The Captain's Mysterious Lady (3 page)

He looked about him. Although it was small, the room and the bed hangings were clean. ‘Yes, thank you.'

‘Do you need anything else? Hot water? Food and drink?'

‘All of those things when the lady regains her senses. Unfortunately she has been unconscious for some time and I do not even know her name.' He put his burden on the bed.

‘My goodness, I know her,' the lady said, peering down at the unconscious woman. ‘She used to live at Blackfen Manor, hard by here, when she was a child. I disremember her name—it was some time ago, you understand—but I know the ladies at the Manor, Miss Hardwick and Miss Matilda Hardwick.'

‘Then send for them at once. They will know what to do.'

The girl on the bed stirred and moaned and opened her eyes. ‘Where am I?'

‘At the King's Arms in Highbeck,' James answered. ‘You had a nasty knock on the head when the coach overturned.'

‘Coach?'

‘Yes, you were travelling on it. Don't you remember?'

‘No. Where was I going?'

‘Coming here, I think.'

‘Why?'

‘You have kin at Blackfen Manor,' the innkeeper's wife put in. ‘I expect you were coming on a visit.'

‘I don't remember.'

‘It is hardly surprising,' James said. ‘You were knocked out.'

‘Who are you?' she asked him.

‘Captain Drymore, at your service,' he said. ‘I was travelling on the same coach. Now you must rest. We
are going to send word to Blackfen Manor for someone to take charge of you. I will leave you in the care of our hostess and come to see you again later.'

The innkeeper's wife accompanied him to the door. ‘Was she travelling alone?' she asked.

‘She had an escort, but he's dead,' he whispered. ‘I don't know whether to tell her that or not.'

‘We should tell the ladies when they come.'

He left her to tend to the girl's bruises and went downstairs again to find the others had arrived and were making them selves comfortable in the parlour with a quart of ale each, while food was prepared for them. ‘What now?' Sam asked when he joined them.

‘She is known to the innkeeper's wife. It appears she has kin close by and someone is going to fetch them to take charge of her,' James told him.

‘Thank the Lord for that, for a moment I thought we were going to be saddled with her.'

James realised, with a jolt, that her predicament had driven the main purpose of his journey from his mind, but it was time he began to think of it. ‘And you wouldn't want that, would you, my friend?'

‘To be sure, it would put a spoke in the wheels. Has she got her senses back?' Sam asked.

‘Yes and no. She is conscious, but still too dazed to know what has happened to her. No doubt the sight of her relatives will be all that's needed.'

‘Then we go on?'

‘To Peterborough?' James queried vaguely, his mind still half with the mystery of the girl.

‘Yes, had you forgot where we were going and why?'

‘No, I had not and I'll thank you to mind your manners.'

‘I beg your pardon, Cap'n sir, but you must admit you
can't be worrying about that one upstairs when we are so close to success.' Sam was almost as determined on catching those two as he was, knowing what it meant to him.

‘How do you know we are close to success?'

‘We know they were on that coach and going to Peterborough, don't we?'

‘Just because they paid the fare to Peterborough, does not mean they meant to travel all the way there. They could have left the stage anywhere to put us off the scent again. Or they may have gone on some where else,' James pointed out.

‘And they might have been held up by those two highpads. That would have delayed them, don't you think?'

‘Very true, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary we will head for Peterborough.'

‘I took the liberty of making enquiries, Captain, and there's a coach coming through at first light which will take us on to Downham Market. And there are connections to Peterborough.'

‘Good. We can't do anything more here.'

 

After they had eaten, James went up to speak to the young lady and take his leave of her. She had swallowed a little supper, he was told, but she was still dazed. ‘She'll be fine as nine pence when the Misses Hardwick come to take care of her,' the innkeeper's wife said, as they stood outside the bedchamber talking quietly.

‘You have sent word to them?'

‘Yes, but they are maiden ladies and will not venture out at this time of night. They will be here in the morning.'

‘Are you sure of that?' He was torn between staying and leaving. It was curiosity mixed with pity and a feeling of responsibility that made him want to stay and see her safely
with her kin, while the determination to find his wife's killers and see them hanged drove him relentlessly.

‘Oh, yes, indeed. Lovely ladies they are, always pleasant, always have a kind word for everyone and they do a deal of good in the village. I reckon she must be a niece or something of the sort. It's a mystery, though.'

‘What is?'

‘No baggage, no money, nothing, according to the coachman.'

‘I will recompense you for her food and lodging.'

‘I did not mean that, sir, indeed I did not. I am sure the Misses Hardwick will see to that. I was thinkin' what a mystery it was.'

‘Yes, to be sure. But no doubt when the lady recovers her senses she will be able to en lighten you. In the meantime, can I leave her with you?'

‘Yes, of course. You must be anxious to continue your journey.'

‘I am.' His mind was made up. ‘Pressing business, you understand. We shall go on the early coach, but a bed for the rest of the night will be welcome.'

‘Certainly, sir. I'll see to it.'

He took several coins from his purse and handed them to her, enough to cover his and Sam's stay and the young woman's. ‘I will go in and say my fare wells. I doubt I shall see her in the morning.'

He opened the door and stepped into the room. The invalid lay in the bed, staring at the ceiling, lost in thought.

‘Madam,' he said, moving over to stand beside her. She looked small and frail in the big bed.

She turned towards him. ‘Captain Drymore. That is right, is it not? I have remembered your name correctly?'

‘Yes, that is my name. Can you tell me yours?'

A tear found its way down her cheek. ‘I must have had a really bad bang on the head, for I cannot remember it. I have been lying here, racking my brain, and it just will not come.'

He sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Do not distress yourself. When you are with your relations again and in familiar surroundings, everything will come back to you.'

‘I expect you are right. But I must thank you for what you have done for me. The landlady has told me and it seems I am in your debt.'

‘Not at all. I did nothing.' He stood up. ‘I came to say goodbye and to wish you well. I am leaving very early in the morning to continue my journey. Mrs Sadler has assured me I can safely leave you in her care until your relatives come for you.'

‘Then goodbye, sir. And again my gratitude.'

He gave her a small bow and left the room. He did not like leaving her, but Sam was right, he could do nothing more for her. They were strangers who had passed a few hours in each other's company, that was all. But she was a courageous little thing and he hoped she would make a full recovery. One day, perhaps, after he had seen justice done for Carrie, he might call at Blackfen Manor and enquire after her.

A
my was walking across the fields surrounding Blackfen Manor, stopping every now and again to watch a butterfly flitting from flower to flower, or a skylark soaring, or gazing into the water of the river at her own reflection. It was like looking at a stranger. The image gazing back at her was unknown to her. She saw a woman in a plain unpadded gown, with fair hair tied back with a ribbon, a pale face and worried-looking eyes. It was the same when she looked in the mirror in her bedchamber, a stranger's blue eyes looked back at her. ‘Who are you?' she would whisper. Teasing her woolly brain about it only brought on a headache.

‘Do not fret, it will come to you, my dear,' Aunt Matilda had said. She was the rounder and softer of the two ladies who had come to the King's Arms to fetch her after the accident. The other, Aunt Harriet, was taller and thinner, more practical and down to earth. Both wore gowns with false hips, though nothing like as wide as those worn in London, and white powdered wigs. They were, so they told her, her mother's sisters and their surname was Hardwick,
none of which she could remember. She didn't remember her own name, let alone that of anyone else.

‘You are Amy,' Aunt Harriet had told her, when Matilda could not speak for tears. ‘And once we have you home, you will soon recover your memory. It is the shock of the accident that has taken it from you. You will be chirpy as a cricket tomorrow and then you can tell us what happened.'

‘I am glad I have found someone who knows who I am,' she had told them. Lying in bed in the inn with no recollection of who she was, or how she had got there, had been frightening.

‘Of course we know who you are. Did we not bring you up from a child? You were coming to visit us, no doubt of it, though why you did not send in advance to say you were coming, we cannot think.'

They had brought her to Blackfen Manor in their gig, put her to bed and sent for their physician. He had said she had no broken bones and her many bruises would fade in time. And he confidently predicted her memory would return once she was up and about surrounded by familiar things and people she loved and trusted. She had to believe him or she would have sunk into the depths of despair.

But after two months, she could remember nothing of her life before that coach over turned, and very little of the immediate after math of that. Her aunts were kind to her, fed her with beef broth, roast chicken, sweet breads and fruit tarts, saying she was far too thin, and provided her with clothes, having assumed her baggage had been stolen from the over turned coach. They fetched things to show her in an effort to jog her memory, saying, ‘Amy, do you remember this?' Or ‘Look at this picture of us and your mama our papa had painted just before she married Sir John Charron.'

‘Amy Charron,' she murmured.

‘No, not Amy Charron, not any more,' Matilda had told her. ‘You are wed to Duncan Macdonald, have been these last five years.'

‘Married?' This had surprised her, though why it should she did not know.

‘Yes.'

‘Where is he? Why was he not with me?'

‘We have no idea, though if he knew you were coming to visit us, he would not worry, would he? When he learns what has befallen you, he will come post haste.'

‘Did I deal well with him? Were we happy together?'

‘Only you can know that,' Harriet said. ‘You never complained of his treatment of you, so one must suppose you were.'

‘Do we have children?'

‘No, not yet. But there is time, you are still very young.'

‘How old am I?'

‘Five and twenty.'

Twenty-five years gone and all of them a mystery!

She had written to Duncan to tell him what had happened, which had been difficult since she knew nothing about him except what her aunts were able to tell her, did not even know the address to write to until they told her. He was an artist, they had said, though how successful he was they did not know. He was of middling height and build, was careful of his appearance and always wore a bag wig tied with a large black bow, which did not tell her much. In any case, she had had no reply.

It was all very frustrating. She could not remember her husband. What did he look like? Did she love him? She supposed she must have done or she would not have married him, but if he turned up would she know him? How
could you love someone you could not remember? Why had she left him behind when she made the journey? Why had he allowed her to travel alone? But she hadn't been alone, had she? By all accounts there had been a man with her and he had died of a broken neck. Who was he? She wasn't running away with him, was she? Oh, that would be a des pi cable thing to do! But how could she know whether she was a wicked person or a good one? When she asked the aunts, they were adamant that she had the sweetest temperament and would not hurt a fly. ‘Goodness, have we not brought you up to be a good, law-abiding Christian?' they demanded. ‘If anyone is wicked, it is certainly not you.'

‘Why did you bring me up?'

‘Because your mama is an opera singer and is always travelling about from one theatre to another and that was not a good life for a young child, so we offered to rear you,' Aunt Matilda said. ‘We wrote immediately to tell her you are here safe and sound. I am sure she would have come to see you if she were not in the middle of a season of opera at Drury Lane.'

‘And my father?'

‘He lives abroad.'

‘Why?'

They had shrugged. ‘Heaven knows.' But she thought they did know.

‘Did I love him?'

‘Of course you did,' Harriet said. ‘You were especially close and very downpin when he went away.' They had showed her a portrait of him, a cheerful-looking man with grey-green eyes and a pointed beard, but it did nothing to help her recall the man himself.

She stopped walking to turn back and look at the Manor. It was a solid Tudor residence, with a moat about it and
a draw bridge with twin turrets on either side of the gate, which led to an enclosed court yard. She found it difficult to believe she had spent most of her child hood there. In the last two months she had explored every inch of its many nooks and crannies, but nothing reminded her of anything. It was like being born, she supposed, with no history behind you and everything new.

She had strolled about the gardens both within and outside the moat and climbed the tower on the edge of the estate that had been built as a look-out and from which she could see the countryside for miles around: the river, the road, the village with its church and inn, all things she had known and loved in her child hood, according to her aunts. The people she met in the village would speak to her, ask how she did, address her sometimes as Mrs Macdonald, but more frequently as Miss Amy, and she would reply, hiding the fact she could not remember their names.

She could not even remember Susan, much to that good woman's sorrow. Susan was in her middle thirties and had been with the family since she was twelve, moving up the hierarchy of the servants from kitchenmaid to chambermaid and from there to lady's maid. But she was more than that, she was a valued companion to both old ladies and had known Amy since child hood, had watched her grow up and helped her dress, scolded her when she was naughty and praised her when she was good. Susan had added her efforts to get her to remember, all to no avail.

Her aunts were worried, she knew that. They had tried everything they could think of to jog her into remembering, but nothing seemed to work. ‘I fear something dreadful occurred before the accident that occasioned your loss of memory,' Matilda had said only the day before.

‘Something so dreadful I have blotted it from my mind, you mean?'

‘Perhaps. If only Duncan would come, I am sure the sight of him would effect a cure.'

‘Then why has he not answered my letter?'

‘We cannot tell,' Harriet put in. ‘Unless something has happened to him, too. I have written to ask your mother to make enquiries.' Her mother, so she was told, had an apartment near the theatre, not far from Henrietta Street where Amy and her husband had their home. That was another thing Amy could not remember. Racking her brains produced nothing. By day she was calm, though worried, but her nights were beset by violent dreams in which she was running, running for all she was worth, knowing there was something evil behind her.

Only the week before, her mother had written to say she had not seen Duncan and their house was unoccupied. Lord Trentham had come to see the opera and had taken her out to supper afterwards and she had asked him to help uncover the mystery. Lord Trentham, Aunt Harriet had explained to Amy, was a lifelong friend of the family and a man of influence. Whether he would succeed Amy was not at all sure, but he seemed her only hope.

Sighing, she began to walk slowly back to the house, trying, as she did every day, to remember something, anything at all, that would shed some light on the life she had led before the coach over turned. She knew she had been rescued by a gentleman who had apparently been another passenger, but she had been so dazed by her experience she could not remember his name or what he looked like. And he had not stayed to see her handed over to her aunts, so they had no idea who he was. Had he known her before that journey? Was he part of the mystery?

 

James was on his way to Bow Street to pay Henry Fielding a visit. He had not caught his wife's murderers thanks
to that coach overturning and the delay in arriving at Peterborough, where the trail had gone cold. He had returned to London, along with thou sands of others who had decided the threat of more earth quakes had been exaggerated and the world was not about to come to a violent end. Rather than go to his Newmarket estate, he decided to stay with his parents at Colbridge House, expecting Smith and Randle to return to the metropolis as soon as they thought the coast was clear but, in two months, none of his contacts had seen or heard anything of them. London's Chief Magistrate had been a great help to him over his quest in the past and he might have heard something of them.

The street was crowded with people going about their business, jostling each other in their hurry to reach their destinations: city men, gentlefolk, parsons, hawkers, women selling posies, piemen, street urchins. James hardly spared them a glance as he made his way on foot to the magistrate's office, where he found him in conversation with Lord Trentham, a one-time admiral, whom he had known from his years of naval service.

‘Now, here's your man,' the magistrate said to his lordship, after greetings had been exchanged and a glass of brandy offered and accepted. ‘He can help solve your mystery.'

‘Oh, and what might that be?' James asked guardedly, assuming they wanted to inveigle him into more thief taking.

‘A man has gone missing and his lordship wants him found.'

‘Men are always going missing,' he said. ‘I know of two myself I should dearly like to find.'

‘Still no luck?' Henry queried.

‘Afraid not. I have been chasing them all over the country. What we need is a paid police force, one that investi
gates crime as well as arresting criminals, a body of men in uniform that everyone can recognise as upholders of law and order.'

‘I agree with you,' the magistrate put in. ‘I am working on the idea and one day it will come about, but in the meantime I must put my faith in people like you.'

‘That has come about because of my determination to see Smith and Randle hang.'

‘Bring them before me, and they will,' the magistrate told him. ‘In the meantime, will you oblige Lord Trentham?'

‘I assume the missing man is a criminal of one sort or another?' James enquired.

‘We do not know that,' his lordship put in. ‘Might be, might not. His wife's family want him found.'

James laughed. ‘An absconding husband!'

‘We do not know that either.'

‘It is a mystery,' Henry Fielding said. ‘And you are a master at solving riddles and can be trusted to be discreet.'

‘That is most kind of you,' he said, bowing in response to the compliment. ‘But I am not at all sure I want to solve this particular riddle. Coming between husband and wife is not something I care to do.'

‘Let me tell you the story and then you can decide.' Lord Trentham said.

‘Go on.' He was availing himself of the magistrate's best cognac and politeness decreed he should at least hear his lordship out.

‘The wife in question is the daughter of a very dear friend, Lady Sophie Charron—'

‘The opera singer?'

‘The same. Two months ago she was on a coach travelling to her relatives in Highbeck, in Norfolk, when the
coach was held up by highpads, only for it to be over turned half an hour later. She has recovered from her injuries, but cannot remember anything leading up to the accident. Her memory is completely blank. And her husband has disappeared. The house where they lived is a shambles. We are of the opinion something happened.'

James had begun to listen more intently as the tale went on, realising they were talking about his mystery lady. He had often wondered what had become of her, had not been able to get her out of his mind, even after he had been to Peterborough and back. Her pale, frightened face haunted him. How could he be sure he had left her in good hands? Was this another occasion for guilt that he had done nothing to help her? Was his pursuit of Smith and Randle robbing him of his common humanity? He had toyed with the idea of calling to see how she fared, but Highbeck was remote and not connected with his own search and he could not be sure she was still there so he had put off doing so.

‘I met the lady,' he said quietly. ‘I was travelling on the same coach.'

‘You were?' Lord Trentham leaned forwards, his voice eager. ‘Then you know more than we do.'

‘Not about her husband I do not. I did not know she was married.' He went on to tell them exactly what had happened and his impressions of the demeanour of the young lady. ‘She was at the inn being looked after by the innkeeper's wife when I left. I was assured her relatives had been sent for and would take care of her, but I have often wondered if I was right to leave her.'