Winterset (28 page)

For a long moment they stood like that, caught in the tangle of their desire, and then, with an almost physical wrenching, Anna whirled and ran from the room.

S
omeone tried to break into Holcomb Manor that night.

In the middle of the night, Anna was pulled from her sleep by the sound of raised voices. She got up and wrapped her dressing gown around her, then hurried downstairs to the music room, where several of the servants were already gathered. Kit hurried in almost on her heels.

“What the devil is going on here?”

“Someone broke the window, sir,” one of the footmen answered, turning to Kit and Anna. “I was keeping watch, sir, like you told me, and all of sudden I heard this sound like glass breaking. So I called for John, here, and we started looking around. When we got to the music room, we found the pane broken and the window up. Someone had reached in and unfastened the lock, looks like. But I guess we scared them off.”

“Close the window and board up that pane,” Kit ordered. “We’ll have the glazier in tomorrow. Hargrove, set someone on that. Then get the rest of the men. We are going to search outside the house.”

While the butler snapped orders to the servants, Kit strode out of the room and down the hall toward the kitchen. Anna hurried after him.

He turned. “Where are you going?”

“With you,” Anna replied. “Where else?”

“You should stay in here.”

“I shall be with you,” Anna countered.

Kit started to protest, then raised his hands and let them fall. “All right. I can’t waste time arguing.”

They continued into the kitchen area, where Kit picked up the lantern by the back door and lit it. Hargrove followed them, handing out lanterns to the servants in clusters of two or three, and the entire group trooped out the back door, spreading out to cover the immediate grounds.

Kit and Anna walked through the garden, glancing in either direction, heading toward the trees at the back. They had not reached them when a cry went up from near the house.

Turning, they hurried back through the garden to where Hargrove and a footman were bending over something on the ground. When they grew nearer, they saw that it was one of the outside guards whom Reed had sent over. He was stretched out, unconscious.

“He’s been knocked out,” Hargrove told them. “I can feel the bump on the back of his head.”

They carried the man inside and laid him out on the servants’ table, where Anna could tend to his wound. The others returned to their search of the gardens, but few had any hope of finding the intruder.

Anna bandaged up the man’s head, and, when he came to, she gave him some of the powder Dr. Felton had left for Kit’s headaches. Everyone returned before long with the expected news that they had found no signs of any person on the grounds.

Anna looked at Kit worriedly. Obviously, whoever had tried to hurt Kit was not giving up on his plan. She had to find out who was doing the killings—and soon.

Anna and Reed went the next morning to visit Nick Perkins. The old man greeted them warmly, though he looked surprised at their visit.

“Come in, come in. Let me brew some tea for us.”

“I don’t know that we will be staying that long,” Anna said somewhat stiffly.

She wasn’t quite sure how to act around Nick now. Looking at him, she felt the same friendship and affection that she always had. Yet she could not help but think about the fact that he had aided Lady de Winter to cover up the murders her husband had committed. She understood that he had not told her the truth about the murders because he was trying to protect her from the knowledge that her own grandfather was a killer and a madman, but, still, there was a pinprick of hurt, knowing that he had lied to her.

“Is something the matter, Miss Anna?” he asked, his forehead knotting in concern.

“We learned some things yesterday,” Reed said. “And we need to talk to you about them.”

The old man looked at them a trifle warily, but he led them into the main room of his cottage, gesturing them toward the chairs. He sat in a chair across from them.

“All right, then,” he said. “What is it you’re wanting to know?”

“We found out yesterday that it was you who discovered Susan Emmett’s body,” Anna said flatly.

Perkin’s eyebrows rose. “Aye, that I did.”

“Yet when I asked you about that murder you said nothing about it.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know how that could have helped you, miss.”

“But surely you can see that it would have been of interest to us that you helped cover up those killings,” Anna shot back, unwanted tears springing into her eyes.

Perkins stared at her in dismay. “Miss Anna…how…who told you that?”

“I see you cannot deny it,” Anna said, her voice laced with hurt. “Nick, how could you do that?”

The old man sighed, seeming almost to shrink before their eyes. He cast a look at Anna and said, “You’re right. It was a wicked thing to do. You cannot blame me more than I blame myself. If it weren’t for me and what I did, old Will Dawson wouldn’t have died.”

He paused, rubbing his hands over his face, then went on. “My family’s been loyal to the de Winters for generations. We’ve worked for them, farmed their land, even fought for them back in the old days. My first instinct, I guess, was loyalty, even though I never liked Roger de Winter. He was a hard, cruel man.” Nick’s face tightened as he spoke. “When I came upon him standing over Susan’s body—he had carried her out to Weller’s Point after he killed her in the house—my first thought was to get him away from there, to get him back to the house.”

Nick stood up and began to pace. “He took my helping him as his due, of course. That is the arrogant sort he was. Everyone else existed to serve Lord de Winter. But Lady Philippa—his wife—was a wonderful woman. She didn’t deserve the shame, and neither did their son. It would have stained the de Winter name forever. When I told her what I had found, she begged me to help her. So I did. What was done, was done, I thought. His going to the gallows wouldn’t have brought the girl back. I told the constable that I had found Susan and led them to the body, but I said nothing about his lordship. And, of course, no one ever questioned him or Lady de Winter. There was no indication that her death had come at Winterset. Lady de Winter saw to it that the room was cleaned up.”

He sighed again and turned toward Anna. “We thought we could control him. His valet stayed with him, and at night they locked him in his bedchamber. He assured us that he understood, that he would abide by the rules. He said he had not meant to kill the girl, and I guess we were eager to believe him. Of course, we saw our mistake after he got away from his valet one night and killed poor Will.”

“But still you did not turn him in,” Reed commented.

“No. We had already concealed the first murder. I could scarcely go forward then and have Lady de Winter accused of being an accessory. She locked him up after that, put him in the nursery and got a burly guard to watch him, as well as his valet.” Nick turned haunted eyes toward Reed. “I’ve never forgotten or forgiven myself. If I had been a better man, a stronger man, I would have taken him straight to jail when I found him. But I wasn’t…and I could not hurt Lady Philippa like that.”

“Why did he do that?” Anna burst out. “We found those masks, his journals, but we could make very little sense of them.”

“He was mad,” Perkins said bluntly. “He grew worse and worse until he died. He had some crazy idea that the legends about the Beast of Craydon Tor were true. He said it was the de Winter curse, but it had turned out to be a blessing. He thought that periodically through the years one of the de Winters, like him, would be one of the ‘Children of the Wolf.’ He said that sort of thing. These ‘Wolf People’ were superior to everyone else, he thought. They had gifts, he said—they had heightened senses of smell and hearing, as if they really were wolves. They were attuned to the woods, to nature, and they had the courage of a wolf. Because he was one of the ‘Wolf People,’ he was not subject to the laws that governed lesser folk. He believed that he hunted and then killed, like a wolf, and that it was his right, part of his superiority.”

Perkins paused, then went on. “He used to put on those masks and wear them about his rooms. He had strange clawlike nails that he would slip on his fingers. I think he must have worn them when he killed his quarry. Perhaps the first time, when he killed Susan in the house, it might have been a sudden impulse. But I think when he killed Will Dawson, he put them on and went hunting.”

Anna shivered. It was a horrible image and one that she knew she would not be able to get out of her head for a long time.

Nick turned to her and said earnestly, “I’m sorry, Miss Anna, but I could not tell you all that. I know what I did was wrong, but I can’t regret it, not when you and your brother and your mother would have had to live with that stigma. You may hate me, but—”

“Oh, Nick.” Anna sent him an anguished look. “I cannot hate you.”

She knew that she was grateful he had done what he did, that she and Kit had not grown up with the black cloud of their grandfather’s evil deeds hanging over them. God knows, she wished that she did not know about them even now. At the same time, she hated what he had done, and she was not sure that she could ever feel the same way about him again.

They left not long afterward, but when Reed turned his horse toward the road, Anna reached out and put her hand on his arm, stopping him.

“I want to go the other way,” she told him.

Reed’s eyebrows soared upward. “By the footbridge? Are you sure?”

“Yes. I have been thinking about it. Even though we have found out who killed those people almost fifty years ago, I’m not at all sure that we are any closer to finding out who the killer is right now. Everyone who lives around here has heard of those killings. You and I have proved that with a little research, a person could find out the essential elements of those killings and repeat them. Remember how Grimsley told us of seeing lights in the nursery and walking along the gallery? He assumed that they were ghosts, because that is the way his mind works, but clearly it could have been someone who sneaked into the house while it was empty. They could have found Lord Roger’s journals. Perhaps there are other journals, ones that talk about the killings, ones that we did not see, and this person read them and became intrigued.”

Reed nodded. “Yes, it’s obviously a possibility.”

“But we still have absolutely no idea who that person is,” Anna pointed out. “So I thought that I ought to try again what we talked about—but this time go to the scene of the crime and see if I can sense more about the murder. Perhaps, if I tried, I could see more of what happened, get a clue about who the killer is.”

Reed frowned. “I don’t like the idea of your exposing yourself to such pain. I saw how you reacted in the room off the gallery, and that was an old murder. Where the killings have been so recent, it will be worse. I don’t want you to suffer that sort of pain.”

“I have to,” Anna insisted.

Finally, with a sigh, Reed agreed, and they turned toward the footbridge.

On horseback, it did not take them long to reach the stream. Anna could feel her stomach tightening as they drew near the location. They dismounted and tied their horses to a tree, then walked over to the spot where Anna and the twins had stumbled upon Frank Johnson’s body.

As she approached it, the tense, uneasy feeling inside her chest began to grow, the pain twisting and turning inside her. She stood over the place where he had lain, looking down, remembering his body lying there. She wanted to look away, to close her mind to the memories, but she forced herself to think about it, seeing again the gruesome wounds, the blood pooling on the ground….

Shock jolted through her, along with a burst of pain in her head, and Anna gasped. It was not as strong as it had been the first time, but she could feel again the sensations that had assaulted her when she had been in this place before. She could see the darkness, feel herself stumbling forward, falling with a thud.

Unconsciously, Anna reached out her hand. She did not realize she had done so until she felt Reed take it, his fingers curling around her palm. She squeezed his hand tightly, grateful for its reassuring strength.

With a sigh, she opened her eyes.

“Are you all right?” He was looking down at her, his brow creased with concern.

She nodded. “It isn’t as intense as when I felt it the other day. I’m not sure how much is the feeling and how much is remembering what it felt like then.”

“What could you tell about the murder?” he asked.

“Not that much. It was quick. I think the killer must have jumped out from behind something and hit the boy in the head, because I felt surprise at almost the same time as I felt the flash of pain. Then he stumbled forward, I think, and fell to the ground and lost consciousness. I could never see the killer. I think he was behind Frank. Poor boy.”

She looked up at Reed. “I’m afraid it isn’t much help.”

“You have established a pattern. Wasn’t your brother knocked in the head, as well?”

Anna nodded. “Yes. He must hit them with something, and then, when they are incapacitated, he goes after them with a knife or whatever it is he uses to cut them.”

“Shall we go on to the farm where your maid was found?” Reed asked. “Do you feel well enough?”