CHAPTER VIII
Maud Ricardo invariably enjoyed her dinner after a headache had worn off, and to-night there were all the things she liked best to eat. She talked to Terry about the different dishes, and how nice it was to be able to choose what you liked without fear of growing fat. She did not notice that the butler and footman looked very pale, exchanging fearful glances and even a whispered word now and then; but Terry noticed, and wondered if there had been a domestic crisis. Perhaps, she thought, the cook had had a fit, or one of the servants had fallen downstairs. At all events, there was something strange afoot.
The two ladies went back to the drawing-room after dinner, and Maud suggested the terrace for coffee. "We shall see the moon rise," she said; "and, do you know, we can look across from our hill to Friars' Moat, and get a glimpse of the lights twinkling there. One could signal across, if one liked."
It was the butler who brought the tray, not a footman, as usual; and when Mrs. and Miss Ricardo had each taken a tiny old Dresden cup and drunk her coffee, he still hovered vaguely.
"What is it, Dodson?" Maud asked, at last awake to the fact that all was not as it should be in the servants' world.
"Why, madam, as a matter of fact I hardly know how to tell you." Dodson swallowed drily. "But I thought, if we kept it till dinner was over, it would be best, and then"
"Are any of you ill or dead?" Mrs. Ricardo inquired in a slightly injured tone, for it was bad luck enough for one day that she should have a headache. Nobody else in the house had a right to have anything.
"None of us, madam. But—a dreadful thing has happened. One of the grooms got the news, and brought it to the house, just before dinner, madam."
Maud grew pale. She was rather a selfish woman, but she loved her husband.
"Not not an accident to the Formidable?" she stammered.
"Oh, no, madam, not so bad as that. It's Lady Hereward. She's dead, madam—murdered."
Mrs. Ricardo's head began to ache again, as if it had been struck by a hammer. She gave a little cry, which sounded almost as if she were angry.
"It's impossible," she exclaimed. "You can't know what you're talking about."
"I only wish, madam, it was a mistake," said the butler. "But I'm afraid there s no chance of that. Her ladyship was found dead this afternoon in Riding Wood, up by the Tower. I believe she had been shot."
Maud felt sick, as if she were going to faint. Her weak nature reached out for help and comfort to some one stronger than herself. Like a frightened child, she turned to Terry, but Terry seemed transformed into a marble statue. Her face was drained of blood, and an expression of horror had frozen upon the clear features. As well seek comfort from a dead woman!
"Terry!" cried Mrs. Ricardo. Terry, do you hear what he says. Milly Hereward—murdered! Shot in the woods where I walk nearly every day. Oh, it can't be true! Such things don't happen—not to people we know. Milly couldn't be murdered. Why don't you speak? Terry—I believe I'm going to faint."
Then Terry did rouse herself. Her gaze came back from a distance, where it had been held by a terrible picture. She was very cold, and it was an effort to move, as if, even to stir a finger, she had had to break a sheath of ice which encased her body like armour. But she did move, going swiftly to Maud, and sitting down on the sofa beside her.
"Bring brandy," she said to the butler, as she slipped an arm round her cousin's wife, and clasped a hand that groped for hers.
"It's too much for me," Maud murmured. "I've been so ill all day."
"I'm very sorry, madam, if I broke the news too abruptly," said Dodson. "We all thought you ought to know, and would wish to be told, and I hoped by waiting till after dinner"
"Yes, yes; I'm sure Mrs. Ricardo will think you did right," Terry reassured him. The brandy, please, as quickly as possible."
By the time the butler had returned with a decanter, Maud was so much herself again that curiosity had conquered horror. She thought it rather hard-hearted of Terry to take the hideous news so quietly, for long ago she and Milly Hereward had been intimate friends. Poor Milly! Dead! She could not make it seem true, and said so. Milly was not at all the sort of woman to be murdered. And that afternoon! No, it couldn't, couldn't be true. It was hardly decent.
"Drink this, dear," said Terry, so gently that to Maud her voice sounded cold. After all, she thought, Southern women felt far more than others. The mellow old brandy did Maud good. Her heart grew warm again, and her tongue was loosed.
"Tell us everything, Dodson," she directed, as the butler lingered uncertainly, not sure whether it was desirable to go, or wait to be dismissed. "Are you sure some one hasn't made up a horrid cock-and-bull story?"
"Only too sure, madam. Everybody knew already. Jennings heard the news at Riding St. Mary. He'd taken some letters to post, from the servants' hall"
"I don't care why he went. Who told him?"
"It was all over the village, madam. Mrs. Barnard, from the home farm at Riding Wood, had sent a man on her bicycle for the doctor and the police."
"Why Mrs. Barnard?" asked Maud, who had no idea of fainting now.
"It seems, madam, that Sir Ian Hereward himself found the body, and came down to the farm looking for Barnard, who used to serve under him, if you remember, madam"
It struck Maud that Terry's arm round her waist became suddenly rigid, like a slim bar of iron, then relaxed and fell limp; but she was too intensely excited to think much about Terry just then.
"Sir Ian found her—dead! How dreadful!"
"I believe he got anxious because her ladyship didn't return from a walk, and went out to look for her."
Mrs. Ricardo leapt into the loosened girdle of Terry's arm, and turned to stare at her.
"Oh!" she gasped, shuddering. "You were at the house, waiting for her, and all the while she was lying murdered. Now you mustn't faint, Terry!"
"I won't faint," the other answered, in a dull, tired tone. "Don't think about me."
"I can't think about anybody or anything but Milly," said Mrs. Ricardo, entirely unconscious that she was thinking mostly about herself. "Oh, how it frightens one! It makes one feel as if we were all murdered. Dodson, have they an idea who did it?"
"No, madam," Dodson answered reluctantly. There was robbery. Her ladyship's jewelry was taken, I understand; her rings, and a brooch, all her money, and a little gold case she was in the habit of carrying"
"Oh, poor Milly! her vanity box. She always had it dangling from her wrist. I suppose some wretched tramp must have seen it."
"Tramps don't generally have revolvers, madam, that's the queer part; and from what Jennings hears, her ladyship met her death from a revolver shot. They're saying in the village already, it would appear, that there's more than meets the eye."
"Oh, it must have been a tramp!" exclaimed Terry. It was the first time that she had broken out impulsively, since the news came.
"In any case, the police are searching the woods," announced Dodson. "It will go hard if they don't hit on some clue."
"Sir Ian must have gone to look for her, after you left Friars' Moat," said Maud, turning again to Terry, to be once more repelled by the frozen, far-away look which she could not help resenting as selfish.
"Yes," Terry replied, as if mechanically.
"What time did they find out?" Mrs. Ricardo went on.
"I don't know exactly, madam. Between five and six, I believe; but they say the poor lady had been dead more than an hour then."
"What have—they done with her—with the body? But oh, how awful, Terry, to be speaking of poor Milly as a 'body!'"
"They would have carried her home, I should say, madam," the butler volunteered an opinion.
"Poor Sir Ian!" mourned Mrs. Ricardo. "It will almost kill him. And to think of his being there with—with his murdered wife, alone. How he will miss Eric Forestier! He has no intimate friends since Eric died. I wish Norman were here."
"Yes," said Terry.
Maud stared reproachfully. "You hardly seem to sympathize at all!" she cried. "I suppose you're numbed by the shock."
"I suppose I am," the younger woman answered.
"We shan't sleep to-night," wailed Mrs. Ricardo. "I dread the long hours. Oh, how my head aches again. I feel as if there were a horrible tramp hidden under every bed in this house. If only they had caught the man, it would be a little better. Have they no suspicions, Dodson?"
"Well, madam, to tell the truth, Jennings brought in a very queer report from the village," the butler replied, half fearfully, half with a kind of gruesome joy in having something further of mystery and horror to report. There's a vague rumour that young Mr. Ian Barr returned to-day, and was seen going into the woods, but no one saw him come out again. The tale is that it was her ladyship who lost Mr. Barr his place as steward, and everybody knows that he was the only person she seemed to have a dislike for. Mr. Barr was always a young gentleman with a high temper, madam, and they've been saying in the servants hall to-night, what if, in a sudden fit of temper"
"No, no!" Mrs. Ricardo cut him short. "I like Mr. Barr. I won't believe it of him. And yet—ah, but it must have been a tramp!"
"Let us hope so, madam," the butler responded solemnly. He had no sympathy for tramps.