A Death in Norfolk

  "No."

  "Good. You row and tell me where to steer."

  He handed me the bag of priceless paintings and went back into the miller's house. He came out with Cooper's body balanced over his shoulders, his slim build in no way bent by Cooper's weight.

  Denis walked past me and dumped Cooper into the rowboat. He got into the rocking craft, holding it steady by the line tying it to a lone wooden post sticking out of the water.

  I stood for a moment on the bank. I still held the pistol, and I had the paintings. I could shoot Denis there and then, row myself to shore, take the paintings to a magistrate I knew, and return home a virtuous man.

  I got into the boat.

  Denis took the bag from me, wrapped it well, and stowed it on the bottom. If we foundered, thousands upon thousands of guineas worth of valuable and historic paintings would go down with us.

  "I assume you know the difference between port and starboard," I said, unlashing the oars.

  "I do."

  I cast off, thumped down onto the seat, and started to row. "Hard aport," I said, and we moved.

  *** *** ***

  I rowed west and north, around headlands, past drained marshes, and to an area where little creeks ran everywhere, water and land blending into one. Here, the villages were far inland, and no fishing boats were in sight.

  Denis did not want me to pull up in the marshes. He had me row out into deeper water, right into the sea.

  I did so with some trepidation. This craft was meant for floating through creeks and rivers or along the shore, not for tossing about on waves. If we went too far, we'd not get back.

  When the land was a only wide line on the horizon, Denis had me stop. I shipped the oars, and the boat bobbed heavily on the waves. The sun was sinking far to the west, over the green smudge of Lincolnshire in the distance.

  Denis grabbed the unmoving form of Cooper and hauled him to the gunwale. The boat tilted alarmingly. Cooper groaned, and his eyelids fluttered.

  "He's alive," I said.

  "I know." Denis hooked his hand around the seat of Cooper's pants. "You might want to look to shore, Captain."

  I did not think Denis meant to dunk Cooper's head in the water to revive him. I had hoped we'd brought him out here for a good talking to, but Denis's lectures tended to be final. Cooper started to struggle, regaining consciousness but still weak.

  "You cannot dump a man overboard and leave him to drown," I said. "That is too cruel, even for you."

  "Do you hear, Cooper?" Denis asked. "The captain has compassion."

  He took up the pistol I'd left on the bench, heaved Cooper up so that his head was over the water, and stuck the pistol's barrel into the back of Cooper's neck. Cooper dragged his head around to look at me.

  What I saw in Cooper's eyes was not terror but rage. He fixed me with a glare of hatred stronger than any I'd ever seen. He was still glaring at me when Denis pulled the trigger.

  The gun's boom was deafening. The life abruptly died from Cooper's eyes as half his face vanished into blood.

  Denis had arranged the execution so deftly that almost all Cooper's blood sprayed into the water, very little touching the boat. Denis laid down the pistol, caught Cooper's waistband again, and heaved the man into the water. Cooper sank, blood and bubbles in his wake.

  Denis took a long breath and stripped off his ruined gloves. I thought he meant to say something to me, but he turned away, bowed his head, and pressed his hands over his face.

  *** *** ***

  Denis sat for a long time--saying nothing, doing nothing. He remained motionless, in silence, while the waves pushed at the boat.

  We started to drift too far north. I took up the oars and quietly turned us around, picking a path back to shore.

  Eventually, Denis raised his head and caught the tiller. His eyes were as cool as ever, no tears, no redness to betray grief. But the sun was full in my face, doubled by its reflection on the water, and perhaps I could not see.

  Denis said nothing at all as we traveled. He steered competently, and we avoided breakers to move smoothly back toward the windmill. I offered to row him closer to Blakeney or Cley, which would give him a short walk over fields to Easton's, but he declined.

  "He will wash ashore sooner or later," I said after another long silence.

  Denis did not ask me who I meant. "I know." His mouth was a thin line. "If you worry that any accusation will fall on you, do not. Your name will not be involved."

  I had not thought that far ahead--I'd barely thought past landing the boat. I said nothing, and Denis went on.

  "When there are questions, I will answer them for you. You are under my protection." He looked to shore at the windmill drawing closer, its arms turning with slow patience. "Morgan will have a proper burial and a grand funeral service."

  Whereas Cooper, the man he'd trusted for twenty years, would be food for the fishes.

  We landed and tied up the boat. Waller hadn't returned, and I decided he must have run off for good.

  Denis entered the windmill with the paintings, then came out with a blanket and went into the ruined miller's house. I unsaddled and unbridled the horses to let them again share the cow's manger, which I replenished with hay from stacks on the leeward side of the house.

  When I looked into the miller's house, Denis had turned Morgan over and laid him out, hands on his chest. Denis covered Morgan with a blanket and came out of the house without a word.

  The day was darkening, and we sought shelter from the night in the windmill. I lit lamps and stoked the fire against the cold.

  Denis looked horrible. His finely tailored suit was shredded and blood-spattered, his face smeared with blood and gunpowder. I imagined I did not look much better, which was confirmed when I bent over the washbasin in the bedroom upstairs. I caught a glimpse of my parchment-white face in the mirror, my dark eyes burning with a strange, feverish light.

  I found bread, cheese, and ale downstairs in the kitchen, and I fell hungrily to my repast. Denis declined my offer to share the meal with him. He sat on a straight-backed chair, his hands on his lap, staring out the window through which he could see nothing.

  "Grieving for him is only natural," I said around bites of thick bread. "He was a part of your life."

  Denis turned his head to look at me. "Please do not speak of it."

  "The man who gave me the life I needed betrayed me too."

  "You mean Colonel Brandon, punishing you for loving his wife." When I did not answer, Denis looked back at the window. "You do not like to speak of that either."

  "No," I said. "But Brandon and what he did to me made me realize that men are who they are. We try to make them into something they are not, and then are astonished when they turn out not to be what we wanted. We betray ourselves."

  Denis got up from the chair. "Pardon me, Lacey, but I have had enough of your philosophy for one day." He walked steadily across the kitchen and opened the door. "You have fulfilled this commission for me. Pack your bags when we reach Easton's and go."

  He went out into the night, closing the door behind him--not slamming it. I resumed my supper and my own troubled thoughts.

  *** *** ***

  The tide turned, and the road south was dry in the morning. Waller did return, with a constable from the nearest village and the magistrate for the area: a well-fed squire on a well-fed horse.

  Waller had witnessed Cooper attack us and kill Morgan, plus Cooper had held Waller hostage. The constable and magistrate were satisfied with the tale that Cooper locked Denis and me into the cellar and then ran off, fascinated by my explanation of how we'd managed to climb out through the floor. Denis said nothing, only stood looking out to sea, his back to us.

  I had cleaned the boat before I'd fallen into heavy sleep the night before and had checked this morning to make sure I'd missed no smear of blood. I hadn't, but no one even looked at the boat. The magistrate went off home and the constable sent for a carter to deliver Morgan's body back to the
Easton estate. They considered Cooper to be a fugitive, and the magistrate said he'd put out the hue and cry.

  I knew they'd find nothing for a very long time. Denis had known exactly where to drop the body. When Cooper did eventually wash to shore, he would be too disintegrated for any but an expert to tell how he died, and then they might believe he'd fallen in with ruffians or was attacked by them. Cooper was a killer--no one would care very much how he met his end.

  Denis and I spoke not at all as we rode back. Bartholomew, who'd spent an uneasy night waiting for me, had plenty of questions when I reached Easton's, especially when he saw my blood-spattered clothes. I put him off with short answers and bade him draw me a bath.

  As I soaked in the hot water, I told Bartholomew to pack my things. We'd be moving into the pub at Blakeney. I did not want to go to the Parson's Point pub, because Buckley would be there, and I still did not have the fortitude to face him.

  Denis summoned me before I could leave, and I went to the study.

  Everything was as before--Denis sitting behind the desk, one of his lackeys at the window, looking on. The desk was bare.

  Before Denis could speak, I said, "One final thing puzzles me. Cooper says he did not kill Ferguson. If he did not, then who did?"

  "Cooper lied," Denis said.

  "He seemed genuinely surprised that Ferguson was dead. Your surgeon told you that Ferguson had been well beaten, but before his death. The wounds on his face were made by Cooper, who was good with a cudgel. But the death blow could have been made afterward."

  Denis shrugged. "Cooper delivered the final blow, Ferguson died slowly of the wound, and Cooper did not realize."

  I was not so satisfied. "A second person might have come upon Ferguson later, when he was too weak to fight."

  Denis rose, not caring. As far as he was concerned, the matter was at an end.

  "Come with me," he said, and walked out of the room without waiting to see whether I followed.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Denis led me downstairs to the dining room. The chandelier above the long table had been lit, and under its glowing light, Denis unrolled the canvases I'd found under the floorboards in the miller's house.

  It was as though paradise had opened itself into this small, quiet room. I saw Venus and Adonis in a misty green garden; a beautifully dressed Dutch man and woman standing together in a tender moment; the haughty face of a princess with a ruff around her neck; glorious blue skies over classical ruins in a world that did not exist.

  Beauty always struck me mute. I could only walk around the table, stunned, looking at glory.

  "I thought you would like to view that for which you nearly died," Denis said.

  "What will happen to them?" I felt as though I asked about orphaned children.

  "They will go to the gentlemen who paid me to obtain them. Those buyers are growing rather impatient. Brigadier Easton angered me not only because he stole from me but because he was ruining my business."

  "But you stole these in the first place," I said. "Or had others steal them for you."

  "I remember telling you--rather poetically, you remarked--that the rich patrons who commissioned the works in the first place usually came up with every excuse why they could not pay the artists once the work was done. Consider that I am taking only that which has already been stolen."

  I met his gaze. "Do you spin this tale to make yourself feel better?"

  Denis looked well rested and almost as normal, his well-made suit perfectly pressed, his linen pure white, his bruises and abrasions already fading. But even so, I saw in his eyes an emptiness that had not been there before. "I spin it to make you feel better," he said. "With your sense of honor, I thought you would enjoy the justice."

  Denis pushed a tiny painting at me, a miniature done in exquisite detail. The picture depicted a young woman in a dark dress, a white cap over her fair hair, a rather elaborate silver necklace around her throat. She kept her gaze serenely downward, but she was so real that I expected her at any moment to look up and speak to me.

  "By Holbein the Younger," Denis said. "Give it to your lady."

  I touched it, sorely tempted. "What about whoever asked you to find this?"

  "No one did. I pick up pieces here and there for my own enjoyment. You have done me several good turns. Take it as a token of my gratitude."

  "Or as a payment for not telling a magistrate all that has happened?"

  "You are a highly suspicious man, Captain. Make of it what you will. I still believe that Lady Breckenridge will enjoy the picture."

  If I took it, I condoned his thievery and Cooper's execution. The picture would forever haunt me. He knew that, devil take him.

  I also knew that someone had tried to kill him yesterday, and instead of assisting the killer in ridding the world of James Denis, I'd saved Denis's life. I'd then helped cover up a murder and was about to look the other way at Denis stealing a fortune's worth of paintings.

  True, after the confusion of the recent war on the Continent and the constant looting of each nation by the others, it was difficult to know who owned what. And Denis was not wrong about the artists. Wealthy patrons could be the most canny criminals of all.

  I put out my hand, picked up the miniature portrait, dropped it into my pocket, and walked away without a word.

  *** *** ***

  The bed in the small room above the pub was not as comfortable as the one I'd had at Easton's house, or indeed, at Lady Southwick's, but I slept heavily, nevertheless.

  I had horrible dreams. Again and again, I saw Cooper's eyes going blank when Denis shot him, his body falling into the waves, and felt my arms aching as I pulled for shore. I dreamed of the paintings Denis had spread across the table, the astonishing colors that suddenly became stained red-brown with blood.

  When I woke, my arms did indeed hurt, both from fighting and the hard rowing through ocean waves. The rest of my body did not feel much better.

  Before I could get myself out of bed, Bartholomew came in bearing a tray heaped with a well-needed repast. The brown bread, warm cheese, bacon, and coffee tasted of ambrosia.

  "Are we going back to London, sir?" Bartholomew asked as he dressed me.

  "Not yet. One or two things I need to clear up."

  I'd thought Bartholomew would look disappointed, but he smiled. "Good for you, sir. You always finish the job. How can I help?"

  *** *** ***

  We returned to the Lacey house. The pile of debris in the back was now cool ash, and I asked Bartholomew to start raking it up.

  The local men began drifting in, asking for work. I had them begin testing and shoring up beams, while I sorted through whatever papers and things had been left in the house. I had to promise to pay the men later, but they took me at my word.

  Terrance Quinn also came. "I'm not much use," he said. "But there must be something I can do. At least pretend there is, Lacey."

  "You can be of enormous help," I answered. "I need a caretaker, a steward. I return to London soon, and my wife-to-be informs me that we'll live here only in the summers. She is a determined lady, is my wife-to-be."

  Terrance unbent enough to smile. "You are up against it."

  Not that I minded one whit. "If you moved in here to direct the repair work, and then stayed on and looked after the place in general, I would be extremely grateful. So would her ladyship."

  So would her ladyship meant a salary, a decent one. Terrance regarded me in surprise. "You would want me?"

  "Why not? You know the local men, and they respect you, you know who can be trusted. Why stay home and carry pots for your mother's cook?"

  "Why indeed?"

  We shook hands, Terrance offering his left. I now had someone to look after the old place, and Terrance had a purpose.

  I turned to other matters. Despite Denis's conviction that Cooper had killed Ferguson, even accidentally, I was not so certain. I wanted again to go over the exact sequence of events leading up
to Ferguson's death.

  Before I could begin, however, a lavish coach and four pulled up the drive that was now being cleared of weeds. A horseman followed the carriage, and I saw, when he dismounted, that the horseman was Grenville.

  I came out of the house to greet him. "I thought you were in London."

  Grenville handed his reins to his groom, who'd descended from the back of the coach. "I did start for there." He neared me, saw my battered face, and stopped in shock. "Good God, Lacey, what happened to you?"

  "Many things. Suffice it to say that the paintings and Mr. Cooper were found, and I am released from my duty to Mr. Denis. You did not answer my question."

  Grenville's brows rose. "I will certainly bribe you to tell me all about it, later. But for my part . . ." He closed his mouth, put his hand on my shoulder and led me into the house, out of earshot of the other men. "I decided to travel to London via Cambridge. While in Cambridge, I stopped and asked a few questions--I know quite a few people there. I believe, Lacey, that I have found your Miss Quinn."

  I raised my brows. "In Cambridge?"

  "Indeed, no. The information you received about her was correct. She is in Lincolnshire. In a place called Market Sutton, to be precise. I thought to jaunt there and speak to her. Are you free to come?"

  The coach and four, I realized, was for me. Grenville had been riding instead of sitting inside the carriage, because of his motion sickness, but he knew I'd never make a day and a half journey on horseback. He was good at anticipating the needs of others, one of the reasons he was well liked.

  He was also afire with curiosity. I was alight with the same curiosity, but I was still battered and slow from my ordeal.

  "Denis sent someone to Cambridge to inquire on my behalf," I said. "You did not have to go."

  "I know, but I could not help myself. I met Denis's man, and he was happy to turn the problem over to me. If you are up to traveling, please join us. If not, I will go alone, at your service."

  "Us?"

  Grenville's smile deserted him. "Marianne is in the coach. When I sent her word I'd be pausing in Cambridge, she came down to meet me."