Page 12 of Death at Fournier Downs
Ahead, a narrow footpath wove through the trees, roughly following the stone wall.
“What lies in that direction?” he asked.
“Haverfield,” the duke replied. “Lord Edgerton’s estate.”
Hugh turned toward Audrey. “Your former home?”
She hitched her chin, as if in defiance of the very thought of it. “Yes. About two miles through the woods.”
“What would she have been doing coming from there?”
“Fournier Downs stretches over thirty thousand acres,” Fournier said, impatience thinning his tone. “This land borders several properties and intersects with multiple walking paths. She might not have been coming from Haverfield specifically.”
The duke’s displeasure was nearly as palpable as the coming storm. Hugh drew a deep breath to keep from biting back with some equally arrogant retort. Instead, he pinned the duke with a prolonged glare before taking a second look toward the top of the field where Audrey claimed to have been. From such a distance, Lady Bainbury should have been able to hear the duchess hailing her. However, if she’d been running, her own rapid breaths might have been too loud in her ears. Fear could have also narrowed her focus.
The first drops of rain pelted Hugh’s cheek. They turned back toward the house then, riding at a faster clip than before. Though they went through the woods and the boughs blocked much of the rain, they were still soaked through by the time they returned to the stable yard.
Audrey dismounted and shook out her skirts.
“Mr. Marsden, you must come in and dry off,” she said, breathless. “I’ll call for tea.”
Hugh’s muscles clenched at the thought of sitting down to tea with the duke and duchess. “I’ve already taken up too much of your time. I’ll make my way back into town.”
Basil had secured rooms at an inn and tavern where the inquest for Lady Bainbury would be held the following day. Apparently, the back room at the inn was the designated place for death inquests. Made for good business, Hugh supposed. After the inquest, those in attendance would be likely driven to discuss their findings over a pint.
“My best in your investigation, officer,” Cassandra said, then turned toward the manor.
Hugh bobbed his head but stayed upon his horse, his trousers thoroughly soaked.
“Thank you for your assistance, Your Grace,” he called to the duke, who was attending to his mount with care rather than turning it over to a groom; it was the mark of a true horseman. He grudgingly acknowledged Hugh with a nod and then led his horse toward a stall.
Hugh eyed the duchess, who had removed her hat again. She met his testing stare with one of her own.
“You said you would stay clear of my investigation,” he reminded her, his attention slipping to her jacket pocket.
“You want to know what it shows me,” she replied. “You know you do.”
He groaned, sopping wet and frustrated. The insolent woman was correct.
“If it is anything of import, find me,” he snapped, and then dug his heels into his horse’s side and rode onward, away from Fournier House.
ChapterFive
Not for the first time, Audrey wished she had applied herself to her art lessons when she’d been younger. Her older sister, Millie, had been more than competent at her landscapes and had seemed to thoroughly enjoy the hours she would spend at the easel. Several of her pieces had been pleasing enough to their mother to even be framed and hung on the walls of various rooms in Haverfield. Even James had possessed artistic talent, though nothing so formal as painting. Her brother had carved works of art with his knife, which she recalled him keeping in his pocket at all times. He’d whittle a plain stick into a writhing snake, an ugly knob of wood into a miniature horse or toadstool or hunting hound—whatever struck his fancy.
Once, he’d returned from school with a whole nautilus shell, the exterior polished to a glimmering pearl and carefully etched with a woodland scene. Audrey had thought it was his most beautiful creation yet when he set it into the palm of her hand and told her it was hers to keep. She still had it, the small shell one of her most precious treasures.
As she sat in the breakfast room at Fournier House the morning after their ride to the quarry, Audrey’s fingers itched to at least try to sketch what she had seen the night before when she’d held the object she’d found and pocketed. Though, not as discreetly as she’d believed. Mr. Marsden had seen her. The man was too sharp-eyed—or perhaps she was too clumsy.
With her riding glove on, the button—round, brown, and thick, certainly from a man’s coat—had not passed its energy into her. Even as they climbed back out of the open quarry pit, she allowed that the button might belong to one of the footmen or stable hands who’d come to collect Charlotte’s body. There had been scattered boot prints in the damp floor of the quarry and in working to lift the countess, a thread might have snapped, a loose button set free.
But later that evening, when Audrey had been able to steal some time alone in her bedroom, she’d taken the button into her palm and allowed the object’s memories to unfurl before her eyes.
It was like seeing a different reality playing on the backs of her eyelids. Indeed, the most recent one was of herself, finding the object. Pushing backward through the memories, she viewed the men in the open pit through an unsettling vantage point; it had been as though Audrey herself was lying upon the ground, watching them as they fetched her body. Audrey pushed further back, and even though by then the button’s energy was fading along with the clarity of images, she was rewarded: Charlotte, throwing up her arms in defense as the owner of the button rushed toward her at the edge of the quarry. A struggle where Charlotte battered at her assailant and tried to fight. And then, the blurred confusion of a fall that ended in utter stillness.
Audrey tried to see more, but the images faded to murk, then pitch. An object only retained so much energy, and she could never anticipate how much or how little. Sometimes, the well of energy was deep, and other times, shallow. There was no rhyme or reason.
She wished she could draw what she’d seen, even if there had been nothing definitive of the person who had been wearing the article of clothing the button had been on. After breakfast, Audrey called for her brougham. Thankfully, she hadn’t yet seen Philip, and she hoped to be gone from Fournier House before he left for The Hare and Crown, Low Heath’s posting-inn, where the inquest was being held at noon. Ladies weren’t permitted at death inquests, but men of import in the surrounding area were. Philip, as duke and veritable owner of the village, was one such man.
