Read Chapter 25: The Empty Summer House

The sky was still the colour of old pewter when Evelyn reached the fountain. Annabel was already there, wrapped in a shawl too large for her narrow shoulders, her breath forming small clouds in the chill. She did not speak, only nodded toward the path that wound past the ornamental hedges toward the old summer house.

They walked in silence, their boots whispering against the damp gravel. Evelyn’s hand rested inside her coat pocket, where the oilcloth bundle of letters pressed against her ribs like a second heartbeat. She had not slept. Every creak of the house had been a footstep, every draft a whisper of discovery.

The summer house rose at the end of the garden like a forgotten relic, its white paint flaking in long pale strips, the windows filmed with grime. A wrought-iron gate hung crooked on its hinges, and the door—newer than the rest of the structure, heavy oak banded with iron—stood closed.

Annabel stopped a few paces short. “They locked it after,” she said quietly. “I watched them carry the key away.”

Evelyn approached the door and tried the handle. Locked, as expected. But the lock was old, the mechanism simple. She slid a hairpin from her bun and worked it into the keyhole, feeling the tumblers shift with a patient, practiced touch she had learned in a different life, in a different house, for reasons she preferred not to examine.

The lock gave with a soft click.

Inside, the air was thick and still, heavy with dust and the sour smell of disuse. Pale light filtered through the grimy windows, illuminating a single room cluttered with draped furniture and stacked crates. Nothing here suggested violence. Nothing suggested anything at all beyond neglect.

Evelyn moved deeper, her eyes adjusting. Annabel followed close behind, her fingers brushing the back of Evelyn’s sleeve like a child seeking reassurance.

“She was here,” Annabel whispered. “I saw them bring her through that door. She was fighting.”

Evelyn crouched near the far wall, where a heavy velvet curtain had been torn from its rod and left crumpled on the floor. She lifted it. Beneath, scuffed into the dusty floorboards, were the marks of a struggle—long scratches where heels had dragged, a pattern of frantic footprints that stopped abruptly near a crate shoved against the wall.

Then she saw it. A scrap of fabric caught on the crate’s splintered edge, pale blue muslin with a delicate pattern of forget-me-nots. Evelyn pinched it free and held it to the light.

“Is this Miss Reeves’s?” she asked.

Annabel’s face went pale. “Her favourite dress. She wore it the day she left. She said she wanted to look pretty for the journey.”

Evelyn tucked the fabric into her pocket beside the letters. Her eyes swept the room again, slower now, searching for something more. The crates were stacked haphazardly, some open, their contents spilling—old books, discarded ornaments, a child’s rocking horse with one missing eye.

And then, in the gap between two crates, a glint of gold.

Evelyn knelt and reached into the shadows. Her fingers closed around a small, cold object. She drew it out: a locket, tarnished but delicate, engraved with swirling initials she did not recognise. The clasp was bent, as if it had been torn from someone’s neck.

She opened it.

Inside was a miniature portrait—a young woman with kind eyes and dark hair pinned loosely, and beside her, a child of perhaps six, round-faced and smiling. Annabel leaned in and made a small, strangled sound.

“That’s Mama,” she said. “And me.”

Evelyn turned the locket over. On the back, scratched in tiny, uneven letters, an inscription: *For my dearest sister, should we ever be parted. Always return to me.*

“The inscription,” Evelyn murmured. “It’s from Miss Reeves to your mother?”

Annabel nodded, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “Aunt Clara wrote it when Mama died. She said the locket was a promise—that she would always find me, no matter what.”

Evelyn’s chest tightened. Miss Reeves had worn this locket close to her heart, a token of her promise to her dead sister. And now it lay discarded in this abandoned room, its clasp broken, as if it had been wrenched away in a final, desperate struggle.

She slipped the locket into her pocket as well, beside the fabric and the letters. They sat heavy against her, the accumulated weight of a dead woman’s proof.

“We should go,” Evelyn said, her voice low. “We’ve been here too long already.”

They stepped out of the summer house into the grey morning. The garden was still empty, the house silent in the distance. Evelyn allowed herself a breath of relief.

Then she saw her. A figure standing at the edge of the hedge, half-hidden by the overgrown laurel, watching them with cold, flat eyes. A woman in a plain grey dress with a starched white cap—Beatrice’s personal attendant, the one who never spoke, who moved through the house like a shadow.

Evelyn’s hand closed automatically around Annabel’s wrist.

The attendant did not approach. She did not speak. She only held Evelyn’s gaze for a long, terrible moment, then turned and walked back toward the house with unhurried steps.

Annabel’s voice was barely audible. “She’ll tell her.”

Evelyn watched the woman disappear through the kitchen door. The morning light had strengthened, but it felt colder now, as if the sun itself had withdrawn.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “She will.”

She looked down at Annabel, whose face was pale and set, and felt the weight of the locket pressing against her ribs like a warning. Lady Beatrice would know soon—if she did not know already—that Evelyn had found her evidence and had not left as ordered.

The confrontation was no longer a threat. It was coming.