Letter from a Dead Man

  Letter from a Dead Man

  By

  Dawn Harris

  Copyright © 2012, Dawn Harris

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twentyone

  Chapter Twentytwo

  Chapter Twentythree

  Chapter Twentyfour

  Chapter Twentyfive

  Chapter Twentysix

  Chapter Twentyseven

  Chapter Twentyeight

  Chapter Twentynine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirtyone

  Chapter Thirtytwo

  Chapter Thirtythree

  Chapter Thirtyfour

  Chapter Thirtyfive

  Chapter Thirtysix

  Chapter Thirtyseven

  Chapter Thirtyeight

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  1793

  Not a year passed without someone falling off a horse at the east gate. I had done so myself once or twice in my six and twenty years, for the gate was higher than any other on the Ledstone Place estate, or on my own land at Westfleet Manor, or anywhere else in this quiet western corner of the Isle of Wight. It stood at the end of a long straight gallop through Ledstone woods, where few riders could resist the temptation to jump it.

  But, when four separate mishaps in February caused a concussion, a fractured shoulder and two broken legs, Cuthbert Saxborough, my godfather and the owner of Ledstone, ordered the gate to be left open whenever possible. Which it was whenever I rode that way, until one glorious morning in April when, to my delight, I saw it was closed.

  I glanced at my groom, John Mudd, who had dismounted to examine his hack’s near hind foot. ‘Anything serious, John?’

  ‘No, my lady, it’s just a stone.’ He took a hoof-pick from his pocket. ‘I’ll soon have it out.’

  Indicating the closed gate, I informed him cheerfully, ‘I’ll wait for you in the parklands.’ This being the area beyond the gate.

  Casting a look along the track, he grinned up at me. ‘Very good, my lady.’ John Mudd had come to Westfleet at the age of fifteen, when I was three, and everything I knew about horses I had learnt from this quiet man. He was, as I well knew, totally devoted to me, and despite becoming slightly more protective since my father’s death in December, he had never fussed over my jumping this particular gate. And I knew he would not now, just as he knew nothing he said would stop me.

  But as I thundered down the long track, I saw someone on the ground on the far side of the gate, directly in my path, and hastily pulled up. I knew it was Mr. Saxborough the instant I caught a glimpse of his forest green riding jacket; the colour, style and elegance of which made this rich and powerful man instantly recognisable in this part of the Island.

  Slipping from my saddle, I looped the reins round a bush, lifted the skirts of my black riding habit a trifle, and ran to his aid. Being a mere quarter of an inch under six foot, I had no difficulty in opening the high gate, but on seeing my godfather clearly I gave a horrified gasp, for his eyes were open and staring.

  I was not fond of him in the same way as I was of Marguerite, who was his second wife; or of Giles, his younger son of my own age, but it seemed so impossible he could really be dead, I dropped to my knees beside him on the muddy track, unbuttoned his riding coat with fumbling fingers, tore off my wide brimmed hat and put my ear to his chest.

  His shirt was damp with perspiration from his morning ride, his body still as warm as the Spring sunshine on my back, but the only living sounds came from a nearby song thrush, the jingle of my horse’s bridle as he shook his head, and my own ragged breaths coming painfully from my chest. Shuddering at the staring eyes, I hurriedly closed them, and staggering to my feet, leant against the gatepost.

  The ring on his right hand, worn by every head of the family ever since Queen Elizabeth presented it to the notorious William Saxborough two centuries before, sparkled in the sunlight. It had belonged to Cuthbert for fifty of his seventy years.

  His horse being nowhere in sight I assumed it had bolted, or gone back to its stable. I doubted it had actually struck the gate, as I couldn’t see any fresh marks. The mud on the track was noticeably flatter near the gate, yet I saw nothing significant in that at the time.

  Nor was there any question in my mind then, how Cuthbert Saxborough had died. I assumed he’d been thrown from his horse when attempting to jump the east gate, for that was how it looked. And I thought of the impact Mr Saxborough’s death would have on the lives of his family; and on Marguerite and Giles in particular, for it was Thomas, Cuthbert’s son from his first marriage, who would inherit the estates.

  Mudd came galloping down the track, and leaving him with Mr. Saxborough while I fetched help from Ledstone Place, I got back on my horse, my mind on how I was to break this terrible news to Marguerite. She was my godmother and I loved her dearly, and the dread I felt at the ordeal that lay ahead must have shown in my face, for Mudd said quietly, ‘Mr Giles or Mr Thomas might be at home, my lady.’

  I looked down at him. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I pray you are right.’

  When Queen Elizabeth bestowed the Ledstone estates on William Saxborough in recognition of his daring exploits against Spain, he built his house in a sheltered spot, surrounded by pretty undulating country, a short ride from the Island’s west coast, and the fishing villages of Dittistone and Hokewell. Later Saxboroughs, adding to the building, had increased its charm, and Marguerite had refurbished every room with a stylish elegance that could only please.

  For her own bedchamber she had chosen a delicate pink wallpaper, with matching curtains and chair coverings, and it was to this room that she retired after Giles had broken the news to her. And where I remained for many hours, doing what I could to comfort her, while Giles and Thomas brought their father’s body back to the house, and attended to all the practical matters that inevitably followed the death of the head of this powerful family.

  Dr. Redding had given Marguerite a sleeping draught, bringing her a much needed respite from her distress, and as she slept, I sat in a chair by her bedside, her hand still in mine. My heart went out to her, for her face was red and puffy from crying, and her golden curls, which showed no sign of grey despite her forty-four years, were dreadfully tangled where she had moved her head from side to side in fretful fashion.

  Heavy rain had been falling for some time, and as the fading daylight plunged the room into even deeper gloom, Giles brought in a branch of candles, which he set down on a stand. I smiled at him, grateful for his thoughtfulness, and he waited by the door, indicating he wanted to speak to me. Sleep having relaxed Marguerite’s tight grip on my hand, I gently removed it, and went to join him.

  Giles, slim and slight, and born with the blond hair and blue eyes of his Saxborough ancestors, looked anxiously across at his mother, and I whispered, ‘She’s slept for the last hour.’

  ‘Thank heaven.’ He looked at me, anguish in his eyes, for he adored his mother. ‘I can’t get the sound of her sobbing out of my head, Drusilla. Her whole body shook with it----- and nothing I did-------? His voice choked with emotion, and I put a comforting hand on his arm.


  ‘There’s nothing you could have done. None of us could.’ Tears misted my eyes, for I’d found her sobbing every bit as heart-rending as he had.

  ‘I shouldn’t have left you alone all this time, but------?

  ‘You and Thomas had other things to attend to.’ Wanting to take both our minds off his mother’s distress, I asked, ‘Did you find your father’s horse?’

  ‘Eventually. I had to put the poor thing down.’ He ran a hand across his eyes at the memory of it. ‘It had got caught up in a thicket and broken a leg trying to escape.’ I asked which horse it was and he said, ‘The young chestnut.’

  ‘The horse he bought three days ago?’ I blurted out in surprise, speaking so much louder than I’d meant to that Marguerite stirred in her sleep, silencing us both. Giles merely nodded in answer, as if it didn’t matter which horse it was. Marguerite settled back into a deep sleep, and not wanting to disturb her again, I said nothing more. But, to me, that one fact couldn’t have been more significant. For, to my mind, it changed everything.

  Meanwhile, Giles informed me in his gentle way, ‘Mudd is waiting to escort you home, Drusilla. I’ll sit with Mama until you come back with Lucie.’

  Lucie, my cousin, was betrothed to Giles, and the wistful note in his voice betrayed how very much he needed her by his side. She and my Aunt Thirza, who had been my guests at Westfleet since September, had gone on an outing with friends and weren’t expected back until dusk. I knew that when Lucie heard about Mr. Saxborough, nothing would keep her from Giles, or from helping me with Marguerite.

  Riding the four miles home across the Downs, I thought about what Giles had told me; that his father had been riding the powerful, highly-strung young chestnut horse he’d bought a mere three days earlier. For, as I saw it, this meant the circumstances of Mr. Saxborough’s death no longer fitted together as they should. The kind of situation I had learnt to recognise when helping my father solve the puzzles encountered in gathering facts for his highly praised book, “The History of the Isle of Wight.” An experience that had taught me things were not always what they seemed.

  But I wasn’t able to speak to Thomas and Giles about it until after breakfast the following morning. They had so much to see to, what with the funeral to arrange, letters to write, people calling to offer their condolences, estate matters to be dealt with, and thirteen year old Tom, at school at Winchester, had to be brought home. Thomas was a widower, Tom being his only surviving child.

  I found Thomas and Giles in the library discussing the funeral arrangements, but as soon as I entered the room, Thomas stood up and set a chair for me, inquiring how Marguerite was this morning.

  ‘As well as can be expected,’ I said, seeing no point adding to his troubles by describing how very distraught she still was. ‘She’s sleeping at the moment, and Lucie’s sitting with her.’

  ‘Poor Mama,’ Giles sighed, glancing at the clock in the corner of the room. ‘This time yesterday father was bursting with health----no wonder she can’t take it in.?

  Thomas reflected sadly, ‘When I think of the times he jumped that gate----?

  Looking at their grieving faces I wished what I had to say could wait, but that wasn’t possible, so I said quietly, ‘Perhaps it didn’t happen the way it looked.’

  Thomas stared at me, puzzled. ‘How do you mean, Drusilla? There’s no mystery, surely? Father was on one side of the gate, and his horse half a mile away on the other. Isn’t it obvious what happened? Father found the gate closed, and decided to jump it, as any of us might have done.’

  Gently I insisted, ‘Not on that horse.’ If it had been any other, I would have accepted it as easily as they had.

  There were many things I had not liked about Cuthbert Saxborough; his harsh treatment of servants, his arrogance, his belief that a woman’s opinion was of little consequence, but I had always admired his ability with horses. To them he showed only patience and love, taking his time over schooling them, gaining their confidence, learning all their little idiosyncrasies. And for him to urge a newly-acquired, nervous young animal over that particular gate, was so utterly out of keeping with everything I knew of him, I simply did not believe he had done it.

  When I asked Giles if he didn’t think it odd, he lifted his shoulders a little. ‘Dr Redding believes father broke his neck when he fell from his horse,’ he said, as if that settled the matter. Convinced he hadn’t had time to think about it properly, I said nothing, but he instantly made it clear he had thought about it, and drawn a different conclusion. ‘We all do stupid things on occasion Drusilla, things we’d never even consider normally. Like that time you were caught in a thunderstorm when out walking, and took a short cut home through a field.’ Giles had seen it all from a nearby hill.

  Thomas looked puzzled. ‘What was wrong with that?’

  ‘The field had a bull in it,’ Giles grinned, savouring the memory. ‘I didn’t know Drusilla could run that fast.’

  ‘You’re never going to let me forget that, are you,’ I groaned.

  A faint smile tugged at his lips. ‘The thing is Drusilla, the fact that it was risky didn’t stop you. You gave way to an impulse. And that’s what father must have done.’

  Unconvinced, I asked, ‘Did you find out who shut the east gate?’

  He shook his head. ‘I spoke to the gamekeeper, and every groom and gardener. No-one was anywhere near that part of the estate. Except me, that is. I rode that way half an hour before the accident, and the gate was open then.’

  ‘Did you see anyone in the woods?’

  ‘Not a soul.’

  ‘Well, someone shut it,’ I pointed out reasonably.

  ‘Does it really matter? All Father had to do was stop and open it.’ This was true, but nothing they had said removed the doubts from my mind.

  Nor was I convinced by the inquest verdict of “Death By Misadventure.” Mr Saxborough had certainly broken his neck when he fell from his horse. But what was it that caused him to be thrown?

  In the difficult days following the funeral, I still hoped the truth would come out, as such things often did. But that didn’t happen, nor did I learn anything new from my own discreet and thorough inquiries. Everyone believed it was an accident, and as life slowly returned to normal, I even began to wonder if they were right.

  Yet, something deep inside of me kept insisting it wasn’t so. A persistent nagging conviction, of the kind I’d experienced on the day my father died of a seizure, when I couldn’t rid myself of the feeling, soon after we parted to dress for dinner, that something was wrong. That had taught me never to ignore instinct.

  I still missed my father badly, and the happy life we had led. I’d loved working on his book, and revelled in the sheer exhilaration of solving a mystery that had puzzled us for weeks. We began by listing the known facts on large sheets of paper, and fixing them to the walls of the workroom where they could be seen at a glance. Sometimes, a small detail, of the kind easily forgotten if we hadn’t written it down, led us to the solution of a problem. And we would dance around the workroom like mad things, clapping and laughing.

  The idea for the charts had been mine, and thinking of those happy times one night when I couldn’t sleep, I decided to use the same system to try to find out what had really happened to my godfather. If I was capable of solving anything by myself, I thought ruefully. And if I could bring myself to spend any length of time in the workroom; something I’d avoided since father’s death, for everything in it reminded me of him in a way no other room did, this being where he was at his happiest.

  It was time I faced it, I told myself, ignoring the lump in my throat, but before I could do so, my aunt’s situation, which had worried me ever since September, when she and Lucie first arrived at Westfleet, suddenly became far more frightening. So frightening, it wasn’t easy for any of us to remain calm, my aunt least of all, as became very plain one morning when I returned home to find the house in an uproar.

  Aunt Thirza stood at the top of the swe
eping staircase, her skirts wrapped tightly round her ankles, her eyes fixed on the servants scurrying about the hall with brooms. Jeffel, my butler, who had been at Westfleet since just before I was born, was directing operations in his usual calm manner, while Lucie watched from beside the staircase. Joining her, I asked quietly, ‘What on earth is going on?’

  No-one, seeing us together, would have taken us for cousins, for she barely reached the top of my shoulder. In fact the only thing we had in common was a snub nose. My light brown curls, hazel eyes and good complexion were nothing out of the ordinary, whereas Lucie had the most ravishing looks. Lustrous black hair framed a flawless oval face, her smile revealed even white teeth, and her figure, at just nineteen, was perfect. It was no wonder, I thought, that Giles had fallen in love with her, and their betrothal at Christmas had pleased us all.

  Startled, she turned quickly. ‘I didn’t see you come in, Drusilla.’ And she confided, ‘There’s a mouse in the hall. The cat brought it in through the drawing room window when Mama and I were sewing.’ Jess, the kitchen cat, was sitting on the bottom stair, innocently grooming herself, and casting an occasional disdainful eye at the antics of the servants. Aware of my aunt’s dislike of mice, I put up a brief, but vain, struggle against my worst instincts, and urged Lucie to go on.

  ‘Well---‘she said, her lips twitching at the memory, ‘Mama jumped onto her chair and begged me to do something.’

  I inquired, rather unsteadily, ‘And did you? Do something, I mean?’

  ‘I rang for Jeffel.’

  ‘Was she - er - standing on the chair when he came in?’

  She giggled and nodded. My shoulders shook, for I wished I had seen his face. Wondering how he’d managed to control himself, I spluttered, ‘W-what d-did Jeffel do?’

  ‘He got it out of the room, but only into the hall.’

  At that moment one of the servants shouted out he’d got the little varmint with his shovel. The mouse was removed and we watched in amusement as Jess, deprived of her prey, stalked out the hall in disgust, her tail held high.

  My aunt came downstairs, visibly trembling, and my amusement changed to concern. For we all had weaknesses, and she was easily distressed at present. Ordering some reviving tea to be brought to the drawing room, I persuaded her into a comfortable chair, whereupon she insisted the whole episode was the fault of the servants. ‘They always leave the windows open too wide, Drusilla. None of them can be trusted to do even the simplest task correctly.’