Letter from a Dead Man

by Dawn Harris

  The nuncheon consisted of various cold meats, the turkey being particularly delicious. There were cold pies, of pheasant and pigeon, along with a vast array of salads, cheese cakes, apricot tarts, an orange cream, a blancmange, and various fruits, including a whole pineapple. It was altogether as convivial a meal as I could recall. Even Aunt Thirza seemed to be enjoying herself, and when Giles mentioned that Mr Reevers was to be his groomsman at the wedding, she spent some time enlightening that gentleman on his forthcoming duties.

  At one point I turned to Piers, and searching for a suitable topic to discuss with him, asked if he was fond of riding.

  ‘I like to be out in the fresh air,’ he said. ‘Riding, walking or sketching.’

  ‘Well, the Island offers many excellent subjects. Although I’ve never been able to do them justice myself.’

  ‘You sketch, ma’am?’

  I smiled faintly. ‘I have tried, but the sad truth is, I cannot draw. I’m sure you will do very much better.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said, and became silent again. I asked which London hotel he’d stayed at, and he replied, ‘Grillons, ma’am.’

  ‘I hear it’s a excellent hotel,’ I commented, hoping to draw him out.

  ‘Yes. Everything is of the finest.’

  There was a hint of sarcasm in his voice, which puzzled me. Vincent seemed unaware of it and said, ‘While we were there, my friend who keeps me informed of events in England, showed me the newspaper accounts of the yachting accident ----’ His voice began to break, and he put a hand over his eyes. ‘Forgive me – I—’

  Lucie’s soft heart was touched. ‘There is nothing to forgive, Mr Saxborough.’

  ‘Dear child,’ he murmured, still distressed. ‘I could not believe it, you see. First my brother’s accident, and then Thomas-----’ Reaching for his glass, he drained it. ‘Not that I knew Thomas well. He was away at school when Cuthbert and I quarrelled. Poor Cuthbert,’ he sighed. ‘I always hoped that one day we would be on good terms again. And now it’s too late.’ When he looked up, I saw tears in his eyes. ‘Still, he did reach his three score years and ten, whereas Thomas cannot have been more than ---’ He stopped and calculated.

  ‘He was just forty,’ Giles sighed.

  ‘That’s only thirteen years younger than myself. I had not realised.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘His son too. A mere boy, with his whole life before him. And to die in such a way.’

  Every line on Vincent’s face was etched with sorrow, unlike Piers, who seemed not to care one jot, either for those who had died, or the family members still living on the Island. It wasn’t so unreasonable when he’d never known any of them. He obviously felt out of place here, and I suspected, if he had any say in the matter, they would not stay long at Ledstone.

  After nuncheon, Marguerite, my aunt and Lucie announced their intention of retiring to her sitting room to discuss wedding arrangements. Giles looked at me, ‘What would like to do, Drusilla?’

  Knowing he and Mr Reevers were taking Vincent and Piers on a tour of the estate, I said cheerfully, ‘Come with you, of course.’

  Vincent was rather taken aback. ‘Do you not intend to join the other ladies?’

  I shook my head. ‘I would much prefer to ride.’

  ‘But are you not a little fatigued after your nuncheon?’

  I smiled. ‘It is not eating I find tiring, Mr Saxborough, but inactivity.’

  When the men went off to change into riding clothes, I murmured to Marguerite, ‘You seem to be getting on famously with Vincent.’

  ‘Well you see Drusilla, he makes me laugh. And nothing is too much trouble for him.’

  ‘What you mean is, he spoils you.’

  She giggled. ‘Yes. Isn’t it wonderful!’

  I went up to the room allotted to the Westfleet ladies, to put on my hat. This was soon accomplished, and picking up my riding gloves and whip, I was taking a short cut via a rather dark corridor when I almost bumped into a servant. He bowed, mumbled an apology and would have walked on, if I hadn’t stopped him.

  ‘I don’t know you, do I? Are you new here?’ He looked to be in his early twenties, tall and slim, with brown hair, and was very neatly dressed.

  ‘I’m Wistow, your ladyship. Mr Vincent’s valet.’

  ‘Oh I see,’ I smiled. ‘I should have guessed.’ I asked how long he had been with Vincent, and on learning it was five years, commented, ‘Then you were with him in America?’

  He admitted it, and I asked if he’d enjoyed the experience. ‘It was most interesting, but I am happy to be back in England again.’

  ‘You have family here?’

  ‘In London,’ he said. ‘A father and a sister.’

  He spoke particularly well for a man of his years and station, a fact I casually mentioned to Vincent while we waited for the others to join us in the hall. ‘Oh yes, he’s a most superior being. I have to pay him a quite exorbitant salary to prevent him going elsewhere.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘His father is one of the most sought after valets in London ma’am, and Wistow was trained by him. He’s quite indispensable to me.’

  Everything about Vincent, the clothes, the expensive valet, his confident manner, all pointed to him being a very rich man. And none of that would have happened, I reflected, if Cuthbert hadn’t assisted him in the beginning. I was glad for Marguerite’s sake that Cuthbert had done at least one thing in his life to help someone else.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The other gentleman soon joined us and from a remark Piers made, it became clear he preferred shooting to riding round the estate. Giles, ever the good host, said he would take a gun out with Piers, if Mr Reevers and I accompanied Vincent.

  ‘Unless,’ he suggested to Vincent, ‘you wish to go shooting too.’

  Piers sniggered. ‘Papa does not care for sport.’

  ‘Very true,’ Vincent agreed affably. ‘I should like to see the estate, however.’

  Mr Reevers offered, ‘I’ll take Piers shooting, Giles. I could do with some practice.’

  Observing the look that passed between Giles and Mr Reevers, and aware that Giles enjoyed shooting, I urged, ‘Why don’t you both go? I should be happy to accompany Mr Saxborough.’

  Giles protested politely, but as I knew Ledstone almost as well as he did, and Vincent had grown up here, he soon gave way. That being settled, the others headed for the gun-room. As Vincent and I waited for the horses to be brought up from the stables, I inquired casually, ‘You do not care for shooting, Mr Saxborough?’

  ‘No, Lady Drusilla. I have never enjoyed the sight of blood. Either human, or animal. It may not be quite the thing to make such an admission, especially to a lady, but I once had to be revived with sal volatile after witnessing a horse being put down.’

  I hardly knew what to say. Few men would openly confess to what most people would consider a weakness, at least not on so short an acquaintance, yet he had done so with that same lack of awkwardness he had shown in taking up his natural place at Ledstone Place again. I saw he was watching me in amusement.

  ‘I could have made up some excuse as to why I do not shoot, but a discerning woman like yourself would have quickly seen through it. I believe you and I both prefer plain speaking.’ Amused by his quick and accurate reading of my character, I countered, ‘Mr Saxborough, I have watched you captivate my godmother, behave with fatherly charm to Lucie, and in a suitably serious manner with my aunt. Tell me, is there any kind of woman you cannot beguile?’

  Vincent threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘My dear Lady Drusilla, it is that very diversity in women that I find so fascinating. And a lady as intelligent and refreshingly honest as yourself is a rare joy.’

  Smiling, I shook my head at this amusing and charming man, whose company I was already beginning to enjoy, and as we toured the estate, I took the opportunity to ask about his wife.

  ‘I lost her when Piers was four,’ he sighed. ‘She nursed Piers through a fever, then fell a victim to it
herself. She was gone within a week. I believe I would have followed her but for-----’ He broke off and brushed a hand across his eyes.

  I murmured softly, ‘Piers must have been a great consolation to you.’

  Composing himself, he said, ‘I had him educated in England as his mother wished. By then, thanks to the money Cuthbert sent me, I was well on my way to becoming a rich man.’ And he acknowledged, ‘I have much to be grateful for.’

  When we reached the place where the East gate had been, he gazed down the long straight track, as if picturing his brother riding along it on that fateful day. I said nothing about the gate being closed after Cuthbert’s death, as I had no real proof.

  Vincent turned to me. ‘So you found him, ma’am. A nasty shock for a lady.’

  ‘A nasty shock for anyone, Mr Saxborough.’

  ‘Most ladies of my acquaintance would have swooned on the spot.’

  I pointed out reasonably, ‘That would not have helped the situation.’ Remarking casually that I had never fainted in my life.

  ‘Never, ma’am?’ he repeated, raising his brows in surprise. I laughed. ‘People who faint are invariably taken off to lie down upon their beds, and I wouldn’t like that at all. I might miss something important. In any case I had to get word to Ledstone.’

  He nodded . ‘What happened to Cuthbert’s horse? Has it been sold?’

  ‘It got caught up in a thicket and broke a leg. Giles had to put the poor thing down.’

  ‘Giles eh?’ He shuddered. ‘He’s a braver man than me. I would have sent a groom to do it.’ As we rode slowly up the track, he said, ‘This has been a dreadful time for my family. Still, Giles is an excellent young man. He and Lucie will bring the Saxboroughs about again.’

  Arriving back at the house, we joined the others in the drawing room, where Giles remarked that Piers was as fine a shot as Mr Reevers, or himself. As Giles was an expert, I eyed Piers with respect.

  Giles, who had arranged an outing for my aunt’s birthday on Friday, invited Vincent and Piers to join us. He hoped to distract my aunt from worrying about my uncle, at least for a short time, and wanting to intrigue her, had refused to say where we were going. When Vincent tried to prise the information out of him, I laughed. ‘He won’t tell you, Mr Saxborough. Giles never divulges secrets.’

  With the time of the expedition settled, Giles and Lucie wandered off together, Marguerite began to talk animatedly to Vincent, while my aunt seemed set on dragging Piers out of his shell. At which point Mr Reevers begged me to accompany him to the Long Gallery to enlighten him about the family portraits. ‘Frankly ma’am, I can’t tell one ancestor from another, and Giles says you know more about them than anyone.’

  On reaching the Long Gallery, he first pointed to a picture of a tall, blond-haired man in doublet and hose. ‘He’s a rum looking character, I must say. Who is he? Some local villain?’

  I laughed. ‘I must beg you to show some respect, Mr Reevers.’ And I indicated the ring on the man’s finger, given to him by Queen Elizabeth, along with the Ledstone estates. ‘This is your most revered ancestor. The one who built Ledstone Place. You must have seen the painting of William in the drawing room, the one with his wife and seven daughters----’

  ‘The man with the evil eyes? Is that William? I wouldn’t like to meet him on a dark night.’ He peered closely at the painting in front of him. ‘He doesn’t look so bad in this one.’

  ‘He was much younger then.’

  ‘Before he did away with his first wife eh?’

  ‘Oh, so you do know something about your forebears.’

  ‘Everyone in the family knows about William.’

  Hearing voices, we looked round to see Giles and Lucie coming towards us. When Lucie saw which ancestor we were looking at, she gave an involuntary shiver, and I couldn’t resist teasing, ‘Did Giles tell you why William rid himself of his first wife?’

  ‘Well - no,’ she admitted uncertainly, glancing at him.

  ‘He’s afraid you wouldn’t marry him if you knew,’ I said, tongue-in-cheek.

  Giles was grinning and Lucie looked from him to me, her cornflower blue eyes every bit as innocent and enchanting as her nature. ‘Whatever do you mean, Drusilla?’

  ‘Well, it was on account of her only producing daughters,’ I explained, trying to keep a straight face. Mr Reevers choked back a laugh, but Lucie’s eyes widened with horror that any man would murder his wife for such a reason.

  Giles squeezed Lucie’s hand. ‘I’ll be more than delighted with seven daughters, if they’re all as beautiful as their mother.’

  She smiled up at him, her cheeks flushed pink, then turned to me. ‘How did William get away with it?’

  ‘According to William she died of a fever on a visit to France, but there’s no tombstone in the village where he said she was buried, nor any record of her death that father and I could find.’

  Lucie’s eyes grew rounder. ‘You went there?’

  ‘Father believed in getting to the truth.’ So did I for that matter. ‘That’s why the book took us so long.’

  Her hand flew up to her mouth. ‘Is it all in his book?’ Smiling indulgently at her, I nodded. ‘I did mean to read it, truly I did. Whatever must you think of me?’ One look at Giles’s face told me what he thought of his future wife.

  Amused, I said, ‘I think you would rather read a novel.’ Adding affectionately that it would be very boring if everyone liked the same things. ‘Still William’s plan misfired. His second wife produced another three daughters.’ Directing them to a painting of all seven girls, I recounted that two had died in childhood, one of consumption at twenty, and one in childbirth. ‘Only one survived beyond forty.’

  Lucie said, ‘I suppose people didn’t live so long in those days.’

  ‘Not when William was around,’ Giles declared in jocular fashion. ‘But his descendants were a dull lot. All very law abiding.’

  She looked so cast down, Mr Reevers teased, ‘In my opinion, ma’am, one murderer should be quite sufficient for any respectable family? Two would seem a trifle excessive.’

  An infectious giggle escaped her, then she asked me wistfully, ‘Are you certain they were all honourable, Drusilla?’ When I nodded, she looked so disappointed, I murmured provocatively, ‘Well, unless you count Giles’s plan to become a smuggler.’

  Instantly Giles said, ‘If we’re ever short of money, I could always--------’ Laughing, Lucie pushed him playfully and he caught her within his arm, smiling down into her eyes. And I thought I had never seen two happier people.

  We studied the more interesting portraits of William’s descendants. His pretty granddaughter who married a lord; his great, great, grandson, Cuthbert’s father, who wore a black patch over the eye he lost after a bizarre accident with a barrel of a gun, and the portrait of Cuthbert with Marguerite, Thomas and Giles, painted about twenty years ago. It was a good likeness of Cuthbert in particular, the artist having captured the expression of unapologetic superiority I had seen so often on his face.

  Giles and Lucie were soon chucking over a picture of his great Aunt Imelda, who bore an uncanny resemblance to one of the horses in the Ledstone stables. Mr Reevers went to see what they were laughing at, while I moved on to a portrait of young Tom, done two years ago. Tears misted my eyes as I thought of how cruelly his life had been cut short, and I knew I wouldn’t rest until I found out the truth about his death.

  Returning to Westfleet later, I studied the charts in the workroom, but saw no answers to the questions in my mind. If only I’d known then what I needed to look for.

  In the morning, Lucie went to Ledstone for the day, while my aunt and I had a long discussion about the wedding arrangements. That afternoon, shortly after my aunt had gone to visit a friend, Mr Reevers called, inviting me to go riding. I accepted happily, for riding with a man who did not treat me as if I was made of china, or needed a rest every ten minutes, was a rare pleasure. Mudd accompanied us, and riding up Manor Lane to the Downs, I inquir
ed civilly after the Ledstone visitors, remarking that my godmother seemed to be enjoying Vincent’s company.

  ‘Well, she has certainly stopped referring to him as the black sheep of the family.’

  ‘Ah, but black sheep are never boring. Unlike some worthy relatives.’

  Mr Reevers arched one of his bushy eyebrows provocatively. ‘Are you thinking of any worthy relative in particular?’

  I choked at the implied reference to my aunt, and saw his eyes were brimming with laughter. It was odd how things has changed between us. That disastrous start, where his carelessness had caused me to land in those nettles, was all but forgotten. I couldn’t say when I had started to like him, or even why I did, except there was a strength of character in his face I hadn’t noticed in the beginning. And he made me laugh. An all too rare quality. Most men I met seemed not to possess a sense of humour.

  After a brisk gallop over Luckton Down, we returned by way of the coast in the direction of Dittistone. Riding along the cliff top at Hokewell Bay, I mentioned this had been my father’s favourite beach, and he asked if I still went there.

  ‘I do,’ I said, ‘though not as often as before.’

  The tide was well out, and he glanced at me. ‘Would you do me the honour of walking with me on the beach? Or would your aunt disapprove?’

  ‘She would insist on Mudd attending us.’

  ‘Would she,’ he murmured in a droll tone. ‘Ah, but someone has to look after the horses.’

  He dismounted and handed the reins to Mudd, before turning to assist me. Leaving the horses to Mudd’s care, we walked towards the chine behind Smiths’ farm, where Mr Reevers inquired, ‘Are you able to clamber down, or shall I carry you?’

  I remarked lightly, ‘What would you do if I took you up on your offer?’

  He smiled down at me, an amused glint in his eyes. ‘Frankly, I’d be in the suds! But as you know the beach well, I felt fairly safe. And I was counting too on your dislike of being treated as a helpless female.’

  I laughed, enjoying this lighthearted banter. ‘Are you always so barefaced?’