For three days Luke clung to life by a thread. Esmond scarcely left his brother’s bedside in Guy’s Hospital, and I only saw him once when he paid a fleeting call to Edenhythe.
‘There is no hope for him,’ Esmond told us unemotionally. ‘None at all.’ And then he had returned to his vigil.
In those three dreadful days I had no time for agonising over what was past. Lady Lavinia needed me, to comfort and support her. Faced with a family disaster she could not even begin to grasp, the arrogant old lady had suddenly become pathetically frail. I knew that never again would she have the power to intimidate me.
‘But why... ?’ she would asked querulously. ‘I don’t understand.’
I evaded an answer, and wondered if Esmond would ever tell his grandmother the whole truth.
I didn’t know it myself, then.
Luke had not fallen into the water. He had hit one of the raised bascules with a glancing blow and gone slithering down to the bottom, receiving terrible injuries. The river itself would have provided a quicker and more merciful death.
Late on the evening of the third day, when the others had already gone to bed, Esmond came to my sitting-room. I rose to meet him, and he covered my hand with his.
‘It’s all over,’ he said quietly.
He stayed with me for only a little while. ‘You must get some rest, Rachel my dear. You look all in.’
He himself was looking white and exhausted when he left me. My heart went with him, and I got little sleep that night.
There was so much that needed explaining. Some I had already guessed, and some Esmond had pieced together from Luke’s disjointed mutterings during his brief periods of consciousness. It seemed that he had wanted to ease his conscience by confessing.
It was Luke, of course, who had partnered Jonathan in the gun-smuggling scheme. It was Luke who had sent out the defective weapons, bought for next to nothing, and so exposed Jonathan to the vengeance of the Sarawei rebels.
Now I learned from Esmond what I had already come to suspect—that twice before Luke had tried to kill me.
On the day of my river trip with Ellen and Albert he had followed us by road to Putney, hoping for a chance to stage an accident. The fog coming down had given him a unique opportunity. Then growing more desperate, his second attempt had been made inside the house, in my own bedroom.
‘I shall never forgive myself for listening to my grandmother,’ said Esmond bitterly. ‘What can you have thought of us—refusing to believe that those terrifying things had really happened to you?’
Remembering, I shuddered briefly, then drove from my mind all feelings of anguish and resentment.
“You mustn’t blame yourself too much, Esmond. Or Grandmama either. Of course it all seemed quite incredible to you. How could you ever have suspected that your own brother... ?’
Esmond shook his head slowly from side to side, looking at me wonderingly. ‘You really are remarkably forgiving.’
He couldn’t know that I would have forgiven him anything in the world.
‘What I can’t understand is why Luke wanted to kill me. What had I done?’
But it was not anything I had actually done; it was what I might have disclosed about him. At first Luke could not believe that I knew nothing whatever of Jonathan’s involvement in the gun-running, and thought I must be acting the innocent for some devious purpose of my own. Not unnaturally, he had been terrified that I would expose him. For Luke this would have been disastrous—the end of his income as an employee of the firm, and of his status within the family. A rejection far more complete than Jonathan’s.
It was only after those two abortive attempts on my life that he had thought again. Perhaps, after all, I knew nothing really incriminating. But there was always the chance that in casual conversation I might inadvertently give something away about Jonathan’s activities in Sarawei. To prevent this risk Luke had from the beginning set out to isolate me from the rest of the family and gain for himself my undivided trust.
‘But it became obvious he wasn’t succeeding.’ Esmond brought his gaze directly to mine. ‘Luke told me that just seeing us together was enough.’
And so the blackmail scheme was hatched in Luke’s mind. By threatening me anonymously, and then coming to my rescue, he calculated that I would be permanently indebted to him.
Luke had lost no time in recovering the money from the shop in the alley. The package of sovereigns was found in his greatcoat pocket.
It was Luke, too, who had stolen my paintings when it seemed I might have some success in selling them. His plan would have been ruined if I’d had money enough of my own to pay the pseudo blackmailer.
And it came as a bonus to Luke that his grandmother, and then Esmond, suspected that the paintings had never existed at all.
Again Esmond blamed himself harshly. ‘How can you ever forgive me for doubting your word?’
At the time it had hurt me bitterly, but now it seemed unimportant.
‘My instinct was always to believe in you,’ Esmond confessed. ‘Right from our first meeting. But before you arrived at Edenhythe, I had already condemned you in my mind. I had decided you would turn out to be hard and self-seeking, putting all possible pressure on Jonathan’s family to extract what you could from the situation. And against the evidence of my own eyes, against all my inner feelings, I tried to make myself go on believing the worst of you.’
‘And what changed your mind, Esmond?’
He smiled. ‘Every single thing about you, I suppose. But perhaps most of all it was your loyalty to Jonathan. The way you stood by a husband who had let you down so shamefully.’
I wanted, in those grey winter days, nothing more than to spend my time with Esmond. But I had to be content with the odd hour here and there. He was working very hard to restore the confidence and goodwill that had been put in jeopardy by Luke and Jonathan.
The cable Esmond had received from the Rajah of Sarawei during dinner on that fateful evening was the first real intimation of anything being wrong. It stated that some captured rebels had given information about guns being smuggled into Sarawei on a Harwood vessel. Jonathan’s involvement was mentioned. The Rajah had peremptorily called for explanations.
‘I was completely, shattered,’ Esmond told me. ‘But I could see at once that if it were true, then someone at this end must be involved, too. And that pointed to Luke. I went off to my study to think it all over. Later on, I came to find you, to see what you could tell me. It was then I discovered from Alice you had gone out. She didn’t know where, only that it was somewhere just over Tower Bridge. She was anxious because you were clearly in a very upset state. When I questioned her further, I learned that Luke had been to see you only a few minutes before. That really made me worried.’
‘And so you came after me? What did you imagine was happening?’
‘I didn’t know what to think. But I knew I had to try and find you, right away.’
Luke’s death, and the exposure of the trade in smuggled arms, had brought a chain of consequences. Daniel Dobbs disappeared the night Luke died, taking the Dolphin with him. The launch was found abandoned, far out in the Thames estuary. Esmond was satisfied with recovering the boat, and made no attempt to have the man traced. He told me later it was because Dobbs had saved my life that time at Putney.
Esmond was greatly relieved to find that the captains of his ships were in no way involved. It was the first mate of the Sarawei Princess who had acted as go-between, secretly loading weapons at London docks with help from Dobbs and Luke, and delivering them to Jonathan in Sarawei. Realising the game was up, he dived into the river to escape arrest. Days afterwards, by an irony of fate, his body was found scarcely two hundred yards from the spot where the Dolphin had gone aground.
Round about this time I received a strange letter. It was ill-written, almost indecipherable and unsigned. But I knew who had sent it; and the message, when I had pieced it together, swept the last fear from my mind. Lee Chan was making it clear that he had no further thoughts of retribution. Justice in his view had been achieved, and another regrettable error narrowly avoided. He was leaving England now—to go where, he did not say.
I had realised, of course, that Luke had never intended making any contact with Lee Chan in an effort to save Esmond. That plan had been a ruse to get me away from Edenhythe, to a place where he could safely kill me.
Christmas at Edenhythe passed by almost unnoticed. It was on the morning of New Year’s Day that Esmond sent the office-boy, Tommy, to find me.
‘The master wants to see you in his office, if you please, ma’am.’
Following the lad along the corridor and through the leather studded door, I thought inevitably of that other interview with Esmond when I first arrived at Edenhythe. I remembered the bitter air of coldness and suspicion there had been between us.
All that was changed, now. He jumped up as I went in, coming swiftly across to me.
‘Forgive the abrupt summons, my dear,’ he said. ‘But there is something I wanted you to know before I told the others.’
A strand of fear caught at my heart. ‘What is it, Esmond?’
He led me over to the chair beside the desk, and then began restlessly striding back and forth across the carpet.
‘I have decided I must make a trip to Sarawei.’
A coldness gripped me because he was going away, ‘When?’ I asked, dismayed.
‘Almost immediately. The Sarawei Princess sails in a few days, and I shall go with her. There are still things that need straightening out. Understandably, the Rajah has been very upset by what has occurred.’
‘But will it be all right in the end, Esmond?’
(Oh yes.’ He smiled faintly. ‘I shall put things right.’
He told me then of a mysterious incident he had not mentioned before. ‘By the way, you may be interested to know that Dibble has resigned.’
‘Oh!’
‘It was very sudden. He didn’t go into details, but his letter suggested that he was doubtful about my continuing to have confidence in him.’ Esmond’s eyes were watching my reaction. ‘I can’t believe his decision had anything to do with this other business.’
‘Oh no, Esmond, I’m sure it didn’t.’
‘Perhaps it is for the best. He was good enough at his job, but I never really cared for the man. He had been Harwoods’ accountant for years, and I inherited him when I took over.’
Esmond continued watching me for several seconds, and then went round the desk and sat down. His attitude suggested that another chapter was closed. I felt certain he had guessed something of the truth of my encounter with Dibble.
He drew up a chair and faced me in a businesslike way. ‘And now the time has come to discuss money matters once again.’
‘But I told you, Esmond, my funds have arrived from Sarawei.’
He brushed that aside. ‘During my enquiries I came to learn about the legacy left you by your father, and how this was “borrowed” by Jonathan. I made it my business to discover the exact amount involved. I’m going to say no more on the subject except that an equal sum will be placed to your credit here in London.’
‘I cannot allow you to...’
‘The matter is already in hand.’ For a moment he was almost the coldly autocratic Esmond I had first known. But then he smiled at me. ‘I shall not be argued out of it, Rachel. This time I intend to have my way.’
He sailed three days later. It was a dismal afternoon with sleet blowing in a biting wind. Just before we all went down to the docks to see him off, he saw me alone, briefly.
‘It will be May when I come home, my dear. Everything will be different then. Enough time will have passed, and the worst will have faded.’
We stood together for a long moment with hands clasped. We allowed our eyes to say to one another things that could not yet be expressed in words. And then Esmond said again, ‘Everything will be different when I come back in the spring, my dearest.’
It was a grim, hard winter. Edenhythe seemed almost like a house at siege, relieved only by the cables that arrived regularly from Esmond. It was at these times that I would find myself smiling.
But slowly, as the grip of winter passed, some of our sorrow passed with it. Lady Lavinia began to improve in health, and there were even brief echoes of her old arrogance. I filled my time by taking up painting again. The view of the river in all its changing moods was a continual challenge.
The canvases that Luke had stolen from my room were later discovered in one of the attics. I let them remain up there, not wanting to stir unhappy memories.
Ellen and Albert had found the constraints of the last weeks very irksome, and slowly started taking up the threads of social life again. But not quite with the old abandon. Just before Easter, they gave us some exciting news. They had been out together during the afternoon, and came back to join Lady Lavinia and me in the drawing-room for tea. Ellen was smiling secretly, looking prettier than I had ever seen her.
‘Shall I tell them now, Bertie?’
He kissed the tip of her ear in the way he had. ‘Why not, my sweetheart?’
She explained that they had just visited Dr. McGregor, and there was no doubt that she was at last expecting a child.
‘Oh, Ellen,’ I said quickly. ‘That’s wonderful for you.’
Lady Lavinia’s eyes were alight with pleasure, and I knew that Ellen’s baby would give her a new reason for living.
‘It is good to see them happy,’ she said quietly, when Ellen and Albert had gone upstairs to change. ‘Edenhythe has had enough of sadness.’
We sat on in the dusk by the open window, enjoying the soft warm air. Faintly, from across the river, I could hear the lilting notes of a barrel organ. I listened, trying to catch the tune, but it escaped me.
Unmistakably, Spring was almost here. Soon it would be May, and Esmond would be coming home.
Copyright © 1970 by Nancy Buckingham
Originally published by Robert Hale
Electronically published in 2015 by Belgrave House
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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.