(A Charm of Magpies 1)The Magpie Lord by Kj Charles Page B

thinking were shallow trickles here.
    How had such a lifeless house been the Magpie Lord’s home? Or perhaps that was why it was lifeless, perhaps he’d drained it in some way.
    He stared at his knucklebones, white under the skin, and the image of mummies popped into his head again, irritatingly. This house wasn’t a dead thing moving, it was a live thing dying. Or perhaps the image simply meant the shrivelled corpse of something once powerful.
    He rose from his crouching position on the floor and looked round the room as he rolled his shoulders. It should have been a lovely place, a double-height room with dark wood shelving, filled with books, many leather-bound and ancient. He should have been consumed with excitement at the idea that somewhere in there might be the Magpie Lord’s own books.
    But the room was dusty and loveless and lifeless, and filled with the ivy stink of the Judas jack, and the echoes of two men’s desperate, self-hating, lonely deaths, and the very recent shadows of Crane’s fear and pain, and it made his hands hurt.
    “The blazes with this,” he muttered to himself, and headed for the door, which he pulled open only to be confronted with a raised fist on the other side.
    “Oh, there you are, I was just about to knock,” said Crane brightly. “I have a fascinating story for you.”
     
     
    Crane sat back in an uncomfortably embroidered chair and watched the show with interest.
    Mrs. Mitching had been extremely reluctant to repeat her story to Day, despite Crane’s assurances that he could, in some unspecified way, shed light on the mystery. But she had produced a pot of tea and a plate of heavy, wet cake and solid, indigestible buns, and to Crane’s frank astonishment Day had devoured two slices of cake and three buns with enthusiasm that had worked better than any flattery, as well as obviously genuine interest in her tale, and now Mrs. Mitching was as close to relaxing as anyone so rigid ever could.
    “So let me be sure I understand,” Day said. “All the…incidents happened in the Rose Walk. You and Miss Diver saw him from a distance, seeming to rage and hit out at something.”
    “That’s right, sir.”
    “And he came up to Miss Brook and spoke to her. Shouted at her.”
    “But she couldn’t hear a word, just saw his mouth moving.”
    “And when she ran, he chased her to the edge of the Rose Walk…”
    “And grabbed at her dress, sir, she says. She swears it was him clutching at her skirts, and that the grip came loose as she stepped off the end of the Rose Walk onto the paved path. With all the rose bushes along there, it’s no surprise to me if something did catch at her skirt, and it’s no surprise what she’d think either, the way that man carried on—begging your pardon, my lord.”
    “Not at all.”
    “Had he, ah, chased Miss Brook in life?” asked Day. “Or is there any reason why she might feel pursued when you and Miss Diver didn’t?”
    “Elsa Brook is imaginative,” said Mrs. Mitching, much as she might have said, Elsa Brook is leprous . “She does her job well and she’s no trouble but she has fancies.”
    “Do you think this was a fancy?” Day asked seriously.
    Mrs. Mitching hesitated. “Maybe, sir. I know what I saw, and Jane Diver isn’t imaginative, and I wouldn’t blame Brook that she was frit after what she saw, or that she feared something was coming after her…”
    Day’s tawny eyes were fixed on Mrs. Mitching’s face. “But?” he asked softly.
    Silence. At last she spoke, in an unwilling rush. “You couldn’t trust Mr. Hector in life, and I don’t trust him in death either, and that’s the truth, sir. And none of my girls are going into the Rose Walk again.”
    Day leaned back. “That’s probably wise.”
    “What do you think sir?” demanded Mrs. Mitching. “Is it really Mr. Hector? My lord says as you know about these things.”
    “I explained that you’ve come across some odd things in the course of your work,”