Page 80 of What Cannot Be Said

“Oh, poor Bounder. It’s gonna take him time to adjust, no getting around that. I’ll hear him whining sometimes and know he’s missing Cato.” She gave a faint shake of her head. “That man was a nasty brute—no reason not to call him what he was, even if he is dead. But there’s no denying he was always good to his dogs, and they loved him.” She paused, then added, “Gotta give the devil his due when it’s due.”

Sebastian studied her plump, sad face. “Who do you think killed him?”

“Me?” She looked vaguely surprised by his question. “How would I know, my lord?”

“An irascible man like that must have made more than his fair share of enemies.”

The woman stared out over the wind-ruffled gray waters of the pond, her eyes hidden by half-lowered lashes. “I can’t say many people liked him.” She hesitated, then added, “To be honest, I don’t know if I can think of anyone who liked him. But to take a gun and shoot him? Who would do that? There aren’t many people around here even own a gun.”

“Did you ever see Coldfield himself with a gun?”

She nodded. “He had one a long time ago. But it’s been years.”

“How many years?”

“Fourteen, to be exact. I know because it was back before that first woman and her daughter were shot and killed in the park. It’s one of the reasons I’ve always thought Cato was the one who did it—because I knew he had this big old double-barreled flintlock pistol. But then, after the murders, I never saw it again. Always figured he must’ve hid it someplace.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Cato? Why, this past Thursday, it was. He came around here looking for my Richard—said he had something he wanted to tell him. But Richard had gone into town after some wire he needed, so he never did talk to him. And then the next thing we knew, you came here with Bounder, saying the man was dead.”

“Do you know if Cato could write?”

Sally Hammond stared at him blankly. “I don’t think so, but I can’t say I know for certain, my lord. Why?”

“Just wondering. When you saw Cato on Thursday, how was he? Did he seem agitated in any way? Worried?”

“Well, you met the man, didn’t you? I mean, he was always more’n a bit agitated. That’s the way he was. But he was in a rare taking that day, no denying that. Said some boy’d been askin’ him all sorts of questions about the killings fourteen years ago—about the way the bodies were laid out and exactly how they’d been killed, and how Cato thought it must’ve been done.”

Sebastian felt something twist deep in his gut. “Did he say who this boy was?”

“No. Just called him either ‘the lad’ or ‘some nob’s get.’ That’s all. Struck me as more’n a bit strange, seein’ as how he made it sound like this had happened back before the second lady and her daughter were killed.”

Sebastian stared across the pond toward the keeper’s cottage, where a rustic bench surrounded by roses and hollyhocks and lavender stood against one whitewashed wall. He had a vivid, painful memory of sitting there while he talked to Arabella, and of watching her bare fingers ruffle the fur of the kitten in her lap.

Aloud, he said, “Did Cato happen to mention how old this boy was? Or maybe describe him in any way?”

“No, my lord. Like I said, he didn’t have much to say about the boy himself, only the questions the lad had been asking. Spooked Cato, it did. He was always a superstitious one, so lookin’ back on it, I guess maybe he saw it as a bad omen.” She stared at Sebastian, her features pinched with worry. “Surely you don’t think that boy could’ve had anything to do with what happened in the park?”

Sebastian looked her in the eye and lied. “No, of course not.”

?He went next to the deserted, death-haunted meadow beside the quietly purling stream. The ground here was still damp from the recent rains, the air clean and fresh and filled with a glorious chorus of birdsong from the surrounding chestnuts and oaks.

His mare’s reins held slack in one hand, Sebastian went to stand in the center of the meadow. All traces of what had happened here barely a week before were now gone. The heavy rains had washed away the blood that once stained the blades of grass and bare earth; time, rain, and sunshine had obliterated the impression once left by a cheerful plaid picnic rug. The rug, abandoned crockery, and picnic basket had all been carried off by a man who was now dead.

The mare shook her head, jangling the bridle, and Sebastian reached out to pat the horse’s neck. “Even the sense of what happened here is fading, isn’t it, girl?”

Leila shook her head again.

Turning away, he tied the mare’s reins to a low tree branch and started to search.

It took him the better part of an hour, but he finally found what he was looking for wadded up and thrust into the hollow of a tree: a pair of small white gloves folded together like stockings.

His mouth uncomfortably dry, Sebastian carefully unrolled the gloves. They were still faintly damp from the recent rains, but the tree’s hollow had mostly sheltered them. They were expensive gloves, crafted of the finest kid, exactly what the daughter of a viscount might wear when going on a picnic to Richmond Park. The bloodstains on the fingers and palms were now old and dark. But the pattern of the stains was essentially what one would expect if their wearer had helped her brother pose the bodies of her aunt and cousin in a posture precisely calculated to echo that of an infamous murder from fourteen years before.

?Sebastian’s last stop was the modest manor house of Mr.Thomas Barrows, Esquire, where he found the barrister’s two sons sitting side by side on the top rail of a paddock fence and watching a dapple gray mare and her pretty new foal graze peacefully nearby.

“I’m here because I need you to tell me again exactly what you heard and saw that day in Richmond Park,” said Sebastian after the brothers had greeted him warily. “From the very beginning.”

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