Page 17 of What Cannot Be Said

Sebastian nodded to the pail of ironstone. “I see you’ve acquired some new dishes.”

Coldfield’s jaw jutted out. “They was just left there in the park. Why shouldn’t I pick ’em up? Why leave ’em there to be ruined?”

“No reason I can think of,” said Sebastian, bringing his gaze back to the man’s sun-darkened face. “Who do you think killed that woman and her daughter yesterday?”

“How would I know?”

“You’ve no ideas at all?”

“Nope.”

“Seen any strangers hanging around here lately?”

“Nope.”

“Did you see the woman and her daughter earlier on Sunday, before they were shot?”

“Nope. Told you I was here sick, remember?”

“So you did.” Sebastian let his gaze drift, again, around the overgrown jumble of lavender and hollyhocks, stinging nettles and rampant ivy. “Thank you for your time,” he said, and turned toward where he’d left Tom with the curricle.

The thatcher sucked in a deep breath that flared his nostrils, but said nothing. He was still standing there beside his broken gate, the dog at his side, when Sebastian swung the curricle around and drove back toward the main road.

“I reckon ’e’s hiding somethin’,” said Tom as Sebastian turned toward the park again.

Sebastian glanced back at his tiger. “I agree. But what makes you think so?”

Tom shrugged. “Just somethin’ about the way ’e was standin’ there. So what ye reckon he’s hidin’?”

“I have no idea. But I think I’d like to take another look at that meadow by the wood.”

Chapter 12

It was an idyllic spot, this sunny, daisy-strewn meadow at the edge of a shady stand of chestnuts and oaks.

Pulling his curricle off to the side of the lane, Sebastian handed the reins to Tom and hopped down. The picnic hamper and rug he’d noticed the previous evening were now gone, doubtless carried off by the same man who’d helped himself to the white ironstone dishes. All that remained to mark what had happened here were the faint impressions left in the grass by the picnic rug and the bodies of the two dead women who’d been posed beside it.

That, and the dried splashes of blood still visible on scattered clumps of grass and patches of bare earth.

Walking to the center of the meadow, Sebastian turned in a slow circle, taking in the lay of the land: the open wood, the narrow brook with the path running beside it, the slope down which the two brothers had run after hearing the shots. A gentle breeze brought him the lowing of distant cows, the chatter of an unseen squirrel, the purling of the nearby brook.

It should have been a peaceful moment, but it was not. When he closed his eyes, it was as if the air here still hummed with a violent swirl of emotions—bewilderment, shock, horror, and a numbing grief, all tangled together with a strange aura of exhilaration tinged with what he thought might well be triumph. It was surely no coincidence, Sebastian thought, that the creatures of the wood were avoiding this place.

Taking a deep breath, he began to walk in ever-widening circles around the site. Lovejoy’s constables had searched the area the previous afternoon, but Sebastian wanted to get a feel for the place himself. He found the bundle of flowers Arabella Priestly had been gathering, now lying wilted and forgotten where she’d dropped them. Perhaps ten or fifteen feet farther upstream, where the broad grassy bank of the brook curved away from the path, he spotted a white ironstone cup that her brother Percy had doubtless been using to catch tadpoles. It lay on its side in the shallows of a pool teeming with tiny, darting black shadows. Reaching down, Sebastian picked it up, turning the cup upside down to let the water run out.

So far he’d seen few flowers here besides the inevitable scattering of daisies, which meant that the sunflowers, poppies, and cornflowers in Arabella’s bouquet must have come from farther upstream. Had young Percy stayed here, scooping up tadpoles in this shallow pool, while his sister ventured farther afield in search of her flowers? If so, the boy could conceivably have seen or heard something that Arabella had not.

Sebastian turned to look back toward the meadow. A clump of brambles hid the fatal picnic site from his view. But the boy had been close enough that he might have heard something. And if the man who shot Laura and Emma McInnis had then ducked into the wood, the young lad might even have seen him.

It was a worrisome thought, for more than one reason. It had been unfortunate enough to have to question Arabella, to ask a girl of fifteen to relive the horrors of that afternoon. But a child of thirteen? Sebastian wondered if the boy’s father would even agree to it.

Still carrying the forgotten ironstone cup, Sebastian turned back to where he had left Tom with the curricle. He had only a passing acquaintance with the children’s father, Miles Priestly, Viscount Salinger. A widower now for some years, he was, like Sir Ivo, a sporting man ten to fifteen years older than Sebastian, with an estate in Leicestershire. Beyond that, Sebastian knew little of the man.

“That’s what ye found?” said Tom when Sebastian walked back to the curricle. “A cup?”

Sebastian leapt up to the high seat and took the reins. “Just a cup.”

?It was midafternoon by the time Sebastian arrived back in London.

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