The Riddle of the Reluctant Rake

by Patricia Veryan

  Adair said laughingly that they would spoil him past permission, but the hard work and the cold air had whetted his appetite. He was quite willing to sit on a tree stump near the table and enjoy his lunch, while the nuns clustered around him, chattering like so many birds, as if he were the first male they’d met for years.

  A coach came rattling along the lane and slowed. Adair’s view was obscured by the coiffes and flowing robes of his companions, but he heard soft feminine laughter and realized he must present quite a picture, surrounded as he was by his pious friends.

  It was now past one o’clock, and having finished his lunch and completed the repairs, he said his farewells. They all gathered to see him go. He offered a flourishing bow and received giggles, smiles and waves in return.

  His directions to the Davis farm proved faulted. The host of the Greyrock Castle Inn had drawn a crude map, but the lane that should have led straight to the farmhouse wandered on for miles with no trace of any kind of habitation and only an occasional cow to munch placidly at him from beyond a hedge. He turned back, irritated, and at length was able to get clearer directions from a carter. “Ye’ll be a friend o’ Wally Davis, is that right, sir?” the man asked, eyeing Adair curiously.

  “A matter of business, merely.”

  “Ar,” said the carter with a sniff. “Nor that don’t surprise me!”

  It was one more indication, thought Adair as he rode on, that Walter Coachman did not go through life overburdened with admirers.

  He reached the farm with no further delays and found it to consist of a run-down house with a few chickens scratching about the yard, and several goats in a small fenced pasture. There was no one about. He dismounted and looped Toreador’s reins over a rail of the fence. The front porch sagged and was sadly in need of paint, but neat and tidy. His knock at the door won no answer, nor did his hail. He wandered around to the back. Some distance behind the house was a ramshackle barn and next to it a paddock where two horses grazed. He could hear a man’s voice. If it was the disappearing coachman, he might very well resent having been rooted out. Adair checked the pistol in his cloak pocket and trod softly into the dimness of the barn.

  A very aged man was tottering about wielding a hay-fork, though whether he was raking the hay or spreading it would have been hard to tell. And as he worked, he grumbled.

  “… from the day as he was born. I told her, then. Years agone though it were. There was summat about them eyes of his. Shifty. I knew how it would be! But would she listen?” He shook the hay-fork at a rooster that had strutted into the barn and paused to tilt its head at him. “No, she would not,” said the old man, staggering a little from this effort. “No more would she now! He’s come home to give back what he owed, she said. Owed! Hah! Stole, more like! If she’d of listened to me—but who am I?” Here, becoming aware of Adair’s presence, he shook the hay-fork again. “Who am I?” he demanded fiercely.

  Adair drew a bow at random. “I fancy you must be Walter’s grandfather, sir.”

  “And if you think as I be proud of that, ye’re fair and far out! Which I’ll speak me mind, no matter what she says. You’re late. They’ve all gone.”

  He was panting and looked worn out. Adair went over to appropriate the fork and offered his arm.

  “Do you expect your grandson to come back soon, Mr. Davis?”

  “Well, of course I do,” said the old man, clinging to his arm and scowling up at him irritably. “What you think? They was a-going to hang about for a sennight? Not even me daughter-in-law be that fulish, and a fulish woman she allus has been. Nor I don’t want to sit on the hay bale, thankee, but ye can leave the fork there. I’d think ye’d know it be cold out here for old bones like mine.” He fixed Adair with a reproachful look, and when a suitable apology had been tendered, said, “That’s why I didn’t go with ’em. Ye can give me a hand up to the house.”

  They emerged into the light, and the old man scanned Adair appraisingly. “You don’t look like them as Wally useter choose for friends when he lived hereabouts. If ye could call ’em friends. You knowed him a long time?”

  “Not—exactly, but—”

  “Then why would ye bother to come?”

  Adair boosted him up the step onto the porch. “I have a message for—”

  “Ah. From they Bow Street folks, I shouldn’t wonder. Wally were messing about with that lot a while since. I told her no good would come of it, though I’ll own you could’ve knocked me down with a feather when t’other lot rid up!”

  “Er—from Bow Street, sir?”

  Mr. Davis gave a snort of impatience. “Bow Street me eye! Are ye quite daft? I mean the flash folks! The widder was fair bowled out, and so were I. Who’d a thought they’d come all this way? And him no more’n a coachman in spite of all his fancy talk.”

  Adair tensed. “Somebody else has come to see your grandson?”

  “A course they has! Did ye think as you was the only one? And late, at that! I vow you young folk nowadays is…” Bristling, Mr. Davis listed the failings of today’s youth while Adair watched and wondered if the poor old fellow was short of a sheet.

  “Ah,” Davis interrupted himself. “Here comes me grandson now, with his ma. And past time.”

  Adair’s heart gave a jolt. He tightened his grip on the pistol in his pocket and turned to face the man whose lies had brought so much misery to him.

  Several people were walking up the lane, following a woman of about sixty who appeared to be distressed and was supported by a husky youth. His gaze fixed on the two of them, Adair said sharply, “I thought you expected your grandson, Walter, Mr. Davis?”

  “By grab but you are looby,” croaked the old gentleman, drawing back in alarm. “That there fine young chap with the Widder be me grandson Eddie. Walter died Monday. They just buried him!”

  It was as if Adair had been struck with a hammer and he stood motionless, staring blankly at the funeral party. Only now did he notice that they all were sombrely clad, most wearing black.

  Walter Davis was dead?

  Surely, it wasn’t possible. He must have come to the wrong place. Death couldn’t have come so suddenly to a relatively young and healthy man? But—if it was truth …

  In that event his desperate search had been for nought. The coachman had carried to his grave the truths that could have exonerated him and restored his good name.

  In a voice that sounded very far away, he said, “My—my condolences, sir. I didn’t know. The last time I saw Walter, he was in good health. I’d not have dreamt—”

  “No more would any of us. Such a way as he had with cattle, who’d a thought he’d let any hack corner him like that?”

  Adair said sharply, “Your grandson met with an accident?”

  “Ar. That’s what the constable called it. I say ’twere plain carelessness. A fine young thoroughbred it is, but more show than strength. You know how they saddle-hosses can be. Wally bought him with some o’ that money he come by. Rid in here lording it over the rest of us, boasting about how he were the only one in the family as had done well for hisself. Much good it did him!”

  “Did anyone see the accident, sir? Was he able to tell you—”

  “Nobody saw it. We didn’t even know what had happened till me granddarter Mary went to call him for supper. She set up such a screeching we all come running. There were nought could be done for poor Wally, and the hoss were so scared it was all we could do to get him out o’ the stall. Ah, here they is now.”

  The mourners were entering the yard. There weren’t many and, except for the widow, tears were noticeable by their absence. Three youngish women, five men, looking uncomfortable in their formal garb; a boy of about ten, who kept lagging back and appeared fascinated by someone behind him. Adair followed his glance and as they drew closer, saw a gentleman whose red hair shone like a flame in the winter sunlight, and a tall fair-haired young lady whose dark garments did nothing to diminish her vivid loveliness.

  Adair gave himself a mental
kick.

  Miss Cecily Hall and her firebrand of a cousin must have known all along where Walter Davis had gone. They had followed his own search to make sure he did not get too close to the rogue. His sudden identification and ejection from the Grey-rock Castle Inn was explained now. This fiendish chit and her fellow conspirators had arranged it. Very likely they were also the ones who had hired those bravos at the Pilgrim Arms in Bedfordshire, which piece of scheming he had mistakenly laid at Thorne Webber’s door.

  He stamped forward, saying between his teeth, “Damn them! Damn them!”

  “Hey!” croaked Mr. Davis, grabbing his arm. “Wally might not have been a credit to us, but I won’t have no cursing at his funeral!”

  Breathing hard, Adair fought for control. The old man was right. Whatever Walter Davis had been, his family had enough trouble.

  Miss Hall’s eyes met his own. He saw them widen briefly. Rufus uttered a muffled snort, and she said something in an urgent under-voice.

  “My condolences, Mrs. Davis,” said Adair.

  The widow said unsteadily, “I doesn’t know ye, sir. Be ye a friend o’ my Walter?”

  With an ironic glance at Adair, Miss Hall interposed, “Major Newton is with us, ma’am. You arrive tardily, Major.”

  “So I see,” said Adair, just as ironically.

  They were invited to come inside and “have some vittles.” Adair declined politely, but Rufus Prior, smiling down at a newly arrived village belle, accepted at once. Eddie Davis said that some neighbour ladies had been preparing food, and it would be a kindness to his mother to partake of the refreshments “and give Walter a proper send-off.” Perforce, Adair followed as the mourners trooped into the house.

  In the small parlour a table was set with plates of sandwiches, biscuits and little cakes, and there were jugs of lemonade and home-brewed wine.

  Adair paid his respects to the other family members, and as more people arrived he was included in their discussions of the coachman’s death. All he learned, however, was that it had been “a fair dreadful thing; a real shock; a example of how a man could be hale and hearty one minute, and gone to meet his Maker the next.”

  Throughout their talk the eyes of the men turned constantly in one direction. It had grown warm in the parlour and Miss Hall had removed her cloak. The black gown she wore was classically simple. ‘She lights up this room,’ thought Adair, and had to remind himself that she was his enemy and, having failed to bring about his execution, had meant to shoot him. And yet she haunted his dreams and just now his stupid heart had leapt at the sight of her. ‘You’re behaving like a lovesick boy,’ he thought savagely as he gravitated to her side. “I congratulate you,” he murmured. “You have outmanoeuvred me. Though I fail to understand why you felt it necessary to have me thrown out of the Greyrock Castle, since Davis was already dead.”

  “We did nothing of the sort.” She spoke softly, but indignation flashed in her eyes. “I have never even heard of such a place. We came here because my grandmama wanted to talk with Walter Coachman. We were most shocked to learn of his death.” She added with a curl of the lip, “And you must not feel obliged to thank me because I vouched for you just now.”

  “Touché! I wish I could understand why you did so.”

  “A whim,” she said with a careless shrug.

  He looked at her levelly, but she avoided his eyes. He asked, “Have you just arrived in the area?”

  “We arrived in time to attend the service, as you might have done had you not dallied with all those nuns.”

  So hers was the laugh he’d heard when that coach passed by. The odd little nunnery came back into his mind’s eye. He said, “They were kind enough to allow me to rack up in their barn.” And he wondered why he thought of the little nunnery as having been “odd.”

  Before Miss Hall could comment, Eddie Davis brought the local curate over to meet her. It developed that the clerical gentleman was cousin to the vicar of her own parish. A garrulous individual, he was delighted to make her acquaintance and bombarded her with questions as to his cousin’s health and family, the manner in which he conducted his duties and the size and prosperity of his congregation.

  Adair slipped away. He went first to the barn and found four young boys peering with ghoulish awe into an empty stall. This, they informed him, was where Walter Davis “got his head bashed in.”

  Adair went inside and prowled about inspecting the walls and flooring while four pairs of eyes watched his every move with growing curiosity.

  A lad whose face was liberally dusted with freckles was at last unable to contain himself, and asked, “Wotcher looking for, sir? Bones and brains?”

  Adair stood straight. “No, you young ruffian. I’m looking for any damage the horse might have done.”

  A small boy asked anxiously if Mr. Walter’s horse was to be shot.

  “Oh, I doubt that,” said Adair with a reassuring smile.

  “I hope not, sir,” the boy said. “He’s a fine hack, and don’t act mean, not like my pa’s old nag.”

  A moment later they answered a summons to go home for supper, and forgot their interest in the tall stranger.

  Adair wandered out to the paddock to take a closer look at Walter Davis’ “fine hack.” It was a sleek young chestnut thoroughbred given to sudden starts and caperings about. Adair called to him. The chestnut flung up his head, trotted over, then raced off again, mane and tail flying. Adair said, “Be calm, friend. I won’t hurt you.” The horse approached uneasily, but allowed his neck to be caressed. Adair told him that he was a fine fellow. Actually, he would not have chosen the animal for his own stable; it was too high-strung, besides which there was a tendency to throw out the right front leg when it ran. Still, it was a handsome creature, and would have allowed Walter Davis to cut a dash before his friends and family. Certainly, he must have parted with the equivalent of several years of a coachman’s pay to buy such a mount.

  The chestnut tossed his head suddenly, and went off at the gallop.

  Adair became aware of the scent of violets. Without turning, he said, “What do you think of him, Miss Hall?”

  Her musical voice answered, “He’s a pretty sight. Rather too fidgety for my taste. Is he the animal who…?”

  “So I am told.”

  “You sound dubious.”

  “Not about the horse.” He turned and said gravely, “I was wondering if your pistol was at my back.”

  “Not just at the moment.” A dimple peeped beside her mouth. “I have to curb my murderous tendencies under the present circumstances. These people have sufficient grief. Though I think few of them cared very much for poor Walter.”

  Her hostility seemed lessened. He probed cautiously, “Are you getting tired of pursuing me, ma’am?”

  She fired up at once. “We followed you only because we thought you would lead us to wherever you had hidden Alice.”

  “Whereas I was searching for your ex-coachman. I’m very sure he lied at my trial, and that he knew what really happened. You said Lady Abigail wanted to talk to him. Will you tell me why?”

  “She will tell you herself when she arrives. The apothecary was to drive her from the church. But I—well, I believe Grandmama has come to think we may have judged you unfairly.” Her beautifully shaped lips drooped. She said sadly, “If that is so, we are back to where we started in our search for my dear cousin. You were our best hope.”

  He bowed and said ironically, “And I, alas, am due to be arrested at any moment. My search for the real culprit may be cut short, because someone has now set it about that I’ve done away with the lady.”

  She gave him a quick glance. “It is a rumour we did not originate, I promise you. We have gone beyond vengeance or—or pride, and pray only to know that Alice is safe.”

  “If we were to pool our knowledge, ma’am, and work together, we might both achieve our gaol.”

  “Grandmama had the same thought. But—even were I to trust you—”

  “Which you are not
sure you do.”

  “Even then, there is nothing I could tell you.”

  “You could tell me what your cousin said after she was brought home.”

  “She spoke to no one. She was not conscious from the time you were—found, till the night she vanished.”

  “While I was in gaol.”

  “You could have arranged—”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake! You cannot still believe that I would spend all this time in futile searching. If I were so enamoured of the lady as to have abducted her, is it not more likely that I’d wish to be with her?”

  “How can I know what you might do? I scarcely know you.”

  He bowed and said formally, “Then allow me to introduce myself. You know of my family. My full name is Hastings Chatteris Adair. I am nine and twenty, and a younger son. I attended Eton briefly before entering the Royal Military Academy. My regimental rank is major, my army rank is lieutenant-colonel—or it was, I should say. At present I have no rank, and my best prospect is to escape the hangman’s noose.”

  “Thank you for the summary. But as to your relationship with my cousin, who is lovely and sweetly natured and—”

  “And little more than a child. I do not pursue children, ma’am.”

  She scanned him searchingly. The very blue eyes met hers without wavering, the lips were rather thin but well-shaped, the firm chin high-held. The wind had blown his dark hair into a charming untidiness about the bruised but finely cut features. She saw pride in that face, and determination, but not ruthlessness; indeed she had several times been struck by the lurking smile that could creep into his eyes. But she had learned early in life to mistrust good-looking men, and this young colonel was very good-looking indeed.

  “There,” he said. “I have told you of myself. Will you respond by telling me whatever you know of your ex-coachman? His friends, his acquaintances, his lady love, if there was one.”