"She might have met someone that she wrote about, might have known someone in Somerset, someone she might have gone away with."
"I tell you, there was no one."
Mrs. Beauchamp rose. "No, I want him to read the letters. So he'll understand what she was like. And he might see something we missed. We don't know that."
She passed me in a swish of skirts and a waft of old-fashioned soap as Grenville and I got politely to our feet. Mr. Beauchamp also rose, but he crossed to the window and stood with his back to us. Beyond him, the rain dripped down the gray windows.
I said, "I will do everything in my power to discover what happened to Miss Morrison."
Beauchamp turned, his stance dejected. "I will not lie to you, Captain. Writing to you was my wife's idea. She holds out too much hope. She will not even voice the possibility that Charlotte is lost to us forever, as I believe her to be."
"Dead, do you mean?" I asked gently.
"Yes. Because she would have written to us, otherwise. We are her only family. Why would she go away? She would have explained."
Tears hovered in his eyes. I wondered very much what he had truly felt for Charlotte-the love of a father? Or something else? And did he even realize it himself?
Mrs. Beauchamp fluttered into the room and thrust a lacquered wooden box at me. "I've kept all the letters she'd written me in the year before she came to us. She also copied out a few that she sent to a friend in Somerset since then. Read them, Captain. You will come to know her through them."
I took the box. "I will return them to you as soon as I can."
"Take all the time you like. I ask only that you do not lose them. They are dear to me."
"I will take very good care of them," I promised.
They hovered, but I knew that the interview was over. "Thank you for seeing us," I said, then Grenville and I bowed and took our leave.
As we rode away in Grenville's carriage, the box tucked beside me, I looked back. Mr. and Mrs. Beauchamp stood at the wide ground-floor window, watching us depart.
We spent the night in Hampstead. While we'd talked with the Beauchamps, the rain had increased, until black water fell around us and cold rose from the Heath. It was Grenville's idea to find a public house to stay the rest of the evening and drive leisurely back to London the next day.
I'd thought the public house would be too rustic for the wealthy Lucius Grenville, but he laughed and said that he'd slept in some places in the wilds of Canada that made Hampstead positively palatial.
He obtained private rooms at the top of the public house that proved snug. A sitting room in the middle opened to a bedroom at either side, luxurious accommodations by my standards. The publican's wife, a cheerful, thin woman, trundled us a supper of roasted chicken, thick soup, greens, cream, and bread. After the penetrating damp outside, we both fell upon it heartily.
The publican's wife lingered, inclined to talk. "I'm afraid it's only the leavings and the soup from yesterday's beef and vegetables, but it will fill the stomach. I know gentlemen are used to much finer, but you won't get better in Hampstead."
"Madam, it is admirable," Grenville said around a mouthful of chicken.
She gave him a modest look. "You'll have fresh eggs in the morning. I suppose you gentlemen are from London, then?"
We replied in the affirmative.
"Journalists, are you?" she asked. "Have you come about our murder?"
Chapter Eleven
I nearly choked on my soup. I coughed and pressed my handkerchief to my mouth then hastily seized my glass of stout.
Grenville finished chewing and swallowing without expression. "We know nothing of a murder. It happened here?"
"Oh, aye, they found her off in the woods, torn to bits, poor lamb."
"When did this happen?" Grenville asked.
The woman leaned on the table, her eyes bright in her bone-thin face. "A week or more, now. Maybe two weeks. I don't remember. That's when they found her. One of the blacksmith's lads, he had gone to do a spot of fishing. Didn't half give him a turn."
"Who was she?"
"That was the funny thing, sir. They didn't know at first. Turns out she's kitchen maid up at Lord Sommerville's big house. She'd gone missing sometime back. Near two months."
"They were certain she was the kitchen maid?" I asked.
She looked at me in surprise. "Oh, yes, sir. Her brother came from London and said it was her."
I sat back, wondering if we'd just discovered the whereabouts of Charlotte Morrison, even in spite of the brother's identification. If she'd been torn to bits, he might not have been able to recognize her.
The publican's wife chattered on, leaning on her hands until white ridges appeared on the sides of her palms. "She'd been dead a long time, they said. I didn't go to the inquest, but my husband, he's always one for gossip. He went out of interest. Whole village did. Poor thing had lain there nigh on two months. Not much left of her."
"Why did they think it was murder then?" Grenville asked. "She might have taken ill, or fallen, or some such thing."
The woman pointed at the nape of her own neck. "The back of her head was bashed in. They said she died of that, then was torn up and dragged out there to the woods. I don't know how they know these things meself."
"Lack of blood where they found her," I said woodenly.
"Truly, sir? It's a bit gruesome, I say. But we had a few journalists come. Not very many." She sounded disappointed.
"Did they discover who did the murder?" Grenville asked.
She shook her head. "And it does give one a shiver of nights, knowing that went on not two miles from your own house. No, the girl's young man was in London when she ran away, and he can prove it. She'd probably run off with some other man what promised her money or jewels or such nonsense. Lured her away and killed her. We've been on the lookout for strange young men since then, but we've not seen a one."
Grenville oozed sympathy. "It must have been a frightening thing to happen."
"It does make one think. Not much wrong with the poor girl but silliness. She didn't deserve to be killed. Now then, gentleman, I've kept you long enough with my talk. You enjoy your supper, as little as it is. I or Matthew will bring breakfast in the morning. We keep country hours here, so you gentlemen will want to be early to bed."
Finished with her gossip, the publican's wife clattered a few dirty plates onto a tray and departed with a rustle and a bang of the door.
Grenville raised his brows. "I was half afraid for a moment that our errand was for naught."
I picked up my spoon. "I wonder if the girl was another victim of Mr. Denis."
"It is possible, of course. This soup, Lacey, is almost excellent. Remind me to tell our lively-tongued hostess. But remember, girls run away or are lured away all the time, though not all of them come to such a tragic fate. Either their families can give them nothing, or they're told they can't have a luxurious life, and they can't resist seeing whether there is something more in the world for them. James Denis cannot be responsible for them all."
I didn't answer as I sopped up my soup with the heel of the loaf. Perhaps Grenville was right-the girl had gone away with a predator who had murdered her. The back of her head had been crushed, the publican's wife had said. I hoped she had not known death was coming.
My heart burned for her, as it did for Jane Thornton. I wondered savagely why civilized England was so much more dangerous for a young girl than the battlefields of the Peninsula had been for soldiers like me.
I took Charlotte Morrison's letters to my bedchamber with me, and lay under the cozy quilt with bricks to warm my feet, and read them. I laid them out chronologically, and read through the last two years of Charlotte's life.