is still at large and might come after you too, if he thinks he can still save the fortune he always wanted to have.’
Alkmene looked at Jake. ‘Fitzroy Walker?’
Jake nodded. ‘Has to be.’ He checked his watch. ‘It is too late for us to return to London tonight. We need two hours to get back to the village on foot and… We will have to do it tomorrow.’
He looked at the young man again. ‘Take care.’
He nodded and stepped back. ‘Thank you for coming here. I do not show myself in the village.’
Alkmene frowned at him. ‘You do not… But…how? You were not spying on us at Wallace Thomson’s house this morning, and later at the church when I was looking at the family grave of the Sullivans?’
He shook his head. ‘I never go there. I had a lad take the letter into town and leave it on the counter at the inn.’
Alkmene frowned. If he had not been spying on them, then who had?
And why?
Jake had already pulled the basket out of her hand. ‘It’s still a long walk back, Lady Alkmene. Let me carry that thing. We’d better think up a plan along the way for how to smoke out Fitzroy Walker. Because I have a feeling he will be harder to get than we thought.’
Alkmene’s feet were positively on fire when they reached the inn again. She asked the innkeeper’s wife to bring her a basin with lukewarm water, large enough to put her feet into. Also some sherry and some cheese and cold cuts.
Jake hitched a brow at her. ‘Used to command?’
Alkmene was too tired to mind, or retort. She just dragged herself up the stairs and once the water had come, dipped her feet into it. It was bliss to sit and let the water play around her feet, through her toes, while the sherry warmed her from the inside out and the cheese caressed her palate.
OK, it wasn’t French and refined like at home, but with an empty stomach everything tasted sweet.
Sitting with her bed pillow behind her back, she closed her eyes and enjoyed the sense of elation that they were so close to the solution. They had their killer identified and only needed a strategy to smoke him out.
Only, hmmm?
Jake had been right that it might be harder than they thought. After all, they had no proof that Fitzroy Walker had been at the house that night, face to face with Silas Norwhich.
As long as they could not place him there, they had nothing to offer to the police. All the pieces they did have formed an intriguing picture, a motive certainly, but they also needed opportunity.
Maybe Fitzroy Walker had already cleverly bought an alibi for the night, convincing some friends or men from a bar to lie for him that he had been with them.
Maybe he would snub them to their faces, proving them wrong in their assumption it had to have been him. But who else?
Somebody knocked on her door.
‘Yes?’ she called, too tired to get up.
Jake came in, carrying her scarf in his hand. ‘This was still in my pocket. I should have returned it to you when we came in.’
She smiled at him a moment. ‘Thank you. Put it on the bed, will you? Thanks also for retrieving it and keeping it safe. It was a present from my father, and he is fussy when I lose things.’ She yawned. ‘I feel bushed. I need sleep more than anything else. You have dinner alone, if you want to. I am turning in just as soon as my poor feet have cooled down.’
Jake laughed. ‘You do know that if you stay too long in that water, your pretty little feet will get all wrinkled?’
‘Like that lasts for ever.’ She stretched her arms over her head. ‘You can’t rile me tonight, Jake. I feel glorious.’
Jake stood, tall, imposing. ‘Strange. You met a man who was done a grave injustice and you feel glorious?’
‘Well, he is about to inherit all of Silas Norwhich’s estate. That should make up for something. I suppose if Mary Sullivan still loves pretty things, she will have some now.’
Jake huffed. ‘That is so typical for your kind of people. Thinking money can buy off anything. As if injustice can simply be settled by paying a price into an account.’
He turned to the door. ‘I am glad we are not eating together tonight. I couldn’t swallow a bite.’
He slammed the door shut. The bang reverberated through the floor and creaked in the beams overhead.
Alkmene sat stiffly, suddenly sensing the water was getting too cold, her poor feet were freezing and her stomach was warm from sherry but could perhaps have used some more substantial sustenance.
But after what Jake had just yelled at her, she was not going down. She didn’t want to see his arrogant face.
Not tonight, maybe not tomorrow either. He was dead set on misconstruing everything she said. Blaming her for the bad feeling that he had over his mother’s ordeal. But she had nothing to do with his mother, his father, his past. He should stop making her pay for an injustice that was not her fault.
Despite Alkmene’s recent assertion he could not rile her, her happy feeling had vanished completely now, and she felt so tired she could just cry. Whatever they accomplished together, it did not change Jake’s views of her. He wanted to hold on to his prejudice.
Perhaps she had to distance herself from him to maintain her dignity. Just look at her – almost shedding tears because he was so unreasonable.
First thing in the morning she had to arrange for a car here in the village, to get back to London on her own.
What on earth did she need Jake Dubois for anyway?
He was just an insufferable cad!
Alkmene awoke with a slight tightness behind her eyes. Usually it was only there if she had stayed out too late partying with Freddie and his friends, drinking too much sherry and playing cards for a pound a point. Losing always made her wake up sour.
But this was not her bedroom, was it?
Opening her eyes, she realized it was the inn where she had spent the night before as well.
It was still dark outside. Sleep had not lasted as long as she would have liked. Reality fell upon her: Jake’s harsh assessment of her that had spoiled her happy mood about the day. Her decision to travel back to London alone.
It didn’t give her any satisfaction. Their trip here had been such a huge success, they should have congratulated each other on their achievement. Instead Jake had ruined it all with those words. He had some axe to grind about the past, but she refused to be the object of it, all the time.
She sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. It was so quiet still. In London there always seemed to be some kind of bustle, liveliness. Here nothing stirred.
She slipped out of bed and looked out into the village square. The dead oak stood like a silent sentry, its naked branches clawing at the skies.
Among the graves beside the church something took shape in the gloom. A dark silhouette moving among the tombstones. It was impossible to make out whether it was a man or a woman. It seemed like a strange hour to go see a grave.
Worried, Alkmene pushed her forehead against the pane but could make out no more. She had no field glasses and even if she did, they would be of little use, with the dim light.
She turned to the bed and ditched her nightgown, slipped into a blouse, tweed skirt and coat. Every blister hurt when she stepped into her shoes with bare feet.
Then she moved to the door and opened it a crack. Nothing stirred in the corridor. She went down it on tiptoe, then the stairs…
One