowing hard, she climbed from the carriage while Fletch distracted any occupants by driving up to the front, bristling with weapons. Hugh had no rifle, right?
She had to do this. Ghosts weren’t real. Lavender was. Think about the laughing, carefree lady who had single-handedly employed a village of impoverished women. For Lavender, Kate had to be brave.
But what about the man with an injured arm stalking toward what could be a household of lunatics and killers? He was risking his life for no reason of his own. Fletch was a clockmaker, she was finally starting to understand. He had never wanted to kill people. But for the sake of a nation, he had, and war had nearly destroyed him.
The real world outside her home was as terrifying as she’d feared—but there were still honorable people in it. She wanted to keep it that way.
Reassuring herself by gripping the butt of the pistol she hid in her skirt—she should have reinforced that pocket seam if she meant to carry weapons—Kate worked her way behind the house.
How could a man as feeble in the head as Hugh have overtaken a woman as bright as Lavender? Especially if Maryann had been with her. Could Vivien be working with Hugh? That might explain why the Jamesons were missing. Kate simply had a hard time playing that through her mind. She’d heard the story the Jameson children had told, but their report was as incomplete as the actors’.
Kate caught her foot on a tree root and winced as she grabbed a prickly branch. Good thing for gloves. Her light spencer and bonnet weren’t much protection against the no-doubt spider-infested shrubbery, but the bushes blocked sight of the formidable Hall. She took a breath and eased on.
To prevent panic from shutting down thought, as it had in the past, she concentrated on the little bit she knew. There might be a perfectly rational reason for a broken window and missing women and an unconscious guard.
No, there wasn’t.
She stopped that line of thought before panic arose again. What was happening with Fletch? She tried to peer through the thick shrubbery but saw only an old bird nest. If she couldn’t see the house, they couldn’t see her, right?
Think, Kate.
According to the actors and Ana Marie’s daughter, Vivien and her sister had been seamstresses working with Ana Marie. Vivien or her sister had been caught stealing and been turned off. They then sewed privately for actors, who claimed their purse was stolen. The tale had sounded convincing but vague. She had only the letter to support the troupe’s accusations and neither source implicated Hugh.
But the children claimed their da had told them to steal from the actors today. And Hugh was their father? If true, that might make Hugh a thief and not the sisters.
But what of all the so-called accidents at the manor? Hugh hadn’t been inside for either one of the stair tumbles, or the mule incident, that anyone could tell.
But Vivien had been in the manor when Ana Marie had fallen. Vivien and her sister had been present when the mules almost crushed Kate. Had the sisters been there when Mrs. Young talked about her mushrooms? Vivien had. Still, thievery did not make anyone killers. What would be the purpose?
Kate had reached the side yard. She wasn’t wearing boots. Her indoor shoes slipped in the weeds but she knew better than to catch branches this time. She caught glimpses of the Hall but no activity. She pushed on, trying to stay calm by using her head for a change.
What did the accident victims have in common? Kate and Mrs. Young had the shop, but that belonged to Lavender. Ana Marie was only a maid and owned nothing of value. It was far more likely that she’d been mistaken for Kate, which was a connection of a sort. Ana might have recognized Vivien but Wilma Jameson hadn’t been around then. Another mark against Vivien?
Nothing explained Vivien’s fall, whether self-inflicted or not. Unless—she was so desperate to work in the shop she’d maim herself and kill to have the position. That would be as mad as Hugh, and Vivien had never struck Kate as mad, just ambitious to a fault, but then, Kate wasn’t in the habit of meeting killers.
If a killer had the missing women. . . Panic reared its ugly head—this time, for the women who might be in that house. Reaching the back of the Hall, Kate plunged into Fletch’s habit of resorting to action rather than thought. She shoved aside grasping branches, listening for any sound from inside.
