Page 28 of The Lawrence Browne Affair
“Oh,” said the vicar, dragging it out to more syllables than strictly necessary, each of them soaked in unwanted concern. “I’ve heard two people say they saw Lord Radnor stealing a sheep.”
Georgie nearly spit out a mouthful of ale but managed to keep his expression neutral. “I fail to see how Radnor could possibly be going about stealing sheep when he never leaves the grounds of his estate. He hardly ever goes farther than the garden.”
“And yet, David Prouse swears that he saw the earl lead away a sheep. I heard him tell his cousin.”
Georgie knew perfectly well that people saw what they wanted to see. He had depended on that very suggestibility many times during his swindles. “And what does Radnor want with your Mr. Prouse’s sheep? Surely if he has a fancy for sheep, he can afford his own.”
“This sheep . . . oh dear.” Halliday now seemed ready to expire from awkwardness. He was gripping his own glass of ale so fiercely that Georgie feared it might shatter. “Lord Radnor is supposed to have used the sheep for some kind of . . . ensorcellment.” He downed half the glass in one go, which was rather coarser behavior than Georgie might have expected in a vicar. “I gather it was an unusual sheep,” he added, with a shrug of helpless bemusement.
Georgie goggled. How the hell special could a sheep possibly be? Never in his life had he been so glad to have been raised in London by proper criminals rather than left to the care of rustics in a backwater like this. “Mrs. Kemp’s caul,” he said, rubbing his temples. “I daresay that was intended for another round of hexes or some such.”
The vicar made a plaintive sound. “Precisely.”
“Do you not have a Sunday school where people can be disillusioned of this nonsense?”
Halliday muttered something to do with money and time.
“In case any further members of your addlepated flock come to you with tales of the earl’s dark arts, do let them know that I have turned his lordship’s quarters inside out without finding anything even remotely suggestive of the occult.” He let each word drop with acid crispness.
“Ah yes.” The vicar shifted in his seat. “Quite.”
“Was this spate of dark magicks”—Georgie rolled his eyes—“what motivated you to have the earl’s mental competence looked into? I gather he’s been in much the same condition for years, so what precipitated this sudden interest?”
“Well,” the vicar stammered. “I received a letter.”
“A letter,” Georgie repeated, dread pooling in his stomach. “What kind of letter?”
“It would seem that an, ah, interested party—a connection of Radnor’s heir—might seek to have the estate put into a trusteeship.”
“To have Radnor declared incompetent and seize his property, you mean.”
“I’m not certain, but that’s my fear.”
That would destroy Radnor. A loud, unfamiliar courtroom would be hellish for him.
“This is quite beyond what I’m capable of investigating,” Georgie all but spat. “If you were concerned for his lordship’s well-being, you ought to have called in a doctor. You ought to have had Radnor engage a solicitor.”
“He would never have consented to any of that,” Halliday protested.
“True,” Georgie conceded, but he was still furious. At the vicar, at this unknown relation of Radnor’s heir, at Jack for having sent him here in the first place. At Radnor, for making him care.
“I daresay even a warlock’s money is as good as anyone else’s, so we’ll try to solve this problem in the usual way. I need men to drain the gardens on the east side of the castle. His lordship needs a dry trench, and right now he has what looks more like a canal. I don’t know what the going rate is, but I’ll double it.” He trusted that double wages would tempt even the most superstitious souls, especially in a year that had seen such a bad harvest. “If the tenants like him, that will go some distance in stopping gossip and perhaps silencing this relation of his.”
The vicar nodded his assent, and Georgie took his leave as civilly as he could.
Outside, the sun had nearly set. They were in the first week of December, and the days were getting short. The crescent moon was hardly visible through the fog, and Georgie had to pick his way carefully to the lane.
So somebody was out to make Radnor look like a villain. That really was the only explanation Georgie could come up with that didn’t involve widespread lunacy. Somebody had decided to take advantage of the local belief that the Earls of Radnor were a bad lot and mix it all up with a dose of superstition. But who, and why?
Mrs. Ferris knew something, and likely Janet too. He could wheedle the secret from Janet in the usual way—compliments, caresses, promises that would never be fulfilled—but he didn’t have the heart. She was harmless. Hell, she was becoming a friend.
There went another one of his pigeonholes, toppled over into complete chaos.
The lane was still muddy from the other night’s rainfall, and Georgie was going to have a devil of a time cleaning his boots when he got back to his room. Even marooned in Cornwall, he wasn’t going to go about in soiled boots. He tried to stay on the edge of the lane to avoid the wheel ruts and lessen the damage.
Penkellis loomed in the distance. Lit from behind by the setting sun and reduced to a silhouette, it didn’t look half as bad as it did in daylight. The ruined wing was hardly visible, and it was too dark to count the boarded-up windows. Straight and tall, Radnor’s tower looked almost noble.
He must have gotten distracted and forgotten to watch where he was going, because he had wandered off the lane, and the next thing he knew he had landed arse first in cold water.
