A Death in Norfolk

by Ashley Gardner

  Helena shook her head. "I am not certain. I remember laying my dress across the chaise. The gown was so pristine and white--a symbol of the girlhood I was leaving behind. I was to be married, to have my own husband and my own house, and I did not need such a dress anymore."

  "Robert helped get you into and out of my house," I continued. "He'd brought the church silver to the meeting place. What happened there? Did Braxton show his true colors?"

  Helena shuddered. "Dear heavens, yes. He laughed at us, told us we were good trained dogs to do what he said. He was going to take the silver and go, and let it be a lesson to us. I could not believe my ears. I'd fallen in love with him . . . No, truth to tell, I was infatuated and flattered by him. No one else had said the things to me that he did. To realize that I'd fallen for his pack of lies, that he'd used me to get the silver from my own father's church, that he thought of me as nothing more than a stupid, childish, frump of a girl . . ." Her eyes filled with tears. "It hurt. It hurt so much."

  Braxton had probably used those very words--stupid, childish, frump of a girl. I wished Braxton weren't dead, so I could get my hands on his throat and teach him some manners. I imagined Robert Buckley growing enraged, as I was doing now, except with the fury of a boy watching his angel being beaten down. It must have seemed right to raise the heavy candlestick and go at Braxton. I could imagine the pattern of the carved silver against my hand, sense the candlestick's satisfying weight, could feel the triumph of swinging the thing and smacking Braxton's gloating face.

  I drew a breath, trying to banish the picture and my angry glee.

  "Foolish of him to linger to boast of his misdeeds," I said. "That was the end of him."

  She looked surprised at my matter-of-fact statement. "Robert--he grew so angry. I was crying. Robert snatched up a candlestick and struck . . ." She shivered. "I thought he'd only stunned Mr. Braxton, that we could run to the constable's house and tell him that we'd caught Mr. Braxton running off with the silver. We would look like wise creatures to have found him out, instead of fools duped by him."

  "But he was dead."

  "He lay so still. I felt for his heartbeat, but he had none, and no breath. Robert could not believe what he'd done. But he never lost his head, as young as he was. He went through Braxton's pockets, found all his money--fifty pounds it turned out to be--and gave it to me. He told me to go, said he'd take care of the rest. He would put it about that I eloped with Mr. Braxton, and that would be that. I cried, but I went."

  Fifty pounds. Lady Southwick had said she'd given Braxton "a bit of money" to help the pair elope. Braxton had duped and flattered her as much as he had Helena.

  "Why did you run?" I asked. "Why not go to a magistrate and explain the accident? Braxton was trying to rob the church, after all."

  "We were young, and we were so frightened. We could not be sure, could we, that we wouldn't simply be dragged away for the murder and the robbery--Robert had done the actual theft, not Mr. Braxton. And I was a coward. I did not want to face the world and confess what Braxton had done to me."

  True that their fate would depend on the kindness of the magistrate. If the magistrate had been an unreasonable and suspicious man, Robert could have been tried for murder and stealing from the church, perhaps Helena as well, as his accomplice. A conviction, even for a child and a young woman, would be hanging or transportation.

  The magistrate at the time had been fifty yards away--Mr. Roderick Lacey. If he'd been too ill to give a judgment, Brigadier Easton might have stepped in, a man equally as adamant about the letter of the law. Robert and Helena had been wise not to chance that either one of them would be lenient.

  "What happened to Braxton's body?" I asked. "How did Robert hide what he'd done?"

  "I never knew. Robert found me a horse, and I fled. I rode across country until I came to a posting inn, in a town in Cambridgeshire where no one knew me. From there I took a mail coach into Cambridge. I met a woman on the coach who felt sorry for me and decided to look after me. She thought me escaping an unhappy home. She let me stay with her a time, then she heard that her acquaintance, Mrs. Edgerton, was looking for a gentlewoman to be her companion, and she sent me to her."

  "You never heard from Robert Buckley again?"

  "Never. Not until this day have I heard a thing from Parson's Point. Robert must be quite grown now."

  "Robert is twenty and married. He has a boy of his own."

  Helena gave me a look of apprehension. "What will you do? I have told you this because you were once my friend, and I know you were a friend to Terrance. Everything about Mr. Braxton can hardly matter now, can it?"

  I privately agreed with her. Braxton had been a thief and a trickster and had duped two youths for his own gain. Cooper had been a thief and a bone-breaker and had tried to kill me and Denis, a man who'd graced him with his trust. Both Braxton and Cooper had died by the hands of the people they'd betrayed. Rough justice.

  Robert should not have covered up the crime. But he'd been ten years old, afraid and uncertain. He'd done what he'd done.

  The murder in the past was understandable, and perhaps not really murder. A frightened and angry child had struck out and killed without meaning to. But that did not change the fact that Robert had murdered again in the present.

  I did not say this to Miss Quinn. She'd had enough guilt and regret in her life, and I would not pile on more.

  I took her hands in mine. "I will say nothing."

  Her eyes widened. "You would keep silent? Why?"

  "Because Braxton was the villain, not you. And because you are right. It was so very long ago, and it hardly matters now."

  She frowned in puzzlement. "You said that he was not really called Edward Braxton?"

  "He stole the name, just as he stole the silver and planned to steal your virtue and reputation."

  "Then you do not know who he truly was?"

  "No. And I suppose we never will."

  Helena squeezed my hands the slightest bit. "Thank you, Gabriel."

  "I will tell no one of your whereabouts if you do not wish me to. But please, write to Terrance and tell him that you are well. I will carry the letter back with me."

  She flinched. "I am not certain I want to see him again. To return to that life. My life is here now."

  "I will leave you to decide whether you face him or not. But Terrance is a broken man. Hearing that you are alive and happy with Mrs. Edgerton will do much to ease him."

  Helena still had no wish to draw back the curtain from this enclosure she'd made for herself, but I saw her realize that Braxton's actions had hurt more than herself and Robert. "Very well. I will write."

  There was nothing more to say. We returned to the house, Helena to her rooms. Grenville and I took tea with Mrs. Edgerton, Helena came down with the letter, and we departed.

  *** *** ***

  In the inn that night, I told a truncated version of the tale to Grenville and a curious Marianne and bade them to keep silent about everything until I decided what to do. They agreed. Marianne voiced the opinion that Mr. Braxton had brought his death on himself, and good riddance. I could see that Grenville agreed with her.

  We traveled back to Norfolk in easy stages, Grenville again spending most of it on the bed in his coach or riding his horse when he felt better.

  Terrance greeted me more cheerfully upon my return. He'd spent every day at the Lacey house, directing the work and enjoying it.

  His exuberant mood changed when I handed him the letter, penned in Helena's hand.

  "You found her," he said, staring at the folded paper. "Where is she?"

  "I promised her that she could tell you, if she chose."

  "Dear God, Lacey. This is the woman I was to have married. Tell me where the devil she is."

  I shook my head. "I am sorry. Read the letter."

  Terrance gave me a dark look, but turned away, deftly breaking the seal and unfolding the letter with his one hand.

  He went out through the back of
the house to read in private, and I made my way on horseback, alone, to Robert Buckley's farm, south and east of the Lacey estate, the setting sun at my back.

  Robert's farm was not large, but the fields were enclosed by neat green hedgerows, and he'd hired laborers to work it with him. His wife gave me a pot of homemade ale while I sat in her warm kitchen and waited for Robert to come in from the fields. She baked as I sipped, the homey, yeasty smells reminding me of the bake shop below my rooms in Covent Garden. I realized, sitting here, that I missed the place.

  Robert trudged in as the sun was going down. He greeted me with a grin and a work-worn hand, and took the ale his wife handed him.

  The two of us went outside, walking around the thatched cottage to look at the view. Green fields rippled away from us down a slight slope, the wide Norfolk sky streaked crimson and gold.

  "Lovely," I said.

  "I am a lucky man, Captain."

  I took another sip of the meaty, dark ale. "I came to tell you that I have been to Lincolnshire. I spoke to Helena Quinn there."

  Robert froze with his ale halfway to his mouth. His good-natured look deserted him. "Miss Quinn."

  "Indeed." I kept my voice down so his wife and the workers in the barn would not hear us. "She told me that you killed Edward Braxton--or whoever he truly was. And I believe you killed the man called Bill Ferguson, a week ago, in Brigadier Easton's windmill."

  Robert stared at me, his dark eyes fixed. "You can not know that."

  "You are correct--I am only guessing. What I believe is that you heard that Brigadier Easton had fled to the Continent, and that Mr. Denis's men had moved in and were tearing up the place. You had no idea what they were looking for, but it scarcely mattered. If they confined their search to the house, you had no need to worry, but if they started looking through the abandoned windmill . . . It was a good hiding place. Easton used it to hide things that did not belong to him. You used it to hide something else. Braxton's body?"

  Robert nodded, his movements wooden. "In the cellar. I chopped him up with an axe I found in your house, I carted him there, and I buried him under the cellar. No one used that windmill anymore."

  "And the windmill was far enough from Parson's Point and the places Braxton used to meet Miss Quinn that he would likely not be looked for there. No one bothered to search for him at all, as it turned out, but you could not anticipate that. Once he was hidden, it was easy enough for you to make it look as though he had absconded with the silver and the vicar's daughter, never to be heard from again. Family too ashamed to pursue it, matter closed. You shoved the silver up the chimney in my house--why did you not simply take it back to the church?"

  "Couldn't," Robert said. "By the time I was . . . finished, Mrs. Landon had discovered that the silver had gone missing, and everyone was up in arms. I thought it best that it stayed hidden for a while. And then, as time passed, it did not seem worth the fuss. If it turned up, there would only be questions."

  "I think I understand. The Lacey house was a good hiding place for it--I commend you. My father kept no servants by that time, I was away at war, and the house was falling to ruin. I made no announcement that I was returning, and you had no idea that Denis's men would be hunting there as well. Still, even if someone found the silver, most people would believe that an incompetent thief had hidden it long ago and never returned for it. Which they did. Did Ferguson find Braxton's body? Or did you only fear he would?"

  Robert looked miserable. "I don't remember what I was thinking. By the time I reached the windmill, someone had done him over already. His face was all bloody, but he was on his feet, and so angry. When he saw me, he ran at me like a madman, murder in his eyes. I saw a thick stick on the floor. I caught it up and struck out. He went down, just like Braxton."

  Tears stood in his eyes, and fear. I could imagine the scene as vividly as I'd imagined the boy Robert killing Braxton--only this time, he'd struck out in terror. Ferguson had been a large and violent man.

  Whether Robert had given Ferguson the killing blow accidentally, or whether he'd known exactly what he was doing, I could not know. I'd never know. Robert had killed to defend his own life and his past secrets.

  "What about Lady Southwick?" I asked. I thought about the pistol ball going past Lady Southwick's nose, Donata's idea that two people had shot at the same time, Grenville's report of Rafe Godwin's utter bewilderment. "Did you shoot at her? Perhaps because she helped Braxton in his scheme with Helena? Unwittingly on Lady Southwick's part, of course. But she might begin guessing what had happened after I came poking around, asking questions about Miss Quinn and Mr. Braxton."

  Robert looked blank. "Someone shot at her ladyship?"

  "With a pistol. She'd set up a shooting match, and she was nearly clipped."

  "I don't have a pistol," Robert said. "And I haven't been near Southwick in years."

  His puzzlement was genuine, and I believed him. Perhaps we had been seeing sinister things where none existed. Rafe Godwin was simply incompetent with a pistol.

  Robert turned away from me. He looked at his beloved farm, made golden by the setting sun. We heard the sounds of the men in the barn, the cows as they were fed, Robert's wife humming in the kitchen, the high-pitched squeal of his little boy as he tried to talk to his mother. An idyllic place.

  I asked, "Where did you put Braxton's bones after you took them from the windmill?"

  "Binham Priory," Robert said. "Under the rubble of the ruins. It is still consecrated ground."

  The villagers now used part of the ancient nave, the only thing spared by King Henry's men, as their parish church. I remembered the tranquility of the rest of the ruins, standing tall on the green, the sadness of a life stripped away and gone long ago.

  "Mr. Denis believes that Ferguson was killed by one of his own men," I said. "And that man is also now dead."

  Robert said nothing. He only watched me, certain I'd come to strip away his life, this son of the man who'd fallen in love with my mother.

  "I am content to let Mr. Denis continue to believe this," I said.

  Robert watched me in continued apprehension. "What about Mr. Braxton?"

  "We'll never know his real name." I gave Robert a tight bow. "May he rest in peace."

  I handed him the jar of ale, turned my back, and walked away.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I returned to London the next day. I rode with Grenville and Marianne, Grenville again spending most of the journey on his back. Marianne seemed to take this in stride, reading a newspaper and inhaling snuff while he slept.

  I asked to be left at my rooms in Covent Garden, though Grenville extended me an invitation to stay at his house. Marianne rolled her eyes at me, amazed I'd not prefer a more comfortable bed, but at the moment, I wanted to be alone.

  I greeted Mrs. Beltan, who'd not yet left for the evening. She gave me some fat buns with butter and coffee without asking for payment. She also gave me my post.

  My rooms were stuffy, and I opened the windows to admit the cool September air. Summer in London, with its heat and stink, was almost unbearable, but fall could be soft and pleasant.

  I ate because I was hungry, drank coffee because I drank any coffee put in front of me. I sat back in my wingchair, feeling the bite of coming winter in the air.

  My post sat untouched. I closed my eyes and thought about all that had happened since I'd hired a coach to take me to the Lacey family estate in Norfolk.

  Home. Or was it?

  I'd thought that there, I'd discover things about my father, about the brute he was, to justify my hatred of him. Instead, I'd found that most people looked the other way at his brutality. I'd found that my mother had taken a lover, had feared to go away with said lover, and had died because she'd fallen ill miscarrying his child.

  I'd learned much about my adversary, James Denis, and I'd helped him kill a man. I'd unraveled a mystery involving the disappearance of a young woman, and murder, past and present, and agreed
to let things lie.

  Three years ago, when I'd left the army and moved to London, I'd had a rigid sense of right and wrong. Since then, the people I'd met and the things I'd seen and done had changed that. Now I'd participated in and covered up murders.

  Life had a strange way of tearing apart one's convictions.

  Three years ago, I had been alone, those I loved out of reach. Now I was to be married--to an aristocratic woman I'd disliked at first sight.

  As though the Fates enjoyed toying with me, I heard my unlocked door open and caught a soft whiff of perfume in the night. My beloved stepped into the room, and spoke.

  "Lacey, why the devil are you sitting alone in the dark?"

  I did not open my eyes. "Why are you not in Oxfordshire with your son?"

  "Because I knew in my bones you'd return to London before you journeyed there. I told Mrs. Beltan to send me word when you did."

  She shut the door. Moments later, I felt the weight of her warm body on my lap, her arms around my neck.

  She ran her fingers over the healing cuts on my face. "I take it you had adventures," she said.

  I finally opened my eyes. "Terrible things, Donata. I did terrible things."

  I knew she'd ask me to tell her all. She was not the sort of woman to distance herself from a man's affairs.

  But she did not ask just then. I felt her cool lips touch mine then brush my cheek. "It is warmer at the Audley Street House," she said.

  I was exhausted. "That is so far away."

  "True."

  My bedchamber was much closer. I rose, took her hand, and led her there.

  End

  * * * * *

  Author's Note

  Many of the locations in A Death in Norfolk are real--Blakeney, Binham Priory, and several other villages on the northern Norfolk coast--but are, of course, used fictitiously. I invented the village of Parson's Point, placing it between Morston and Stifkey, just west of Blakeney. Likewise, I invented the locations of the windmills where some of the action takes place.