Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [114]
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
Ridiculous, of course, but she was almost crying with the memory of her distress. Counting back, I realised that while Maudie Martley was lying weak with fever in her inn, I was probably no more than a mile away, inquiring for my father around the hotels of Calais. If he hadn’t chosen an inn on the outskirts, I might have found her nearly a month ago.
‘Then I heard this voice in English asking what was going on. It was a rough sort of voice, but I was glad of it at first, until I turned round. God help me, it was one of the fat devil’s servants, grinning like an ape. “Well,” he says, “you have given us some trouble. We’ve been looking all over the bloody place for you.” And he says to the Frenchman who had my arm, “You keep hold of her – she’s wanted,” and goes running off. Half an hour later, a carriage draws up outside and it’s the fat devil himself.’
I remembered how the fat man had asked me, Where’s the woman? He must have been searching Calais for her and, by sheer mischance, he’d found her at last, probably quite soon after they’d tried to kidnap me.
‘Did you ask him about my father?’ I said.
‘I was too terrified to ask him anything. His servants dragged me into his carriage, then we drove off. “Well,” he said to me, “you’ve got yourself in serious trouble now. Trying to defraud an innkeeper, not to mention the money you stole from me when you ran off …” I told him, God’s truth, I hadn’t. I’d never touched a penny of his, but he kept on as if I hadn’t spoken, about how he’d offered me a respectable position and I’d deceived and robbed him, and if he told the French police I’d go to prison for a very long time, perhaps even to the guillotine.’
Even the memory of it scared her. Her hand went to her neck.
‘They couldn’t have done that,’ Daniel said.
‘He said he was a lawyer, and I heard people calling him milord. Who’d have believed me against him? I was nearly mad with fear and he could see it. In the end he said he wouldn’t report me, only I’d have to do exactly what he said. He took me to his hotel and wrote down a long statement that he made me sign. He called in another man to witness it and then he stamped a big seal on it in red wax. He told me that if I ever tried to go back on my word and say I hadn’t said it, that would be perjury and I’d be in even worse trouble. I had to promise to go back to England with him and not try to run away again. So I promised. What else could I do?’
She looked at Daniel imploringly.
‘I dare say in your place anybody would have done the same,’ he said. ‘So he never mentioned Mr Lane?’
She looked down at her hands, clenched together in her lap.
‘Not as such, not to me. No.’
‘To somebody else?’
‘I think so, yes. It must have been him they were talking about.’
‘They? Who?’
‘The fat devil and another gentleman. But I was under the floorboards, you see.’
‘Floorboards?’
‘Yes, of the coach. The fat devil said I must go back to England with him, but I’d better make sure nobody saw me or I’d be arrested. There were some gaps between the floorboards, just enough to let air in and I could see up into the carriage, but only a very little, mostly his boots and his fat belly.’
‘And somebody else was in there with him?’
‘Not on the journey over, no. It was when we were off the boat on the other side at Dover. It sounded as if we were getting ready to drive away, then I felt the carriage tilt the way it does when somebody gets in. This new man’s first words were about me. He said to the fat devil, “I still can’t find the Martley woman. There’s no trace of her this side of the Channel or the other ” The fat devil said he could give up troubling himself because they’d found me without his help. The other one said they might have told him, then he asked, “Where is she?” The fat devil gave a thump with his boot, just above my head and I think he must have pointed downwards because the other gentleman said, “You mean she’s dead too?” in a quavery sort of voice. And the fat devil said, “No. One’s more than enough. What in the world possessed you, shooting poor