Page 42 of The Premonition at Withers Farm
“Ain’t no time, ma’am,” the boy inserted, hopping from one foot to another. “My sister is awful sick.”
Perliett exchanged a glance with her mother. “Awful sick” just might be beyond even Perliett’s admitted purview.
“You may spread germs,” Perliett said and waved her mother off. “I will be fine. Really. Go back to bed and rest before you become ‘awful sick’ too.”
Maribeth’s eyes narrowed at the instruction.
Perliett smiled at Maribeth, knowing full well that as much as her mother cared, she also preferred to coddle herself. Not to mention she had three sittings scheduled for the week and would be loath to put them off. Maribeth’s gifts were becoming something of a marvel since word of the shattered window and Eunice Withers’s supposed angst had spread through town.
Brody said little on the way, passing his grandparents’ farm, with his own family home their destination a few miles past. His lanky body hardly looked ready to be manning a rig, and yet he did it with familiar expertise, even in the midnight glare of the moon.
Perliett craned her neck to look at the Withers farm as they wheeled by. The two-story farmhouse was square and solid-looking, and there was a large white barn with a cupola. It appeared to be a peaceful place. Perliett hoped it could return to such a state.
She settled back in her seat. Evangeline Poll had stated emphatically that Perliett resembled Eunice. She’d never noticed and still didn’t quite believe it. The idea was altogether unnerving in some ways, while in others complimentary. However, Perliett could clearly recall what Eunice’s poor dead body looked like lying on the table underneath a white sheet, and it wasn’t a pleasant premonition of what she herself might look like someday. Not now.Absolutelynot now.George and Detective Poll were hypervigilant in their suspicions. There was no hunting killer on the loose. Merely someone who had taken a knife to Eunice Withers and—
“Here we are, Miss Van Hilton.” Brody interrupted Perliett’s musings. She didn’t expect a nine-year-old boy to help her down from the carriage, so she saw to it herself.
Hurrying to the house, Perliett made quick work of the greetings. She was taken directly to the little girl’s room where, after taking her temperature and listening to her cough, Perliett was almost certain she knew the remedy.
“Little Miss Patricia has the croup. It will pass, but we need to get her fever down. I recommend wetting one of her nightgowns in water from your well so that it is cold. We’ll dress her in that. The coolness will be quite uncomfortable, but it should help bring down the fever. When it dries, she will sweat out the remaining illness.”
And she didn’t even need to use her apothecary chest for that solution!
After an hour of getting the little girl into the highly unpleasant wet nightgown, Perliett instructed the parents, “Be diligent. She will whine about the nightgown. Wouldn’t we all? But it is for the best. I can check back tomorrow to see how Patricia fares.”
Perliett waited.
The parents thanked her profusely and then both flanked their little girl’s bedside.
Perliett stood in the doorway, a bit at a loss. Brody had gone to bed. It was two in the morning after all. Yet his father was making no signs of seeing her home. This appeared to be a habit forming with nighttime calls. Transport to the patient’s bedside, followed by inadequate transport home. But Perliett could hardly blame them. Worry was etched into the parents’ tired faces, and Perliett hadn’t the heart to outright demand the little girl’s father be a gentleman and see her home. Although, considering recent events, it wasmore than likely the more reasonable course of action. She shouldn’t have been so quick to decline her mother’s suggestion of accompanying her.
Stuck in the conundrum of politeness and consideration versus vigilance and caution, Perliett erred for what was most comfortable to her constitution. Blowing a soft breath from between her lips, Perliett gripped her apothecary chest by its handle and made her way through the dimly lit farmhouse to the front door. She opened it, pausing on the top stair of their porch.
“Well, this is unseemly.”
Perliett eyed the dark yard, the darker shadow of the road ahead of her, and then she noted clouds had built up in the sky and become quite persistent at shutting out the moonlight. She adjusted her grip on her apothecary chest.
“Fiddlesticks,” Perliett murmured. If she walked briskly, the distance could be traversed in under an hour. It was merely a few miles, and she wore a walking skirt and sensible shoes. Passing by the Withers farm would most assuredly conjure thoughts of murdered Eunice, but then one couldn’t discount that Eunice had likely been flirtatious and coy and sneaking from her home in the middle of the night, which was not a recipe for good tidings. No. Perliett’s reason for being out wasn’t a clandestine meeting—or whatever had coerced the murdered young woman into the darkness. No. She was here for good reason, and fate would only be kind to her because of it.
Perliett adjusted her wool shawl around her shoulders and stepped off the porch. A nighttime hike would do her health good. She just wouldn’t tell her mother that she’d walked home. In the dark. Under the surveillance of the crickets and the owls and the coyotes and raccoons.
Ten minutes into her walk, Perliett increased her gait as the Withers farm came into view. Truly, there was nothing ominous about the place itself, just the story of its inhabitants.If Eunice had been tempted to sneak from the home in the night, then her assailant had to have waited for her not far from here. Had she known him? Perliett certainly thought that would be a good possibility. Why else would a young woman leave her home in the middle of the night to mingle with a man she didn’t know? Assuming thatwaswhat had lured her from her bed. A man. A lover? It was plausible considering it was the beautiful and coy Eunice Withers.
But maybe ithadn’tbeen someone Eunice knew who had lured her from the safety of her home. Had Kenneth Braun? Perliett was certain there was a secret relationship between the two that was highly scandalous should it come to light. But she still warred within herself over her suspicions, and she’d yet to express them to Detective Poll. Her empathetic side certainly didn’t wish to expose poor Kenneth to more trauma, considering his nosebleed and anxiety made for arguable proof that he wasn’t to blame for Eunice’s death.
Maybe ithadbeen a stranger—a dashing stranger. Mysterious. Dark. Like Rochester fromJane Eyre. Or debonair like Mr. Darcy fromPride and Prejudice... Perliett glanced over her shoulder, certain she’d heard footsteps behind her. There was nothing but a dark road. “Oh, who am I kidding?” she mumbled to herself. “No female in her right mind would sneak out at night to meet up with the pasty, tongue-tied Mr. Darcy.” No. A girl who was a romantic at heart would sneak out for someone far more enticing than a Mr. Darcy type of man.
Mr. Bridgers’s visage flooded Perliett’s mind. Nowhewas a mysterious, brooding Rochester sort. He was not at all what Perliett would have assumed—
She halted, tilting her head to listen.
For certain shehadheard footsteps behind her! An overactive imagination could be to blame certainly, and playing Sherlock Holmes in the dark with a murderer afoot was reckless. But still...
Perliett whirled and instantly understood how a person could taste fear. She stared into the black deep of the night. Cornstalks lined both sides of the road. Cornstalks. Like the ones that had hid Eunice’s body. She narrowed her eyes, straining to see in the dim light, the form, the outline,anythingthat could claim ownership to the footsteps.
A low chuckle filled the air. So quiet she wasn’t sure she’d heard it. But then it drifted through the corn, combining with the thudding rhythm of her own erratic heartbeat.
“Who’s there?” Perliett demanded, but the night swallowed her words.
