Once Upon a Wallflower

Sensing that sympathy would only make Nan lose her composure, Mira tried to adopt a similarly unsentimental tone. “Well, as we seem to share a common goal, I suggest we pool our resources. I confess I only know about Olivia Linworth’s fall. As for the earlier murders, I know only that they took place, but I don’t know anything about them. Would you mind telling me what you know? Only if it is not too painful for you to talk about, of course.”

“No need to worry, I’ll be fine. It has been three years now, and I would rather catch Bridget’s killer than continue to nurse my own grief. Bridget…” Nan paused, swallowed hard as though she were swallowing her pain, and cleared her throat to start again. “…was twenty-two when she died, the same age as I am now, and as sweet as the day is long. Ellie Thomas, the vicar’s daughter, was out picking berries or some such thing, and she found dear Bridget in the middle of the circle of standing stones, near Dowerdu.”

Mira interrupted. “Dowerdu?”

“Yes. Dowerdu is the ‘black water,’ the sacred well that gave Blackwell its name. When the old religion was practiced, people who had, um, unsavory requests of the gods would make their offerings at Dowerdu. Of course, at present the well does nothing more than provide water for a small crofter’s cottage, and the cottage itself has come to be called Dowerdu. Now Lord Blackwell and young Mr. Ellerby use it as a hunting lodge. And, plenty of folks have seen Lord Ashfield lurking about there, too. Even though he doesn’t hunt.” Nan paused to let the import of her words sink in. “Right near the well and the cottage there is an ancient stone circle. That is where poor Bridget was found.”

Nan’s voice broke again as she continued, her voice a taut thread of pain. “She had been stabbed. It was a brutal death. Her arms and legs were covered with scratches and bruises, and her ankle was swollen a bit. Those that saw her poor body before she was cleaned said it looked as though she had been running through the woods and had wrenched her ankle. It might have been what slowed her down so her killer caught her.

“At the time, everyone believed she had been killed by a traveling peddler or tinker, but then, almost exactly a year later, a group of fishermen found Tegen Quick on the shore below the cliffs just south of Blackwell…below the path that runs between Blackwell Hall and the coves where the fishermen put in. She, too, had been stabbed. John Andrews said she had wounds on her hands and her face, even. Much of her blood had been washed away by the tide, but still every one of those old salts who found her shook and wept as they told the story. Two young women killed at Midsummer in the same manner…people began to suspect something more sinister was afoot.

“And then, a year after that, Miss Linworth died.”

Mira sat for a moment, digesting what she had learned. “So the first two girls were stabbed. But Olivia Linworth fell—or was pushed—off a wall. She wasn’t stabbed at all?”

“If she was, I never heard of it. And this is a small town. News tends to travel.”

“So if Olivia was killed in a different manner, why do people assume she was killed by the same person?”

Nan raised an eyebrow as though Mira’s question was ridiculous. “Every summer, right near Midsummer’s Eve in fact, for three years in a row, a young girl is killed within spitting distance of Blackwell Hall. They must be related. How could they not be?”

Mira nodded. “Yes, I see your point. But why suspect Nicholas?”

Without a blink of hesitation, Nan replied, “Because he’s right queer. Been odd all his life, near as I can tell.”

Mira sat stunned for a moment. “That’s all? Because he’s odd? The whole countryside suspects the man of three murders simply because he is odd?”

Nan’s chin rose a notch. “Not just odd, but peculiar, secretive. He creeps about on the moors at night, and Tom Henry, the smithy, said he once came out to Blackwell to repair some of the doors in the old keep, and he saw Lord Ashfield walking along the top of the wall in his shirtsleeves…with red smears of blood all over the white linen.” She shivered. “Even a streak of the stuff across his cheek.”