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There was relief on the gatekeeper’s face now; she half smiled. ‘Would that be the gentleman who came very late, miss?’

‘Yes, I think perhaps he did arrive late. Do you remember what kind of a carriage he came in?’

‘Oh yes, miss, I remember.’ Mrs Holmes smiled comfortably and reached down to take her daughter’s hand. ‘It was a hack chaise. The old hack chaise from the Feathers.’

‘I see. And the Feathers is the inn here in Belston village, is it?’

‘Oh no, miss. The Feathers is over at Hopton Cresswell.’

Chapter Six

And Hopton Cresswell was six miles away. Six miles of very indifferent road. It took Dido almost an hour to complete the journey – which was just as Catherine had foretold.

‘And what am I to do while you go there?’ she cried when Dido told her that she wished to drive on to Hopton Cresswell – alone.

‘You can make your calls in Belston.’

‘But, Aunt, I am not intimate with anyone in the village,’ cried Catherine, with outraged propriety. ‘It would be most ill-mannered for me to pay any visit of longer than a quarter of an hour – or twenty minutes at the very most.’

‘Then I suppose you must pay a great many calls – and walk very slowly between them,’ said Dido heartlessly. ‘For I must go to Hopton Cresswell and there is no knowing when I might have the use of the carriage again.’

Fortunately, Catherine saw the importance of discovering more about Richard’s visitor and agreed, in the end, to the arrangement with so little complaint that Dido was in hopes of only being reminded of the great kindness four or five times a day for the next week or so.

Of Hopton Cresswell’s other claim upon her interest – the suspicion that the dead woman had lived there – she said nothing to her niece. The gatekeeper’s words had shocked her – providing, as they did, the first hint of a connection between the murder and Mr Montague’s sudden departure and, as she travelled along the narrow lanes beyond Belston, she had ample time to worry over it.

Was it possible that the young man’s disappearance and the murder were part of the same mystery? The thought could not be avoided.

It would all have been so much easier, she reflected, if she knew Richard Montague. Then she might know – or at least be able to guess – what he might be guilty of. But she had never set eyes on the young man and the accounts that others gave did very little to delineate his character.

What kind of a young man was he? Was it possible – was it conceivable that he had known the woman in the shrubbery? That he had taken her life? Catherine’s testimony, being that of a lover, was not to be relied upon, of course. But yesterday Dido had tried to discover what she could about him, starting first with the one who might be supposed to know him best – his mother.

When the ladies retired from the dining room after dinner, Lady Montague had immediately engrossed herself in an intricate game of Patience, which she spread out on an inlaid table by the fire. The Misses Harris, tireless in their pursuit of accomplishments, had taken themselves respectively to their instrument and drawing board, so Dido had had only to signal to Catherine with a little motion of her head to intercept the garrulous Mrs Harris, before she herself stepped over to her ladyship’s side and began her enquiries.

It had been heavy work, standing there, almost overwhelmed by the rose-water scent of the lady and with the heat of the fire beating upon her cheek.

Her ladyship was, of course, properly charmed at the approaching marriage. Delighted with the prospect of having Catherine for a daughter. And as for Richard himself, yes, he was a sweet boy. And she believed he had done very well at the university. Or rather well, at least; for young men did not generally like to apply themselves, did they?

Dido had suggested that, at three and twenty, he was rather young to marry.

Her ladyship pulled the lace of her long, full sleeve down over her wrist and twisted a ring about on her finger. ‘Yes,’ she owned, ‘I was a little surprised when I was told that it was all settled. But Sir Edgar says that an inclination to marry early is no bad thing in a young man.’

‘Did you expect that it would be some years before Mr Montague settled?’

‘Oh, no…’

For a moment her ladyship looked so very vacant, with a kind of milky staring in her pretty green eyes, that Dido suspected her natural languor might be receiving a little artificial aid. Laudanum perhaps? She had known several ladies to make rather free with the stuff.

She repeated her question.

‘Oh no,’ said her ladyship vaguely, ‘I do not know that I expected anything, but Sir Edgar thinks the boy should marry. Sir Edgar thinks that it might serve to fix him at Belsfield and make him attend to the business of the estate. That it will prevent him from always wandering off to town – or wherever it is that he goes.’

As she spoke her ladyship turned up a card – one which seemed to necessitate a rearrangement of all the others on the table. She bent over the table, rapidly making her calculations and placing each card into its new position with a neat little snap.

It became impossible for Dido to draw her attention away from the increasingly complex patterns of her Patience. Reluctantly she turned away and abandoned herself to the unwelcome confidences of Mrs Harris.

Mrs Harris was a large woman with extravagant greying curls and plump red arms below the fashionable short sleeves of her gown. She very neatly manoeuvred across the drawing room and trapped Dido upon a corner sofa where she talked unceasingly of how the world despised her because she had once been nurse to the first Mrs Harris, until tea and the gentlemen arrived to distract her from her grievances – and to give Dido an opportunity for a change of companion.

She watched with interest as the men disposed themselves about the room. Colonel Walborough going to Miss Harris’s side and Mr Tom Lomax, on seeing that, taking up his station at the instrument with Miss Sophia. Sir Edgar, she noticed was a very dutiful husband, going immediately to his wife to enquire how she felt and had she taken her physic? Though the lady was so far from appreciating his exemplary behaviour that she turned her face away and pulled the rings about on her fingers, hardly giving him two words in reply.

Dido continued her enquiries into Richard Montague’s character.

Miss Harris clearly felt that the most remarkable thing about her cousin was that he was, ‘Handsome. Oh, very handsome indeed. He has beautiful eyes and he moves extremely well.’

This seemed to exhaust the ideas of Miss Harris. But Dido was almost sure that as she spoke she cast a significant look in her sister’s direction. Immediately, Miss Sophia left the instrument and came to add the highly original information that ‘Dear Richard’ was ‘sweet.’ And that he was ‘really the most delightful man.’ And ‘you can have no idea how very agreeable.’

Miss Sophia was much given to emphasis. If her conversation had been a letter, more than half the words would have been underlined. And when Dido ventured to press her further on the subject of her cousin’s character, she showed an alarming propensity for the strangest, most rambling of anecdotes. Dear Richard, had, she cried, been so terribly sweet about the rats. Miss Sophia had been enchanted by the rats.

Dido was at a loss to know what to say to such an extraordinary declaration. But – and this time she was quite sure that she was not imagining it – there was a nod of encouragement from her sister and Miss Sophia continued.