Letter from a Dead Man Read online

  Marguerite dealt with the matter, accepting it had been an accident, but the instant we were alone again, she became visibly flustered. ‘What am I to do?’ she said, looking at the painting her housekeeper had handed to her. ‘This is the only portrait he has of his wife. He’ll be terribly upset.’

  ‘Glass can be replaced,’ I said. ‘Is the painting damaged at all?’

  She held it up close to her eyes. ‘Oh dear, where are my spectacles?’ Passing the miniature to me, she urged, ‘You look Drusilla, your eyes are so much better than mine. I don’t know how I shall face him if that silly girl has ruined it.’

  I studied the portrait carefully. ‘There’s a tiny scratch in one corner, probably caused by the broken glass, but the lady herself is unharmed.’ Only then did I take a proper look at the woman for whom Vincent had given up everything. ‘She’s incredibly lovely, isn’t she,’ I said, gazing in admiration at a pair of huge honey coloured eyes set in an oval face, and long golden tresses reposing against a neck that was as graceful as a swan’s. Returning it to Marguerite, I said, ‘I can see why Vincent fell in love with her.’

  ‘Yes. It is such a pity she was only an actress.’ And added, ‘Giles must arrange for the glass to be replaced.’ She looked at me, still worried. ‘What on earth am I to say to Vincent?’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll understand. After all, the portrait itself is unharmed.’ She put it on the table beside her, and I glanced at the lady again, saying a trifle enviously, ‘What wouldn’t I give for hair like that.’

  Marguerite shook her head. ‘Blonde hair wouldn’t suit you at all.’ Her thoughts still on Vincent she spoke of what was uppermost in her mind, that he would soon be leaving Ledstone. ‘I shall miss him so very much, Drusilla. But I am determined to make the best of the time left to us. In fact I’ve decided to hold a Farewell Party for him and Piers.’

  ‘That’s a splendid idea,’ I declared, eager to encourage this optimistic outlook. She wanted everyone at Westfleet to come and we settled on Tuesday as being the most suitable day.

  ‘I’d like to give him a memento, to remind him of us. What would please him, do you think?’ I deliberated for a moment or two, shook my head, promising to give it some thought, and she went on despondently, ‘I believe he’d stay longer if it wasn’t for Piers. Do you know, I actually overheard Piers talking of these dreadful executions in Paris, and saying how much he wished he could be there.’

  She gave a shudder, and we agreed that no sane person would choose to be in Paris during this awful revolution. Yet Giles had gone, and I’d always thought him sensible. Guillotines were set up all over France, but it was in Paris that the King and many members of the nobility had lost their lives.

  Later, as Parker was seeing me out, Mr Reevers came down the stairs. He wore a dark green coat, fawn breeches, and carried a riding crop. At the sight of me, his eyes lit up. ‘I heard you were here,’ he smiled, eagerly crossing the hall. ‘I hoped I might see you before I left.’

  ‘You’re leaving Ledstone?’

  ‘Only for a few days. The sale of my home has to be completed, and the clothes I mean to wear at the wedding are still in Lymington. Will you walk with me in the garden for a few minutes, there’s something I particularly wish to say.’

  CHAPTER THIRTYONE

  My heart began to thud, and once we were away from the house, he said, ‘Giles asked me to speak to you. He’s afraid you are putting yourself in great danger. He told me about your trip to Portsmouth. And he’s right to be worried. Murderers are utterly ruthless, your research into history told you that. The difference is, this one has not been dead for centuries. You are a highly intelligent woman, but you have almost no experience of what a villain will sink to in order to stay alive. If he even suspects you have evidence that will send him to the gallows, he will kill you without a second thought. But I believe you know that.’ When I didn’t answer he asked, ‘Do you have that kind of evidence?’

  I met his look. ‘No, I do not.’

  He seemed to relax a little. ‘Can you obtain it, do you think?’

  I gave shrug. ‘Giles insists I leave it in his hands now. And I believe that would be best.’

  He groaned. ‘You should never tell lies. Your voice gives you away. Besides, you’re not the type to give up that easily. I wish you’d tell me what you mean to do.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’

  ‘We are on the same side,’ he said, frowning.

  ‘How can I be certain of that?’

  He shook his head at me sadly. ‘I thought you were a good judge of character, Drusilla.’

  ‘I did not give you permission to use my name, sir.’

  ‘No. I beg your pardon.’ Taking out his pocket watch he said, ‘I wish I could stay, but I shall miss the tide if I don’t go now.’

  Forcing a smile, I said lightly, ‘Will you be back in time for the party?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ News which left me feeling unaccountably dejected. He lifted my left hand to his lips. ‘Be careful, my dear.’

  Riding home, I refused to think about Mr Reevers, concentrating instead on the memento Marguerite wanted to give Vincent. Remembering Vincent’s promise to visit the Island again next summer, I was delighted for Marguerite’s sake, and for my own too, as I enjoyed his company. Although I hoped he would not bring his son with him next time. And thinking of Piers, I suddenly had the perfect idea for a memento.

  An hour later, I was in the library when Giles called in on his way home from visiting his tenant. ‘Lucie’s gone for a walk with her mother,’ I told him and took the opportunity to ask what he was giving Lucie as a wedding present.

  He looked across at me, his eyes glowing. ‘It’s a surprise, Drusilla.’

  ‘So I imagined,’ I said, smiling. ‘You’re not the only person who can keep a secret, you know.’

  He grinned at me. ‘Yes, I do know. To be truthful I’m dying to tell someone. I’ve bought her the most delightful, spirited bay mare you ever saw. Radleigh is bringing her to the Island when he returns.’

  ‘You bought her on the mainland?’

  He nodded. ‘The last time I stayed with Radleigh.’

  Without thinking I blurted out, ‘Oh, but that was the night---------’

  ‘When Thomas and Tom died?’ He sighed and went on, ‘It was also when I bought the mare and barely got home in time for the outing to Carisbrooke. Once the horse is in my stables I shall have to swear all the grooms to secrecy. I expect that will cost me a pretty penny.’

  I laughed. ‘Well, you can afford it. In any case by this time next week you’ll be married.’

  He nodded eagerly and said, a quiver of excitement in his voice, ‘I didn’t know it was possible to feel this happy.’

  I hesitated, not wishing to spoil the moment, then said, ‘Anything can happen in a week. You will take care, won’t you, Giles.’

  He smiled at me. ‘Of course I will, but I’ve told you before, nothing is going to happen to me.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Giles, there’s something I must ask you.’ I was determined to find out what he knew about the murders that I didn’t. ‘The thing is—’ I stopped, for he was no longer listening, having seen Lucie walking back to the house with my aunt.

  ‘You will excuse me, won’t you, Drusilla,’ he grinned, hurrying towards the door. ‘Perhaps we can talk later.’

  Giles spent the afternoon with Lucie and was easily persuaded to stay to dinner. I sent a message to Marguerite so that she wouldn’t worry; a sensible precaution, for it was well after ten when Giles finally left. The others went straight up to bed, but having failed to speak to Giles alone again, I was in no mood to settle. Collecting a cloak, I left the house though a back door. Physical exercise always had a calming effect on me, and crossing the lawns to the right of the house, I climbed the steep rise beyond. There was very little moon, but looking down towards the village I could just make out the church and the cottages around the green. A faint light bobbed about in the ch
urchyard, suggesting local smugglers were busy.

  I caught the faint sound of voices on the breeze, but it wasn’t smugglers I could hear, the churchyard was too far away. Quietly making my way down the hill, I realised the voices were coming from the other side of the wall bordering my land. There was a hillock close to the wall, and climbing it, I could just make out a man on a horse speaking to someone standing beside him.

  ‘Someone’s been talking to Lady Drusilla, Jacob.’ The softly spoken voice was so well known to me I had to bite my lip to stop myself gasping out loud.

  ‘So I heard.’ Jacob was the smuggler Giles had employed to collect my uncle’s letters from France, and to bring his own message to me. ‘What did he have to go and do that for?’ ‘Money, of course.’

  Jacob grunted. ‘Been dealt with has he?’

  ‘Naturally.’ Giles sounded remarkably untroubled. ‘His usefulness came to an end the moment he opened his mouth.’

  The wind kept taking their voices away, but I heard Jacob ask Giles what would happen now. ‘Well, unless I’m much mistaken, Mr Piers means to have me arrested.’

  Jacob muttered an oath. ‘He knows you did it then?’

  ‘Oh yes. He’s known for some time.’

  ‘You’d be topped for sure if you were arrested, and then he’d get his hands on Ledstone.’

  ‘Quite so.’ His horse moved restively, and Giles calmed him with a word. ‘Only Ledstone is mine now Jacob, and I have no intention of letting anyone take it away from me. So Mr Piers must be stopped.’

  Jacob laughed unpleasantly. ‘Just say the word and I’ll---------’ A sudden gust of wind caused the leaves to rustle and I missed the rest. A moment later Giles rode off, while Jacob headed for the churchyard.

  I couldn’t seem to move, and I thought, vaguely, that if I tried my legs would give way. I don’t know how long I stood there staring into the darkness, but eventually I stumbled blindly back to the house. Shutting the door, I leant back against it, shaking with shock.

  The house being in darkness, I felt my way into the drawing room, where the fire was still glowing. Stirring the embers with a poker, I threw on a log, and sinking into a fireside chair, sat staring at the sparks, the conversation I’d heard repeating itself over and over again in my head.

  It wasn’t possible, I told myself. It just wasn’t possible. Giles could not have done those terrible things. Yet, he’d admitted it. I’d heard him say so. Heard him say that Piers knew he was guilty. And that the Gosport man, having opened his mouth to me, had been dealt with. I put my head into my hands and groaned, for I had told Giles what the man had said.

  Ever since Cuthbert Saxborough’s death I had tried to keep an open mind as to who had killed him. Sticking to the facts, just as I had when assisting with father’s work. Facts did not lie. Only people did that. The Gosport man told me an English gentleman had paid French smugglers to murder Thomas and Tom. He’d even given me the date they received their money - the fifteenth of September. When all the gentlemen, except Giles, had been at Ledstone. Giles, as I well knew, had been in France on that date. But I’d decided that was a subtle attempt by the man behind the murders to make me think Giles was guilty. Now, it seemed, I was wrong.

  Numb and trembling, I sat by the fire for a very long time, until things finally became clearer in my mind. And I saw that, whatever my own feelings were, I had to decide what I should do. Which was so awful a thing to contemplate that, in the end, I resolved to write everything down on my wall charts first. Perhaps then I would be able to think more clearly.

  Taking a spill from the mantle shelf, I thrust it into the embers of the fire, lit a branch of candles, threw the spill into the fire, and carried the candelabra into the workroom, placing it on the table. Removing a sheet from the wall, I first added the small background details learned earlier in the day, before forcing myself to record the conversation I’d overheard between Giles and Jacob. This being so fixed in my memory, I wrote it word for word. When it was done, and the ink had dried, I returned the sheet to the wall, and went through every fact I had concerning the deaths of the three Saxboroughs, including the whereabouts of every member of the family at those times, where it was known. Then there was the background information; the part played by smugglers in the murders, and in my uncle’s rescue, Vincent’s letters, Piers’s obsession with sketching, Mr Reevers’ lack of money, and a great deal more. No circumstance was too small to my mind.

  As I slowly studied it all again, I gave a sudden gasp. For, one of the minor facts I’d just added contradicted a trivial background detail I had noted down soon after Cuthbert’s death. I checked it again, but there was no doubt.

  And in that instant so much became clear. This small insignificant fact was the reason I had been attacked at Hokewell Bay. He feared it would eventually lead me to the truth. As, indeed, it had now. To me, it was absolute proof of guilt; as he had known it would be.

  Slowly, bit by bit, I came to see how the murders had been planned and carried out. I recalled too the reminder father had written to himself, that solving a mystery was often a matter of asking the right question. Now, at long last, I saw what that question was. And if I had asked it when I’d had the opportunity, before I left for Portsmouth, everything I’d overheard Giles say tonight would have been obvious to me long ago. But that question had simply not occurred to me then. And it was too late to ask it now.

  Eventually, sheer exhaustion got the better of me, and going up to my bedchamber, I undressed, climbed into bed, and fell into a troubled sleep. When I woke some hours later, the curtains had been drawn back, and I heard Gray, my maid, busying herself in my dressing room. The sky was a clear blue, and as the first shaft of golden sunlight fell across my bed, a blackbird on the tree below my window burst into song. The kind of morning that would normally have had me leaping eagerly out of bed. Instead, the events of last night came rushing back into my mind, and I lay there some time with my eyes closed.

  When I opened them again, I sat up and gazed round my bedchamber at all the things I loved. The old wood panelling, the small bookcase holding some of my favourite books for when I couldn’t sleep, the brightly patterned curtains that matched those around my four poster bed. On the mantle shelf above the fireplace was the first fossil I ever found, when I was four. I’d asked father how the tiny shell had got into that stone, and his answer had fired my interest in his hobby.

  The old screen standing in front of the fireplace had belonged to my mother, and I loved too the ormolu clock bought in Paris when travelling with father. Portraits of my parents hung on the wall opposite, painted soon after their marriage. The delicate looking mother I couldn’t remember, and beside her the father I had adored, his laughing gray eyes smiling down at me, as they had all my life. With the passing of the years, the slender figure portrayed here had filled out, he’d acquired laughter lines on his face and his thick brown hair had become tinged with grey. And I sighed deeply, thinking he couldn’t help me now.

  It was then an odd thing struck me. It was true that, in the early days of the Saxborough troubles, I had longed for his help, for we had worked so well together; but at some point, that feeling had passed without my being aware of it. What I really yearned for was his physical presence, as I still missed his companionship deeply. As for the business of the murders, I already knew what I had to do. A man responsible for the deaths of three members of his family could not be allowed to profit from his crime. No matter who he was.

  Now I knew who, how and why, I had decisions to make. After breakfast I went straight to the workroom, informing Jeffel that on no account was I to be disturbed. For, I had to be quite certain I hadn’t missed anything last night. Going through the facts again, I recognised the meticulous skill with which everything had been planned. In the calm of daylight I also realised the tiny detail that had explained it all to me last night, would not, by itself, be sufficient to prove guilt in a court of law.

  I spent an hour or two making pla
ns, and as these involved Mr Arnold, I resolved to call on him first thing Monday. Today, being Sunday, he would not be at work. Meanwhile, it was vital that I should be seen to be carrying on my life as normal. Thus, resolutely putting all other thoughts out of my mind, I went to see my godmother about the memento for Vincent.

  Marguerite often enjoyed an afternoon nap in her drawing room, and when Parker announced me, she sat up with a start, the book on her lap slipping onto the floor. ‘Did I wake you?’ I murmured apologetically.

  She straightened her cap, insisting she had not been asleep. ‘I was reading.’ Reaching down for the book, I was astonished to find it was a volume of sermons. Until I lifted it up and another much slimmer book, one the romances Lucie loved, fell out. Marguerite immediately feigned surprise. ‘How on earth did that get there? One of the servants must have----’ But I was laughing so much she soon gave up the pretence.

  I sat down, declaring affectionately, ‘I can’t stay long. It’s just that I had an idea for a keepsake you could give Vincent.’

  ‘Oh, do tell me. I can’t think of a thing.’

  ‘Well, you remember that lock of his son’s hair we found in one of those old letters?’ she nodded, puzzled. ‘He might like that - perhaps set into the handle of a quizzing glass.’

  Instantly she clapped her hands together. ‘Drusilla, how clever you are. That’s the very thing.’

  She talked excitedly about how and where to get it done in time, but when I pointed out Vincent would wonder how she came by it, she bit her lip in vexation.

  ‘Well, I shan’t tell him I’ve kept his old letters. It would be too unkind to remind him of what he wrote then. I shall say I found the lock of hair among my keepsakes, and thought he might like it.’ She looked at me appealingly. ‘The letters are in my dressing room. I could ring for my maid I suppose, but she’s bound to bring the wrong box or—’