Eustace arrived while he was still mired in misery. “Here you are, brother! I have been looking everywhere for you.”
“Oh? Is it about the tower?”
“The tower?”
“Wallace has everything in hand. It will be clear by Wednesday.”
“Oh, that,” Eustace said with a quick laugh. “Yes, I am sure everything will be fine. Wallace is a good man. You will not need me, I take it? Or anyone else?”
“No. Mine was the only name mentioned, I believe. I will be there to show Sir Hubert round the empty cellars, and he will not notice if there is a strong smell of brandy in the air.”
Eustace laughed. “Strong is an ally. He will not betray us. Not like— Well, never mind that. No, I wanted to talk to you about another matter entirely. Do you remember that old biddy that the Edgertons had trailing round with them for a while — the one who went missing?”
“You mean Mrs Edgerton’s former governess, Miss Peach?”
“The very same. A body has been found, over at Tonkins Farm. Seems to be her. She had been living in the hay barn there. I have been checking all the remote barns and sheds, and happened across the body this morning.”
“I am very sorry to hear it,” Kent said. “What happened to her?”
“Strangled.”
“What! Another murder? Does Captain Edgerton know?”
“Of course,” Eustace said testily. “Naturally I went to him straight away. But it can hardly be connected to Nicholson’s death, so perhaps now he and his odd bunch of cronies will take themselves back to Hartlepool and leave us in peace. They have done nothing except cause disruption for months now.”
“They found Father’s missing money,” Kent said. “That is hardly nothing. But what was Miss Peach doing at Tonkins Farm?”
“Who knows? Her mind was not sound, so there need not be a rational reason for it.”
“Why did you check there? You said you were checking remote barns, but that one is hard by the farmhouse, and there would have been people in and out of it when the hay was being got in. Miss Peach could hardly have been living there then.”
Eustace huffed in annoyance. “What is this, brother? You are getting as bad as Edgerton for asking questions. Perhaps she moved about, who knows. The point is, she has been found at last, so Edgerton will have no cause to poke around in our affairs.”
“Did you think he would?”
“He pokes into everything! The man is incorrigibly nosy, and imagines that everything is his business. Strong is sound, but if Edgerton got wind of our little enterprise, he could cause us a world of trouble. Do not let him, that is all I ask. Keep him well away from the tower, or any mention of it.”
Kent chewed his lip thoughtfully. “You do not think, then, that perhaps our mysterious visitor there might have been Miss Peach?”
“What? What crazy nonsense is that? The tower is above twenty miles from Pickering, and how do you suppose she got there? She never took the public stage coach, and I hardly think she walked all that way, do you?”
Kent frowned. It was possible, surely. It was almost two weeks since he and Katherine — ah, that day! Pain lanced through at the memory. He must try not to think about it. Almost two weeks since… sincehehad seen signs of occupation at the tower. Time enough even for an elderly lady to make her way to Tonkins Farm. Walk five miles, stay in a disused barn or shepherd’s hut for a day or two. Then another five miles. Yes, it could be done.
“If she was wandering about from barn to barn, say…” he said slowly.
“Kent, she was last seen in Pickering, and her body turned up only a couple of miles away. I doubt she was ever more than two or three miles from the town.”
That was a good point. Just because a thing was possible did not mean it had happened that way, and what would Miss Peach be doing at the tower, anyway? She believed herself to be investigating Nicholson’s death, so she would focus her attention on Corland or Pickering, surely? The tower had no connection to Nicholson at all. No, it was foolish to imagine she had ever been there. He resolved to put the idea out of his head.
“Do not start putting ideas into Edgerton’s head, I beg of you,” Eustace went on, “or he will be crawling all over the place looking for who knows what, and if he finds so much as a drop of candle wax in the wrong place we shall never be rid of him. Remember your loyalty to me and to the enterprise, and keep him away from the tower at all costs.”
Kent laughed, although uneasily. “Very well, brother. Let us at all costs keep the nosy Captain Edgerton away from our affairs.”
But he wished with all his heart that the enterprise was not his affair. When Eustace had first drawn him into it, making it sound so harmless, he had seen nothing wrong with it, and it was thrilling to his younger self to scurry about at night. But lately he had grown uneasy with it, appeasing his conscience with the thought that others depended on him. And now that Katherine had made him see the wrong in it—
Instantly, his thoughts were filled with Katherine again. His lovely Katherine, with whom he had hoped to spend the rest of his life. Was there anything he could do to recover his position with her? He tried to recall their happier exchanges, where she had told him what she expected from a husband. No secrecy… he remembered that one, and look how much trouble it had brought him!
What else? A good character… integrity, honesty, trustworthiness. All of those came into it. Ah, that was more difficult. He regarded himself as being of good character, but was he? Or would the world view him as Katherine did, as a smuggler, a law-breaker, who encouraged working men to break the law with him?
