Justice Hall - Laurie R. King [162]
Papers, it looked like: a packet of letters bound in a tired blue ribbon, a folded piece of heavy paper, and a single letter in its opened envelope, with a crumpled oil-cloth wrap that they had been in. I pulled them out, eased the lid down again, and glanced at the solitary envelope. It had been sealed, then opened with a sharp blade; the envelope had neither the black Post Office stamp nor the red mark of the censor. One glimpse of the handwriting, and I nearly ripped the letter out of its envelope. Dearest Pater, it began.
I was holding in my hands Gabriel Hughenfort’s final letter to his father, the letter written the night before his execution. A letter, I saw, containing no word of the young officer’s true fate, but which held instructions on thanks to be extended to various individuals, including the batman Jamie McFarlane and the Reverend Mr Hastings. Most important, however, and the reason it had never reached Gabriel’s parents, was the startling news of his battlefield wife, Helen, his love for her, his apologies for the haste of the marriage, and his knowledge that they would love her as their own. Gabriel’s other “final” letter, that time-stained sheet with the gentle and uplifting words intended for his mother’s eyes, had gone through; this one, from the heir to his duke and meant for the father alone, had been given to a trusted family confidant to deliver personally. I sorted quickly through the bound packet of envelopes, all of which were in a woman’s hand (Helen’s, I thought), then unfolded the heavy paper of the other loose document: a Certificate of Marriage, between Gabriel Adrian Thomas Hughenfort and Philippa Helen O’Meary. To my relief, it did not look as if Lenore and Walter had got as far as reading them.
“Did you find these in here?” I asked them, keeping my voice casual.
“They were under the corner of those dirty cloths,” Lenore informed me, anxious that I should accept the inevitability of their find. “We just climbed in to hide—or rather, I did, and when Walter couldn’t find me he started to blub—”
“Did not!” the boy exclaimed in outrage.
“—and so I let him in with me, and then we could only get the top open a little way and we found these when the cloths got messed up, so we thought we’d sit and read them while we waited for Miss Paul to come looking for us, and then we heard you and got frightened that we might be in trouble and—”
“Oh, I shouldn’t worry about it,” I reassured them easily, folding the papers away into an inner pocket. “I won’t tell. Although if I were you, I shouldn’t say anything to anyone about having been inside the chest. Parents worry, don’t you know, about children getting trapped and being unable to get out. They might decide to keep you in the nursery for your own safety. Too, that way, by the time someone notices the great gash you put into the side of it, you’ll be safely back in London.”
I felt remarkably guilty at the manifold threats I was holding over their heads, but I couldn’t take the chance of their chattering to their parents or any adult in earshot about being inside the chest where Gabriel’s papers had been hidden away. The apprehension on both faces told me they would keep silent, at least long enough for the matter to be resolved.
“How long has it been since you reported in to your governess?”
“We probably ought to go now,” Lenore admitted.
“Dust yourselves off first,” I suggested.
“We’re allowed to dress up tonight, too,” Walter informed me.
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if he planned to come as a character from Mr Barrie’s hated play, but I hadn’t the heart. “Good,” I said. “Have fun.