“—Provided he were as cunning as yourself, my lord,” I observed, “but I should never assume so much. Does Miller’s Dale lie in the way from Chatsworth?”

“Not directly. He should lose valuable moments in crossing a tortuous bit of country. I do not think he could possibly have done it, along the road home, and yet appeared at the stated hour.”

“Let us leave, then, the whole tangle of the maid’s flight,” I suggested, “and take up instead the question of her clothes. Why choose Charles Danforth’s attire? For choice it must have been. I do not believe, as Arnold’s sister declared at the Inquest, that Tess was sent naked into the world.”

“Perhaps she did not wish to give rise to comment if she were seen — as Mr. Hemming avows.”

“Then why not wear Andrew Danforth’s clothing? It would be more the style of a besotted female, to sport the attire of her beloved.”

“He is somewhat taller than his brother, and undoubtedly taller than the maid.”

“I cannot recall her relative height,” I admitted, “but surely, if disguise alone was the maid’s object, she might have found ample resources enough within the servants’ wing. Danforth must possess at least one manservant.” I shook my head obstinately. “No, Lord Harold, there is a purpose to her masquerade that worries me greatly. I cannot help believing that she was intended to be mistaken for Charles Danforth. And that George Hemming perceives it.”

Lord Harold studied me gravely. “You think that Hemming is Charles Danforth’s enemy? — That Hemming was here, in the rocks above our path, with the view to killing Charles Danforth? And that he shot the still-room maid in error?”

“Not at all,” I returned, “though such an admirable theory would explain his extreme disquiet upon viewing the body, his avoidance of the Inquest, and his recent confession. I admire your thinking greatly, my lord, but I cannot agree with it. George Hemming is too prosperous a man of affairs, to commence killing off his oldest clients.”

“Then let us have your own view of the case.”

“George Hemming is well-acquainted with Charles Danforth’s enemy — and fears that it was this person’s hand that despatched the maid in error.”

“Jane — Jane! Must you complicate the business so dreadfully?”

I sighed. “It is a woman’s duty in life.”

Lord Harold did not reply. We were just then breasting one of the heights of Miller’s Dale — the very spot where I had paused to draw breath on Tuesday morning, and had considered of the crows.

“But why should anyone expect Mr. Danforth to appear at such an hour, in such a place? He mentioned no summons in the course of the Inquest.”

“He does admit to having dined alone, and to being a restless sleeper. He visited the Masonic Lodge, and thus is known to have been abroad on the Buxton road on Monday night. He admits to having retired, and then to rising once more with the intention of walking through his estate sometime near midnight. — What if that pattern is not unusual? What if it is known to all his domestics, and a good part of his acquaintance? Perhaps the man who killed Tess Arnold expected to find Charles Danforth — and in the variable light of a half-moon, fired upon a single figure toiling up the path from Penfolds in a gentleman’s pantaloons.”

“You said, I think, that Tess Arnold was intended to be mistaken.” Lord Harold had come to a full stop at the brow of the hill, and stood there, breathing lightly, his eyes upon the tips of his Hessians. The gleaming dark leathers were clouded with dust. “If you would mean what I suspect — then someone must have directed the murderer to lie in wait.”

“Of course. The person who wished Tess Arnold dead — as she so decidedly is.”

Lord Harold’s grey eyes flicked over to my own. “The same person who took her into his bed?”

“Why not? Who else could know of both the maid’s circumstances, and Charles Danforth’s habits? Who else should be so admirably suited to setting a snare — but Andrew Danforth?”

“Why not shoot the maid himself? Surely such a course would require less subterfuge than this proxy killer, and a victim in disguise.”

“Remember that Mr. Andrew aspires to politics. Such characters will be marked by their subtlety; outright murder is not in their style. It should be far too dangerous for an impecunious younger son, and might place him, rather than his brother, on the gallows. Better to dine at Chatsworth on the night in question and have one’s movements vouchsafed by a Duke. I’ll wager that Andrew would not go so near a fowling piece as the gun room at Penfolds, before the first of next month.”[10]

“You think it was he who urged the maid to wear Charles Danforth’s clothes,” Lord Harold remarked.

“Provided it was he who procured the gunman. Only in Charles Danforth’s pantaloons could Tess Arnold be killed by Charles Danforth’s enemy. Moreover, local suspicion has turned swiftly on Danforth himself, in no small part because of the maid’s clothes.”

“You believe that Andrew intended his brother, Charles, to wear a noose, so that Andrew might come into his inheritance with the same stroke that rid him of the maid.”

“Charles Danforth has been a most inconvenient figure for the better part of Andrew’s life. But for Charles, he might have inherited all his fond parents intended for him.”

“And but for Tess — he might have had Lady Harriot.”

“—Or so he may be suspected of fearing.”

Lord Harold considered all this in silence, his gaze fixed upon the limestone crag a hundred yards distant.

“And that,” I told him quietly, “is where the poor wretch died.”

THE SCATTERED STONES WERE STILL SPLASHED WITH dried blood, but the birds had departed, and the stench was nearly gone. Lord Harold doubled his elegant frame, his hands upon his knees, and narrowly surveyed the earth about the maidservant’s place of sacrifice.

“Your theory, Jane — excellent though it is — does not explain the mutilation,” he observed.

“No more it does,” I replied serenely. “I was so kind as to leave you matter for thought, my lord. You must have something to engage your restless understanding.”

He smiled crookedly and stood up. “Let us throw blame upon the long-suffering Freemasons,” he suggested, “and be satisfied. I can observe nothing on the ground, Jane — the earth hereabouts is too trampled.”

“But surely you are sportsman enough to study the surrounding landscape, and determine where her killer was fixed?”

“The lead ball found its mark in the center of her forehead, I think you said.”

Unbidden, the memory of that visage — so untroubled in the sleep of Death, the ragged hole of the wound so incongruous above the fair curls — rose like a spectre in my mind. I said with difficulty, “A remarkable shot.”

“Too remarkable by half. Were there scorings in the dust, suggestive of the body’s having been dragged?”

“—As though she were struck by the ball elsewhere, and brought here to the base of the rock for … anatomisation?”

“If that is the case”—he scrabbled swiftly back along the path we had already traversed, then forward again some distance, along the way Tess Arnold might have come—“there would be blood spilled where she first fell.”

We cast about, eyes narrowed, for the space of several moments. The sun beat down fiercely, and not a breath of air stirred; the sound of a bird’s strident call brought a prickling of gooseflesh along my arm.

“Ah ha!”

Lord Harold was crouching in a patch of crushed bracken perhaps fifteen yards from where I stood. I hastened to join him.

“The ball hit her here, Jane, and she fell heavily across that rock.” He pointed to a crimson smear on a broad, dimpled boulder. “She must have lain dead some time — observe how much blood has soaked into the earth. It would naturally be disguised by the grasses”—he poked at them with his ebony walking stick, and revealed a broad brown stain—“and Sir James would hardly think to look for it; it cannot really concern him where the maid fell.”