by Caro Peacock
‘So perhaps it was accidental,’ I said.
He whistled a few bars of ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’.
‘You don’t think so, then?’
‘I’m not saying anything.’
‘You have a way of not saying anything. Out with it.’
‘You said yourself, either brother had a reason. I’ve gotten to know the pair of them quite well over the jousting, and as far as I can tell they’re both calves from the same barn.’
‘Meaning?’
‘According to you, their mother was stubborn and their father was crazy. Breeding’s the same with people as with animals– what goes in comes out.’
‘But their father wasn’t always mad.’
I said no more. Amos would have heard, as I had, that it was syphilis that had eaten away the old lord’s brain, but even in our free and easy conversation there were things not to be discussed.
‘Two wives at a time doesn’t sound too sensible to me,’ he said.
‘In any case,’ I said, ‘there’s one big objection to either Stephen or Miles killing their mother. Tabby bought the laudanum. It’s far more likely that she’d do that for Lady Brinkburn than for either Stephen or Miles. She knew who Lady Brinkburn was. If Lady Brinkburn had met her wandering round the estate it would have seemed quite natural to Tabby to be asked to run an errand for her.’
‘Where’s she gone, then? That was Saturday, this is Monday. A girl like that would have got herself back to London in that time.’
‘But suppose she heard somehow that Lady Brinkburn had died? She might make the connection with the laudanum and think she’d be blamed.’
That ended the conversation for a while, because we were coming near Kingston and the road was busy. I noticed several more large horses whose total blackness looked suspicious, though we didn’t get near enough to smell them until we turned into the yard of the coaching inn at Kingston, when distinct whiffs of barber’s shop and bootroom scented the air.
A harassed-looking ostler with a list and a measuring stick pounced on us as soon as we rode through the gateway.
‘Geldings to the left, mares to the right.’
Amos told him he should take it easy because it was a funeral and not starter’s orders for the Derby. He made a point of helping me down from the mare and treating me like a fine lady, which was his habit when in company, no matter how companionably we’d ridden. Within minutes I was being escorted inside the inn by a lad who carried my saddle bags. I’d supposed that rooms might be hard to come by because Lord Brinkburn’s friends and associates would have come down from London to see off the cortège, but the landlord seemed glad of my custom. He had a list on his desk of rooms occupied and it looked no more than half full. One name, though, leaped out at me even though I was reading upside down: O. Lomax Esq. So at least Lord Brinkburn’s old family friend and lawyer was among those present. Come to think of it, he was probably Lord Brinkburn’s executor, thus responsible for overseeing all the pomp and complexity of the funeral cortège. Neither Stephen nor Miles was on the list, so they must be staying overnight elsewhere.
I took possession of my room, washed hands and face in water from the pitcher and replaced my top hat with a bonnet that had suffered from being cramped into a saddle bag. Supper of cutlets and a glass of claret was served to me in a private parlour, alongside a mother and daughter who were on a coach journey from Godalming to London. They said little and ate quickly. I’d have much preferred to share my meal with Amos, but when he was about his professional business there was no chance of that. After I’d eaten, I looked out to the yard and saw him chatting happily with a group of grooms and ostlers in the evening sunshine, beer mugs in their hands, surrounded by rows of black equine faces looking out over loosebox doors.
It was still too early to retire for the night, so I decided to stroll. On a whim, I asked the landlord for directions to the private asylum where Lord Brinkburn had died. He looked surprised but gave me clear directions–down the main road southward for half a mile, then first right. The place was called Newlands, and it was set back from the road. A walk of less than half an hour brought me to the top of its drive. From appearance, it might have been any country house, admittedly rather a gloomy one, in red brick, standing in lawns and shrubberies that produced dark green leaves rather than flowers, even in late June. But the gates that closed off the drive were perfectly ordinary gates, with no chain or padlock, and as far as I could see there were no bars at any of the windows. Obviously losing one’s reason, like so many other things in life, was much more discreetly managed with plenty of money.
As I stood looking down the drive, a man came hurrying up it. I stepped back against the hedge, not wanting to be noticed. He was a working man, a gardener possibly, with powerful broad shoulders and a discontented expression. He opened both gates wide, and waited. Hooves and wheels sounded on the road, from the direction I’d come, and a dark carriage drawn by two heavy horses came swaying into sight. I stayed where I was, thinking that this was how things were done. Lord Brinkburn’s place was being filled immediately by another paying guest, similarly afflicted. To avoid embarrassment or unpleasantness to his relations, he was being brought at the end of the day, to be stowed out of sight. It was not something I wanted to see and I regretted the curiosity that had brought me there, until I realised it wasn’t a carriage for the living. It was the hearse. It rolled along slowly and heavily and turned in at the gates. Tomorrow it would be driven by a coachman all in black, with a black scarf round his hat and a black ribbon on his driving whip. Tonight it was in the hands of a delivery driver in plain brown jacket and gaiters. A straight-sided mourning coach, as black as the hearse, followed at the same slow pace behind two mismatched brown cobs. As they went down the drive, the broad-shouldered man closed the gates behind them and followed. Hearse and mourning coach drew up one behind the other at the front of the house and the drivers jumped down.
By now, the light was starting to go. I stepped out from the hedge to walk back to town, then caught my breath and prepared to run. A man was standing a few yards away. He must have come along the road from the other direction while I was watching the hearse. For a moment, surprise at finding him there kept me from recognising him, though I sensed at once that his presence wasn’t friendly.
‘You again,’ he said.
Stephen Brinkburn. I said nothing, partly because my heart was beating so hard. I was embarrassed too at being found there, with no proper reason.
‘What are you doing here? Or can I guess?’
His first question was reasonable at any rate. He’d last seen me in London and couldn’t have known about my impulsive decision to ride out on the black mare. I couldn’t even turn his question back on him, since it was only to be expected that a son should take an interest in his father’s funeral arrangements, though it was odd he’d chosen to do it from the road rather than up at the house.
‘I suppose my brother sent you,’ he said.
To that at least I had a response.
‘I’m not working for your brother.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
Although he made no move towards me, his hostility filled the air round us.
‘If you don’t believe me when I tell the truth, there’s no point in talking, is there?’ I said.
I turned and walked slowly in the direction of the main road, expecting with every step that he’d come after me. Instead he called out.
‘You can give Miles a message from me.’
I walked on. He shouted again.
‘Tell him he can ride the black horse tomorrow, and I wish him joy of it.’
I stopped and turned then, caught by the oddity of the message. Stephen was still standing there by the gates of the asylum, a tall black figure against the pale road. I decided not to ask him what he meant by it and walked on quickly, relieved when I came to the main road with people and horses going up and down.
My heart was still thumping ha
rd, so I made myself walk slowly back to the inn. Instead of going in by the main door, I went through the arch into the yard. As I’d hoped, there was the glow of a pipe in the twilight and the unmistakeably tall silhouette of Amos by the back door.
‘Where’ve you been then?’ he said to me, without even turning to look.
‘Walking.’
I was still too disturbed by the meeting to want to tell anybody, even Amos. Instead I asked him how the horses were settling.
‘Well enough. They’re most of them used to being in different quarters. Our two ate up their feed like good ’uns.’
It was soothing, being among the horses. We strolled together from box to box, watching one nuzzling its hay manger, one asleep with legs folded in neatly like a cat, one swaying gently on its feet. As we went, I counted them. Four black mares for the mourning coach, then the row of taller geldings to pull the hearse,…four, five, six, seven.
‘There’s too many,’ I said to Amos, pausing by the last box. ‘Or are they keeping one spare?’
‘No, that’s the saddle horse. Mr Lomax was down after dinner to see it’s all being done right, and he told us. One seventeen-hand gelding to be ridden on the first stage in front of the hearse, making seven altogether.’
‘So who’s riding him?’
Amos gave his pipe a long pull to keep it glowing and looked at me.
‘His heir. That’s what Mr Lomax said. His son and heir.’
So that was what Stephen meant. By letting Miles ride the black horse at the head of the funeral procession tomorrow, he’d be publicly acknowledging his brother’s right to title, fortune and bride. After all this, total surrender.
Only the way Stephen had said it hadn’t sounded like surrender in the least.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I told Amos about meeting Stephen and we discussed it until the last of the light went and bats were flying across the stable yard. The essential decency of Amos made him believe there were limits to what a man would do.
‘I could understand Mr Stephen wanting to knock Mr Miles down,’ he said. ‘He’s done that once already. But they’re brothers. I don’t reckon he’d do worse than that.’
‘You said yourself it’s all in the breeding. And you didn’t see Stephen tonight.’
‘Did he threaten anything?’
‘Not as such, no. But…’ It was hard to put into words the impression he’d made on me. ‘It was as if he’d decided something and there was no going back.’
‘I don’t see there’s much he can do,’ Amos said. ‘There’ll be enough people watching. Not unless he rides up to the procession tomorrow and challenges Mr Miles to fight him.’
‘Oh gods, Amos. You don’t think he’d do that?’
The idea hadn’t occurred to me, but once spoken it seemed all too likely. It was what they’d been practising for weeks, after all. It even came as something of a relief after what I’d been imagining.
‘And there’s the business of the armour,’ I said. ‘We still don’t know what’s become of it. Suppose Stephen’s planning to arrive on a pure white charger in the ancestral armour.’
‘Worth seeing,’ Amos said.
I was tempted to agree with him. Also, it would puff this absurdity of a funeral procession into the laughing stock that Lord Brinkburn’s life deserved.
‘It’s still dangerous,’ I said. ‘Miles won’t be wearing armour. If Stephen has got his hands on a lance with a point to it, he could run him through.’
Amos still wasn’t convinced.
‘Only if Mr Miles is daft enough to sit there and let him do it. What are you thinking of doing, then? Telling Mr Lomax to watch out tomorrow?’
‘I don’t trust Lomax. Besides, he’s a lawyer and he’d want evidence. All I have is a feeling.’
Amos tapped out his pipe.
‘Tell you what I’ll do, if it’ll make you sleep better. I’ll borrow a horse tomorrow and make sure I’m not far away from Mr Miles.’
I said, meaning it, that yes it would make me sleep better. With Amos on the alert, Miles should be as well protected as if he had a squadron of the Household Cavalry round him. I only hoped he deserved it.
Next morning, I was down at the stable yard before six o’clock. The cavalcade wasn’t due to set out from the asylum until eleven, but the grooms had been up and active from first light, putting a final polish on to the horses’ already gleaming coats with linen cloths, oiling hooves to jet blackness. Amos was in the gelding’s box, plaiting his mane. He told me nothing had been seen yet of Miles or Mr Lomax. He’d heard that Miles was staying with a friend in another part of the town. I went inside for breakfast. By the time I came out, the first two pairs of horses were on their way to Newlands. Amos went out next with our two, riding the gelding bareback and leading the mare. He winked at me as he went and promised to be back in plenty of time to pick up another horse so that he could keep an eye on our man. Soon after the last of the ten black carriage horses had left the yard, a groom came from wherever Miles was staying to collect the big saddle horse.
The yard seemed empty with them all gone, but then people started arriving with bags and baskets because the London to Chichester stage was due. It arrived in the usual hurry, with a confusion of passengers and luggage descending and alighting and grooms pushing people aside to change the horses. It left full up inside, with three riding on top. As it was grinding out of the yard through the archway, a man came running up. Behind the coachman’s back, he jumped on the passenger step then bounded up, grabbed the rail round the top of the coach and swung himself on to an outside seat. It was done as deftly as a circus trick. He sat down with the other outside passengers, coolly raising his hat to acknowledge the laughter and ironic cheers of people watching.
‘There’s a fellow doesn’t believe in paying fares,’ someone said.
The man’s athleticism was all the more surprising because, from the glance I’d had of him, he wasn’t young and had the use of only one arm. The left one had flapped limply at his side as he jumped. I might have thought more about it at the time, but one of the passengers from London who had got out of the coach was standing and staring at me.
‘Miss Lane.’
Robert Carmichael seemed as surprised to see me as I was to see him. He was dressed in black and looked near exhaustion, face pale and eyes feverish.
‘What are you doing here?’ I said.
Not a polite question, but I couldn’t help it. Of all people, he seemed one of the least likely to want to honour the late Lord Brinkburn.
‘I suppose I owe it to him,’ he said.
In a conventional situation, it would have been perfectly reasonable for the tutor of the late lord’s sons to take a modest place in his cortège. Did Carmichael really expect me to believe that was the case here? Then I remembered that he didn’t know I knew that he’d knocked his late lordship downstairs.
‘Is Lomax here?’ he said.
‘Yes, but I haven’t seen him. He may have gone straight to Newlands.’
‘Newlands?’
‘The asylum.’
He looked ready to drop from weariness.
‘It’s not far,’ I said. ‘If you like, I’ll walk with you and show you. You’d just have time for a coffee first, if you wanted.’
I wasn’t simply being charitable. Whatever his reason for being there, he might have some influence on his former pupils, though I doubted if it would be enough to prevent whatever Stephen intended. He nodded, thanked me and disappeared inside.
I found Amos in the tack room and told him about the man jumping on the stagecoach.
‘He looked very much like the clown from Astley’s,’ I said. ‘If he’s here, he’s working for one of them, probably Stephen.’
Amos agreed. By daylight, he seemed disposed to take my suspicions more seriously.
‘Still, why was he getting out before anything starts?’ he said.
‘Perhaps he’s done whatever Stephen wanted him to do.’
‘In that case, why isn’t he just taking himself back to Astley’s? He’s going in the wrong direction. Unless he’s planning to meet us next stop.’
‘Next stop?’
‘Esher’s next stop for the stagecoach. Next stop for the coffin too, but with the speed that’ll be going, it’ll be evening before it gets there.’
‘At that rate, it will take them a week to get to Portsmouth.’
He grinned.
‘Today’s the slow day. After that, the mourning coach and the first lot of horses go back and they pick up a bit of speed, by hearse standards any road. Mr Lomax is staying with them all the way to the boat to see things are done properly, but the rest of them go home tonight.’
‘So will today be the only day Miles is riding with them?’
‘That’s right. If Mr Stephen is planning anything, it’s got to be here or at Esher, or somewhere in between.’
He quickly tacked up the cob he’d arranged to borrow and set out again for Newlands.
Soon after that, Robert Carmichael emerged from the inn, looking refreshed by the coffee. It was twenty to eleven, so we set out briskly along the road. As we walked, I told him my theory about Stephen. He shook his head.
‘No, I don’t believe that of him. If it were the other way round, I might. There’s a wild streak in Miles, but apart from anything else, Stephen wouldn’t make himself look ridiculous.’
‘I think he’s beyond worrying about that. He’s on the point of losing everything. Did you know Sophia had signed that paper for Miles?’
‘Not until it was too late, no.’
‘And that Miles has taken Stephen’s fiancée?’ I said.
‘Nothing has been announced officially.’
‘But all of London is talking about it. You must know Stephen better than most people. Have you any idea what he’ll do?’
He shook his head. I was letting myself grow angry, oppressed with the idea that something was going to happen and we could do nothing about it.
‘What in the world was he doing last night, on his own by the gates to the asylum?’ I said. ‘Where was he all the time he was missing from London?’
