The Corpse with the Sapphire Eyes by Cathy Ace Read Free Book Online

poked their attractive little faces through various stems and tufts of edible vegetation, while spectacular birds and iridescent insects hovered in the sky—which was the ceiling. There was a vast rectangular table at the room’s center, surrounded by eighteen dark wooden chairs with tall, Gothic-arched backs. As in my room, the segment of the circle adjoining the rest of the wing was windowless, but here it featured a monumental fireplace. It was tiled, buttressed, painted with a good deal of red paint, and highlighted with glinting gold leaf. Beside it was a massive door. My room had a little door in the same spot that led to a bathroom. I wondered what was behind the door in this room.
    â€œSit to my right, Cait,” called Alice Cadwallader from across the room. Her rasping tones bounced around, and it was immediately clear that any sound of chatter would do the same beneath the high ceiling, which was beamed like a spider web, with a massive iron chandelier hanging from its mid-point. “And you, the fiancé, sit to my left. I want to find out more about you. You look rather interesting. Mair, Owain, move along.”
    I felt awkward as I took the seat vacated by the daughter of the house, and my embarrassment was heightened when Alice’s imperious demands resulted in everyone shuffling from seat to seat. We eventually all settled with Alice at the head of the table, Bud to her left, next to Mair, then Idris, who’d just rushed in to join us, having presumably finished his grisly task in the kitchen. I sat to Alice’s right, next to Owain, then Siân, then Janet. The rest of the table stretched away, unused, making us look like a very feeble gathering.
    Dilys Jones entered from the great hall carrying a huge tray, which she placed on a discreet sideboard. She placed platters of pâté, toast, and butter in the center of the table. She rather ungraciously plopped the plates down, reaching between us as though we were in the way.
    â€œIt’s not what you were supposed to be having,” the cook announced grumpily, “but with all that fuss about David I wasn’t able to do a roast. I managed to get some toast done, and this was ready for tomorrow, but you’re having it now. It’s rabbit pâté. The main will be cawl, which should have been your starter, but you can have bigger bowls. Then there’ll be trifle. Not really appropriate, but it’ll have to do. I can make teisen lap for tomorrow instead, but I didn’t have time to do the rice pudding I’d planned.” It seemed that David Davies’s death had been an imposition.
    â€œMair, come and serve me,” said Alice loudly, “and tell me again what happened to David. Was it a nasty fall?”
    I heard Mair sigh heavily, clearly holding back anger, as she left her seat. “I told you, Mother, he’s dead. He died. He broke his neck. Of course it was a nasty fall.”
    â€œYou never said he was dead .” Alice’s shock changed to horror. “You mean he died ? Why didn’t anyone tell me? It is my house, you know. I just let the rest of you live in it. I have every right to know. I should have been informed. Was it instant?”
    As Mair piled pâté and butter onto a plate, then balanced a few slices of toast beside the glistening mounds, she almost hissed, “He fell down the servants’ stairs, Mother, and his neck was broken in the fall. He was dead before he hit the bottom.”
    â€œYou don’t know that,” said Owain. “He might have been alive for some time, then died just before he was found. Or even after he was found.”
    As Dilys circled the table she replied to Owain, “He must have been dead by the time he hit the bottom. The way his neck was broken, he couldn’t have lasted the fall. Seen enough birds with broken necks in my time to know he was dead.”
    â€œI hope it was a quick, clean death,” said Mair