“Alright,” she replied quietly.
Keeping her gaze averted from the body, she turned to the door and stepped back out into the hallway. Once there, she waited for Myles and Isaac to join her. She didn’t want to go with them but if it helped to prove her innocence then she would. It hurt, more than she cared to admit, that Myles might think her capable of such a dastardly crime as murder. If accompanying him on a tour of the house in search of the real culprit helped ease his doubts about her then she would do it.
Besides, if you are honest, you want to stay with Myles, a small voice warned her, and she knew it was right.
Estelle jumped nervously when the lock on the door clicked quietly behind them. She tugged her shawl tighter around her shoulders with a shiver. To her disappointment, Myles didn’t slide an arm around her waist like he had in the bed chamber. Instead, he issued her with a stern look.
“Don’t wander off. I don’t like taking you with us but there is nowhere else you can be safe right now,” Myles warned.
Isaac hissed a frustrated breath through his teeth. Myles glared at him.
“I know you think she did it but consider the facts, Isaac. Estelle couldn’t possibly know our whereabouts to get those letters to us, could she? Besides, I am sure someone could confirm she was in the village only yesterday, so she couldn’t have been in Crosskey, or London where those letter’s arrived.”
Isaac didn’t look convinced but didn’t argue any further. He issued Estelle a menacing glare that warned her of dire consequences if she didn’t follow his instructions to the letter.
Estelle wanted to protest her innocence but suspected she was just going to make a bad situation worse still, and so wisely remained silent.
Cranbury chose that moment to appear at the end of the hallway, his face a mask of uncertainty and worry.
“Call the staff together and keep them together. Someone is responsible for this. Nobody enters or leaves this house, do you understand? I want this house locked tightly until we can find out who did this,” Myles instructed; his voice harsh.
Cranbury nodded and wordlessly hurried off to carry out his instructions to the letter. Myles knew the whole house would be thrown into chaos but, as far as he could see that was good because it meant everyone would be increasingly vigilant and would question anything that was even the slightest bit unusual from now on. He wanted them to contemplate where they had been this morning, and what each other had done. That way, if anybody had seen something but not really considered it all that important they might tell someone, and the culprit would be found sooner.
“This is a big house,” Estelle said. “How do we search it?”
“We start at the top and work down,” Isaac snapped.
“Look, I know you are upset about what has happened but don’t take it out on our guest. Estelle is, just like everyone else, innocent until proven guilty and, as such, is to be considered a guest in this house, just as you are, Isaac. I would ask you to behave with better decorum. A lapse in manners in whatever circumstance is unacceptable,” Myles warned darkly.
It was the first time he had ever dressed his cousin down in such a way. He regretted it, especially in front of a guest, but it had to be done. He ignored the niggling doubt which began to form in the back of his mind that Isaac had a point, and turned toward his cousin.
“We all stay together while we do this. If you don’t think you can be civil, go back to your room, close the door, and stay there. I am sure you will hear the commotion if we find somebody,” he ordered.
“I am coming too,” Isaac argued.
“Just
don’t do anything rash if we find somebody,” Myles warned. “They need to go to prison for this. As far as I am concerned they can swing from the hangman’s gibbet.”
“Well, we won’t find them standing here in the hallway, now will we?”
“Wouldn’t it be better to start to search downstairs?” Estelle murmured suddenly.
She hated to interrupt, especially when tensions were running so high, but the words burst forth before she could stop them. “I mean, if someone committed such a heinous crime, wouldn’t their instinct be to run for freedom? They would go downstairs and try to get out of the house, wouldn’t they?”
Myles shook his head. “I can understand your logic, Estelle, but we are trapped here. Whoever killed Gerald only had to look out of the window this morning to know that.”
“So they trapped themselves here as well?” Estelle frowned. She shivered and looked about her warily.
Myles took great comfort from what he suspected was her instinctive response. He shared a look with Isaac, who had also seen her fear, and softened his stance.
“So he, or she, could do it again?” she whispered, her voice full of trepidation.
“I am afraid so,” Myles sighed.
“We need to be armed,” Isaac said. Now that he had started to calm down a bit, logic had resurfaced and he realised just how foolish he had been. To wander off into the darkest corners of the house to find a murderer with no way to defend himself was tantamount to suicide.
“Let’s go and get the guns out of my study. Then we can start to search,” Myles suggested, in no way eager to search the house unarmed himself.