Free A Gilded Grave by Shelley Freydont

to Will, who glanced at the door. “Can you tell me who you were with and what happened when you got to the walk?”
    “Yes. Cassie—Cassandra Woodruff—Vladimir Howe, Herbert Stanhope, and several others who were behind us. But there were people all over. I don’t see how—”
    “Yes, thank you. Please continue with your movements.”
    “We reached the cliff walk and stopped to admire the sea. Like a lot of people were doing.” She left out the part about the champagne. But from the way Will was looking at her, she thought he might have an idea of what they’d really been doing, and she blushed hotly.
    “Then Vlady looked down and said someone was out on the rocks. At first we thought we had”—she looked at her father; he gave her an encouraging nod, then looked down at his ink blotter—“perhaps discovered a pair of lovers, or—but then we looked more closely and— Well, then Vlady—Mr. Howe—said someone was hurt, and he started to climb down the rocks. Then Herbert followed him. Cassie and I waited on the walk.”
    Will’s eyebrows rose.
    She looked away; she wasn’t about to admit that she had tried to follow them and would have, had Lord David not stopped her.
    “But even from there we could see who it was.”
    “From that far above her?”
    “Well, it isn’t that far, is it? Not like some places on the cliffs. She was just a few feet below us. Sort of at the edge of the rocks before there’s a drop-off into the ocean.”
    “So you saw her clearly?”
    “Yes. I told you—”
    “Deanna,” her father warned.
    “Sorry. It was overcast, but the clouds were moving quite rapidly. While we were looking, the moon broke through and we saw that it was Daisy. We could see her face quite plainly in the moonlight. Her body was parallel to the walk, but her head—her head wasn’t.” Deanna took a breath, blew it out. “Her head had fallen sideways over the edge of the rock. She was staring straight up to the sky.” Suddenly the image was very clear in her mind. She swallowed.
    “You don’t have to continue,” her father said softly.
    She shook her head. “It’s all right, Papa. I want to help.”
    “Please, go ahead.” Will’s voice was calm, reassuring.
    “She was lying almost straight, as if she were sleeping. I remember thinking her feet were so small.” Embarrassingly, she teared up. She broke from Will’s gaze. “Papa, is it all right if I give Elspeth the afternoon off?”
    “Of course, my dear.”
    Realizing she might be implicating Orrin in the investigation, Deanna added, “My maid Elspeth and Daisy were friends. She’s been upset.”
    Will nodded, turned the page of his notebook. “Did you see anything else?”
    Deanna thought about it. Re-created the scene in her mind as she did when working on a still life after the fruit had beentaken away. Her art teacher always said she had a good eye. Now she wished she didn’t.
    “Daisy was lying on her back. If she had jumped, wouldn’t she have landed face-first?” Deanna wondered if that made any difference. Could Will’s forensics determine something about the fall from the way she landed?
    Deanna was dying to ask, but didn’t. “She must have slipped and fallen, except—”
    Will cleared his throat, and Deanna blinked furiously. She knew not to cry in public, and she really wasn’t much given to crying. Until today, at least.
    “Except what?”
    “Except it wasn’t the kind of place you fall from, and if she had somehow missed her way in the dark, she would have slid down and not landed that far from the path. Even if someone had pushed her . . .” She stopped.
    “Deanna? Miss Randolph?”
    She started. “Yes?”
    “Did you think of something?”
    “I . . . no.” She darted a look toward her father. She didn’t want to have to say more.
    “Sergeant,” her father warned.
    “Just a few more questions, sir.” Will continued without waiting for his okay. “What happened next?”
    “Cassie