Chapter Twelve
Shame flooded David so that for a moment he couldn’t speak, let alone meet her gaze. “Sailing.”
“Just…sailing?”
Eventually.
She said, “You don’t want to talk about it. I’m sorry.”
And for some reason, that made it easier to smile.
“I don’t want to think about it—which is not quite the same thing.
I taught myself to draw accurately and with the odd flourish of imagination—ships’ decks, sails and rigging, sailors’ faces lined with character and hardship and too much rum, coastlines and harbors, even the stars at night and the moon reflected in the sea.
After I found Solomon—or he found me—it was like…
freedom. As if the world burst back into color, and I saw so much more.
I needed to paint so much more. Learn so much more.
” He drew in a sharp breath. “I’m sorry. I’m babbling.”
“No, you’re not,” she said softly.
And for no reason, he was soothed and justified and found himself smiling.
“Mama says there are no fish in the canal because it’s dirty,” Clarence said. “Did you fish when you were a sailor?”
“Sometimes, yes. Shall I draw you a fish?”
“A big fish!”
David sketched a couple of big fish, then a whale and a dolphin and an octopus that made the boy laugh because he drew huge eyes and a comical expression on its face. David tore out a couple of pages from the book and passed them to Clarence with his pencils.
“You draw some,” he suggested.
“Like yours?”
“If you like. Or one you’ve seen. Or a completely imaginary one.”
“A sea monster?” Clarence asked eagerly.
“Why not?”
Clarence flumped onto his stomach, the book and paper in front of him, and set happily to work.
David glanced at Adelaide to find her smiling at him. It was a smile to drown in, a woman to drown in, and yet there were no real possibilities here, certainly no salvation. She had been in love with Solomon. If she liked David at all, it was because of that.
“Why did you not marry Solomon?” The words spilled out without permission, appalling him, whatever they did to her. Now she would take the remaining blackberries, and her son, and go.
Instead, she turned her face up to the weak autumnal sun and sighed. He thought she would just ignore his insolence, but after a long moment’s consideration, she replied.
“Cowardice.”
That, he had not expected. “Cowardice? You?”
“We are all afraid of something.”
“And you were afraid of Solomon?”
She met his gaze. “Aren’t you?”
He opened his mouth to scorn the suggestion, but memory got in the way.
The adult Solomon was not the Solomon of childhood.
Of course he was not physically afraid of his brother, but there was something about him, a relentlessness, and something indefinable that made David afraid to disappoint him.
Afraid to lose his trust, his company. Or was it more than that?
A wildness that had once been in them both as children, and only existed now in Sol…
The confused thoughts pushed each other aside and became one certainty. “Solomon would never have hurt you.”
“There are many ways to hurt and many of them are unintentional. Solomon helped me when no one else would, and yet he was unknown. I chose the safe option and married Luke Jenkins.”
“Do you regret it?”
She shook her head. “No. Though I’ll not deny it gave me something of a turn to see him again. Only it was you.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“And then you did see him again.”
She gazed across the canal into the distance. “He is where he is supposed to be.”
With Constance. Did she mean that, or was she saying the right things? “And you?”
She sighed. “I am in limbo.”
He nodded, for he understood that feeling all too well. His had lasted for years, between escape and Solomon. “You don’t feel at home here?”
“It’s Clarence’s home. Do you?”
“In England?” He considered. “I don’t think home is a place for me.”
“Is it Solomon?”
“Yes. And Constance.”
“You like her?”
He didn’t like that Adelaide cared for his answer. “I wasn’t sure at first. Her story is…complicated. But yes, I like her for herself, and for Solomon. They are like two parts of the same whole.”
“And you, David?”
His name on her lips felt oddly moving. Like everything about her. “I am used to being alone. To have my brother back is enough. Was enough…” Why had he said the last words aloud?
“But you are making a new life.” She indicated his sketchbook beneath Clarence’s elaborate monster with its huge eyes. “Your own life.”
“Yes. Aren’t you?”
Her smile was twisted. “I’m trying. It seems I am either unpopular or over-popular.”
Solomon and Constance would want to know about that. David knew Adelaide was a suspect and he should ask questions. But what he did ask came from deep within himself.
“Would you allow me to paint you?”
As soon as the words left his lips, he knew they were a mistake. Her face shut down, but not before he had seen the disappointment in her eyes. A beautiful woman constantly pursued only for her physical beauty.
“I want to know you,” he blurted.
*
Just beyond the bridge, Constable Wills was with a couple of boatmen on a narrow barge. They appeared to be dredging the canal with a large net. Constance and Solomon turned in their direction.
“Find anything?” Solomon asked.
Wills shook his head. “Not yet.”
He left the men to rake through the most recent treasures pulled up by the net—a length of pipe, a load of leaves and gravel, a horseshoe, half a cartwheel, and something unrecognizable that seemed to be made entirely of rust—and jumped off the boat to talk.
“Even if we find the pistol, I’m not sure we’d know whose it was,” he confessed.
“Then you don’t know who in the neighborhood owns a pistol?”
“No reason to,” Wills said. “It’s never come up before. I know Mr. Percival had one, because I found him shooting rabbits with it once. He didn’t hit many.”
“The killer could have disarmed him,” Solomon said, “and shot him with his own weapon.”
Wills sighed. “Which hardly helps us. We’ve searched this bank already—the busy side—but we decided the canal itself would be a more likely hiding place. If we don’t find it, there’s always the quiet side.”
“Who owns the land over there?” Constance asked.
“Mostly the squire—Sir Felix. Nearer to town, some of it’s Jenkins land.”
“I can’t see any houses. Do people live there?”
“Oh yes. Other side of that wood. Only a few cottages, mind—a couple of Larchford tenants and some laborers.”
“Are there are other bridges?” Solomon asked.
“Not till you get to Channing,” Wills replied.
“And in the other direction?”
“About four miles or so beyond the Larchford Bridge.”
“We’ll search the other side,” Solomon said. “Good luck with the dredging.”
Wills grunted. “Oh, the stray horse Nelson kept at Dare Hall stables? It is the one Percy got at his last inn stop. It seems to have wandered into the paddock on its own. Either Percy fell off and it bolted, or he abandoned it somewhere.”
Wills jumped back on board the barge, while Solomon and Constance crossed the bridge, both deep in thought.
“It’s quite a wide expanse,” Solomon commented. “Why don’t I cover the wooded area and you take the stretch nearer the canal?”
Constance nodded agreement. He had the feeling her attention was elsewhere, and hoped that it was not his past with Adelaide.
There was certainly something she was not saying to him, and he had the feeling she needed to.
Neither of them wanted to go back to the early days of dancing around each other and hiding their own emotions.
Solving mysteries had brought them together.
He refused to allow this mystery to drive them apart. He would find a way.
Or she would.
At the edge of the wood, he quickly found a stick long enough to beat at the grass and the bushes, in search of anything untoward—signs of scuffle, blood, or a pistol. The wood was a surprisingly dense but for a narrow strip dividing the canal from fields beyond.
He had been systematically searching the woods for probably a quarter of an hour when a sudden crashing of undergrowth made him spin around. A dog of very mixed parentage stopped in its tracks and stared at him.
“Here, Shep,” a man growled, materializing beside the dog. He was dressed like a farm laborer in work clothes, a shapeless jacket hanging from his wiry shoulders. He could have been forty or fifty years old.
“Good day,” Solomon said politely.
The laborer touched his cap. “G’day, sir. You looking for something?”
“Yes,” Solomon said. “Anything to identify who killed Percival Harvey from Channing House.”
The laborer frowned and nodded. “Terrible thing. Never heard of such doings in these parts. Not since the days of the highwaymen, anyway.”
“Did you know young Mr. Harvey?” Solomon asked.
“By sight. See him in the Duke’s Arms now and again. Or out shooting rabbits, with a pistol, the silly so—young gentleman,” he finished, not very convincingly.
“I don’t suppose you saw him out here last Thursday afternoon, did you?”
The laborer scratched his head in thought. “Thursday? M’wife goes to market on a Thursday.”
“Ah. So you went with her,” Solomon said, disappointed if not surprised.
“Oh no,” the laborer said. “Just getting the days clear in me head. Harvest’s in, so work is scarce round about now. Me and the dog went for a walk—this way, as usual. Cross the bridge at Larchford and walk into Channing for a pint at the Duke.”
Since the thread seemed to have been lost, Solomon tried again. “Did you see Percy Harvey that afternoon? Around here or in Channing?”
“Can’t say I did,” the man said. It was somehow inevitable. No one seemed to have seen Percy until his body was fished out of the lock. As if sensing Solomon’s frustration, the man tried to help. “Saw Mrs. Harvey, though.”
Solomon blinked. “You saw Mrs. Harvey last Thursday afternoon? Where?”
“Must have been round about here.”
“What was she doing?” Solomon asked.
“Just walking,” the laborer said vaguely. “Same as me.”
Solomon’s heart had begun to beat faster. “Did she speak to you?”