Page 30 of A Stolen Heart

CHAPTER SIX

“ALEXANDRA!” THORPE WAS BESIDE HER on the porch in an instant. His eyes, at first on her, went to the doorstep, and he saw the animal. “Good God! What the devil is that doing here?”

Alexandra shook her head. “I have no idea. Ugh.” She gave a shudder.

“Your dog or cat brought you a present?” he guessed.

“We have no dog or cat. Not with us.”

“The housekeeper might have one—nearly any kitchen has a cat for mousing.”

“Perhaps. I’m not sure. But it would take a monstrously big cat to bring this thing here.”

“True.” His hopes of fobbing her off with a pleasant lie died.

“A person brought it.”

“It would seem so,” Thorpe agreed reluctantly. He reached across and hammered on the door.

A moment later a footman opened the door. He looked surprised to see Alexandra knocking at her own door, but then his gaze flickered to the animal on the steps, and he gave a sharp gasp.

“Blimey! Oh, ‘scuse me, miss. I mean, uh…” He looked in fascinated horror at the corpse.

“I assume that you have not seen this before?” Thorpe asked.

“Cor! No, sir, not likely!” He struggled to regain his usual dignified demeanor. “I beg your pardon, my lord. I cannot imagine how this came to be here.”

“Get the butler; I want to ask him a few questions. And get rid of that carcass right away.”

“Let’s go in by the servants’ entrance,” Alexandra suggested. “It’ll be quicker than waiting for them to clean this. And I am not stepping over that thing. We can question the servants there.”

“Of course.” Thorpe wondered why it had even occurred to him that Alexandra would hand over the task of investigating this incident to him, as any other woman would. He followed her around the corner of the house and along the narrow passageway to the servants’ entrance.

He did manage to get there before Alexandra and open the door for her. She nodded her thanks and swept inside. Everyone in the kitchen stopped and turned to look at them in astonishment. Thorpe wondered if any of the former occupants of the house had ever casually walked in the servants’ entrance.

“I need to speak to all of you,” Alexandra began crisply. Thorpe knew that if he had not heard her shriek with his own ears a few minutes earlier, he would not have thought she had been at all discomposed.

The servants lined up before her, rather like troops about to be inspected. Thorpe watched them for any flicker of expression that might show that one of them already knew about the dead rat on the doorstep. After all, the person who would have easiest and most unnoticed access to the stoop would be someone who worked here.

“There is a dead rat on the front doorstep,” Alexandra began without preamble.

Everyone stared at her in astonishment.

“What, miss?” the butler asked, unsure he had heard correctly.

“I found a dead rat on the stoop when Lord Thorpe and I returned home just now.” All eyes swung to Thorpe, as if for confirmation. He nodded, and the group turned to Alexandra.

“What I want to know is whether one of you put it there,” Alexandra went on.

So she had already figured that out, too, Thorpe thought admiringly. Of course, it would be just like Alexandra to look at a problem head-on, with no attempt to make anything seem better or nicer.

“Miss Ward!” The butler appeared genuinely shocked, as did most of the servants. None of them looked in the slightest guilty or as if the news was not new to them. “None of us would think of such a thing!” He swung around to look at each and every member of the staff with his piercing gaze. They immediately fell into a chorus of noes, accompanied by a multitude of accounts of their whereabouts the entire afternoon.

“Did any of you see or hear anything suspicious?” Alexandra asked, cutting into their babble.

The answer, once again, appeared to be a universal, emphatic no.

“You needn’t have seen someone putting the rat there,” Thorpe added, glancing from one to another. “It could have been something like seeing someone on the street this afternoon who looked as if he didn’t belong or someone in a hurry.”