put them. You’ve got to tell us where those keys are. If you’re dead, none of us are getting out.”
Jack returned the shrug with one of his own and gave a slow grin. “Then keep me alive, Wycliffe.”
* * *
Dear Catherine,
I have not been successful in my petitions to have Jack Travers freed. I shall come home at once. Thank you so very much for taking care of Mama for me—
Madeline pushed her pen back into the inkwell and stared down at the letter. Catherine, Lady Lindale, was the only person who knew she was really in Dartmoor, not in Hampshire, visiting an old school friend. Should she write and let Catherine know she would be coming home? Or should she just arrive? Which would be better for a woman who intended to smuggle an escaped convict with her?
Rain pattered against the window of her small moorland cottage. Madeline stared out at the vast, wet landscape. It haunted her still, what she had said to the magistrate on the afternoon of the murders. It had all been circumstantial. It had all been wrong . . .
Grandfather had encouraged her to speak to Sir Roland immediately. She had known she must not wait to give her evidence, even though she’d felt so . . . empty. Cold, stunned, and empty.
Sir Roland was the local magistrate. He had sat at Grandfather’s desk, waiting patiently for her to speak.
“Miss Highchurch came to us originally as a governess for my sister Amelia,” she’d begun. It had been hard to speak, but she had known it was her duty. Back then, she’d believed so strongly, so stupidly, in duty.
“Amelia is seventeen,” she had explained, “but Miss Highchurch stayed on to be a companion for my mother, who sometimes becomes very confused, and wanders, and needs a watchful eye.”
She’d swallowed hard. “I left the house to search for Amelia and her friend Lady Sarah,” she continued. Sir Roland knew Sarah, Lord Lindale’s daughter, of course. “It was five minutes past four o’clock and they were supposed to practice music. I knew they were in the maze—”
The maze consisted of one mile of seven-foot-tall hedgerows, meticulously shaped to create a series of winding paths. There was only one way out. Madeline had grown up with the maze, but she had never been able to find her way through. She was very adept at hiding her panic when she found one dead end after another, but it had always welled up to almost consume her.
“If you wish to wait—” Sir Roland began.
“She is strong and capable,” Grandfather had interrupted. He had been seated in the straight-backed chair beside hers. “She knows the importance of this.”
She knew now why he’d pushed her. He had wanted to seal Jack’s fate as quickly as possible. Grandfather—Mother’s father—was the wealthy businessman Laurentide Knightly. Sir Roland had been predisposed to agree at once with anything Grandfather said. It had been so easy for Grandfather to get what he wanted.
“It took me several minutes to walk through the maze,” she had continued. “I found M-Miss Highchurch first. She was lying on her back, with her arms outstretched—” She’d swallowed hard, remembering. Grace’s white face had been tilted to the side. Her blue eyes had stared up at the sky but no longer saw the sun or the swallows or anything at all. Her neck had been ringed with large bruises of purple and blue . . .
Sir Roland had been gentle and kind, coaxing her to keep talking.
“I was frightened for my sister,” she told him, fighting to distance herself from fear. From horror. “I called her name. I went forward into the maze. Around the first corner, I found Sarah’s body. She had been strangled, too.”
“Tell him the rest, Maddy.” Grandfather had patted her shoulder.
“I found a red kerchief in the base of the shrubbery beside Lady Sarah’s body.”
Sir Roland nodded. “Do you know whom it belonged to?”
“Jack Travers. He is the head groom. I saw him leaving the maze, furtively, a