Castle & Key by W.R. Gingell

Author:W.R. Gingell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W.R. Gingell

Nine

Susan didn’t realise that she was so very on edge about seeing Emmett for the first time since their escape from the butler’s pantry until she entered the kitchen later that morning and found only Regan. Mingled disappointment and relief stirred in her chest and made her too restless to do more than make a quick breakfast of the last of the porridge that was rapidly congealing on the table. It was ridiculous to be so discomposed at the thought of seeing Emmett when she had just felt for the pulse of a dead man in the hallway above-stairs a bare hour or two earlier.

She asked Regan, who was still looking faintly tearstained, “Are you all right?”

Regan shrugged—a miserable, half-hearted thing. “I hate finding the ones that have got lost. They’re always so starey and limp and bloodless!”

Susan had a sudden, inescapable memory of blood seeping down the walls and into the carpet, and had to clear her throat before she could ask properly, “Have there been a lot of those?”

“More than enough,” Regan said, and added with a sudden burst of energetic asperity, “And they’re always left there for me to find! No one else is expected to find bodies before breakfast!”

“I suppose Mrs. Carmichael and Mr. Oswald just clean them up,” Susan said bracingly.

“That’ll be the gardeners,” Regan said bitterly. “Can you see Mrs. C picking up a dead man? No fear!”

If it came to that, Susan couldn’t really picture Mr. Oswald picking up a dead body with his delicate hands and shuddering looks. So the gardeners would make it into the house after all? Susan felt that she wasn’t quite sure she appreciated that. It was one thing to know that the gardeners hadn’t been burning the body she’d thought they’d been burning. It was quite another to trust that they hadn’t been burning a body at all—especially when they’d spent a significant amount of time over the last few days and nights peering through the windows of the manor without moving.

“Isn’t there anyone else who can do it? Someone from the town, for example.”

It wasn’t that she thought there might be—it was more that Susan wanted to know how much connection the manor had with the town below, apart from pillaging it periodically for women of a marriageable age or servants willing to bet their lives for a very decent amount of money.

To her surprise, Regan said, echoing what the master had said last night, “They can’t get in once everything starts. No one can. No one comes in, and no one goes out. We have to make up for any lack by changing positions.”

“How very practical!” said Susan, hoping for more.

Unfortunately, Regan seemed to have remembered that she wasn’t supposed to talk about any of the things she had just talked about, and her eyes dropped. “Never mind that,” she said. “I shouldn’t be talking about things like this. You’ll find out soon enough on your own without me telling you things, and I don’t want to end up like the master’s valet.

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