by Issy Brooke
People’s actions, based on emotions, were generally not.
Inspector Benn went on. “She knows that we know; and we know that she knows. There is nothing more she can say. All these things point to her guilt, Lady Calaway, and after yesterday’s events where we searched her house so openly and thoroughly, she has done the one last thing open to her. She has fled, and thereby proved her guilt!”
She was annoyed by his smug flair. She said, “Well, that is all very clever of you sir, but how does it profit you now? She is gone and has evaded any arrest you might have performed.”
He snorted and dismissed her fears as easily as he dismissed the idea of a woman alone being able to flee undetected. “She will hardly be able to remain out of sight, without funds, and unnoticed – not a woman like Lady Beaconberg. All the local area is looking for her already, and she will be found within hours. You mark my words. She is a fine woman – she won’t be sleeping in the hedgerows. She’ll give herself away.”
ADELIA RAN BACK INSIDE and up to Lady Beaconberg’s rooms where Elizabeth was crumpled on her mother’s bed, sobbing, bunching up the covers in her fists and letting her tears fall willy-nilly. The lady’s maid was an older woman and though she looked upset, she was able to answer Adelia when she asked, “Has my lady taken anything with her?”
The maid nodded. “Yes, my lady. I’ve been checking. She must have gone dressed for the night and prepared for travel, for I think she’s wearing her good walking dress which she hardly ever wears – on account of her hardly ever walking anywhere.”
“And did she take a bag?”
The maid pursed her lips and bid her wait while she checked again to be sure. After a few minutes she came back and said, “Yes, though not a large one. She has taken one of her smaller carpet bags, not enough for clothing but perhaps for a change of essentials at least, and her hair things and so on. The usual necessities for a lady.”
So the figure that Adelia had seen could have been concealing a small bag under their cloak. “And is this flight a surprise to you?”
“It is, my lady. A shock beyond words. She gave no sign of anything amiss last night. But Maisie says you saw her leave?”
At that, Elizabeth sat up and wiped her face, glaring at Adelia. “You knew she was going? You saw her go? Why didn’t you stop her?” she snarled.
“Last night, I could not sleep and I was looking out of the window. I didn’t know then that it was your mother. But I did go outside to apprehend whoever it was. I was too late. I could not find them.”
“You knew! You knew!” Elizabeth began to scream and she slithered off the bed. The maid stepped in and prevented the girl from reaching Adelia. The screaming brought another female servant to the door and between them, they dragged Elizabeth away with very practised moves, working in coordination with one another. This was not the first time they’d had to do such a thing.
Adelia thought, well, that’s more laudanum and locked doors for the poor girl. No wonder she wants to run away with Rowlandson. I wonder what he’s been doing while all this has been going on? Apart from skulking in the trees and watching the house from afar – what does he know?
I would wager that no one has thought to speak to him, she reflected.
With a nod that was aimed at no one but herself, she resolved to leave the house as soon as she could, and find this Francis Rowlandson.
FIRST SHE WENT TO THE Grey House and found that word of the night’s proceedings had reached them before she could have the chance to deliver the news, which was a slight let-down, but she was called upon to relay everything from her point of view anyway, so that made up for it. Mary’s eyes shone with something that was very like excitement as Adelia described Lady Beaconberg’s flight from justice. Sibyl sniffed with disapproval. And Grace frowned.
“She’s a silly woman with all the good taste of a blind field-hand but she is not a murderer.”
“She could have been working with someone,” Adelia said.
Grace pooh-poohed the idea immediately. “She would do it if it benefited her, but none of this nonsense has made her life any easier. She wouldn’t have done a thing that ended up inconveniencing her.”
“She didn’t know it was going to inconvenience her,” Mary suggested, still apparently in favour of the romantic side of the lady running away from the law like a fairy tale. “No one commits a crime thinking they will be caught.”
“I hope you’re not speaking from experience,” Theodore said, but his attempt at a joke fell as flat as it usually did, and conversation was quickly hurried on.
Adelia was finally able to ease Theodore away from the rest of them. “I think that while everyone else is distracted, we should talk to Francis Rowlandson,” she told him.
“Ah, for a minute there, I was worried you were going to say that we should pursue Lady Beaconberg herself.”
“The police are doing that and they have the expertise,” she said. “Although,” she added after a moment’s pause, “If I had any idea where she might go, I’d surely go straight after her.”
“And you have no idea?”
“None at all. She has no friends. Her only ally is me and she’s gone from me. She’s quite, quite alone.”
Theodore reached out a hand and took hers, and she was grateful for it. “We will find her for your sake as much as for justice,” he said.
“Thank you.”
Seventeen
Theodore was not sure what conclusions to draw from Lady Beaconberg’s abscondment but he was inclined to agree with the police that it suggested her guilt, or at the very least, that she knew something incriminating that she was not prepared to reveal.
But he also agreed with his wife that Rowlandson could know something. He had been watching all the proceedings from afar and he could have seen all manner of things over the last few weeks. Together, Theodore and Adelia wandered out into the breezy summer day to look for Francis Rowlandson. They started by heading to the offices of the mills in the town partway between the Grey House and the city of York itself. It was a stroll of around two miles by country lanes, and very pleasant. He was glad of the exercise and Adelia assured him that she was more than happy to cover the distance.
“Don’t you remember when we were courting and we would walk miles and miles on moonlit nights!” she said, prodding him with her elbow. It sank into slightly more flesh around his middle than it would have done thirty years ago.
“I do. Mostly we were both trying to avoid anyone who might have known us. Why do lovers want to keep everything so secret? Most of our friends were delighted when we revealed our intentions to the world.”
“Most but not all. And it is nice to have one’s own secrets, a shared secret, just between the two of us, is it not?”
Theodore cast his mind back. He remembered some of the feelings he had had, but could not pinpoint why. “I think I am looking at it too rationally,” he admitted.
“You are. But I love you anyway.”
“That’s a relief.”
She tutted until he remembered to tell her that he, too, loved her back, and they walked on in a happy silence for a short distance until everything was ruined by the sudden appearance, from behind a hedge, of one of the traveller folk in a brown suit, rising up like a character in a Punch and Judy show.
Theodore recognised him as the man who had been at Thursza’s side while they’d been at the encampment helping the children. He remembered his name. “Kit Greenacre, sir,” Theodore said. “Good morning to you. How are the patients? Do you need another visit? I should be happy to attend later this afternoon.”
“Lord Calaway, good morning, Lady Calaway.” The man briefly touched his finger to the brim of his cap, which was as high an honour as they were going to get. “Thank you for your service to our children; there’s many a so-called Christian who would spit and cross the street to avoid us but there you were, sleeves rolled up and in amongst us, and we shan’t forget it though don’t expect me to fawn over you
neither like some of them do as gives us charity and expects servitude from it.” He laughed, mostly to himself. “Anyway, the lad is up on his feet and plaguing his mother and since we have stopped him from drinking milk, his bowels are better and even his skin is more clear. Any time you wish to call upon us, you may, and we will make you welcome – though we are moving on in a week or so’s time, so don’t be alarmed if you find us gone.”
He fell into step alongside them, and Adelia asked, “Where do you intend to go? Do you follow plans, have regular routes?”
“To some extent we do. We’ll perhaps go across the fells, heading west, Appleby way. It’s a journey for summertime, and best done before the winter bites down.”
“For sure,” Adelia said. “Very sensible.”
He huffed. “Sensible? Don’t talk to me like a child. We’ve lived like this for centuries. We’re hardly going to do something that is stupid, are we?”
“Ah.”
Then he laughed. “Aren’t you the stupid ones, walking with the likes of me? What will people say?”
“Er...”
Theodore had been thinking. He interrupted the general and pointless chatter with a question of his own. “I saw, Mr Greenacre; Lady Beaconberg ran away last night. Will you ask around if anyone has seen her?”
“She’s gone west,” Kit Greenacre said without hesitation.
Theodore and Adelia both burst out at the same time. “West? What? How, where?”
Kit laughed. “Now, before you ask me a barrage of questions, I don’t know who killed Lord Beaconberg and I don’t know who will win the St Leger and I don’t know if the sun will come up tomorrow as it did today; that’s all in God’s hands. But I do know that Lady Beaconberg came to us as evening fell and asked us to give her a horse, and we asked why – for not all horses are equal to all things – and she said she had to ride to Lancaster. Perhaps she is heading to Ireland. So we arranged for a horse to be tethered on the road leading out of the estate and she went back home.”
“What time was this?” Theodore asked.
Kit shrugged and pointed at the sun. “Evening was falling but it wasn’t night.”
Adelia said, “She was at dinner but she went to bed early and that was certainly before the sun set. That must have been when she left Dovewood and came to you. But that’s a fair distance so she must have had help from within the house.”
“She rode out to us. There’s a lot of women tearing about on horses at night around here.”
“Or ghosts.”
Kit laughed. “No ghosts! Not here. Only flesh and blood but that’s another matter. Now I have a question for you. Why did she want one of our horses when she rode to us on one of her own?”
Theodore said, “Your horses don’t attract the same attention. Her horses are fine thoroughbreds, hunters or carriage horses. Yours are...”
Adelia said, rather briskly, “And I don’t think her horses belong to her. They now all belong to Sir Arthur, don’t they? She’d be stealing.” Much like the fact that a wife who ran away from home was actually stealing a possession from her husband; her own self, in fact, was a chattel of her husband’s. Technically the law had changed a few years previously but it certainly hadn’t changed many attitudes.
“I can’t imagine a murderess would be worried about being hanged for theft,” said Theodore.
“She might not be a murderess,” Adelia pointed out.
Kit put his hands in his pockets and whistled, to remind them that he was still there. Theodore thanked him and Adelia nudged him until he remembered to dip his hands into his own pockets and pass Kit a few coins “for the continued improvement of the children and this is certainly not charity.”
“Thank you kindly.” And then he was gone, darting away down a path that was almost invisible, merging into the countryside almost immediately.
Adelia said to Theodore, “Mary romanticises them so much but I can see why. I wonder if we ought to take her to see them before they leave?”
“As if they are a sideshow for the rich to peer at?” Theodore retorted snippily. Then he felt her recoil and realised he’d spoken too harshly. He squeezed out a tight-lipped smile. “Mary is very tired still. Let her keep her notions of their life to what she reads in books. It’s safer that way.”
“Yes,” replied Adelia. And Theodore thought there was a funny note in her voice as she said, “We must keep Mary safe, mustn’t we?”
THEODORE WALKED ON for a few more steps and then he became aware that Adelia had stopped. He turned around.
There was a determined look in her face. She had a set to her jaw that told him, from long experience, that she was about to ask permission for something that she had already quite made up her mind to do, and that her asking was merely a courtesy.
“I think I ought to go after her,” she said. “You can go after Rowlandson perhaps but I ought to go after her.”
He was surprised and yet, as he thought about it for a second longer, not surprised at all.
“You want to follow Lady Beaconberg to Lancaster?” he said.
“Yes. I know the sort of woman that she is and I can go to the female places that the police won’t even think of visiting. They will be tracking her like she is a fugitive, doing fugitive things, following fugitive patterns, but she is, after all, a lady.”
“A lady trying to travel in stealth on a Romani’s piebald nag.”
“That disguise gets her out of the area but it would not surprise me if she reverts to her usual character once she is over the Pennines and in Lancaster itself.”
“I wonder why she’s gone there?” he mused.
“I will ask her when I find her,” Adelia replied.
“How will you get there?”
“Train where possible, for the speed – coach and carriage in between. I will overtake her, in fact, if she stays on horseback and therefore I will apprehend her.”
“If Kit is wrong, you will look very foolish.”
Adelia smiled. “Kit isn’t wrong. I don’t believe he is a liar. And I am often foolish anyway. Do you mind if I go?”
“I have no choice.”
Her smile broadened. “You don’t, no, but bless you anyway.” She grew serious and said, “If you absolutely forbade it, I’d think again.”
“If I absolutely forbade it, you’d flee in the night just like Lady Beaconberg,” he said. “Come along. You need to get back to the Grey House and pack and then I will come back out and speak to Rowlandson while you head off to intercept Lady Beaconberg.”
“I think this all ought to be done in secret.”
“You’re right,” he said. “The police are certain of her guilt – but are we?”
“She is guilty of something but not murder,” Adelia said. “Yet that ‘something’ makes me more wary of her.”
“Then you cannot go alone. Should I come?”
“No. You’re needed here and it will look very strange. If anyone asks, tell them that I am laid up in bed, having caught whatever it is that has struck your mother.”
“There is a note in your voice which suggests you are rather thrilled about this whole thing,” Theodore said. “Please do not take risks in your delight to be acting like the heroine in a silly novel.”
“Me? Of course not.”
He was concerned, nonetheless, and hoped that he could persuade someone else to accompany his glorious, insane, unique wife on her quest.
ADELIA WAS CLOSETED in private with Smith, because apparently a journey necessitated a complete change of clothes, and so Theodore was alone in the main part of their suite at the Grey House when Mary came in looking for her mother.
“She won’t be long,” he told her. “Come and sit with me here.” He was basking in a pool of sunlight by the window. As soon as he had seen her safely on her way, he was intending to continue with his own tasks, but for the moment he was happy to simply exist in the moment. That was one thing he’d grown more aware of with ageing; one had to take every chance to si
mply be.
Mary was happy to settle herself in a wing-backed armchair. She gazed out at the window and said, “I’m glad the rain has passed.”
“We all are. How are you feeling?”
Did a frown pass over her face? He couldn’t be sure. “I am very well, thank you,” she replied stiffly.
“Does it bother you that I ask about your health?”
She did not reply.
“Why does it bother you that I ask?” he said again.
She turned her eyes on him and they glittered with some unfathomable emotion. “Because I am more than an illness.”
“But I love you and I am your father! If I did not ask, you would think that I didn’t care.”
“I know, I know, and I am an ungrateful daughter and I am sorry,” she said with a petulance that reminded him of the girl she had once been.
Lots of conversations that he had heard and taken part in came back into his mind. He thought about the sleepwalking and the idea that Adelia had mooted – that she was not asleep at all. He thought about the figure Adelia had seen on the night the news had broken about Lord Beaconberg, and the unlocked door. Hoof prints in the grass. Experimentally, Theodore said, “What excites you, Mary? What gets you out of bed in the morning, eager to start the day?”
She kept her face turned away. “Nothing should excite me. I have been told that excitement is bad for my heart. I must remain quiet and demure at all times, the perfect angel in the house.”
“Every word of that was bitter.”
“Yes. I find it hard to do my duty but I pray for strength. I try. I fail. I am sorry. I suppose I am not the perfect daughter that you would like me to be. I am not the woman you think I am.”