Page 83 of Winterset

Anna and Reed went the next morning to visit Nick Perkins. The old man greeted them warmly, though he looked surprised at their visit.

“Come in, come in. Let me brew some tea for us.”

“I don’t know that we will be staying that long,” Anna said somewhat stiffly.

She wasn’t quite sure how to act around Nick now. Looking at him, she felt the same friendship and affection that she always had. Yet she could not help but think about the fact that he had aided Lady de Winter to cover up the murders her husband had committed. She understood that he had not told her the truth about the murders because he was trying to protect her from the knowledge that her own grandfather was a killer and a madman, but, still, there was a pinprick of hurt, knowing that he had lied to her.

“Is something the matter, Miss Anna?” he asked, his forehead knotting in concern.

“We learned some things yesterday,” Reed said. “And we need to talk to you about them.”

The old man looked at them a trifle warily, but he led them into the main room of his cottage, gesturing them toward the chairs. He sat in a chair across from them.

“All right, then,” he said. “What is it you’re wanting to know?”

“We found out yesterday that it was you who discovered Susan Emmett’s body,” Anna said flatly.

Perkin’s eyebrows rose. “Aye, that I did.”

“Yet when I asked you about that murder you said nothing about it.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know how that could have helped you, miss.”

“But surely you can see that it would have been of interest to us that you helped cover up those killings,” Anna shot back, unwanted tears springing into her eyes.

Perkins stared at her in dismay. “Miss Anna…how…who told you that?”

“I see you cannot deny it,” Anna said, her voice laced with hurt. “Nick, how could you do that?”

The old man sighed, seeming almost to shrink before their eyes. He cast a look at Anna and said, “You’re right. It was a wicked thing to do. You cannot blame me more than I blame myself. If it weren’t for me and what I did, old Will Dawson wouldn’t have died.”

He paused, rubbing his hands over his face, then went on. “My family’s been loyal to the de Winters for generations. We’ve worked for them, farmed their land, even fought for them back in the old days. My first instinct, I guess, was loyalty, even though I never liked Roger de Winter. He was a hard, cruel man.” Nick’s face tightened as he spoke. “When I came upon him standing over Susan’s body—he had carried her out to Weller’s Point after he killed her in the house—my first thought was to get him away from there, to get him back to the house.”

Nick stood up and began to pace. “He took my helping him as his due, of course. That is the arrogant sort he was. Everyone else existed to serve Lord de Winter. But Lady Philippa—his wife—was a wonderful woman. She didn’t deserve the shame, and neither did their son. It would have stained the de Winter name forever. When I told her what I had found, she begged me to help her. So I did. What was done, was done, I thought. His going to the gallows wouldn’t have brought the girl back. I told the constable that I had found Susan and led them to the body, but I said nothing about his lordship. And, of course, no one ever questioned him or Lady de Winter. There was no indication that her death had come at Winterset. Lady de Winter saw to it that the room was cleaned up.”

He sighed again and turned toward Anna. “We thought we could control him. His valet stayed with him, and at night they locked him in his bedchamber. He assured us that he understood, that he would abide by the rules. He said he had not meant to kill the girl, and I guess we were eager to believe him. Of course, we saw our mistake after he got away from his valet one night and killed poor Will.”

“But still you did not turn him in,” Reed commented.

“No. We had already concealed the first murder. I could scarcely go forward then and have Lady de Winter accused of being an accessory. She locked him up after that, put him in the nursery and got a burly guard to watch him, as well as his valet.” Nick turned haunted eyes toward Reed. “I’ve never forgotten or forgiven myself. If I had been a better man, a stronger man, I would have taken him straight to jail when I found him. But I wasn’t…and I could not hurt Lady Philippa like that.”

“Why did he do that?” Anna burst out. “We found those masks, his journals, but we could make very little sense of them.”

“He was mad,” Perkins said bluntly. “He grew worse and worse until he died. He had some crazy idea that the legends about the Beast of Craydon Tor were true. He said it was the de Winter curse, but it had turned out to be a blessing. He thought that periodically through the years one of the de Winters, like him, would be one of the ‘Children of the Wolf.’ He said that sort of thing. These ‘Wolf People’ were superior to everyone else, he thought. They had gifts, he said—they had heightened senses of smell and hearing, as if they really were wolves. They were attuned to the woods, to nature, and they had the courage of a wolf. Because he was one of the ‘Wolf People,’ he was not subject to the laws that governed lesser folk. He believed that he hunted and then killed, like a wolf, and that it was his right, part of his superiority.”

Perkins paused, then went on. “He used to put on those masks and wear them about his rooms. He had strange clawlike nails that he would slip on his fingers. I think he must have worn them when he killed his quarry. Perhaps the first time, when he killed Susan in the house, it might have been a sudden impulse. But I think when he killed Will Dawson, he put them on and went hunting.”

Anna shivered. It was a horrible image and one that she knew she would not be able to get out of her head for a long time.

Nick turned to her and said earnestly, “I’m sorry, Miss Anna, but I could not tell you all that. I know what I did was wrong, but I can’t regret it, not when you and your brother and your mother would have had to live with that stigma. You may hate me, but—”

“Oh, Nick.” Anna sent him an anguished look. “I cannot hate you.”

She knew that she was grateful he had done what he did, that she and Kit had not grown up with the black cloud of their grandfather’s evil deeds hanging over them. God knows, she wished that she did not know about them even now. At the same time, she hated what he had done, and she was not sure that she could ever feel the same way about him again.

They left not long afterward, but when Reed turned his horse toward the road, Anna reached out and put her hand on his arm, stopping him.

“I want to go the other way,” she told him.