A Christmas Visitor Read online

  Ashton Gower might well have wished him dead, and rejoiced when he was, but there was nothing whatever to suggest that he had killed him, except the madness of the man and his hunger for revenge, and they proved nothing at all.

  Reluctantly he turned and made his way back, shivering in spite of his coat, scarf, hat, and thick, fur-lined gloves. Everything in him wanted to believe Gower was responsible. It was factually absurd, and emotionally the only thing that made sense.

  With the daylight the snow was thawing and by the time he reached the house his feet were thoroughly soaked, as were the bottoms of his trousers. He went up the back stairs to his room and changed before coming down again to the dining room.

  Mrs. Hardcastle brought him a late breakfast, and he was joined by Benjamin, curious to know where he had been.

  “To the stepping stones,” Henry replied when asked. “Tea?”

  Benjamin sat down. He looked tired, his eyes hollowed round with shadows. He accepted the offer. Henry poured for them. “Why?”

  “Just to see if what Leighton told us makes sense. It does, Ben. I can’t imagine Judah going there to meet Gower at night, and it’s ridiculous to think Gower waited there for him by chance.”

  Benjamin looked at him steadily. “You think it was simply an accident?”

  Henry did not know how to answer. His intelligence and his instinct fought against each other. He was a man used to logical thought, brought up in the discipline and the beauty of reason. And yet his knowledge of Judah Dreghorn made the deductions sit ill with him. He answered the only way honesty could dictate. “There must be something we don’t know, perhaps several things.”

  Benjamin gave a rueful smile. “Same old Henry, careful thinker.” He drew in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “We need that now more than ever. What do we tell Antonia?”

  Henry did not have to weigh his answer. There was only one they could afford, and he had a firmer trust of Antonia’s courage and judgment than Benjamin had, sharp memories of her frankness, her curiosity, and the courage with which she met the answers, so many of which she had had to face alone. It hurt him deeply that her happiness had been so short. “The truth,” he replied.

  The opportunity did not come until the evening. Either one of them had been otherwise occupied, or Joshua had been with them, but after dinner they were all gathered around the fire, and Joshua had gone to bed. It was Benjamin who began, looking at Antonia with grave apology.

  “I’m sorry to raise it again, but I believe we need to understand better what happened the night Judah died.”

  “I don’t know anything I haven’t told you,” she answered, her hands knotted in her lap, unornamented but for her gold wedding ring.

  He was gentle. “What did you talk about on the way home from the recital?”

  “The music, of course.”

  “How was Judah? Of course he would be proud of Joshua, but was he otherwise just as usual?”

  She considered for a few moments. “Looking back on it, he was more than usually absorbed in thought. I believed at the time it was the emotion of the music, and that perhaps he was tired. He had had a difficult case in Penrith. I didn’t know then just how awful Gower had been. Judah had not told me, I only learned after his death of the details. He’s an evil man, Benjamin. To hate so much is a kind of insanity, I think, and that is frightening.”

  “Did Judah mention him at all? Can you remember?”

  Ephraim sat motionless, his face deep in thought. Henry felt a chill of anxiety. There was a power in Ephraim, a courage that stopped at nothing. If he once were convinced that Ashton Gower had killed his brother, nothing would deter him from pursuing justice. Such strength was disturbing.

  “When I think of it,” Antonia replied, “he actually spoke very little. He only answered me.”

  “He didn’t say where he was going, or why he wanted to walk at that hour?” Benjamin persisted.

  “Not really, just for the air,” she answered. She looked uncertain. “I thought he wanted to think.”

  “Outside, on a winter night?”

  She said nothing, now deeply unhappy.

  Henry was gentler. “Did he suggest you should not wait up for him?”

  She had to think for a moment. “Yes. Yes, he did say something like that. I don’t remember exactly what.”

  “So he expected to be gone an hour or more,” Henry deduced.

  “An hour?” Benjamin questioned.

  “By the time Joshua had got over his excitement and gone to bed, and then Antonia herself had,” Henry replied. “It sounds as if he intended to go as far as the stream. What lies beyond it? Where is this Viking site, exactly?”

  “Farther down the stream,” she said. “Just above the lower crossing before you get to the church. He wasn’t going to the site. There’s nothing really beyond the higher crossing, except a copse of trees, and a shepherd’s hut. Do you suppose he was going there? What for?”

  There was only one answer, and it hung in the air like an additional darkness.

  “If it was someone he didn’t trust, he’d have taken the dogs. They’d have attacked anyone who threatened him.”

  “Or he was going to see someone he trusted,” Henry said.

  Antonia stared at the fire. “Or there was no one else. He slipped, that’s all, just as Dr. Leighton said.”

  Benjamin’s face was bleak. “Which could not have been Gower. We are no further forward.”

  Another thought occurred to Henry. “Unless he went with the purpose of helping Gower, perhaps to offer him some kind of assistance in getting himself work, or some establishment in the community again.”

  Ephraim’s eyes opened wide. “After what Gower had been saying about him? But if he was, why there, of all places? And in the middle of the night!”

  “Judah might have helped him anyway,” Antonia said quietly. “He helped all kinds of people. But I can’t think why meet there!”

  “Neither can I,” Benjamin agreed coldly. “What happened? Gower killed him for his trouble? Or else when Judah slipped, just left him there to drown? I know the man was a swine, but that’s inhuman.”

  “If he did, we’ll prove it.” Ephraim stared at him. “I’ll see him answer for every word, every act. He’ll never blacken a Dreghorn name again.”

  Antonia smiled and nodded, her eyes brimming with tears.

  But alone upstairs in his room, Henry looked out of the window toward the vast, snow-bleached expanse of the mountains under the star-glittered sky, and thought what he had not dared say to the family. He had known Judah well, they had been friends for years, shared all manner of things both with words and in silence. They had understood the emotions that were too complicated to explain, and talked all night of the philosophies that lent themselves to endless exploration.

  Judah would not have met alone with Ashton Gower to offer him help, after Gower had accused him of fraud, at the stream or anywhere else. He was far too sophisticated not to realize that Gower could then blackmail him with the threat that he had helped only to hide his own guilt, and Gower would do that. That was the kind of man he was, and Judah knew it.

  The more Henry weighed the facts they had, the less any answer fitted them. Each one left loose ends and questions unanswered. He drew the curtains across and prepared to go to bed. Tomorrow he would have one more journey to make to the station at Penrith, and one more time to break the news.

  In the morning the thaw had set in and everything was dripping. Much of the snow had melted and there were long streaks of black over the hills where the slopes were bare. Trees that had been hung with icicles yesterday were naked today, branches an unencumbered lace against the sky.

  A grim-faced Mrs. Hardcastle served breakfast of eggs, bacon, Cumberland sausage, toast, jam made of witherslacks, or brambles known as black kite, and scalding hot tea in a silver pot. The reason for her anger became known quite early on: Ashton Gower had resumed his accusation and one of the newcomers in the village
was repeating it. Mrs. Hardcastle’s opinion of her should have turned the milk sour.

  Henry was ready to set out for the station when Ephraim strode across the stable yard, coattails flapping, and climbed in beside him. He offered no explanation and Henry made no remark. He had a strong idea why Ephraim had come, and he was not sure whether it would make the task of breaking the news to Naomi Dreghorn easier or more difficult. He half expected Ephraim to offer to go in his place, but he did not. It seemed that in this first meeting again after the years between, and Nathaniel’s death, he did not wish to be alone with Naomi.

  There was little wind, but the damp in the air made the journey cold. Neither of them had anything further to say about Gower or the subject of his accusations. Henry asked Ephraim about Africa, and was caught up out of the grief of the moment listening to his answers.

  Ephraim smiled, and for a space of time he did not see the sweep of snow-scattered hills or the ragged clouds above, but felt the hot sun on his skin and dry winds of Africa carrying the scents of dust and animal dung, eyes narrowed against the light as he saw in his mind’s eye the endless plains with vast herds of beasts and the curious flat-topped acacia trees.

  “You can hear the lions roar in the night,” he said with a smile. “It’s primeval nature as you never see it in Europe. We’ve grown old and become too civilized. You hear a hyena’s maniacal laughter in the dark, and it’s as if you heard the first joke at the beginning of the world, and he’s the only one who knows it.”

  For a moment Henry also forgot the knife-edge wind with the rain behind it.

  “And the plants,” Ephraim went on. “Every shape and color imaginable, and nothing lost or wasted, nothing without a use. It is so superb that sometimes I feel drunk just looking at it.”

  They continued to talk.

  The time of the journey flew by, and because of the change in the weather, the train pulled in within moments of midday. There were clouds of steam, shouts, and a clanging of doors.

  Henry did not know Naomi by sight. He realized with surprise that he did not even know what manner of woman to expect. He had been too preoccupied with present events even to form a picture in his mind, tall or short, dark or fair. Now he stood on the platform without any idea at all.

  Five women alighted from the train. Two were elderly, and accompanied by men, a third was dark and spare with a grim countenance and severe clothes as if she were applying for a place as a governess in some forbidding establishment. Henry knew Ephraim well enough to not even consider her.

  The other two were handsome, the first fair-haired and dainty, a most feminine woman. She looked about her as if searching for a familiar face.

  Henry was about to go forward, certain this must be Naomi; then he saw the other young woman. She was taller, broader of shoulder, and she walked with an extraordinary grace, as if movement were a pleasure to her, an unconsidered and natural art. Her face had an unusual beauty, partly a strength of feature, but even more an intelligence, as if everything were of interest to her. If she had ever felt fear, there was no mark of it in her bearing. Henry could not help wondering if it was complete innocence, or a most remarkable courage.

  He looked sideways, momentarily at Ephraim, and the last doubt vanished that this was Naomi.

  Henry stepped forward. “Naomi Dreghorn?”

  She smiled at him, charming but cool. She did not know him, and for a moment it seemed that she had not recognized Ephraim either.

  “My name is Henry Rathbone,” he introduced himself. “I have come to meet you and take you to the house. You may remember, it is about six miles away, on the lake.”

  “How do you do, Mr. Rathbone.” Her smile was wide and full of pleasure, and she offered him her hand, as if she had been a man. It was slim and strong, and she gripped his firmly.

  He picked up her case. “And I expect you remember Ephraim?”

  Her face was calm, but the warmth in it was suddenly distant.

  “Of course. How are you, Ephraim?”

  He replied a little stiffly. She might have thought it was coolness, but Henry could see the uncharacteristic awkwardness of his movement—his usual ease which had its own kind of grace was entirely vanished. He was at a disadvantage which was unfamiliar to him.

  They spoke of trivialities until they were seated in the trap and on their way out of Penrith and once again going westward, the damp wind in their faces, smelling of rain.

  Ephraim asked Naomi about America, sounding as if it were mere courtesy that made him inquire. She replied warmly, with imagination and wit, so that whether he would or not, he was compelled to care. She described the vast plains of the west, the herds of buffalo that made the earth tremble when they ran, the high deserts to which she had traveled from the west, where the earth was red and ochre and the colors of fire, wind-eroded to fantastic shapes, like castles and towers of the imagination.

  She did not speak of Nathaniel’s death, and neither Henry nor Ephraim asked, each waiting for the other to broach the subject of death, and break the news to her. They had half an hour’s truce with death while she described travel and adventure, hardship made the best of, and they found themselves laughing.

  “I brought a gift for Joshua,” she said with a smile that held a trace of self-mockery. “I think I chose it because I like it myself rather than because he will, but I didn’t mean it to be so. I like to give people things I would keep.”

  “What is it?” Henry asked with genuine interest. What would this most unusual woman have brought, to go with Benjamin’s scripture in its carved and perfumed case, and Ephraim’s royal necklace of ivory and gold?

  “An hourglass,” she replied. “A memento mori, I suppose you would call it. A reminder of death—and the infinite value of life. It is made of crystal and set with semiprecious stones of the desert. The sand that runs through it is red, from the valleys that look like fire.”

  “It sounds perfect.” Henry meant it. “We spend too much of our lives dreaming of the past or the future. There is a sense in which the present is all we have, and we cannot hold it dearly enough. It sounds like a gift of both beauty and memory, like the other gifts he has been brought.”

  “You think so?” She seemed to care for his opinion.

  If Ephraim was not going to tell her, then he must.

  “I do. But before we reach the village, I am afraid there is hard news we have to share.”

  “What is it?” She saw that it was serious and the light vanished from her face.

  Briefly he told her about Judah’s death and Ashton Gower’s accusations.

  She listened very gravely, and spoke only when he had finished, by which time they were less than a mile from the house.

  “What are we going to do about it?” she asked, looking first at Henry, then at Ephraim. “This man must be silenced from slander, and if he is in any way responsible for Judah’s death, then we must see that he answers for it! Apart from justice, Antonia and Joshua are not safe unless he is imprisoned again, and his words shown as lies.”

  This time it was Ephraim who answered. “We have to prove he was there,” he said grimly. “It isn’t going to be easy because he will have made sure he told no one, and no one else would be out at such a place at night.”

  “Why else would Judah go out there in the snow at night, except to meet somebody?” she asked.

  There was no answer, and they were approaching the drive gates.

  The next hour was taken up in the emotion of arrival and welcome, exchanges of concern, of grief, and of a depth of understanding between the two women, who had both experienced widowhood while still so young. Although they had known each other only briefly, and that several years ago, there was an ease in their communication as if friendship were natural.

  They resumed the conversation in the late afternoon over tea by the fire with scones, hinberry jam, and slices of ginger cake, baked with spices and rich molasses from the West Indies.

  This time Antonia joined
in. “The more I think of it, the more certain I am that he intended to meet someone,” she said gravely. “I hadn’t remembered before, but he took out his pocket watch several times in order to check the time. I thought then that it was to see how long the recital had been, but he would not do that more than once.”

  “The difficulty will be to prove that it was Gower,” Benjamin pointed out. “It is not the easiest place for them to meet, and frankly, a ridiculous time.”

  “But Judah was there!” Antonia argued. “However absurd it is, it is the truth.”

  “There is still something we do not know,” Henry insisted. “Either something important, or that we have misunderstood, and it is not what it seems.”

  Ephraim’s face set hard. “Well, two things I am sure of: Judah would not have done anything unjust or dishonest; and the other is that Ashton Gower is a convicted forger, driven by hate and the passion for revenge on the family who legitimately bought his estate. Judah is dead, and Gower is alive and slandering his name.”

  “None of that is at issue,” Benjamin agreed. “The problem is to prove it.” He turned to Antonia. “What was Judah wearing that night?”

  She looked puzzled. “It was an evening recital. We were all dressed quite formally.”

  “He didn’t change before he went out afterwards?”

  “No.” She bit her lip. “I assumed he simply wanted to walk a little after sitting in the hall all evening, and in the carriage on the way back. Why? How can that help?”

  “I don’t know,” Benjamin admitted. “But there is no point in trying to find anything on the ground where it happened. All marks or prints will have disappeared long ago. His clothes will have been kept safely. I thought there might be something, a tear, even a note of a meeting, anything at all …” He tailed off, losing belief in the hope as he spoke.

  “There could be a note,” Henry said, rising to his feet. “Sometimes things remain dry inside a pocket. If anything at all is legible, it might help. Let us at least look.”

  “Of course,” Antonia agreed, standing also. “I didn’t know what else to do with them. I couldn’t bring myself even to clean them …” She gave a brief, tight little smile. “Maybe it is for the best?”