Death at Dawn

by Caro Peacock

  ‘Bonjour, madam.’

  The accent was so obviously English that I answered, ‘Good afternoon, sir.’

  He blinked, came forward a few steps and glanced towards the gravediggers.

  ‘Do you happen to know whom they are burying over there?’ he said.

  It was not a bad voice in itself, low and educated. But there was something about the way he said it that made me sure I’d seen him before, and I went cold.

  ‘Thomas Jacques Lane.’ I tried to say it calmly, just as a piece of information, but saw a change in his eyes. So I added, ‘My father.’

  ‘Do I then have the honour of addressing Miss Liberty Lane?’

  ‘You were watching me,’ I said. ‘This morning on the sands, it was you watching me.’

  He didn’t deny it, just asked another question.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘As you see, arranging my father’s burial.’

  He said nothing. I sensed I’d caught him off balance, and he wasn’t accustomed to that.

  ‘You knew him, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘It was you who sent me that note.’

  I’d guessed right about his watching me, so this was only a step further.

  ‘What note?’

  He sounded genuinely puzzled.

  ‘That lying note, telling me he’d been killed in a duel, ordering me to wait at Dover.’

  ‘I sent you no such note. But if you were at Dover, you should never have left there. Go back. I tell you that as your father’s friend.’

  All my misery and shock centred on this black stick of a man.

  ‘There was only one person in the world who had the right to give orders to me, and he’s lying over there. And you, sir, are lying too – only far less honourably.’

  I was glad to see a twitch of the tight skin over his cheekbones that might have been anger, but he mastered it.

  ‘How have I lied to you?’

  ‘Did you not write me that note? My father would never in his life have fought a duel, and anybody who knew him must know that.’

  He looked at me, frowning as if I were some problem in arithmetic proving more difficult than expected.

  ‘There has clearly been some misunderstanding. I wrote you no note.’

  ‘Who are you? What do you know about my father’s death?’

  He stared at me, still frowning. I was aware of somebody shouting a little way off, but did not give it much attention.

  ‘I think it would be best,’ he said at last, ‘if you permitted me to escort you back to Dover. You surely have relatives who –’

  ‘Why don’t you answer my questions?’

  ‘They will be answered. Only for the while I must appeal to you to have patience. In times of danger, patience and steadfastness are the best counsel.’

  ‘How dare you sermonise me. I have a right to know –’

  Two men were coming towards us along the path from the cemetery gates. A four-horse coach was waiting there, but it didn’t look like a funeral coach and neither of them had the air of mourners. One was dressed in what looked like a military uniform – buff breeches and highly polished boots, jacket in royal blue, frogged with gold braid – although it was no uniform I recognised. The other appeared to be a coachman and had brought his driving whip with him. The man in black seemed too absorbed in the problem I presented to hear their heavy footsteps on the gravel path.

  ‘Is this man bothering you, missy?’

  The hail from the man in the blue jacket was loud and cheerful, with tones of hunting fields in the shires. I thought he was probably some English traveller who had happened to be driving past. His hearty chivalry was an annoying interruption and I was preparing, as politely as could be managed, to tell him not to interfere, but there was no time. The man in black spun round.

  ‘You!’

  ‘Introduce me to the lady.’

  ‘I’ll see you in hell first.’

  Both the words and the cold fury were so unexpected from the man in black that I just stood there, blinking and staring. Unfortunately, that gave the hearty man his chance.

  ‘Such language before a lady. Don’t worry, missy, you come with us and we’ll see you safe.’

  He stepped forward and actually put a hand on my sleeve.

  ‘On no account go with him,’ the man in black shouted.

  I shook off the hand. It came back instantly, more heavily.

  ‘Oh, but we really must insist.’

  Laughter as well as hunting-field heartiness in the voice. I tried to grab my arm back, but the fingers tightened painfully.

  ‘Let her go at once,’ said the man in black.

  He advanced towards us, apparently intent on attacking the hearty man, who must have been around thirty years younger and three or four stone heavier. It would be an unequal contest, but at least it should give me a chance to pull away and run. But the hearty man didn’t slacken his hold on my arm. He jerked his chin towards the coachman, who immediately grabbed the man in black, left arm round his windpipe like a fairground wrestler, and lifted his feet off the ground. The man fought back more effectively than I’d expected, driving the heel of his shoe hard into the coachman’s knee. The coachman howled and dropped him and the whip. The man in black got up and took a step towards us, seemingly still intent on tearing me free from the hearty man. But the coachman didn’t give him a second chance. He grabbed the man by his jacket and twirled him round. As he spun, the coachman landed a punch like a kick from a carthorse on the side of his bony temple. The man in black fell straight as a plank. He must have been unconscious before he hit the gravel path because he just lay there, eyes closed, face several shades more grey.

  ‘I hope you haven’t gone and killed him,’ the hearty man said to the coachman, still keeping a tight hold on my arm.

  ‘Let me go at once,’ I said.

  I’m sure there were many more appropriate emotions I should have been feeling, but the main one was annoyance that my man should have been silenced before I extracted any answers from him. At this point, I still regarded the hearty man as a rough but well-intentioned meddler and simply wanted him to go away.

  ‘Oh, we can’t leave a young English lady at the mercy of ruffians in a foreign country. We’ll see you safely back to your friends.’

  He assumed, I supposed, that I had a party waiting for me back in town. More to make him release his grip on my arm than anything, I accepted.

  ‘Well, you may take me back to the centre of town if you insist. My friends are at Quillac’s.’

  I named the first hotel that came into my head.

  ‘Are they now? Well, let’s escort you back to them.’

  He let go of my arm and bowed politely for me to go first. The coachman picked up his whip.

  ‘What about him?’ I said, looking down at the man in black. His eyes were still closed but the white shirt over his narrow chest was stirred by shallow breaths.

  ‘He’ll live. Or if he doesn’t, at least he’s in the right place.’

  We walked along the path to the carriage at the gates, the hearty man almost treading on my heels, the coachman’s heavy steps close behind him. It was an expensive travelling carriage, newly lacquered, the kind of thing that a gentleman might order for a long journey on the Continent. Perhaps they’d left in a hurry because there was an oval frame with gold leaves round it painted on the door, ready for a coat of arms to go inside, but it had been left blank. The team were four powerful dark bays, finely matched. There was a boy standing at the horses’ heads dressed in gaiters and corduroy jacket, not livery. The coachman climbed up on the box at the front and the boy pulled down the steps to let us in. The hearty man gave an over-elaborate bow, suggesting I should go first.

  ‘You might at least introduce yourself,’ I said. In truth, I was still reluctant and wanted to gain time.

  ‘I apologise. Harry Trumper, at your service.’

  I didn’t quite believe him. It was said like a man in a play.

/>   ‘My name is Liberty Lane.’

  ‘We knew that, didn’t we?’

  He was talking to somebody inside the coach.

  ‘How?’

  ‘We knew your father.’

  It seemed unlikely that my clever, unconventional father would have wasted time with this young squire. As for the man inside, I could only make him out in profile. It was curiosity that took me up the three steps to the inside of the coach. The man who called himself Harry Trumper followed. The boy folded up the steps, closed the door and – judging by the jolt – took up his place outside on the back. The harness clinked, the coachman said ‘hoy hoy’ to the horses, and we were away.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  There was a smell about the man inside the carriage. An elderly smell of stale port wine, snuff and candlewax. My nose took exception to it even as my eyes were still trying to adapt themselves to the half-darkness. The man who called himself Harry Trumper had arranged things so that he and I were sitting side by side with our backs to the horses, the other man facing us with a whole seat to himself. As my sight cleared, I could see that he needed it. It was not so much that he was corpulent – though indeed he was that – more that his unwieldy body spread out like a great toad’s, with not enough in the way of bone or sinew to control its bulk. His face was like a suet pudding, pale and shiny, with two mean raisins for eyes, topped with a knitted grey travelling cap. The eyes were staring at me over a tight little mouth. He seemed not to like what he saw.

  ‘Miss Lane, may I introduce …’

  Before Trumper could finish, the fat man held up a hand to stop him. The hand bulged in its white silk glove like a small pudding in a cloth.

  ‘Were you not told to stay at Dover?’

  He rumbled the words at me as if they’d been hauled from the depths of his stomach.

  ‘The note,’ I said. ‘Did you write it, then?’

  ‘I wrote you no note.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  By my side, Trumper burbled something about not accusing a gentleman of lying. I turned on him.

  ‘You said you knew my father. What happened to him?’

  ‘He took something that didn’t belong to him,’ Trumper said.

  I think I’d have hit him, only another rumble from the fat man distracted me.

  ‘I said I wrote you no note. That is true, but if it matters to you, the note was written on my instructions. As soon as I knew of your father’s misfortune, I sent a man back to England with the sole purpose of finding you and saving you unnecessary distress.’

  But there was no concern for anybody’s distress in the eyes that watched my face unblinkingly.

  ‘He hated duels,’ I said. ‘He’d never in his life have fought a duel.’

  ‘Sometimes a man has no choice,’ Trumper said.

  The fat man paid no attention to him, his eyes still on me.

  ‘That is beside the point. Tell me, did your father communicate with you at all when he was in Paris or Dover?’

  Why I answered his question instead of asking my own, I don’t know, unless those eyes and that voice had a kind of mesmeric force.

  ‘He wrote me a letter from Paris to say he was coming home.’

  There was no reason not to tell him. Even talking about my father seemed a way of fighting them. Trumper sat up, feet to the floor, face turned greedily to mine. The fat man leaned forward.

  ‘What did your father say in this letter?’

  I was more cautious now.

  ‘He said he’d enjoyed meeting some friends in Paris, but was looking forward to being back in England.’

  ‘Gentlemen friends or women friends?’ said Trumper, eager as a terrier at a rat hole.

  The fat man looked at him with some contempt, but let him take over the questioning.

  ‘Gentlemen friends,’ I said.

  ‘Did he mention any women?’

  The eagerness of Trumper’s question, practically panting with his tongue hanging out, made me feel that my father’s memory was being dirtied. In defence of him, I told the truth.

  ‘He mentioned that he’d met an unfortunate woman who needed his charity.’

  And realised, from the look on Trumper’s face and a shifting in the fat man’s weight that made the carriage tilt sidewards, that I’d made a mistake.

  ‘Did he mention a name?’ Trumper said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Or any more about her?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What did he propose to do about her?’

  His letter had implied quite clearly that he was bringing her back to London with him.

  ‘I really don’t know,’ I said. ‘It was only a casual mention of her.’

  ‘She’s lying.’ The fat man growled it without particular enmity, as if he expected people to lie. ‘He was bringing her back to England with him, wasn’t he, miss?’

  ‘It seems you know more than I do, so why do you ask me?’

  ‘He abducted her from Paris. We know that, so you need not trouble yourself to lie about it.’

  ‘My father would not take away any woman against her will.’

  ‘Did he write to you from Calais?’

  ‘No. That letter from Paris was his last.’

  ‘Are you carrying it with you?’

  ‘No!’

  From the fat man’s stare, I expected him to order Trumper to search me there and then, and shrank back in the corner of the seat.

  ‘Did he tell you to meet the woman at Dover?’

  ‘No, of course not. I was waiting to meet him, only he didn’t even know it.’

  ‘Do you know where he lodged in Calais?’

  It heartened me that their inquiries round Calais must have been as fruitless as mine.

  ‘No. Not at any of the big hotels, I know that much.’

  ‘So do we,’ Trumper said, rather wearily.

  The horses were moving at a fast trot now, the well-sprung carriage almost floating along. There was something I hadn’t noticed until then, with the shock and the questioning.

  ‘This isn’t the way back to Calais.’

  ‘It’s a better road,’ Trumper said.

  I didn’t know enough about the area to contradict him, but I edged forward in my seat, trying to see out of the window. We were stirring up such clouds of dust that I couldn’t make out much more than the outlines of bushes. A look passed between the two men. Trumper pulled down the window and shouted something to the coachman that I couldn’t hear above the sound of wheels and hooves. The whip cracked and the rhythm of our journey changed as four powerful horses stretched out in a canter. I’d never travelled so fast before. Trumper hastily shut the window as a cloud of white dust blew up round us. I reached for the door handle. I don’t know whether I’d have been capable of flinging myself out at such a speed, but there was no chance to tell, because Trumper’s heavy hand clamped mine and forced it down on my lap.

  ‘Sit still. We’re not doing you any harm.’

  ‘Please take me back to Calais at once.’

  ‘You must understand …’ Trumper said. He had both of my hands now and was trying so hard to keep them held down that he was pressing them between my thighs. When I struggled it made things worse. The sweat was running down his forehead. He kept glancing over at the fat man, as if for approval, but the suety face watched impassively.

  ‘We are only trying to protect you,’ Trumper pleaded. ‘You saw what happened back in the graveyard. You wouldn’t stay in Dover as you were told, so all we intend is to take you somewhere safe until the trouble your father’s stirred up settles down again.’

  ‘Take me where?’

  ‘There’s a nice little house by a lake, very friendly and ladylike, good healthy air. It will set you up nicely.’

  He sounded like some wheedling hotelier. I laughed at him.

  ‘The truth is, you’re kidnapping me.’

  ‘No.
Concern for your safety, that’s all. I’m sure your father would have wanted it.’

  ‘My family will miss me. My brother will come after you.’

  ‘Your brother’s in India. You have no close family.’

  This growl from the fat man froze me, both from the bleak truth of it and the fact that this creature knew so much about me. For a while I could do nothing but try to keep back the tears. I suppose Trumper must have felt me relax because he let go of my hands and sat back, though keeping so close to me that I was practically wedged in the corner of the carriage. The horses flew on, sixteen hooves thudding like war drums on the dry road, harness chains jingling crazed carillons. Several times the whip cracked and the coachman shouted, I supposed to warn slower conveyances out of our way. Dust stung my eyes, at least giving me an excuse for tears. Trumper started coughing but the other man seemed unaffected. Then –

  ‘What the hell …?’

  We’d stopped so abruptly that Trumper and I were propelled off our seats and on to the fat man. It was like being flung into a loathsome bolster. Above the unclean smell of it, and Trumper’s curses from floor level, I was aware of things going on outside – loud whinnying, whip cracks and the coachman’s voice, high with alarm, yelling at the horses. The carriage started bouncing and jerked forward several times. Trumper had been trying to claw his way up by hanging on to my skirt. This sent him back to the floor again, but since he still had a handful of skirt, it dragged me down with him. My face was level with the fat man’s belly, a vast bulge of pale breeches, like a sail with the wind behind it.

  There are better uses for your head than employing it as a bludgeon.

  My father’s voice from fifteen years back, on the occasion of a schoolroom quarrel when I’d butted my brother and caused his nose to bleed. I thought, Well, I’m sorry, Father, but even you are not always right, closed my eyes, drew my head back, and used all my strength to propel it like a cannonball towards the bulging belly.