Family Plot Read online

  “But how came you to be here, Mrs. Pickett?”

  Although her heart was still pounding, her breathing was a bit steadier now, making it easier to answer his questions. “I came to pay a call of condolence on Miss Kirkbride—you must allow me to express my condolences to you, as well, on the death of your uncle—and when I left the house—” She realized she could hardly confess to searching the stables for information regarding the whereabouts of the stable hand whose body was even now hanging from the rafters. “When I left the house I found the wind had grown rather keener, so I stopped by the stables thinking to ask if someone might be spared to drive me back to the inn. But when I entered the stable, I found no one but the horses and—and—” Her voice broke, and her trembling began anew.

  “A most distressing sight, I am sure,” he said, then sighed. “I very much fear that I may be in some way responsible for the poor fellow’s death.”

  “You, Gavin? In what way?”

  He paused to steer her past a rock jutting into the narrow pathway. “I daresay you have heard enough of our family’s history to know that he was once caught in what is commonly called a compromising position with my cousin Elspeth. Of course she was merely using him to goad her father, but I believe he thought she truly cared for him. Once her betrothal to me was announced, I fear he could no longer live with the knowledge that he had lost her a second time.”

  Lady Fieldhurst’s mind had become so attuned to murder that the possibility of suicide had not occurred to her. “You believe he died at his own hand, then?”

  “I believe it is the only explanation that makes sense. Who would have reason to kill a stable hand?”

  “But a stable hand who tried to force his way into the house—”

  “There is no denying that he made a nuisance of himself, but most of us deal with annoying people every day without having any overwhelming urge to kill them. Besides,” he added, “Elspeth was the one being harassed, and I doubt she would have the strength to do such a thing, even had she the inclination.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” she said slowly. “I had not thought—and yet—”

  “Yet what, Mrs. Pickett?”

  Not for the first time, she wished she had not been so hasty in assuming Mr. Pickett’s name; hearing herself thus addressed, and at such a time, was much too great a distraction.

  “I am far from expert at such things, but would he not have needed a chair, or a stool, or something to—to reach the beam overhead and then to step off—” she shuddered at the more grisly details of doing away with oneself by hanging.

  “I believe you may be right,” Gavin said, much struck. “And was there no such chair or stool in evidence?”

  She shook her head. “No, I am quite certain there was not.”

  “Perhaps it was merely out of sight, in the shadows,” he suggested. “Forgive me for being so graphic, but I daresay that in his death throes he might have kicked it quite some distance.”

  Lady Fieldhurst frowned thoughtfully, seeing once more the horrific scene that was surely burned into her brain for all eternity. “No, there was no chair or stool. Even if there had been, and Neil had kicked it as you say, it must have come to rest against one of the stalls.” She recalled once more the nervous, stamping horses, and glanced up at her escort as a new thought occurred to her. “What did you do with your horse, Gavin?”

  His arm stiffened beneath her hand. “I beg your pardon?”

  “The footman said you had gone out riding. When you returned you must have—” Too late she realized the terrible truth. Of course Gavin would have led his horse back into the stable for grooming, and then—what? Had he discovered Neil’s body before her? Surely, then, he must have said so—unless he had found a very much alive Neil waiting to confront him over his marriage to Elspeth. Or had Neil had bigger fish to fry than the mere blighting of a fifteen-year-old love affair? Mr. Pickett had said that Neil had once before sought to profit from the misfortunes of the Kirkbride family; had he gained some hold over Gavin that he thought to turn to his advantage? And what secret would be more worth paying to keep than the truth regarding one’s part in a murder?

  She picked up her pace, suddenly eager to escape the narrow confines of the path and the precipitous drop to the sea. “But Gavin, what a shocking way to treat your horse!” she exclaimed brightly. “You must have abandoned the poor creature in the stable yard, for if you had entered the stable you surely must have seen poor Neil. It is too kind of you to accompany me, but you must not neglect your horses on my account. I could have found my way back to the inn without your escort. You must give him an apple or some extra oats when you return, to repay him for his patience. Or do you ride a mare?”

  She was babbling. She knew it, but she could not seem to stop. All she could do was keep talking in a desperate attempt to banish the sudden suspicion from Gavin’s eyes. Then his fingers closed around her arm, and she realized that all the talking in the world would do her no good. She had no doubt that she would soon be taking a shortcut down the cliff path, and that her self-appointed escort intended that she would not survive the fall.

  “A valiant attempt, my dear, but your every word condemns you,” Gavin said, confirming her worst fears. “Yes, I returned to the stables following my ride and, as you suspect, I found Neil waiting for me there, the fool.”

  “You are a better man than this, Gavin,” she said cajolingly, in a desperate attempt to appeal to his better nature—if in fact he possessed such a thing. “Surely much must be forgiven a man disappointed in love not once, but twice, and over the same woman. He did not deserve to die.”

  Gavin gave a snort of derision. “Believe me, ardor for the fair Elspeth was the last thing on his mind! He offered to sell me his silence, the blackguard! After the ball he was waiting on the terrace like a moonling, awaiting a glimpse of his lost love, when what did he see instead but the figure of a man silhouetted against the curtain in Uncle Angus’s window—a man, he was persuaded, whose stature was too slender to be Duncan, and whose movements were too nimble to be Uncle Angus’s manservant. When Neil learned the next day that the old man was dead, he put two and two together and saw a way—or so he thought—to extort money from me in exchange for keeping quiet.”

  The path widened a bit some twenty or thirty feet ahead. If she could only keep Gavin talking until they reached that point, she might be able to hitch up her skirts and run. It was a slim chance, but at the moment it appeared to be the only chance she had. “Then it was you who killed him?”

  “My dear girl, do you truly think I would admit as much? Ah well, I suppose it matters little. It is not as if you will live long enough to pass the information along to the intrepid Mr. Pickett. Well then, since you will have it, I did silence Neil, and permanently. When in London, I box frequently with Gentleman Jackson, so I am stronger than I look. Neil probably outweighed me by at least two stone, but whatever I lacked in size, I made up for in technique. Once I had rendered him unconscious, I had only to slip the rope around his neck, toss the loose end over the beam, and hoist the body off the ground.”

  “And—and Mr. Kirkbride?”

  “Neil was quite right; I did indeed hasten my dear uncle off to his heavenly reward. Hmm, I wonder if there is a word for the murder of one’s uncle? We have patricide for the murder of a father, and fratricide for the murder of a brother—we nefarious nephews should be immortalized in the lexicon, as well. I must look into it.”

  Fifteen feet to go, twelve—“But why, Gavin? He was prepared to entrust his beloved daughter to you in marriage. What could he possibly have done to you that should warrant his death?”

  “Why, nothing, at least not to me personally. But have you any idea how much it costs to maintain a fashionable existence in London?”

  “But Elspeth was to be her father’s sole heiress, and you were to be Elspeth’s husband! You would have eventually controlled his entire fortune,” she pointed out. “Or was that the problem—the fact th
at she was not Elspeth at all, but the actress Mrs. Church?”

  Gavin stopped and stared at her, a maddening ten feet short of her goal. “So you know about that, do you? It appears your Mr. Pickett is rather more clever than I gave him credit for. But there is where I made my fatal—no pun intended—error. The actress I hired to play the part of my long-lost cousin was, in fact, my long-lost cousin. It seems Elspeth survived after all, and found fame as the toast of Drury Lane Theatre.”

  “You hired her?”

  “I did indeed, and tutored her rigorously in the history and mannerisms of my dear departed cousin. And she, damn her, was careful not to prove too apt a pupil. How she must have laughed at me!” He ground his teeth at the thought. “And just when things were going so well—old Angus over the moon at her return, and all eagerness for us to be joined as man and wife—I went to her room that night after the ball to give her the first installment of the payment we had agreed upon, and she informed me of her true identity. She said she had no intention of marrying me, and even thanked me for effecting a reconciliation between her and her father, curse her impudence. She told me she planned to break off the engagement the next morning, as soon as she could speak to her father in private.”

  “If that was her intention all along, I wonder why she went through with the betrothal announcement at all?” Lady Fieldhurst marveled. If she could only keep him talking long enough, surely someone would come along. The wrongly suspected Duncan might yet turn up, or perhaps even Mr. Pickett, if he were not still sound asleep at the inn.

  “I can answer that. She went through with the ball so that all the neighboring gentry could see that her father accepted her fully, the prodigal child returned at last to the fold. Even though the broken engagement must undoubtedly cause some speculation, it would not be her reputation damaged by it, but mine. Breaking an engagement is, of course, a lady’s prerogative. Then, too, she might not have stopped with merely breaking the engagement. She might have decided to make a clean breast of it and tell Uncle Angus of my part in the little drama. I could not take that chance.”

  Lady Fieldhurst made what she hoped was a sympathetic noise, although it sounded even to her own ears like a pitiful whimper.

  “Acting on the theory that half an inheritance was better, so to speak, than no bread, I resolved to do in the old man before he could carry out his plan to change his will in Elspeth’s favor. It was easy enough to accomplish, thanks to the foxglove derivative he takes for his heart.”

  “Good God, you must be mad!” breathed Lady Fieldhurst.

  “Mad? Not at all. Merely at low tide financially, and with no other way of righting the sinking ship. I console myself with the knowledge that Elspeth’s return, while undeniably a happy event to Uncle Angus, put a significant strain on his already weak heart. He probably would not have lived much longer in any case, and his sufferings were brief. So shall yours be, my dear, I assure you.”

  And with those final words of comfort, he seized her by the arms and dragged her to the edge of the precipice. Lady Fieldhurst fought with every ounce of strength she possessed, but Gavin’s lithe form concealed a surprising strength.

  “You are wasting your energy, Mrs. Pickett.” Gavin was hardly even breathing heavily. “As I told you before, I box regularly with Gentleman Jackson in London. Not to boast, but I even beat him on one memorable occasion.”

  “I’ll bet—you—cheated!” Lady Fieldhurst retorted, still struggling to free herself.

  Gavin chuckled. “If you are thinking to shame me, you are wasting your breath. You would be better served in saying your prayers.”

  She was already doing that, although whether those prayers were directed toward the Almighty or John Pickett, even she could not have said. She could no longer spare the breath to speak, not even to scream for help. Her foot found Gavin’s instep, and she kicked and stamped for all she was worth. She might have saved herself the effort, for his iron grip never slackened.

  At last, when her strength was almost spent, she knew what she must do. She knew, just as surely as if she had read the account in the newspaper, what would happen in the days following her plunge over the cliff. Her death would be deemed a tragic accident, the sad consequence of her taking the path too quickly in her impatience to reach the inn and report the stable hand’s suicide. Duncan would no doubt hang for the murder of his uncle, since he stood to lose his inheritance, and indeed his very absence seemed to confirm his guilt. Elspeth was too frightened for her own life to come forward, or perhaps Gavin would find some way to kill her next, and there would be no one to see that he paid for his crimes.

  In that moment of clarity, she knew that if she could not prevent Gavin from throwing her off, she could at least make certain he went over with her, thus ensuring that some rough sort of justice was done. Sooner or later Mr. Pickett would be called upon to examine their bodies at the foot of the cliff, and perhaps he would deduce the rest; her sacrifice would at least prevent him from having Duncan’s innocent blood on his hands. Her mind made up, she stopped struggling against her captor and instead flung herself against his chest. Thrown off balance, he released her abruptly, windmilling his arms.

  His scream joined with hers as they went over the precipice together.

  CHAPTER 18

  IN WHICH JOHN PICKETT ASSUMES

  THE RÔLE OF ROMANTIC HERO

  * * *

  “Are you telling me,” Pickett asked incredulously, “that your cousin Gavin hired you to portray yourself?”

  “Yes, although of course he did not realize I was in fact his cousin Elspeth,” Miss Kirkbride answered. Her gaze was fixed on the view outside the window of the inn’s private parlor, but Pickett suspected that, instead of seeing the busy inn yard, she saw her dressing room backstage at Drury Lane Theatre and the cousin, now approaching middle age, who had called on her there. “Recall that Gavin had not seen me in more than a decade, and he thought I was dead, so he would naturally not expect to see me. And then there was the heavy theatrical maquillage I wore as Ophelia. Alas, it takes a liberal application of cosmetics to transform a woman of more than thirty years into Shakespeare’s innocent young heroine.”

  “And yet Gavin never recognized your name? I confess, I only this morning became aware of the connection between your birth name and your stage name, but Gavin grew up in Scotland. Surely he must have noticed it was the English equivalent?”

  “You are clever, Mr. Pickett, but there is a difference between being clever and being merely crafty. Gavin prided himself on the former when instead he was only the latter.”

  “What of that little scene on the beach? Your recent success as Ophelia helped you out a bit there, I believe.”

  Miss Kirkbride looked puzzled. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Mrs. Pickett drew a sketch showing you lying in the position in which they found you,” he explained.

  “Oh, did you recognize my Ophelia?” She smiled, and for a moment the shadows in her eyes were banished. “Yes, the position was the same, although I can assure you the boards of the Drury Lane stage are much more comfortable than the shingle on the beach!”

  “Yet you lay there for how long before you were discovered?”

  “Actually, not as long as you might think. Gavin had given me funds for passage on the mail coach from London, but I dared not disembark at Ravenscroft for fear of being recognized. I had the coach set me down at the next village over. Between that village and this, there is a stretch of isolated beach where my cousins and I used to swim, until they went off to school and my father decided I was a young lady and too old for such things. I waited until the afternoon, and then walked to this stretch of beach. There was a moon that night, and the beach has not changed much in the intervening years, so I was in no danger. In fact, I passed a very peaceful night gazing at the moon and swimming beneath the stars.”

  “Swimming?” Pickett echoed, appalled. “At this time of year?”

  “You forget, Mr. Pickett, that I
am Scots bred. I find the cold water bracing.”

  “But Harold said your clothes were scarcely damp!”

  Miss Kirkbride arched a mischievous eyebrow. “ ‘Clothes,’ Mr. Pickett? I don’t recall having said anything about swimming in my clothes.” Seeing him blush crimson, she added, “As I said, it is a very isolated strip of beach, so there was little chance of my being discovered. Then as dawn approached, I put on my clothes and walked on to the beach adjacent to the house, where I arranged myself on the shingle, just as Harold and his brothers found me.”

  “But why the beach? Why was such an elaborate ruse necessary?”

  “The beach scene was Gavin’s idea. He thought Father would be much more inclined to take pity on a familiar-looking stranger with no memory than on a returned prodigal who sails into the drawing room after fifteen years with no explanation or apology, clearly prepared to resume her place in the family. It may sound cruel, Mr. Pickett, but I welcomed the opportunity to gauge my family’s reaction to my return before deciding whether or not to reveal myself to Gavin.”

  “It seems to me that Gavin was as much a pawn in your scheme as you were in his,” Pickett remarked.

  “Yes, I confess that while speaking with Gavin I began to form a plan of my own.” She gave a wistful sigh. “I wanted to go home, Mr. Pickett. I suppose I’d always wanted to go home, but I didn’t realize how much until Gavin came to me with his proposition. I had not seen my father in more than a decade, and I knew he must be getting on in years. Gavin seemed certain that he would welcome me, and if it turned out that Gavin was wrong, well, I would be no worse off than before. Either way, I would be five thousand pounds the richer—a comfortable retirement, when the time came. Then, too, there was Duncan. In spite of the bitterness of our parting, I had never truly forgotten him. If I were to come here and find him happily married with a quiver full of children, perhaps I could finally lay the ghosts of the past to rest.”