Free Murder at Newstead Abbey by Joan Smith

someone call me?” Corinne demanded over breakfast the next morning, after she had been told the exciting happenings of the previous night. There was a polite mumble of “nothing you could have done,” and “didn’t want to waken you.”
    She turned a wrathful eye on Coffen. “And why didn’t you tell me you were going ghost-hunting? I would love to see a ghost. Let me know the next time and I’ll go with you. What are we doing today? Don’t plan to leave me out of all the excitement.”
    “We thought you and Mrs. Ballard might write up the cards for Byron’s Christmas party,” Luten replied. “We plan to deliver one to the Richardsons, you recall.”
    “I thought Prance was doing the cards.”
    “You write them and I’ll paint a sprig of holly or some such thing in one corner,” Prance said. “There’s not time for anything more elaborate. We still have the decorations to attend to.”
    “Do the card for the Richardsons first and we’ll deliver it this afternoon,” Luten said, to keep her in curl. He had good reason to know a bored Lady deCoventry could create mischief.
    “I’ll draw up a list of the names,” Byron offered.
    The ladies and Prance spent the morning working on party preparations. Luten had some correspondence to write. His own estate, Southcote Abbey, was not far away. He planned to stop on the way home and had some instructions for his staff.
    Coffen was more interested in the murder. He went in search of clues at the scene of last night’s shooting. Deducing was all well and good but he liked a tangible clue, something you could see, could pick up and examine and ferret out who it belonged to and how it got where it was. Vulch, if it had been Vulch, hadn’t left any such clues behind, but Coffen did find a fresh score mark on the pillar where he had been shot at, so at least that was real. He roamed through the park, searching for signs of where Vulch had tethered Diablo. The ground was too cold to hold horse shoe marks and the horse hadn’t been thoughtful enough to leave any droppings.
    He was wandering about from tree to tree, eyes down, when he heard the rumble of carriage wheels and the clatter of hooves coming from the roadway into the abbey. Looking up, he saw through the trees a stylish chaise, dark blue with silver trim glinting in the sunlight as it dashed through the park. It was drawn by a matched team of bays, with a liveried footman sitting beside the coachman on the box. No crest on the panel to denote a noble caller, but the rig suggested someone from the upper realm of society. With luck the Richardsons! He darted back to the abbey to hear what they had to say.
    It was indeed Sir William and Lady Richardson who were soon being announced. Corinne was disappointed that they had come, thus depriving her of a call on them that afternoon. But of course she was curious to meet them, and rose from the desk near the fire where she was writing invitations when they were announced.
    Her attention, like everyone else’s, was on Lady Richardson. Sir William was merely a stately gentleman who followed behind her. The sort of man who said, “Yes, dear,” and carried his wife’s parcels. His dark hair was silvered at the temples and the lines on his high forehead suggested middle age, but at closer range she thought he was not really much older than his wife. Forty to her thirty or thereabouts. Nothing in his toilette stood out. He wore a well-tailored blue Bath cloth jacket with no extremes of padded shoulder or nipped waist or stylishly large brass buttons. His cravat was as unassuming as his expression.
    His wife, on the other hand, was a riot of excesses and pretensions. Her bonnet wore too many feather, the fox trim on her suit was too large, her suit too bright a blue, and her talk was too loud. Other than these lapses in taste, she was an attractive lady. The body the blue suit covered was perhaps just a shade more fulsome than the ideal, though by no means fat. Her