Free Death at Bishop's Keep by Robin Paige Page B

the vicar put in. He was a stooped, wiry man in his late sixties, with a lion’s mane of silver hair and a droopy white mustache. His smile at Miss Ardleigh lighted pale blue eyes. “Your aunt has told me how glad she is that you were able to come to England. She has for some time felt the need to be closer to her only niece.”
    Miss Ardleigh met the vicar’s smile with an inquiring look. Charles thought she was about to ask a question, but after a brief hesitation, she only said, “I am glad to be here.”
    The vicar turned to Charles. “And I am delighted to meet you, Sir Charles. I understand that you are assisting Fairfax with the Colchester dig. I must confess to being something of an antiquarian myself. The Colchester site has long held a great fascination for me.”
    Eleanor’s eyes were sparkling. “Then you may be interested to hear, Vicar, of Sir Charles’s latest find.” Her voice took on a tone of muted excitement. “He discovered a dead man in the dig this morning!”
    There was a horrified gasp from Miss Ardleigh’s two aunts, seated across the room with Lady Henrietta. “Eleanor!” Lady Henrietta exclaimed.
    â€œBut it’s true, Mother,” Eleanor protested. “He’d been murdered!”
    â€œHow perfectly appalling!” Patsy Marsden cried in a coquettish fright, clapping her hands.
    â€œIndeed it is appalling,” Lady Henrietta said sternly. “Not at all a fit subject. Shall we speak of something else?”
    â€œMurdered, was he, Charles?” Lord Marsden asked from his chair beside the columned and pedimented mantelpiece. The baron was a balding gentleman of immaculate white waistcoat and imposing stomach, testimony to a long-standing devotion to saddle of Dartmoor mutton and excellent port.
    â€œYou’re in for it now, Charles,” Bradford said, helping himself to the sherry decanter on the sideboard. “You’ll have to tell the whole thing.”
    Charles looked at Lady Henrietta.
    â€œOh, very well,” she said. But Charles could hear, beneath the grudging reluctance of her tone, an unacknowledged curiosity, so he gave an abridged and slightly sanitized account of the discovery of the dead man and the activities of the police. His attention, however, was focused less on the story than on Miss Ardleigh, whose interest in the narrative was intense, but nothing like the self-dramatized horror exhibited by Eleanor and Patsy.
    â€œA foreign gentleman, you say?” the vicar asked, knitting bushy white brows.
    â€œContinental,” Charles replied, “from the cut of the clothes. He was wearing a scarab ring that suggested travel in Egypt, or at the least, Egyptian interests.”
    â€œA scarab?” Miss Ardleigh asked quickly. Her glance went to her aunts. The elder aunt, who sat on the sofa with an easy grace that was very different from the frowning abruptness of her sister, colored slightly and turned her head.
    â€œWhat is a scarab?” Patsy asked.
    â€œA dung beetle,” Bradford said. His mother made a noise in her throat.
    â€œAn Egyptian magical amulet,” the vicar said quickly.
    â€œThe beetle is associated with the transit of the sun,” Charles explained, “and hence the resurrection.”
    The fussy aunt sniffed. “Egyptian magic,” she said in a tone that suggested hellfire and perdition. “No wonder he was murdered.”
    The vicar shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat. “My dear Mrs. Jaggers,” he began, but was interrupted by Lord Marsden.
    â€œRobbery, to be sure,” the baron said gruffly. “Country’s gone to the dogs. Nobody’s safe since we’ve ceased giving riffraff the boat. Damned anarchists can plant their bombs anywhere, blast it all. That Frenchie who blew himself up at Greenwich, for instance. If the bloody bomb hadn’t gone off in his hands, it would’ve taken out the