I turned back, the room now dark after the rain-soaked glare. As I stood waiting for my eyes to adjust, I realized that something incongruous lay across the one remaining, mice-chewed sofa.
I went to the sofa and leaned down to look. In the dim light I saw a dress--a long, high-waisted pale muslin that a young debutante might wear. The garment was thick with dust now, the hem tattered. When I lightly touched the sleeve, the gauze that covered the silk crumpled to nothing.
I straightened up, puzzled indeed. I had no sisters and no female cousins. My mother had died when I'd been a lad, and she'd not brought out any young women as favors to friends or even had them to visit. My father, as far as I knew, had chosen his mistresses from the glittering demimonde, ladies with much experience who'd never wear such an innocent gown as this.
Why the dress was there and who it had belonged to was a complete mystery. If a couple had broken into the house for a tryst--they'd have found it quite easy to gain entrance--why leave the gown behind?
I didn't touch the dress again, fearing it would dissolve further if I handled it. The fabric was so very fine.
The rain began to slacken, and I knew I needed to complete my errand before the paper burned my pocket to ash. I left the intriguing puzzle of the dress and closed the door of the room, locking it with the key I'd found in the lock. I put the key into my pocket.
My hired coach had returned to Norwich, and I prepared to walk the two miles to the brigadier's house. I told Bartholomew to find the nearest public house and indulge himself in a well-earned ale, and I went to the brigadier's alone.
Through the lightened rain, I could now see across the marshy flats that ran eastward from here to the spit of land called Blakeney Point. The tide was out, fishing boats marooned on sand that ran a long way out to sea.
I remembered the brigadier, though through the perspective of a boy. Brigadier Easton had been a martinet, like my father, but with a streak of fairness that my father had lacked. He lived in a brick house that was as tall and deep as it was wide, windows in even rows covering all three floors of it.
The footman who opened the door took my card, gave my damp clothes and muddy boots an askance look, but at least he let me wait inside, out of the rain. The brigadier must have recognized the Lacey name, because the footman quickly returned and bade me follow him upstairs.
I was shown into a long, narrow study whose windows looked north to the village of Cley and another windmill. This windmill was dark and tall, its fan like spindly arms.
The brigadier, on the other hand, was short and pale. Easton was in his sixties, as my father would have been had he been alive. While my father had been a big man--the same six-foot, broad-shouldered build as myself--the brigadier was small and slight. He made up for his stature with a powerful voice, which had, before his retirement, bellowed orders to troops in India.
He came to me, hand extended. "Gabriel Lacey. Not the young hothead who eloped and raced away in the middle of the night?" He chuckled as I shook his hand. "I'd wondered when you'd make your move and become a man. Captain now, eh? Commended for bravery at Talavera; you and all the Thirty-Fifth Light. Damned bloody battle, that."
It had been. I'd started the morning a lieutenant and had been given captain that evening, both for my actions and because too many other captains had died. My father had passed away here that night, though I'd not known until I'd received the letter weeks later.
Easton released my hand but peered up at me nearsightedly. "Back home now, are you? What are you going to do with the place?"
"I have some idea of repairing the house and living in it," I said.
Easton's look told me doubted my sanity but wouldn't argue. "And, you're getting married. Don't look surprised. We read the London newspapers even out here. My felicitations."
I bowed politely. I put my hand into my coat and withdrew the message from Denis.
"Thank you. I did not come here only to call on a neighbor. I was charged with delivering this to you. From London."
Easton frowned at it. He took the folded paper from me--thick, cream-colored, and expensive--walked to his desk, sat down, and opened a drawer. He removed a pair of spectacles from the drawer and balanced them on his nose. He opened the paper, read the one word of the message, and went utterly still.
I approached the desk as Easton stared down at the paper, his face drained of color.
The one word on it was Corn. Obviously a code, but what Denis meant by it I couldn't imagine.
The expression on Easton's face was telling me. He slowly stood, his skin wan, the man looking ten years older now than when I'd walked in.
"You brought this from Mr. Denis," he said.
"I did. Denis . . . asked me to."
Now what was in Easton's eyes was abject fear. He studied me anew, taking in my large build, my big hands, the walking stick I held, inside of which rattled a sword.
"I suppose I ought to have known. What else did he ask you to do? Tell me quickly; I've faced it before."
I frowned. "Nothing. To deliver the message was my only charge. What does it mean?"
The brigadier let out a breath and sank to his chair. He put both hands on the desk and looked up at me, shoulders slumped in defeat.
"You've brought me my death sentence, my boy. That's what it means. This is my last day on earth."
* * * * *
About the Author
Award-winning Ashley Gardner is a pseudonym for New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Ashley. Under both names--and a third, Allyson James--Ashley has written more than 30 published novels and novellas in mystery and romance. Her books have won several RTBook Reviews Reviewers Choice awards (including Best Historical Mystery for The Sudbury School Murders), and the Romance Writers of America’s RITA (given for the best romance novels and novellas of the year). Ashley’s books have been translated into a dozen different languages and have earned favorable reviews in Publisher's Weekly and Booklist.
More about the Captain Lacey series can be found at
http://www.gardnermysteries.com
Or email Ashley Gardner at
[email protected] Books in the series
The Hanover Square Affair
A Regimental Murder
The Glass House
The Sudbury School Murders
The Necklace Affair (a novella)
A Body in Berkeley Square
A Covent Garden Mystery
A Death in Norfolk
A Disappearance in Drury Lane
And more to come!
Jennifer Ashley, A Covent Garden Mystery
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