An Earl Out of Time (Time Into Time)

‘Oh no, Miss, she is very healthy, but he said one could never be too careful with the wellbeing of a young lady.’ That sounded like a direct quote. ‘His lordship is very protective.’

The room was small, made cramped by a narrow truckle bed jammed in against the tall clothes presses and chest of drawers. The dressing table, I’d noted, was in the main bedroom. There was no window, but I supposed the maid slept with the door ajar in order to be able to listen out for whatever emergency Lord Cottingham’s vivid imagination conjured up. Then I recalled why I was there and mentally apologised. The emergency had happened.

‘And you drank warm milk before you went to bed and don’t remember anything else?’

‘No, Miss. Miss Trenton was quite as usual that evening. She’d had dinner at home, with his lordship. There were no guests. I undressed my lady and brushed her hair when she had put on her nightgown. She said she was going to read for a bit, so I trimmed her lamp and left her to it. I’d been up since five, so it was a treat to get to bed and not to have to wait up for her.’

‘And you didn’t hear anything in the night?’

‘No, Miss. I woke up and there was this terrible thumping and shouting and I felt ever so queer. I dragged myself out of bed just as the door was broken down – his lordship had put his shoulder to it. He came tumbling in, almost flattened me, he did.’

‘So it was definitely locked?’

She nodded, her black curls bobbing under her starched cap. ‘I saw his lordship pick the key up from the floor over there.’ She pointed to a spot on the carpet.

Or the door was locked from the outside and he brought the key in, concealed in his hand, and pretended to pick it up. I had seen that in TV murder mysteries several times. ‘And what was missing – besides Miss Trenton?’

‘Nothing at all, Miss, just a day dress and shoes and so on – what she’d been wearing that afternoon.’

‘How was the door was locked on the inside if she had gone?’ Did that prove she went out of the window?

The maid stared at me, apparently confused. ‘I don’t know, Miss. Put like that, it’s a proper mystery.’

‘You checked the room yourself, even though you were feeling unwell from the drugged milk? And no-one else searched in here?’

‘Well, yes, Miss, it was me what checked. And no, no-one else has looked.’

It took me half an hour. No-one came to find where I had got to, but I guessed Lucian would have pretty much exhausted his social chit-chat by now. Either that or he was having his ear talked off by the anxious brother. It was frustrating because I wanted to have a look at the yard and garden and I needed to talk to the other servants, Cook in particular. She would be the most powerful woman in the household.

‘Thank you, Martha,’ I said, taking a last look round the pretty, frustrating, room. What had I expected? That I would pick up a book and a note would fall out saying, Meet me at midnight in the Square, signed with someone’s name in full?

Where was Miss Trenton? In a lover’s arms… or cold in a shallow grave?

Lucian was standing in the hall talking to the butler who was handing him his hat and cane.

‘Ah, there you are, Cousin. Cottingham has had to leave for an appointment at Bow Street. He is hiring Runners.’

‘Very sensible, I’m sure. We need to look at the garden and service yard now,’ I told the butler as though I expected there to be no difficulty about it whatsoever.

He blinked, but he gestured to a door at the back of the hall without making a protest. ‘This way, Madam. My lord.’

‘Thank goodness for that,’ I said as we walked down a few steps onto the tiny circle of grass and out of his hearing. ‘He must assume the permission for me to interview the maid extends more widely.’

‘What did you find? Anything?’ Lucian took my arm and guided me to a winding path that vanished behind some shrubs. ‘I want to look at the back gate.’

‘Nothing positive. Let’s sit for a moment.’ There was a cast iron bench decorated in a fern pattern in a rose arbour that screened it from the house. I sat down and Lucian joined me, sitting just close enough for me to feel

his warmth. He shifted, lifted his arm as though to rest it along the seat behind me, then seemed to change his mind.

‘The maid’s story hasn’t changed,’ I reported. I leaned back and took a deep breath: growing green things, the ever-present coal smoke and the faint unpleasant rumour that warned that an outside privy was close by. ‘The door was locked from the inside, she is certain. Unless Cottingham actually brought the key with him and pretended to pick it up from the carpet.’

‘Why should he do that?’

‘As I said, the close family always top the list of suspects.’ Lucian looked incredulous and I shrugged. ‘I admit, he doesn’t look as though he is trying to hide something. I have never seen anyone with such an open-looking face, and he seems frantic. I could not see any way to get out of her room except by the door or the window.’ I pointed up. ‘But that is over the sunken service area.’ It looked even higher from outside. ‘It doesn’t seem very likely to me that she could have got down a ladder in long skirts, certainly not unwillingly, but we ought to check for marks on the ground.

‘The room is delightful and the maid says that her brother looks after her indulgently. I searched, but without lifting the rugs and testing the floorboards, or dismantling the bed, I can see no caches. Other than a taste for somewhat lurid novels she appears to be the sheltered, innocent young lady everyone says that she is.’

‘Da – That is to say – ’