‘And Uncle Paget agreed to this monstrous lie?’ Emma gasped. ‘No, I don’t believe it. Whatever his faults, he was a man of honour.’
‘You must believe me, Emma, you must have faith in me. I could see nothing beyond the peril I was in, and I sought a way out. It came to me in that instant that I knew something about Paget which he would not want disclosed. Yes, child, something highly discreditable about that man of honour! It was no moment for scruples, I had to use what weapons I possessed – can I be blamed for that?’
‘You mean you coerced Uncle Paget into supporting you, with threats to expose him if he didn’t? It was vile of you, vile!’
‘So I was vile, but not Paget? Let me tell you what he had done, that man whose memory you hold in such high esteem. His marriage to your Aunt Jane was a sham, no real marriage at all, for he already had a wife. I learned the fact by sheer chance through meeting someone who’d known Paget in his young days before he entered the army. It emerged that the woman had soon tired of him and became the mistress of an actor in a troupe of strolling players, running away with him when they moved on. She was still alive, I discovered, when Paget wed my sister.’
‘And poor Aunt Jane didn’t know about her?’
‘No, and Paget was desperate that she shouldn’t! Don’t look at me like that, Emma. I would never have told Jane, but the threat was enough to persuade Paget. We waited together in his study until after midnight, when a messenger came running for the doctor, saying that Mr Hugh Hardaker had been found dead at the mill by the watchman.’
He fell silent, observing her keenly, trying to gauge her reaction to his words. Over his shoulder Emma noticed a kestrel hovering motionless upon the wind, and she envied the bird its ability to soar free in the pure, clean air. Suddenly it dived after some unseen prey, disappearing behind one of the dark pinnacles of rock.
Randolph went on more slowly, ‘If I’d known how things were going to work out, I’d never have gone to Paget and involved him. I would have spared myself the constant anxiety that one day in his cups he might say something incriminating. When Sutcliffe returned to Bythorpe six weeks ago Paget was terrified out of his wits. I had to remind him forcibly that he was in this affair as deeply as I was, and had as much to lose. Having kept silent at the time when Sutcliffe was arrested and convicted, having done nothing to confute all that fortuitous evidence which piled up against him, Paget had become, as they say, my accessory after the fact.’
‘No wonder Uncle Paget turned to drink!’
Randolph gave a black frown at the memory. ‘The fool! I told him repeatedly that he was in no danger as long as he kept his head, but Paget couldn’t face up to the situation like a man. He had to seek refuge in alcohol.’
Repelled by such callousness, Emma could almost feel a kind of compassion for her dead uncle.
‘Feeling as you do,’ she flung at Randolph scathingly, ‘I wonder that you troubled to organise the search for Uncle Paget the other night.
‘I am Randolph Hardaker. I could not be seen to stand by while a member of my family was lost on the moor.’ He gave a rueful shrug. ‘I began to regret it, though, when Paget started blabbering. I feared that at any moment he might say too much.’
‘So it was fortunate for you that he died so soon!’
‘Fortunate? You could put it like that.’
It was the expression in his eyes that gave Emma the clue.
‘You killed Uncle Paget, you smothered him!’ she cried with sudden total conviction. ‘Yet I don’t see how it was possible. He spoke to Aunt Jane at the very last.’
‘That was an unexpected stroke of luck for me. Either Jane imagined it, or else she was deliberately deceiving herself in order to allay the guilt she felt for having despised Paget. It was an easy matter for me, merely a pillow held against his face. He was already dead before I called Bernard. You’ve no cause to look so shocked, lass. Remember that Bernard himself had declared Paget could not last through the night.’
‘That was no justification for – for murdering him! You speak so calmly of these dreadful killings, as if your conscience is quite untroubled by them. And what of Matthew Sutcliffe, a man who had done you no sort of harm? Yet you allowed him to suffer the punishment that should have been yours.’
Randolph’s face was twisted with anger. ‘Why are you so obsessed with Sutcliffe? Would to heaven I had never encouraged him in the first place, but I thought it was safer to have him friendly than not. When I saw the way things were between you I tried to separate you. If Bernard had listened to reason you would be in Bavaria now. Yes, and Cathy would likely still be alive, so you needn’t hold me responsible for her death.’ He read the disgust in her face, and his resentment exploded. ‘I suppose you would have preferred me to have been transported instead of Sutcliffe. Your own flesh and blood!’
‘It would have been justice,’ she said chokily. ‘It is right that the guilty should suffer for their crimes.’
‘Guilt and innocence – what do they count for when survival is at stake? You of all people should know that, Emma, because you and I are the same underneath the skin. Surely you must have realised, over the years, that you mean more to me than any other of the Hardakers? We have the same strength and fighting spirit, the same determination to win against all odds.’
Her body went to stone. ‘I am not like you! I used to admire and respect you, Uncle. I used to love you. But now I feel only loathing and contempt.’
Randolph flinched back as though she had struck him. Then in an oddly humble gesture he reached out his two arms to her, and his eyes pleaded for understanding.
‘Emma lass, you cannot know what you’re saying. You could never find it in your heart to turn from me, to abandon me when I most need you. Nothing and no one can harm us if only we stay together and face the world together.’
Emma stared at him in horror. ‘I wish to heaven there was no tie of blood between us. I feel tainted by it. I wish to heaven that you weren’t my uncle.’
‘I’m not your uncle!’ he shouted, his voice ringing with a strange, desperate triumph. ‘Do you not know it, Emma, can you not feel it? We are closer kin that that, far closer. My dearest child, we are father and daughter!’
The shock came to her like a blow across the throat, knocking the breath from her body. She could feel herself swaying, and struggled to regain her balance. At her feet a small stone skittered down, and the sound of it bouncing against the rock-face was a warning of her perilous position.
‘Come away from the edge, for God’s sake,’ Randolph begged. ‘Here, take my hand.’
Sickened and incredulous, she said, ‘You – you and my mother?’
‘Yes, Alice and I. Your mother loved me more than she ever loved Hugh. What use do you imagine he was to a woman? And yet the fool believed you were his child, until I disillusioned him that night at the mill.’
Emma felt a new intensity of emotion, a new depth to her hatred. He was depriving her of everything she had clung to since she was orphaned; the fond memory of her mother as a kind and gentle woman, a loyal, devoted wife; the memory of her father, who for all his weaknesses had loved and cherished his small daughter. And now, in a single shattering moment, that man had become just Hugh Hardaker, her uncle. And in place of what had been snatched away, she had been given a mother who was an adulteress and a father who was a murderer; a ruthless schemer, a man of villainy such as Emma had never conceived possible. With every instinct she possessed, with every part of her, she hated Randolph for being her father.
He could read all this in her eyes. Read the scorn and hatred, the bitterness – and her fear of him.
‘You don’t seem to grasp what I’m telling you,’ he raged. ‘I am your father, Emma, and I demand a daughter’s obedience from you. Now do as I say. You are coming with me!’
As he spoke he stepped forward purposefully. Emma turned away with a whimper of terror and stared wildly about her. She had never before ventured so close to this outer edge of
the Abraham Stone, and the vertical drop at her feet was petrifying. Then in a fleeting, panic-stricken glimpse she noticed a narrow ledge of rock, six or eight feet down. Perhaps she could reach it, and from there somehow clamber from crevice to crevice. She did not pause to consider if, dressed as she was in those cumbrous skirts and petticoats, it could be managed. As Randolph’s hand reached out for her she dropped down over the rim, sliding wildly, her clothing snagged by the abrasive rock, until she landed heavily on her feet upon the ledge. For a moment she swayed there dangerously until her frenzied fingers found a hold.
Randolph’s head appeared, and he stared down at her.
‘Emma, are you hurt? That was a foolhardy thing to do.’ He knelt on the very edge and extended his arm. ‘Here, let me help you up.’
But she cowered away from him, crouching low so that his hand could not reach her. Randolph said impatiently, ‘No more of this! If you refuse to come up, then I will come down to you.’
Frantically she looked for a means of further descent, but there was none. The rockface fell sheer and smooth and unbroken, allowing no hand or foothold. Randolph had not hesitated in starting to come down. His right foot, close enough for her to touch, scrabbled for a hold, the toe of his boot wedging into a small fissure. He tested it briefly before giving it his full weight. She heard an ominous cracking noise, and suddenly a chunk of rock split away. For an infinitesimal instant Randolph seemed to hang in space, then his fingertips lost their tenuous grip and his heavy body came falling towards her, went past her, his arms and legs flailing wildly, while a sickening scream escaped from his throat. Emma did not hear the sound of the impact as he landed far below, for in that instant a fragment of the dislodged stone caught her right temple. She recoiled, fighting down waves of faintness, knowing that to lose consciousness now would be fatal.
The seconds passed and dimly, through the fog that clouded her mind, she thought she heard a voice calling her name. Matthew’s voice! She summoned all her strength and shouted back.
‘I’m here, Matthew. I’m here! ‘
When he found her Matthew wasted no words of horror, but started at once to climb down. Realising his intent, Emma begged him to leave her and fetch help. But he ignored her plea and continued down with slow, sure-footed movements. Very soon he was standing beside her on the narrow ledge, his arm protectively around her.
‘You are safe now, my love. You are safe now that I am here.’
For a few moments she clung to him in a flood-tide of relief. Then she gasped, ‘How did you know? How did you know I was here?’
‘From Ursly. When you didn’t come to meet me this afternoon, I went to her cottage to see what she could tell me about your cousin’s death, and what led up to it. She seemed relieved to see me and confessed everything – all that she’d been holding back before. Emma, I know it was Randolph who killed your father.’
So Ursly hadn’t told him quite everything. As with herself, the old woman had baulked at that final revelation.
‘Ursly knew somehow that you were in terrible danger,’ Matthew was saying. ‘She broke off suddenly and told me to get to the Abraham Stone as fast as my horse could carry me. “Miss Emma needs you”, she said. I didn’t know whether to believe her or not, and I can only thank God that her sense of urgency impelled me to come.’
Emma added her own prayer of gratitude for Ursly and her mysterious powers. If the old woman had not sent Matthew to her aid, what then?
With Matthew there to give her courage, the climb back to safety seemed almost easy. He found footholds for her and supported her weight, and at the top he took her hand and led her down, step by step, to the base of the Abraham Stone. From there on horseback, leading Randolph’s horse by the bridle, they descended from Black Scar Rocks and skirted the ridge to where Randolph’s body lay. Dismounting, they stood together looking down at the crumpled heap that had so recently been a living man.
Matthew said sombrely, ‘He didn’t stand a chance, of course, falling from such a height. But it was him or you, Emma! Your uncle would have killed you without compunction.’
‘He wasn’t my uncle,’ she said, her throat aching with unshed tears. ‘He told me that just now. It was the cause of the quarrel that night at the mill which ended in his brother’s death. That message found scratched on the stone floor must have been Hugh Hardaker’s last despairing attempt to claim me as his daughter. I was his, he was trying to insist, in spite of what Randolph had told him. Perhaps he still believed it, but I think he must have known in his heart that it wasn’t true.’
‘You mean – Randolph was your father?’
She nodded wordlessly, and the shocked surprise in Matthew’s eyes softened at once to compassion. He reached out and drew Emma into his arms, holding her face to his shoulder, gently stroking her hair.
‘And would he have killed you, even so?’
Her voice was very faint, muffled by the tweed of his jacket. ‘I cannot be sure, Matthew. I shall never know the answer to that question.’
Chapter Nineteen
The breath of both horse and rider clouded into the frosty air, and the jagged outline of Black Scar Rocks was blurred by a soft lilac haze. Emma wasn’t hurrying, for it was another half-hour yet before Matthew was due to meet her at Ursly’s cottage. Reining in, she sat motionless in the saddle and gazed across the expanse of winter-brown heather to the flat-topped Abraham Stone. It had all started there, she thought, when Matthew had appeared out of the summer mist that lay like a veil across the moor. And it was there it had ended, too, with Randolph Hardaker’s fall to his death. Emma had never again climbed the Abraham Stone, and never would as long as she lived. This, the direct route between Bracklegarth Hall and Ursly’s cottage, was the closest she had come.
Tomorrow a train would bear her and Matthew away from the Brackle Valley; first to Leeds, then by the main line to London. And there in three days’ time, at a quiet little church in Kensington, they would be married. No family and no friends would be present. There was no one she wanted in attendance at her wedding. Tomorrow would be her final goodbye to this moor, to Bythorpe, to the West Riding, and soon even to England. There would be few regrets at leaving the country of her birth, few fond memories she would carry away with her.
Except of Cathy, her cousin – no, her sister! The thought of their closer relationship brought Emma no warmth, for it was a painful reminder of the man who had fathered them both, the man her mother had loved.
Looking back, Emma understood mama’s reluctance to visit Bracklegarth Hall, to have more than a minimum of contact with the other Hardakers. She had believed it was entirely on account of Chloe, but now she knew it was more because of Randolph, and mama’s feeling of remorse. And that dying message her husband had scratched on the weaving room floor. He lies ... mine, MINE – had she guessed its true meaning? Had she been able to deduce that Randolph was Hugh’s killer? Emma would never know, but the thought that perhaps her mother, like Paget, had allowed an innocent man to suffer for Randolph’s crime was something that would haunt her for ever. There was one other thing they would never know for certain, she and Matthew – how his muffler came to be found at the mill on that fatal night. Matthew had missed the muffler a few days before, and they could only conclude that the light-fingered pedlar had found it, or stolen it, and later dropped it in his hasty escape from the scene of the crime.
During the past five weeks a new closeness had grown up between Emma and Seth’s grandmother. Ursly was living in greater comfort now. With winter fast approaching, Matthew had wasted no time in engaging a builder to make repairs to the lonely moorland cottage, and at Emma’s request he had also arranged for the old woman to receive a regular payment sufficient for her simple needs. As for Seth, he had returned to his employment at Bracklegarth Hall. But one day, when his grandmother finally let go her tenacious hold on life, he would take a ship and join Matthew and Emma in the far-off land where they were to make a new beginning.
It ha
d been disconcerting for Emma to learn from the Hardakers’ lawyer that all Randolph’s worldly goods had been bequeathed to her. In his will he had not disclosed their true relationship, but had left his property to be divided equally between his daughter Cathy and his niece Emma, with the proviso that should Cathy predecease him, then everything was to go to Emma. This meant the house, Randolph’s investments, and his majority holding in the Brackle Valley Mill. But Emma wanted none of it, and had gone running in panic to Matthew to tell him so.
‘I couldn’t touch a single penny,’ she insisted. ‘To me it’s tainted money. What shall I do, Matthew?’
He smiled at her, understanding how she felt. ‘Give it away then, my dearest, I have plenty for us both. Who shall be the lucky recipient?’
She stared at him, bewildered by the direction her own thoughts were taking.
‘Would you – would you think I had lost my reason if I suggested giving it to Aunt Chloe and Aunt Jane?’
His eyes crinkled in the way she loved to see, because at such moments the sadness and bitterness which still lurked there sometimes was completely wiped away. Matthew was learning to laugh again, a lesson Emma felt she herself still had to learn.
‘I presume,’ he suggested teasingly, ‘you feel you owe so much to those two aunts of yours?’
‘I wouldn’t want to see Aunt Chloe turned out of her home. And Aunt Jane will be in want of a home now that Bernard is taking over the practice. They could live together at Bracklegarth Hall. As for the mill, a manager will have to be appointed to run it. If Blanche’s Cedric ever wants to enter the firm, it will be something for them all to sort out between them. Thank heaven it is not a matter I shall ever be called upon to decide.’
Emma told the two sisters separately of her decision. First Chloe, at breakfast the next day, while the autumn rain slashed against the window panes. Chloe heard her out in silence, and when at last she spoke it was in a very subdued voice.
The Other Cathy Page 22
