On the terrace just outside stood Julia, staring at him with huge, stricken eyes set in a face drained of all color. “You—you’re alive,” she stammered. “You’re alive.”
Heedless of the glass crunching beneath his feet, he crossed the room in three strides and, not bothering to open the window, ducked through the gaping hole and stepped over the sill.
“I’m alive,” he assured her, and caught her in his arms as she swayed on her feet.
She stroked his face with one trembling hand. “It was Mr. Hetherington.”
“Yes, I—I know.”
“He isn’t the only one who can throw rocks,” she said, with a trace of her usual spirit.
He had to smile a little at that. “No, he isn’t—for which I am very grateful.”
“John, the snakes—”
“Snakes?” echoed Pickett, all at sea.
“I can’t—I can’t hold them off any longer,” she said, and went limp in his arms.
“It’s all right,” he murmured, cradling her closer. “They can’t hurt you.”
He slipped one arm beneath her knees and picked her up bodily, then turned back toward the window just in time to see Hetherington close his wife’s sightless eyes with one gentle hand. Tears ran down the man’s face, but hatred burned in his eyes as he looked up at his late adversary.
“I—I’m sorry, sir—” Pickett began.
“You’re sorry? You’re sorry? You don’t know what ‘sorry’ is!”
“It was an accident—”
Hetherington’s gaze shifted to Julia, lying insensible in Pickett’s arms. “No, you don’t know what ‘sorry’ is, not yet, but you will. You have a wife there, one you love. Shall I do to her what you did to mine? Shall I make you beg for her life, as you were prepared to make me beg for Brigid’s? No, not today,” he said, as Pickett darted a quick glance at the pistol lying on the carpet, mentally gauging how long it would take for Hetherington to snatch it up and reload. “But someday, someday when you’re least expecting it, when you’ve convinced yourself that it’s safe to lower your guard—”
His voice rose in volume with each new threat, and it was with no small sense of relief that Pickett noticed the butler, two footmen, and a wide-eyed housemaid, who had all come running and were now crowded in the doorway to the study.
“Send for the magistrate,” Pickett instructed the butler. He glanced down at the lifeless heap that had once been the lady of the house. “This—this was an accident, but there are other charges against your master that are not. And be sure you keep him here until the magistrate arrives,” he added, instinctively holding Julia closer. “Don’t let him get away.”
One of the footmen, the same one who had cut up his mistress’s meat at dinner, glanced from the gunshot wound in her chest to the weapon lying on the floor next to his master’s desk, and apparently drew his own conclusions. “He won’t be going nowhere,” he declared stoutly, setting his jaw.
Not that Mr. Hetherington was showing any signs of making any such attempt; with his outburst over, all the fight seemed to have gone out of him, and he sobbed over the dead woman whose head he cradled on his lap. But while they awaited the magistrate’s arrival, Pickett had a more urgent priority, one who was just beginning to stir in his arms.
“John, you’re all right?” Julia asked. “He didn’t hurt you?”
“I’m fine,” he assured her, turning slightly in order to block her view of the woman’s body. He supposed he ought to set her on her feet now that she had recovered from her swoon, but in the light of Hetherington’s threats, he couldn’t bring himself to let her go. “But what are you doing here? Not that I’m complaining,” he added hastily. In fact, had it not been for her timely intervention, it would have been he instead of Mrs. Hetherington who lay dead on the floor.
“I realized the handwriting looked too bold for Mrs. Hetherington to have managed it with her crippled hands, and thought her husband must have written it for her. I practically ran all the way from the Hart and Hound, rather than wait for Jem Hawkins to return with the wagon. And then when I got here, I found Mr. Hetherington holding a gun on you! Oh John, I’ve never been so frightened in my life!”
Pickett thought that was saying something, given the fact that during the one year of their acquaintance she had faced standing trial for murder, hanging from the edge of a cliff, and being trapped in a burning theatre.
“I’m taking you back to the inn to rest,” he told her. “I can’t stay with you—I’ll have to come back here and tie up a few loose ends with the magistrate—but then you can pack your bags. Tomorrow we’re going back to London.” London, where he would be faced with the task of explaining to Mr. Colquhoun what had taken place here—and how his own mishandling of the case had allowed it to happen. Still, he was forced to admit that the outcome could have been worse—much worse. He breathed a sigh of relief. “Tomorrow we’re going home.”
EPILOGUE
In Which John Pickett
Must Give an Accounting of Himself
“And there you have it,” Pickett concluded miserably. Almost a week had passed since the disastrous denouement, and now he stood before the magistrate’s bench, making his report to a scowling Mr. Colquhoun. “You warned me—more than once—about the dangers of taking a case too personally, but that’s exactly what I did. I botched this case in just about every way it’s possible to botch one. I—I am sorry, sir.”
The magistrate looked up from the written report in his hand to regard his most junior Runner over the top of the wire-rimmed spectacles he wore for reading. “No one expects you to be perfect, Mr. Pickett. You’re only twenty-four years old—”
“Twenty-five,” Pickett corrected him.
The bushy white eyebrows rose. “Twenty-five?”
Pickett nodded. “This past March.”
“Well, in that case, you should have known better.” With Pickett momentarily taken aback, the magistrate pressed his argument. “It seems to me the fault must be partly mine, for giving you the impression that my acquaintance with Robert Hetherington was much warmer than it actually was. It’s true that at one time we were upon visiting terms, and our wives were once very close. But then my Isabella came along, and James not long after, and it can be painful for a childless couple to find itself forever in the company of a growing family. We drifted apart, and it wasn’t until I was about to dispatch you to the Lake District that I recalled Hetherington had bought a property there. I thought it might help you to have a contact in the area; I had not considered what decades of disappointment and bitterness could do to a man, and for that, I owe you an apology.”
Pickett could not allow these self-recriminations to pass. “The fault is mine, sir, and mine alone. I couldn’t stop thinking of Julia, of how I would have felt, what I would have done if I had discovered she was guilty of a crime—not treason, but the murder of her first husband. I lost all objectivity, and because of me, an innocent woman is dead.”
“She might not have been so innocent, you know,” the magistrate pointed out. “The plot is being investigated as we speak, and it may turn out that she was up to her neck in it.”
Pickett rather hoped she was—not to assuage his own conscience (at least, not only for so self-serving a purpose), but because it seemed to him that the woman deserved some measure of vengeance. “Even if she was, sir, she still deserved the right to face her accusers, to offer a defense of her actions. Perhaps, after hearing her past history, a jury might have been lenient.” A shadow crossed his face. “More lenient than I was, in any case.”
Mr. Colquhoun flipped back through the written report before him. “Did you succeed in disarming him, then? I’m afraid I missed the part that said it was your finger pulling the trigger.”
“No, but it was undoubtedly I who pushed her husband’s arm so that the ball meant for me struck her instead.”
Mr. Colquhoun regarded his inconsolable young Runner in silence for a long moment. “Show me,” he said a
t last.
“I—I beg your pardon?”
“Show me,” the magistrate said again. He pointed his index finger like a gun, and aimed it across the bench at Pickett. “Disarm me, as you tried to do Robert Hetherington.”
“Better not, Mr. Pickett,” Harry Carson, a member of the horse patrol, called impudently. “If you do, it’ll make an awful mess.”
Pickett turned, and saw that every member of the Bow Street force who was not actively engaged in an investigation had gathered around to watch.
“I—I can’t—” Pickett protested feebly.
“That’s just what we’re going to put to the test,” declared Mr. Colquhoun. “Do to me exactly what you did to Hetherington. Whenever you’re ready, Mr. Pickett.”
Something was different, something aside from the obvious, and after a few seconds’ consideration, Pickett realized what it was. “He didn’t have his arm stretched out. It was bent at the elbow.”
“Meaning you had to reach, say, an extra foot or so,” the magistrate said with a nod, adjusting his “weapon” accordingly.
Pickett stared at the hand pointed at him. The events of that morning were never far from his thoughts, so it took only a moment for the flesh and blood to vanish, replaced by an image of the very real pistol held by a man who had threatened not only Pickett’s life, but every happiness he had ever known. He took a deep breath and lunged across the bench, causing the wooden railing to groan beneath his weight and scattering his painstakingly transcribed report in all directions as he grabbed the magistrate’s forearm. Mr. Colquhoun’s arm immediately went limp, and Pickett fell sprawling belly-down on the desk, banging his chin in the process.
As his audience burst into startled laughter, he picked himself up with what dignity he could muster. “You weren’t even trying!”
“No, I wasn’t,” confessed his magistrate, unrepentant. “If Hetherington had done likewise, his shot would have gone into the floor. But he didn’t. He fought back, and it was his resistance, not your attempt to disarm him, that caused his wife’s death. It was indeed a tragic accident, but one for which her husband, not you, must bear the blame.”
“It’s supposed to make me feel better, knowing that I couldn’t overpower a man more than twice my age?”
Mr. Colquhoun regarded his protégé with a twinkle lurking in his blue eyes. “Do you want absolution, Mr. Pickett, or don’t you?”
Pickett glanced down at the railing he clutched with both hands. “The bench is a bit higher than Mr. Hetherington’s desk,” he said.
“I doubt it would make much difference. Do you recall whether your feet were on the floor?”
Casting his mind back, Pickett remembered sliding off the desk to turn and identify the reason for his foe’s horrified expression. “No, sir. They weren’t.”
“There you are, then,” said the magistrate decisively. “You might have had the advantages of youth and strength, but he held the more stable position, seated behind his desk while you lay across it.”
Mr. Colquhoun might consider the matter settled, but there was one element Pickett could not dismiss so easily, not while Robert Hetherington still lived. The assembled audience began to disperse, realizing the show was over, and Pickett waited until they were out of earshot before confiding in a low voice, “You should know, sir, that he—he threatened Julia. He promised to come after her—not immediately, he said, but later, after I’ve had time to lower my guard.”
“I should think by that time he’ll be six feet under—and may God have mercy on his soul,” the magistrate said. “Mr. Pickett, you said yourself that he is being held in prison pending the Carlisle assizes. I’ll make inquiries, and let you know when he’s been executed.”
Pickett let out a sigh. “Thank you, sir. I was hoping you would.”
“And now,” pronounced Mr. Colquhoun, glancing over his shoulder at the large clock that hung on the wall above his bench, “I intend to go home and seek my dinner. I suggest you do the same.”
“Yes, sir,” said Pickett, and turned away, prepared to suit the word to the deed.
“Oh, John,” the magistrate called as he reached the door.
“Sir?” Pickett asked, pausing to turn back.
“Do you and Mrs. Pickett intend to make a habit of this? Taking it in turns saving each other’s lives?”
A faint smile touched Pickett’s lips. “One can only hope, sir.”
“You’re all right, then?”
“Not just yet,” Pickett confessed, “but I will be.”
And with this promise, he left the Bow Street Public Office and turned his steps toward Curzon Street, and the woman who had the power to make it so.
Author’s Note
Warning: this note contains spoilers. If you haven’t yet read the book, you might want to do so before proceeding further.
Some books require more research than others. This one required a lot. Thankfully, I had the opportunity to see the Lake District for myself when I visited the area shortly after the book was finished, which allowed me to flesh out descriptions of setting—and where I startled a tour guide by asking, “Are there places along the river where the bank is high enough that you could push someone over and kill them?”
While researching online for some reason the husband of an Irishwoman might bear a grudge against the English (sadly, never far to seek in the history of Anglo-Irish relations), I came across the second Battle of Carrickfergus, which had taken place in 1760 (there had been an earlier one in 1597), and which I incorporated into my story.
My investigations into mail smuggling proved more elusive. Much has been written on the smuggling of brandy and tobacco across the Channel à la Kipling’s “five and twenty ponies trotting through the dark,” but I could find very little on the domestic smuggling of letters beyond the fact that it existed, and was apparently widespread. I found no particulars, however, which forced me (or left me free, depending upon how one looks at it) to rely on informed imagination in creating my own story. The two anecdotes cited by Robert Hetherington in Chapter 14—that of a brother and sister working out their own method of communication, and the assertion that four of every five letters mailed from Manchester were sent by means other than the Royal Mail—were drawn from actual writings, albeit from about twenty-five years later; in fact, both constituted part of the debate that eventually led to postal reform and, in 1840, the creation of the Uniform Penny Post, which allowed letters to be sent for the same cost regardless of distance, with the postage to be paid by the sender, rather than the recipient.
Interestingly, the smuggling of domestic mail seems to be linked to the rise in literacy: When only the upper classes could read and write, the cost of receiving letters was immaterial, as they could easily afford it. As literacy spread to the middle and sometimes even the lower classes, however, it became necessary for them to look for affordable ways of corresponding with friends, family, and business associates, despite the dubious legality of those ways.
On the subject of letters, the old “lemon juice as invisible ink” trick is something every schoolchild knows today, but there was a time when it was the latest in high-tech intelligence. For instance, George Washington is known to have used it, and trained spies in its use, during the American Revolution.
Finally, one detail that might be confusing to American readers: In Regency England, one went to the “post office” to hire a post chaise, the Regency equivalent of a rental car; one took one’s letters to (or fetched them from) the “receiving office.”
About the Author
At the age of sixteen, Sheri Cobb South discovered Georgette Heyer, and came to the startling realization that she had been born into the wrong century. Although she probably would have been a chambermaid had she actually lived in Regency England, that didn’t stop her from fantasizing about waltzing the night away in the arms of a handsome, wealthy, and titled gentleman.
Since Georgette Heyer died in 1974 and could not write any more Regencies, Ms.
South came to the conclusion she would have to do it herself. In addition to the bestselling John Pickett mystery series (now an award-winning audiobook series!), she has also written several Regency romances, including the critically acclaimed The Weaver Takes a Wife.
A native and long-time resident of Alabama, Ms. South now lives in Loveland, Colorado.
Sheri Cobb South loves to hear from readers! Look for her on social media:
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or email her at [email protected]
Read all the John Pickett Mysteries:
Pickpocket’s Apprentice: A John Pickett Novella
https://www.amazon.com/Pickpockets-Apprentice-Pickett-Novella-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B07H145NXJ/ref=sr_1_19?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1536273719&sr=1-19&keywords=sheri+cobb+south
In Milady’s Chamber
https://www.amazon.com/Miladys-Chamber-Pickett-Mystery-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B07GZYRTZ9/ref=sr_1_4_twi_kin_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1536273473&sr=8-4&keywords=sheri+cobb+south
Family Plot
https://www.amazon.com/Family-Plot-John-Pickett-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B00PUXA9QM/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1536273789&sr=1-4&keywords=sheri+cobb+south
Dinner Most Deadly
https://www.amazon.com/Dinner-Deadly-Another-Pickett-Mystery-ebook/dp/B015ESSHZC/ref=sr_1_6?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1536273828&sr=1-6&keywords=sheri+cobb+south
Waiting Game
https://www.amazon.com/Waiting-Game-Another-Pickett-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B07H15SYNM/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1536273888&sr=1-17
Too Hot to Handel
https://www.amazon.com/Handel-Another-John-Pickett-Mystery-ebook/dp/B01GW0UERA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1536274053&sr=1-1&keywords=sheri+cobb+south
For Deader or Worse
https://www.amazon.com/Deader-Worse-Another-Pickett-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B07GZYXM4D/ref=sr_1_13?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1536274119&sr=1-13&keywords=sheri+cobb+south
Peril by Post Page 23