The Heiress of Linn Hagh by Karen Charlton Page A

room?’
    The master of Linn Hagh threw a final contemptuous glance in the direction of the local constable and then rose to his feet.
    ‘I’ll take you,’ he said. ‘I won’t have any bugger wandering around Linn Hagh on their own.’
    ‘I’ll get back to the horses.’ Beddows sniffed and left.
    The door of Helen Carnaby’s room was a mess. The upper half had been completely smashed away by Carnaby’s axe. The bottom half was spiked with light-coloured jagged shards where the blade had sliced through the age-blackened wood and revealed the natural patina beneath. Someone had made a half-hearted attempt to sweep up the mess, but splinters still crunched beneath their boots.
    Lavender pointed at the door on the other side of the dark corridor.
    ‘What room is that?’
    ‘It’s where the female servants sleep. We’ve two of them. The cook—you’ve met her—and a maid.’
    Lavender followed Carnaby and Woods into the bedchamber, closed what remained of the door and began to examine it. Behind him, he heard Woods slide up the sash window.
    Two iron staples were screwed into the rough stones on either side of the door, and another two staples were widely spaced on the back of the door. These were needed to hold the weight of the heavy metal bar that was designed to lie along them. The iron bar leant against the wall. Lavender picked it up and tested its weight. Next, he lowered it down onto the four staples. He noted its snug fit against the wood. The door would never have yielded an inch once the bar was dropped in place, although it clearly had not stood up to a determined man with an axe.
    ‘The last line of defence,’ he said.
    ‘Eh?’ Carnaby growled. His eyes flitted coldly between the two officers.
    ‘Oh, I was explaining to Constable Woods earlier about how pele towers were designed to protect families from the border reivers. See here, Woods? If raiders has breached the pele tower and were storming through the building, the family could bar themselves into one of these rooms in a last desperate attempt to save themselves from rape and murder.’
    ‘Charmin’ ,’ Woods said.
    ‘Very interesting, Detective.’ Carnaby yawned. ‘But how did my sister get out of this room when it was barred from the inside?’
    Lavender lifted the bar off the staples, dropped one end onto the floor and ran his hand across the flaking, rusty surface. His fingers caught against a globule of candle wax. He scratched it off with his nail and pocketed it discreetly.
    ‘I’ve no idea at the moment, Mr Carnaby. I’ll have to give it some thought.’
    ‘Was anything missing when you checked the room after your sister’s disappearance?’ Woods asked.
    ‘Only her cloak and hand muff,’ Carnaby said.
    ‘Nothing stolen?’
    ‘No. Not that we could see.’
    ‘So she didn’t wander outside in the freezing snow in her nightgown,’ Lavender said with some satisfaction in his voice.
    ‘No, the maid who sorted her clothes said that her nightgown was still here, and Helen had disappeared in the same dress she had been wearing the day before.’
    ‘Which suggests she never undressed for bed on the night of the twenty-first.’ Lavender dropped down onto his haunches and began to scan the dusty floorboards. He gently shifted piles of sawdust and splinters with his fingers. He felt Carnaby’s dull eyes bore into his back. He leant forward onto his knees and began to inch his way towards the iron bed frame, sifting patiently through the debris on the floor.
    ‘And whatever happened,’ he called back over his shoulder, ‘Miss Carnaby—or whoever took her—remembered to take warm clothes for when she left the hall.’
    ‘Might not have done her any good,’ Carnaby observed dispassionately. ‘It was a foul night and snowed heavily. No late night coaches run from Bellingham. Cloak or no cloak, unless she got inside somewhere quickly, she’ll have bloody perished.’
    ‘Where’s the maidservant now?’ Woods