Lady Anne 02 - Revenge of the Barbary Ghost, page 13
She exited the room and latched the door, then ascended the stairs, for there was nothing else to see in the cellar. Marcus was still not back, and in fact never did return.
Pamela didn’t even try to conceal her agitation. Anne decided to share what she knew with her friend, and was relieved to find that at least Pamela was aware her brother was the Barbary Ghost. “How long have you known?” she asked her friend, as they sat on the terrace. They had decided to walk down to the beach as soon as they judged the tide would have rolled out, to see if there would be any reminders of the melee the night before, or any clue as to where St. James had gone.
“I’ve known all along. St. Ives is only three miles from here, and he was able to slip out at night from his regimental billet easily. You know what St. James is like,” Pamela said, with a faint attempt at a smile. “He loves excitement, and he’s always dabbled in hocus pocus. The Barbary Ghost was his idea, and I think he would have done it even if Captain Micklethwaite had not approached him.”
“Micklethwaite?”
“He … he’s apparently a ship captain who uses his vessels for the free trade, as those fellows call it.”
They were silent for a while, but finally Pamela stood and paced to the edge of the terrace, looking out to sea. She turned back to Anne, wringing her hands together. “I can’t wait any longer; I want to look down on the beach, just see what went on, if there is any sign of what he has gotten up to. Perhaps Marcus got caught in his cave by the tide. He cannot swim at all, you know, and has a dreadful fear of the water.”
Anne felt sure that the small crevice she had found, though above the tidewater, would not be a viable place to spend a night. It wasn’t deep enough, nor secret enough. But she could not take away her friend’s suggestions. As for herself, she feared that St. James had been arrested the night before. If so, they would hear about him soon; she didn’t want to imagine what would happen to him after that. For an officer in the army to take part in such illegal activity could be possibly treasonous, for all she knew of the law. She did know that treason was a hanging offense.
Though Robbie insisted on accompanying Anne and Pamela down to the beach, Anne sent Mary to St. Wyllow for Sanderson. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she wanted her sturdy driver at Cliff House, if only to take them to St. Ives to see if St. James had, for some odd reason, decided to walk back to his regiment.
Or in case he had been arrested and they had him in a military jail.
They clambered awkwardly down the cut toward the beach, dresses and shawls making the climb difficult. Pamela, not as energetic as Anne, needed to pause after the climb and sat on a rocky outcropping for a long moment. The tide had receded, leaving behind, on the wet sand, a line of seaweed and detritus. Anne could see that the smugglers had not had the opportunity to retrieve their missing booty, as ankers and half ankers and wooden crates littered the beach, jumbled by the tide.
Pamela recovered, and she and Anne walked toward the slice of shore below Cliff House to try to see up to the crevice in the rock, but once there it was evident that whatever had happened the night before, St. James was not there now. “We may as well go back to the house,” Pamela said, her tone listless.
Anne shook her head. “You can go ahead, but I want to look around a little more.”
“I’ll wait for you, then,” she said, with a listless sigh.
Anne eyed her with a worried frown; Pamela did not seem to be herself lately, or had she been this way for longer than Anne had bothered to notice? Her high spirits were more occasional now than they had been, but was that just a natural mellowing with time? Anne turned back and scanned the rock wall, and then gazed down the beach. A jot of color beyond a rock caught her eye; perhaps a bolt of smuggled cloth, or a flag, or some such thing, flapping in the wind?
Robbie, his pockets full of shells, bounced after her, but as Anne began to clamber over the rocky outcropping near the base of the cliff she put up one hand; some foreknowledge quivered within her at what she would see, and she was not going to have that little boy scarred by the sight, if it should prove to be unfortunate. “Robbie,” she said, her voice trembling, as she turned and looked back at him. “Go back to Miss Pamela, if you would.”
“But—”
“Robbie, now!” She took in a long shaky breath and turned her gaze back to the flapping piece of cloth.
He retreated and she put out one hand to steady herself, then climbed over the rock. She gasped in horror, a sick sound gurgling in her throat. St. James’s dead eyes, crusted with sand and seaweed, stared at her, his flesh white and pasty, wrinkled from saturation from the tide. But he did not drown; oh, no … his throat had been cruelly cut, and his flesh hung open, the tidewater having scrubbed him clean, leaving behind a pale, waterlogged appearance, with more seaweed tangled in his hair and across the ferocious wound.
“Oh!” she cried, then clamped a hand over her mouth. She glanced back, her vision blurred by tears. Pamela and Robbie were down at the water’s edge, the woman watching while the boy used a piece of plank to dig in the sand. Anne swiftly clambered back over the rock intent on one thing: She would make Pamela go back up to Cliff House, where she would tell her what had happened to her beloved older brother.
But things rarely work out as expected. When Anne spotted Darkefell striding purposefully down the beach toward her she ran to him and threw herself into his arms.
“Anne, Anne, what is it?” he asked, holding her close.
For one long moment she surrendered to the delicious warmth of his arms, putting her head against his chest. His steadily thudding heart, racing from the climb down, his warmth, the growing familiarity of his scent: it all comforted her, and the tears came.
“Tony, oh, Tony!” she groaned, looking up at him. “It’s St. James; he’s dead, his throat slashed! He’s been murdered!” She pushed away from him, staggered sideways, and lost her breakfast on the wet sand.
Ten
Anne quickly recovered and pointed out where the captain’s body was, indicated by a piece of fluttering cloth behind a rocky outcropping. She then went directly to her friend, murmuring to Darkefell that she must break the tragic news to the dead captain’s sister. He watched the pantomime of horror; Pamela shrieked in dismay, putting out her hands as if to push away the truth, then dissolved in tears, covering her face, her sobs carried away on the ocean breeze.
Hugging her friend in a close embrace, Anne rocked Miss St. James and patted her back while the young lad, Robbie, stood silently watching. As tender as Anne’s sensibilities clearly were, Darkefell reflected, her strength was asserted by her immediate recovery, after her brief illness, and her determination to offer her friend the comfort and support she needed in this awful moment. Though some would call Anne’s strength unwomanly, he saw it differently. No matter what life threw at her, she could accept it or overcome it. It seemed to him that women often had that role, of forbearance and fortitude. To call such inner fortitude unfeminine was to dismiss what ladies had to bear their whole lives long in childbirth, marriage and mourning.
But a grim task awaited him. Darkefell turned away from the scene of such sorrow, and bent down to examine St. James’s body. The captain had been murdered, certainly, as Anne had said, for his throat was slit with great precision and expertise, the flaps of waterlogged skin pallid and horrible. Whomever had killed him had murdered before in the same way, for the cut was appallingly precise, one deadly slash with a saber or cutlass. St. James had certainly died before he was in the water, judging by how the wound was scoured clean, and from the amount of ocean sand imbedded in it. If not for the tangle of rocks at the base of the cliff, his body may have been swept out to sea. Perhaps that’s what his murderer expected to happen.
The captain was dressed in just breeches and a shirt, pink-stained from blood, but it was impossible to tell if that was what he had been wearing when he died. Crouching by the body, the marquess glanced up and around, over to Anne, who held the weeping Pamela in her arms, still anxiously watched by young Robbie.
What should he do about the body and the ladies? He was grateful that he was there, and able to spare Miss Pamela some grief, perhaps, though there would be no assuaging ultimately the terrible anguish she must still suffer. As he tried to decide how to convey St. James’s body up to Cliff House, he reflected that he must remember to thank Anne’s clever maid, Mary, who had paused at the inn on her way into the village, to ask that he go to her mistress. Her Scottish blood was sure something was wrong, she said, and how right she was. He would not have wanted Anne to have to handle this on her own, even though he was sure she could have.
His glance slewed up to the cut in time to see Sanderson, Anne’s bulky driver, striding toward the frozen tableau. Darkefell motioned for him to come over, and the man obeyed instantly. “There has been a tragedy here,” the marquess said, standing, “and I wish to avoid upsetting the ladies by confronting them with the corpse of Captain St. James. Carry him up to Cliff House, concealing his state from Miss Pamela St. James as much as possible.”
He paused and looked down at the wide, staring eyes, then bent over and closed them as much as he could. “I don’t want her to see the wound, if it can be avoided,” he muttered. “Explain to the housekeeper, or whoever is there, and do not let them deter you from taking the body up to a spare room, or his own chamber, if you can establish which it is.”
Sanderson grunted his assent, bending to his somber task, and Darkefell clambered over the rocky outcropping and slid across the wet sand to the pair of women, shielding their view of the driver’s occupation as much as he could, but he was impressed, as always, by Anne’s stoic resolve. She held her friend’s head against her shoulder and spoke soothing words, but the despair in her eyes as she looked up at Darkefell made him wish he could be her comforter.
He put one hand on her shoulder, and spoke quietly, being as matter-of-fact as he could. “Sanderson is taking Captain St. James up to the house. Who is the magistrate for this parish?”
“Magistrate?” Miss St. James asked, wiping her tears with the back of one trembling hand. She looked up at Darkefell. “Why do you want the magistrate?”
Darkefell darted a look at Anne; did the other woman not know the state of her brother, and how he died? Anne shook her head, as if reading his thoughts. “Never mind, for now,” he said. Sanderson had strode ahead with his tragic burden. “Let us go back up to your house, Miss St. James. Are you all right to walk, or do you require assistance?”
She could walk, it seemed, but he supported her on one side, with Anne on the other, and the little boy, Robbie, just ahead; they made their way slowly back up to the house.
The next few hours were a tumult of emotion and difficult decisions. Anne sent word to St. James’s regiment, while Darkefell insisted on locating the magistrate. It wasn’t that Anne didn’t think they needed the magistrate—it was clear to her that St. James had been murdered—but having to explain it all to Pamela was heart-rending.
They were in Pamela’s room; her maid, Alice, had been sent downstairs to help Mrs. Quintrell and her daughter, for the household was in an uproar.
“Who would want to kill St. James?” Pamela cried, for the third time since Anne had explained why the magistrate was necessary. “Marcus didn’t have an enemy in the world.”
Anne returned to her friend’s side from the window, where she had been looking out to wait for Darkefell’s return with the local official. “What about this smuggling business? You knew about St. James’s part in it … is there anything else I should know? Did you know when there was to be a landing, every time?”
Pamela, tears trailing down her cheeks, covered her face with her hands. “What does any of this matter?” she said, her voice muffled. “I’d like to be alone for a while.”
“Pam, I—”
“Anne, please! Just let me be.”
So Anne left the room, pausing outside the door. It broke her heart when she heard her friend burst into anguished sobs, but perhaps Pamela needed just to cry it out. That was a woman’s prerogative, after all, and no refuge for weakness, but a path through sorrow, toward strength. Muttering a prayer out loud as she passed the room where Marcus’s poor body lay, Anne descended to find Lolly rearranging the sitting room and directing Alice where to dust.
Anne had thought Lolly would be shattered by the tragedy, but she looked up as Anne entered the room and said, “There you are, dear, just in time. If we are to have a number of gentlemen—the marquess, the magistrate and perhaps someone from Captain St. James’s regiment—I thought I would take the liberty of arranging the furniture a little better. Men dislike being crowded, in my experience, and we cannot make them sit outside, for it is increasingly damp.”
Glancing around, Anne could see the practicality of Lolly’s improvements, which was to take Pamela’s artistic furniture arrangement and push everything against the wall, leaving adequate room for booted gentlemen. She was about to comment favorably when she heard a noise outside. She glided to the window overlooking the gravel drive. Darkefell and another gentleman were dismounting their horses, and both handed the reins to Mr. Osei Boatin, who accompanied them. As they were moving toward the house, Anne recognized her own carriage pull up, and a gentleman in a regimental uniform, red cutaway coat faced in white and trimmed heavily in gold braid, stiffly got down: Colonel Sir Henry Withington.
The men greeted each other in the hale and hearty male pattern, handshakes, bows, claps on the back. No falling on each other’s necks in a time of sorrow, as women do. Anne felt a tug of humor at the picture that would make, if they but behaved as ladies would in such a circumstance, but pushed away the thought. This was no time for levity; poor, dear Marcus was dead. She straightened her stomacher, patting her full, dark skirts into place. This was a house of mourning, and the formal patterns must be observed. Soberly, she greeted the gentlemen, while Lolly, eerily calm and organized in the face of tragedy, trotted out to the kitchen to order the obligatory refreshments.
Darkefell leaned close to Anne and murmured, brief and to the point, “I’ve made free with your driver and carriage; Sanderson is going off to fetch the local vicar, a Mr. Barkley. He’ll return with him directly.” He then straightened and said, “Lady Anne Addison, may I introduce to you Mr. Alexander Rokeby Twynam, the magistrate of this parish. And you’ve already met Colonel Sir Henry Withington, an old acquaintance of mine and Captain St. James’s regimental colonel.” The men made appropriate obeisance, and sat where directed, uncomfortably filling the small, gloomy room.
Colonel Withington was the first to speak, as he removed his sword from his hip, laying it across his lap. “Lady Anne, this is a terrible occurrence. St. James, from my brief acquaintance with him, seemed charming and a credit to the uniform. Is Miss St. James going to join us? I would like to express my sympathy.”
“She is indisposed, as you can well imagine,” Anne answered, gravely. “I am acting in her stead, gentlemen, and have her permission to speak for her in matters concerning her brother.”
Mr. Twynam, a large, heavy gentleman dressed in an enormous embroidered frock coat and wearing an impeccable wig, leaned forward, the chair beneath him creaking ominously, and said, “My lady, I will require a few minutes with Miss St. James today. I’ve got some concerns about what has been happening with this smuggling gang, and Mr. Puddicombe, the local excise officer, has made some rather grave accusations.”
“What kind of accusations?” Anne said, her tone shrill, her stomach churning. Puddicombe … that was the fellow Anne had seen Pamela with in the alley the day before, the one with whom she was arguing.
“I should perhaps not call them ‘accusations,’ my lady; more like questions he has raised. Nothing with which to concern yourself, but I will need to speak with Miss St. James just to clear things up. And my lord,” he said, turning to the marquess. “I was told by my son, who is a lieutenant in the Light Dragoons, that you and Captain St. James had a rather vicious bout of fisticuffs at the regimental assembly a few nights past. The captain sustained the worst of the scrap, I hear. What was the quarrel about?”
Darkefell turned crimson, the telltale vein pulsing in his temple. Anne watched him, wondering if he would confess what St. James had said to make him so angry.
“I think if you wish to know what it concerned,” he said, his jaw square and his teeth clenched, “some of St. James’s intimates in the regiment will be able to tell you. Many of them were standing about and heard the captain.”
“Would it not be simpler if you just told me?”
“No,” Darkefell said, and did not elaborate.
The magistrate eyed him, his brow furrowed in thought, but said nothing further.
Lolly flitted in just then and was introduced. The magistrate bowed deeply over her hand and she twittered a greeting, her pale eyes wide as she curtseyed. But the older woman swiftly excused herself and gestured to Anne to follow her. When they got out to the hall at the bottom of the staircase, Lolly breathlessly said, “Miss St. James is distraught … almost hysterical. I cannot calm her, Anne.”
“I’ll go up, then,” Anne said, casting her gaze up the stairs. She could hear Pamela’s voice, becoming louder and more shrill. She was not going to let her friend be subjected to any kind of male browbeating, so she swiftly went back into the sitting room and said, as the men all stood, “You will have to excuse me, gentlemen. Poor Miss St. James is suffering acutely, as you can imagine, and I must go to her.”
“Of course, my lady,” the magistrate said, bowing, a ponderous action in one so large. “I will need to speak with her, though.”
