Moon Love (8 page)

But it was paper money that was coming in, and she knew the workers were paid in coin because Betty’s beau worked there, and his first move upon receiving his pay was to run to Bratty Hall and hand one half of it over to Betty, who was saving it for their marriage.

The proprietors of the Greenman and the Rose and Thistle were other possibilities. A good deal of money changed hands at an inn. Bransom had been staying at the Greenman. Perhaps he had stumbled across some clue there. She had never cared for Edward Reilly, the proprietor, in the least. A leering way he had about him. Then of course there was the bank. They handled more money than anyone else.

It was hard to imagine the manager, Mr. Fairmont, who had his pew near the front of the church and was an Alderman besides, being involved in anything so devious. Mrs. Fairmont was active in parish matters and always invited Amy to her parties. Would any of his employees have enough authority to handle the large sums involved without Mr. Fairmont’s supervision?

Darkness had fallen by the time she finished dinner, but she was not in a hurry to leave the Hall. There would be traffic at the coal yard in the early hours of evening. If she waited until quite late, the men would be in the tavern, or too drunk to notice her. At ten o’clock she went abovestairs to say goodnight to her papa, and to tell Tombey she was taking a sleeping draft as she was having trouble sleeping. This would ensure that he did not call her if her papa had one of his spells. Tombey knew what to do better than she did herself.

At eleven o’clock, George came tapping at the door of the morning parlor, as arranged in advance. He had changed out of livery into a dark jacket and buckskins, and looked quite dashing. Amy had already changed into the clothing she wore when she acted as lookout for the Gentlemen. He handed her a pistol, the handle of its twin protruded from his own pocket. They slipped along the corridor to the library, leaving by the French doors there to avoid being seen by the butler.

George had a pair of aging, undistinguished hacks from his lordship’s stable waiting for them a few yards down the driveway. Speed was not as important
as anonymity. It was unlikely they would be chased. She was grateful for George’s company. He was an amiable fellow, young enough to enjoy this spree and strong enough to tackle anyone who might interfere with them.

A crescent moon rode high in the witch black sky above, partially concealed by a rag of shifting cloud. It cast a spectral light on grass and bush. Stark branches of denuded trees waved to and fro as the wind blew. Underfoot, fallen  leaves rustled, releasing the moldy aroma of autumn.

As they reached the coast road and headed toward Easton, they encountered fog. It drifted in from the ocean, to float like a soft, diaphanous blanket over the land, giving the strange appearance that trees and houses grew from clouds.

There was little traffic on the road. They met the rat catcher with his terrier, who snapped at the horses. Half a mile farther on, they heard a mounted rider approach. The desultory clip-clop told Amy it wasn’t Ravencroft or Felix. It proved to be the Revenueman on his donkey. He was always encouraged by rumors set about by Cocker to ride forth on those nights when no cargo was coming in.

As he passed, he lifted his hat and said, “Evening, George.” He glanced at Amy but didn’t recognize her beneath the slouched hat drawn low over her forehead. George returned the salute and they rode on.

As the coal yards were on the north edge of town, they did not have to ride through Easton. The fog was lighter here, on higher ground. In the distance, Amy could distinguish one gig and a couple of mounted riders on the High Street. The gig was parked and the riders were riding away from her.

She and George dismounted at the outer limit of the coal yard and tied their mounts to the pole of a wooden fence that separated the ugly coal yard from the little settlement behind it, and nominally protected the coal. As several boards were missing, however, it was entirely ineffectual. An ambitious child could have helped himself.

Amy stood a moment, gauging the activity of the neighborhood. Dim lights burned in a few of the ramshackle houses. Sounds of voices raised in mirth or anger issued from behind closed doors and broken windows. A dog and a few stragglers were on the street. The two men were staggering drunk. The female, an elderly woman wrapped in a shawl, bent on some errand of her own, paid them no heed as she hastened past, muttering into her shawl.

The liveliest spot was the tavern. It was fully lit, with sounds of revelry issuing from the open door. Lights burned behind the blinds of three windows at the Spanish Lady but no sound came from the house. Amy beckoned, and George followed her through an opening in the fence.

Once shut off from the street, it was like being in another world, A black, Stygian world with no sign of life save the wisps of fog that floated like smoke, low to the ground. Like Hades, but without the fire, Amy thought. All along the ridge of the estuary, mountains of coal rose up, glimmering dully in the moonlight. Beyond the estuary, the ocean gleamed silver and silent
as the tomb. The noise from the street was dulled to quiet echoes.

She walked forward until she saw the guard’s shed. A light burned within.

“I’ll peek in the window and see if Jemmy’s asleep yet,” George said.

He was back in a moment. “He’s sitting with his head on the desk and a bottle of wine by his elbow. I tapped on the window and he didn’t look up. We needn’t worry about him, Miss Bratty.”

Amy nodded and stood a moment, looking around. Now that she was here, this seemed an unlikely place to bury a body. It was busy during the day with coal landing and being put aboard the smaller boats. Certainly no one had gone to the trouble of removing a whole coal mountain to bury a body beneath it. The mountains were removed and replaced by new ones regularly in any case.

She turned, looking all about. At the rear was the tallest, widest mountain of all. It was a sort of back-up, to be used if the current supply ran short. A body might be buried there and remain undiscovered for months, perhaps years. To remove all that coal, however, would take days. But then one need not remove it all. She had seen the backhouse boy fill the coal scuttle from the coal pile in the cellar at home. He just dug his shovel into the middle of the pile, and coal fell down from above to recapture the shape of the mountain, A body pushed into the interior of the mountain would soon be concealed in that fashion.

“George, we should have brought a shovel,” she whispered.

“I saw one leaning against the shed. I’ll get it.”

Again he darted off and returned in a trice with a shovel. “Do you want me to start digging
,
Miss?” he asked, apparently willing to dig up the whole yard.

“I know it sounds an enormous job, but I want you to dig into that largest pile of coal. Just push the shovel in at whatever height is convenient.” That, she thought, was what the man who hid Bransom’s body would have done, if he hid the body there.

George was not one to question his mistress. He went forward and dug the shovel into the mountain while Amy lifted the window of the dark lantern and directed its faint beam on the coal pile. Coal descended from above in a clatter. They both looked around in alarm, but no one came forth to challenge them.

“Keep digging. Go all around the pile in a circle,” she said, and stood at his elbow to peer for an arm or a leg.

George had the shoulders of a bull. He dug the shovel in again and again, and each time the coal rattled down from above to fill the hole he created. It was beginning to seem hopeless. If Bransom’s body was in there, it would be there until some emergency forced the use of the reserve mountain.

She was about to tell him to stop when he stopped of his own accord and uttered a high-pitched, “Blimey! It’s a hand, Miss!”

Amy rushed forward and played the light where George pointed. She saw five rigid, splayed fingers, grimed with coal dust, sticking out from the pile. Of course the hand could not be positively identified as Bransom’s until the rest of the body was exhumed, but it was a man’s hand, and Amy felt in her bones it was his. A shudder seized her. She felt faint with the knowledge that she was soon to behold poor Mr. Bransom, dead and black from coal dust.

She felt so weak she had to sit down. She looked around for a spot, but there was nothing but earth and coal. Momentarily distracted, she didn’t
see the dark form creeping up through the shadows toward George. George saw it, however, and he saw the pistol that was pointed at him as well. with a loud howl, he leapt forward. Amy turned just in time to see his shovel fall with a forceful blow on the attacker’s head, to hear the dull thud of the blow, and to
see the victim crumple to the ground.

She felt sure this must be the man who had killed Bransom. Why else was he watching the coal pile? And if he had killed Bransom, then he must be Alphonse’s accomplice. She had done it. She had captured him by her own wits, with no help from Lord Ravencroft. She was delighted to think of his astonishment and chagrin when she told him. She drew the pistol from her pocket and advanced, with the lantern in the other hand, to behold the face of the infamous traitor who was selling England for gold.

“Good God, it’s Ravencroft;” she cried, and dropped the lantern.

“So it is,” George said in a weak voice. “It looks like I’ve kilt him, Miss.”

Chapter Ten

Amy was appalled at the horror she had wrought. Lord Ravencroft’s death was on her head. George was but her tool. Fleeting visions of herself in the dock, on the gibbet, and ultimately buried in unhallowed ground flashed through her mind. Then Lord Ravencroft opened one glaring eye and the air was filled with curses never heard before, even in the stable when her papa’s wayward gelding kicked the undergroom. Upon seeing he was alive, her fear was transmuted first to joy, then anger, then back to fear tinged with pity
as she saw the black ooze dripping into his left eye.

She fell to her knees beside him and said foolishly, “Are you hurt, milord?”

“No, I enjoy having my skull cracked open,” he growled. “Of course I am hurt.”

He sat up and began struggling to draw his handkerchief from his pocket. Amy took it from him to wipe the blood from his eye, fully expecting to be shoved off, but he allowed her to help him.

“Get the lantern, George, and let me see how bad this wound is,” she called over her shoulder.

George flew to do as he was bid. The dark lantern had landed upright and was still burning. He directed the beam to Ravencroft’s face. Amy steeled herself to examine his cut. It was bleeding copiously, but as Ravencroft was conscious and in control of his wits – though scowling and grumbling thunderously – she decided it was not a fatal wound.

“We had best call a doctor,” she said.

“And bring him here, to start asking questions?” Ravencroft huffed. “How do we explain our presence in this godforsaken place?”

“We can get you to a sawbones at least,” she said. “Is your carriage nearby?”

“I would hardly bring my carriage on a job of this sort.”

“Your mount, then.”

“I walked from the inn.”

The blood continued oozing down toward his
eye. He tried to tie his handkerchief around his head to cover the wound, but it wasn’t large enough.

“If you would remove your cravat, I could use it as a bandage for you,” she suggested.

Ravencroft reached up and fumbled with his cravat, finally yanking it off with one hand so brusquely it chaffed his neck, glaring at her with irritable accusation all the while. His hostility and her own feeling of guilt made her fingers clumsy.

It didn’t help that she was so close to him she could feel the heat of his breaths on her cheek. Her fingers trembled as they brushed his forehead with the lightest possible touch.

“You needn’t be afraid to touch me,” he said, as she worked at the turban. “I won’t break.”

“That’s not what I’m afraid of. Your bark leads me to fear you might bite.”

He snorted, but it sounded like an amused snort.

By the time she got the cravat tied around his head and the ends tucked in, he looked like an angry pasha.

“You can use George’s mount to get to the doctor’s,” she said. “George will go with you. Doctor Flynn is the closest.”

“We can’t leave you alone, Miss!” George objected.

“I will be quite all right. We don’t want anything to happen to Lord Ravencroft.”

“That’s bolting the door after the horse has left the stable.” He sat a moment, recovering, then said to George. “See if there’s any wine left in Jemmy’s bottle.”

“There ain’t,” George said. “I already looked.”

“I gave him two bottles. Look in his desk drawer.”

Amy made note of this trick for future use. She had not thought to ensure that Jemmy had wine.

George nipped off and Ravencroft said to Amy, “You have some explaining to do, Miss.”

“I believe my presence here explains itself. I was looking for Bransom’s body. I found it,” she finished triumphantly.

This had the expected effect of distracting him.

“What! Where?”

She pointed to the largest coal mountain. “George and I will come back and dig it out after we take care of you.”

Ravencroft leapt to his feet and hastened to the coal pile. Amy ran after him. “You really should rest, milord.”

He took up George’s shovel and eased the coal away until he could get hold of Bransom’s wrist. He dug his own arm into the pile and when he had a good grip on the arm, he pulled. Slowly, inch by inch, the body came out. First the forearm, then the upper arm and shoulder.

Ravencroft stopped and turned to Amy. “You had best not watch this, Miss Bratty. It won’t be a pretty sight.”

“Do you know Bransom?” she asked. The strain of controlling her feelings left her voice hard and cold.

“I’ve never met him.”

“Then how did you plan to identify him?”

Ravencroft didn’t reply. Miss Bratty appeared to have her feelings, if she possessed any, under control. He gave a heave and Bransom’s head, as black as the coal in which it had been buried, came out. The force of the pull caused it to waggle, as if he were alive. The face turned toward her, the open eyes staring at her. Amy took one look, then her head began to spin in circles, then blackness engulfed her as she fainted dead away.