Page 64 of The Magpie Lord
“Indeed.”
“Does that mean, if you’d just come to bed last night—”
“Probably.” Stephen pushed through the roses. “Shut up.”
“I didn’t say a word,” said Crane, grinning.
They were back in the open space by the Rose Walk, and Crane looked around for the first time. The ground was covered with dust and feathers and uprooted grass, bare earth now at points. Bruton lay on his face, blood wet on his shattered skull. Haining was on his back, blood trickling from his mouth and nose, eyes dark and bulging, not breathing. Beyond him was a vaguely human form that Crane glanced at once and turned from.
“Who was that?” he asked.
“Baines,” said Stephen. “The magpies had him.”
Crane’s eyes flicked again to the bloody, sprawled mess on the ground. White ribs showed through the torn skin and flesh. “Why?”
“He made the charnel posture, I think. They didn’t like that.”
“The— Where is it?” demanded Crane, belatedly realising. “The damned thing’s gone!”
“The magpies took the remains. They’ll have burial under the sky. I think probably the birds know what’s best for Vaudreys, in Piper.” Stephen was looking at Miss Bell, not Crane. She nodded abruptly.
Crane was frowning. “Haining, Baines, Bruton.” He strode over to the stone pedestal, looked behind it, flinched at what he saw.
“Stephen, you should see this.”
“I felt it.” Stephen didn’t move. “Lady Bruton stripped Miss Thwaite, yes?”
“Someone did.” Crane couldn’t take his gaze off the terrible rictus of staring eyes and clenched teeth on Helen Thwaite’s yellow corpse. “And Lady Bruton’s nowhere to be seen.”
Stephen sighed. “Lady Bruton clearly persuaded her dear Muriel into this business with the promise that Helen could be turned into more than a flit by the power of the charnel posture. She was virtually talentless and knew it, and it was driving her mad. Easy enough to dangle a cure in front of her mother.”
“Would it have worked?”
“No idea. Maybe.”
“And Lady Bruton stripped Helen to get away. Lady Thwaite chose to die just now, didn’t she?”
“She was going to anyway,” Stephen said. “Don’t feel too sorry for her. She chose her path.”
“Maybe, but the other lady was the worst of a bad lot, if you ask me.” Miss Bell gave an emphatic sniff.
“Inarguably,” said Stephen. “And I will catch up with her, in due course.”
“I’m sure you will.” Crane looked around. “Meanwhile, what do we do with all the bodies? And what the hell do we tell Sir James?”
“We’ll have to burn the Thwaites, at least. Is there any chance of a tragic house fire?” Stephen asked Miss Bell.
Miss Bell tapped her lip thoughtfully. “Baines’s house would do. It’s isolated enough.”
“But what would Lady Thwaite have been doing there?” asked Crane.
Stephen shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Look at the corpses, Lucien, we can’t let people see that. We fire a house with the bodies in it and leave a terrible mystery, or we burn them here and their families never find out they’re dead. I say the former unless anyone has a good reason not to. Let’s leave Bruton and Haining here, I’ll get the magpies to take them. And I hope someone drove, because we’re going to need a carriage.”
Chapter Nineteen
Later—significantly later, leaving an isolated house burning—Stephen finished washing his hands in the scullery and walked back through Piper’s long corridors until he reached the library door, outside which Crane was leaning, propped by his shoulders against the doorframe.
“Hello.”
