An Anne Perry Christmas: Two Holiday Novels

by Anne Perry

  Benjamin turned to Naomi. “Henry and I already spoke to Gower. We met him by chance in the street. He's consumed with hatred. Even death isn't enough to satisfy him. He wants to justify himself and get the estate back for…”

  “I'll see him in hell first,” Ephraim said huskily.

  “There's no good confronting him,” Benjamin argued. “We need to determine where he was that night, and if it was even possible for him to have been to the crossing where Judah was killed, and also the stones where he was found. Does he have access to a horse, or did he take one? Did anyone see him, and if so, where and at what time? If we gain anything from him it will be either by charm, or tricking him. Naomi…”

  “No!” Ephraim cut across him, instantly protective. “You can't ask her to speak to him. For God's sake, Ben, he murdered Judah!”

  Naomi flushed, seeing the emotion in Ephraim's face.

  “He won't know who she is,” Benjamin pointed out, apparently oblivious of it, or of her embarrassment. He could think only of plans. “And if she went with Henry…”

  “I'd rather go alone,” Naomi said quickly. She flashed a smile at Henry, as if he would understand, then looked back at Benjamin. “To begin with at least, I can pretend anything I wish, or allow him to assume it. If I go with Mr. Rathbone, Gower will take against me from the outset, because he knows Mr. Rathbone is your friend.”

  “He's dangerous,” Ephraim told her, finality in his voice. “You forget where he's been already. He was eleven years in prison in Carlisle. He's not a…”

  She looked at him with the shadow of a smile on her mouth, but her eyes were direct, even challenging. Watching them, Henry realized that there was far more between them than he, or Benjamin, had supposed, and a great deal more emotion.

  “We suspect that he murdered a member of our family,” she replied coolly. “I understand that, Ephraim. I am going to see him openly, and in daylight. He is evil, we are all perfectly certain of that, but he is not stupid. If he were, we would not find him so difficult to catch.”

  The dull red of anger spread up Ephraim's cheeks, and a consciousness that he was betraying his emotion too far. It was as if their exchange was not new but merely something in the middle of an established difference.

  Benjamin looked at his brother, then at his sister-in-law, aware that he had missed something, but not certain what it was. “Are you sure you would not prefer to have Henry with you?” he asked.

  “Quite sure,” Naomi answered. “If Gower sees me with anyone from this house we will in a sense have tipped our hands.” She looked at Antonia, and bit her lip. “Sorry. That is a card-playing expression I have heard men use. I'm afraid I have mixed with some odd company when traveling. Geological sites are not always in the most civilized of places.”

  Antonia smiled for the first time since Henry had arrived, perhaps since Judah's death. “Please don't apologize. Some time, when this is past, I would like to hear more about it. There are advantages to having a family, but there are chances you lose as well. But I understand the reference. You might be surprised how fierce and how devious some of the ladies of the village can be about their cards.”

  Now it was Naomi who smiled self-consciously. “Of course, I didn't think of that. The desire to play and to win is universal, I suppose. But believe me, I shall play better against Mr. Gower if I do it alone.”

  Benjamin conceded. “I shall go to the village, then follow the path Gower must have taken to see exactly how long it requires, including walking up the bed of the stream.”

  “You'll freeze!” Antonia exclaimed with concern.

  He smiled at her. “Probably. But I'll survive. I'll have a hot bath when I get back. I won't be the only man to get soaked through. Shepherds do it regularly. It's time we did something for Judah, apart from talk, and grieve.”

  No one argued with him. As he stood up he glanced at Henry. They had not asked him to do anything specific, but the question was in Benjamin's eyes, and Ephraim's also as he rose.

  “Oh, I have one or two things to be about,” Henry said, excusing himself as they parted in the hallway, he to go upstairs, change into heavier clothes, then head out to the stables to borrow a horse. He was not willing to tell them what he intended. He looked further ahead, and for that he needed to speak to Judah's clerk in his offices in Penrith.

  He rode out quickly, hoping not to be seen. He did not wish to be asked his purpose, not yet.

  As he climbed the steep road eastward, the wind behind him, he turned it over in his mind. What if Benjamin were to discover that it was not practically possible for Gower to have traveled the distance in the time he had? What if Naomi's questions actually proved Gower's innocence, not of intent, but of being able to have committed the act himself? If they failed to prove Gower's guilt, what lay ahead after that? He wanted to find something, a next step to take, other answers to seek. Was there anyone else Gower could have used, willingly or not? Might there have been an ally in the original case, someone who had not come to light then? Did anyone else profit from that tragedy, or from this?

  It was a fine horse, and he found the ride exhilarating, his mind sharper.

  There was always the major possibility that in their loathing of Gower and his appalling accusations, they seemed not to have considered whether Judah had other enemies. He had been a judge for some time. There was little enough crime of any seriousness in the Lakes, but it did exist. He must have sentenced other men to fines or imprisonment.

  Who else bore him grudges? He did not think for an instant that Judah had been corrupted in anything, but that did not mean that others could not imagine it. Many people refuse to accept that they, or those they love, can be in the wrong, or to blame for their misfortunes. In the short term, it seems easier to blame someone else, to let anger and pride encase you in denial. Some live in it forever. Some accept their own part only when all vengeance has proved futile in healing the flaw that brought them down. The longer you persist in blaming others, the more difficult it becomes to retreat, until finally your whole edifice of belief rests on the lie, and to dismantle it would be self-destruction.

  Who else, apart from Gower, might exist in such a self-made prison? He needed to know, just in case the grief and the anger, the lifelong hero worship of an elder brother, had blinded Ephraim and Benjamin to other thoughts.

  Henry did not imagine even for an instant that Judah was guilty as Gower accused. He had known Judah well, and loved him as a friend. He had seen him more clearly, having no childhood passions or loyalty of blood. Judah had had faults. He could be overconfident, impatient of those slower of thought than himself. He was omnivorous in his hunger for knowledge, untidy, and he occasionally overshadowed others without realizing it. But he was utterly honest, and as quick to see his own mistakes as anyone else's, and never failed to apologize and amend.

  Henry needed to know the truth, all of it. They could not defend Judah, or Antonia, with less.

  By the time he arrived he knew exactly what he wanted to do. It took him only a few inquiries at the ostler's where he left the horse, before he was sitting in the office of the court clerk, a James Westwood, who received him with grave courtesy. He sat behind a magnificent walnut desk, his spectacles balanced on the end of his rather long nose.

  “I can tell you nothing confidential, you understand,” he warned pleasantly.

  “Yes, I do understand.” Henry nodded. “My son is a barrister in London.”

  “Rathbone!” Westwood's face lit up. “Really? Oliver Rathbone? Well, well. So he is your son? Fine man.” He smiled. “I still can't tell you anything confidential. Not that much of it, mind you. Nasty business. All very foolish.”

  “The estate was in the Gower family?” Henry began. He repeated essentially what Antonia had told him.

  “Precisely,” Westwood replied. “Originally the estate was in the Colgrave family. Then Mariah, the widow of Bartram Colgrave. She married Geoffrey Gower and had two sons by him. One of them died as a
child, the other is Ashton Gower. But the whole thing was much smaller than before they built that big house, and of course long before they found the archaeological site with all the coins and so on. But I'm ahead of myself.” Westwood coughed and cleared his throat. “The widow, Mariah Colgrave, brought not only the land, but a great deal of money to her second marriage. With it Geoffrey Gower purchased more land, and built that house that is the center of the estate now. When he died, it passed to Ashton, his surviving son.”

  Henry was puzzled. “Then what was it that was forged? And how could Ashton Gower be responsible? It seems to have happened before he was born. How could Peter Colgrave have had any right to it? He wasn't in direct descent.”

  Westwood pursed his lips. “It's not the estate itself, it's the date of it that's at issue,” he explained. “It all hinges on whether the extra part of it, which includes the house, the better part of the land, and the place where the Viking hoard was found, was purchased before Wilbur Colgrave died, or after.”

  “Who was Wilbur Colgrave?” Rathbone was following it with difficulty.

  “Bartram's brother, and Peter Colgrave's father. A matter of which way the inheritance went, you see?” Westwood said. “Before and it should pass to Peter Colgrave, after and it passes to Mariah, and then to her son, Ashton Gower.”

  “Didn't they know that at the time?” Henry still did not understand. “And if it was a forgery, then Ashton Gower was not even born, so he couldn't possibly be to blame.”

  Westwood waved his finger in the air. “Ah, but it was only questioned when Mariah died, just over eleven years ago. Before that everyone took it for granted.”

  “Well, if Mariah forged it, or Geoffrey did, it is still not Ashton Gower's fault!”

  “That is the crux of it!” Westwood said, his face sharp with interest in the problem. “The forgery was recent! They knew that from the ink on the paper, even though whoever did it lifted all the seals off the old one, the family one, and reused them. Very clever, but the rest of it was rubbish!”

  “Then why didn't Wilbur Colgrave claim the estate, and the money, at the time? It was rightfully his!” Henry pointed out.

  “That is a very good question,” Westwood agreed keenly. “He is a bit of a scoundrel, and rumor has it that he was always more than a little in love with Mariah—his brother's wife. By all accounts, she was a real beauty in her day. They even said she paid for the land with personal favors.”

  He blushed very slightly. “Least said the soonest mended, I think. Anyway, the part that concerns Judah Dreghorn is that when Ashton Gower came to claim his inheritance, Peter Colgrave swore that the Gower deeds to the estate were forged, and it should be his, as heir to Wilbur Colgrave, who was the younger brother and heir to Bartram, rather than his widow, who forfeited it on remarriage. It was entailed, and supposed to remain in the Colgrave name, except that Wilbur died, too, leaving his widow and child, Peter. All rather a mess.”

  “And Ashton Gower took advantage to try to prove the estate was his by forging a new deed with the right date for Mariah, and thus for him?”

  “Precisely,” Westwood agreed. “But it failed. The land went back to the Colgrave family, the only one left—Peter. Which was probably where it should have been all the time.”

  “And Gower went to prison,” Henry concluded.

  “Quite. It was a great deal of money he attempted to steal by fraud,” Westwood said gravely. “It could not go unpunished. The sentence was perfectly fair and appropriate.”

  “So Ashton Gower lost his home and the fortune he had always assumed to be his. No wonder he was bitter.” Henry could imagine it, the young Gower growing up loving the land, riding on it, climbing the hills, feeling he belonged. Then suddenly he lost his father, and his inheritance, the whole nature of his identity and his place in the community was lost. Little wonder he was so angry he could barely think wisely. But it did not excuse dishonesty, and certainly it was not Judah's fault.

  “Why did he blame Judah Dreghorn?” he said aloud.

  “Ah!” Westwood steepled his fingers. “That is something I don't understand,” he admitted. “Gower completely lost control of himself. He ranted and raved at the judge, accusing him of corruption, even at the trial. And then afterwards, when Colgrave sold the estate very quickly, and Dreghorn bought it, Gower swore revenge on Dreghorn for having lied about the whole thing. He said the deeds were genuine, and Dreghorn knew it. Which was all patently ridiculous. But it was extremely ugly. Most distressing.”

  “And now Judah is dead, in very odd circumstances.” Henry looked steadily at Westwood. “Do you believe Gower could be so bent on revenge that he would harm him?”

  “Oh, dear.” Westwood shook his head a little, obviously distressed. “You are asking me a highly improper question, Mr. Rathbone. It is one I would prefer not to answer. In fact, I really feel that I cannot!” His eyes were very steady, sharp, and bright. His refusal was an answer in itself, and he looked at Henry long enough to make sure that he understood it as such.

  “I see.” Henry nodded. “Yes, quite plainly. Do you know why Peter Colgrave did not wish to keep the estate?”

  “He is another man about whom I prefer not to express an opinion.” He smiled very slightly and stared at Henry over the tops of his spectacles. “Don't press me into something that would be indiscreet, and might embarrass us both.”

  Henry gave a half smile. “Thank you. At least I think I understand something of the actual issues, but not why Ashton Gower imagined he could get away with anything so stupid.”

  “Arrogance,” Westwood said quietly. “I imagine he made the forgery in the heat of anger, perhaps when he discovered the original and realized what it would mean to him. Then he could not back out of it. But that is only my guess.”

  Henry thanked him and went outside into the cold, already darkening afternoon.

  hey met before dinner, a little later than usual. Mrs. Hardcastle had prepared a magnificent meal, and the whole house was decorated for Christmas with wreaths of holly, ivy, and pine. There were polished apples and baskets of nuts tied with gold ribbons.

  Henry saw it with surprise, in view of the recent, terrible bereavement, and glanced uncertainly at Antonia, in case the servants should have done it without her permission.

  She smiled back at him. “It's still Christmas,” she said very quietly. “We must not forget or ignore that. Without Christmas, there would be no hope. And I have to have hope: wild, unreasonable, against all the logic that man can have, things only God can do.”

  “We all have to,” he agreed as they walked into the dining room side by side. “We'll definitely keep Christmas. Thank you.”

  They took their places and the dishes were served one after another. They were ready for pudding when they finally approached the subject of their achievements during the day.

  “I walked all the distances,” Benjamin said thoughtfully. “It's possible, but only if you don't hesitate at all. And there would be no time for Gower to have waited for Judah more than five minutes. Not if Judah went straight there. Of course he could have waited for Gower, because we have no idea when he died, except that it was some time before three o'clock when they found him. Also we don't know what time Gower got home again.” He turned to Naomi. “Perhaps you do? Did you manage to see him?”

  Naomi gave a rueful little shrug. “It was easier than I expected.” She looked at Benjamin, avoiding Ephraim's eyes, but both imagined she was perfectly aware that he was looking at her.

  “How did you do it?” Antonia asked.

  Naomi smiled at her. “With more invention than I am proud to admit,” she answered. “Let me do you the favor of not telling you, so you can meet the village with complete innocence. People speak of you so highly.” She looked at Antonia with candid regard. “You are much admired, even by those who are stupid enough to listen to Gower. Your reputation is your greatest asset. And when we all go away again, you will remain here and it will matter that it is
not changed.”

  Antonia smiled, but she did not attempt to speak.

  Henry had not thought of it in quite those bold terms before, and he realized that perhaps Antonia had not either. None of them had looked beyond the shock and anger of the present. But of course Benjamin would return to the Holy Land. He was probably in the middle of some great excavation. Ephraim would go back again to Africa and his exploration, the plants and discoveries that so fascinated him. Naomi would make the long journey back to America, and then westward once more to take up Nathaniel's work, and her own friends in the life they had made there. Even Henry would return to Primrose Hill, and the joys and cares of London. Antonia would then taste the full measure of her loneliness.

  Henry remembered the death of his own wife. At first, shock numbs much of the deepest ache. There are things that have to be done, people told, arrangements made. One forces courage to surmount weakness and for the sake of other people, one behaves with dignity.

  But afterward, when the first mourning is over and the attention goes, friends and family return to their own lives, then the true weight of loss descends. Everything one used to share is no longer as it was. The silence of the heart is deafening. Antonia had yet to face that.

  Naomi had already experienced it, but she at least had some work that would occupy her energies and her thoughts. Of course Antonia had the estate to run, and her care for Joshua, but his grief was her burden as well.

  “What did you learn?” Benjamin was asking Naomi now. She had already answered some of his questions, and Henry had not been listening.

  “He seems to have spent the evening with the Pilkingtons,” Naomi replied, a faint look of distaste on her face. “Mrs. Pilkington is a woman of extraordinarily generous bosom, balanced by an opposingly mean spirit. She has opinions as to the moral value of everything, good or bad. Decadent is her favorite word. I don't know why, because I don't think she knows what it means.”