When she had turned her back on Society by marrying beneath her class, Julia had gained in return a passionate, if inexperienced, young lover. There was no trace of passion, however, in the slightly mint-scented embrace that awakened her in the middle of the night. It was a plea for comfort, pure and simple. And she answered it in the only way she could.
SEVERAL HOURS LATER, Pickett arose and dressed, then kissed Julia lingeringly before setting out on foot for the Hetherington estate.
“Are you sure you won’t eat breakfast first?” asked Julia.
He shook his head. “I couldn’t eat if I tried.”
“We’ll both have something after you return,” she promised him, forcing a smile. “Little Pickett will no doubt be demanding it by that time.”
“You needn’t wait on me,” he said. “I may feel even less like eating by the time I come back.”
He kissed her again, and she fought the urge to cling to him, knowing it was for the best that he could put the unpleasant business behind him as soon as possible. And so she smiled encouragingly at him and bade him goodbye, then dressed for the day in a walking dress of Pomona green kerseymere (noting with mixed emotions that it fit a bit more snugly through the bosom than it had previously done) and descended the stairs to partake of a light breakfast.
She returned to her room to await Pickett’s return, wondering if he had reached the Hetherington manor house yet—and if so, what reception he had found there once the object of his visit had become clear. The letters were stacked neatly on one corner of the writing table, awaiting delivery to the magistrate that afternoon. Julia picked up the top one and scanned the innocuous-looking black scrawl with the faint brown lines beneath. Her brow puckered thoughtfully. Something was odd about it, something quite aside from the hidden message revealed by the candle’s heat . . .
Suddenly she knew. How had they missed it? It was obvious, so very obvious . . . As she stared at the sheet of foolscap in her hand, the bold black lines seemed to take on a life of their own, writhing across the page like a serpent. There aren’t any serpents in Ireland, are there? she thought irrelevantly. St. Patrick had driven them into the sea, where they had all drowned . . . all but one, which had crossed the Irish Sea to England and taken up residence in the Lake District . . . The paper slipped from her hand and fluttered to the floor as she fought the inky black serpents who curled themselves into spots that danced at the corners of her vision.
It had been so obvious, and yet they had missed it, both of them, and now he was walking into danger all unawares.
“Not now, little one,” she murmured to the baby, banishing the black spots through sheer force of will. “Not now. First we have to try and save your papa.”
17
In Which Events Take a Most Unsettling Turn
PICKETT ARRIVED AT the Hetherington residence, and suffered the misfortune of having the footman throw open the door to him just as Mrs. Hetherington was crossing the marble-tiled hall. To his chagrin, she appeared genuinely delighted to see him standing on the portico.
“Why, Mr. Pickett!” Her Irish accent, which he had previously found so lilting and musical, now served only to remind him—as if he needed a reminder!—of what he was about to do. “What a pleasant surprise! But does Mrs. Pickett not accompany you?”
“No, I—I’m afraid not,” Pickett said. “I’ve come to—I was hoping for a word with your husband on a—a matter of business.”
“Of course. Do come in! You may go, James,” she said, dismissing the footman with a nod. “I shall take Mr. Pickett to Mr. Hetherington’s study. I believe he is recording the rent receipts,” she added to Pickett, “but I’m sure he will welcome the interruption.”
Pickett was equally sure he would not, but had no choice but to follow the traitress across the hall to the same room in which he had first made the acquaintance of his magistrate’s friend. Unlike that earlier occasion, Mr. Hetherington was already present, seated before his desk. The brown velvet curtains covering the floor-to-ceiling windows had been tied back, but although the sun would not reach this side of the house until the afternoon, the indirect light was sufficient to cast the man into silhouette, giving him a somewhat sinister appearance that did nothing to ease Pickett’s mind.
“Robert, my dear, look who’s come to visit,” she announced. “Mr. Pickett, my husband tells me that yesterday he offered an impromptu dinner invitation to you and Mrs. Pickett for tonight. Dare we hope you have come to deliver your acceptance in person?”
Pickett shook his head. “I—I’m afraid not.”
“What a pity! Perhaps another night, then? I should so like to hear you sing again!”
“I—I believe we will be returning to London very soon.”
Mrs. Hetherington made suitably disappointed noises, then concluded with, “But I must not keep you standing here when you have business to discuss with my husband! Robert, you will let me know when you are finished with Mr. Pickett, will you not? We can at least give him tea before we send him back to his wife.”
Mr. Hetherington promised not to let their guest depart before she had plied him with this beverage, and she, satisfied with these assurances, took her leave. After the door had closed behind her, Mr. Hetherington addressed his unexpected caller. “Well, Mr. Pickett, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company? I believe my wife made some mention of business?”
“She did, sir, but I’m afraid it’s a business that brings me no pleasure.”
“Oh?”
Pickett’s eyes had by this time adjusted sufficiently to the sunlight to see his host’s face. Pickett wished they had not; having to look the man in the eye made the ugly business even worse. Taking a deep breath, he recounted the story, starting with the anonymous letter that had brought him from Bow Street and continuing through the letter he’d found on Ned Hawkins’s body, whose secrets had only been revealed by accidental proximity to a candle flame and whose handwriting exactly matched the one from Mrs. Hetherington.
“If I may say so, sir,” he concluded, “I like your wife very much, and I think it a great pity that her hospitality to me and mine should result in such unexpected and tragic consequences.”
“So do I,” the older man said with a sigh. He pulled open one of the lower drawers of the desk and leaned down to fumble amongst its contents. “But mayhap Patrick Colquhoun can console himself with the knowledge that his young prodigy was not nearly so clever as he supposed.”
Whatever reaction Pickett had expected, that was not it. “I, er, there must be some mistake—”
“Aye, that there is—and you’re the one who made it.”
Hetherington straightened in his chair, and Pickett found himself staring down the barrel of a blunt-nosed pistol. A hundred, a thousand images flashed through his mind in the space of an instant: Mrs. Hetherington’s arthritic hands; a footman stationed by her chair to cut up the meat that she could not; the pianoforte she could no longer play; and, worst of all, his own wife with her perfectly sound arm in a makeshift sling fashioned from one of his cravats, so pleased with her own cleverness in gathering handwriting samples by enlisting others to write her letter for her . . .
“It was you,” he said, feeling more than a little ill at the realization of what he’d missed. “You’re E. G. B.; your wife can’t write.”
“Oh, E. G. B. isn’t a person,” Hetherington said, giving him the rather pitying smile he might bestow on an engaging but particularly slow child. “It stands for ‘Erin go bragh’—or ‘Éire go Brách,’ if you prefer the Gaelic form. Roughly translated, it means ‘Ireland forever,’ and is a favorite expression amongst all those who support the cause of Irish independence. As for my wife, she can indeed write. But not for very long, and not without pain, so for the last several years I’ve handled her social correspondence. Did you never even suspect, then? Tut-tut, Mr. Pickett, I should have thought better of you, after reading your magistrate’s testimonial—which was quite glowing, by the bye.”
&n
bsp; “You were Mr. Colquhoun’s friend!” Pickett insisted. “You were above suspicion!”
“Like Caesar’s wife?” He shook his head, but the gun never wavered. “I’m sure Patrick Colquhoun would tell you that no one is above suspicion, Mr. Pickett. I daresay a few more years at Bow Street would have taught you that. It’s as I said before: You’ve been asking the wrong questions.”
The wrong questions, indeed. Small wonder Ned Hawkins had been so reluctant to identify himself, when the Bow Street Runner he’d sent to London for had no sooner set down his bags than he was asking how to contact the very man Hawkins had summoned him to investigate!
“Unfortunately,” Hetherington continued, “you won’t live long enough to benefit from a lesson hard-learned.”
Pickett’s eyes never left the small, cold circle of metal aimed at him, but his brain took frantic stock of his surroundings. The study door behind him was closed—he remembered seeing Mrs. Hetherington shut it behind her—but even if it were standing wide open, he would never be able to reach it in time. Nor did the tall windows along the opposite wall offer any escape, for Mr. Hetherington, still seated behind his broad desk, blocked his access to them.
“If you shoot me,” Pickett said slowly, “your wife will hear the gunshot and come to investigate.” He wished his voice didn’t sound so tremulous. If he was going to die in any case, he might as well meet it bravely, in a way that would make Julia and Mr. Colquhoun proud. The thought gave him courage, and he stood a bit taller, forcing Hetherington to adjust his aim slightly upward.
“Aye, that she will. But you provided me with the excuse yourself. That ‘business’ you had with me,” he explained, seeing Pickett at a loss. “You had thought to buy a pistol from me. Unfortunately, it will accidentally go off while you are examining it. A pity you’ll be so careless, but young people so often are, you know.”
“If we’re to speak of carelessness,” Pickett said, “I wonder at your allowing that letter to fall into the wrong hands.”
Hetherington gave a grunt of annoyance. “I have no idea what aroused Ned’s suspicions, and I suppose I never will,” he said pettishly.
“Perhaps he became suspicious of your willingness to take the risk of offering such a ‘public service’ as illicit mail delivery without some ulterior motive,” Pickett suggested somewhat tartly, no longer constrained by good manners.
“Oh, the mail scheme has existed for decades,” Hetherington said dismissively. “I only became involved quite recently. And if I may be allowed to boast, I made changes to the process that made it much more efficient—and much less likely to be discovered, at least by anyone in a position to prefer charges.”
“Congratulations,” Pickett put in drily.
Hetherington chuckled. “I do like a man who can keep a cool head in a crisis! I can see why Patrick Colquhoun took such a fancy to you. But as you surmise, I had my own reasons for not wanting to trust my correspondence to the Royal Mail. For whatever reason, Ned Hawkins became suspicious and went to the cave, retrieved my letter from the bag, and read it. It’s unlikely he recognized the code—it involves writing in lemon juice or some other acidic substance, which weakens the paper and causes it to turn dark when exposed to heat. But having recognized my handwriting, he no doubt read the accomplishments of my children and, knowing I had none, realized there had to be more to the letter than appeared at first glance, and assumed the worst. In any case, he was on his way to my house to confront me with his discovery when we met on the cliff path. I daresay you know the rest; it was your wife who saw me push the fellow, was it not? I always thought so, but could never be entirely sure. That being the case, I have been extremely reluctant to eliminate the potential threat lest I be mistaken, but now—”
“Julia poses no danger to you,” Pickett interjected quickly. “She knows someone pushed Ned Hawkins, but could not identify you.”
“I am relieved to hear it, for her sake as well as my own. It would be a pity to be obliged to do an injury to so charming a lady. I found the very idea so repugnant that I slipped down to the inn one night and threw a rock through your window in the hopes of frightening the pair of you into returning to London, thus sparing me the necessity of taking some more drastic action. Unfortunately, you allowed your emotions to overpower your intelligence.”
I should have left her on the mail coach, Pickett thought despairingly. I should have sent her back to London, even if it killed me. Interesting choice of words, that . . .
Hetherington shifted in his chair. “But ‘Tempus fugit,’ as the saying goes, and I would prefer to have this business settled before Brigid returns. Have you any last words, Mr. Pickett?”
It appeared his time was at hand. “Will you at least answer one question first?” Pickett asked, as much an attempt to delay the inevitable as it was an urge to satisfy a very real curiosity.
Hetherington gave a careless shrug, which Pickett took for an affirmative.
“Why?” he asked simply. “You have a good life here, a life many men would envy. Why would you risk it all to betray a country that has been good to you? Your wife, I could see, perhaps—”
“You know nothing of my wife!” the older man snapped, and Pickett thought the mask slipped, revealing a glimpse of the embittered man behind the affable manner. “My poor Brigid has little enough reason to love the English. Tell me, are you familiar with the battle of Carrickfergus?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” Pickett confessed.
“I thought not. Few people are these days, as England hardly showed to advantage in the affair. They remember it well in Belfast, though. It was almost fifty years ago, during the Seven Years’ War. A French privateer named Thurot took the Irish town of Carrickfergus and captured its castle. Held it for five days, too, until the Royal Navy showed up to drive him out. He made Belfast uncomfortable enough in the meantime, though, with his demands for supplies and ransom money.”
“Oh?” Pickett was not quite certain where his adversary was going with all this, but reasoned it could only be to his benefit to keep the man talking. Perhaps by the time Hetherington came to his point, he—Pickett himself—would have miraculously thought of some way out of his present dilemma.
“My wife’s father cast his lot with Thurot,” Mr. Hetherington continued. “He had a grudge against the English dating back to the famine of twenty years earlier, when a late frost killed all the crops. Brigid had not yet been born, but her parents’ three older children died in the outbreak of starvation and disease that followed.”
“I’m very sorry to hear it,” Pickett said. “Still, the English can hardly be blamed for the weather.”
“No, although there were those who felt Whitehall might have done more to help relieve the suffering. In any case, the English must certainly be blamed for what followed. When the French withdrew from Carrickfergus, Brigid’s father was arrested, and all his property was confiscated. But even though the English had stolen her inheritance, they weren’t done with her yet.” Hetherington’s breath came fast and hard, and Pickett knew with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach what he was about to hear. “He was being held in the castle pending execution when she went to visit him one day. Half a dozen British soldiers waylaid her. They kept her for four hours, and when she scratched one of them in the face, he retaliated by breaking her fingers. She wasn’t yet fourteen years old.”
“Oh, God,” breathed Pickett. It was a wonder the man was still sane. If such a thing had happened to Julia . . .
But no, he wasn’t going to think about that. It was that—asking the wrong questions, thinking first of Julia’s safety and Ned’s murder only a distant second, imagining what he might have done had it been Julia who was guilty of such a crime, when he was compelled by the bonds of love and the vows of matrimony to cherish and care for her—that had led to his being where he was now: on the receiving end of a pistol.
And because he had been unable to distance himself from the case enough to examine it objectively,
his life would be forfeit for the sins of his long-dead countrymen. Still, Pickett refused to give the man the satisfaction of seeing him beg for a mercy he knew would never be granted. And so they stared at one another, Pickett braced for the shot that would put an end to his existence, his adversary engrossed in thoughts of injustices long past. The only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock over the mantelpiece, a noise that seemed to Pickett almost preternaturally loud as it counted off with relentless precision all the lost moments that he would never live to see: He would never see Julia again, never lie with her in his arms, never see his infant son or daughter, never watch it grow up—
Suddenly the crash of breaking glass shattered the silence. Pickett did not waste time in wondering why. He lunged across the desk, grabbing Hetherington’s pistol arm and wrenching it with every ounce of strength he possessed. How long they struggled, he didn’t know—it seemed like hours, but was very likely a matter of seconds—but the deadlock was broken when the door opened and a lilting Irish voice asked, “Robert, what was that—?”
The gun went off with a deafening report, and the look of utter horror on Hetherington’s face made Pickett’s blood run cold. The pistol fell from the man’s hand, and he pushed past the desk, calling his wife’s name in a strangled voice.
Pickett, still sprawled across the desk on his belly, scrambled to his feet and turned in time to see Mrs. Hetherington slowly crumple to her knees. The expression on her face was one of utter astonishment, and across the bosom of her fashionable gown, a crimson stain bloomed like some obscene flower.
“Brigid, a mhuirnín,” her husband crooned, gathering her in his arms.
Instinctively, Pickett averted his gaze, then blinked as he took in the wreckage that had saved his life. One of the tall windows was shattered, and shards of glass littered the carpet. A rock the size of his fist lay in the middle of the floor, obviously the cause of all the damage, and on the terrace just outside—
Peril by Post Page 22
