Ghost Walk (22 page)

‘No, I wouldn’t – if you were my adoring husband. But you’re just a criminal, a murderer. You wanted to talk to Cousin Verney. I was curious so I followed you to the stables. I saw you with – with – this man. I overheard everything.’

At that Hank waited no longer. He sprang forward. The rifle fired and he fell back, cursing, clutching his side.

Annette stared at him in horror. She thought she had killed him and for a moment she was thrown off balance by the
realisation. It was a moment wasted, for we still had his
partner
to deal with.

Without a second glance at the injured Hank, he leapt
forward
to seize the rifle from Annette. I ran to her side, but we were no match for him, he felled Annette with one blow.

Now it was my turn. I grappled with him knowing it was
useless
. Within the next few moments I would be dead.

But the door Annette had left open sprung wide –

A grey shadow sprang into the room.

‘Thane!’

‘Bloody dog,’ the false priest yelled and raised the gun. Through the smoke Thane was caught in mid-air. The bullet hit him in the chest. I saw blood on his fur. He staggered then shook himself and kept moving slowly forward.

I heard myself scream: ‘No!’

I jumped across and tried to seize the man’s rifle as he tried to shake me off, to raise it again.

For a moment that seemed like eternity I struggled with him. He pulled free and hit me across the head. As I crashed to the floor, I heard the rifle crack again.

My last sight was of Thane moving through the air and falling, falling on top of Boyle’s assassin.

He lay still.

The rifle fired again and my world exploded into darkness.

So this was death.

Once again, I was to be proved wrong. I was alive and when I opened my eyes again I was in my bedroom at the farm.

Had it all been one of my lurid nightmares? Faces, mostly out of focus, swarmed into view but before I could summon up enough strength to speak to them, they drifted away.

Jack, his father, Dr Dalrymple with a stethoscope cold on my chest, shaking his head sadly to shadowy figures in the room behind him.

Jess emerged most often, laying cold cloths on my burning forehead.

Once or twice I even thought I saw Thane but I was too weak to call out to him.

Besides Thane was dead. I had seen the bullet strike him. Perhaps I was in heaven, perhaps we both were, although I burned with a ferocity that suggested hell and made Dante’s Inferno look like a Sunday school picnic on a bright summer day.

Once the cloud in my brain began to clear and I could grapple with logical thought, I felt bitter resentment too.

I am never ill. Determined to stagger out of bed I was glad of the proximity of that bathroom as I hung on to the furniture which behaved in a very odd way.

I was very sick indeed and on one of these forays I miscarried and lost the baby whose existence I had concealed from Jack for more than two months. My only reason, I told myself, was that I did not want him to feel he was obliged to marry me, despite Vince’s reassurances.

But time had become distorted. Sometimes I heard church bells. The bells for my wedding? There’s not a moment to lose. I must get out of bed –

It was all too much. I could get up in my mind but my body refused to obey, so after a few feeble attempts, I drifted back into
the floating world of the unconscious.

One day the clouds cleared a little and Jack emerged.

Grinning down at me he took my hands and said, ‘Hello, you’re still with us!’

I said: ‘I must get up. Is it today we’re getting married?’

He smiled. ‘Not today, dearest Rose. That today has been and gone – and you missed the Jubilee celebrations. But never mind, there’ll be a wedding for us just as soon as you’re well again.’

I tried again to sit up but the effort was too much.

‘How long have I been here?’

‘Nearly two weeks. You’ve been very ill. Dr Dalrymple didn’t give us much hope for you. Said this was one of the worst influenza cases he had coped with – where the patient had
survived
.’ Again he grinned. ‘There’s strong stuff in that little
package
, that’s what he said.’

Overcome for a moment by the memory of it, he gripped my hand. ‘It was terrible, Rose. We all thought you were going to die. You were so tiny fighting that terrible fever, lying there like a little doll. Ma never left you for more than an hour or two.’

‘I remember her, those cold compresses were wonderful.’

He tucked the covers round me. ‘Now rest. You’ll be up and about again soon. We have a wedding to arrange.’

About to leave, he smiled sadly. ‘Sorry about the baby – Dr Dalrymple told me, thought I knew –’

‘I was going to tell you – I just wasn’t sure – it was early days and I have lost babies before –’

He put a hand over my lips. ‘Hush now! We still have each other.’

Next time he came I wanted to know what had happened at Annette’s cottage. I was very confused and vague about it all.

Thinking back, much of what happened that day seemed like the delirium of a raging fever but I wanted an exact chronicle of events, especially the bit about Annette’s husband, Hank Elder, the man who called himself Danny McQuinn.

Even now, the name could make Jack wince.

‘He’s in prison awaiting extradition to the United States to be tried for a list of kidnappings, mostly successful – until a child died when the rich parents didn’t pay up. He must have thought he was in luck when he met Annette and read up about the Verneys. Not only an heiress but a prospective victim.’

‘What about his accomplice?’ I decided not to mention my suspicions about a Fenian plot concerning Dr Blayney that had all been so seriously incorrect.

‘Crofts? He’ll hang, for Father Boyle’s murder,’ Jack said
grimly
. ‘Elder thought he’d made a good choice there since Crofts’ family had worked for the Verney estate and as a lad he’d been a gardener at the Abbey. What Elder didn’t know was that Croft already had a police record and was under close investigation for a number of crimes in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

‘He might have got away with murder but he hadn’t bargained on Father Boyle having any relatives who were expecting to hear from him. Like a mother taken ill suddenly in York – the reason for the return half of his ticket from Inverness and his last-minute change of plan. He was just looking in briefly to see Father McQuinn, to explain that he would be back as soon as he had seen her and made arrangements for someone to take care of her. When he didn’t arrive, and there was no response to their telegraphs to Eildon – which Crofts collected and destroyed,
relatives
raised the alarm.

Having got most of it wrong before the influenza almost
finished
me, I said: ‘How did you know about the cottage?’

‘It was That Dog as Ma still calls him, you have to thank. Pa was working one of the fields close to the Verney estate when Thane started behaving oddly. As you know from the past, he can be very determined. He made it clear that he wanted Pa to follow him. And as Pa knows a thing or two about sheepdogs rounding up their flock, he got the message that this was
something
important.

‘We met them on the drive with Thane dashing back and forth and Pa puffing in the rear. The gamekeeper, startled out of his wits by uniformed constables on the drive, said yes, we’d probably find Father Boyle with Alexander in the grounds at this time of day.

‘We knew there wasn’t a moment to lose – Thane was heading for a cottage at a great speed and we followed, arriving just after you’d collapsed.’

‘But what were you doing at Verney Castle in the first place?’

‘We’d come on the train to arrest Croft for the murder of Father Boyle.’

He smiled rather shame-facedly. ‘Your disclosures about that night had put us on the right track and confirmed our suspicions about him –’

‘Which you might have shared with me,’ I said indignantly, realising that it would have saved me rushing in the wrong
direction
over Dr Blayney.

Jack shook his head firmly. ‘I wanted to keep you out of this at all costs, Rose. For heaven’s sake, think of the predicament. We were getting married within days. It was all arranged.’

‘Hardly important, surely, when lives were at stake,’ was my stinging response.

‘Your life, Rose. Let’s get that clear for once and for all. Your life is more important to me than seeing any criminal brought to justice. The last thing I wanted was you rushing off in your lady investigator role –’

He paused and shrugged. ‘Which of course is exactly what you did and nearly got killed once again. You have more lives than the farm cat!’

I’d have liked to argue with him if I had felt stronger so I decided on a change of subject.

‘What of Annette? She was marvellous.’

‘A few bruises, shocked but otherwise unscathed. You can ask her the rest yourself. She’s looked in every day and at this minute
she is sitting downstairs having a cup of tea with Ma.’

Leaning over, he kissed me. ‘I’ll see you later.’

‘With that cup of tea, please. I’m hungry.’

Annette came in and sat by my side and made the
conventional
remarks about how glad she was to see that I was recovering and what a terrible shock I had given everyone.

‘Alexander sends his special love.’ In reply to my question she said:

‘He is very well, and of course he knows nothing of all this
terrible
business although I dare say when he is older someone will give him the story of the attempted kidnapping and why his Latin tutor was removed so quickly. A curious thing, when we told Alexander that Father Boyle wasn’t coming back he was very pleased. Apparently he disliked him intensely. Children are odd that way, instinctive somehow.’

She smiled. ‘The great news is that Alexander is now the proud possessor of a labrador pup. My insistence had not gone unnoticed and Cousin Quentin, having seen him so devoted to Thane, decided it was time the lad had a dog of his own.’

There was a short silence. I hardly dared to ask, ‘What about you, Annette. What happened with – with –?’

I couldn’t call him Danny.

She shook her head and sighed. ‘I think I knew the first minute I set eyes on him again that I had made a dreadful
mistake
. It was so terrible because there was nothing tangible, just this dreadful certainty. He looked the same, sounded the same but this was not the same man I had dreamed of and built up all my hopes on for the past two years. I think I had the answer when almost his first words were to ask had I come into my
fortune
yet and in our very first embrace in the cottage that was to be our honeymoon home, I knew he had never loved me at all.’

She looked suddenly stricken. ‘I made excuses that night I was to spend with him. Fortunately he did not seem to care but it was a moment of revelation and I saw him for what he was. I knew
then without being told that my cousins’ warning had been
correct
. They knew more about the world and fortune hunters than I did. But I was headstrong and I mistook infatuation for love – for a man who was older, divinely handsome and whose life seemed so different from ours, so full of adventure.

‘The awful thing was that I would have to live with my
mistake
– I could hardly run to my cousins – I would just have to believe that when I had lived with him for a while, got used to him again, I might find that I had misjudged him. Some hope!’

There was a pause and then I asked: ‘But how did you find out – about the plan to kidnap Alexander?’

‘He wanted to talk to my guardian urgently and he had seen him with the dogs heading towards the stables and would go after him. I was uneasy and knew somehow that I didn’t want him to face Cousin Quentin alone. So I followed him.

‘They didn’t hear me. I heard voices but it wasn’t my cousin he was speaking to. He was in a heated argument with Father Boyle. Where was the kid? Why hadn’t he brought him along as they planned? And to my horror I knew I was overhearing that they intended to kidnap Alexander.’

She shrugged. ‘Never mind what a fool I had been, all I knew then was that I had to protect Alexander. Fortunately for me, I needed no excuses, since he was in bed covered in spots – a legacy of the children’s party, perhaps.

‘Then I remembered that I had arranged to meet you at the cottage and that you might be in danger. I had no idea what to do, who to turn to. There wasn’t time to rush back to the house, explain what I had overheard and try to convince Cousin Quentin that I hadn’t gone mad.

‘But knowing that this man I had married was a criminal I decided to arm myself. I’m not much of a shot as you must have noticed,’ she added apologetically. ‘But I ran to the gun room and seized one of my cousin’s rifles – loaded it – just to scare them. When I reached the cottage –’

She shuddered. ‘You know the rest.’

‘You were very brave. What will you do now?

‘I will stay until Alexander goes to prep school as I intended originally. As for the future I have no idea, but something will pan out, I am sure I am in God’s hands.’

‘Will you go back to the convent?’

‘Never! That phase is over for me. I know I haven’t a vocation. My cousins are very kind, they have said there will always be a place for me as long as I wish and suggested that as I have a good education I might assist Dr Blayney in this huge task of
cataloguing
the library and the old family documents. Amelia said it would help to keep my mind off things.’

A sad smile. A pause. ‘I have to say I was quite wrong about Dr Blayney. Under that rather plain exterior, he is a very kind and thoughtful man and I am perhaps learning, rather too late, that one should not be fooled and that there is more to a man than the elegant wrappings.’

And thinking of the lovelorn Dr Blayney, I said, ‘Never too late,’ thinking that perhaps Fate might have a happy ending for him.

As for Thane, he had survived. I had not imagined his
presence
at my bedside. Jess had allowed him to come upstairs although it was strictly against her principles regarding That Dog.

‘He was so desperate to see you, lass,’ Andrew told me later. ‘He sat at the foot of the stairs and refused to move. He refuses to go out with me either these days and even Jess saw that it would have taken a heart of stone to keep him out of the house and that seeing him might even speed up your recovery.’

After Annette had gone, Jess brought me that cup of tea and one of her freshly baked scones.

‘You’ll have to eat something,’ she said chidingly, ‘if you’re ever going to fit that nice wedding gown again. You’ve got very thin, nothing but a rickle of bones,’ she added encouragingly.

I suppressed a shudder having avoided any possibility of seeing
my reflection in the bedroom’s one mirror and I thanked her for the cold compresses and for taking such good care of me.

She nodded shyly. Roughly taking my hand and at a loss for words, I felt tears were not very far off.

‘There’s another craiter that’s never been far from your side. I’ll just get him for you.’

Jack came in with Thane and confirmed his mother’s remarks. ‘He’s been standing vigil, begging to be allowed to stay with you.’

And so I was able to hug Thane again who greeted me joyfully. But I wanted to know what had happened to him that day. In particular the part he couldn’t tell me about. How the bullet which had struck him had been removed, was it another of Andrew’s miracles?

When I told Jack, he shook his head. ‘You must have been dreaming. If a bullet had struck him in the chest, he would be dead.’

But I had seen it. I had seen him fall but there was not a mark on him.