Indeed, as they emerged, Tiffany could hear scuffling above, and someone crying out. She turned as if to hurry to them.
“No,” Old Elizabet hissed. “You must stay free. I’ve already sent for Constable Brooks and sent word to Lord Northbury. Come quickly because your part is yet to come.”
“What part?” Tiffany whispered. But she hurried along behind Old Elizabet into a tunnel that was not nearly so nice as her former hiding place. It was dank, and noisome water ran along the floor.
The old woman moved spryly down the dank steps, the only light a sheltered ray from a dark lantern.
They slipped out a narrow crack in the wall onto a path that led into what might once have been an orchard surrounded by a hedge, but was now a tangled thicket of brambles and scrub brush.
Old Elizabet dropped to her knees and pulled a plug of brambles away from a tunnel that was scarcely three feet high.
For several feet they crawled on their hands and knees, until they came to a clearing. The shambled remains of a building stood there.
Old Elizabet raised her fingers to her lips, indicating that they should be quiet. Tiffany let the oldster lead her into the ruin.
Deep within it, a woman sat on a log beside the cold hearth of a ruined fireplace. Her arms were clutched around her waist. “I told Henry, I told him that girl would be the death of him. I told him. I told him.”
She rocked back and forth, huddled in a worn, thin shawl. “I told him, I told him. Where is that fool girl? Why doesn’t she come mend the fire? Tiffany, where are you?”
Tiffany stiffened, but Old Elizabet lay two fingers across her lips before a sound could escape them.
“I told him, I told him. Shoulda left her in the orphanage where she could disappear. Shoulda coulda . . .but he wouldn’t, wouldn’t, would not, would not…”
“What is she muttering about?” Tiffany whispered softly.
The mad woman’s head snapped up. “Who’s there? Have you come to take what is mine? Mine, I tell you, even though he left it all to her. All of it, all…an’ I can’t find her, so I can’t have what is mine.”
The old woman began to sob. “All alone in this cold, cruel world, not so much as a farthing to comfort me. No one to care, oh, Henry, why did you do it? Did you hate me so much as all that?”
Old Elizabet pulled Tiffany gently away from the sight and into another part of the burned-out shell.
“She’s fair daft, but there are things that she knows. Once Constable Brooks gets here, we’ll see what we can learn.”
“What’s to learn?” Tiffany asked.
“Ah, that is the question of the hour,” Old Elizabet replied. “It is, indeed, the question of the hour.”
Chapter 40
Constable Brooks slipped quietly out of the undergrowth from a direction that was different than the way Old Elizabet had brought Tiffany.
“It is over,” he said. “I managed to scatter them and get everyone out. You have her?”
“Aye, that I do,” Old Elizabet said. “Much good it will you. She’s raving mad as a hatter in beaver season.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Even if I cannot, you have saved her from who knows what fate.”
“Fate? What? What is going on? Why would anyone want to harm Mrs. Bentley, other than to slap her for some of her more harebrained remarks? I didn’t mean for her to go to the poorhouse, but I could not stand it any longer.”
“I know, child,” Old Elizabet soothed. “I know.”
“As for why,” Constable Brooks said, “Lord Northbury charged me to learn more about your background. He said that something about your story didn’t ring true.”
“Didn’t ring true? Just how true can I tell my story? I didn’t hold back. I’m a nobody, nothing except what I can make of myself.”
“Somebody doesn’t want your true story to come to light,” the constable said. “I’m not quite sure who. But as soon as I started asking questions, someone came snooping around the poorhouse.”
“You brought her here? Out here in the woods, all alone?”
