Medi-Evil 3 Read Online Free Page B

Chillerton ?”
      “None at all. The Chillertons were regarded as goodly neighbours . I mean, they had political differences with Lady Hannah, but isn’t that the way of things all over?”
      “Who else is here aside from the guests?”
      “Our cook, Agnes, who’s an elderly sort, and two chamber maids, Martha and Charlotte, and they’re bits of girls. Neither could hurt a fly.”
      O’Calligan regarded the blood staining the floor and the bed-linen in the corner. “How wealthy were the Chillertons ? Did anyone stand to gain from their deaths?”
      Cedric regarded him curiously. “Am I to understand, captain, that you’re taking some kind of investigator role here?”
      O’Calligan shrugged. “You’ve seen how the land lies. At this moment, I’m a very suitable suspect.”
      “With respect, anyone who knows you knows that that’s nonsense. You’re a proper gentleman.”
      “That’s not the way the Prince of Orange’s magistrates might see it.” O’Calligan scanned the room for the least clue. “My future hangs by a thread as it is. For all Lady Foxworth’s good will, this incident might turn that thread into a rope.”
      Cedric considered this, then said: “Well, in answer to your question, there’s no-one here like to benefit from Lord and Lady Chillerton’s deaths. They have a son at Court – a clerk in the Exchequer, I believe. He stands to inherit everything, but he’s not here. He probably wouldn’t have had too long to wait for his inheritance anyway.”
      “And what’s that ?” O’Calligan wondered. He indicated a bell suspended from a cord in a high corner. “There’s one of those in my room too.”
      “That’s from the old days,” Cedric explained. “The Foxworths were always sea-folk. They were awarded Silvercombe Hall for services against the Spanish Armada. But the original family this house was confiscated from was Catholic. They used to hold Masses here, and shelter priests and nuns and such. A bell like that was put in each room. They could be rung from a secret place, to alert guests should the priest-hunters come by.”
      O’Calligan glanced around at him. “Does that mean there are priests’ holes as well?”
      “There were, but they’re all gone now. The whole inside of the house was refurbished by Lady Hannah’s father, thirty years ago.”
      Despite this, they spent another ten minutes making rounds of the room, tapping on each wall, but there wasn’t so much as a hollow thump to greet their knuckles.
     
    *
     
    Not surprisingly, the Christmas Day hunt was abandoned. Even without the atrocious murders, it would have been impossible to send the hounds out. The gardens and moors were still deep under snow, while flakes continued to fall, no longer tossed by a gale but thickly and heavily in an unrelenting cascade. This also prevented anyone from leaving the hall and heading the sixteen miles to Minehead , where they might summon help.
      Shortly before luncheon was served, Lord Lightbourne took it on himself to question the domestic staff, which he did unduly harshly as far as O’Calligan was concerned. Lightbourne , the Irishman decided, was probably the sort of master who would willingly take a horsewhip to his servants. He sat the cook and her two maids in window-seats in the drawing room, then questioned their every move on the previous night in a tone so severe that it would have done Matthew Hopkins proud. Needless to say, he reduced them to tears, but he didn’t stop there, insisting on regaling them with the ghoulish details of the murders, determined, in his own words, to “break their stubborn impudence”.
      However, Lightbourne wasn’t the only person O’Calligan formed opinions about that morning. There was a mournful mood: people were understandably subdued, but were all of them shocked rather than grief-stricken. Lady Foxworth’s relationship with the Chillertons had not always been as amicable as old Cedric