Kit inhaled sharply. “Then you’re my—”
“I knew it the minute I laid eyes on you,” Leo broke in, still talking to the fire. “You’ve got Amy’s mouth, her eyes. She called you Kit straight off, said it was less of a mouthful than Christopher. She adored you, Kit, and she was fairly fond of me, though I don’t know why. No brother ever gave his sister more hell than I did. Yes, Kit.” Leo pursed his lip and nodded. “Your mother was my sister. I’m sorry to say it, but I’m your uncle.”
“I’m not sorry,” Kit said softly.
“You will be,” Leo said with a bitter smile. “I wasn’t a very nice young man, you see. I fell in with a bad crowd when I was about sixteen. By seventeen I was a swaggering punk, the sort that breaks windows and drinks too much and slags off coppers just for the fun of it. Mum and Dad had washed their hands of me by the time I was eighteen, but Amy didn’t believe I was beyond redemption. She thought a change of scene would straighten me out.” Leo gave a grunt of mirthless laughter.
“Is that when she invited you to Anscombe Manor?” Kit asked.
“Amy and I were like night and day,” Leo went on, ignoring Kit’s question. “She was a good-hearted, hopeful sort of girl. She truly believed that she could help me turn my life around. She had me move into the manor three months after she married Sir Miles. I kept my nose clean for a few weeks, stayed away from the boozer and minded my manners, but I’d learned too many bad habits to shake them all at once. One night I got into a scrap with a local yobbo, and it found its way into the dear old Upper Deeping Despatch. Sir Miles was ready to throw me out on my ear, but Amy talked him into giving me another chance, and another, and another….” Leo took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “And then I met Charlotte.”
“Charlotte DuCaral?” I said.
“Amy’s best mate,” said Leo in a nostalgic, faraway voice. “She was only seventeen when I met her, two years younger than me. She had white-blond hair and soft gray eyes and the sweetest way about her. She was the kind of girl you don’t want to disappoint, you know?”
“I know,” said Kit.
Leo gave Kit a searching glance, then turned his gaze to the fire again. “She’d led such a sheltered life, and mine had been so wild, that no one could believe it when we fell head over heels for each other. Charlotte woke something up in me.” He shrugged. “I can’t explain it, but it made me want to be a better man. I stayed away from the boozer for a whole year. I started thinking with my brain instead of my fists. I turned over a new leaf, just to make her proud of me.”
“You were transformed by love,” I said softly.
“I was,” Leo agreed, “but Charlotte’s parents didn’t buy it. Looking back, I can’t really blame them. I’d made a name for myself, and it wasn’t a good one. In their eyes I was a snot-nosed young hooligan who was bound to go from bad to worse. They didn’t like it one bit when they found out that their precious daughter was in love with the likes of me.”
“They might not have liked it,” I said, “but what could they do about it?”
“What do you think they did?” Leo stabbed the stick into the flames. “They told us we couldn’t see each other anymore. They banned me from the grounds. They told Sir Miles that if I set a toe on their property, they’d have me arrested, and they’d see to it that the story wasn’t hushed up this time.”
“Did my mother know that you’d fallen in love with Charlotte?” Kit asked.
“Of course she did,” said Leo. “She was Charlotte’s best mate, wasn’t she? And she was on our side. She acted as our go-between when Charlotte and I came up with a plan to run away together. We’d elope at midnight and be married before her parents knew she was gone. Only marriage would do, for a girl like Charlotte.”
I gazed into the darkness beyond the fire and imagined the young Charlotte DuCaral making her escape. I saw her packing a small bag, letting herself out the kitchen door, making her way through the shrubbery and into the woods to the appointed meeting place, where she waited until dawn, when her heart told her that Leo had failed her.
“When the big night came, I lost my nerve,” said Leo. “I tried to get it back with a few shots of whiskey, then a few more. It was past midnight by the time I staggered out of Anscombe Manor, nearly dawn when I stumbled down the hill, sucking on a flask to keep my courage up. And who should I run into at the bottom of the hill? Charlotte’s father. He had a shotgun, and he waved it in my face. Called me all sorts of names. I lost my temper, grabbed the gun, and I…I killed him.”
“No!” I exclaimed, sitting bolt upright. “It wasn’t you. Charlotte’s brother attacked Maurice.”
Leo looked as confused as I felt. “Charlotte’s brother was setting up a children’s clinic in Africa on the night I shot Maurice. He wasn’t even on the same continent.”
“Does Charlotte have another brother?” I asked.
“No, just the one, and he died in a plane crash two years later,” said Leo, glancing at Kit.
“What about sisters?” I inquired hopefully.
“No sisters. Just one older brother.” Leo raised his open palms and asked, with a touch of exasperation, “Why are we talking about brothers and sisters when I’ve just confessed to murder?”
“Sorry,” I said, blushing, and motioned for him to continue. “Carry on.”
“Thank you,” said Leo, a bit tetchily.
“Lori has a point,” said Kit. “You couldn’t have killed Maurice DuCaral. He died three years ago.”
“I don’t know where you’re getting your information, Kit,” said Leo, “but it’s wrong. I was there that night. I know what happened. I didn’t mean to kill him, but when the gamekeeper ran up, the shotgun was in my hands and Maurice’s body was stretched out in the bracken, covered in blood.”
“Are you sure he was dead?” Kit asked.
“I’m sure,” said Leo. “I dropped the gun and crawled over to him. He wasn’t breathing. He didn’t have a pulse. He was dead.”
“Hmmm,” Kit said ruminatively. “What did you do when you realized that he was dead?”
“I was too shocked to do much of anything,” Leo admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “It was Madeline DuCaral who took charge.”
“What was Madeline doing there?” I asked.
“She’d heard the gun go off,” said Leo. “She came out to find her husband dead and me with his blood on my hands. I expected her to call the police, or to order the gamekeeper to shoot me, or to shoot me herself, but she just stood there, staring down at Maurice’s body. Then she made a deal with me.”
“She what?” I said, certain I’d misheard him.
“She made a deal with me,” Leo repeated. “If I agreed to disappear, she and the gamekeeper would make the shooting look like an accident, and she’d never tell anyone what had really happened. She’d allow me to get away with murder, but only if I promised to leave England and never come back. If I stayed, I’d go to prison.”
I stared at him in frank bewilderment. “Why on earth would she let you off the hook? You’d killed her husband.”
“Yes, and can you imagine what it would do to a girl like Charlotte, to learn that the boy she loved and trusted had murdered her father?” Leo demanded. “Charlotte was a naive eighteen-year-old. She was an innocent. Sure, it’d be hard for her to lose her father, but it’d be a double dose of hell for her if she found out that he’d died by my hand. Mrs. DuCaral didn’t give a toss about me. She was trying to protect her daughter.”
“So you ran away,” said Kit, “for Charlotte’s sake.”
Leo dismissed the comment with a flick of his hand. “Don’t make me out to be a hero, Kit. I ran to save my own skin. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in prison, and with my reputation the courts would have had no mercy on me. So I ran—straight into that mad old woman, Lizzie Black. She was picking berries here, in Gypsy Hollow, when I came bursting through the trees, all spattered with blood. I was in such a panic that I blurted out, ‘I’ve kill
ed him!’ God knows what she thought, but it didn’t matter, because no one ever believed a word she said. I didn’t see anyone else after that. I just ran flat-out until I reached the manor.”
“My mother must have been horrified,” said Kit.
“She was,” said Leo, “but she was my big sister, and she knew Charlotte better than anyone. She thought it’d kill Charlotte to know the truth, so she cleaned me up, gave me money and the keys to her car, and sent me on my way. I went up to Liverpool, got a job on a cargo ship, and disappeared.”
“To Australia,” I said.
“I ended up in Australia a year later,” said Leo. “I wrote to Amy, to let her know I was all right. She wrote to me from time to time, poste restante in Sydney, because I rarely had a fixed address.” He glanced shyly at Kit. “She told me all about you, Kit, sent me a picture of you when you were no bigger than a loaf of bread. When her letters stopped, I made some inquiries and found out that she’d been killed in a car wreck. I couldn’t believe it….” He ran a hand through his grizzled hair and sighed. “I’m sorry, Kit. I should have been here for you when you were growing up. But things don’t always work out the way they should.”
“You’re here now,” said Kit. “Why did you come back?”
“I wanted to see you,” Leo answered simply. “I couldn’t go to my grave without seeing Amy’s boy.”
“I wish you’d told me who you are when we first met,” said Kit.
“I wasn’t going to tell you at all,” Leo confessed shamefacedly. “I knew you’d start asking questions if I played it straight with you, and I was afraid of what you’d think of me when you heard the answers. I killed a man, Kit. I broke a young girl’s heart. I ran like a coward because I couldn’t take the punishment I deserved. I’ve tried to become a better man since then, but I’ll never truly escape my past. I’ll understand it if you want nothing to do with me. And if you want to turn me in—”
“I’m not going to turn you in, Uncle Leo,” Kit cut in, as if he found the suggestion utterly ridiculous.
“Uncle Leo,” Leo echoed, his voice breaking. “You know how to bring a tear to an old villain’s eye.”
“I’ll bring my fist to your eye if you keep putting yourself down,” Kit warned. “I’m not being sentimental, Uncle Leo. I simply don’t believe that you killed Maurice DuCaral.”
Leo smiled affectionately at his nephew. “You take after your mother, Kit. You want to think the best of people, even when they—”
“I’ll have to prove it to you,” Kit interrupted thoughtfully. “And to do that, I’ll need time.” He stood, tossed the dregs of his tea into a convenient puddle, and carried his cup and his stool back to the motor home. When he returned, he stood before Leo and said sternly, “I don’t want you to leave the Anscombe estate until I speak with you again. If we have another storm and you want a hot bath or a hot meal, go to the manor house. I mean it, Uncle Leo. I’ll be very upset with you if you disappear.”
Leo rose from his chair, looking somewhat bemused. “You’re not upset with me for murdering Maurice DuCaral, but you will be upset with me if I take off. Have I got that right?”
“Exactly right.” Kit clapped a hand on Leo’s shoulder, then enveloped him in a bear hug. “Welcome home, Uncle Leo.”
Leo hesitated for a moment before returning the hug, then pushed Kit away, saying gruffly, “Get off home, the both of you. I need my beauty sleep.”
I put my cup next to Leo’s on the flat stone and followed Kit through the gap in the trees. I glanced over my shoulder before the campfire vanished from sight and saw Leo gazing fixedly at Kit, with an inscrutable expression on his face.
“I hope he’s still here when we come back,” I murmured when we reached the muddy track.
“He will be,” Kit said confidently, and patted his pocket. “I stole the keys to his caravan.”
Twenty
“You sneak!” I exclaimed, both shocked and tickled by Kit’s bold act of thievery.
“I had to do something,” he said, pulling his flashlight from his pocket and switching it on. “Leo’s been running scared for nearly forty years. I can’t allow him to run again before I clear his name.”
Kit was so absorbed in his thoughts that he was walking at a relatively moderate speed, for which I was profoundly thankful. It was easier to avoid the track’s boggy spots when the flashlight’s beam wasn’t bouncing around quite so much.
“You meant it, then,” I said, peering up at him. His finely sculpted profile was silhouetted against the starry sky, but it was too dark to read his expression. “You’re really going to prove that Leo didn’t kill Maurice DuCaral.”
“It shouldn’t be too difficult,” he said. “While you were confusing the issue with irrelevant questions about Charlotte’s nonexistent siblings, I was counting up the holes in Leo’s story.”
“I wasn’t confusing the issue,” I protested. “I was trying to figure out who Rendor might be.”
“Let’s set your imaginary monster aside for the moment and concentrate on my very real uncle, shall we?” Kit said brusquely, and went on without waiting for a reply. “We don’t live in the Middle Ages, Lori. Madeline DuCaral couldn’t have simply bunged Maurice’s body into the family mausoleum without notifying the proper authorities—a doctor, the police, a coroner. There would have been an inquest in a shooting death, and the inquest would have been covered by the local newspaper. Yet we didn’t find one word in the Despatch about a fatal shooting accident at Aldercot Hall.”
“Not one word,” I agreed meekly. Kit had been so even-tempered all day that his sudden curtness had taken me by surprise. It was like being snapped at by a puppy.
“Apart from that,” he continued, “everything we’ve learned over the past four days contradicts Leo’s story. We have it from Henrietta Harcourt as well as Ruth and Louise Pym that Maurice DuCaral was an invalid for nearly forty years and that Charlotte nursed him until his death three years ago. Which means that he was still alive when Leo left him lying in the bracken, all covered in blood. The worst that Leo could have done was injure Maurice. He certainly didn’t kill him.”
“But, Kit,” I ventured hesitantly, “Maurice didn’t have a pulse when Leo left him. He wasn’t breathing. Unless Lizzie Black has been right all along and Maurice DuCaral was a vampire, so he could have been dead one day and alive the next, I’m not sure how you’re going to get around the part where he doesn’t have a pulse and he’s not breathing.”
“I’ll get around that part when I come to it,” Kit declared, his jaw hardening. “My uncle committed petty misdemeanors in his youth—scrawling graffiti, brawling, boozing—but he wasn’t a hardened criminal. It would have been totally out of character for him to commit murder.”
“He was drunk at the time,” I reminded Kit.
“Precisely,” he said in an oddly elated tone of voice. “He was drunk.”
I could almost hear the gears clicking in his brain, so I did nothing more to disrupt his concentration until we reached the Mini, when I said, “I assume you’re concocting another cunning plan.”
“It’s a fairly straightforward plan, actually,” he said. “Meet me here at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, and be prepared for a hike. We’re going back to Aldercot Hall. I need to speak with Henrietta.” He smiled down at me so suddenly and so sweetly that it was as if the sun had risen in the night sky. “You had it right from the start, Lori. Leo is a nice man. He and I are going to be great friends.” He gave me a quick, strong hug, then spun on his heel and headed for the courtyard and his flat.
I leaned against the Mini, to recover from the smile and the hug, then slid behind the wheel and started the engine. As I drove back to the cottage, I marveled at the powerful pull of family ties. A few short hours ago, Kit would have recoiled in horror from the thought of revisiting Aldercot’s kitchen for any reason. Now he was so bent on proving his newfound uncle’s innocence that he was willing to place himself within Henrietta Harcourt’s astonishi
ngly long reach and risk having his pretty chin chucked yet again.
I’d taken a bullet for my children, but my sacrifice seemed trivial compared to the one Kit was making for Leo. Families, as Kit had so wisely noted, were funny things.
It was half past nine when I walked into the cottage, and everyone, including Stanley, was in bed and asleep. I regretted missing the twins’ bedtime, but when I went upstairs to look in on them, I reminded myself that, since the odds of a train filled with chlorine gas derailing next to their school yard were microscopic, there would in all likelihood be many more bedtimes to come.
When I went back downstairs, I found a message from Annelise lying on the kitchen table, conveying the wonderful news that Bill would be home on Thursday, barring further cat fights within the Shuttleworth clan. I crumpled the message and tossed it into the wastebasket, then went to the study to fill Aunt Dimity in on the day’s events. After giving Reginald’s ears an affectionate twiddle, I lit a fire in the hearth and sat in the tall leather armchair with the blue journal in my lap.
Aunt Dimity’s handwriting curled across the page as soon as I opened the journal.
Did you and Kit have any luck in Upper Deeping?
“Yes,” I said, “but it wasn’t the luck we expected. We didn’t discover anything new about the DuCarals, but we found out who Leo is.”
The Leo who’s camping in Gypsy Hollow? The cad who toyed with Charlotte DuCaral’s affections?
“Yes and no,” I said. “Leo is camping in Gypsy Hollow, but he never meant to toy with Charlotte’s affections. You’re not going to believe this, Dimity, but it turns out that Leo is Kit’s uncle. Kit’s mother was Leo’s older sister, and she invited Leo to stay at Anscombe Manor forty years ago….”
I launched into a dramatic recapitulation of Leo’s story, telling Dimity of his misspent youth, his transformative love for Charlotte, her parents’ staunch opposition to the match, and the midnight elopement that had ended in heartbreak and tragedy. When I finished, several minutes seemed to pass before Aunt Dimity responded.
Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter Page 20