Murder At Rudhall Manor by Anya Wylde

and had possessed a voice that seemed to emerge from deep within his
intestines to break through his cruel lips in a bellowing, reverberating sound.
    A sound that had shaken the very air surrounding him and had
held strength enough to send a weak willed creature shooting a few feet into
the air in absolute terror.
    Along with his commanding voice he had also possessed a
lusty temperament, a lineage that could be traced back a hundred years, and
blood so blue that one was amazed to see his red cheeks.
    He also happened to have been four feet, eleven inches tall.
    Lucy chewed the back of her quill, her finger tapping his
name on the sheet before her. The ink was still wet and a blob formed where
Archi had been. She did not notice but continued to drum the sheet with her
fingertips.
    Lord Sedley had, owing to his bottle head, squandered a good
deal of the Sedley family wealth on what he termed as 'good investments'. They
had turned out to be very bad investments.
    His pennies would have been better spent buying rotten eggs
or mud.
    Perhaps it was his short stature, she mused, that had turned
him into an evil little goblin.
    He had been like a greedy little squirrel hoarding his nuts,
refusing to let slip a single one into anyone else's hand, even if the hand had
belonged to a member of his family.
    She shook her head sadly. He wouldn't need those nuts
anymore ….
    She threw the quill down on the table and started pacing the
room. Her hand absently skimmed over the dusty books lining the shelves. A
layer of thick grey dust settled on her fingertips.
    She sneezed.
    Lady Sedley was a terrible wife. She was like that bird Lucy
had read about once in a book; the beautiful bird who snuck her eggs into
another bird's nest and then abandoned her unborn chicks to their fate.
    Lady Sedley, with her mulligrubs, was also a swooner. An
artistic swooner who swooned only in the presence of handsome men irrespective
of their marital status. Her slim figure collapsed on demand in a dignified
heap and draped itself on the nearest fainting couch or chair, but never ever
the floor.
    She had been ten years younger than Lord Sedley when they
had married. They said she had been beautiful—still was, Lucy supposed— in an
ethereal, incompetent and bleating sort of way.
    Lucy returned to the desk and circled Lady Sedley's name.
    Lady Sedley could have done it. After all, she had plenty of
reasons to off the old dried up shrimp. She had despised her tight-fisted,
stiff rumped oleaginous husband, and she was having an affair with the valet.
His death now allowed her to sell this ugly manor and retire to the more
sociable Bath and live the rest of her life in comfort.
    Lucy's forehead creased as she recalled the cook telling her
once that Ian had been thrown into debtor’s prison some years ago. Lord Sedley
had refused to help his son, and since that day Lady Sedley had eyed her
husband with simmering, ill-concealed hatred.
    Lucy slipped the list into a pocket of her skirt and went
and stood in front of the fire. She held out her hands letting the warmth soak
into her skin. She wished she could store this heat somewhere and use it when
she needed it again.
    With a sigh, she once again dipped her fingers into her
skirt pockets and extracted a tiny flask of brandy. After a sly look to the
left and right to assure no one else was in the room with her, she took a swig
of the contents.
    The effect was immediate.
     Warmth coursed through her limbs as the brandy slid
down her throat.
    "The blasted Sedley family," she muttered to
herself. "May maggots fill their brains and poison ivy adhere to their
behinds forever."
    Family … Her heart clenched in pain and she pushed away the
sudden longing like she had done countless times before and rapidly blinked her
eyes.
    This would not do. Her sudden gloomy mood, she convinced
herself, was the library's fault. It was a depressing sort of room, and any
mentally stable creature was bound to feel affected by its lonely