Forster paused with his shovel idle in his hands. `I wouldn't know nothin' 'bout that.'
Sebastian kept a wary eye on the man's shovel. `I've also heard you and Miss Tennyson didn't exactly get along.'
`Who said that?'
`Does it matter?'
Forster set his jaw and put his back into his digging again, the dirt flying through the air. Sebastian breathed in the scent of damp earth and decay and a foul, dark smell that was like a breath from an old grave. He said, `I can understand how it might get under a man's skin, having to take orders from a woman.'
Forster scraped the last of the dirt into the trench with the edge of his shovel, his attention seemingly all for his task. `I'm a good overseer, I am. Sir Stanley wouldn't have kept me on if I wasn't.'
Sebastian watched Rory Forster move on to the next trench. The man's very name Forster, a corruption of forester harkened back to the days when this wood had been part of a vast royal hunting park. His ancestors would have been the kings foresters, charged with husbanding the royal game and protecting them from the encroachments of poachers. But those days were long gone, lost in the misty past.
Sebastian said, `Did Miss Tennyson tell Sir Stanley she suspected you were the one vandalizing the site in search of treasure?'
Forster straightened slowly, the outer corner of one eye twitching as if with a tic, the rough cloth of his smock dark with sweat across his shoulders and chest and under his arms. `Ye ain't gonna pin this murder on me. Ye hear me?' he said, raising one beefy arm to stab a pointed finger at Sebastian. `I was home with me wife all that night. Never left the house, I didn't.'
`Possibly,' said Sebastian. `However, we don't know precisely when Miss Tennyson was murdered. She may well have met her death in the afternoon.'
The twitch beside the man's eye intensified. `What ye want from me?'
`The truth.'
`The truth?' Forster gave a harsh laugh. `Ye don't want the truth.'
`Try me.'
`Huh. Ye think I'm a fool?'
Sebastian studied the man's handsome, dirt-streaked face.
`You can say what you have to say to me, in confidence. Or you can tell your tale to Bow Street. The choice is yours.'
Forster licked his lower lip, then gave Sebastian a sly, sideways look. `Ye claim it was me what told ye, and I'll deny it.'
`Fair enough. Now, tell me.'
Forster sniffed. `To my way o' thinkin', them Bow Street magistrates ought to be lookin' into Sir Stanley's lady.'
`You mean Lady Winthrop?'
`Aye. Come out here Saturday about noon, she did. In a real pelter.'
Sebastian frowned. Lady Winthrop had told him she'd never visited her husband's controversial excavations. `Was Sir Stanley here?'
`Nah. He'd gone off by then. Somethin' about a prize mare what was near her time. But Miss Tennyson was still here. She's the one her ladyship come to see. A right royal row they had, and ye don't haveta take me word for it. Ask any o' the lads workin' the trenches that day; they'll tell ye.'
`What was the argument about?'
`I couldn't catch the sense o' most o' it. Her ladyship asked to speak to Miss Tennyson in private and they walked off a ways, just there.' Forster nodded toward the northeastern edge of the island, where a faint path could be seen winding through the thicket of bushes and brambles.
`But you did hear something,' said Sebastian.
`Aye. Heard enough to know it was Sir Stanley they was fightin' about. And as she was leavin', I heard her ladyship say, Cross me, young woman, and ye ll be sorry!'
Chapter 20
`You're certain you heard her right?' asked Sebastian.
The foreman sniffed. `Ye don't believe me, ask some of the lads what was here that day. Or better yet, ask her ladyship herself. But like I said, if ye let on 'twas me what told ye, I'll deny it. I'll deny it to yer face.'
`Who are you afraid of?' asked Sebastian. `Sir Stanley? Or his wife?'
Forster huffed a scornful laugh. `Anybody ain't afraid of them two is a fool. Oh, they're grand and respectable, ain't they? Livin' in that big house and hobnobbin' wit the King hisself. But I hear tell Sir Stanley, he started out as some clerk with little more 'n a sixpence to scratch hisself with. How ye think he got all that money? Mmm? And how many bodies ye think he walked over to get it?'
`And Lady Winthrop?'
`She's worse 'n him, any day o' the week. Sir Stanley, he'll leave ye alone as long as yer not standin' between him and somethin' he wants. But Lady Winthrop, she'd destroy a man out o' spite, just cause she's mean.'
Some twenty minutes later, Sebastian's knock at Trent House's massive doors was answered by a stately, ruddy-faced butler of ample proportions who bowed and intoned with sepulchral detachment, `I fear Sir Stanley is not at present at home, my lord.'
`Actually, I'm here to see Lady Winthrop. And there's no point in telling me she's not at home either,' said Sebastian cheerfully when the butler opened his mouth to do just that, `because I spotted her in the gardens when I drove up. And I'm perfectly willing to do something vulgar like cut around the outside of the house and accost her directly, if you re too timid to announce me.'
The butler's nostrils quivered with righteous indignation. Then he bowed again and said, `This way, my lord.'
Lady Winthrop stood at the edge of the far terrace, the remnants of last night's wind flapping the figured silks of her high-necked gown. She had been watching over the activities of the band of workmen tearing out the old wall of the terrace. But at Sebastian's approach she turned, one hand coming up to straighten her plain, broad-brimmed hat as she shot the butler a tight-jawed glare that warned of dire future consequences.
`Don't blame him,' said Sebastian, intercepting the look. `He denied you with commendable aplomb. But short of bowling me over, there really was no stopping me.'
She brought her icy gaze back to Sebastian's face and said evenly to the red-faced butler, `Thank you, Huckabee; that will be all.'
The butler gave another of his flawless bows and withdrew.
`My husband is out with the men from the estate searching for the missing Tennyson children,' she said, her fingers still gripping the brim of her hat. `He'll be sorry he missed you. And now you really must excuse me...'
`Why don't you show me your gardens, Lady Winthrop?' said Sebastian when she would have turned away.
`No need to allow the interesting details of our conversation to distract these men from their work.'
She froze, then forced a stiff laugh. `Of course. Since you are here.'
She waited until they were out of earshot before saying evenly, `I resent the implication that I have something to hide from my servants.'
`Don't you? You told me yesterday that you never visited the excavations at the moat. Except you did, just last Saturday. In fact, you had what's been described as a right royal row with Miss Tennyson herself.'
Lady Winthrop's lips tightened into a disdainful smile.
`I fear you misunderstood me, Lord Devlin. I said I did not make it a practice of visiting the site; I did not say I had never done so.'
Sebastian studied her proud, faintly contemptuous face, the weak chin pulled back against her neck in a scowl. As the plain but extraordinarily well-dowered only daughter of a wealthy merchant, she had married not once, but twice. Her first, brief marriage to a successful banker ended when her husband broke his neck on the
