The Sea Between

by Thomas, Carol

  ‘In one of the bedrooms?’ Mrs Henderson echoed, her eyes as wide as dinner plates. Spurred into action at last, Mr Henderson turned towards the door.

  ‘No, wait a minute, Jack! Don’t go empty-handed,’ Mrs Henderson called over her shoulder as she disappeared down the hall. A moment later she emerged from the kitchen carrying a brass-handled poker. ‘Here, take this. It might come in handy,’ she said, thrusting it into her husband’s arms. Jack gave a grunt of agreement, plucked his jacket from the coat-stand, then strode off down the street.

  Ignoring Mrs Henderson’s pleas to her to go inside so she could bar the door, Charlotte stood on the doorstep and refused to budge. Faced with the choice of either locking her out or standing on the step with her, Mrs Henderson armed herself with a furled umbrella and timorously chose the step. Eventually a contingent of four men strode up the street, wielding a motley assortment of makeshift weapons. Halting briefly outside George’s gate, they huddled together to discuss tactics, then two of them filed purposefully through the front door while the other two men fanned around the back to guard the rear of the house. One by one the windows in the house filled with light as lamps were lit, and a long ten minutes later Jack Henderson emerged.

  ‘Oh, here’s Jack coming at last,’ Betsy Henderson said with relief. ‘Now we shall find out how Mr Fairfield is.’

  ‘Good news. He’s all right,’ Jack said, nodding assurances as he strode towards them. ‘He’s taken a hard blow to the back of his skull, but he’s talking sensibly enough.’

  ‘What about the thief?’ Mrs Henderson asked anxiously. ‘Did you apprehend him?’

  Charlotte wasn’t altogether surprised when Mr Henderson shook his head. She had purposely not hit the thief very hard with the jug for fear she might kill him. Added to which he’d had a good ten minutes’ grace to regain his senses and make good his escape before Mr Henderson and the other men had finally gone to search the house.

  ‘Have you sent for the constable, Jack?’ Mrs Henderson asked.

  Jack nodded. ‘Bert Grant has sent one of his sons to fetch him. He told him to go to the hall, too, to inform your brother what’s happened,’ he added, turning to Charlotte. ‘He should be here shortly.’

  She turned to look down the street, but there was no sign of the constable or George. ‘I’d better go back to the house,’ she murmured. ‘Would you mind walking along the street with me, Mr Henderson?’ It was only twenty yards from the Hendersons’ house to George’s, but she felt very shaken up and didn’t like the thought of walking even that short distance on her own.

  ‘Of course,’ Jack said, and offered her his arm.

  As they reached the gate she could hear the sound of male voices in the parlour, among them William’s. He was telling the others what had happened, by the sound of it. As she walked in, followed by Mr Henderson, the conversation came to a sudden halt, and she noticed Mr Grant glance down at the tear in her bodice then look quickly away again. It wasn’t a large tear, but it was large enough to set the cogs of speculation turning. At the moment, though, she was more concerned about William than her reputation. White as a sheet, he was sitting on the sofa holding a towel to the back of his head, and cradling a big pudding basin in his lap. He hadn’t been sick, but he obviously feared he might be.

  ‘Are you all right, William?’ she asked. It was a stupid question, when he clearly wasn’t.

  ‘I’ve felt better,’ he returned, grimacing with pain as he lifted his head to look at her.

  ‘Come and sit down, Miss Blake,’ Jack Henderson said kindly, ushering her across to an armchair. ‘You’re still shaking like a leaf, and no wonder.’

  ‘Can you tell us what happened, Miss Blake?’ enquired Bert Grant. ‘Mr Fairfield remembers hearing a noise and going upstairs to investigate, but that’s about all.’

  William looked across at her expectantly as she sat down. Like the rest of them, he had noticed the rip in her dress.

  Clasping her hands tightly together in her lap to stop them from shaking, she related what had happened. ‘As Mr Fairfield said, we heard a noise and he went upstairs to look around,’ she said. ‘I waited in the kitchen. I could hear him walking around, then I heard a loud thud. I thought he’d knocked something over in the dark, so I went into the hall and called to him, thinking he might have hurt himself. Then I heard him—someone—walk on to the landing and start to come downstairs. I thought it was Mr Fairfield, but it wasn’t, it was…’ She clasped her hands more tightly and swallowed. ‘It was somebody else.’

  ‘You didn’t recognize him?’ Bert Grant asked.

  She shook her head.

  ‘What happened after that?’

  ‘I ran through the kitchen to the back door. I wasn’t quick enough, though, and he caught me before I could unbar it. He said he wanted money, jewellery.’ She reached up to finger the small strip of fabric hanging loose from the tear in her bodice and swallowed again. ‘He ripped my brooch off my dress, then asked me what else there was in the house. All I could think of was George’s deed box that he keeps under the bed. I knew there were a few pounds in it, and I thought if he got that he might be satisfied and go. He made me go upstairs with him and get it for him. It was locked so he started trying to prise it open. While he was bent over it, I picked the water jug up and hit him with it and knocked him out. Then I ran to get Mr Henderson.’

  She looked across at William. Like everyone else, he was staring at her in mute astonishment.

  Jack Henderson was the first to find his voice. ‘So it was you who broke the jug. Well, things are making a bit more sense now. When we found the smashed pieces we thought the thief had hit Mr Fairfield over the head with it, but we couldn’t work out why he’d dragged him into the other bedroom afterwards. Then we realized that that couldn’t have been the case because Mr Fairfield wasn’t wet.’ He turned to look towards the window as voices and brisk footsteps sounded outside on the street.

  Bert Grant stepped over to pull the curtain aside. ‘It’s your brother. I can’t make out who the other man is.’

  ‘The constable probably,’ Jack suggested.

  A minute or so later, George burst into the room. He looked as if he’d run most of the way. Sweat was trickling down his cheeks and dripping off his chin, his face was as red as a beetroot and he was panting like a dog. Behind him, looking almost as hot, was Richard.

  ‘Charlotte—are you all right?’ Gasping for breath, George anxiously appraised his sister’s pale face.

  ‘Just a bit shaken, that’s all,’ she answered.

  He looked her over again, then turned his attention to his partner, who was plainly in a much worse state than his sister.

  As William began to explain to George what had happened and how he’d come by his bleeding head, Richard went over to Charlotte and crouched down beside her chair. ‘Charlotte, are you sure you’re all right? Did he hurt you?’ he asked in a worried voice.

  ‘No, he didn’t hurt me,’ she said, doing her best to keep her voice steady. She met his eyes briefly, then looked away.

  Taking the hint that she didn’t want to talk to him, Richard stood up, introduced himself to Bert Grant and the other three neighbours, then extracted as much information as he could from the four of them about the night’s events. The constable arrived, on foot, at just about the same time as Ann and Eliza arrived in a carriage. Richard went outside to talk to his wife, then briefly returned to say that Eliza was quite distressed and he was taking her home.

  The next hour was taken up by the meticulous documenting of statements. Charlotte’s statement took by far the longest time, not that she was a great deal of help. She’d seen the thief’s face very clearly in the kitchen where the lamp was burning, but seeing it was one thing, describing it was quite another. She did her best, but to be honest her description would have fitted half the men in Lyttelton. The trouble was, the man had no distinguishing features that she could think of. He was just a very ordinary-looking man in his late twenties o
r early thirties. Since he’d made no attempt to hide his face, it was the constable’s guess that he wasn’t a local man. ‘Was he a seaman?’ he suggested.

  ‘Possibly,’ she answered unhelpfully. How was she to know if he was a seaman? Recognizing that this particular avenue of enquiry wasn’t getting very far, the constable moved on to the stolen brooch.

  ‘Describe it,’ he said. ‘We’ll circulate a description to all the pawn shops in Christchurch and tell them to watch out for it. I don’t hold out much hope of recovering it, but you never can tell.’

  She described it.

  ‘It’s unusual. That’s good. It’ll be easy to recognize,’ he said, as he wrote it all down. ‘Any other distinguishing features. Any inscriptions?’

  ‘There’s a name inscribed on the hull of the ship,’ she said. With all the neighbours gone and William safely dispatched home in a carriage, only family were present now, and she could talk more freely, confident that whatever the constable wrote down in his book wouldn’t be relayed all around the town. ‘You can’t read it with the naked eye, but it says Nina,’ she said. ‘And beneath the clasp is my name—Charlotte.’ There was more than just her name there, but she wasn’t prepared to tell the constable the rest of the inscription.

  It was nearly midnight when she finally tumbled into bed. Sleep was a long time in coming, though, and when it did come it was filled with bad dreams. Some about the thief; some about Richard. In one dream, she had dreamed she was sleeping…sleeping not in her bed, but on a stormy sea, her arms wound tightly around her naked body, her hair flying wildly in the wind, waiting for Richard’s ship to come and rescue her. But no ship had come, and she had woken to find the salty wetness on her cheeks was not seawater, but tears.

  Chapter 11

  Richard rolled on to his back and stared at the darkened ceiling. Breathing out a low sigh, he turned his head towards the window, wondering how many more hours there were until dawn. He sighed again and turned his head the other way to look at Eliza. He couldn’t see her face, but he could hear her breath coming low and even in sleep. She was facing away from him, curled up like a cat. He yawned and stared at the ceiling again. He was dog-tired. He hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep since the night of the magic lantern show, the night he’d unexpectedly seen Charlotte again. No, don’t think about her, he told himself. He squeezed his eyes shut in a vain effort to squeeze her out of his mind—it was thinking about her that was keeping him awake.

  The Nina, think about the Nina, he told himself. The image of his ship instantly conjured up the image of a smaller one, forged from silver. He thrust his right leg out of bed and let it fall with a soft whumph on top of the counterpane. The swine, ripping it from her dress like that! Charlotte had put on a brave face, but the thief had frightened her. He had seen it in her eyes, heard it in her voice when she’d spoken. Dragging his leg back into bed, he rolled on to his side and stared at the window again. Fairfield had looked pretty shaken up, too. What exactly is their relationship? he wondered. Fairfield had escorted Charlotte home, but she surely isn’t thinking of marrying him? No, surely not. The man’s an idiot. Fancy going upstairs empty-handed, not even taking a lamp with him! No wonder he got clouted over the head, bloody fool. And having let himself get knocked senseless, he left Charlotte to fend for herself. And fend she had. How many other women would have had the wit or courage to smash a water ewer over the head of an intruder?

  ‘She certainly doesn’t lack mettle,’ he murmured.

  Disturbed by the sound of his voice, Eliza stirred in her sleep. Richard rolled restlessly onto his back and stared at the ceiling again. Lyttelton, both women in Lyttelton. He hadn’t realized that Charlotte was living there. His mother hadn’t mentioned it in any of her letters, not that she’d mentioned Charlotte at all in the few letters he’d received from her. If he’d known Charlotte was in Lyttelton, he would never have bought a property there. As for what he could do about it now…it was hardly fair to uproot Eliza and shift her somewhere else, especially when she’d taken such a liking to Ann and was so delighted with the house. If his mother had shown a little more warmth towards Eliza, and if Eliza had shown a bit more liking for the farm, he might have suggested that Eliza should move here to the farm. As things stood, though, that was out of the question. Eliza had made it quite plain that she wanted to live in a port, not out in the wilds, as she put it. She’d lived in a port all her life. As for his mother, he could almost see her comparing Eliza with Charlotte; and she’d by no means forgiven him for marrying Eliza with ‘such precipitate and premature haste’, which were the words she’d used in one of her letters to him. It had not in fact been as precipitous and hasty as she’d made out. He’d known Eliza for quite some time.

  He glanced across at Eliza, then pushed the blankets back, slid quietly from the bed and padded over to the window. Pulling the curtain aside he gazed out over the hills. The sky was starting to take on a light grey hue. About an hour until dawn, he reckoned. Letting the curtain fall back, he dragged off his night-shirt and dressed. Quarter of an hour later he was riding across the hills, leaving his wife once again alone in their bed.

  It was well past dawn when he got back; well past breakfast, too—his stomach was growling. As he made his way back to the house, he caught sight of his mother, the long ties of her white apron fluttering in the wind. John Blake was with her. Richard pulled on the reins, slowing his horse to a walk, as he watched them. They were discussing the new barn. John was pointing to it, and his mother was nodding in agreement. Flicking the reins, Richard rode down the last stretch of hill. He had a great deal to thank John for. John had been more than generous in the help he’d given to Letitia after Ben’s death.

  As he rode into the yard, John walked over to greet him. ‘How are you, Richard? Your mother was just telling me that you and your wife arrived last night. It’s a little late, but may I offer you my congratulations on your marriage.’

  Dismounting, Richard clasped John’s hand warmly and smiled, wondering if John felt as awkward as he did. The last time they’d met, he’d been courting John’s daughter with a view to marrying her. ‘Thank you, John. And may I also thank you very sincerely for all the help you’ve given my mother these past months. I’m greatly in your debt.’

  John waved his hand dismissively. ‘I did no more than any other neighbour would have done.’

  Richard shook his head. ‘You’ve done far more than most neighbours would have done, John. Far more.’

  John gave a small shrug, then dipped his head towards the horse. ‘Been on an early morning ride, have you?’

  ‘Yes. I thought I’d make the most of the day.’

  ‘You’re here for a week, I hear.’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Your wife is living in Lyttelton now, Letitia tells me,’ John remarked casually.

  Richard glanced across at his mother. He had told her last night that Eliza was living in Lyttelton. She had made no comment, but he could tell from the expression on her face that she thought he shouldn’t have settled Eliza there.

  ‘We shifted into a house there last week,’ Richard said and proceeded to explain how it had come about. In fact, Eliza had been keen to settle in Auckland where her cousin was living, having heard good reports of it in her cousin’s letters. When they’d arrived in Auckland, however, they’d discovered that her cousin had recently sold up and gone to Australia. Eliza had been understandably disappointed, and her disappointment had somewhat soured her impression of the place. A poor sailor, she’d been adamant that she wasn’t sailing all the way back to England. He’d therefore suggested to her that she might wish to see if she liked the farm or perhaps Lyttelton. At the finish of his explanation, he added quietly, ‘I didn’t realize that Charlotte was living in Lyttelton with George and Ann, John.’

  John nodded. ‘Did you call on them?’

  Richard shook his head. ‘I saw them on Saturday evening at a magic lantern show. I’ve some news for you, too.’ Tossin
g the reins over the horse’s back, he proceeded to tell John and Letitia about the burglary. At the finish of his account, John was looking very grim-faced.

  ‘You’re sure Charlotte wasn’t harmed?’ he asked.

  Richard gave a reassuring nod. ‘She was just very shaken up.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this last night, Richard?’ Letitia looked at him reprovingly.

  ‘Because it was late, Mother, and I was very tired.’

  ‘What about George’s partner? Is he recovering?’ John asked.

  ‘I assume so.’ Richard hadn’t heard that he wasn’t, not that he’d enquired.

  Letitia gave a sympathetic cluck with her tongue. ‘Poor man. He could have been killed.’

  Richard looked away, feeling rather less compassionate. It was Fairfield’s stupidity that had placed Charlotte in such a dangerous situation.

  ‘Do they hold out much hope of apprehending the man?’ John asked.

  Richard shrugged. ‘I’d say the chances are fairly slim.’

  ‘How did he manage to get into the house?’

  ‘I don’t know. Forced a window, I expect.’

  ‘Were any other houses burgled?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Richard said.

  ‘How’s Ann? How did she take it? Did it upset her? A shock like that isn’t good for a woman in her condition,’ John said, frowning.

  ‘She seemed to cope with it. She was concerned for Charlotte, naturally,’ Richard replied.

  John stared at the ground and shook his head. ‘God, whatever are things coming to when a woman isn’t safe even indoors!’

  ‘Come inside and have a cup of tea, John.’ Letitia reached up to pat his arm. Her fingers lingered on his sleeve for a moment, then she let her hand fall to her side again. ‘Come along, Richard,’ she said, as she turned towards the house. ‘Your breakfast is waiting for you. And so is your wife.’

  ‘Where is she?’ he asked.