Chapter 5

The Harold Stables

The estate of House Harold lay two hours by carriage from the western gate of Lumière, and it was in the early afternoon three days after the ball that Sion Arden reined in his horse before the rusted iron gates of the manor. More than two years after losing its master, the house looked as houses with no one to tend them generally do: ivy sprawled at will over every wall, and the fountain in the garden had evidently been dry for some time, its basin heaped with fallen leaves.

The old servant who opened the door stiffened the moment he saw the crest of the royal knights. The Count's mother was unwell, he said, and received no visitors. Sion said he had no wish to trouble the mother; he only wanted a brief look at the stables.

"The stables? That horse was disposed of the very day it happened."

"There may be no horse, but there are still stables, are there not?"

The servant hesitated a moment, then, finding no further reason to resist before the knights' crest, pointed toward the back courtyard. The coachman had quit last spring, he said; now only an old stablehand remained, looking after the two horses that were left.

Walking toward the back courtyard, Sion checked the notebook inside his coat once. If the lady really had visited these stables as the gambler Gould claimed, he had to learn first what she had seen that day, and for that there was nothing to do but go through whatever this house had left, feed ledgers and servants' memories alike, one by one.

The stables were a long stone building of six stalls, four of which stood empty; only from the two innermost stalls came the sound of horses, and there was not a soul to be seen in the doorway. The old stablehand must have gone out on some errand.

Sion looked into the empty first stall. The straw on the floor was old and damp, and the bridle hanging on the wall was coated in dust. The second stall was no different. When he reached the third, an old wooden nameplate hanging over the stall door caught his eye. The paint of the lettering was half flaked away, but it could still be read. Ebony. The name of the black horse Edwin Harold had boasted about to his society friends until his mouth went dry.

From inside the stall came a rustling sound: someone stepping carefully on dry straw. Sion laid his hand on the hilt of the sword at his hip and pushed the stall door open.

A woman in a deep navy riding habit was crouched before the feed trough. In her gloved hand was a fistful of straw bits that looked to have been scraped from the bottom of the trough, and spread out beside her knee was a small handkerchief. She had been in the middle of placing something onto it, a little at a time.

When the woman raised her head, a few strands of jet-black hair had slipped loose beneath her riding hat.

"...My lady."

"Ah, S-Sir Arden...?"

The straw bits scattered from Adelaide Crowell's hand.

For a while, neither of them said anything. There was only the sound of the horse in the innermost stall blowing through its nostrils.

"What are you doing here?"

Sion asked first, and his voice came out lower than he had intended. The lady hurriedly folded up the handkerchief she had spread out, clutched it, and rose. The knees of her riding habit were covered in straw.

"I, I... came to pay my respects to Mrs. Harold. But she was unwell, so I couldn't see her... and I was about to go home, when..."

"When you were about to go home, you came to the stables?"

"...I wanted to see the horse Sir Edwin loved."

"I was told that horse was disposed of on the day of the accident."

The lady closed her mouth, and Sion moved his eyes to the handkerchief she held. From between the folds of the cloth, along with the straw bits, something like a darkish powder was spilling out.

"Would you show me that handkerchief?"

"Th-this is just..."

"My lady."

Sion held out his hand, palm up. It was the hand of an investigator receiving evidence, and the lady looked down at it for a moment. Then slowly, very slowly, she placed the handkerchief on it.

When Sion unfolded the handkerchief, there were straw bits, old oat husks, and several pieces of dried leaf that seemed to have been lodged in the cracks at the bottom of the trough. For something that had come out of a trough left untouched for more than two years, the color of the leaves was more vivid than he would have expected.

"Why were you collecting this?"

"...I don't know. It's just, it seemed strange."

"What seemed strange?"

Instead of answering, the lady looked down at the trough, and Sion followed her gaze. It was a trough carved from stone, with a few cracks in the bottom. No one seemed to have cleaned it in more than two years, for straw and oat dregs were packed hard into every crack.

"Sir Edwin... always gave his horse the same oats. Only those from a southern merchant. The ones with a blue anchor mark stamped on the sack. But the last time I came, the sacks had changed. They were stamped with a red circle. Sir Edwin said he'd switched to better oats, but..."

From there the lady's voice grew smaller and smaller, until it was nearly lost in the sound of straw underfoot.

"...That was the first time the horse looked at me and laid its ears back. It used to be such a gentle horse."

Sion looked again at the dried leaves on the handkerchief. A horse laid its ears back when it was wary or agitated. In his cavalry days he had seen dozens of horses like that. And for a few of them, it had been because someone had mixed something into their feed.

"Did you tell the City Guard about this?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"...Because no one asked."

Having said this, the lady bowed her head, and Sion looked down at the crown of her head where it showed beneath her riding hat. It was the very same answer as the face that had held the glass of lemonade in the ballroom. What is not asked, she does not tell.

And yet this time the answer sounded a little different. Something no one had asked about in more than two years, this lady had remembered all by herself, down to the mark on the oat sacks.

With her head still bowed, Adel looked at the toes of the knight's boots. There was mud from the stable yard on them. That meant he had tied up his horse and walked straight here. He would have asked a servant of the house where the stables were, the servant would have tried to stop him using the old mother as an excuse, and he would have pushed past with the knights' crest.

So he did come after hearing Gould.

Then in this man's head right now, I've moved one more step toward the killer than I was at the ball three days ago. I crept in alone to the stables of a fiancé who died and was scraping at the bottom of the feed trough.

Even thinking this, she was not surprised. She had reckoned with the possibility before she ever entered the stables. She simply had not known the knight would come this quickly. Three days was exactly the right number for him to confirm Gould's name and find his way to the Harold stables. That was why she had chosen today. Had she been a single day later, this trough would have been his.

One step too late, Sir Arden. Or should I say one step too early.

Just then there was a stir in the stable doorway, and an old man in a battered hat came in carrying two water buckets, one in each hand. Seeing the two people standing before the third stall, he froze where he stood. The eyes of the old man, apparently the stablehand, moved from the knights' uniform to the lady in her riding habit, and lingered there a long while.

"...Isn't that Lady Crowell?"

Adel raised her head. The old man's face was familiar; he was the one who had held the black horse's reins on that early-summer day two years ago when Edwin showed it off to her.

"Yes. It's been a long time."

"Oh my, you've come again. That day, too, it was three days after you came by that the whole business happened..."

The old man stopped mid-sentence, as if realizing his slip, and closed his mouth. He set down the buckets and took off his hat, clutching it, and the knight, saying nothing, took out his notebook and wrote something down.

Adel approached the old man. With the steps of a frightened lady, but only to a distance from which the old man could not back away.

"Excuse me, sir. Might I ask you just one thing? Back then, Sir Edwin changed the oats, didn't he? Do you remember who brought the new oats?"

The old man blinked, and the hand clutching his hat turned slowly, as if groping through his memory.

"That... it wasn't the Count who ordered them himself. One day the sacks were just there. The Count said a southern merchant had left them as a sample, I think. No, or was it that your family had sent them, my lady..."

The stables fell silent. The knight's pen stopped on his notebook, and Adel felt his gaze at her back. That gaze which had watched her shoulders in the garden on the day of the introduction was now resting on the nape of her neck.

"...From my family?"

"Ah, n-no, I'm old, my memory comes and goes. Around that time the Crowell house sent over all sorts of things, you see. Engagement gifts, courtesies and such. It might have been one of those, and then again it might not..."

The old man could remember no more than that, and Adel bowed her head in thanks and stepped back. Her fingertips were cold, as if she had dipped them in ice water and drawn them out. Inside her riding gloves, she curled her fingers once and straightened them.

The things sent from House Crowell to House Harold during the engagement. All she herself had sent were a handkerchief she had embroidered by hand and a single book, so who had sent the rest, even she did not know.

The duchess cares about appearances. Engagement gifts, funeral wreaths, always the largest.

As she walked toward the stable doorway, Adel heard the footsteps of the knight following behind her. Half a step back: the distance of an escort, and the distance of an observer.

"My lady."

"...Yes."

"On your way back, follow behind my horse. The western road is dangerous after sundown."

Adel did not turn around, only nodded. She did not ask whether it was kindness or surveillance; most likely it was both.

Her grey mare, tied in the stable yard, saw her and pricked up its ears. It was the first time since she was eighteen that she had ridden out of the western gate alone, without maid or coachman, and on the way back she had acquired an escort she had not wanted.

On the road to the western gate, Adel folded the fingers inside her glove one by one, counting the things that must have gone from the Crowell manor to House Harold during the engagement, and when her fingers passed five, she stopped counting and took a fresh grip on the reins.

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