Death at Dawn: A Liberty Lane Thriller. Caro Peacock
his wife’s grave. Indeed, his thin and clean-shaven face was severe, his complexion greyish and ill looking. He might have been sixty or more, but it was hard to tell because grief and illness age people. When he saw me looking at him he hesitated, then raised his hat.
‘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.’