The Leopard Prince (Princes #2)(84)

So, thinking the tavern keeper would come back for the money if nothing else, Harry and Bennet had lurked in the dark tavern. They had coughed and spit up black phlegm once or twice, but they hadn’t talked. Thomas’s death had stunned Bennet. He stared into space, his eyes far, far away. And Harry had considered his future life with a wife and a child and a whole new way of living.

As the dawn gave light to the dim room and it became evident that Dick wasn’t going to show up, Harry remembered the cottage. The Crumb cottage, the hovel where Dick and his sister had been raised, had long ago fallen into ruin. But maybe Dick might use it as temporary shelter? Far more likely he was in the next county by now, but they might as well check it.

Now as they neared, the cottage looked deserted. The thatched roof had mostly fallen in, and one wall was crumbled, leaving the chimney pointing nakedly to the sky. They dismounted and Harry’s boots sank into mud, no doubt the reason for the cottage having been abandoned. The river behind the tiny house spread over her banks here, making a marshy area. Every spring the cottage probably flooded. It was an unhealthy place to live. Harry couldn’t think why anyone would build here.

“Don’t know if we should even try the door,” he said. They looked at the door, tilting inward under a leaning lintel.

“Let’s check around back,” Bennet said.

Harry walked as quietly as he could in the mud, but his boots made a squishing sound as the muck sucked at them with each step. If Dick was here, he was already warned.

He was in the lead when he rounded the corner and stopped short. Plants as tall as a man grew in the boggy ground behind the cottage. They had delicate, branching fronds, and some still bore flat seed heads.

Water hemlock. “Jesus,” Bennet breathed. He’d come around Harry, but it wasn’t the plants he looked at.

Harry followed the direction of his gaze and saw that the entire back wall of the cottage was gone. From one of the remaining rafters a rope was tied and a pathetic bundle dangled at its end.

Janie Crumb had hung herself.

Chapter Nineteen

“She didn’t know what she was doing.” Dick Crumb sat with his back against the decayed stone of the cottage. He still wore his stained tavern apron, and one hand clutched a crumpled handkerchief.

Harry looked at Janie’s body, swaying only feet away from where her brother sat. Her neck was grotesquely elongated, and her blackened tongue protruded from swollen lips.

Nothing could be done for Janie Crumb now. “She was never right, poor lass, not after what he did to her,” Dick continued.

How long had he been sitting there? “She used to slip away at night. Wander the fields. Maybe do other things I didn’t want to know about.” Dick shook his head. “It took me a while to realize she might be up to something else. And then Mistress Pollard died.” Dick looked up. His eyes were bloodshot, his eyelids reddened. “She came in after they took you, Harry. She was wild, her hair all flying away. Said she hadn’t done it. Hadn’t killed Mistress Pollard like she killed the sheep. Was calling Lord Granville the devil and cursing him.” The big man knit his brows like a puzzled little boy. “She said Lord Granville killed old woman Pollard. Janie was crazy. Just plum crazy.”

“I know,” Harry said.

Dick Crumb nodded, as if relieved by his agreement. “I didn’t know what to do. She was my little sister, crazy or no.” He wiped the dome of his head with a shaking hand. “The only family I had left. My baby sister. I loved her, Harry!”

The body on the rope seemed to twist in horrible reply. “So I did nothing. And last night, when I heard that she’d fired the Granville stables, I came a running down here. The old place had always been her hidey-hole. Don’t know what I would’ve done. Only I found her like this.” He threw his hands out to the corpse as if in prayer. “Like this. I’m so sorry.” The big man began to cry, great heaving sobs that shook his shoulders.

Harry looked away. What could one do in the face of such overwhelming grief?

“You have no reason to apologize, Mr. Crumb,” Bennet spoke from beside Harry.

Dick raised his head. Snot shone beneath his nose. “The blame lies with my father, not you.” Bennet nodded curtly and walked back around the cottage.

Harry took out his knife. Dragging a chair over beneath the corpse, he climbed up and cut the rope. Janie slumped, suddenly freed from her self-imposed punishment. He caught the body and gently lowered her to the ground. As he did so, he felt something small and hard fall out of Janie’s pocket. He bent to look and saw one of his own carvings: a duck. Quickly, he palmed the little bird. Had Janie been placing his carvings at the poisonings all along? Why? Had she meant to set him against Granville? Perhaps she’d seen Harry as her instrument of revenge. Harry darted a glance at Dick, but the older man was simply staring into the face of his dead sister. It would only grieve Dick further to tell him Janie had meant for Harry to take the blame for her crimes. Harry pocketed the duck.

“Ta, Harry,” Dick said. He took off his apron and covered his sister’s distorted face.

“I’m sorry.” Harry laid his hand on the other man’s shoulder.

Dick nodded, grief overtaking him again.

Harry turned to join Bennet. The last sight he had of Dick Crumb was the big man bending, a mountain of sorrow, over the slight form of his sister’s body.