(A Charm of Magpies 1)The Magpie Lord Read Online Free PDF Page A

tattooed and scarred, this was unmistakably the hard body of a hard man. Stephen felt himself shiver suddenly.
    He needed to look away now.
    He turned abruptly, unable to do it with grace. Crane, apparently unembarrassed, reached out a long arm for his shirt and began to dress as Stephen pulled himself together.
    “Right. Well, that might do it, but… You came back to England four months ago, yes? No visits before then?”
    “None. I hadn’t planned to return at all. Wouldn’t have, but the lawyers were making a fuss.”
    “Mmm. Tell me how your father and brother died.”
    “Is that relevant?”
    “I hope not.”
    Crane gave him a narrow-eyed look as he buttoned his shirt. “I’m told they both killed themselves. Hector hanged himself from the same bell rope I tried to use. Father shot himself.”
    “Where?”
    “In the head.” Stephen made an exasperated noise, and Crane gave a twitch of a smile. “Piper. In the library.”
    “Blast. Can we sit down? Lord Crane, the Judas jack was created to drive its victims to madness and self-murder. Its choice of victims was driven by the magpie feather, your family symbol. It was hidden in your family home. It would have been made to order, carved for its purpose, and that wood is clearly more than a few months old. It was in the Piper library until it came back here with you. So—”
    “That device attacked my father and brother?” Crane’s eyes were steady on Stephen’s. “That’s why they killed themselves? They experienced what I did?”
    “Yes. I think so. It’s possible that their suicides were coincidence, but the balance of likelihood is against that.”
    Crane nodded. He walked to the door, opened it, and bellowed, “Merrick!”
    The manservant appeared almost before Lord Crane was seated again, and took a chair at his jerked thumb.
    “The shaman thinks the jack thing got the old man and Hector,” said Crane without preamble. “It was aimed at the family. A device to kill Vaudreys.”
    Merrick considered this, nodded slowly.
    “Which raises a question,” Crane went on. “Is someone trying to wipe out my entire family, or was it a trap for Hector and my father, and I fell into it?”
    “That’s a good question.” Stephen looked at the aristocratic, emotionless face opposite him. “You don’t seem surprised to learn your family may have been murdered.”
    Crane shrugged. “I always found it deeply improbable either of them killed himself. Hector was incapable of remorse, and it’s much more plausible that my father was driven to suicide by sorcery than that he chose to clear my way to the succession. What seems to me very likely indeed is that someone hated them enough to kill them. And I find it very unlikely that person was trying to kill me because I haven’t been here, so do we in fact have a problem?”
    “Murder?” Stephen knew he sounded scathing, couldn’t help it. “It is a crime.”
    “Mr. Day, you know what they were,” Crane said. “If someone killed them, it was about bloody time.”
    “No, it was murder,” said Stephen. “No matter what they were.”
    “I dispute that. Hector did exactly as he chose—rape, assault, abuse—with my father’s protection and complicity, and he got away with it for thirty years and more because not one single person had the guts to stand up to them—”
    “My father did .”
    Stephen was on his feet, he wasn’t sure how, and his hand was painfully tight round the sharp-edged crystal stem of his glass. Crane’s eyes were on his, intent.
    “Did he,” he said calmly. “I didn’t know that. Who is your father?”
    “His name was Allan Day. Of Ruggleford.”
    “I don’t know the name. When was this?”
    “Sixteen years ago.”
    “After I’d left. He must have been a brave man,” said Crane. “I take it things did not end well for him.”
    “Your father destroyed him.” Stephen’s throat was tight on the words. “His business, his reputation. His career. My mother. He