by Rebecca King
The more Luke talked, and contemplated the sheer arrogance of the culprits responsible for what was happening to the Tynesdales, the more incensed he became. This was the reason why he worked for the Star Elite. He was going to do whatever it took to make sure that whoever was doing this to Rosemary and Thomas faced justice for their crimes. It didn’t matter whether the gossip going around about them was right, or if Thomas and Rosemary was guilty of anything. Nobody should be subjected to such a hate campaign. Nobody should have their lives put in danger in their own home because of the bloody-minded ignorance of a handful of spiteful people.
When Luke looked at Rosemary, he saw the effect being at home had on her. Her once peachy cheeks had turned pale and drawn. Her once sparkling eyes were now dull and almost lifeless. It warned him that she was very scared. It also warned Luke that she was likely to be innocent of whatever rumours were being spread about her because most guilty people would have left the village by now.
‘Mr Tynesdale, might I have a word with you?’ Luke asked Thomas when he re-appeared in the shop moments later.
Thomas jerked out of his revere. The look he gave Luke was apologetic as he said: ‘I am sorry. I didn’t realise we had a visitor.’ He brushed his hands off and held one out to Luke.
Luke introduced himself, not just as himself, but as a member of the Star Elite. ‘I would like a word with you in private if I may?’
Thomas nodded, but eyed the front window worriedly. It was clear that he was reluctant to leave his shop vulnerable given there was no front window.
‘I’ll help you board it up and will arrange for it to be repaired,’ Luke promised.
‘I think you will find that nobody will come and repair it,’ Thomas replied, his voice thick with emotion.
‘Oh, they will,’ Luke argued firmly. ‘Leave it to me.’ There was something in his voice that made Thomas look at him a little more closely. ‘We need to secure the shop because we must have a private conversation without half the village watching.’
Thomas barely glanced at the onlookers outside before disappearing into the back room behind the main shop. Luke shared a worried look with Rosemary before following Thomas. Minutes later, he was outside hammering a huge board into place. Luke mentally cursed when several nails wouldn’t hold because of the rotten frame but eventually managed to secure enough around the board to hold the window. When he turned to look at the street it was to find several villagers still openly watching him. Luke scowled deeply at them and gathered the box of nails and his jacket. He was about to return to the shop when he saw Samantha Morton watching him closely from across the street. This time, she was alone. Luke glared at her and cursed when she began to cross the street and head toward him. Thankfully, she was intercepted by the arrival of William Debrette, the magistrate.
‘Ah, there you are my good friend,’ William boomed jovially.
Luke was shocked at the jocularity behind William’s greeting but smiled at the man and watched him dismount his horse. He grinned when William immediately engulfed him in a bear hug and clapped him heartily on the back.
‘Problems,’ William whispered meaningfully.
Both men knew that the villagers needed to see such a spectacle and know that the tide was turning against them. Debrette also knew that this morning’s activities would be talked about by the locals, many of whom would stop spreading gossip now purely because the magistrate had been called today.
Luke nodded. ‘Someone has decided to try to murder the shop’s owner,’ he announced loud enough for Samantha Morton to hear. She hovered just a few short feet away, openly listening to what was being said. Luke didn’t doubt that she was trying to find out who he was and what connection he had to the magistrate. As far as he was concerned, she could wonder, she was getting no explanations from him.
‘Come on in. I am sure Rosemary will be delighted to see you,’ Luke said warmly, guiding William into the shop. ‘Don’t mind the nosy neighbours, they are looking for more vile gossip to spread,’ he added pointedly before he closed the shop door on their startled faces and outraged gasps.
‘Are all the villagers that curious?’ William asked, shaking his head in disgust.
‘I think that people who are so watchful will have seen whoever threw the brick,’ Luke said with a nod toward the shop window. With that, he guided the magistrate toward Thomas’s workshop.
‘We have to put a watch on his house,’ William announced grimly once Luke and Rosemary had finished telling both him and Thomas what had happened to date.
‘Are the Star Elite going to be involved in this?’ Thomas whispered, looking a little stunned.
‘We have to be,’ Luke warned. ‘I witnessed the attack on your daughter this morning, sir. I will inform my colleagues, but they will not condone me leaving, not when it is clear to me that someone somewhere has decided to wage a vendetta against you. Spreading gossip about you is one of the many ways the culprit and their friends have chosen to target you. It has involved a lot of people, practically an entire village, but has now started to extend into physical attacks on your property and lives. That makes the criminal activity going on around you more than just a bit of spiteful gossip, and is something that warrants our involvement, sir.’
William nodded. ‘There are no finer men than the Star Elite to help you with this. They will find the culprits and will ensure they face justice for what is going on here. For now, I must ask if there is anything either of you wish to tell me. If you do know of any incident or reason why someone would target you, please tell us now. We can help you, but it is best to be up front and honest with us, eh?’
‘There is nothing,’ Thomas replied firmly. ‘I have tried to think of something that might have been said that would have upset someone, but there truly is nothing. We haven’t done anything.’
‘It just doesn’t make sense why the Mortons would target us with so much malice for no reason. I think that all of this would be easier to understand if we knew that there had been an argument or something, but we have no idea why they would do this,’ Rosemary replied.
Luke nodded. He slid a look to Debrette and found the man watching him. They both believed Thomas and Rosemary. Their confusion and fear were evident on their faces. Further, the lack of compassion of the villagers outside warned them that the Tynesdales were the victims, but the culprit behind the vendetta was far more dangerous than the Tynesdales realised yet.
‘We will find the proof we need,’ Debrette promised. ‘The culprits will face justice for the attack on you this morning, Miss Tynesdale, together with the vandalism of the shop window as well as charges of intimidation and defamation of character. It is all illegal and means that anybody involved has to face justice.’
‘We cannot just assume that the culprits will stop even though the Star Elite are involved. I am afraid that whoever is doing this may become more secretive, but they are unlikely to stop until they are forced to,’ Luke added. ‘That means that your lives are still in danger.’
‘It would help if we could arrest the blighters when they are carrying out an attack. It is far harder to locate the culprits if they have plenty of places to hide or people prepared to lie for them,’ William warned. ‘But what they probably don’t realise is that not everyone can lie all the time. To have so many people involved with what they are doing means that everyone must constantly work to keep their words guarded and their lies consistent. That is far harder to do than most people realise, especially as time moves on. Someone will make a mistake and talk openly about what has happened, or say something that condemns the guilty, mostly because they are arrogant. The truth will often be spilt at the most inopportune moments because their malicious natures become overwhelming and make the guilty reckless. I am sure that the visible signs of damage are a physical sign of the culprit’s capabilities that the person responsible will take pride in. The guilty won’t stop to realise that it is always a physical sign of their guilt as well. I mean, one can hardly miss
a smashed window caused by a flying brick.’
Thomas nodded. ‘It cannot have been an accident.’
‘I will speak to my colleagues,’ Luke said. ‘We are taking a couple of days off to regroup before we start another investigation. However, I am sure Sir Hugo will understand if we delay our investigation to resolve what is happening here.’
William nodded. ‘I can arrange for a couple of my men to be at your disposal. It won’t hurt to have a night patrol around here for the time being. I will have men in place by later today.’
‘You would do this for us?’ Thomas looked truly shocked.
Luke grinned. ‘It is what we do. I am only glad that I was in the right place at the right time and saw what happened to your daughter.’
‘Please call me Rosemary,’ she whispered, sliding a look to William to include him in the invitation.
Debrette nodded his thanks and ordered both her and Thomas to call him William.
‘Do you go into town often?’ William asked. ‘I am only asking because I think we need to make sure you have a proper escort. You are not to go anywhere alone for the time being.’ He looked at Thomas. ‘Either of you.’
Thomas nodded his understanding and lifted his brows at his daughter.
‘I know I shouldn’t have gone into town to shop but I really don’t want to give the villagers our custom given how they have treated us,’ Rosemary explained, looking apologetically at her father.
‘It’s all right, my dear. Your trip to town has helped us, don’t you think?’ Thomas assured her with a smile.
‘I have a watch that needs repairing if you wouldn’t mind,’ William announced suddenly, digging around in his pocket for his fob watch. He held it aloft for Thomas to see. ‘The hour hand stopped going around ages ago. Would you look at it for me, please?’
Thomas’s entire demeanour changed instantly. His once curved shoulders straightened. His lax spine stiffened and turned rigid. He looked almost officious as he put his spectacles on and studied the watch William held. Thomas rubbed it and polished it with his shirt sleeve before turning it over and over, clearly lost in studying the mechanism. He began to mumble about the mechanism and time, and how he was going to repair it.
‘I am sure this shouldn’t take much. I think the hour hand has been dented somehow, and it needs a good clean.’ The reverence in which he held the watch before placing it carefully onto the workbench was startling. Thomas then preceded to rummage for a large piece of cloth, which he folded. Ceremoniously placing the watch in the centre of it, Thomas then attached a label to the timepiece with string and wrote Debrette’s name and the date on the ticket in tiny letters. He then rolled up the fob watch and secured it with laces before placing it in the centre of his workbench. ‘I should have it ready for you in a day or two.’
Debrette, who had been watching him closely, knew immediately that the rumours being circulated about Thomas’s professionalism were completely fictitious. Nobody so reverent over a battered old fob watch would allow a watch to leave the shop without having been treated with the upmost respect. Further, it wouldn’t be released to the customer until it worked perfectly and was sparkling.
Luke pursed his lips because he too had never seen anybody so adoring of watches as Thomas. Even Rosemary had faded into insignificance. In contrast, Luke found himself studying Rosemary more than the watch.
‘Right, well, I am going to arrange for someone to come and replace the window. It has to be done before dark because it is a weak point in the building,’ Luke explained, more to Debrette than to Thomas, who was now distracted by his work. ‘Then I will go and have a word with my colleagues.’
Luke didn’t explain that he was going to get a carpenter to come and repair the window frame as well. However, he doubted that fixing the front window was going to resolve all the problems in the property. The more he contemplated the state of each room he was in, the more Luke realised that Rosemary hadn’t been lying when she had said that the house needed a lot of repairs. What he couldn’t understand was why her father had allowed it to fall into such a state.
‘We will both leave you for now,’ William announced. ‘I have to go and get my men on watch. We won’t be away for long. For now, you should both stay indoors.’
‘Will you be paying Miss Morton a visit?’ Rosemary asked.
‘Not today,’ William replied. ‘I want to see what she does now that she has seen me in here. I don’t doubt she will try to find out who Luke is. Leave it with us. We will have a word with her father, but all in good time, eh?’
‘Did you see who threw the brick?’ Luke asked Thomas before he took his leave of them.
Thomas shook his head. ‘I heard the glass smash and the thud of the brick hitting the floor but was in here. By the time I got to the door, all I could hear was the footsteps of the vandal running away.’
‘Was anybody outside?’ William asked.
‘I didn’t see anybody but was too shaken by the damage in here to pay much attention to what was going on outside,’ Thomas sighed. As he spoke, his gaze was running over the clocks on the wall in the shop.
Luke didn’t doubt that Thomas had been more concerned for his clocks than the window, or his safety. ‘Have any clocks been damaged?’
‘I don’t know,’ Thomas muttered. ‘I am going to take a closer look at them, but I don’t think so.’
‘Check them and let me know if anything has been damaged. I need an estimation of how much property has been damaged, and that means all of it. The clocks, the window, even the floor if it has been dented by the brick,’ William added.
Thomas nodded.
‘I would also like a list of people who have been openly hostile with you,’ William said once he was beside the door. ‘I know it sounds like an odd request, but I need to know the names of everyone who have started to treat you differently since this all began. That includes shop keepers, and old friends. Don’t worry about getting them into trouble. If they had any loyalty to you then they wouldn’t have gotten themselves involved by treating you so poorly, would they?’
Rosemary looked worriedly at Luke. ‘That is a lot of people.’
‘How many?’ Luke asked.
Rosemary sighed but struggled to come up with a number.
‘About forty or fifty. The village is only small,’ Thomas replied.
‘I think about fifty given how I was treated in the shops. The butchery, bakery, and grocery were all hostile, and the customers,’ Rosemary corrected.
Thomas was nodding. ‘The regulars at the tavern are the same.’
‘It is practically the whole village,’ William amended. It wasn’t a question.
Thomas sighed. ‘I don’t have any clue why the Mortons would do this.’
‘I doubt you have done anything. They have got a problem. We will find out who has smashed the window,’ Luke assured him. ‘I don’t think you understand just how much we are capable of. I work with the Star Elite. We aren’t above arresting an entire village to get to the truth if we need to. On this occasion, the culprit is wrong to think that there is safety in numbers. The sheer volume of people who know about this, and have had a part in spreading malicious lies intent on causing damage to your reputation, are just as vulnerable to arrest as the vandal who threw this brick.’
While Luke was talking, William was nodding slowly as if agreeing with everything Luke was saying. Rosemary and Thomas shared an astounded look but neither of them said anything more after offering their thanks. Luke bowed politely at them before turning his attention to Rosemary. With a smile that was intimate, he bowed over her hand and pressed a lingering kiss to the back of it. Rosemary blushed.
‘I needed to see that,’ Luke murmured gently. With a wink, he followed William out of the workroom. Before he closed the door, Luke popped his head back into the room and looked at Thomas. ‘I will be back soon. In the meantime, lock the door. Don’t leave any door unlocked for the time being either. Unfortunately, that means to the
shop as well. If you have a customer, they can knock on the door but don’t allow anybody in who has been hostile to you.’
Luke quietly closed the door and waited until he heard the bolt being slid across. He then followed William to his horse at the front of the property. He was unsurprised to find that Samantha Morton had left, but the villagers who were still going about their business were watchful and openly curious about why the magistrate was at the clock shop with a stranger.
‘God, they don’t miss anything, do they?’ William hissed in disgust. He nodded to the shop. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think that they are scared and rightly so. What I don’t understand is how a businessman’s seemingly innocent daughter knows a common criminal. I doubt she threw the brick, but she knows who did,’ Luke warned.
‘You like her, don’t you?’ William mused, smiling at his friend of many years. He nodded to the clock shop again when Luke looked at him.
‘Yes, I like her. It was obvious, was it?’ Luke replied with a grin. ‘She is pretty.’
‘She is perfect for you. Her father has a fine reputation for being one of the most highly skilled craftsmen of his era. I don’t doubt that they will weather this storm. We will do what we must to get them through it alive, eh?’
‘Indeed,’ Luke replied. ‘Can we count on your support?’
‘I shall oversee this case myself,’ William assured him. ‘For tonight, I will put two of my men on night watch in the village. They can patrol the streets. If my men find anyone out after dark, they will have authority to arrest them if they are anywhere near the clock shop. How does that sound?’
‘It sounds like it will make everyone wary,’ Luke replied a little ruefully. ‘We work a little more secretively than that.’
William stepped closer. ‘Yes, I know. But while all eyes are watching my men, they aren’t watching what you are doing, are they?’ William stepped back and winked at Luke before mounting his horse. ‘My men will start tonight. You do what you must. Let me know if I can be of further assistance. I shall begin to pull together a case against the culprits starting with the young women you saw this morning.’