Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [38]
“Whatever do you mean?” she gasped. “What trouble, what harm … what are you talking about, Sammy?”
He took in a deep, shuddering breath and said, “Josh is in police trouble, Annie, they’ll be after him this time. He told me you had your aunt Jessie’s money hidden under the mattress. He said to tell you he needs it to escape.” He grabbed her by the shoulders, suddenly desperate. “He has to get away, Annie, a long way away. Out of the country. He said mebbe we would go to San Francisco where your dad went, we’ll make our fortunes there … if only we can leave this mess behind us. Don’t ask any more questions, Annie, just give me the money. I’ll go with him. I promise I’ll look after him with my own life. Only I beg you not to ask me why.”
His wild, dark eyes met hers and she knew he was talking about something too terrible to put into words, but she still could not understand how it could relate to Josh. He was such a good lad, he always had been … what could he have done to be in trouble with the police, such bad trouble to make him run away, all the way to San Francisco?
“Annie, for God’s sake, there’s no time to lose.”
Pulling herself together she ran swiftly up the stairs and dragged back the heavy flock mattress, rummaging underneath for the thin sheaf of ten-pound notes. She ran back downstairs and thrust them into his trembling hands, too shocked to question him further.
“Thanks, Annie, you’re a grand lass,” he said, stuffing them quietly into his pocket, and without another word he ran off down the path. She called after him. “Did Josh say anything else, a message for me or anything …?”
Sammy shook his head. “I’ve got to rush, lass,” he said, glancing nervously up and down the lane.
She nodded, tears squeezing from her eyes. “Tell him I love him, no matter what,” she called. “And I’ll never believe he did anything bad.” Sammy’s fathomless black eyes met hers for a moment and then he was gone.
The neighborhood was in an uproar when the police announced they were looking to arrest Josh Aysgarth for the murder of three young women.
“Josh Aysgarth?” they cried disbelievingly. “Why, he’d never hurt a fly. He’s one of life’s innocents, that lad, allus in a world of his own. And he didn’t have no time for lasses either. He was allus just with Sammy Morris.”
But Mrs. Morris told everybody how her Sammy had found Josh standing over the girl’s body down by Durrent’s Beck, half-in and half-out of the water, it was. She said Josh told Sammy he hadn’t done it and Sammy—who had always been daft in the head where his friend was concerned—believed him. He had run to Ivy Cottage to ask Annie Aysgarth for help. How could she refuse? She had been a mother to Josh since their proper mam died when he was a little lad and she were nothing but a girl herself. Annie had said she knew their Josh would never do such a thing and she had given Sammy the hundred pounds her aunt Jessie had left her that she was saving for a rainy day. Then Sammy had run home to tell his mother what had happened and that he was running away with Josh and now Mrs. Morris didn’t know where they had gone.
“I’ll never forgive Josh Aysgarth for leading my son astray,” she told the awestruck neighbors, wiping her eye on a corner of her clean, flowered apron. “My Sammy’s gone and likely I’ll never see him again.”
And if Annie Aysgarth knew where they had gone, she wasn’t telling. But everyone who saw her, shopping at the Maypole or hurrying to catch the tram or buying ale for her father’s dinner just like normal, said she had aged overnight from a girl of twenty-six to a woman of forty. Poor Annie Aysgarth, they said, she had loved that boy like her own son and she would never tell on him, not in a thousand years.
As for Frank Aysgarth, after those first headlines hit the newstands he never left Ivy Cottage again. His hair turned white and he retreated into total seclusion and silence, looked after by his faithful daughter, Annie.
CHAPTER 8
1905
Francie’s difficult childhood years slowly passed and one morning she awoke and remembered