Medi-Evil 3 (4 page)

 
“Is it, Hannah? So why, pray, is
O’Calligan
the only one among us dressed?”

 
And that was true. Everyone, with the exception of Cedric, who was back on duty in an hour anyway, wore nightgowns and slippers. But
O’Calligan
, though he’d loosened his oil-black hair so that it hung past his shoulders, had only stripped to his shirt and breeches. He even wore his boots.

 
In actual fact he had spent the night seated by his fire, smoking pipe after pipe as he brooded on his future in a
Williamite
Britain, but, unused to being questioned, he now remained stubbornly tight-lipped.

 
“This is absurd,
Lightbourne
,” Judge Prendergast put in. “Why should
O’Calligan
murder the
Chillertons
? They were Catholics and
Jacobites
, like him.”

 
“Maybe he viewed them as collaborators,”
Lightbourne
said. “Maybe he’ll view
you
the same way.”
Lightbourne
was a tall, sturdy individual, only in early middle-age but beetle-browed and angry-faced, and he gazed at
O’Calligan
with fanatical dislike.

 
Judge
Prendergast’s
viewpoint was more measured. “Whoever’s responsible, he’ll be punished, but might I suggest we find the miscreant first rather than the nearest convenient scapegoat.”

 
“And might I suggest we start hunting for him now,”
O’Calligan
added. He turned to his hostess. “Madam, I no longer have authority here, but it might be a useful thing if we searched these premises. It’s possible some vagrant has broken in, seeking shelter.”

 
Lady
Foxworth’s
delicate cheek paled at the mere thought, but she nodded quickly. “Yes, we should search.
Of course.”

 
“Might I also suggest,”
O’Calligan
said, “that we remove the bodies to one of your outbuildings. How soon we’ll be able to summon help in this weather I don’t know, but if we keep them indoors too long, they’ll start to putrefy. Outside, the cold will preserve them until an enquiry can be made.”

 
Again Lady
Foxworth
nodded. “Cedric, assist Captain
O’Calligan
.”

 
O’Calligan
and the servant wrapped the bodies in sheets, and carried them downstairs. As they did, Cedric voiced a quiet opinion of his own. “If you’ll notice, captain, their throats haven’t been cut. More ripped, I’d say.”

 
When they reached one of the stables, having ploughed through snow that was now knee-deep and still being driven on a sword-edged wind,
O’Calligan
saw the same thing for
himself
. By the light of a lantern, he examined the victims’ throats, and noted that, though the outer flesh and the esophagus tissue beneath had been sliced from one side to the other, the wounds were ragged-edged and zigzagging.

 
“A hooked blade, maybe?” he said, baffled.
“And not especially sharp.
Good Lord. Whoever did this, Cedric, is a savage.
A
real
savage.”

*

For the next hour, the men, now coated and booted and armed to the teeth, searched every nook of the great manor house, while the women sat nervously before a rekindled hearth.

 
It was no small task. As well as its central section and extensive wings,
Silvercombe
Hall also boasted a number of outhouses. However, no trace was found of an interloper. More to the point, no locks had been forced or windows broken. The search party even ventured out into the landscaped gardens, though this was fruitless for different reasons: the blizzard howled and the snow drifted to such depths that sculptures, arbors and topiary alike were all buried. Eventually they returned indoors, having agreed to meet again in the morning and discuss the affair over breakfast, though throughout this conversation Lord
Lightbourne’s
eagle-eye was fixed on Jack
O’Calligan
.

 
For his own part,
O’Calligan
had no intention of retiring just yet, and when various bedrooms had been closed and locks thrown, he summoned Cedric back to the murder scene. It was now ice-cold in there and pitch-black, the fire having died, the candle having been removed. Cedric produced a fresh one and lit it, and they stood there warily, their breath swirling vaporously around them.

 
“The luggage is untouched,”
O’Calligan
said, nodding to an open cupboard, in the foot of which two heavy portmanteaux could be seen. “Whoever did this was not trying to rob them.”

 
Cedric nodded, then added: “There’s another mystery. How did the villain get in? I checked the window before. It’s fast. Not even tampered with.”

 
O’Calligan
crossed the room to check for himself, but found that the window was indeed securely locked. Beyond its warped panes, he saw a shelf of unbroken snow. No-one had entered by this route. “The only conclusion is that the killer was already in here when they arrived,” he finally said.

 
“Then how did he get out?” Cedric asked. “The door was locked from the inside.”

 
They glanced around the room, the walls of which, with the exception of a stone breastwork over the hearth, consisted of solid oaken panels.
O’Calligan
even glanced up the chimney, but saw a narrow brick shaft not remotely large enough for a human to pass through. He stood back, even more confused. “Cedric, you know the people gathered here very well. Better than I ever could. Did any one of them have reason to hate Lord and Lady
Chillerton
?”

 
“None at all.
The
Chillertons
were regarded as goodly
neighbours
. I mean, they had political differences with Lady Hannah, but isn’t that the way of things all over?”

 
“Who else is here aside from the guests?”

 
“Our cook, Agnes, who’s an elderly sort, and two chamber maids, Martha and Charlotte, and they’re bits of girls. Neither could hurt a fly.”

 
O’Calligan
regarded the blood staining the floor and the bed-linen in the corner. “How wealthy were the
Chillertons
? Did anyone stand to gain from their deaths?”

 
Cedric regarded him curiously. “Am I to understand, captain, that you’re taking some kind of investigator role here?”

 
O’Calligan
shrugged. “You’ve seen how the land lies. At this moment, I’m a very suitable suspect.”

 
“With respect, anyone who knows you knows that that’s nonsense. You’re a proper gentleman.”

 
“That’s not the way the Prince of Orange’s magistrates might see it.”
O’Calligan
scanned the room for the least clue. “My future hangs by a thread as it is. For all Lady
Foxworth’s
good will, this incident might turn that thread into a rope.”

 
Cedric considered this, then said: “Well, in answer to your question, there’s no-one here like to benefit from Lord and Lady
Chillerton’s
deaths. They have a son at Court – a clerk in the Exchequer, I believe. He stands to inherit everything, but he’s not here. He probably wouldn’t have had too long to wait for his inheritance anyway.”

 
“And what’s
that
?”
O’Calligan
wondered. He indicated a bell suspended from a cord in a high corner. “There’s one of those in my room too.”

 
“That’s from the old days,” Cedric explained. “The
Foxworths
were always sea-folk. They were awarded
Silvercombe
Hall for services against the Spanish Armada. But the original family this house was confiscated from was Catholic. They used to hold Masses here, and shelter priests and nuns and such. A bell like that was put in each room. They could be rung from a secret place, to alert guests should the priest-hunters come by.”

 
O’Calligan
glanced around at him. “Does that mean there are priests’ holes as well?”

 
“There were, but they’re all gone now. The whole inside of the house was refurbished by Lady Hannah’s father, thirty years ago.”

 
Despite this, they spent another ten minutes making rounds of the room, tapping on each wall, but there wasn’t so much as a hollow
thump
to greet their knuckles.

*

Not surprisingly, the Christmas Day hunt was abandoned. Even without the atrocious murders, it would have been impossible to send the hounds out. The gardens and moors were still deep under snow, while flakes continued to fall, no longer tossed by a gale but thickly and heavily in an unrelenting cascade. This also prevented anyone from leaving the hall and heading the sixteen miles to
Minehead
, where they might summon help.

 
Shortly before luncheon was served, Lord
Lightbourne
took it on himself to question the domestic staff, which he did unduly harshly as far as
O’Calligan
was concerned.
Lightbourne
, the Irishman decided, was probably the sort of master who would willingly take a horsewhip to his servants. He sat the cook and her two maids in window-seats in the drawing room, then questioned their every move on the previous night in a tone so severe that it would have done Matthew Hopkins proud. Needless to say, he reduced them to tears, but he didn’t stop there, insisting on regaling them with the ghoulish details of the murders, determined, in his own words, to “break their stubborn impudence”.

 
However,
Lightbourne
wasn’t the only person
O’Calligan
formed opinions about that morning. There was a mournful mood: people were understandably subdued, but were all of them shocked rather than grief-stricken. Lady
Foxworth’s
relationship with the
Chillertons
had not always been as amicable as old Cedric believed.
O’Calligan
learned this from himself questioning the maids that morning, albeit in a gentler manner. It seemed there’d been disputes over land in the past, and once apparently Lord
Chillerton
had invested heavily in a sea voyage to the
Foxworth
family’s trading post on the coast of Madras; but the ship sank in a storm, and the
Foxworths
had refused to recompense him, which had caused a very public row. Judge Prendergast had also had issues with the
Chillertons
: one time he’d refused to make good on a gambling debt to them, using his period of empowerment following Monmouth’s rebellion to bully his elderly
neighbours
into cancelling it outright. The only person present
O’Calligan
had no real information about in this respect was Lady
Lightbourne
, though he discovered a little bit about her in a brief conversation with his hostess.

 
According to Lady
Foxworth
, Loretta
Lightbourne
, formerly Loretta
Wilberforce,
was a rector’s daughter from Devon, who had only married her beau at the age of twenty-nine, a period in life when she might normally have been regarded as an old maid. Lady
Foxworth
knew nothing of the
Lightbournes
’ courtship and romance, except that Loretta had taken confidently to her life as wife of a country squire. She was a stern-looking woman with a stiff posture and pinched features, but she compensated for her lack of physical attractiveness with a strict and assertive attitude. She ran her husband’s household efficiently, and had successfully reined in his one-time gallivanting antics. Not that she seemed to be firmly in control at present. As
O’Calligan
and Lady
Foxworth
surreptitiously watched her, Lady
Lightbourne
sent Cedric for a fourth glass of French brandy.

 
“It must be the stress of circumstances,” Lady
Foxworth
said, still pale in the cheek herself. “I’d always thought her given to temperance.”

 
“Her abrasiveness is clearly a front,”
O’Calligan
observed.

 
“She has a temper, though. Her husband lives in fear of it, for one.”

 
O’Calligan
glanced towards the hearth, where Lord
Lightbourne
stood over the flames, one hand resting on the mantel. Following his normal instinct to be cock of the walk,
Lightbourne
was wearing a bright blue coat that morning, trimmed down its buttonholes with gold thread, and with a lengthy, red velvet doublet underneath. His cravat was a froth of intricate lace, his shoulder-length, chestnut wig of the finest quality.