7. Lady Ashworth's Tea

The invitation arrived on cream-colored paper, embossed with the Ashworth crest—a stag rampant, antlers spread like grasping fingers against a field of green. Dr. Moore turned it over in her hands, reading the elegant copperplate script for the third time. Lady Ashworth requested the pleasure of her company for tea on Thursday afternoon at four o'clock. There was no mention of a reason, no polite fiction about discussing village health initiatives or charitable endeavors. Just the invitation, formal and opaque as a sealed envelope.

Thursday arrived cold and clear, the first day in a week without fog. Dr. Moore dressed carefully, choosing a wool suit of sober navy blue that had seen her through a dozen medical conferences and at least one inquest. She pinned her mother's cameo to the lapel and polished her shoes until they gleamed. If she was walking into the lion's den, she intended to do it looking like a woman who could not be intimidated.

The walk to the manor took forty minutes along a lane that wound between drystone walls and winter-bare hedgerows. The moor stretched away to the west, brown and gold under the pale afternoon sun. A kestrel hung motionless in the sky, riding the wind with wings spread wide, and somewhere in the distance a tractor chugged across a field. It was a scene of such perfect rural tranquility that Dr. Moore almost allowed herself to forget why she was here. Almost.

The manor house loomed before her, its windows glittering in the afternoon light. A maid in a starched apron answered the door and led her through a succession of rooms that grew progressively more ornate—the great hall with its vaulted ceiling and suits of armor, the drawing room with its Chinese vases and French tapestries, and finally a small sitting room on the first floor that overlooked the garden. The room was decorated in shades of rose and cream, and a fire crackled in the hearth, filling the air with the scent of applewood.

Lady Ashworth rose from a chaise longue as Dr. Moore entered. She was dressed in a gown of soft grey silk, her dark hair swept up in an elegant chignon. The bruise on her wrist, which Dr. Moore had noticed during their previous encounter, was hidden today beneath a long sleeve and a delicate bracelet of silver and turquoise. But there were other signs, visible to a trained eye—the careful way she moved, as though guarding against sudden pain; the faint shadow beneath her eyes that powder could not quite conceal; the slight tremor in her hands as she gestured toward a chair.

"Dr. Moore. How kind of you to come." Lady Ashworth's voice was as composed as ever, but there was something beneath it, a tension that vibrated like a plucked harp string. "I have ordered tea. I hope you prefer Darjeeling."

"Darjeeling is perfectly acceptable." Dr. Moore settled into the chair, setting her medical bag on the floor beside her. She had brought it out of habit, though she doubted Lady Ashworth had invited her here for a consultation. "Your home is very beautiful."

"Is it?" Lady Ashworth glanced around the room as though seeing it for the first time. "I suppose it is. I have lived here for twenty-three years, and sometimes I forget to notice. The rooms begin to feel like a museum after a while. Beautiful things in glass cases, admired but never touched."

There was a pause. A maid entered with the tea tray, laying out a silver pot and delicate china cups, a plate of cucumber sandwiches, and a dish of scones with clotted cream. She moved silently, efficiently, and departed without a word. Lady Ashworth poured the tea with the automatic grace of long practice.

"I understand," she said, handing Dr. Moore a cup, "that there was another discovery on the moor this week. The body of a poacher, I am told."

"Old George. Yes. The constable ruled it an accident."

"And what do you think, Doctor?"

Dr. Moore took a sip of her tea before answering. It was excellent—hot, fragrant, and perfectly brewed. "I think that Old George did not die by accident. I think he was strangled with a wire snare and left in the woods to be found. I think someone wanted to silence him. And I think that someone has connections to this estate."

She had expected Lady Ashworth to react with shock, or denial, or at the very least a reproach for making such an accusation. Instead, the woman simply nodded, her expression unchanged.

"Yes," she said quietly. "I thought you might think that. You are very perceptive, Dr. Moore. My husband underestimated you. He underestimates everyone, but especially women. It is his greatest weakness."

Dr. Moore set down her teacup. The conversation had taken a turn she had not anticipated. She had expected evasion, polite deflections, perhaps even a veiled threat. She had not expected honesty. "Lady Ashworth, if you know something about what is happening on this estate—"

"I know everything." Lady Ashworth's voice was still quiet, but it had acquired a hard edge, like velvet wrapped around steel. "I have known for fifteen years. I know about the hunts. I know about the guests. I know about the ledger that my husband keeps locked in his office, the one with the names and the dates and the red crosses. I know about the bodies buried in the peat, and the women who were brought here from the cities, and the men who paid thousands of pounds for the privilege of hunting them like animals."

The words hung in the air between them, impossible and undeniable. Dr. Moore felt her heart beating faster. She had suspected much of this, had pieced it together from bones and photographs and a constable's notebook, but to hear it spoken aloud—and by Lady Ashworth, of all people—was something else entirely.

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked.

Lady Ashworth rose from her chair and walked to the window. She stood with her back to Dr. Moore, looking out over the garden. The winter sunlight fell across her shoulders, and for a moment she seemed almost insubstantial, a ghost haunting her own house.

"Because I am tired," she said. "I am tired of being afraid. I am tired of waking up every morning and wondering if today is the day he finally kills me. I am tired of smiling at dinner parties while monsters eat my food and drink my wine and talk about the 'sport' they will enjoy on the morrow. I am tired of being a decoration in a museum of horrors." She turned back to face Dr. Moore, and now her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "My husband is not a philanthropist, Doctor. He is a predator. And I have been his prisoner for twenty-three years."

Dr. Moore stood up, her medical instincts overriding her caution. She crossed the room and took Lady Ashworth's hands in her own, feeling the tremor that ran through them. "You are not a prisoner now," she said. "You are talking to me. That is the first step toward freedom. Tell me everything. Leave nothing out. And when you are finished, we will decide together what to do."

So Lady Ashworth talked. She talked for nearly an hour, her voice never rising above a murmur, as though she were afraid the walls might be listening. She talked about her marriage, which had begun with courtship and flowers and promises and had descended, within months, into a nightmare of control and violence. She talked about the first time she had discovered what her husband did on his "hunting weekends"—how she had found a woman's earring in the pocket of his shooting jacket, and how he had beaten her so badly that she could not leave the house for a fortnight. She talked about the guests, the men who came to the estate with their expensive guns and their expensive clothes and their expensive appetites. She talked about the ledger, which she had glimpsed once when her husband was drunk and careless, and the names she had recognized—judges, politicians, captains of industry, men who were supposed to be pillars of society.

And she talked about the women. The runaways and the workhouse girls and the immigrants who had come to England looking for a better life and found instead a death in the peat. She did not know how many there were. She had lost count over the years. But she knew their faces, or some of them—the ones she had glimpsed through windows, or heard crying in the night, or seen being led across the moor by men who would not meet her eyes.

When she was finished, the tea had gone cold and the fire had burned down to embers. Dr. Moore sat in silence for a long moment, absorbing the weight of what she had heard.

"The ledger," she said at last. "Where does he keep it?"

"In his office. Behind the portrait of himself. There is a hidden panel in the wall."

"Can you get me a key?"

Lady Ashworth shook her head. "The office is always locked, and he carries the only key on a chain around his neck. But there is another way." She crossed the room to a small writing desk and opened a drawer. From it she withdrew a single key, old and iron, with a tag that read "East Corridor." "The east wing is closed off. It has been for years. But there is a door at the end of the east corridor that connects to the back of my husband's office. It was once a servant's entrance. He has forgotten it exists."

Dr. Moore took the key. It was heavy in her palm, cold and solid. "Why are you giving me this?"

"Because you are the first person in fifteen years who has asked the right questions. Because I am too much of a coward to do what needs to be done. And because, if you succeed, perhaps I will finally be free." Lady Ashworth's voice cracked on the last word. "I do not expect you to forgive me, Doctor. I have been complicit in terrible things. My silence is a sin that I will carry to my grave. But if there is any chance—any chance at all—that some of those women can be given justice, then I will do whatever I can to help."

Dr. Moore slipped the key into her pocket. "You are braver than you know, Lady Ashworth. And you are not alone. There is a boy—a runaway named Tommy Briggs. He witnessed one of the burials. He has been hiding on the moor for nearly a week. And he has something that I believe your husband will very much want back."

Lady Ashworth's eyes widened. "A page from the ledger. He has it?"

"He has it. And he is willing to testify, if we can keep him alive long enough."

There was a sound from the corridor—footsteps, heavy and deliberate. Lady Ashworth's face went pale. "My husband," she whispered. "He said he would be in the village all afternoon. He must have returned early."

Dr. Moore stood, straightening her jacket. "Can you delay him?"

"I can try. But you must go. Now. Take the servants' stairs—they are at the end of the corridor, behind the tapestry. They will lead you to the kitchen garden. From there you can reach the moor without being seen."

Dr. Moore clasped Lady Ashworth's hand one last time. "I will be in touch. Stay strong."

She slipped out of the sitting room just as the heavy tread reached the top of the stairs. The tapestry at the end of the corridor was a vast, dusty thing depicting the Battle of Agincourt, and behind it a narrow staircase spiraled down into darkness. Dr. Moore descended as quickly as she dared, her hand on the cold stone wall. At the bottom, a door opened onto the kitchen garden, and beyond the garden lay the moor, brown and gold and empty under the afternoon sun.

She did not look back. She walked swiftly across the garden and through a gate in the hedge, and she did not stop until she was a hundred yards from the house, hidden among a stand of gorse bushes. Only then did she allow herself to breathe.

In her pocket, the iron key pressed against her hip. In her mind, the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place. And somewhere in the house behind her, Lady Ashworth was greeting her husband with a smile and a kiss, pretending that nothing had changed, pretending that the mask was still firmly in place.

But the mask was slipping. Dr. Moore could feel it, like a change in the weather. The fog that had shrouded Bramford-on-Tees for so long was finally beginning to lift. And when it cleared, the truth would be revealed—a truth more terrible than anyone in the village had ever imagined.

She walked on, toward the signal box where Tommy Briggs was waiting, toward the evidence that would bring down a monster. The moor stretched before her, vast and ancient, and the peat beneath her feet held its secrets close. But not for much longer. The dead had waited long enough.