by Eve Silver
“Out! Out with all of you!” boomed the voice of command from somewhere deep in the building. Squire Craddick, she thought. “You’ll all wait in the yard now while I see the way of things.”
Feet moved and shuffled, and those crammed in the entry to the pub spilled out the doorway and into the yard in a wave, taking Jane with them, farther and farther from the open door. She tried to enter then, ducking forward, but someone caught her arm.
“No, miss,” said a man she did not know, likely one of the squire’s. “Best you be spared what’s within.”
She tried to tear away, but he held her fast. The sucking undertow of her panic nearly overwhelmed her.
“What has happened?” she demanded.
“Murder,” he said.
Murder. Death. An icy fist closed about her heart.
“I am Jane Heatherington,” she said. “The Crown Inn belongs to my father and I wish to go in.”
“Wish or not, you’ll wait here like the rest,” the man replied.
“Who lies dead within?” she forced herself to ask. But the man turned his back to her and pushed his way through the crowd.
Jane gritted her teeth, holding back the wail that threatened to tear free. Her legs wobbled, and she thought she would have fallen had the throng not been so close, the press of someone’s back against hers holding her up. Trapping her.
Others began to speak, asking questions, offering conjectures.
“What did they find besides a body? Smuggled goods?” a man asked.
Jane swallowed the thick knot that clogged her throat. What had the squire and his men found? She knew the answer to that: Smuggled kegs. False evidence to damn her father. And if she said so...would anyone here listen? And if they did listen, if they believed her, would that not condemn Aidan for some crime?
Another man urged, “Tell us what you found.”
Hearing the voice, Jane realized that the question came from Robert Dawe. She looked about, hoping to find him, hoping he might help her enter the inn. She saw only the unfamiliar faces of the squire’s men crowded close around her.
“You ask what we found?” The squire’s man made a rude sound. “We found nothing. Nothing at all, though we had a note that promised us a smuggler’s bounty.”
Jane’s head jerked up. She could not fathom it. Aidan had had ample time to bait his terrible snare, to hide the kegs that would damn her father.
“Nothing?” she demanded. “Are you certain?”
“We found nothing, not a sign of the promised swag. We searched. Every room. Even the attic. Two good men climbed down the cliff face to the caves below. There was nothing here, and nothing there.” He shrugged. “Either there never was anything to find, or the landlord of the Crown is a wily fox, moved it all before we came.” He shrugged again. “Can’t arrest a man without evidence.”
He spoke of the landlord in the present tense. Not dead then. Her father was not dead. But then whose body lay within?
Was it Aidan, shot before he had the chance to unload the barrels? Was that why the squire’s men had searched and found nothing? She could not breathe, so thick and heavy was her terror.
“And then?” another voice prodded.
Jane jerked her head toward the speaker, and for an instant, at the fringe of the crowd, she thought she caught a glimpse of Joss Gossin, the landlord of the New Inn. She rose on her toes, but after mere seconds was forced to fall back, her weak leg failing now to hold her weight. Disappointment scraped through her. She would have welcomed a familiar face and whatever assistance he might offer. Now, she regretted that she had not held close to Hawker. He would have stood a better chance than she to break through the throng.
With a desperate surge, she pushed against the crush of bodies once more. She made no headway, and changed her tactic, trying to move backward instead, and perhaps circle around.
This approach met with greater success. She inched toward freedom with a sick urgency gnawing at her.
All around her was a slurry of words and voices.
“...heard an argument ...”
“...a scuffle to the back, in the kitchen ...”
“...the sound of pistol shot ...”
Jane let those behind her press forward while she held her ground, nearly stumbling more than once. She took a step back, then another, faster and faster, until finally she fell free of the crush.
She lurched away, hugging the shadows of the wall, dread surging in her throat. No one paid her any mind, and she was grateful for that. Hurrying now with her loping, uneven gait, she rounded the corner of the building, and skirted the patch of the garden she had tended for years. There were weeds there now, and the earth was dry and packed, as though it had seen no water since she left.
She went to the familiar kitchen door, her entire body tense and trembling. Walk away. Turn and walk away and wait for Squire Craddick to bring the tidings. She was taken by a slashing need to run, run, run. Away from here.
Away from the tragedy that awaited her. There was no possible good end to this.
A deep, slow breath reined in her panic. She would not play the coward. She would open the door and see either her father or Aidan lying dead on the floor. And then another possibility wormed into her thoughts.
They could both be dead.
Swallowing a sob, she set her fingers to the doorknob. The chill of the metal bit her skin. Slowly, slowly, she turned the knob, pushing the door open a little, and a little more.
There was only a weak peat fire in the hearth, and a single candle flickering gamely against the darkness. First, she saw the table, and the chairs beside it, one of them overturned, another leaning against the table, standing on two legs. Her gaze followed the broken crockery strewn across the floor, and the congealing trail of mutton stew that had spewed in a wide pattern.
For an instant, she felt cold and distanced, as though she was not inside herself but somewhere else entirely. As though she stood far, far away and peered at the scene through a smudged glass. And then horror crashed in on her as she realized her feet had brought her deep into the kitchen and she stared down at a hand... an arm... a big body, face up on the cold floor, eyes filmed in grayish-white, staring sightless to the ceiling. There was a dark stain across his chest and blood on the stone floor beneath him.
She caught hold of the back of the closest chair and steadied herself, her gaze riveted on the bloody wound.
Digory Tubb was dead, drying blood staining the left side of his shirt. Shot through the heart, one of the men out front had said.
A shudder took her. What was he doing here, in her father’s kitchen? Aidan had sent him away. Did he take the threat so lightly that he stopped mid-flight for a tankard of ale?
The murmur of conversation made her aware that she was not alone. Raising her head, she saw two men at the far end of the hallway that led from the kitchen to the bar. They were deep in discussion, both their faces turned away from the kitchen door.
Jane swallowed and inched forward.
They paid her no notice as she rounded the table, taking pains to walk as far from Digory Tubb as she could.
Other voices, gruff and male, carried from the front of the inn and the common room, the sound nearly drowned out by the buzzing in her ears. Her feet moved forward, though she did not will it, and in a moment she stood looking down at a second man, angled across the floor, close to the hearth.
For an infinity she did not understand what she saw, and then she understood too well.
“No,” she whispered, and sank down in a graceless slump, horror and grief tearing at her. With a shake of her head, she realized that someone knelt beside her in the shadows, beside the sprawled body, hands pressed to a thick cloth, wet and stained a deep, deep red.
Raising her eyes, she saw it was Mary.
“Is he dead?” Jane asked, struggling for calm, her voice low and husky.
“Yes.”
Her breath was torn from her in a brutal rush. “Oh, God,” she g
asped. Dead. Her father was dead. Shot.
She could barely understand the truth of it.
“I could not stop the blood,” the barmaid said.
Jane closed her eyes. Opened them again. Her father was still there, sprawled across the cold, stone floor. She stared at him, her thoughts in turmoil, and through it came a prayer that he had not suffered, that he had died quickly, that he would be forgiven for his sins. Perhaps he was at peace now. She hoped for that. And she hoped that her mother was there to greet him, to find the goodness in him... surely there had been some goodness....
Her mother had loved him. Hadn’t she?
Jane choked on a sob.
One of the men turned at the sound, and glanced in their direction. His eyes were a deep turquoise blue, set in a lined, weathered face, his brows thick and silvered. No recognition dawned on his face as he studied her, for he did not know her. But she knew him. Squire Craddick. She had stepped to the side of the road many a time over the years so he could ride past.
“I’d thought there was only one of you.” He frowned, and shook his head, bemused. “Well, I’ll ask that you both wait here. You were the last to see these men alive, to hear what conversation took place between them, and I’ll have questions for you in a moment or two.”
He turned away once more.
The way he moved made her certain: it had been Squire Craddick that Aidan had met on the Bodmin Road the night he had ridden off and left her alone. The night Gaby was shot.
They were together in this, Aidan and the squire, together in this plan of vengeance.
Or were they? Even in her distraught state, Jane saw the fallacy of her logic, and a new terror jabbed at her. They might be together in their hunt for wreckers, but not in Aidan’s hunt for revenge.
Had Aidan killed her father? Was it Aidan the squire was after?
Clasping her hands in her lap, Jane rocked slowly forward and back. She could not tear her gaze from her father’s face. His eyes were shut, his complexion gray and waxy.
She reached out with a trembling hand, thinking to smooth his hair, but stilled before she touched him. A sharp, wrenching pain twisted through her.
With all she knew of her father now, of the things he had done and the marks on his soul, what was she to feel? What was she to think? There was only a vast and barren wretchedness in her heart.
No, that was not true, for smoldering in a secret corner was the clean, cold relief that neither of the dead men lying before her was Aidan Warrick.
Jane lifted her gaze to Mary. “What happened here?”
“’Twas a terrible thing,” Mary said, staring down at her hands where they yet pressed on Gideon’s chest. Then, as though she finally understood the futility of her efforts, she drew them away at last.
“That one”—Mary jerked her chin toward Digory’s still form—“came looking for money. He was wild-eyed, and kept glancing about as though he expected someone to be behind him. They argued, him and Gideon, and he threatened your father. Said he’d tell everyone the truth, but he never said the truth of what.” Her words were barely above a whisper, but they flowed quickly, in testament to her pressing need to set them free.
Dread reared in Jane’s heart. The truth about the company of wreckers and smugglers, the identity of the leader of the vile band.
Had the monster been Digory Tubb, or her own father?
All this time, Aidan had planned to place false evidence to see her father convicted of a crime he did not commit. What tragic and ghastly irony that in all likelihood, her father would ultimately have condemned himself by his own actions. She could only imagine that if the Squire and his men had come in time to stop the killings, Digory would have turned on her father and marked him guilty to save his own skin.
She drew a shuddering breath. “They shot each other?”
“No, no.” Mary shook her head, her eyes dull. “That is the strangeness. That one there... Dig, your father called him… put a pistol ball in your father, and then your father’s friend put a ball in him.” Mary jutted her chin toward Digory’s body.
Jane stared at her for a long moment, unable to string her thoughts together to form a coherent chain. She felt numb and heavy, as though she swam through mud, and a terrible lethargy tugged at her.
Her father was dead. Shot by Digory Tubb, who was himself then shot by… “My father’s friend?”
“You know him. He’s been here at least twice before. I remember because he tried to steal me away, told me there’d be a place for me at the New Inn,” Mary said.
Joss Gossin.
She had seen him outside only moments ago. He’d hovered at the edge of the crowd, then disappeared from view.
“An odd one, he is. And cruel,” Mary continued. “He said something about two perfect scapegoats, and then he laughed while he shot Dig dead. Then he said something about one less share to carve from the whole.”
One less share...
Of course. Joss Gossin led the wreckers. The realization was so simple, so sensible, she could summon neither shock nor surprise. Perhaps her heart was frozen.
“Why did he let you live?”
Mary shook her head. “Didn’t know I was here. I hid outside the door. Pressed my back to the wall and didn’t dare even breathe.”
“Did you tell the squire all of this?” Jane asked.
“Not yet. I tried. But he bid me wait my turn.” Mary gave a strange little laugh. “He has spent the last minutes discussing the pistols that fired the shots, while your father lies cold on the floor.”
Jane glanced at Squire Craddick. She opened her mouth, about to rise, to tell him that Joss Gossin had escaped, that he had tricked them all by blending with the crowd. In that instant there came a loud commotion from the common room, and the squire stalked toward the front of the inn.
“Wait,” Jane called, but he paid her no mind, and her efforts to rise were hindered by her lame leg.
“They’re mad, aren’t they?” Mary said. “Leaving us here with two dead men.” She gave a dark and ugly laugh. “Waiting for their pleasure in finding the time to ask me what I saw and heard.”
Mary heaved a sigh and set the bloodied cloth on the floor. Her hands shook, and she clasped them tight, then jerked to her feet. She ladled water from the bucket into a basin and began to scrub her hands.
“Don’t bother to try and tell him a thing,” she said, glaring in the direction the squire had taken, her tone angry now. “I tried. I did. Twice. He’ll listen only when he’s ready.”
Pressing her hand to the wall, Jane rose with measured care, and made her way to the barmaid’s side.
“I’m glad you’re safe,” she said.
“First time I found my good luck.” Mary gave a hollow laugh. “My husband was in a mood, and so I was late. Came rushing up the road just in time to see your Mr. Warrick leave. A frightening one, he is. Handsome as the devil, and twice as heartless, I’d wager.”
“Leave?” Jane echoed. “Mr. Warrick was here? And he left? Before Digory came?” Her first instinct was relief. It surged past her fresh grief and horror. Here was her proof that Aidan had left the Crown Inn alive.
Then she thought on the oddity of it. From Mary’s account, he had left before her father was shot. He had left the inn without bearing witness to his vengeance, without hiding the barrels to be found on her father’s premises.
Had he arrived too late to hide them?
That made little sense, for he had departed Trevisham more than two hours ago. Yet, the squire’s men had found no hidden bounty. She shook her head, confused. “Tell me again the order of events.”
Mary shrugged. “I came to the kitchen door, with a thought to slip in and spare myself your father’s temper. But they were already arguing, your father and that one who shot him”—again she jutted her chin toward Digory’s body—“and I waited beside the open door. Heard the whole of it. Saw it, too. Saw your father shot, and then his killer killed….”
“By Joss Goss
in.”
Mary nodded.
“Where did Joss go then?” Jane asked.
“Along the hall and out the front. Just before your Mr. Warrick came in the back.”
Jane frowned at that. “I thought you said Mr. Warrick left before my father was killed.”
“He did. And then he came back. He knelt by your father as he breathed his last; heard his dying words, same as me.”
Jane trembled and tears stung her eyes. It suddenly crashed in on her, all that had happened and come to pass. The weight of it was terrible, choking the breath from her and clutching a tight fist about her heart.
“What were they? My father’s last words?” Jane asked in a pained whisper.
Mary pressed her lips together.
“Please,” Jane said. “Tell me. Even if they were terrible, I need to know.”
Mary sighed. “Your father looked straight at Mr. Warrick and he said the strangest thing. He said that they were paid up right and even. An eye for an eye. He said, ‘Don’t think you are blameless, my handsome. It were a man from your crew what killed my wife and made the gel a cripple.’” Mary sent an apologetic look at Jane. “That’s what he said.”
Mary’s words droned in Jane’s thoughts, louder, louder.
It could not be.
What bitter and cruel fate would do this?
She could not breathe, her throat closed against the air, and her chest bound in iron. She lurched away, feeling sick, a new grief assaulting her.
A man from Aidan’s crew.
The smuggler who had led to the events that stole both the full use of her limb and her mother’s life. Bitter bile clawed up from her gut.
He was a man from Aidan’s crew.
She could not bear to think that ’twas all part of Aidan’s vengeance. Her ruined limb. Her mother’s death. That he had known it all along. Orchestrated it as torment for her father.
Could he have been so cruel?
She had lived all this time with Gideon Heatherington, willfully blind to what he truly was. Could she be guilty of blinding herself to the worst of Aidan’s flaws, as well?