The Great Game (Royal Sorceress) by Christopher Nuttall Page B

she guessed, as there were several other intact vases in the room – that had been flung against the wall. Could it have been the murder weapon? She walked over and picked up one of the pieces, only to discover that it was almost eggshell-thin. It would have shattered on a person’s skull, without inflicting any real damage.
    “I shall leave you to your task, Lady Gwen,” Lord Mycroft said. He looked over at Lestrade. “See to it that she gets all the help and support that she requires.”
    “Of course, Your Lordship,” Lestrade said. “But we have already arrested a suspect.”
    Gwen blinked. “A suspect?”
    “The one other person in the house when Sir Travis met his untimely end,” Lestrade said. “His maid. She is currently in the kitchen, being interrogated...”
    “I think I should talk to her,” Gwen said, shortly.
    “A good idea,” Lord Mycroft said. “I shall see you in Whitehall, Lady Gwen.”
    He bowed and left the room, twisting slightly so he could pass through the door. Gwen watched him go, then looked back at Lestrade. She could understand why he’d arrested the maid, but how could someone have harboured murderous intentions for so long and yet remained undetected by her master? A Sensitive would know better than to treat a servant as part of the furniture...
    “Take me to her,” Gwen ordered.
    Lestrade bowed and led her out of the room.
     

 

    Chapter Nine
    S ir Travis’s mother died just after the Swing,” Lestrade said, as they made their way down to the kitchen. “The maid was left in the house all alone until Sir Travis returns from India – and he dies bare weeks later. I don’t think that was a coincidence.”
    Gwen scowled, keeping her thoughts to herself. Lestrade was as tenacious as a bulldog, which wasn’t always a good thing. When he came up with a theory that fitted the facts, he rarely gave up on it easily, to the point where he twisted or ignored later facts so he could keep his original theory. She had to admit that two deaths in the same house looked suspicious, but it didn’t necessarily follow that the maid was a murderess.
    “Maybe,” she said, finally. “How did Sir Travis’s mother die?”
    “Cold, the doctor claimed,” Lestrade said. “She did have a hard life – plenty of family heirlooms had to be sold off to provide for her son. And many of their cousins called her a traitor.”
    Gwen nodded. Every aristocratic family with a high opinion of itself – which was almost all of them – prided itself on passing houses, land, paintings, jewels and worthless tat picked up overseas down to its distant descendents. There were aristocratic families, having trouble making ends meet, that could have solved their problems by selling off some of their family collections. But that wasn’t the done thing in Polite Society. Sir Travis’s mother would have been accused of throwing away her son’s heritage, even though she would have had no choice. It wasn’t as if his relatives had helped her when she needed it.
    She glanced over at Lestrade and asked a question. “There was only one maid?”
    “I don’t think they could have afforded to keep others,” Lestrade said.
    Gwen blinked in surprise. Sir Travis’s family had been poorer than she realised, if only because house help was cheap . Gwen’s mother had never had any difficulty hiring servants, even though they’d heard rumours about Gwen herself. A regular aristocratic family would have a small army of servants, ranging from cooks to coachmen. You weren’t anyone in society unless you had a horse and carriage of your very own.
    She scowled as Lestrade led her into the kitchen. It was smaller than she’d expected, smaller than the one she remembered from back home – and clearly not designed for feeding more than a handful of guests. A gas stove sat in the middle of the room, flanked by two tables and a free-standing set of shelves loaded with cooking tools. Gwen had never really cooked anything in