The Scent of Murder by Felicity Young Read Free Book Online Page B

late.
    Laughing as he did so, Montague smeared blood from the paw across her forehead and down her cheeks. She felt the heat of blood, smelled a strange, feral smell. A drop of blood trickled into the corner of her eye, another slid down her face, glazing her lips with a vile, metallic taste.
    She dropped to her knees and was violently ill.
    ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ Tristram murmured over and over again. He stayed with her and rubbed her back until she had stopped vomiting, long after the hunting party had left for home.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Timothy, one of the footmen, drew the cart alongside the ice house, unloaded it and helped Dody with her preparations. The threat of rain gave her little choice but to examine the bones in the dark tunnel. They positioned lanterns in its wall alcoves and set up two long trestle tables. Provided the tunnel door remained open, the light would just be sufficient. Timothy filled several buckets from a barrel of water they had brought with them and placed them on the ground next to the tables. He explained that the river was close by and she could replenish her supplies there, if necessary.
    He produced another bucket filled with cleaning implements: scrubbing brushes of various sizes, small paintbrushes, clean rags and scrapers. Then he took Dody’s portmanteau — the one Annie had been so curious about — from the cart and carried it into the tunnel, setting it down on the brick-paved floor. Finally, he lifted out Tristram’s basket of bones and placed it on the table, keeping his eyes averted from the contents.
    Most were not as driven to solve the mystery of death as she was, Dody reflected; more often they were repulsed by it. She herself had shared the majority view until circumstances dictated that the only medical specialty open to her was autopsy surgery — better known to the layman as ‘the Beastly Science’. It was amazing how quickly she had adapted to the stench and the gore. Soon her growing understanding of disease, injury and decay had transformed her studies from bearable to fascinating. To detect the cause of a mysterious death, to provide grieving loved ones with the answers to their desperate questions, was satisfying in itself, and all the more if the death was at the hands of someone who needed to be brought to justice.
    Dody’s hunger for justice was as keen as Pike’s, and was what had first driven them into a cautious alliance, then friendship, and then so much more. She tried not to think of the telegram burning a hole in her pocket and forced herself to put an end to her daydreaming.
    Timothy was keen to leave her to it. He had been jumpy since they arrived, turning at every rustle, starting whenever a pheasant broke cover and whooshed from the undergrowth. ‘The hunting party will be returning soon, miss, and I am required to wait at table for luncheon.’ He paused. ‘Lady Fitzgibbon asked if you will be joining us.’
    ‘Please send Her Ladyship my apologies. This might keep me busy until teatime.’
    ‘May I organise some sandwiches then, miss?’
    ‘No, thank you.’ After a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, devilled kidneys, mushrooms, tomatoes and two pieces of toast, it was hard to imagine ever being hungry again.
    Timothy shuffled on his feet.
    ‘You may go now.’ She was as reluctant to have the young man breathing down her neck as he was to be there. ‘I will pack up myself and drive the cart home. There is no need for you to return.’
    ‘The master won’t like that.’
    ‘But you would, I’m sure.’
    The footman would not meet her eye.
    ‘What’s troubling you, Timothy?’
    The young man shrugged beneath his smart black overcoat. ‘Don’t like this place, that’s all. Even Sir Desmond won’t come ’ere at night.’
    Dody smiled. ‘Because it’s supposed to be haunted?’
    ‘No s’pose about it.’
    ‘And yet you are willing to return and collect the cart after dark?’
    ‘Not really willing, miss, but I don’t