The Heiress of Linn Hagh (The Detective Lavender Mysteries Book 1)

by Karen Charlton

  The death of her husband now changed everything. Left vulnerable and helpless in a hostile, alien country, Magdalena probably also faced financial ruin. He felt an impulsive urge to leap onto the next mail coach, race down to Gainsborough and protect her. This alarmed him; he was not a man given to rash behaviour. One thing was for certain: he needed to bring this case in Bellingham to its natural conclusion. He now had pressing business farther south.

  ‘What else does the letter say?’ Woods asked.

  Lavender shook himself and tried to think rationally.

  ‘The Home Department has tried to contact Doña Magdalena for some time to pass on the news of her husband’s death. Unfortunately, they’ve been unable to locate her. This doesn’t surprise me. She has been flitting from the charity of one set of Spanish émigrés to another for months.’

  Woods nodded.

  ‘Magistrate Read asks me to convey the news to her myself, if I know of her current location.’

  ‘Then I guess you’d better write to the señora tonight,’ Woods said simply.

  Yes, thought Lavender. He’s right. A letter is what is called for—no rash gestures. Give the woman some time to grieve for her husband.

  ‘While you’re writin’ to her, I’ll get a nap, and then I’ll take first watch in the graveyard.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The rain turned to sleet and then snow as Woods trudged down the hill towards St Cuthbert’s just before midnight. This is a dismal trip, he thought as he stared at the flurry of snowflakes that danced down in the narrow window of vision between his hat brim and the top of the wet scarf that swathed his face. He was wearing every item of clothing he had brought with him—including two pairs of trousers and the thick socks Betsy had knitted for him—but he still knew he would be frozen before long. He had forgotten how bloody cold it was up here in the North East of England.

  He pushed open the creaking iron gate and walked across the lonely graveyard to the rear of the church. In the dim moonlight, he could see the fine layer of unblemished snow that had settled over the ground. No one had been this way in a while. He turned around and watched the falling snow cover his own tracks.

  Moving to the back of the church, he sought the straggly patch of bushes Lavender had told him to find. There, amongst the perennial willow weed and a couple of stunted elders, was a large rhododendron bush. Carefully, he pushed aside the waxy, lance-shaped leaves and tried to force his way between the boughs, which did their best to resist him. Suddenly, they yielded, and he found himself in a large, dry space. The branches sprang back behind him.

  Careful not to take out his eye on any unseen branches, he scooped up as much loose foliage as he could find and heaped it onto the damp soil to make a nest. Next, he took out his blankets and made himself as comfortable as possible on his pile of leaves and twigs. By breaking off a few more branches of the bush, he was able to make a gap big enough to peer through.

  Before him, the black walls of St Cuthbert’s were silhouetted against an even blacker sky. Baxter Carnaby’s grave was just about visible. If the missing heiress did decide to pay her father a visit on the anniversary of his death, then Woods would be able to see her. Personally, he felt that even the most devoted of daughters would quail at venturing out on a night like this.

  Sighing, he realised that he was in for a long and futile wait. He settled down and allowed his mind to think back to Lavender and his Spanish señora. Was the untimely death of Don Antonio Garcia de Aviles a blessing in disguise for his friend and employer, or a curse? It was never a good idea to go mooning around after another man’s wife, but Woods was not convinced that the newly widowed señora would make Lavender happy.

  The man had been moody and tight-lipped when they had left Barnby Moor after his encounter with the highwaymen and the señora. He had sat brooding in the corner of the coach for the rest of their trip north. At supper in the taverns, he had been taciturn and distracted.

  Woods had heard him stomp back to his bedchamber after dining with the señora and had got the distinct impression that their meal together had not gone well. He had tried a bit of gentle ribbing, but Lavender would not be drawn out on what had transpired between them. Woods suspected that the detective had had his fingers burnt—or at least slapped. Hardly surprisin,’ he thought. That señora is a feisty filly and would be a handful for any man.

  Lavender’s professional reputation, university education and obvious intelligence opened up the doors of many upper class drawing rooms, but Woods suspected that even as an impoverished widow, the señora would still be out of Lavender’s reach. The principal officers were fêted in London by the ton; their novelty and rarity meant they were welcome everywhere as guests, from Almack’s to private boxes in Vauxhall Gardens.

  But in the eyes of high society, none of these things would make Lavender good enough for the aristocratic señora. His friend and colleague aimed too high. This dalliance was doomed to fail. At the end of the day, Stephen Lavender was still a working police officer and the son of a Bow Street runner.

  What Lavender needed, he decided, was a good, homely woman like his own Betsy. Indeed, Betsy had tried to introduce Lavender to a couple of eligible gals back home in London on the few occasions when he had dined with them. The young women had sighed and reported back to Betsy that the detective was charming, polite, but very, very distant.

  Betsy told him that Lavender was an attractive man for a gentleman in his mid-thirties. A bit thin in the face and body, perhaps, and in need of some good home cooking, but he was tall, dark, wealthy and fastidiously neat and clean. Unfortunately, the man was also married to his work.

  Back at The Rose and Crown, Lavender stared miserably at the black-edged parchment on the table, twirled his quill and felt hopelessly inadequate.

  Beside him on the table lay the letter from Magistrate Read. In another attempt to put off the inevitable, he picked it up and read the last paragraphs again:

  I do not know how you came to meet Señora Morales, Stephen, but should you know of the current whereabouts of de Aviles’ widow, I would be grateful if you would pass on the unfortunate news of her husband’s death and ask her to contact me at Bow Street for further information.

  While rendering us some good service at the start of the French occupation of Spain, de Aviles turned out to be as vainglorious and inconsistent as the rest of his aristocratic countrymen. He had no reason to be fighting at Talavera and, indeed, had been dispatched on an altogether different mission by General Sir Arthur Wellesley. However, I will strive to give a good report of him to his widow.

  Regarding this lady, I would also urge caution on your part. There are reports that she and her servants shot their way out of Spain, dispatching two of Napoleon’s officers and half a dozen infantrymen who had been sent to arrest her. It may very well be that the female is the more deadly of the species when it comes to the de Aviles family . . .

  Oh, Magdalena, he thought sadly, no wonder you wanted to ‘forget.’ With a heavy heart, he took up his quill and dipped it into the inkwell.

  My dearest Magdalena,

  It is with great sadness that I must inform you . . .

  In his bush in the icy churchyard, Woods was freezing, shocked and indignant.

  He had been shivering in his cramped position in the rhododendron for only an hour when a drunken couple burst through the iron gate of the graveyard. Laughing raucously, they clutched each other for balance and slithered down the path towards the rear of the church where he was secreted. They passed a brandy bottle between them, raised it to their lips and drank. The woman sought shelter from the flurries of snow behind one of the buttress pillars, but the man continued to move towards Woods.

  For one terrible minute, he thought he was about to be discovered, but the drunkard stopped three feet away and stared glassy-eyed at the trunk of a stunted elder tree. Woods could still see the u
npleasant, crooked grin stretched across the face below the hat.

  The next second, Woods heard the unmistakeable sizzle of an arc of warm urine hitting frozen holy ground. The acrid stench nearly made him retch.

  Damn it, he thought. I’m goin’ to have to sniff that for the next seven hours.

  The drunken sot now wove his way back round the gravestones to his doxy and took the brandy bottle from her. She meanwhile reached for the unbuttoned front fall on his breeches—the strumpet’s intention was obvious.

  ‘Strewth,’ Woods groaned between gritted and chattering teeth as the fumbling commenced. It had ceased snowing, the wind had dropped and he had an unimpaired view of her attempts to box the Jesuit.

  Cursing beneath his breath, Woods closed his eyes. Unfortunately, he couldn’t close his ears. After several embarrassing minutes of grunting, the couple briefly fell silent. Woods risked a look. That was a mistake.

  The woman’s ministration to her companion’s member had only inflamed his sodden passion. Now he had hitched up her skirts and had her pressed up against the consecrated wall of the church. She squealed like a stuck pig with every thrust, and Woods had to endure another painful twenty minutes of their noisy and intoxicated lust.

  He shuffled uncomfortably on his damp blanket, pulled his hat farther down over his ears and tried to imagine the expression on the face of St Cuthbert’s vicar if the man ever got to see what his parishioners did in his Saxon churchyard. The cleric had a lot more to worry about than the insidious rise of Methodism.

  Finally, the rutting couple broke apart and readjusted their clothing. Woods saw the glimmer of metal in the moonlight as coins changed hands. He sighed and waited for them to leave. The trollop pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders and staggered off into the night, but her customer now slumped down in the shelter of the wall and took another swig from his bottle. A few moments later, he had fallen asleep and began to snore loudly.

  Great, thought Woods. This is the last thing I need.

  If the nervous Helen Carnaby did creep out in the middle of the night to visit her father’s grave, the first thing she would see was a frozen stiff only yards from where Baxter Carnaby was buried. If that didn’t scare her away, nothing else would. For a moment, he considered breaking his cover and trying to shake the tosspot awake to send him home, but then he decided against it. Tough as they were up here in this county, even a Northumbrian could not sleep out of doors on a November night without cover; nobody was that immune to the cold, were they? The man would probably wake up soon and stagger back to the warmth of his home.

  He didn’t. When the first red smudges of dawn glowed above the eastern horizon and the smell of smoke drifted down from the silent town towards the isolated church on the marshy ground by the river, the man still slept in the graveyard, curled up against the sandstone wall of the church.

  Bleary-eyed, stiff and sore, Woods shuffled around in his confined space. He was frozen to the bone, fed up and hungry. He had kept awake all night—thanks to the annoying and incessant screech of a tawny owl. Helen Carnaby had not shown up. Well, not yet anyway. Fortunately, he knew that Lavender would soon be along to relieve him.

  Somewhere down the valley, sheep began to bleat. Crows called to each other from nests in the treetops then rose, circling and wheeling in pairs and groups of three, before they headed down to their favourite feeding grounds. Down by the silent river, moorhens squabbled in the reeds. Slowly, daylight spread across the frosted earth, and the church with the strange stone roof. Trees, distant rooftops and tombstones took form out of the indistinguishable mass of blackness. It promised to be a brilliant day with a sky of white light and ice blue arched over the world, but Woods was not in the mood to appreciate the shimmering clarity of the northern winter sky.

  The church gate squeaked again and a heavily veiled young woman entered the graveyard.

  Woods forced his teeth to stop their noisy chattering. It was she.

  She didn’t take the direct route, which would have led her straight to the unconscious drunk; she went the long way around the building. For a moment, he had doubts. Perhaps it was someone else? Then he remembered that her mother’s grave lay on the blind side of the church.

  Eventually, she appeared round the corner and glided over to Baxter Carnaby’s grave, the hem of her black gown damp with melted frost and dew. She reached out a gloved hand to touch her father’s headstone. Even with her veil, Woods knew it was Helen Carnaby. Her silvery-blonde hair was clearly visible beneath the material. He could see the compassion etched across her shadowed and thoughtful face. Her youth, poise and grace all gave away her identity. The small posy of hellebores she carried—the twin of the one they had found on her mother’s grave—was yet another clue to her identity.

  Quietly, he waited and watched. Lavender had been quite clear in his instructions: Watch her and follow her back to her lair; at no point startle her or alert her to your presence.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Woods caught the unexpected flash of silver.

  Instinctively, he turned his head. He swore.

  The drunken wretch from the previous night was now on his feet, his gaze fixed on Helen Carnaby’s back. His eyes blazed with madness in a face consumed with hatred. He held a gulley knife in his right hand. He raised it and began to advance on the oblivious young woman.

  ‘For Christ’s sake! Run, Miss!’ Woods yelled.

  He forced his stiff limbs into action and struggled to his feet. He tore off his gloves, fumbled inside his pocket for his pistol and crashed through the bush into the open, fighting the excruciating cramp in his leg.

  ‘Run, gal!’

  But Helen Carnaby was rooted to the spot, still unaware of the danger behind her. She stared at him in alarm—as did her attacker—both of them shocked at Woods’ sudden appearance from the bush. For a brief second, the three of them were held there, motionless in a triangle of fear: the woman, the killer and the grimacing constable with the agonizing cramp. Then Woods aimed his pistol at her attacker.

  Helen Carnaby gasped, turned and finally saw her would-be assailant and his blade. She screamed. The villain turned on his heels and sped back up towards the road.

  ‘Stop, you bastard, or I’ll shoot!’

  Woods tried to give chase, but his legs folded under him. He crashed down onto the icy ground with a resounding thud. His pistol fired as he fell. The shot ricocheted off the deep-set church windowsill with a puff of dirty sand and shattered the stained-glass window. Its retort echoed around the still valley as ancient glass slithered noisily to the ground.

  Woods scrambled to his feet and staggered awkwardly over to the deserted road. The murdering rogue had vanished.

  He returned to the rear of the church. Helen Carnaby had also disappeared. Swearing, he moved down the overgrown path that meandered off into the distance beside the black river. It was empty and edged with the towering willow weed that swayed lightly in the breeze. If she was there, he would never find her.

  ‘Damn and blast it!’ he cursed.

  An angry exclamation behind him made him turn sharply. Still brandishing his smoking pistol, he found himself face-to-face with a furious, indignant and breathless man in a billowing nightshirt.

  It was the vicar.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Can you describe him?’

  Woods sat huddled in a dry blanket before the blazing fire in the empty taproom of The Rose and Crown and shook his throbbing head. His frozen hands still trembled as he sipped at a steaming bowl of hot chocolate.

  ‘His hat was pulled down low—and to be honest, sir—I’d not paid him any attention. I just thought he was a befuddled rat, sleeping off the liquor. But his eyes! Full of hatred and viciousness—they were light-coloured.’

  He sipped some more of his beverage. Lavender and Constable Beddows observed him quietly and took in his words.
r />   ‘What about his coat? Did you get a good look at his coat?’

  A flash of recognition now jolted through Woods’ exhausted brain. The hot chocolate slopped dangerously towards the edge of the bowl.

  ‘Yes!’

  An image of the man silhouetted against the moon and only three feet away, urinating against the tree, now came vividly to mind.

  ‘It were dark, but I’m sure it were an army greatcoat—with capes. I couldn’t make out the colour, mind.’

  Lavender fell back satisfied, his expression grave.

  ‘What’s the significance of that?’ Beddows demanded.

  ‘We’ve found evidence that a beggar who camps out in one of the caves in the gorge wears a military greatcoat,’ Lavender informed him.

  ‘A beggar, eh?’ Beddows spat on the floor of the taproom. ‘Damned town is crawling with them.’

  ‘Ah, but this one is tall, light-eyed, with a hat, and carries a clay pipe and a kitchen knife in his pocket,’ Lavender told him. ‘So perhaps he might not be too hard for you and your men to track down? Woods will be able to recognise him when you arrest him.’

  ‘He don’t sound like one of our regulars. Never seen a gadgie of that description afore.’

  ‘You need to find him—and quickly,’ Lavender said.

  ‘I don’t rightly know . . .’ Beddows began to bluster.

  ‘Well, I do,’ Lavender snapped. ‘You need to gather up your men and find this madman before he succeeds in harming someone. If it hadn’t been for the quick thinking of Constable Woods, you would have had the murder of a young woman in your church yard to contend with.’

  ‘He could have just been out to rob her—a silk snatcher.’