A Murder in Time Page 14

  Goddamnit!

  “Get back!” she shouted as she rounded the rocks and shrubbery. She saw a girl—Georgina, she recognized—shaking and crying in the arms of an ashen-faced man.

  “What is it?” she demanded, scanning the area. What kind of wildlife did they have in these parts? “What’s wrong?”

  The man gave her a blank stare. Georgina continued wailing, hysterical. Kendra considered slapping her, but thought she’d enjoy it too much. Instead, she reached out and shook the arm of the man. “What happened?”

  “T-there! Over there!” he gasped and pointed to the water.

  Warily, she inched toward the edge of the lake, and caught the pale glimmer in the dark water. It could’ve been a dead fish, but she knew it wasn’t. She knew what it was even before she saw the hair floating like flotsam on the surface of the water, the cameo blur below, the wide, dark eyes. Most likely, the girl had been pretty. Yet nature, as brutal as it was beautiful, had taken its toll. Now she was just dead.

  12

  Kendra studied the nude body that had been caught and anchored in the cattails and weeds along the shore.

  “My God!” The Duke of Aldridge’s voice came from behind her, sounding shaken. “My God. Is that . . . ? We need to get her out of there. We need to help her!”

  “She’s beyond help,” Kendra stated matter-of-factly, and shifted her gaze to the surrounding area. It was as idyllic from this angle as it was from where they’d set up the nuncheon. Green trees, lush shrubbery, slate-gray rocks, and the waterfall created a private oasis of which Georgina and the young man no doubt had wished to take advantage. Instead, they’d found death—and, she could see, not an easy or a natural death. Her practiced eye scanned the body, noting the dark bruises circling her throat, the ligature marks at her wrists, and the lacerations running across the torso. Something tightened inside her as her gaze fell on what she considered the most damning of all—the injury on her left breast.

  Alec crouched down beside her, his face grim as he stared at the figure under the water. “We still need to get her out of there.”

  “No. We need to . . .” Preserve the crime scene. It hit her like a two-ton brick that those words had no meaning here. What the hell was she going to do? Call the coroner, the cops, the CSI team? She’d never studied this particular time period, but she sure as hell knew that the tools she was so familiar with in the twenty-first century were either rudimentary now, or nonexistent.

  Alec eyed her curiously. “We need to . . . what?”

  “Nothing,” she mumbled and rubbed her hands over her face, trying to organize her thoughts.

  “What happened? Did she fall in?” A man stepped to the edge of the lake so he could get a better look.

  “Most likely she was bathing, slipped, and drowned,” suggested another man.

  Kendra shot him an incredulous look. Would they write this off as a drowning? She couldn’t let that happen. “Not unless she walked naked through the forest to get here. You don’t see any clothes, do you?”

  Alec frowned as he did a narrow-eyed scan. “This area is a watershed, with a network of tributaries, one of which feeds this lake. The main river flows toward the ocean, but her body could’ve been swept downstream and carried here.”

  “That may be how her body got here, but that’s not how she died.” Kendra stood up abruptly. “She was murdered.”

  For the space of about three seconds, there was a shocked silence.

  Then someone denounced shrilly, “That’s outrageous!”

  Kendra glanced around. The rebuke had come from the woman in the vivid blue dress who the Duke had escorted to the nuncheon. She glared at Kendra like she was responsible for the dead woman. “Who is this creature, Bertie?”

  That seemed to rouse Aldridge. He still looked deathly pale, and his hands shook visibly as he brought up a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his brow. But he made an effort to pull himself together. “Caro, you and the other ladies must return to the castle. Harding? Mrs. Danbury? Please be so good as to escort the ladies home.”

  The butler moved forward. “Of course, Your Grace.”

  “I’ll be happy to lend my assistance to the ladies, sir.” The offer came from the young man who was still holding the whimpering, red-eyed Georgina. Sarah had raced to her friend’s side, and was now casting curious glances at the lake. She didn’t look eager to leave. In fact, Kendra thought several of the ladies looked undecided, wanting to display the proper horror even as they strained to get a glimpse of the body. As they were standing several yards away from the lip of the lake, Kendra doubted whether anyone could see anything. Georgina was probably the only woman who’d gotten a good view of the corpse.

  Kendra caught the hard look Mrs. Danbury shot her. The housekeeper’s expression would’ve been understood even in the twenty-first century: Get your ass over here, now!

  Her heart sank. This was outside her jurisdiction. Way outside her jurisdiction. Like, two hundred years outside her jurisdiction. But she couldn’t force her feet to move.

  They’d probably shrug the girl’s death off as an accident. And why should she care? She didn’t belong here. Her only concern was to get back to her own time line.

  But what if the two incidents were connected? Like most people in law enforcement, Kendra wasn’t a big fan of coincidences. She’d been thrown back in time, and now she was presented with a murder victim. And, God help her, the violence that had been done to this poor girl piqued every one of Kendra’s instincts.

  She’d probably pay for her insubordination, but she ignored the housekeeper. “The Duke’s right. We need to clear the area, secure the scene,” she said in a low voice to Alec.

  He gave her an odd look, but before he could respond, the woman with the pockmarked face separated herself from the group of ladies that Mr. Harding and Mrs. Danbury were trying to hustle out of the area.

  “Bloody hell,” Alec muttered under his breath, and moved forward to intercept her. Kendra couldn’t hear what was being said, but from the woman’s body language she was making an appeal to stay while Alec was ordering her to go. The woman gestured to the lake, even stomped her foot, but Alec won the argument. The woman shot Kendra a disgruntled look, then whirled around, skirts belling out as she rejoined the departing procession.

  “Now, Miss Donovan,” Alec said, returning to Kendra’s side. There was a tic along the clean line of his jaw; impatience deepening the green of his eyes. “You need to explain yourself.”

  Kendra had the oddest sense of déjà vu. A handful of men had stayed behind and were now staring at her. Once again, as in her life in the twenty-first century, she was the only woman . . . and a freak.

  “No.” Aldridge stepped forward. “Alec, we need to get that poor girl out of the water. Now.”

  Alec exchanged a look with the Duke, and nodded. “Yes, you are correct, Your Grace. I trust you have no objections, Miss Donovan?”

  He was being snide, she knew, but she answered anyway. “She wasn’t killed here, so you won’t be destroying any trace evidence.” Not that it would matter if there was trace evidence, she thought bleakly. She wouldn’t be able to examine it, anyway.

  Again she felt a wave of helplessness. What could she do here? Christ, even something as simple as fingerprinting was beyond the scope of these people. Fingerprints had been used as a source of identification as early as the T’ang Dynasty in China, and there’d even been a murder case solved in ancient Rome by identifying a bloody handprint, but that was an anomaly. The distinctive ridges in fingerprints, she knew, wouldn’t be accepted as a crime-solving tool for another fifty years.

  She stepped back while Alec took charge, ordering two footmen to wade into the water to disentangle the body from the weeds. During the grim process, the younger footman began to look so green that Kendra feared he was going to throw up on the corpse at any moment. Thankfully, they managed to get her limbs free and carry her to the shore before anyone got sick. Alec was already stripping
off his coat to cover her in a belated attempt at modesty.

  Kendra saw the look in his eyes, knew that he understood. He’d seen what she had. That close to the body, it would’ve been impossible to miss.

  “She’s been strangled,” he said.

  “Yes.” Kendra knelt, scanning the girl’s white face. “God, she looks so young. Fourteen. Maybe fifteen,” she murmured softly, feeling a tug of pity. She cleared her throat. “She hasn’t been in the water long. Less than twenty-four hours, I’d say.”

  “What, are you a bloody body snatcher?” laughed one of the loitering young men, earning a few uneasy chuckles from his peers.

  A man with ash blond hair and soulful brown eyes came forward, squatting down beside her and Alec. “I may be of some help. I was a surgeon. Simon Dalton,” he introduced himself, meeting Kendra’s eyes. He shifted the jacket aside. It took Kendra a moment to realize he was being careful to preserve the girl’s modesty before lifting her arm. “She’s still in rigor mortis.”

  “The water’s cold, so rigor mortis could be slowed.”

  “You seem remarkably well-informed, ah . . . ?” That was from the tall, russet-haired gentleman standing next to the Duke. He was handsome—not quite in Alec’s league, but there was something compelling about his dark blue eyes in the tanned, raw-boned face as he stared down at her.

  “Kendra Donovan. I’ve had some experience.”

  He lifted an incredulous brow. “In murder? Forgive me, but you are a woman. A maid!”

  “So?” Since that response seemed to flummox him, Kendra went back to studying the dead girl. “I suspect we’ll find the hyoid bone and the thyroid and cricoid cartilages compressed from manual strangulation.” She glanced up at Simon Dalton. “And look at the eyes, Doctor—subconjunctival and petechial hemorrhage.”

  Surprisingly, he flushed. “I’m not a physician; I’m a surgeon.”

  She frowned. What the hell was the difference?

  “I noticed,” he continued, in response to her observation, and then explained to the group at large, “Petechiae is when the blood vessels around the eye rupture due to asphyxiation.”

  Alec scowled. “Does anybody recognize her? Is she from the area?”

  Flies, ever in tune with the scent of death, began to arrive. Alec waved his hand impatiently to disperse them, a temporary reprieve, as they simply buzzed back in greater numbers.

  The men surged forward to get a better look at the dead girl. Kendra got the impression that it was curiosity that drove them, not a desire to help. One of the young men made a noise low in his throat and stumbled back.

  “Watch it, Gabriel!” another man grumbled, pushing lightly at him.

  “Have you seen her before?” Kendra asked Gabriel sharply. He looked to be around her age, good-looking with tousled dark brown hair and hazel eyes. His reaction could’ve been the shock of seeing a dead body. Or something else.

  “No . . . No . . .” Gabriel moved away. As Kendra watched, he reached into his coat and pulled out a silver flask, unscrewing the lid and drinking deeply. Judging by his flushed face and somewhat glassy eyes, she suspected this wasn’t the first time he’d used the flask today.

  Alec was watching, too. “Try avoid getting foxed, Gabe.”

  The younger man stiffened, shooting Alec such a blistering look that Kendra was surprised she couldn’t feel the heat of it.

  “It’s difficult to tell . . . but she doesn’t appear familiar,” Aldridge murmured, rubbing the back of his neck as though it ached. “No word has gone around about a missing girl. Have you heard anything, Morland? The local magistrate is usually the first to hear such things.”

  “Eh?” The man with the russet hair—Morland—gave a start, then shook his head. “No, Your Grace. I’ve heard nothing.”

  Aldridge stared down at the girl somberly. “Somebody had to have been mad with rage to strangle this poor child and throw her into the river.”

  Kendra hesitated, chest tightening. Again, she considered letting this go, just agreeing with whatever they said . . . dammit. She couldn’t.

  “This wasn’t rage,” she said slowly. “It was calculated. Cold and calculated. The man who did this did it deliberately.”

  Again there was a stunned silence. Then the man named Morland demanded, “What the devil are you saying?”

  “I’m saying this girl wasn’t just strangled. She was strangled repeatedly. The pattern of bruising round the neck is large, irregular, meaning he strangled her and then allowed her to breathe again. He then brought his hands back, the position slightly different—see?” She pointed to the irregular shadowy smudges around the victim’s throat. “And he strangled her again. And again.”

  Morland glared at her. “That is utterly preposterous! Who are you? Really, sir.” He turned to the Duke. “You can’t expect us to swallow such a preposterous tale. And from a mere servant . . . from a . . . a woman!”

  Kendra had to bite back a scathing reply. This is not my era, she reminded herself. If they didn’t believe her, she’d have to let it go.

  Still, her mouth felt dry as she shifted her gaze to the Duke of Aldridge. His brow was furrowed, but she couldn’t read him. Would he dismiss her findings because she was a woman?

  He shook his head. “’Tis not the time to argue about it, Morland. We need to do something with this poor girl.”

  Kendra let out the breath that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. He wasn’t calling her crazy. Yet.

  That test would come when she told the Duke what she knew, what she suspected.

  She could only pray that he’d believe her.

  Kendra hung back while they discussed where to bring the body—the castle’s icehouse was the final consensus. Then they had to figure out the best way to get her there. It was finally decided that a couple of footmen would carry her to the clearing, and a wagon would transport the victim the rest of the way to the castle.

  The process was cumbersome. First, the remaining footmen were squeamish about touching the body any more than they had to. They balked at her suggestion that they relinquish their fancy livery coats to wrap around the victim, and only did so after Alec ordered them.

  Kendra couldn’t really blame them. Hell, she wasn’t happy with the situation either. It didn’t matter that this wasn’t the kill site, or that the body had been washed thoroughly by the river and lake, or the fact that even if she could find some trace evidence, she didn’t have the equipment or forensics experts to give her the answers that she needed. She still kept track of every forensic violation that was made.

  “We must summon the local constable,” the Duke said as they began their trek back through the forest.

  Alec snorted. “Much good that’ll do. The worst Roger Hilliard has had to face is catching a poacher now and then, and breaking up fights between farmers, because a cow got into somebody’s field and ate their bloody grain.”

  “So . . . in terms of law enforcement, you only have a local constable?” Kendra asked, the sinking feeling in her stomach getting worse.

  “Morland’s the magistrate,” someone pointed out.

  Alec scowled. “You don’t have any experience in this matter either, Morland.”

  Kendra caught the flash of anger in Morland’s eye. Alec wouldn’t win points for diplomacy, but she silently agreed with him. None of them had any experience in this matter.

  Except for her.

  “What do you suggest, Sutcliffe?” the other man challenged. “Bring in a Bow Street Runner?”

  Alec’s jaw tightened. “Perhaps.”

  “I don’t like bringing in someone from the outside,” Morland scowled.

  Both the sentiment and the sour tone nearly made Kendra smile. It was almost exactly the same words, certainly the same inflection, that she’d heard from countless cops when the FBI was called in to investigate homicides. Maybe things weren’t so different here after all.

  Then she remembered what Morland had said to the Duke. You can’t expect us
to swallow such a preposterous tale. And from a mere servant . . . a woman.

  It wasn’t like she hadn’t faced discrimination before. But dealing with a stubborn local sheriff or a surly police officer who resented the FBI’s input—whether she was a woman or not—was a far different situation than this. She shivered suddenly, rubbing her arms.

  “Are you all right?”

  Kendra glanced up at Alec, surprised by the concern she heard in his voice. “I’ve had better days.”

  His mouth curved at her dry tone, but the smile was fleeting. He reached out automatically to hold the tree branches back from slapping her in the face. The action was surprisingly chivalrous.

  “There’s no need to be afraid, Miss Donovan,” he assured her, surprising her even more. “You’ll be safe at the castle.”

  Kendra blinked. He was, she realized, actually trying to be nice. Except he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.

  Some things weren’t so different in this time line. In fact, some things, she thought, never changed. Like murder. And monsters.

  “You’re wrong, you know,” she said solemnly. “We should be afraid . . . because it’s going to happen again.”

  13

  The icehouse was a large, low, windowless building of gray stone, with its entry point—thick oak double doors—facing north. The squat appearance was deceptive, Kendra realized, as they went through another set of doors that led down, below ground level. It was clever, making use of the earth to keep the temperature cool. There were four rooms, the largest being where the ice itself was stored, giant slabs that had been cut from lakes and ponds during the winter months and carted here to be stored year-round.

  The other three chambers had a variety of uses. Two were used for storing perishables like milk and butter, and vegetables. The third, the one they crowded in, was obviously where the fresh game hunted on the estate was skinned and deboned. A handful of pheasant and quail, and several rabbits hung by their feet on hooks in the ceiling, near the white tiled wall at the far end of the room. Though lanterns had been strung around the room, thick shadows seemed to crouch and wait in the corners. The air smelled of smoke, earth, gamey meat, and raw blood.