1: Murder In The Night
CORLAND CASTLE: JUNE
The screams echoed through the castle. Walter, Viscount Birtwell, dragged himself reluctantly from sleep, at first puzzled, then scrambling in alarm from his bed. Instantly he tripped over something, cursing roundly. Where was he, anyway? Then he remembered — the principal guest room.
It was already light enough to see, although not yet full light. Perhaps close to four o’clock. Still the screams continued, high, piercing, terrified. What on earth was happening?
Without waiting to light a candle, he hauled open the heavy wooden door and stumbled out into the corridor above the stairs. Dark, but not impossible to see. One hand against the wall to guide him, he half ran towards the screams, tripping only once over a chair, and avoiding just in time a heavy marble-topped table.
Aunt Alice’s room… that was where the noise was. The door was closed, but there was no doubting that the screams emanated from behind it. In the distance, he heard voices approaching from the other direction… his father, he thought, and his brother, Kent. A light flickered far away down the corridor. Unlike Walter, they had waited to light a candle.
The screams stopped. Without hesitation, Walter pushed open the door and went inside.
What he saw within chilled his very bones. In the middle of the room, Aunt Alice stood in her nightshift, liberally drenched with blood. In one hand, she held an axe, blood still dripping from it. And on the vast canopied bed which dominated the room, a mound of torn sheets and blankets, and more blood — so much blood! A few feathers from a ripped pillow floated here and there. And from beneath the blood-drenched mound of bedding, one arm dangled, motionless.
Uncle Arthur. And he was dead, very dead.
“Who is it?” Aunt Alice’s voice was high with alarm. Her eyes were turned towards Walter, but she could not see him, having been blind since a childhood illness.
“It is I, Aunt Alice.”
“Walter! What has happened here, Walter? What has happened to Arthur? Is this blood?”
She held up one red hand.
“It is blood. Where did the axe come from, Aunt?”
“Axe? Is that what it is? I tripped over it on the floor. What hashappened, Walter? I could not hear him breathing, but when I leaned over to listen… when I touched him… Is Arthur…?” Her voice broke on a sob.
Walter took two quick steps into the room, so that he could see the bed more clearly, but he had to avert his eyes hastily. It was too horrible for words.
“He is dead, Aunt.”
She uttered an unearthly wail, dropping the axe and falling to her knees, with a high, “No! No! No!” of despair.
Behind Walter, his father arrived with Kent. The Earl of Rennington was fifty-five, already stout and wheezing slightly now from the exertion of running. Walter’s youngest brother, Kent, was twenty-two, with his mother’s slender frame and dark eyes, wide now with the excitement of a night-time alarm.
“What is going on? A nightmare?” he hissed at Walter, grinning, but Walter merely stood aside to let them through. The sight would soon wipe that grin from Kent’s face.
Then he saw his sister and cousin following them into the room, with a gaggle of servants rushing up behind them.
“No!” Walter cried, jumping forward to block the girls’ way. “Out, both of you. At once! Go back to your room and stay there.”
They would have bridled at this cavalier treatment, but he pushed them roughly back through the door and closed it behind him, muffling the shocked exclamations of the men as they saw the devastation within.
“Go!” he said sternly, and waited until they had ambled, grumbling, down the passageway.
Leaving several footmen on guard outside the door to prevent anyone else from entering, Walter went back inside. Aunt Alice had not moved, but at least she was silent now, as tears cascaded down her cheeks. Kent was patting her shoulder awkwardly.
“Ah, Walter,” his father said, with obvious relief. “The girls…”
“I have sent them back to their room and told them to stay there.”
“Good. They should not see this. But what can have happened here? This is quite dreadful!”
“It is not for us to determine what happened, Father. This is a matter for the magistrate.”
“Ah, of course. Strong will know what to do. We must send for Sir Hubert at once.”
