I forced myself to putter at a snail’s pace down Anscombe Manor’s drive, to avoid the cardinal sin of frightening the horses, but as soon as I pulled in beside Friedrich’s Porsche, I leapt from the Mini and ran to the courtyard so fast that I sprayed gravel in my wake. Kit was waiting for me there, standing half hidden in his shadowy doorway, with his hands buried deep in his jacket pockets.
I would have appreciated five seconds to catch my breath, but Kit took off before I’d stopped gasping, and I raced after him, splashing willy-nilly through assorted puddles in my attempt to keep up with his long strides. When we moved beyond the courtyard’s floodlight and onto the muddy track, the darkness compelled us to slow down, until Kit pulled a flashlight from his pocket, switched it on, and sped up again.
“Good…thinking,” I panted, scampering around potholes caught in the flashlight’s bobbing beam.
Kit glanced down at me, as if he were noticing me for the first time. “Sorry, Lori. Am I going too fast for you?”
“Nope,” I managed, clutching the stitch in my side. “I’m as eager to talk to Leo as you are.”
“I don’t think you can be.” Kit moderated his pace, out of kindness to me, but his voice quavered with suppressed excitement as he explained. “When I invented the story about doing genealogical research at the Despatch, I never expected it to come true. What if Leo is my uncle or my cousin? He might be able to tell me things about my mother, things my father never told me, things I’ve always wanted to know.” He shook his head. “No, Lori, I don’t think you can be nearly as eager as I am to speak with him.”
“Hurry, then,” I urged him. “Don’t wait for me. I’ll catch up.”
Kit was too saintly to leave me floundering in the dark, however, so he adjusted his stride to mine, and we entered Gypsy Hollow side by side. The motor home was still there, and although the night sky was strewn with stars, the patched awning had been reerected on its telescoping poles. Leo sat beneath the awning on the rickety camp chair, with his tin cup in one hand and a long stick in the other, gazing into the campfire that blazed within the ring of stones.
He was wearing the same clothes he’d worn when he’d shared his stew with us—brown rain jacket, blue sweater, brown corduroy trousers tucked into black Wellington boots—and he’d leaned his bicycle against the side of the motor home. His bright blue eyes were somber, almost melancholy, when we emerged from the gap in the trees, but when he spotted us, they lit instantly with the same glimmer of amusement they’d held when I’d slithered down the hill into Gypsy Hollow.
“Well, isn’t this nice?” he said. “My old mates Lori and Kit, come to welcome me home.” He rested the stick against the arm of the chair and got to his feet. “I’ll fetch the stools and a couple of cups. We’ll make a party of it.”
October’s chill had returned at sundown, so it felt good to sit near the fire and sip the hot, sweet tea Leo brought for us from the motor home. When he’d used the word “party,” I’d remembered the police report and wondered what kind of drinks he’d serve. I’d been faintly relieved to discover that he’d filled our cups with nothing stronger than tea, cream, and sugar. The same notion must have crossed Kit’s mind, because I saw him sniff his tea surreptitiously before sampling it.
“Drink up,” said Leo. “There’s plenty more where that came from.” He stirred the fire with the long stick, then leaned back in his chair and surveyed us amiably. “What’ve you two been up to while I’ve been away?”
“We’ve been worrying about you,” I replied frankly. “I don’t mean to pry into your private business, Leo, but where in the heck have you been for the past two days?”
Leo slapped his thigh and roared with laughter. “A funny way you have of minding your own business, Lori.”
“Lori wasn’t the only one who was worried,” Kit chimed in loyally. “We were both afraid that you might have had an accident. The weather was pretty rough for cycling.”
“True enough,” Leo acknowledged agreeably. “It was pretty rough for hunkering down in an old tin can, too. The caravan can get a bit gloomy on wet days, so I cycled to the Oxford Road, hitched a lift into town, and spent the weekend in more cheerful surroundings.” He jutted his chin toward the bicycle. “Shredded a tire on the way back, though, so I won’t be cycling again anytime soon.”
I asked myself what kind of accommodation Leo could possibly afford in a pricey place like Oxford and thought immediately of St. Benedict’s, a homeless shelter in which Kit had stayed when he’d been down on his luck. I’d volunteered to work at St. Benedict’s often enough to know that the place was clean, warm, and safe, but I wouldn’t have described it as cheerful. Then again, I admitted silently, I wasn’t Leo. St. Benedict’s might have seemed like a five-star hotel to him, compared to the “tin can” he’d driven to Gypsy Hollow.
“Sorry if I gave you a fright,” he added. “An old bush ranger like me is used to coming and going as he pleases. It never dawned on me that you might miss me—but I’m touched that you did.”
“You should have come to the manor house,” said Kit. “The Harrises have lots of spare rooms.”
“Kind of you, Kit,” said Leo, “but your bosses wouldn’t want a stranger pottering round their house.”
“I don’t think you are a stranger to Anscombe Manor,” Kit said slowly. “I think you stayed there a long time ago, in your younger days, when you got to know Gypsy Hollow and High Point and the Upper Deeping Fair.”
Leo bent forward to stir the fire again. “Been checking up on me, Kit?”
“Not intentionally,” Kit replied. “I was looking through some old newspapers when I ran across the name Leo Sutherland.”
“You found the police report,” Leo said quietly, still toying with the fire.
“Yes,” said Kit.
A vagrant raindrop slid from an overhanging branch onto the awning. Ham, Nell’s Labrador retriever, barked once in the distance, then fell silent. Leo rested his elbows on his knees and clasped the stick loosely in his hands, but his gaze never left the fire.
“It was the only time my name got into the paper,” he said. “Your father buried all the other stories. He had a lot of clout in the county. Well, he was a war hero with a knighthood to his name, and he had a bucket of cash to throw around. It stands to reason that people did what he told them to do. And he told them straight out to bury every stupid, careless thing I did. He didn’t want the world to know that his brother-in-law was nothing but trouble.”
Kit inhaled sharply. “Then you’re my—”
“I knew it the minute I laid eyes on you,” Leo broke in, still talking to the fire. “You’ve got Amy’s mouth, her eyes. She called you Kit straight off, said it was less of a mouthful than Christopher. She adored you, Kit, and she was fairly fond of me, though I don’t know why. No brother ever gave his sister more hell than I did. Yes, Kit.” Leo pursed his lip and nodded. “Your mother was my sister. I’m sorry to say it, but I’m your uncle.”
“I’m not sorry,” Kit said softly.
“You will be,” Leo said with a bitter smile. “I wasn’t a very nice young man, you see. I fell in with a bad crowd when I was about sixteen. By seventeen I was a swaggering punk, the sort that breaks windows and drinks too much and slags off coppers just for the fun of it. Mum and Dad had washed their hands of me by the time I was eighteen, but Amy didn’t believe I was beyond redemption. She thought a change of scene would straighten me out.” Leo gave a grunt of mirthless laughter.
“Is that when she invited you to Anscombe Manor?” Kit asked.
“Amy and I were like night and day,” Leo went on, ignoring Kit’s question. “She was a good-hearted, hopeful sort of girl. She truly believed that she could help me turn my life around. She had me move into the manor three months after she married Sir Miles. I kept my nose clean for a few weeks, stayed away from the boozer and minded my manners, but I’d learned too many bad habits to shake them all at once. One night I got into a scrap with a local yobbo, and it found its way into the dear old Upper Deeping Despatch. Sir Miles was ready to throw me out on my ear, but Amy talked him into giving me another chance, and another, and another….” Leo took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “And then I met Charlotte.”
“Charlotte DuCaral?” I said.
“Amy’s best mate,” said Leo in a nostalgic, faraway voice. “She was only seventeen when I met her, two years younger than me. She had white-blond hair and soft gray eyes and the sweetest way about her. She was the kind of girl you don’t want to disappoint, you know?”
“I know,” said Kit.
Leo gave Kit a searching glance, then turned his gaze to the fire again. “She’d led such a sheltered life, and mine had been so wild, that no one could believe it when we fell head over heels for each other. Charlotte woke something up in me.” He shrugged. “I can’t explain it, but it made me want to be a better man. I stayed away from the boozer for a whole year. I started thinking with my brain instead of my fists. I turned over a new leaf, just to make her proud of me.”
“You were transformed by love,” I said softly.
“I was,” Leo agreed, “but Charlotte’s parents didn’t buy it. Looking back, I can’t really blame them. I’d made a name for myself, and it wasn’t a good one. In their eyes I was a snot-nosed young hooligan who was bound to go from bad to worse. They didn’t like it one bit when they found out that their precious daughter was in love with the likes of me.”
“They might not have liked it,” I said, “but what could they do about it?”
“What do you think they did?” Leo stabbed the stick into the flames. “They told us we couldn’t see each other anymore. They banned me from the grounds. They told Sir Miles that if I set a toe on their property, they’d have me arrested, and they’d see to it that the story wasn’t hushed up this time.”
“Did my mother know that you’d fallen in love with Charlotte?” Kit asked.
“Of course she did,” said Leo. “She was Charlotte’s best mate, wasn’t she? And she was on our side. She acted as our go-between when Charlotte and I came up with a plan to run away together. We’d elope at midnight and be married before her parents knew she was gone. Only marriage would do, for a girl like Charlotte.”
I gazed into the darkness beyond the fire and imagined the young Charlotte DuCaral making her escape. I saw her packing a small bag, letting herself out the kitchen door, making her way through the shrubbery and into the woods to the appointed meeting place, where she waited until dawn, when her heart told her that Leo had failed her.
“When the big night came, I lost my nerve,” said Leo. “I tried to get it back with a few shots of whiskey, then a few more. It was past midnight by the time I staggered out of Anscombe Manor, nearly dawn when I stumbled down the hill, sucking on a flask to keep my courage up. And who should I run into at the bottom of the hill? Charlotte’s father. He had a shotgun, and he waved it in my face. Called me all sorts of names. I lost my temper, grabbed the gun, and I…I killed him.”
“No!” I exclaimed, sitting bolt upright. “It wasn’t you. Charlotte’s brother attacked Maurice.”
Leo looked as confused as I felt. “Charlotte’s brother was setting up a children’s clinic in Africa on the night I shot Maurice. He wasn’t even on the same continent.”
“Does Charlotte have another brother?” I asked.
“No, just the one, and he died in a plane crash two years later,” said Leo, glancing at Kit.
“What about sisters?” I inquired hopefully.
“No sisters. Just one older brother.” Leo raised his open palms and asked, with a touch of exasperation, “Why are we talking about brothers and sisters when I’ve just confessed to murder?”
“Sorry,” I said, blushing, and motioned for him to continue. “Carry on.”
“Thank you,” said Leo, a bit tetchily.
“Lori has a point,” said Kit. “You couldn’t have killed Maurice DuCaral. He died three years ago.”
“I don’t know where you’re getting your information, Kit,” said Leo, “but it’s wrong. I was there that night. I know what happened. I didn’t mean to kill him, but when the gamekeeper ran up, the shotgun was in my hands and Maurice’s body was stretched out in the bracken, covered in blood.”
“Are you sure he was dead?” Kit asked.
“I’m sure,” said Leo. “I dropped the gun and crawled over to him. He wasn’t breathing. He didn’t have a pulse. He was dead.”
“Hmmm,” Kit said ruminatively. “What did you do when you realized that he was dead?”
“I was too shocked to do much of anything,” Leo admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “It was Madeline DuCaral who took charge.”
“What was Madeline doing there?” I asked.
“She’d heard the gun go off,” said Leo. “She came out to find her husband dead and me with his blood on my hands. I expected her to call the police, or to order the gamekeeper to shoot me, or to shoot me herself, but she just stood there, staring down at Maurice’s body. Then she made a deal with me.”
“She what?” I said, certain I’d misheard him.
“She made a deal with me,” Leo repeated. “If I agreed to disappear, she and the gamekeeper would make the shooting look like an accident, and she’d never tell anyone what had really happened. She’d allow me to get away with murder, but only if I promised to leave England and never come back. If I stayed, I’d go to prison.”
I stared at him in frank bewilderment. “Why on earth would she let you off the hook? You’d killed her husband.”
“Yes, and can you imagine what it would do to a girl like Charlotte, to learn that the boy she loved and trusted had murdered her father?” Leo demanded. “Charlotte was a naive eighteen-year-old. She was an innocent. Sure, it’d be hard for her to lose her father, but it’d be a double dose of hell for her if she found out that he’d died by my hand. Mrs. DuCaral didn’t give a toss about me. She was trying to protect her daughter.”
“So you ran away,” said Kit, “for Charlotte’s sake.”
Leo dismissed the comment with a flick of his hand. “Don’t make me out to be a hero, Kit. I ran to save my own skin. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in prison, and with my reputation the courts would have had no mercy on me. So I ran—straight into that mad old woman, Lizzie Black. She was picking berries here, in Gypsy Hollow, when I came bursting through the trees, all spattered with blood. I was in such a panic that I blurted out, ‘I’ve killed him!’ God knows what she thought, but it didn’t matter, because no one ever believed a word she said. I didn’t see anyone else after that. I just ran flat-out until I reached the manor.”
“My mother must have been horrified,” said Kit.
“She was,” said Leo, “but she was my big sister, and she knew Charlotte better than anyone. She thought it’d kill Charlotte to know the truth, so she cleaned me up, gave me money and the keys to her car, and sent me on my way. I went up to Liverpool, got a job on a cargo ship, and disappeared.”
“To Australia,” I said.
“I ended up in Australia a year later,” said Leo. “I wrote to Amy, to let her know I was all right. She wrote to me from time to time, poste restante in Sydney, because I rarely had a fixed address.” He glanced shyly at Kit. “She told me all about you, Kit, sent me a picture of you when you were no bigger than a loaf of bread. When her letters stopped, I made some inquiries and found out that she’d been killed in a car wreck. I couldn’t believe it….” He ran a hand through his grizzled hair and sighed. “I’m sorry, Kit. I should have been here for you when you were growing up. But things don’t always work out the way they should.”
“You’re here now,” said Kit. “Why did you come back?”
“I wanted to see you,” Leo answered simply. “I couldn’t go to my grave without seeing Amy’s boy.”
“I wish you’d told me who you are when we first met,” said Kit.
“I wasn’t going to tell you at all,” Leo confessed shamefacedly. “I knew you’d start asking questions if I played it straight with you, and I was afraid of what you’d think of me when you heard the answers. I killed a man, Kit. I broke a young girl’s heart. I ran like a coward because I couldn’t take the punishment I deserved. I’ve tried to become a better man since then, but I’ll never truly escape my past. I’ll understand it if you want nothing to do with me. And if you want to turn me in—”
“I’m not going to turn you in, Uncle Leo,” Kit cut in, as if he found the suggestion utterly ridiculous.
“Uncle Leo,” Leo echoed, his voice breaking. “You know how to bring a tear to an old villain’s eye.”
“I’ll bring my fist to your eye if you keep putting yourself down,” Kit warned. “I’m not being sentimental, Uncle Leo. I simply don’t believe that you killed Maurice DuCaral.”
Leo smiled affectionately at his nephew. “You take after your mother, Kit. You want to think the best of people, even when they—”
“I’ll have to prove it to you,” Kit interrupted thoughtfully. “And to do that, I’ll need time.” He stood, tossed the dregs of his tea into a convenient puddle, and carried his cup and his stool back to the motor home. When he returned, he stood before Leo and said sternly, “I don’t want you to leave the Anscombe estate until I speak with you again. If we have another storm and you want a hot bath or a hot meal, go to the manor house. I mean it, Uncle Leo. I’ll be very upset with you if you disappear.”
Leo rose from his chair, looking somewhat bemused. “You’re not upset with me for murdering Maurice DuCaral, but you will be upset with me if I take off. Have I got that right?”
“Exactly right.” Kit clapped a hand on Leo’s shoulder, then enveloped him in a bear hug. “Welcome home, Uncle Leo.”
Leo hesitated for a moment before returning the hug, then pushed Kit away, saying gruffly, “Get off home, the both of you. I need my beauty sleep.”
I put my cup next to Leo’s on the flat stone and followed Kit through the gap in the trees. I glanced over my shoulder before the campfire vanished from sight and saw Leo gazing fixedly at Kit, with an inscrutable expression on his face.
“I hope he’s still here when we come back,” I murmured when we reached the muddy track.
“He will be,” Kit said confidently, and patted his pocket. “I stole the keys to his caravan.”