Murder at Keyhaven Castle by Clara McKenna

Author:Clara McKenna [McKenna, Clara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2021-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Her father was dead.

Stella had wanted him to go away. Had been counting the days when he’d go back to Kentucky. She never imagined this.

Stella had cried more in the past hour than she had her entire lifetime. Her head pounded, her whole body ached, but the tears had dried up, her nose had stopped running, and she welcomed the reassuring rocking of Tully beneath her as they rode. Out in the fresh air with the sun on her back, away from the dank, dark, closeted castle tower room, she was able to face the truth, the complete and brutally honest truth. That, alongside the shock, the guilt, and the grief, was a lightness, an unexpected sense of relief.

She shivered. Had the breeze cut through her dress, or was the chill from something else? Seeking reassurance, Stella leaned forward to stroke Tully’s shoulder. She was startled to find her horse’s sleek coat foamed with sweat.

How long had they been riding? Where were they? The landscape caught her off-guard. They’d crossed the spit, passed the marshes, climbed the banks of the shoreline, navigated the path through the shrubby coastal heath, and had entered Whitley Wood not far from Rosehurst. The journey had been a blank. She couldn’t remember any of it.

What Stella painfully remembered was the police wagon rumbling away, carting both Sir Owen and her father’s body back to Lyndhurst: one to the police station, the other to Dr. Lipscombe’s examining table. With an autopsy, Brown promised they’d determine precisely how her father had died.

Does it matter?

She turned in the saddle, expecting a slow cavalcade of carriages, like a funeral procession, following behind. Only the dogcart with Lister, Sir Owen’s mount, tied to the back, followed. But where were Ethel and the children? Uncle Jed? Aunt Ivy? The Swensons?

“Most of the others went back to Pilley Manor.” Lyndy, answering her unvoiced question, swayed comfortably in the saddle as he rode alongside her. “I’m taking you to Morrington. I don’t think you should be alone right now.”

Stella agreed. She wasn’t sure she could ever go back to Pilley Manor. There were too many memories of her father there.

When they approached Morrington Hall, sunlight reflecting off the chimneys jutting above the trees, Stella was struck by the resemblance of the first time she’d traveled up this drive. She, pushing the gas of the Daimler, eager for a glimpse of the manor house, her father grumbling at her to slow down. Stella had had no idea then the secret her father held, how he’d sold her off like one of his horses, for his own benefit. She’d resented him for it, almost hated him. Now she just felt drained.

A pig, pink and barrel-shaped with large black spots, emerged suddenly from the wood, its snout to the ground, industriously wiggling and sniffing out its quarry—fallen acorns. It crossed the driveway, oblivious of the horses, and disappeared into the trees on the other side. Lyndy clicked his tongue, urging the horses, distracted by the pig, to move on.

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