Authors: Eleanor Kuhns
Rees nodded. He would have accepted a plateful of dirt just to shift everyone’s attention away from him and Lydia. Very conscious of his manners, he held her chair. She was aware of everyone’s gaze as well; she sat down and folded her hands daintily in her lap. When he seated himself across the table from her, he said, “I’m sorry. Putting you in this position was poor judgment on my part.”
Lydia smiled. “After this nothing else will be difficult. But it will be a pleasure to eat something else besides my own cooking.”
Rees sat back in his chair, relaxing, and very grateful that Lydia was not one of those picky hysterical women. Susannah hurried out with the first course, a salad of fresh garden greens. Rees spread his linen napkin across his lap and picked up his fork.
An hour later, after a fine and very substantial dinner, Rees sat back replete. He could not finish the apple tart sitting before him, although it was delicious. Lydia, more sensible, had satisfied herself with a cup of tea.
“I daresay it’s time to go home,” Rees said without moving. Lydia nodded and took a sip from her cup.
The door slammed open and Caldwell, his rusty black cloak flapping, hurried inside. “Rees. Rees,” he cried. “Thank the Lord I found you.”
“Yes,” Rees said, a premonition dropping his heart to his feet.
“I thought you would want to hear this. Both James Carleton and Richard Bowditch have been shot.”
Rees stood up so suddenly, his chair crashed to the floor. “What? Where? That’s not possible. Was it a duel?”
“Don’t know. Dr. Wrothman left for the scene and I thought you might…” Noticing Lydia, he paused.
Rees was already moving toward the constable but suddenly recollecting his companion, he stopped and turned back to her.
She smiled. “Go on. I’ll find my own way home.”
“We’ll make sure she reaches the farm,” Susannah said. Rees realized both she and Jack had come out from the back.
“I’ll take her,” Jack promised.
“Are they seriously hurt?” Susannah asked Caldwell.
He shrugged. “I won’t know until I see for myself.”
Rees shot an apologetic glance at Lydia and hurried forward. “We’ll take my wagon,” he said. “It’s just outside.”
“Follow Water Street to the end,” Caldwell said as they climbed in.
“Where are we going?”
“A farm sold to Henry Carleton many years ago,” Caldwell replied. “The fields were planted for the first time this year. Some of the hands harvesting the barley heard the shots.” He glanced at his companion. “Both Richard Carleton and James Bowditch would have died for certain if the men hadn’t been working close by.”
“The hands see anyone?”
“Nah. The shooter didn’t pass them. At least that’s what they said.”
“Do Mrs. Bowditch and Mrs. Carleton know yet?”
“Don’t know. I sent a deputy to inform Mrs. Bowditch, but I assumed one of the hands would run and tell Mrs. Carleton.” Caldwell sighed. “I really don’t know any more. I wouldn’t know that much but one of the hands came into the Bull.” He glanced at Rees. “He was distraught, I suppose. I stopped at Dr. Wrothman’s office to let him know and was heading out myself when one of the local boys said he saw you going into the coffeehouse.”
Rees nodded, his thoughts in turmoil. These shootings could not be a coincidence, but he could not understand how they fit with Nate’s murder.
Forty minutes later, they reached the lane leading to the old farmhouse. Several fields lay fallow and thick with goldenrod before they reached the barley. The tiny house—more of a shack, really—was weathered a dark gray. Both windows were gone, presumably removed for the glass, and the front steps were rotten. Rees spotted several weak places in the roof and suspected a heavy snow would bring the whole thing crashing down. A buggy and a wagon were drawn up to the steps. Rees pulled Bessie up beside the other vehicles and he and the constable climbed down. They jumped over the rotting steps and hurried inside.
Both the wounded men were lying upon the floor, scarlet blood dyeing the wooden planks around them. Dr. Wrothman knelt beside Richard, leaning over the gaping wound in his left shoulder blade. He did not move. And Rees hoped the boy was unconscious and not dead.
Rees knelt beside Carleton. Blood from the wound in his arm stained his fine yellow silk waistcoat. He was awake, his eyes glittering with pain. Rees cut off Carleton’s coat sleeve and bent over the wound. It looked as though the ball had passed through his arm; by the size of the hole in his triceps the projectile had apparently gone all the way through. Rees looked at the positions of these two men. Richard lay on his belly and Carleton on his back. It appeared as though they’d been shooting at each other and Richard had turned to run. Were they dueling over Elizabeth? But the girl claimed her father supported this connection.
Rees untucked his shirt and tore a long strip from the bottom to use as a bandage. Although he hadn’t dressed a wound for many years, he’d done hundreds of field dressings during the War for Independence and his hands remembered how. Groaning, Carleton opened his eyes.
“I’ll need to take this boy to town,” Dr. Wrothman said. “This ball must be removed.…”
“No!” Molly’s shrill scream made both the doctor and Rees jump. She ran into the abandoned house and tried to fling herself upon her son.
Dr. Wrothman caught her and shook her. “Molly. Molly, you’ll injure him further. Stop.”
“I must bring him home,” she said, struggling in his arms. “Care for him.”
“Molly. Listen to me. I must remove the ball. If I leave it in there, he could die from septicemia.”
“Then you’ll follow us home and perform the surgery there,” she cried fiercely. With tears streaking her face and her mussed gown and that short hair, she could have been a woman recently freed from the tumbrel on its way to the guillotine. Rees pitied her.
Dr. Wrothman glanced over at James Carleton and rose slowly to his feet, his knees audibly creaking. He inspected Rees’s bandage and nodded. “If you and the constable wouldn’t mind taking Mr. Carleton home? Richard is much more seriously injured.”
“Of course,” Rees said.
“That’s a good dressing,” Wrothman added, turning to meet Rees’s gaze. “Some skills are never lost, are they?”
Rees shook his head. “I’m sorry I still need to know it,” he said.
Dr. Wrothman, Marsh, Rees, and one of the hands in his battered homespun carried the unconscious Richard down the steps. Navigating the rotten steps took a few minutes and Rees used that time to examine Richard’s wound. The ball had shattered the bone, and the blood still oozing from the wound was mixed with a dark substance. Gunpowder. Carleton had been very close to Richard. Why had they chosen to duel inside? That didn’t make sense. And who owned dueling pistols? James?
Once they got Richard down the steps without too much jostling, they laid him in the back of Molly’s wagon. Someone had thought ahead; quilts padded the bottom, and Molly threw another over her son. Marsh and the hand sat in the back with Richard to hold him as steady as they could and Molly climbed up into the seat. She picked up the reins, too concerned for her son to care about the picture she made, and they set off. Rees watched her in approval, admiring her skill as she tried to balance speed with a smooth ride.
“I’ll come by the Carleton home as soon as I’ve finished with Richard,” Wrothman said as he jumped into his buggy. “The sooner I remove the ball, the better his chances of survival. After that, well, he’s in God’s hands.”
“What were these men even doing here?” Rees asked.
“Maybe Carleton can tell you that,” Wrothman said. “I asked Molly and she doesn’t know why her son was here.” He smacked the reins down hard upon his horse and they shot off in an explosion of dust.
Rees and Caldwell exchanged a glance and turned back to the house.
James had managed to lever himself into a sitting position. “You don’t need to help me,” he said. “I have a horse. Just give me a minute.”
“That buggy outside isn’t yours?” Rees asked. Carleton shook his head. Rees turned and hurried outside to the buggy, Caldwell at his heels. A valise had been strapped to the back. When Rees unstrapped it and examined its contents he saw fashionable expensive clothing: Richard’s clothing.
“I fancy Richard was planning a journey,” Caldwell said.
“Indeed,” Rees agreed. “But why stop here?” Unless he’d planned to meet Elizabeth here?
“Carleton’s horse is tethered at the back,” the constable said, pointing.
Rees followed him around to the decaying lean-to at the back, instantly recognizing the beautiful chestnut with one white stocking as the animal described to him by Fred Salley. James had been at the cottage the day of Nate’s murder!
“Carleton can’t ride this animal,” Caldwell said. “He’s too fresh.”
“We’ll put Mr. Carleton into the buggy and tie the horse at the back,” Rees said. Clucking at the gelding, Caldwell untied the reins from the rail and tugged the animal around toward the front of the house. Rees knelt and looked at the ground. The chestnut’s prints were clear and obvious, very different from the other hoofprints marking the ground. Another horse had been tied here recently, a horse with one loose shoe. And underneath those prints were the hoofmarks of a third horse, a smaller animal that must be a lady’s mount. Probably Elizabeth Carleton, Rees thought.
Whistling softly, he rose to his feet. Elizabeth and Richard must have been planning to run away together. So James Carleton followed his daughter. But why shoot the boy? Especially since Carleton favored the match?
As Rees walked toward the back door he spotted a thread caught in the splintered wood for the doorframe. Carefully he teased the fiber from its hook. Silk, yellow silk from James’s waistcoat. Rees tucked it carefully into his pocket. He planned to have a serious discussion with James Carleton, and soon.
Together he and Caldwell supported Carleton to the buggy. He argued with them and refused to climb in and fought them when they tried to force him. He grunted with pain as a sudden move wrenched his wound. “Don’t struggle,” Caldwell advised him, not without sympathy. “Your wound won’t hurt as much if you don’t fight us.”
Realizing he was no match for two healthy uninjured men, he settled, reluctantly, and they crammed him inside. When he was safely stowed, Rees said, “I’ll follow you in the wagon. You’ll need my help at the other end.” Caldwell nodded and whipped up the horse as Rees climbed into his wagon.
He kept well behind the buggy and the horse tied at the rear. Despite the dust that floated back at him, he appreciated this solitude. It offered him a chance to ponder the shootings in an abandoned house with the tracks of at least three horses at the back. Several additional questions had occurred to him, and Rees suspected Carleton could answer most of them. And where was Mrs. Carleton? She must not know of her husband’s injury, or else she would surely hurry to him. When Rees had been the one shot, Lydia ran to his side.
No servant came to the door in answer to Caldwell’s knock. Rees flung it open and entered, staggering under Carleton’s weight. Nobody came to remonstrate with them. Rees kicked open the door into the small sitting room and manhandled the wounded man into the room and onto a fragile-looking couch.
“I’ll go see if I can find anyone,” Caldwell said to Rees, his eyebrows raised in some surprise. Rees nodded. Where was everybody? Inspiration struck him and he looked at James in sudden surmise.
“Leave me here,” Carleton said. “I’m fine.” Even his lips were white.
“You aren’t fine,” Rees said.
“I’m not dead.”
“Don’t you think your wife will want to know what happened to you?”
Carleton grinned humorlessly. “She’s gone. She took the girls to London. And half the servants.”
“Why?” But even as he asked the question, Rees knew. “She shot you? And Richard?”
Carleton shrugged. “She didn’t mean to hit the boy. He was running out the front door with Elizabeth and she threatened him and told him to stop. She really wanted to shoot me, and after Richard fell, wounded, she turned the pistol on me.”
“Dueling pistol?”
Carleton nodded. “From her father. Charlotte, well, she had her heart set on a title for each of the girls.”
“To the point of killing someone?” Rees asked in astonishment. He found that hard to believe.
Carleton grinned, his smile bitter. “She’s very much like my father. Determined to have her way.” His eyes shifted away from Rees, and he admitted in shame, “He confided in her far more than he ever did in me, his own son.”
Rees, whose thoughts tumbled over one another in such disordered speed he could scarcely decide which question to ask first, finally said, “Could she have killed Nate?”
Carleton snorted. “Why would she? She scarcely knew him. Besides, he was beaten with a scutching knife and you know how dainty she is. She wouldn’t have the strength.”
“You were at the cottage the night of his death,” Rees said. “Don’t deny it. The chestnut horse with the white stocking was seen in the lay-by.”
Carleton stared to one side, his face working. Rees refused to help and sat in silence until James finally said, “Yes. I went to plead with Nate to allow the marriage between Richard and Elizabeth. He knew why I was pushing the suit and he laughed at me. He said maybe we could talk about my debts and maybe, since we were long time friends, he would make an accommodation. But Richard and Elizabeth would never marry. He would see to that.”
“But why?” Rees asked.
“I don’t know. Anyway, he saw Marsh coming down the hill and I hurried upstairs to hide. They argued, too.” Carleton grimaced. “I think Marsh is in love with Molly Bowditch.”
“What?” Rees couldn’t keep the disbelief from his voice.
“I know. Horrible. But I clearly heard the word ‘love’ and Marsh scolded Nate for not spending more time at the house. Anyway, he left because Richard arrived. The boy was furious; I heard that easily enough. He picked up the scutching knife, well, I didn’t know what it was then, and
thwack
,
thwack
. As soon as Richard left, I hurried downstairs. Nate was alive, sitting on the floor by the table with a rag held to his head.”