Peggy tossed her head in the magnificent manner only the prettiest women can really carry off.“No.”
“Have you any idea why he went there?”
Her lip curled.“Meeting some woman, no doubt.None of my business, my lady.”
Implying it was none of April’s either.“Actually, it’s all of our business when a member of the household is attacked, possibly killed.Who was he going to meet?”
Peggy paled a little, but she shook her head.“I don’t know, my lady.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Why should I?”she asked with just a shade of aggression.
“Because, so I hear, you had transferred your affections from the young gardener—Godley, is it?—to Edward.”
“Edward was a mistake.He thought he was too good for the likes of us.Actually, he isn’t good enough for me.”
“And yet he visited the maids’ side of the attic, didn’t he?”
“Oh, no!”
That was adamant.Too adamant?It certainly contained shock, though that was easily manufactured.Or could Edward have been creeping about the maids’ quarters without them knowing?If so, it cast the footman in an even less savoury light.
“His behaviour must have angered a lot of people,” April remarked.“Do you have any idea who might have attacked him?”April held up one hand to forestall the standard denial she could already see coming.“This is important, Peggy.It affects us all.You must see that.”
The girl swallowed.“I don’t know, my lady.I wish I did.”
April took the key from her reticule.“Any idea what this opens?”
Peggy blinked at it.“No, my lady.”
It might have been true.As she replaced the key in her bag and pulled the ribbons closed, she said, “Did you unlock the front and side door this morning?Were they all locked?”
“Yes, my lady,” she said, as though surprised.
Which meant Edward was unlikely to have left by any of the usual doors.Another thought struck her.“Do you ever hear strange noises in this house?”
“Oh, that will be the ghost.”
April sighed.“That’s what Edward said.I expected better of you.”
A faint tinge of colour seeped into Peggy’s face.“I don’t know, my lady,” she said stiffly.“I never heard noises apart from what you’d expect and know about.”
“Very well.”
April left the maid to get on with her work and wandered outside to think.
The good weather was continuing and promised to bring another warm spring day.It was already pleasant, walking in the sunshine, but any fresh air would have been a relief from the enclosed mess of emotions, tensions, and lies that had swamped her inside.
The servants were all lying about something.
It had always annoyed April that servants were always the first to be blamed for any accident or crime within a household.In this case, she found she could not be as vehement in her defence of them.They were lying, certainly to her, and probably to each other.Why?What the devil was going on here?
Unexplained noises in the night that no one but herself and Piers seemed to hear.Permanently tired servants who stayed up ridiculously late when they didn’t need to.A key that Edward had taken with him when he went toward the summer house, but that did not fit the summer house door, and that Peggy at least did not seem to recognize.She had forgotten to ask Becky.And Mrs.Riley had almost certainly lied about it...
As she sat down on a wooden bench, something flashed through her mind and vanished, the germ of an idea that made her think of Mrs.Radcliffe more than real life and then vanished into nonsense—perhaps because she had just caught sight of Piers striding toward her from the direction of the wood.
Mr.Hubble was with him and raised his hand to her in a friendly wave.She waved back, and he veered away from Piers to the front door.Piers kept coming and flopped onto the bench beside her.
