Read Online The Shadowcutter by Harriet Smart - Free Book Online

up again, with all the care he could find in himself, when all the time his imagination was picturing the face of the young woman in the riding habit.
    A moment later, Major Vernon returned, closing the door behind him.
    “Is she all right?” asked Felix.
    “Yes,” said the Major.
    Felix went towards the door.
    “Are you sure that is wise?” said Major Vernon.
    “I don’t know,” Felix said. “I want to... I need to...” and he opened the door and went out.
    He saw at once that she was standing in the room on the other side of the hall, but in the doorway, as if she were hesitating on the threshold, that she too felt drawn back towards him.
    In this fanciful, pleasure-driven place that their common ancestor had built, where painted birds cavorted above them, they stood in their doorways. It was as if as a physical force was pulling them together, yet they both advanced but half a step each.
    “My Lady –” he began, and she at the same moment said, “Sir –” and then she made a gesture to say that he was to speak first. But his mouth was dry. He found he could only offer up his filthy, shirt-sleeved arms and hands in a gesture of apologetic supplication. He would have embraced her if he could. It was what his muscles and his heart were straining to do. She was a stranger and yet not at all a stranger.
    “I –” he began but he could not find any words.
    He stood there, looking at her, scouring every detail of her face, regretting he had never laid eyes on her before, feeling the loss of never having seen her as a child, never having had her as a companion in youthful adventures. It was a loss he had never known before but now it struck him, cold on his heart, just like the feel of that poor unborn child in the dead woman’s womb.
    At length she spoke.
    “I am sorry. I did not mean to come. I ought to have stopped myself but –” and she threw up her own hands just as he had done.
    He nodded. She was like himself: impulsive, driven and confused.
    “I am glad you did,” he said, and took a step towards her. “I am glad to see you at last.”
    It was the truth. He had never felt as honest as he did in that moment. It was as if he had discovered something sacred, and there was no place there for lies. She nodded, and he felt certain that she felt the same.
    “You should get back to your work,” she said. “Major Vernon...” Felix glanced behind him. Major Vernon was discreetly observing them. “We will have time enough in the future, but she has no time left.”
    He nodded, and turned and went back in, closing the door behind him.
    Major Vernon reached for his notebook.
    “She’s right,” Felix said.
    “So?” said Major Vernon glancing at the body.
    “She’s with child,” he said.
    “How many months?”
    “Four to five, but that’s an approximation.”
    “That adds to the puzzle. Suicide?”
    “God forbid!” he exclaimed. Clinical detachment had deserted him. He could only see the tragedy. He swallowed and said, carefully, “Unlikely. That head injury. That is the key to this.”
    “Then we must go and look at the site when you are done here.”
    -0-
    When he had finished his examination, Felix went with the Major to the scene of the discovery of the body. As they left the dairy, there was no sign of Lady Charlotte which both relieved and disappointed him.
    “This way,” said Major Vernon, leading him through a fantastical garden of statues and billowing dark yew hedges, until they emerged to face a mass of water, overshadowed by a cliff that dripped with ferns and which was fissured to create the entrance to a cave.
    “And you have to go over that bridge to get into the grotto?” he said.
    “Yes,” said Major Vernon. “And that is where I saw the crushed shells.”
    “Quite the spot for a tryst,” Felix said.
    “Exactly,” said Major Vernon. “But there are any number of points in which she could have fallen, stumbled into the water, don’t you agree, meaning it was