A Christmas Visitor Read online

  Benjamin looked at her. “I don’t know yet. But we will succeed. Judah was our brother, and I, at least, will never leave here until I have cleared his name, I promise!”

  “Nor will I,” Ephraim said fiercely. “I give you my word, for you, for Joshua, and for Judah himself.”

  She bent her head, the tears spilling over her cheeks. “Thank you.”

  The morning was sharp with high, drifting clouds and a thin sunshine. Henry rose early, had a cup of tea, and then dressed and went out. He preferred to walk alone and think. They had spoken brave words the evening before, but they had no plans that were assured of giving them the proof they needed. They were loyal, that was never in question. They were brave. Benjamin had the logic and the acute intelligence to marshal all the information they could acquire, and the force of mind to present it. Ephraim had the strength to face whatever unpleasantness, difficulty, or obstruction the people in the village might use, or to face Ashton Gower himself. Nothing would cause him to retreat from what he believed to be right, no matter what the cost.

  And Naomi had a charm and wit, an imagination to understand others, a warmth to disarm them, so she could glean all kinds of information that a more direct, confrontational approach would not. Henry found himself liking her more with each encounter. He could easily see why Ephraim had fallen in love with her, and remained so even over the years since she had left. In fact it was less easy to understand why Benjamin had not!

  Why had she chosen the quieter, far less dynamic Nathaniel? That was something Henry felt he would never understand. But then what man ever really understands the choices of women?

  He walked rapidly westward along the way Judah had gone on the night of his death. Apparently it was the easiest way from the house to the site of the Viking hoard, and he had not yet seen it. The air was crisp and sweet, and he saw wild birds wheeling in the sky and only a little higher on the slopes of the hills, the dark forms of deer grazing. A winter-coated hare loped across the snow only twenty yards away. He thought how infinitely more beautiful this was than the dripping, smoke-darkened streets of London, or of any other city.

  He crossed the stream over the narrow stone bridge, balancing with great care, although there was not actually ice on it, as he was much relieved to find.

  Then instead of going toward the church, he turned upstream and followed the path where it had led along the bank, and then climbed away. There was a small wooden notice indicating that he was almost there.

  He saw it as soon as he breasted the rise, its remaining walls etched dark against the snow. Behind it a lone man stood staring across the wind-rippled water, which was blue and silver and gray. He knew who it was before his footsteps crunching on the snow made him turn: Ashton Gower, bare-headed, his black hair and fierce eyes making him look as if he belonged to the landscape, even to the period when this shrine had been built. It gave Henry an odd feeling of intrusion, as if he were trying to alter history to make his own people belong in someone else’s heritage.

  He dismissed it with irritation. It was a trick of the light and his imagination. “Good morning, Mr. Gower,” he said politely. He considered saying something agreeable about the view, or even the possibility of more snow blowing up from beyond Helvellyn, and changed his mind. It would make him sound as if he were nervous. He did not mean it, and they both knew that.

  Gower swept his arm wide. “Like it?” he asked. “I’d welcome you to my land, but the law has taken it from me. You can come here any time you want, if the Dreghorns say you can. I can come here only to the point open to the public. But I refuse to pay!”

  “Has anyone asked you to?” Henry inquired, standing beside him and looking at the water, the mountains, and the sky, wild, wind-ragged, ever-shifting patterns of light and shadow.

  “Not yet,” Gower replied. “Even Dreghorn hadn’t the nerve to do that. He knew he was wrong, you know? He couldn’t look me in the eye. More grace than his brothers.” His mouth twisted. “Or more guilt!”

  “I’ve known Judah Dreghorn for twenty years,” Henry told him levelly, controlling his temper with difficulty. “Apart from what I know, there’s no one else who has an ill word to say of him. I also know what they say of you, Mr. Gower, and it is far less flattering. I assume you are claiming that the expert in forgery was lying as well? Why? Are you so hated here that men will perjure their souls to see you punished for something you did not do? Why? What have you done to earn that?”

  Gower shivered, hunching his shoulders as if the wind were suddenly blowing off ice. “The deeds I got from my father’s safe were genuine,” he said, facing Henry directly. “I can’t prove that, but they were. The land was his. Wilbur Colgrave might have been in love with my mother, but no Colgrave yielded his land for anyone. The reason he didn’t claim it was that he had no right to. That whole story of an affair was a slander. But who can prove that now?” There was pain in his voice, deep and angry, but so real Henry could feel it tear inside him also. Perhaps it was for his mother’s reputation as much as for himself. Henry would find it unbearable were such a thing suggested of his mother.

  How much can pain justify? Did Colgrave have to have revealed that very private detail? Could he not at least have kept that much silent? There was an unspoken understanding that one did not blacken the names of the dead who could no longer speak for themselves!

  But then that was exactly what Gower was doing to Judah. Henry said as much aloud.

  Gower turned to stare at him, confusion and frustration in his face. “How else can I defend myself?” he demanded, his voice almost choking. “This land is mine! They took my home, my heritage, my mother’s good name, and mine! And made me pay for it with eleven years of my life, while they took the spoils. Now I’m a branded man, without a roof over my head except I labor for it, and pay week by week. I’m supposed to accept that? That’s your idea of justice, the Dreghorn way?”

  “And the forged deeds?” Henry asked. “Or did the expert lie? Why? Is Judah Dreghorn supposed to have paid them, too?”

  “I don’t know. I do know the document I gave them was genuine, and it said the land was my father’s. The dates were right.” There was no doubt in Gower’s face, no flicker, only blind, furious certainty.

  There was no answer. Henry turned away and walked back to the house. He went straight to the stable, requested a horse, and rode out along the road to Penrith. He needed to know the exact history of where the deeds had been kept from the time of Geoffrey Gower’s death until the expert from Kendal had examined them and pronounced them to be forged. Doubt was gnawing at his mind, shapeless, uncertain, but fraying the edges of all his thoughts. He did not doubt Judah’s honesty, but could he have been mistaken, perhaps duped by someone else? It was a disturbing idea, but Henry could not leave it unanswered.

  The town was busy with the usual trade and market. The streets were crowded with people coming and going. Wagons were piled with bales of woolen cloth. All the traditional manufactures of the Lakes were there: clogs, slate, bobbins, iron goods, pottery, pencils. And every kind of food: oats, mutton, fresh fish, especially salmon, potatoes, Forty Shilling and Keswick Codling apples, and spices from the coast.

  Henry pushed his way through and eventually found himself at Judah’s offices again. It was a long, tedious task to trace the arrival of the deed and its exact whereabouts from that time forward until it was taken to be shown to the specialist in Kendal.

  “Ah, yes,” the junior clerk said knowingly. “Very sad. Never suspected Mr. Dreghorn of anything like that, I must say. Goes to show.”

  Henry froze, anger built up inside him. “Goes to show what, Mr. Johnson?” he said coldly. “That memories are short and loyalty thin?” Then the instant he had said it he regretted his lack of self-control. He was making his own task harder.

  Johnson flushed scarlet. “I don’t believe them!” he protested. “You do me wrong to think I did, sir, and that’s a fact.”

  Henry shifted his own position, p
erhaps a little less than honestly. He had assumed the man was speaking for himself. There had been no outrage in his face. “I was referring to those who do, whoever they are,” he amended. “I trust that having known Mr. Dreghorn you would be the last to agree, and the first to defend him.”

  “Of course I would,” Johnson said with a sniff.

  Henry used his advantage. “Then I am sure you will be as eager as I am to clear it up beyond question. I need to follow the history of those deeds that were sworn to be forgeries. When did they come here? Who brought them and from where? Where were they kept? Who had access to them, and who took them to Kendal to show to … what is his name?”

  “Mr. Percival, sir.”

  “Yes. Good. If anyone did tamper with them, it was not Mr. Dreghorn.” He made it a statement that could not be argued with.

  “Of course it wasn’t!” Johnson agreed truculently.

  But it was a slower task than Henry had expected, and Johnson was, above all, protective of his own reputation. He now had a new master and was determined to appear in the right. Judah was gone and could be of no more help.

  Henry caught him in a couple of self-serving lies before he was certain beyond argument as to the history of the deeds. The matter had taken well over a week, and during that time no one had looked at them. Undeniably, Judah could have altered them, or replaced them with forgeries. But so could a number of other people with either access to the office, or to the messenger who had carried them to Kendal. And of course it still left the time they had been in Mr. Percival’s care, a further two weeks or more. All were unlikely, but none was impossible.

  Henry thanked Johnson, who was now a good deal more anxious, then returned to the stable where he had left his horse, and set out on the long ride back to the estate.

  He turned the problem over in his mind all the way. Who had had the time, the opportunity, and the skill to make the forgery? The paper had apparently been wrong, and the ink, so they were easy enough to come by. The old seals had been removed from the original deeds, and glued back on the new ones. Time seemed to be the major element. But they had been in Judah’s offices for a week, then transported to Kendal and in Percival’s office for another two weeks. For anyone familiar with the deeds, it would take only a day to take them, create the forgery, destroy the original, and put the forgery back.

  It might be more difficult to prove who had actually done it. Unfortunately Judah was the person with the best opportunity, apart from Mr. Percival, of course. But there was no reason to suppose he had any interest in the matter.

  Henry continued to think about it as he rode. He found the stark beauty of the winter landscape peculiarly comforting. Its clean lines, wind-scoured, had a kind of courage about it, as if it had endured all that the violence of nature could heap on it, and pretension was swept away. The cold air stung his face, but his horse was a willing and agreeable animal, and there was a companionship in their journey. He thanked it with affection when he finally dismounted in the stable yard and went into the house.

  The evening was much more difficult. No one else had learned anything they felt to be of use. The whispers in the village were growing louder and each of them had heard remarks which at the best could be regarded as doubting, beginning to question whether Judah was actually as honest as he had seemed. Other cases were recalled where people had protested their innocence, even though a jury had found them guilty. There was no direct accusation, nothing specific to deny or disprove, just an unpleasantness in the air.

  Henry said that he had been to Penrith. He did not want to make a secret of it or it might seem underhanded, and anyway the groom would know because of the horse. But he did not tell anyone why he had gone, or precisely where.

  They sat around the dinner table with another delicious meal. Mrs. Hardcastle had made one of the local delicacies for pudding—a dish known as rum nicky—made of rum, brown sugar, dried fruit, and Cumberland apples.

  Antonia spoke because it was her home and they were her guests. She would not allow them to sit uncomfortably in silence, but it was all trivia, little bits of news about sheep dog trials last summer, boat races on the lake, who had climbed which mountain, what weather to expect.

  Henry was aware of Ephraim one moment looking at Naomi, the next carefully avoiding her eyes. Whatever it was that he felt for her, she did not wish to acknowledge it, and yet Henry was absolutely certain that she knew.

  And all the time at the back of his mind was the fear that they would all have to be told the possibility that in some way, through misplaced trust, inattention, some kind of carelessness, Judah had made an error, and Gower was not guilty of forging the deeds, which must mean that someone else was.

  Who else profited? Peter Colgrave, that was obvious. Had anyone else thought they could buy the estate cheaply? Had anyone known of the Viking hoard, with its gold and silver coins, its jewelry and artifacts, not to mention its historic value? That was another thing to find out, if possible.

  But sitting at the table, seeing their faces, the tension, the anger, and the grief, he dared not approach it yet. But how long could he wait?

  After the meal was finished Antonia went upstairs to say good night to Joshua, and Henry knew from the evenings before that she would be gone for quite a long time, perhaps an hour or more. Joshua was nine years old, still a child in his hurt and confusion, trying hard to earn the respect of his uncles, to behave like the man he thought they expected him to be.

  And he was also intelligent enough to know that they were protecting him from something else. Henry had seen his face as they changed the subject when he came in while they were speaking of Gower, or the village. They did not know children. They did not realize how much he heard, how quick he was to catch an evasion, a note of unintended patronage. He could see fear, even if he could not give it a name.

  Henry could remember how Oliver had constantly surprised him with his grasp of things Henry had assumed to be beyond him. He watched, he copied, he understood. Joshua Dreghorn was just as eager and as quick. Antonia knew that, and she was spending her time, and perhaps her emotions, with him.

  Henry invited Naomi to accompany him for a short walk in the starlit garden, which she accepted. He held her cloak for her, then put on his own coat, and led the way to the side door.

  “What is it?” she asked as soon as they were a couple of yards from the house. “Have you learned something?”

  There was no time to approach it obliquely. “I went to see a clerk in Judah’s office in Penrith,” he answered. “I asked him exactly where the deeds had been since they were taken out of Geoffrey Gower’s safe.” He spoke quietly, although the crunch of their footsteps on the frost-hardened grass might well have disguised their voices, had anyone near an open window been listening. “There was time and opportunity for someone to have altered it … changed it for another.”

  “You mean put a forgery in place of a genuine one?” She saw what he meant immediately, and there was fear in her voice. With the hood of her cloak up he could see little of her face.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “You believe Gower?” It was a direct question, filled with incredulity, but asked nonetheless.

  He could not answer immediately, not with complete honesty.

  “Mr. Rathbone?” she demanded, gripping his arm and pulling him to a stop.

  “I don’t believe Judah would have done such a thing, for any reason whatever,” he said unhesitatingly. Of that he was absolutely sure. “But he may have trusted people he should not have.”

  Her voice was very low. “Have you told that to anyone else?”

  “No.” He was smiling in the dark, but it was self-mockery, there was no pleasure in it at all. “I have spent all my ride back from Penrith and a good deal of the evening trying not to do so. But it is a possibility we have to face.”

  “You are sure there was opportunity?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who? If not Gower, why would anyone else?
He was the only one who would profit from such a stupid forgery!”

  They started to walk again, heading farther away from the house, and anyone who might look out and see them.

  “He made the date into the one that would mean the property was his!” she went on, still holding his arm. “The other date would have left it as Peter Colgrave’s, as it was. Then we bought it. No one else had anything to gain from changing it.”

  “There is no answer that fits the facts,” he told her. “Ashton Gower swears that the deeds were not forged, the expert says that they were. The forged date favors Gower.”

  “Yes. Isn’t that proof?”

  The thought he had been fighting against all day crystalized in his mind.

  “What if the forgery is not a change at all?”

  “But that makes no …” She stopped. “Oh, no! You mean if the forgery is an exact copy of the original, date included? So Gower was telling the truth when he said the deed was genuine? Then it was replaced by an obvious forgery, with exactly the same date, so Gower would be disbelieved—lose his land!”

  “Yes.”

  “That is terrible! But who? Colgrave?”

  “Perhaps. Or anyone else who thought they might be able to buy the estate cheaply.”

  “Judah bought it from Colgrave, at the price he asked. He was in a hurry for the money. I think he had debts. Maybe someone else expected to buy, and didn’t get the chance. That could be anyone!”

  “Maybe someone else had already found the Viking hoard and knew what it would be worth,” Henry pointed out. “Colgrave didn’t, or he would have asked a far larger sum.”

  “And Gower believes it was Judah.” Her voice was somber and tight with strain. “Perhaps he really didn’t do it, is that possible? Without knowing it, Judah sent an innocent man to prison!”

  “Yes, it is possible.” He loathed admitting it. “Of course it is also possible that he is as guilty as sin of killing Judah,” he added. “Somebody did. No one else we know had a reason—except the real forger.”