Page 94 of Winterset

The other man landed a hard hit on her uncle’s chin, knocking his head back, and then he rolled out from under him, but her uncle lunged at him, hitting her attacker around the knees and toppling him over again. Anna looked around for something to use as a weapon and spied the fallen club lying beside Reed. She ran to pick it up and turned back to the fight.

Her uncle was on the ground on his back, the killer straddling him, his hands around her uncle’s throat. Anna ran to them and brought the tree branch down as hard as she could. She intended to hit his head, but at the last moment he dodged, and it cracked across his back instead, breaking in two. He turned toward Anna, snarling, and started to rise.

At that moment Reed lunged into the scene and brought his hand down sharply, rapping the killer on the head with his own club. The man wavered for a moment, then collapsed.

“Reed!” Anna launched herself into his arms, and he caught her, staggering back a little shakily.

“Sorry.” He gave a little half laugh. “I’m not quite steady.”

“Of course not.” Anna stepped back and looked up into his face. “You’re bleeding. He must have cracked you on the head.”

She dug into her pocket for a handkerchief and pressed it against the wound on Reed’s temple. Blood streaked the side of his face and neck.

“I don’t know what happened. I was riding along, and suddenly something fell on me. He must have been up in a tree.” He turned and looked down at his assailant. “Good God. Who the devil is he?”

“The Queen’s spy,” Anna’s uncle answered. He had gotten to his feet and was standing rubbing his throat.

Reed looked at him. Hastily Anna said, “Reed, this is my uncle. Uncle Charles, this is Reed Moreland. He bought Winterset.”

Uncle Charles looked suspiciously at him. Reed reached out to shake his hand, but her uncle backed up, shaking his head. “No. No. Can’t do that.”

“Uncle Charles doesn’t like to shake hands,” Anna told Reed. She turned back to her uncle. “Thank you, Uncle, for coming to help me.”

Lord de Winter nodded. “Of course. I saw him before. First I thought he was a demon. I wasn’t sure what was going on. But Gabriel explained it to me. Said he was an assassin sent by the Queen. He was in disguise. I have been searching for him. Then I heard you scream. I knew he was after you.” He turned toward Reed, explaining, “She would be in line, you see, after Kit, if he killed me.”

“Yes, of course,” Reed answered calmly. “Well, what do you say we see exactly who this chap is?”

He walked over to where the fallen man lay and bent over him. The mask was tied on, and he had to jerk at it strongly to rip it from the man’s face. He straightened, and the three of them stared down at the man beneath the mask.

“Miles Bennett,” Anna breathed.

* * *

“His poor mother,” Anna said, shaking her head.

It was the next morning, and she was sitting at Holcomb Manor, pouring tea for Dr. Felton, Reed and her brother Kit. Shortly after Reed had taken off Miles Bennett’s mask, Kit and Rankin had arrived, drawn, as Charles de Winter had been, by Anna’s screams. They had listened in amazement to Anna and Reed’s story, and afterward, while Uncle Charles had returned to his home, Kit and his gamekeeper had helped Reed tie up the squire’s son and take him down to the village to jail.

Kit had returned to Holcomb Manor after that, but Reed had accompanied the constable to the squire’s house, and he had come to the Manor this morning to tell them what had transpired, arriving right before Dr. Felton.

“Yes,” Dr. Felton said now, agreeing with Anna’s comment. “I just returned from the squire’s house. Mrs. Bennett was prostrate with grief. I had to give her a calming tincture.”

“The squire, as well,” Reed said. “They apparently had no idea that anything was wrong with Miles, putting his moods and his locking himself away in his room for hours down to his youth and ‘poetic’ nature.”

“The Squire assured me that Miles was not adopted,” the doctor went on. “He said that the boy was seized by the notion that he was adopted two or three years ago, but the squire thought he had gotten over the idea. He hadn’t mentioned it recently.”

“So he could not have been related to Lord Roger de Winter?” Anna asked.

Dr. Felton shook his head. “Apparently it was just another one of his bizarre notions. It would be easy, I suppose, to say that he inherited his madness from the old lord, but it isn’t the case. Miles’ illness, I think, is merely some sort of perverse fascination with Lord Roger and his misdeeds that mingled somehow with his obsession with you, Miss Holcomb.”

“Did you know about Lord Roger de Winter?” Anna asked the doctor curiously. “Did you tear out the pages concerning him in your father’s journal?”

Felton shook his head. “No. I had no idea that he had treated Lord de Winter for anything other than the usual colds and such. I suppose my suspicions should have been raised by the fact that there were no accounts of treating anyone at Winterset for any sort of illness, but it just never struck me.” He shook his head. “My father would, of course, have protected his patients’ privacy, but I cannot believe he knew that Lord de Winter had killed those two people. He would not have helped Lady de Winter to conceal that.”

Though Kit, Reed and Anna had agreed that the truth must be told about Lord de Winter’s murders, they had not revealed that Nick Perkins had helped Lady de Winter to conceal what had happened. However wrong it had been of him to do so, Anna could not expose her old friend’s wrongdoing. Whatever he had done, he had done out of kindness and loyalty to Lady de Winter, and Anna was sure that he had paid for it many times with his burden of guilt.

“Did they find anything at the Bennetts’ house?” Anna asked.

Reed nodded. “Indeed they did. Estelle’s new earbobs, for one thing. Apparently Miles was her ‘gentleman’ friend. They had been meeting in the woods secretly for some time, and he gave her the earrings, then took them back after he killed her. I don’t know whether he planned all along to kill her that way, or if he did it in a rage and then decided to set it up to look like the original murders. Miles has given the constable almost nothing coherent. He is either silent and brooding, or he raves about the ‘Wolf People’ and such.