“Or when Professor Moriarty smashed on the rocks at the Reichenbach Falls,” Peter added thoughtfully, but Nell objected that the water had probably washed that blood away, so it didn’t really count.
“What about when Duncan Robards knocked his tooth out at football?” Peter proposed. “He was bleeding all over the place.”
Bantry gave Emma a sidelong look and stood upright, muttering, “Don’t know why I bother....”
Bantry pulled the green door open, and for a moment they stood together, peering down at the grassy space at the bottom of the stairs. The oilcloth had been removed and a pair of stout planks had been placed on the stairs—a ramp for the wheeled stretcher, Emma thought. But the main focus of her attention, the damp grass near the tool-filled wheelbarrow, where Susannah’s battered head had lain, had been obliterated by the passage of many feet.
Nell turned a reproachful eye on Bantry. “No blood,” she said, somewhat testily.
“Wait,” said Peter. He leaned forward slightly, then ran down the planks to point triumphantly at a dark stain on the handle of the grub hoe.
“Let me see.” Nell shouldered her way between Bantry and Emma and joined Peter beside the wheelbarrow. Brother and sister bent low over the. stain, discussing it with an almost clinical detachment.
“She must’ve whacked her head on the hoe when she fell,” Peter reasoned, and Nell nodded.
“That’s as may be,” Bantry said, walking briskly down the planks, “but we’ll be whackin’ weeds with it.” He picked up the grub hoe and the scythe and carried them over to the chapel.
“What are you doing, Mr. Bantry?” asked Peter.
“Movin’ the tools into the chapel,” Bantry explained. “Remember the rain we had last night? Might come back again tonight, and as we’ll be needin’ the barrow, and as I don’t want my tools to get rusty, I’m goin’ to put ’em inside where it’s dry.”
“But Dad won’t want the chapel cluttered up,” Peter objected.
Bantry shifted the load in his arms and looked curiously at Peter’s worried face. “Don’t your father look after his tools?” he asked. “That’s all I’m doin’, son. Your father won’t begrudge us a bit o’ roof. Now, you come over here and see that it’s all stacked tidy.”
“It’s all right, Peter,” said Nell. “Bertie says that Papa won’t mind.”
Peter glanced at his sister and seemed to relax a bit as he strode over to lend Bantry a hand. When the barrow was empty, Bantry looked up at Emma and asked, “Where do you want us to begin?”
The rest of the morning passed quickly. Bantry and Peter stripped dead vines from the walls, Emma turned the soil in the raised beds, and Nell trotted to and fro, carrying armloads of debris to the wheelbarrow, while Bertie sat on an upturned bucket, supervising.
Bantry and Emma took turns wheeling the barrow up the ramp and tipping its contents in a windswept, rocky meadow outside the east wall of the castle. A broad path cut through the meadow, a bright-green ribbon of moss running through the gorse bushes and clumps of tamarisk, and beyond the path the land fell away abruptly, dropping nearly two hundred feet to the foaming waves below.
“The cliff path,” Emma said. She turned to Bantry. “Isn’t that where Peter was this morning?”
“Aye,” said Bantry, “but Master Peter knows not to go beyond the path. And Lady Nell’s not allowed outside the castle walls on her own.”
Emma nodded absently, listening as Peter called to Nell to bring him the pruning shears. Only fifty yards separated the cliff path from the east wall of the chapel garden. If Susannah had cried out, Peter almost certainly would have heard her. She must have fallen silently, Emma thought with a shudder, and quickly thrust the matter from her mind.
It was nearing one o’clock when a heavyset man with a bristly red mustache appeared in the doorway of the chapel garden. Emma recognized him as one of the men she’d seen eating breakfast in the kitchen. Like the others, he had a radio clipped to his belt, but at the moment he was also burdened with a large wicker hamper.
“Mr. Bantry, sir,” he called respectfully, coming down the stairs, “Madama thought you might be wanting a bite to eat.”
“Madama was right, Tom,” said Bantry. He stepped down from the low retaining wall and walked over to take charge of the hamper. “Everything peaceful?”
“So far,” the man said. He nodded pleasantly to Emma and the children before leaving.
Emma stuck her pitchfork in the ground, Peter tossed a last handful of dead vines in the wheelbarrow, and Nell went to fetch Bertie before joining them on the stairs. Once Bantry had handed plates and glasses around, he set out a jug of cider, a bunch of grapes, a round of cheese, a long loaf of crusty bread, a covered bowl filled with rosemary chicken, and a dozen strawberry tarts topped with shredded coconut.
“God bless Madama,” Bantry said reverently, and Emma murmured a heartfelt “Amen,” smiling when Nell’s hand darted toward the tarts. Bantry clucked his tongue and the hand hesitated, then picked up the bunch of grapes instead.
“Who was that man?” Emma asked, opening the cider. “The man who brought the hamper.”
“Tom Trevoy,” Peter informed her. “He’s the chief constable in Penford Harbor.”
“He’s the only constable in Penford Harbor,” Nell added.
“Trevoy?” said Emma. “I think I met a relative of his. She runs a guest house where I stayed, near Exeter.”
“That’ll be Tom’s Aunt Mavis,” Bantry confirmed.
“Why’s Tom wearing that thing in his ear?” Nell asked.
“That’s a radio,” Peter explained. “It’s so he can talk with the other men. Isn’t that right, Mr. Bantry?”
“Aye,” Bantry said shortly. “Now, who wants a nice bit o’ cheese?”
Emma finished pouring the cider, then put the jug down and leaned back to survey the results of the morning’s work. Clearing away the dead growth had given her a better idea of the chapel garden’s basic shape and structure. There were more weeds to pull, more vines to remove, but her next step would be to the drafting table, to make some preliminary sketches. When the meal drew to a close, she declared a half-holiday.
“You’ve earned it,” she said, plucking twigs from Nell’s curls. “You’re hard workers and I want you both to know that I really appreciate all your help.”
“No one works harder than Peter,” Nell informed her. “At home, when Papa’s away, Peter—”
“Would you like me and Nell to take the hamper back, Mr. Bantry?” Peter interrupted, getting to his feet.
“Miss Emma and I’ll see to that,” Bantry said. “Run along and play, now, the both of you.”
“But I wanted to tell Emma—” Nell began.
“Here, Nell, have the last tart,” said Peter, thrusting it toward her as he hustled her up the steps. “You heard Mr. Bantry. We’re supposed to play now.”
Bantry waited until the children were out of earshot, then shook his head. “ ‘We’re supposed to play, now,’ ” he mimicked gruffly. “Lad acts like it were an order.” Piling dishes into the hamper, he went on. “Has a bee in his bonnet about keepin’ busy, that one. Left him alone in my pottin’ shed for five minutes last week, and when I came back, he’d swept the floor.”
Emma nodded. “Nanny Cole seems to be having the same problem,” she said. “She was reading the riot act to him about it this morning.”
“Somethin’s frettin’ at him.” Bantry looked thoughtfully at the closed door and rubbed the back of his neck. “Don’t know what it is, but somethin’s got him all wound up. Here, pass me that glass, will you?”
Emma shook the last drops of cider from her glass. “Maybe he’s not used to having men patrol the house he’s living in,” she suggested. She caught Bantry’s eye as she passed the empty glass to him. “That’s what Newland and Chief Constable Trevoy and those other men are doing, isn’t it?”