Murder in Thistlecross Read online

  When Maisie left the dining room I asked Annabel, “What were you saying?”

  She looked down at her hands, which were resting on the edge of the table. “Oh, it’s nothing. Never mind.”

  I knew Annabel had been close to explaining why she was nervous for her three sons to visit, but she had apparently decided against telling me. She had come close so many times before, but hadn’t been able to bring herself to share the secret she held.

  But I knew the secret—Aunt Margot had told me. She thought it important for me to understand the complex relationships between Annabel and her sons.

  I watched a movie in my room that night before going to bed. I thought about Annabel, alone in her big suite of rooms upstairs, probably pacing the floor out of nervousness over the arrival of her sons.

  The next morning dawned cool and softly bright, the fog slowly shredding into tiny wisps that remained close to the ground, giving the estate an ethereal look in the watery sunshine of the early morning.

  I yawned and stretched, savoring the quiet. There would be a storm coming, I knew, and its arrival would coincide with that of Annabel’s sons. In the meantime, there was plenty of work to be done. I made sure Maisie and Brenda were caught up with their work in the kitchen and the guest rooms and then confirmed the various reservations I had made for the family over the next several days. I double-checked the office hours of the local doctor in case Sian required his services. I spent a good part of the day trying to calm Annabel’s nerves. She was in quite a state by late afternoon. I almost wished she hadn’t insisted upon this reunion—it was doing nothing for her state of mind.

  The doorbell rang at precisely four o’clock. Annabel, in her favorite armchair in the sitting room, gave a start. She had instructed Brenda to admit the guests and show them to the sitting room. She twisted a scarf nervously in her hands, looking at me with uncertainty in her eyes.

  “They’re here. What should I say?” she asked in a loud whisper.

  “They’re your sons, Annabel. You’ll know just what to say when you see them,” I assured her, hoping I was right.

  The door swung open without a sound and Brenda stepped into the room. “Mrs. Baines, Andreas and Sian are here.” She stepped aside to allow Annabel’s eldest son and his wife to enter the room.

  I was glad I was sitting off to the side, where I could watch Annabel and her son and daughter-in-law without being obtrusive or seeming nosy. Andreas Tucker, a tall man with hair the color of onyx and a cleft in his chin, gave his mother a hug and Annabel held out her hand to Sian, who grasped it lightly and gave it a quick squeeze. Sian was tall and pretty, with wavy light brown hair and fair skin that seemed to glow. Her belly, which had grown substantially since I had seen her last, only added to her voluptuous beauty.

  Brenda watched Andreas and his wife greet Annabel, then turned to leave the room, looking back over her shoulder and straight at Andreas before closing the door behind her.

  “How was your trip? And how’s that little grandbaby of mine doing?” Annabel asked.

  “The trip was fine, and the baby’s fine, too, Mum. He’ll be here before we know it,” Andreas said.

  “I’m glad you two arrived first,” Annabel said, looking up at her son. “It will be nice to have you with me when the others get here.”

  “Mum, you don’t need to worry about Hugh and Rhisiart; they will be fine. It’s Cadi you have to worry about,” he replied, giving his mother a dark look.

  “Please, no disparaging remarks,” Annabel said in a scolding tone. But her expression softened and I knew she didn’t hold Andreas’s words against him because he was right.

  Sian put her hand over her belly and asked Annabel, “Do you mind if I lie down for a bit? I’m so very tired.”

  “Not at all, Sian. If there’s anything you need, just let someone know,” Annabel replied. She nodded her head toward me. “Eilidh, can you show Sian which room will be theirs? I don’t know where Brenda went.”

  “Sure,” I said. I noticed the long look Andreas gave Sian. “Sian, follow me and I’ll take you. It’s on this floor, so you don’t have to climb any steps.”

  “Thank you,” she said with a small sigh. I hadn’t realized women in the late stages of pregnancy could be so tired. I thought they had their old energy back after the first trimester. I had no personal experience, of course—and now probably wouldn’t, thanks to my divorce—but I remembered Greer saying she had lots of energy toward the end of her pregnancy.

  Sian moved slowly, so I waited for her at the door while she gathered up her purse and her jacket. I stood aside to let her out the door first, then followed her and closed the door quietly behind me. “This way,” I said, nodding my head toward the hallway to the right of the front door.

  She followed me down the long stone hallway that mirrored the hallway where my own room was located. She didn’t bother to look up at any of the portraits that hung from the stone walls, Andreas’s ancestors’ eyes, also the ancestors of her unborn child, watching her as she walked.

  “Have you heard from Hugh and Cadi?” she finally asked.

  “Not yet. They shouldn’t be too far behind you,” I said.

  She let out a loud sigh. “I guess we’ll have to pretend to get along until this week is over,” she said, her voice grim.

  There was nothing I could say to that.

  “What about Rhisiart?” she asked.

  “He’ll be here tonight, but not until quite late, I think,” I said, turning my head to look at her as we walked. “He was coming up from London. I believe he had a meeting with his agent this afternoon.”

  We came to the door of the room she and Andreas would share for the week. Just like mine, and most of the other rooms in the castle, this room was large, dark, and cool, with a huge fireplace for warmth. The room was vaguely circular because it was set along the inside of one of the castle turrets. Stone walls lent the room a feeling of security, which was amplified by long heavy drapes hanging from each of the windows. All the bedroom chambers in the castle, much like the common rooms, were furnished with dark, heavy antiques and this room was no exception. Adding to the heaviness of the furniture was dark, plush bedding piled on the four-poster bed. As Annabel’s favorite son, Andreas was privileged to be a guest in the most sumptuous guest room in the castle.

  I saw that Brenda had already placed the couple’s luggage in the huge armoire. I looked around approvingly and asked Sian if there was anything I could get for her.

  “No, I’m good,” she said. The hearth was cold and dark now, but I told her I could ask Brenda to build a fire for her.

  “Don’t bother,” she said. “I just want to be left alone. I’ll get under the covers and I’ll be warm enough.”

  I nodded and left the room, closing the huge door quietly behind me. Sian was not my favorite person and I was glad to leave her in her room. She and Andreas had visited Annabel a few times over the past two years and I had always found her to be a bit snooty and standoffish. I walked back to the sitting room, where I paused before pushing the door open and announcing my presence.

  The door was slightly ajar and I could hear Andreas and Annabel speaking in low voices. “Mum, she’s been a horror ever since she became pregnant,” Andreas was saying.

  Annabel clearly didn’t think much of his opinion on the subject. “You have a lot to learn about pregnant women,” she said. I could hear the faint smile in her voice. “They can be moody and they’re almost certainly uncomfortable, so if they indulge in a little complaining, that’s their prerogative.”

  “Were you like that when you were pregnant?” Andreas asked.

  “I’d like to say I was pleasant and charming as ever, but I suppose your father might have had a different opinion.”

  Silence. The mention of Andreas’s father had stalled the conversation. I knocked on the door as I pushed it open slowly
and entered the room.

  “Ah, here’s Eilidh,” Annabel said with a smile. “Andreas, I don’t know what I would do without her.”

  I waved her words away with my hand. Her praise was flattering, but it always made me feel more essential than I really was. And Andreas apparently agreed. “You’d be just fine, Mum,” he said. Did he say that because he was stroking her ego, as I frequently did, or did he say it because he really felt my presence in the castle was unnecessary? I couldn’t be sure. I hoped it was the former.

  Annabel reached her hand toward me and I walked forward to take it in mine. I didn’t care what Andreas thought. As long as Annabel felt she needed me, I would stay with her.

  Just then Brenda knocked on the door and came into the sitting room. “Yes, Brenda?” Annabel asked.

  “Sian is asking for Andreas.”

  Andreas sighed and turned to his mother. “I’ll go see what she wants. I’ll come find you later after I unpack.”

  “Be good to her, dear. That’s my grandchild she’s carrying,” Annabel said with a wink.

  He followed Brenda out of the room. I could hear them talking, but their voices receded as they went down the hallway.

  “What would you like me to do now?” I asked Annabel.

  “I think I’d like some tea,” she said. “Would you mind asking Maisie to bring some up for me?”

  I left her alone in the sitting room while I went downstairs to the kitchen in search of Maisie. I found her wrestling with a large roast, trying to baste it without letting it slip around in the roasting pan.

  “Maisie, let me help you with that,” I said, hurrying over to the oven and grabbing oven mitts from the counter nearby.

  “Thank you, Eilidh,” she said with a grunt, sticking out her bottom lip and trying to blow hair out of her eyes.

  I held the pan while she used a fancy-looking implement to scoop up the basting liquid. It was a deep, rich-looking brown broth.

  “It smells wonderful,” I said, breathing deeply and enjoying the scent of the beef and roasting vegetables.

  “Annabel asked for the roast because her sons are the meat-and-potatoes type,” she said, straightening up next to the oven. She reached around to rub the small of her back. “This gets harder every year,” she said.

  “What does?” I asked.

  “Making the big, fancy meals. It’s hard on my back.”

  “Do you want me to get you some aspirin?”

  “No, thank you. I sent Brenda for some.” She turned to look out the kitchen door, then spoke almost to herself. “Now where has she gotten to?”

  “I saw her a few minutes ago. Sian was looking for Andreas, so Brenda came to the sitting room to get him.”

  Maisie gave me a look of disgust. “That girl of mine. Always hanging around Andreas whenever she gets the chance.”

  I smiled. I could see how a man with Andreas’s good looks could be hard for a teenage girl to ignore. Or a grown woman, for that matter.

  “Oh! I almost forgot why I came down,” I said. “Annabel would like some tea. She sent me down to tell you, but why don’t I take it up? You rest your back.”

  “Would you mind? It would be so nice if you could take the tea things upstairs for me. Or I could have Brenda do it, if she ever shows up again.”

  “I don’t mind at all.” I knew where the tea set was located, and Maisie put on the kettle to heat while I readied the tray to take it upstairs to Annabel. She always liked me to join her for tea, so I put out cups for two. The kettle was making the wheezing noise that came right before boiling, so Maisie hurried to pour the water into a silver pitcher to take upstairs. She had just set the kettle back on the stove when Brenda burst through the kitchen doorway, her eyes red-rimmed and teary.

  She stopped short, then turned away hurriedly when she saw me, but Maisie wasn’t about to let her go anywhere.

  “Brenda, where have you been? I need help in here.” She paused and got a good look at Brenda’s face. “What’s the matter now? Don’t tell me you’re crying over Andreas.”

  “It’s none o’ yer business,” Brenda said, sniffing. She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her shirt. Maisie shook her head as I picked up the tea tray. I didn’t want to be present when Maisie talked to her young daughter about older men. Older married men.

  I returned to the sitting room, where Annabel was standing by the window overlooking the grounds behind the castle. The hilly fields, yellow-green at this time of year, stretched to the horizon, broken here and there by large stands of trees and a long stone wall that had been there for centuries. It had served to protect long-ago generations of the Tucker family, their castle, and the village from unwelcome English invaders at one time, but now it served merely to break up the property into different fields, most of which were used for horse riding. Annabel’s late second husband, Brian, had been a gentleman farmer, as Annabel had explained to me, but those fields had lain fallow since his death.

  She turned around and smiled at me when I set the tray down on a small table next to her armchair. “Thank you, Eilidh. I thought Maisie was going to do that.”

  “Maisie’s back hurts, so I didn’t want her carrying the tray up the stairs.”

  Annabel changed the subject. “I think it went well with Andreas and Sian, didn’t you?”

  “Mm-hmm,” I answered noncommittally. I didn’t really know how everything went with Andreas because I had left to take Sian to her room, but what I had heard sounded like Andreas was fed up with his wife. Annabel didn’t know I had heard that part of the conversation. And as for Sian, she hadn’t stayed in the sitting room long enough with Annabel to do anything but exchange courtesies. I thought Annabel was grasping for good omens.

  “Poor Sian doesn’t feel well,” Annabel said, as if reading my thoughts. “I don’t think my son is entirely sympathetic to her condition.”

  “Never having been pregnant, I guess I don’t really understand it myself,” I answered. “But my cousin Greer had a baby and she told me what it was like.”

  Annabel smiled at Greer’s name. “I’ll never forget how happy Margot was when her granddaughter was born. How is Ellie?”

  “She’s doing very well. Loves having James as her new dad, loves school, loves art.”

  “That’s wonderful to hear.”

  * * * *

  There was a knock on the sitting room door and Brenda stuck her head in. “Hugh and Cadi are here, Miss Annabel.”

  “Oh! I didn’t expect them so early,” Annabel fretted. As she set her teacup down on the table tea sloshed over the side. “Please show them in, Brenda.”

  She busied herself mopping up the tea with a napkin from the tray, but I took her hands gently and eased her into her armchair. “Annabel, I’ll clean this up. You need to sit down and take a few deep breaths. You’re shaking.” I had never seen her like that.

  She ran her hand across her brow and slumped back into her chair. “Thank you, Eilidh. I’m so nervous. It’s been a long time since I saw Hugh and Cadi and I guess I’m a little overwhelmed.”

  “That’s understandable. You’ll settle down once you take a few deep breaths. In through your nose, out through your mouth. That’ll slow your heart rate.” She closed her eyes and did as I suggested. I could see her shoulders fall, as if she was already beginning to relax a bit. But then there was a quick knock on the door and she sat up in her chair, straight-backed and at attention.

  Brenda pushed the door open without waiting for Annabel to say anything and stood aside to let Hugh and his wife, Cadi, enter the sitting room. In the two years I had worked for Annabel I had heard stories about Hugh and Cadi, but I hadn’t met them yet. And from what I’d heard, I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet them.

  Chapter 2

  Hugh looked nothing like Andreas. He was on the short side of medium height, with a thick middle and graying curly hair
cropped close to his head. He stepped into the room and glanced around quickly, his eyes taking in every detail, then fixed his focus on his mother.

  Annabel rose from her chair and walked toward him, her hands outstretched. He took her hands in his and kissed her lightly on both cheeks. I caught the briefest glimpse of hurt in Annabel’s eyes when she glanced at me—I think she had hoped her son would embrace her and the years of physical and emotional distance would fall away.

  Hugh disengaged himself from his mother’s hands and looked behind him toward Cadi, who had been standing in the doorway watching her mother-in-law and her husband.

  Cadi was, in all physical respects, the opposite of Sian. She was petite with elfin features and pixie-cut blonde hair. She teetered on high heels and wore a handsome powder blue wool coat with a wide collar and a matching plaid scarf.

  “Cadi, come say hi to Mum,” Hugh said. Cadi stepped forward lightly and kissed Annabel on each cheek, following her husband’s lead.

  “It’s good to see you both,” Annabel said, her voice a tiny bit shaky. “Please, come sit over here and have some tea.” She looked at me and I understood the look in her eyes. It clearly said, please help me.

  I stepped forward and extended my hand, first to Hugh and then to Cadi, introducing myself as Annabel’s assistant. Annabel’s eyes held a look of relief. “Yes, I’m sorry. I should have introduced you,” she said, looking at me. Then she turned to Hugh and Cadi. “Eilidh is a huge help around here and if you need anything while you’re here, she’s the one to ask. She knows everything about what’s been planned for your holiday.”

  Hugh and Cadi nodded at me with slight smiles, their faces unreadable masks. For a moment no one spoke. Then I broke the silence, saying, “Let me run downstairs and get more teacups and biscuits. I’ll be right back.” I know Annabel hated for me to leave her alone in the room with her son and his wife, but I thought Hugh and Cadi might be more likely to let down their guards and talk freely to Annabel if I weren’t in the room.