There are those who will assert that Providence robbed animals of sense, and thus consigned them to serve at man's pleasure. But it was my lot to have a country childhood, and though I was denied a mount of my own, was often to observe my dear Madam Lefroy[27] in command of hers. That she worked with the animal's intelligence, rather than doubting the existence of such, was apparent. And so I determined to discover what had so terrified Lady Bess about the gate.

Upon approaching it, I found nothing amiss — it seemed a gate much like any other. A scrap of fabric, grey against the whiteness of the snow, caught my eye, and I bent to retrieve it; a fine handkerchief of lawn, with Isobel's looping monogram. She left them behind her wherever she went; I had myself observed her drop them countless times, and surmised she must keep a running account with a purveyor in Town. But how had one come to be here? I secured it in my pocket, and turned to study the paddock.

As if for the first time, I saw what had filled my sight unnoticed before: several sets of footprints, crossed and trampled one upon the other; led to the small hay shed at one side of the paddock, and the door was slightly ajar. Fanny Delahoussaye again?

There was no sound from within at my approach, unless it was drowned to silence by the excited nickers that rang out from the horses’ end of the field. I touched the wooden door with gloved fingertips, and it slowly swung back on creaking hinges. There could be nothing inside, I determined once my eyes had adjusted to the light, but hay — great mounds of it piled from floor to ceiling, with a slight dusting of snow where cracks in the roof had given way to the weather. The grooms, perhaps, had visited the place upon turning out the horses, and left a sprinkling of fodder fresh upon the snow. I made as if to turn away, when my sharper senses stopped me. The scent of dried summer grass — sweet and musty enough to send one sneezing — had been overlaid with something animal. My heartbeat quickened as I put a name to the odour: it was blood, still warm and wet, and soaked into the hay at my feet.

I bent down and studied the floor, discerning in the dimness a blacker stain. The wetness led to the dark corner of the shed, and though my heart misgave me, I felt that I must know what lay there in the fodder. Lifting my skirts and treading carefully, I crept towards the farthest bale.

The fingers of a hand, reaching in endless supplication from a covering shroud of hay, stopped me still; and for an instant, my courage failed me. That it was a woman's hand I readily discerned, and something very like terror held me in its grip for the space of several heartbeats. But I recoiled at the knowledge of my faint head, and determined to go on rather than back. I reached a gloved hand to the hay and pulled it aside.

It was the maid Marguerite, and in no fit state to be seen.

Her throat had been cut from ear to ear; and her head hung at a lugubrious angle from her neck, which was bedaubed with the welter of blood that had poured from her obscene wound. Her sightless eyes were rolled back into her head so that only the whites were apparent, and her mouth was agape in a silent scream. But it was the limpness of her body, thrown like a rag doll's in the mound of hay, that affected me most strongly; the helter-skelter of limbs, nerveless beyond all mastery, were mute testament to departed life. Had she made the sign of the cross, eyes wide with terror as she died?

I should like to record that I viewed the mangled girl with the equanimity befitting a heroine of Mrs. Radcliffe, or that a black curtain fell before my eyes, and all sensibility failed me, as Charlotte Smith would have it[28]; but, in truth, I lost my head and screamed at the fullest pitch of my lungs, turning and running from the gruesome shed without a backward glance.

Once outside in the air, trembling and frantic, I forced myself to halt and consider the facts. The maid was dead, and hardly by her own hand; that she had been murdered, and brutally so, must be made known to Sir William Reynolds at once. But what of her presence, here in the field? Had she been hiding by day in the shed, the better to post her poisonous letters by night? Or had she been lured here from hiding by the summons of her murderer? If the former, a hasty interview of the grooms should satisfy all doubts; either they would admit to consciousness of her sheltering in the field, or profess it to be impossible.

That she had been murdered in the shed was readily apparent, for had she been dispatched elsewhere and secreted in the hay under cover of darkness, the marks of her blood must surely have been registered on the snow that lay everywhere about. It had ceased falling by the previous night's supper; and the blood was too fresh, by my judgment, to have been spilt very long past.

It was then that I became sensible of the import of the footprints that I had first noted leading towards die shed; and bent to study them more closely. That the one foot was Marguerite's own, seemed clear; and that the other represented a man's larger boot, was equally obvious; but beyond this I could tell nothing. Was the man's print that of a poor labourer or a wealthy gentleman? The bright morning sun had warmed the snow just enough to soften the imprint of both shoes, leaving an outline that revealed nothing of the leather surfaces themselves.

I stood up and craned for some view of the groom, James; he appeared as I did so, a dark speck on the hill above the paddock fence, waving gaily. I raised my hand in return, and with new determination ducked back into the hut.

If the girl had been summoned to her death, she might yet bear the missive somewhere about her person, and so posthumously identify her murderer. That a man bent upon silencing her would also have surmised as much, I acknowledged, but deemed the search no less worthy. When James arrived, Marguerite should become the property of the law, with all the hullabaloo and confusion such a gruesome discovery necessitated; I had best undertake the duty alone, and quickly.

I allowed myself a moment to adjust to the poor light, drew a quick breath against the sickening smell of blood, and determined not to glance at the poor maid's face as I reached for the pockets of her gown. She lay twisted on her back, thrusting one hip upward and guarding the other; and I confess I was forced to wrestle with her corpse the smallest degree to obtain access to the nether side; but it was for nought. Her pockets were empty.

I hesitated an instant and considered the ways of country folk. Where would a simple girl secrete a letter; safe from prying eyes? In her bodice, of course.

Her coarse nankeen gown was a fearful thing, while the linen of her shift was rucked up and stiffening with blood; I bethought me of my gloves, and removed the right, the better to preserve it from stain. And, God help me, I reached into the upper edge of the dead woman's shift and felt briefly around her corset, closing my eyes as I did.

It was there, the faintest edge of folded paper lodged against the whalebone, and holding my breath, I plucked it out between two fingertips. Just time enough to tuck it into the pocket of my cloak and wipe my hand on some unspoilt hay. Then I drew on my glove once more and ducked through the doorway, my terror on my face, to meet James the groom.