Page 17 of The Curse of Penryth Hall
TWENTY MINUTES LATERMrs. Penrose joined me in the morning room with a full tray overladen with sandwiches, biscuits, and little teacakes iced in pink. Gauging from the spread, she’d been waiting her entire life for me to arrive at Penryth. My stomach let out a longing growl, reminding me I’d not eaten since breakfast the day before.
She gestured for me to sit and I did as she suggested, but not before snatching a ginger biscuit and plopping it into my mouth with an audible crunch.
“Has Ruan left?” she asked, picking up a pair of silver tongs. “Sugar?”
“Yes, please. I assume he’s gone by now. I left him in the orchard.” Then another thought struck me. “Oh, good God. What’s he done with the body?” My imagination ignited with possibilities, some more macabre than others. None pleasant. The biscuit grew dry in my mouth.
“Nothing for you to worry over, my lover. Some of the lads from the village helped bring him up to the house while you were upstairs with the mistress.”
“You don’t mean he’s here?”
She lifted her hands in exasperation. A serious slight for a housekeeper under ordinary circumstances, but we were beyond propriety now. “Where else would he be, maid? We’ve cleaned him up as best we can. The constable asked that we lock him in the cellar, to prepare him for burial and to keepthe curious sorts from nosing about. Bothering the poor man’s body.”
“Do you mean to tell me he’s in the storeroom?”
Mrs. Penrose looked wounded at the thought. “Well, it’s not like we laid him alongside Sunday’s joint, if that’s what you’re insinuating. No, he’s cleaned up—the poor soul—and in the old wine cellar. He might have been a loathsome sinner, but that still don’t justify not paying him the proper respects.”
I tried to look suitably mournful for said sinner, but it was a difficult emotion to feign when I was growing increasingly puzzled over the whole situation. Pulling my silver flask from my pocket, I filled her cup first, then my own. “How are you?”
The edge of her mouth curved up slightly and she blinked at me. “Do you know, maid, you are the first person to have asked that this whole wretched day?”
Her words settled uncomfortably in my belly, as my motives for asking were far from innocent.
“I’m as right as I can be.” She took a long drink of the gin-infused tea and sighed heavily.
“Mrs. Penrose…”
“What is it, maid?”
“It’s only… I want to talk to you about what happened in the copse this morning.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “I suspected you might have some questions.”
Somewas an understatement. I had nothing but questions. “It’s only… you seem convinced that it’s the curse, as does Tamsyn.”
“Because it is, maid. It is. I’d hoped Ruan would tell me different but it’s just the same as it was before.” The corners of her mouth tightened in strain and she blew out her breath. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this, it certainly isn’t proper but then again, nothing in your and my acquaintance has been, has it?”
I shook my head. From what I’d gathered, Mrs. Penrose had seen me at my absolute worst. And rather than taking my poor behavior as an indictment against me, she felt duty bound to take me under her wing. An oddly fortuitous turn of events.
“You may as well know the whole of it as you’re in the thick of things.” Seconds ticked by while Mrs. Penrose slowly drew courage from the contents of her cup, her lids heavy as she leaned back into the brocade chair. Black leather shoes, shined but worn, peeped out beneath her fresh gray skirt. “It’s the same as it was afore. Even down to the way the body was laid. I’d hoped… I prayed that Ruan would have noticed something different. That the constable would agree and we’d be well shut of it.” She crossed herself and then downed her cup before jutting it out for me to pour her another.
“Was the previous victim Sir Edward’s uncle then?” I tugged a leg up underneath me in the chair, racking my brain trying to piece together the bits I’d learned from Tamsyn.
She ran her fingers over the rim of the cup hesitantly. “Sir Edward wasn’t supposed to inherit the title. His uncle held it before him. An old bachelor.” She frowned deeply. “They found him in the cowshed. Laid out like we saw this morning. His entrails ripped clean from him. At first they thought it was some sort of wild creature. But there’s nothing in the countryside to kill a man in that fashion.Nothing natural at least. Oh, an adder might do a fellow in. Or he might get gored by a teasy bull. But this was different. This was—”
“Intentional.”
She pressed her lips tight and gave me a firm nod. “That it was, maid. I’ve seen all sorts of things in my life, but I’ve never seen such evil done a soul in any other way.”
The hairs rose up on the back of my neck at her words. “What killed the old baronet, then? Did they ever learn?”
“The curse, maid. The curse. But we didn’t know it then. Not until his pretty young wife was found two weeks later.”
I furrowed my brow. “But I thought you said he was a bachelor.”
Mrs. Penrose set her cup down and leaned forward, the chair creaking softly. “He was, he married not long before his death. I had just been brought on to be her lady’s maid, though I never set eyes on her alive.”
“What happened?” I mumbled between bites of my tea sandwich.
