TGOH Chapter 4

2. The First Death

"Impossible."

Ian turned from the doorway and said it flatly. His face was the color of a dead man's.

"...It's murder."

"You're lying."

"It's murder."

"There's no evidence it's Edmund!"

"...There is."

Veronica found she could not make herself believe it. Her lips moved without sound. Not an hour ago this man had been smiling at her, welcoming her back. That someone could cease to exist in the interval between lunch and this moment—it would not settle into anything that felt like sense.

Who had killed Edmund Hamilton? Where had they gone? Were they still somewhere inside the estate? Or had it been someone who lived here—

"Vera?"

Veronica snapped back.

"Ah—yes. Ian. I'm listening."

Ian walked toward her along the corridor. His pallor showed everything. He had the look of a man who had seen something he could not fit back inside the ordinary shape of the world.

He steadied himself, or tried to.

"We need to gather everyone in the estate," he said. His voice shook at the edges.

Veronica agreed at once. Ian was right. There would need to be a plan, a response of some kind—something to hold the situation before it slid further.

She left Julia in the care of the butler. Julia was not a steady person in the best of circumstances, and no good would come from keeping her near the body. Better to have her downstairs with her daughter—that, at least, would give her something to anchor to.

Ian spoke quietly to Joseph.

"Please take my sister-in-law to the dining room."

Joseph—who had served the Hamilton household for more years than anyone could comfortably count—answered with equal care.

"Of course, young master."

Julia and Joseph descended the stairs. The maids had gone down long before them. The third floor emptied until only Veronica and Ian remained.

What is to be done. Veronica reached over and took Ian's hand. It was very cold. He startled—a brief, involuntary flinch—and looked down at her.

"...Veronica?"

"...We can't leave Edmund there like that."

She meant: we have to do something.

Ian knew she was right. Leaving his brother's body unattended would trouble his conscience in ways he couldn't undo later. The chaos would keep him occupied now, but the memory would come for him afterward—the understanding that there had been a moment when he could have attended to it and hadn't.

The difficulty was that they were the only ones left on this floor. Everyone else had gone downstairs. And so they would have to do this themselves.

Should he let Veronica see? The question moved through him once, quickly. Then he looked at her eyes—steady, clear, revealing nothing of what it was costing her—and lost his objection entirely. Whatever had made her like this, he could not begin to guess.

He stepped aside.

The full breadth of the room opened before Veronica.

Red.

From the bedding to the wallpaper, without exception.

The body had been hacked—there was no other word for it—as though in every direction at once, and Veronica pressed both hands over her mouth. A wave of nausea moved through her. She stood very still, breathing through it, trying to clear from her eyes what was already there.

"How could anyone do this to a person..."

The words came out slowly, without weight or direction, spilling from her lips into the air. Ian held her arm. He was prepared to catch her.

In Veronica's widened eyes, the full scene reflected itself back at her. The body, dealt with as if by an axe—indiscriminate, thorough—was less a person now than a mass of something the mind refused to name. Ian looked at it beside her and made a brief, compressed sound low in his throat.

This was why the people who had seen it screamed.

Veronica shook her head, once, slowly—as though the motion might dislodge what had adhered to the backs of her eyes. Ian's worried gaze followed her from behind as she moved toward the bed and drew out a blanket. She looked for whatever was least damaged in this room. The blanket was the best option available.

"For now... it would be better to have him in one place. We'll wrap Edmund here, and send for the police. The nearest constable's office—we can ask them to come."

She bent her knees to kneel. A firm hand came around her elbow and held her upright.

She blinked at Ian.

He smiled, awkwardly, and not quite meeting her eyes.

"Vera. Do I look like the sort of man who would allow a lady to handle a body?"

She had forgotten. He withdrew leather gloves from his coat pocket, drew them on, and gathered what had once been his brother into the blanket. The smell was metallic and close—the kind that parks itself at the back of the throat and refuses to move. From the floor, something damp and cold in the smell of it rose upward, as if the room itself were contemptuous of their presence.

By the time Veronica and Ian returned to the dining room, thirty minutes had passed since the body was found. Everyone in the estate had gathered.

Julia, picking ceaselessly at the hem of her sleeve. Little Veronica, bent over a toy with the complete contentment of a child who knew nothing. The elder Mrs. Hamilton, lost somewhere inside her own shock. Joseph and the maids, all wearing the same flat, shaken look. Little Veronica's nurse and governess. The estate physician. The cook. Every person who lived under this roof was present and accounted for.

The staff was considerably reduced from what Veronica remembered, but she did not remark on it. There was no greater rudeness than making assumptions about another family's circumstances.

"First, we contact the police."

Ian said it evenly, keeping his voice low. With a murder committed on the premises, the police were the one thing that might credibly reassure the people in this room. And if the killer was still somewhere inside the estate, those words were the ones that would frighten them.

But.

"...That is—sir—the telephone line has been cut."

Joseph's words. The dining room went rigid.

Someone intended to isolate them. And whoever that was, it was almost certainly the same person who had done what had been done to Edmund Hamilton's body. The moment that understanding crystallized, a brief, shivering panic moved through the room.

"This is impossible!"

The cry came out of Julia like a convulsion. Little Veronica, startled by the sudden violence of her mother's voice, burst into tears. Julia did not turn toward her daughter. Under ordinary circumstances she would have had the child in her arms within seconds, soothing her with murmured words and whatever kisses she could manage—but Edmund's murder had clearly broken something open in Julia that ordinary considerations could not reach.

Veronica gathered her niece quickly and held her close, murmuring against her hair. The governess—Ludmilla Powell, who had introduced herself at dinner—moved to help, working alongside Veronica with quick, practiced efficiency. When it became clear the child was beyond either of their reach in this room, Veronica placed little Veronica into Ludmilla Powell's arms.

"Please look after her. The room will be better than staying here."

Ludmilla Powell went up first. A maid was sent along with her.

It was Ian who stopped Julia from tearing at her own hair. He spoke quietly, with the kind of steadiness that cuts through hysteria.

"Sister-in-law. Take a breath first. There are other ways to reach the police—many of them. If it comes to it, I'll go myself."

"But—!"

"No, sir."

Joseph. Twenty years of watching over this family, and the quality of certainty it gave him was unmistakable. Ian waited.

"If you leave, there will be no adult man remaining to protect the people of this household. It would be better for me to go instead. Miss Veronica is here, the elder madam is here, the young madam is here."

It was true. If the killer was still somewhere inside these walls, Ian was the only one who could protect the people who remained. Any decision about what to do next—whether to run, whether to hold—that too would fall to Ian. He had to stay.

"Please allow me to go."

Joseph said it with a finality that admitted nothing. Ian finally nodded.

But unease sat in Veronica's chest and would not move. Outside. Walking all that distance to the nearest station along a road barely anyone used, with no carriage coming this way—

"...Joseph. Will you be all right?"

"Of course, Miss Veronica." He smiled—the particular smile of a man performing it for someone else's benefit. "I may look it, but I'm quite fit still."

He said he would get himself ready to leave, and rose from his chair. When Veronica had first arrived, there had been twelve people in this estate including herself. One was dead. Three had left the room. Now Joseph was about to leave the estate altogether. Seven remained in the dining room.