Oh, Izzy! If only it were you here now, and not just your scarf…
Simpson knocked on the open door. “Beg pardon for intruding, my lord, but Captain Edgerton is very wishful to speak with you, if you can spare him a few minutes, and seeing as you’ll be away first thing tomorrow—”
“Captain Edgerton?” He frowned over the name before he remembered. “The fellow investigating the death of Mr Nicholson, correct?”
“Yes, my lord. He is in the old nursery. This floor, south-eastern corner.”
Ian folded the scarf neatly and put it carefully into a pocket. “Tell him I shall be there as soon as I have divested myself of the dust of the road.”
Captain Michael Edgerton was very small for a military man, but then he had been in the East India Company Army, not the Life Guards, and Ian presumed requirements were less rigid in India. Ian was unusually tall, but even a man of average height would tower over the captain. He had a business-like and well-used sword lying on the table in front of him, however, and he looked Ian straight in the eye, respectfully but with not a hint of undue deference.
The captain was soon dealt with, however. He had some idea that Ian had been in the castle at the time of the murder, butsince he was not, as his notebook proved, that question was soon settled. Ian left him to his investigations. They did not seem to be going well. An entire month since the murder, with no culprit yet identified, and the captain clearly suffering from wrong information. It was not promising. The murderer must be long gone by now.
Dinner that night was a strange affair, with Lord Rennington in an abstracted mood, Lady Rennington away and the Lady Alice, still in deep mourning for her husband, keeping to her room. Her daughter, Tess, had gone away somewhere, too. Walter, the eldest son, had gone off to London to see about a position at the Treasury, and Eustace, the middle brother, was at his own house. Only the two youngest children were present, the perpetually cheerful Kent, and the perpetually lachrymose Olivia.
However, Captain Edgerton dined with them, together with his wife, and whatever the captain’s history, she, at least, was impeccably ladylike. Ian discovered she was a cousin to the Earl of Morpeth, a man Ian knew and liked very well. There was also a fashionable London lawyer by the name of Willerton-Forbes, urbane and articulate. The other member of the captain’s group was a young Scotsman by the name of Alexander, the sort of charming rogue a father would question carefully before allowing him near his daughter. The earl, however, took no notice as the Scot applied himself with enthusiasm to the task of delicately flirting with Olivia.
“You need not be concerned about Sandy,” Mrs Edgerton said in an undertone to him, as Olivia burst into laughter and tapped the Scotsman playfully on the arm. “The poor girl has been very down. Her come-out was put off this spring on account of her grandmother’s illness, and now she finds she is not who she thought she was. Sandy likes to cheer her up, but he knows the limits.”
“Who is this cousin he talks about?”
“Lord Saxby of Maeswood Hall in Shropshire. Sandy was heir presumptive at one time, but Cam — the baron — has two sons now. Sandy does not usually mention his cousin, but as we are under an earl’s roof, it seemed sensible to mention that he is not some vagabond we found under a hedge somewhere.”
“Nor is your husband, I presume, but he has a fanciful imagination. Tiger Blythe? Shooting an elephant?”
Her eyes twinkled. “Everything my husband says is true, my lord, and Tiger Blythe is now Lady Humphrey Marford. You may ask her if you want confirmation.”
He nodded. “I confess, I did hear some tales about her, but I never take much notice of gossip. It is usually malicious.”
“But generally contains at least a grain of truth, and in this case, more than a grain,” she said.
Ian said nothing, listening as Edgerton’s improbable story moved on to describe how Tiger Blythe had winged an escaping villain, after first shooting his hat from his head, and wondered greatly whether Edgerton could distinguish truth from falsehood at all. How on earth was the man able to investigate a murder when his head was full of such fanciful tales?
When the ladies had withdrawn, the earl turned to Ian. “You will follow Izzy to Harfield, I suppose.”
“If that is where she has gone.”
“She said she would go there, for her mother is there, but one never knows with Izzy.”
“Wherever she is, I will find her,” Ian said. Hewouldfind her — he must!
“Of course you will! And you will remarry and all will be well.”
“I have a special licence.”
The earl’s face crumpled. “Exactly! I wish—! Farramont, if you go to Harfield and see my wife, will you… will you tell her I should be very happy to have her home again? Very happy.”
“I will tell her that, sir. I shall tell her those exact words.”
Poor fellow! He missed his wife just as much as Ian missed Izzy, and perhaps more, for they had been married for thirty years. Three decades of contentment, and then to be torn apart! Why would she leave him alone at such a time? And why on earth, if he missed her so much, would he not go after her?
***
Izzy arrived at Harfield Priory a little after noon. There was a sharp wind blowing, so she waited in the carriage while Samuel knocked and rang and knocked again, until eventually, the massive iron-studded doors creaked open and the elderly butler, still struggling into his coat, emerged.
Harfield Priory combined, in Izzy’s mind, all the worst elements of a medieval house. From the outside, all traces of its religious origins had been obscured by later additions, and even that was now covered in ivy. Nor was it the pretty sort that turned brilliant red in autumn, but the dull, green sort that was unutterably dreary. At least it gave the façade a degree of uniformity. Inside, however, all was ancient, with rambling wings, small rooms leading one into another, abrupt changes of level, so that one was constantly going up or down three steps, and depressing dark panelling. At night, when one should properly hear the distant moans of ghostly monks, one was kept awake by the mice rioting in the wainscoting. The Priory made her deeply grateful for the airy modernity and classical symmetry of Stonywell. Not only did the Priory not have an octagonal saloon with a domed roof, it could barely muster a single room with four straight walls and a level ceiling.
Izzy entered what had once been the Great Hall and was in fact the only grandly proportioned room in the house.
