Page 26 of To Swoon and to Spar
“And can you blame me, given the possible outcome?”
“Don’t be absurd. If I were going to murder you, I’d work out something much sneakier and easier than pushing you off a cliff.” She paused to consider. “Poison, for example, seems like it would work nicely.”
“It’s very odd that you and my sister don’t get along, because you sounded remarkably like her just then,” he said darkly, and was pleased to see her blanch.
“In any case,” she said after a brief, appalled silence, “I think you are imagining things—I’ve not noticed anything out of the ordinary.”
“Of course you haven’t,” Penvale said, exasperated. “They all love you. It’s nothing but blissful smiles for you.”
“Perhaps because I am not treating them like criminals,” Jane said, frowning. “Do you have to commence the questioning the moment they enter the room?”
The room in question was the library, where they’d had a tray of tea and biscuits sent up to offer the servants some refreshment and perhaps put them more at ease, though it had not been a terribly successful strategy. The staff had seemed disconcerted to be offered food by their employers, as if they were guests invited to tea, and Penvale was beginning to wonder if the biscuits weren’t doing more harm than good.
He leaned forward to select his third.
On top of all this, they’d managed to learn nothing of use—predictably, everyone had professed ignorance of the screaming and the tapping at the window and any other strange occurrences around the house. Penvale, lacking any evidence suggesting anyone’s guilt, could hardly start in on accusations, but there was a persistent voice at the back of his head reminding him of one undeniable fact:
Houses simply did not haunt themselves.
“Who is left?” he asked wearily, feeling as though he’d come through several wars.
“Mrs. Ash, I believe.” Jane consulted the list she had drawn up in her neat handwriting. “I think we’ve spoken to everyone else.”
“Thank God,” he muttered.
“Need I remind you that this wasyouridea? You’ve no right to complain.”
“You’re right,” Penvale conceded, in part just to see the surprised expression that flickered across her face. “Shall we ring for her, then?”
This proved unnecessary, as the woman in question entered the room at that moment. “My lord, my lady,” she said solemnly, curtseying. “Did you need me to fetch someone else?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Ash,” Penvale said politely. “Won’t you take a seat? We were hoping we might have a few minutes of your time.”
Looking as though she expected to be struck by lightning at any moment, their housekeeper lowered herself into an armchair opposite Penvale and Jane. She sat in it stiffly, looking exquisitely uncomfortable; evidently, Jane noticed this as well, for she leaned forward in her seat and said gently, “Mrs. Ash, may I pour you a cup of tea?”
The older woman’s expression softened at these words, and something niggled within Penvale—some half-formed thought that had been lingering at the back of his mind, trying to bump its way to the front.
Jane wasdifferentwhen she spoke to the servants, he realized, and not in the unpleasant way that most aristocrats were when speaking to their social inferiors. The prickliness, the temper that always seemed so quick to spark whenever she was in conversation with him—those were absent. Her voice was soft, easy, in a way that it rarely was with him. Even her ever-present scowl was gone, replaced by a gentle smile. He did not understand her at all, this mysterious creature he had married, but he could not help thinking it reflected well upon her that she spoke to her servants with more kindness than she used when addressing her equals.
Though Penvale did still hold a cherished hope that she might one day converse with his friends and family with something less akin to open hostility.
Jane finished pouring a cup of tea for Mrs. Ash and leaned forward to hand it to her. Relaxing back in her chair, she said, “Lord Penvale is attempting to understand everything strange that has occurred at Trethwick Abbey of late, Mrs. Ash, and he would like to ask you a few questions.”
“All right,” Mrs. Ash said reluctantly, with the air of a woman about to attend her own funeral.
“I wonder if you might recall,” Penvale began in a brisk tone that earned him a glare from Jane, “when, precisely, you first observed anything unusual occur.”
Mrs. Ash made a great show of being deep in thought. “I suppose it was last summer,” she said at last. “That was when we first heard the wailing.”
“Wailing,” Penvale repeated, curious. His uncle had not provided many specifics regarding the events that had led to his sudden desperation to sell the house.
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Ash said gloomily. Next to him, Jane shifted in her seat but did not say anything. “In the middle of the night, we first heard it—an uncanny sort of shrieking. It sounded as though it came from within the walls…” She trailed off, shaking her head.
“Hmm,” Penvale said, regarding her steadily; this did, in fact, sound remarkably like what he had experienced the day before. He turned to his wife. “Jane, did you hear the noise?”
She looked surprised to be asked her opinion on the subject. “I… I did,” she said, lifting her chin.
“And were you not alarmed, as my uncle presumably was?”
