Runaway (31 page)

I stepped into the room, my eyes desperately seeking Robert. Though I spotted a soldier in regimentals at once, I did not find Robert’s beloved features. I swept the room again. At first I only registered disappointment that he was not present. Then I recognized other faces. Mr Lawrence had risen at my entrance and was staring at me. Lord Rutherford sat in a large chair, his cane resting next to him. He appeared strained and pale. Opposite him sat another man instantly recognizable as the magistrate from London. I’d expected to see him, so he was not as great a shock to me as the man next to him. When I looked at the young soldier again, I recognized him, though he was not my brother. There, sitting in an easy chair, uniformed and groomed and looking very much at home, was my father’s murderer himself, whom I’d last seen on the beach at Studland. He had the same wavy brown hair, the same pale blue eyes and the same mole beneath one of them. There could be no doubt.

I gasped and shrunk back. ‘You … here?’ I gasped, clutching my throat as though I felt his knife there once more.

‘Where I belong,’ said the murderer complacently. His arm rested in a sling, looking for all the world as though he’d been injured in a battle recently.

I looked around me fearfully. ‘Are you all in this?’ I asked.

Miss Judith rustled forward, her silken petticoats hushing and swaying. ‘Do you not know your own brother? You were eager enough to meet him.’

‘Who is this person?’ demanded Rutherford icily. ‘Why did you bring her in, Judith? I told the servants to deny me!’

‘She said she was Robert Lawrence’s sister!’ said Miss Judith innocently. ‘I thought the two of them should be reunited without loss of time.’

‘She is not my sister, grandfather,’ said the man to Rutherford before I could speak. ‘As I told you earlier, both my mother and sister perished of a fever in America. This wench was a servant in my family. She is the thief I told you about, who tried to steal the family’s papers from me. She must have had some idea of pretending to be Charlotte and worming her way into your family.’ The false Robert then got to his feet and pointed dramatically at me. ‘Worst of all, my lord: this despicable wench was the murderer of your son and my father, Andrew Lawrence!’

Lord Rutherford gasped and shrunk back in his chair. Lawrence looked startled and Miss Judith’s eyes sparkled with excitement.

‘
No!
’ I cried, appalled, looking around at them all. ‘It’s a lie! He was
my
father;
you
killed him! You tried to kill me too! You did this!’ I bared the bandaged cut on my arm. Lawrence took a hasty step towards me, but then stopped.

‘Father left the papers to me! We were everything to each other until you destroyed our lives. I don’t know who you are, but you are
not
Robert!’

‘I am Robert, but I’m certainly not
your
brother! You are a thief and an impostor.’

The murderer turned to Lord Rutherford. ‘Grandfather,’ he said again. ‘She is a low person who has a mind to better herself by unspeakable crimes. She is utterly ruthless! She has even been working for you here as some kind of servant to learn more about you, hasn’t she?’

‘Not to my knowledge!’ spluttered Lord Rutherford. ‘We don’t employ her sort here!’

‘She’s been masquerading as a boy, my lord.’

‘What?’ cried his lordship, outraged. He looked from one to the other of us, but I could see he was inclined to believe the suave soldier in the smart uniform, rather than the shabby intruder in a worn gown.

I began to see how clever the murderer’s story was. He had enough truth about him to make me look a liar. For all I knew, either Lawrence or Rutherford or both had plotted this with him. What was I to do?

I looked at Lawrence, realizing he must know me. As his eyes met mine, I saw he did. But he stood quite still, impassive, and even more impossible to read than usual.

‘Egad!’ Miss Judith exclaimed suddenly. ‘I do believe … yes, it is that stable boy who was working here! What was his name? Charlie! That was it. You are Charlie! What have you done with my horse, boy?’

‘That boy?’ cried Rutherford explosively. ‘Then you stand proven a thief, boy! The varmint stole a valuable horse from our stables! We must call for a constable!’ He rang the bell vigorously for the servants.

‘Wait!’ I cried. ‘Do what you like with me. I don’t care!’ I turned to the murderer and the magistrate. ‘Tell me! Where is Robert?’ I cried wildly. ‘What have you done with him?’

The murderer turned to Lord Rutherford. ‘It seems the poor creature is mad as well as dishonest,’ he said pityingly. He turned back to me and said slowly and clearly, as though to a witless idiot: ‘I am Robert Lawrence. You were our servant, Abigail.’

‘That’s a damned lie!’ said Henry, finding his voice at last, stepping forward to stand beside me. ‘I was a friend of Andrew Lawrence, Lord Rutherford’s eldest son, and I followed him to America! I watched his children Robert and Charlotte grow up. This is certainly Miss Charlotte,’ he put his hand on my shoulder, ‘and I don’t know where Robert is, or who you might be, but you are nothing like him, except a similarity of height and colouring.’

The man pretending to be Robert looked taken aback for a moment, but quickly recovered himself. ‘So you’ve paid some other menial to lie for you,’ he sneered at me. ‘That proves nothing.’

‘What the devil is going on here?’ interrupted Lord Rutherford irascibly. ‘Johnson, you said you had found my grandson as I commissioned you to do. Have you or haven’t you?’

‘Of course I have,’ said the man who I had believed to be a magistrate in London. ‘It is all just as I told you,’ he said. ‘This is Robert Lawrence. You’ve seen the evidence! All his papers! And painful though it will be for you to hear it, my lord, I found this girl with the blood of your son upon her hands! With my own eyes, I saw her guilt! But she escaped me. I have been hunting tirelessly for her ever since, in the hope of bringing her to justice.’

‘So you say,’ said Lawrence calmly, stepping forward. ‘And yet the posters you distributed from here to London refer to a Charlotte Smith. Not Abigail.’

As he spoke, he pulled the dreadful poster from his coat and held it up for all to see. ‘Smith was the alias her father used. How do you explain that?’

‘I used the name she was calling herself!’ said the magistrate, thrown on the defensive. ‘The girl has been pursuing us, determined to lay her hands on money. Do not, I beg your lordship, be taken in by her or to be persuaded to buy her off. She should hang for theft!’

‘Was she following you before or after she took employment here?’ asked Lawrence, apparently bewildered. ‘For I would swear we worked her far too hard here to allow her any such freedom.’

‘Before!’ cried the magistrate. ‘Naturally it was before! I was hunting for your son, Lord Rutherford, but sadly, I reached him just too late!’

The truth crashed upon me at Lawrence’s words. Neither Lord Rutherford nor Lawrence had been scheming against us. It was this man. He’d been paid to trace the heir, but instead of bringing him to Deerhurst, he’d had him killed for his own ends. I looked at the murderer and the magistrate and realized that between them they planned to usurp my father’s and my brother’s place. I could see it all so clearly, but how was I to convince Lord Rutherford?

While I stood frozen, working it all out, Lord Rutherford signed to the butler and the footmen who had entered at the ringing of the bell. ‘Take these two intruders away,’ he ordered. ‘Lock them up and bring me the key! The constable shall have them! I don’t know what you were thinking of, bringing them in here, Judith!’

Miss Judith smiled. ‘Why, it’s been most entertaining, hasn’t it, Grandpapa?’ she asked. ‘And I still want to know where my horse is!’

The servants both came forward to grab me and take me away, but as they seized my arms, I cried out: ‘Don’t you see? He’s cheating you! That man murdered my father, not me!’

‘How dare you,’ spluttered Lord Rutherford. ‘Get out!’

‘I don’t care about the inheritance!’ I yelled as I was dragged away. ‘Have it, for all I care. Keep your stupid money! I just want my brother! What have you done with Robert?’

‘My lord, do you not remember me?’ asked Henry frantically as he too was dragged away. ‘I am Bridges’ brother, Henry! I served you faithfully in the stables for years here! When I left, I served your son! I followed him to America … Can you not summon Bridges to ask him the truth of this?’

I fought my captors, desperate to hear what Lord Rutherford would say to this. But though his expression was arrested for a moment, he waved the servants to take Henry away. He looked, I thought, grey, shrunken and defeated. Judith, standing beside him, looked gleeful and amused.

My last glance as I was forced from the room was for Lawrence. He was watching me, his face carefully blank. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but he had spoken for me. I had a tiny shred of hope left that he might believe me.

Both Henry and I were shut in a small, airless box room that was mainly used as a storage room for brooms and the like. Neither of us resisted once we’d been dragged from the room, merely accompanying the servants quietly. When the lock clicked shut behind us, I looked at Henry miserably.

‘I’m so sorry, Henry,’ I said. ‘They got the better of us and it’s my fault. I thought Robert was here!’

‘You and me both, Miss Charlotte,’ agreed Henry sadly. ‘I fear we’re in a peck of trouble now.’

‘I’m more worried for Robert. Did he come here? Or was it that … that impostor who came through the gates this morning all along? And if he isn’t here, where can he be?’

Henry bit his lip, his face pale. ‘Charlie, I think we must prepare ourselves for the fact that they might already have done away with Robert.’

‘I won’t think that,’ I said firmly, though my voice shook. ‘Until we find him, there’s still hope.’

Time passed. I heard the stable clock striking seven in the distance. A short time after that, we heard footsteps and a key turned in the lock.

Both Henry and I braced ourselves, expecting the constable already. But it was Mr Lawrence who stepped into the room.

My heart beat faster at the sight of him. I was both glad to see him and terribly afraid. I couldn’t see what he had to gain by setting up an impostor, but I hadn’t forgotten that it was apparently his letter that had lured my brother here. We stood looking at each other uncertainly.

‘Charlie,’ Lawrence began after an awkward silence. ‘I’ve been working at this mystery from the other end. You’re telling the truth aren’t you? Will you explain it to me?’

‘Of course I am!’ I said. ‘And I will! I’m the daughter of Emily Saunders and Andrew Lawrence. You already knew that though, didn’t you? You spoke to my grandparents.’

‘Yes. Though they did not know who your father was. Why did you never tell me? All this time?’

‘I did not know! And if I had known, I still would not have known whether I could trust you. You had that poster in your bag! I thought you would turn me in!’

‘Oh, Charlotte! You saw that? When I took that down, I had no idea it was you! I was suspicious of Johnson, Lord Rutherford’s lawyer. I had some fears that he was untrustworthy so I did some checking. It appears my fears were well-founded.’

‘Oh. But is it true you wrote a letter to my brother? Why?’

‘Because I was concerned about you,’ Lawrence replied. ‘You must believe me. I knew nothing then of your connection to the family. But even before I knew you were a girl, I thought your family should know your whereabouts. It was clear from everything you’d said that you were very young, well educated, and dangerously adrift in the world. You had mentioned your brother’s first name and where he was posted. You’d entrusted the surname Smith to the Saunders. Once I knew all that, he wasn’t difficult to trace.’

‘That was it?’ I asked. ‘Truly? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I kept silence because I feared you would think I was interfering.’

‘You did not try to lure him into a trap, so you could have him killed?’

‘What?’ exclaimed Lawrence. ‘No! How could you think such a thing of me? What motive could I possibly have?’

‘The fact that with her father gone, Robert is the only person between you and the succession,’ said Henry. ‘That could be motive enough!’

Lawrence shook his head. ‘I’ve never expected or coveted the inheritance,’ he assured Henry. He turned to me. ‘Do you believe I would be capable of such a thing, Charlie?’

‘No, not now,’ I said. I felt quite weak with relief. ‘You would have nothing to gain from a false heir. I believe you. But you are imposed upon. That man upstairs is not my brother! You do not believe I murdered my father, do you?’

‘No, Charlie, of course not. Your story makes sense to me; it confirms what I had already suspected.’

‘Her parents never told her who they were,’ said Henry. ‘When she came to me in Dorset, I told her! I held her father’s papers.’

‘The papers those men have now shown to Lord Rutherford?’ asked Lawrence, his eyes widening. ‘How did they come by them?’

‘They threatened to kill Belle,’ I said tearfully, remembering my terror that night. ‘I gave them up.’

Lawrence caught his breath. ‘My God!’ he exclaimed. ‘What is this infamy?’

‘That man upstairs is a liar and a murderer!’ I cried.

‘They took a risk coming straight here with Charlie still alive to tell the tale,’ Henry broke in. ‘Perhaps they had found out the real Robert was on his way and made haste to get here before him, trusting to the tale of Charlie being a thief and a servant to prevent her thwarting their plans.’

‘It’s a good story,’ I admitted. ‘And I lent it truth by stealing Belle. But they were going to
shoot
her!’

‘I know, Charlie, I know,’ said Lawrence. He fell silent, deep in thought. Henry and I exchanged glances again.

‘Mr Lawrence,’ I said timidly. ‘My brother must be out there somewhere,’ I indicated the park with a sweep of my hand. ‘We need to search for him!’ Quickly, we explained our theory of what must have happened.

‘You’re right,’ agreed Lawrence at once. ‘And we should see if Bridges has returned. Come with me, both of you.’