The stylish man was peering toward the train hissing on the track, while the conductor shouted and slammed the coach
doors, porters jangled baggage trucks, and passengers scurried to board. "Where is Aunt Penelope?"
"She developed a frightful cold," Miss Marsden said carelessly, "really quite severe, poor old thing. The doctor advised her to take to her bed. Rather than wait, I came on without her."
The young man frowned. "Papa will not be at all pleased, Ellie. You know his feelings on the subject of women traveling unescorted."
Miss Marsden gave him a dazzling smile. "But I was not alone, Bradford. My dear friend Miss Ardleigh was kind enough to accompany me, and of course I had Garnet. I am sure Papa could not object." She drew Kate forward. "Miss Kathryn Ardleigh, may I present my dear brother, the Honorable Bradford Marsden, and his friend, Sir Charles Sheridan, who is staying the month with us. Gentlemen, Miss Ardleigh is the niece of Miss Sabrina Ardleigh and Mrs. Bernice Jaggers. She has come to live with her aunts at Bishop's Keep."
Kate's amusement at Miss Marsden's adroitness in giving their accidental meeting the appearance of a planned jaunt was nearly lost in her astonishment. There were two aunts? But she could not question Miss Marsden without revealing her ignorance about the situation into which she was walking, as Uncle O'Malley would have said, as blind as a bat. In spite of her intuitive liking for her companion, her own railway confidences had been discreetly reserved. She was anxious to know whether Bishop's Keep was indeed as romantic as she imagined, but she had not asked. Nor had she disclosed either her secretarial employment or the existence of Beryl Bard-well. And she had asked nothing about her aunt, leaving it to Miss Marsden to think what she wished.
"Charmed, I am sure, Miss Ardleigh," Bradford Marsden drawled, bending in a polished greeting over her hand. ' 'How nice that you have come." He cocked a wry eyebrow. "And how felicitous for Eleanor. Now she will have a friend directly at hand. No doubt you will be required to properly admire her nuptial finery and envy her choice of husbands. Most of her friends, regrettably, fail to serve these necessary
purposes, for they live in London. You will certainly be useful."
"I am glad to share Miss Marsden's joys," Kate said quietly, retrieving her hand.
Miss Marsden made a playful face. ' 'Come now, Bradford, do behave." She turned to the other gentleman, who stood slightly behind her brother. "Sir Charles Sheridan, my dear Kathryn, is a masterful photographer, famous for some picture or other that he took of the Queen at her Jubilee, and thereby earned his knighthood. You will have to persuade him to take your portrait, as he did the Queen's, and Mrs. Langtry's. But don't let him talk to you of fossils," she added with a playful gaiety. "Once given leave to begin, the man scarcely knows how to make a stop, and must be reined in with the firmest possible hand."
Kate nodded at Sir Charles with interest, half expecting him to wear some visible token of his grandness. But as a knight, he was a stunning disappointment, especially in comparison to the impeccably groomed, grinning Bradford Marsden. Sir Charles's brown canvas jacket needed brushing. It was covered with lumpy pockets, stuffed, from what she could see, with odds and ends of scientific paraphernalia-magnifying lens, an ivory rule, a pair of calipers. His tweedy Norfolk breeches were tucked into scarred, heavy-soled leather boots, and a soft felt hat, a broad-brimmed, brown thing with a shapeless crown, was pushed back on his curly brown hair, cut overlong, so that he looked like a buccaneer. From the look of him, Kate deduced that his knighthood was not a distinction he valued highly.
"Kathryn-" Miss Marsden took her arm. "May I call you Kathryn, my dear? And you really must call me Eleanor. I require it. It is so tedious to be formal." Without waiting for a response, she went on. ' 'Dear Kathryn has arrived a day sooner than expected, so I have offered to take her to Bishop's Keep."
Mr. Marsden pursed his lips. "But my dear sister, I fear that five is too many, given your monstrous load of parcels."
Kate disengaged her arm. "I can wait here," she said hastily. "I can send word to Bishop's Keep to let them know I
have arrived, and someone will be sent to fetch me. I shall not mind staying, truly."
She would not, either. Beryl Bardwell would spend the time writing down everything she had seen on the clanking, steam-belching journey from London to Colchester and as much of Eleanor's chitchat as she could remember, as well as full descriptions of the elegant Bradford Marsden and Sir Charles Sheridan, he of the lumpy pockets. And she would give her thoughts to what adventures and great mysteries lay ahead at Bishop's Keep, which she imagined as an enormous stone pile of arches and towers, shrouded by a mysterious haze and haunted by ghosts of dead Ardleighs. Now that she was almost there, she had to admit to some anxiety. The sense of being alone in a strange place, so distant from the life she had known, the feeling of utter dependence on the goodwill of her unknown aunt-her two unknown aunts! — made her feel apprehensive. Apprehension was not an emotion Kate was used to. She didn't particularly like it.
"Actually, I prefer to stay behind," Sir Charles said. "I shall return to the scene of the murder and see if anything new has been found out-although," he added, as much to himself as to them, "judging from Sergeant Battle's muddled methods, I rather doubt it."
Kate swiveled to look at Sir Charles. Eleanor squealed and clapped her hands.
"Murder!" she cried. "How delightfully shocking! Charles, you naughty man, what dreadful scrape have you gotten yourself into now? You must tell us all about it as we ride. There is nothing I love quite as much as a good murder, especially when one of our party is involved in it." She possessed herself of Kate's arm once again. "And it is absolute balderdash to think of anyone's staying behind," she added firmly. "We will hire a man with a cart to take Garnet and the boxes, whilst we enjoy a leisurely drive through the countryside. You should know, dear Kathryn, that the painter John Constable, who has memorialized our Dedham Vale in his landscapes, was Sir Charles's estimable great-uncle. Come now, everyone."
Kate smiled. Clearly, problems were readily solved if one
had the money to hire the solution. But even though she continued to smile as Eleanor led them toward the carriage, she was at the same time surveying Sir Charles with greater interest, wondering exactly what sort of murder he meant.
The carriage, with Kate's boxes roped at the rear, proceeded through the Essex countryside, resplendent in late-summer glories. Blackbirds sang in the hawthorn hedges, apples ripened in the orchards, and golden stubblefields were studded with standing sheaves of grain. But the sun was a flat silver disk, mist-shrouded, in a pearl-gray sky. As they rode, the air thickened into a damp, cool fog. Bradford Marsden seemed preoccupied, while Eleanor wheedled out of Sir Charles a full account of the dead body in the dig and Beryl Bardwell made careful mental note of every grisly detail that might enrich "Amber's Amulet."
So far, her story was little more than character sketches of an Egyptian gentleman (greatly resembling the ship's steward in appearance and demeanor) and a mysterious medium named Mrs. Amber Bartlett, who wore an amulet and conducted seances in darkened rooms. It did not presently involve a murder, if only because Kate had not yet thought it all out, but the story would undoubtedly be the better for one. She made a note to herself to look for the newspaper accounts of the Colchester tragedy, and at Sir Charles's mention of the photographs he had taken that morning, she asked to see them.
"But my dear Kathryn," Eleanor protested in a shocked voice, ' 'they are photographs of a dead man. And not merely dead, but shockingly murdered! One presumes that there was a great deal of blood." She shuddered with an eager delicacy. "The mere thought of it makes one quite faint." Then she smiled and patted Kate's hand. "But I forget. You are an American and American women are reputed to be amazingly venturesome. You would not be daunted by a bit of blood, perhaps not even by the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tus-saud's." She turned to Bradford. "Perhaps Miss Ardleigh would consent to your escorting us to Madame Tussaud's, — dear brother. I understand that Cecil Hambrough's dreadful