'Terrance returned safe, but not sound,' I said. 'He lost an arm, Helena, and his spirits are low. I quite understand-when I learned that the surgeon would not have to cut off my leg, I wept for joy. Terrance did not have that happy news.'
Her face had gone ashen. 'Lost his arm? Dear Lord.'
'There is more to your fear of returning home than shame at your foolishness,' I said, my voice taking an edge. 'Your family would have forgiven you if you'd turned back that night, regardless of whether Mr. Braxton had touched you. Terrance would have forgiven you. Your family is good at heart. Things would have been difficult for you, but not impossible. Yet, you carried on with your plan to ran away. Why?'
Helena pressed her hands together and shook her head. She did not want to tell me.
'I found the church plate,' I said. 'Did Mr. Braxton coerce you to steal it for him?'
She looked up at me in anguish. 'Robert did it. Little Robert Buckley, the publican's son. He did it, because I asked him to. Gabriel, I am so ashamed.'
Robert, who'd told me he'd been potty about Helena Quinn. 'He stole the silver and brought it to you. Then what happened? It was stuffed in the chimney of my house, so Mr. Braxton obviously did not abscond with it.'
Helena bowed her head, and her voice was almost inaudible. 'I have taught myself not to think on it. But it happened… such an awful thing happened.'
I realized the last piece of it, an idea that had been swimming in my mind, just out of reach. 'Edward Braxton is dead,' I said. 'Or at least the man calling himself Edward Braxton. Was it an accident?'
Helena looked up at me again, her hazel eyes clear and intelligent. 'It might have been. Robert killed him. He struck Mr. Braxton with one of the candlesticks, and Mr. Braxton fell stone dead. Poor Robert killed him. For me.'
Chapter Twenty-Four
Her words fell into silence, the violence she spoke of incongruous in this tidy garden. Clouds were filling the sky, the afternoon turning cold.
When I spoke, I did so slowly, my thoughts arranging themselves as they emerged. 'Lady Southwick suggested to Mr. Braxton that you met him in the copse near my father's house, and from there you would run away together. That evening, you went to the Lacey house. My father was ill in his bed, and he'd not have known that you'd crept into my mother's sitting room, always shut, and changed from your gown into traveling clothes.' I paused. 'Why leave the dress there?'
Helena shook her head. 'I am not certain. I remember laying my dress across the chaise. The gown was so pristine and white-a symbol of the girlhood I was leaving behind. I was to be married, to have my own husband and my own house, and I did not need such a dress anymore.'
'Robert helped get you into and out of my house,' I continued. 'He'd brought the church silver to the meeting place. What happened there? Did Braxton show his true colors?'
Helena shuddered. 'Dear heavens, yes. He laughed at us, told us we were good trained dogs to do what he said. He was going to take the silver and go, and let it be a lesson to us. I could not believe my ears. I'd fallen in love with him… No, truth to tell, I was infatuated and flattered by him. No one else had said the things to me that he did. To realize that I'd fallen for his pack of lies, that he'd used me to get the silver from my own father's church, that he thought of me as nothing more than a stupid, childish, frump of a girl
…' Her eyes filled with tears. 'It hurt. It hurt so much.'
Braxton had probably used those very words- stupid, childish, frump of a girl. I wished Braxton weren't dead, so I could get my hands on his throat and teach him some manners. I imagined Robert Buckley growing enraged, as I was doing now, except with the fury of a boy watching his angel being beaten down. It must have seemed right to raise the heavy candlestick and go at Braxton. I could imagine the pattern of the carved silver against my hand, sense the candlestick's satisfying weight, could feel the triumph of swinging the thing and smacking Braxton's gloating face.
I drew a breath, trying to banish the picture and my angry glee.
'Foolish of him to linger to boast of his misdeeds,' I said. 'That was the end of him.'
She looked surprised at my matter-of-fact statement. 'Robert-he grew so angry. I was crying. Robert snatched up a candlestick and struck…' She shivered. 'I thought he'd only stunned Mr. Braxton, that we could run to the constable's house and tell him that we'd caught Mr. Braxton running off with the silver. We would look like wise creatures to have found him out, instead of fools duped by him.'
'But he was dead.'
'He lay so still. I felt for his heartbeat, but he had none, and no breath. Robert could not believe what he'd done. But he never lost his head, as young as he was. He went through Braxton's pockets, found all his money-fifty pounds it turned out to be-and gave it to me. He told me to go, said he'd take care of the rest. He would put it about that I eloped with Mr. Braxton, and that would be that. I cried, but I went.'
Fifty pounds. Lady Southwick had said she'd given Braxton 'a bit of money' to help the pair elope. Braxton had duped and flattered her as much as he had Helena.
'Why did you run?' I asked. 'Why not go to a magistrate and explain the accident? Braxton was trying to rob the church, after all.'
'We were young, and we were so frightened. We could not be sure, could we, that we wouldn't simply be dragged away for the murder and the robbery-Robert had done the actual theft, not Mr. Braxton. And I was a coward. I did not want to face the world and confess what Braxton had done to me.'
True that their fate would depend on the kindness of the magistrate. If the magistrate had been an unreasonable and suspicious man, Robert could have been tried for murder and stealing from the church, perhaps Helena as well, as his accomplice. A conviction, even for a child and a young woman, would be hanging or transportation.
The magistrate at the time had been fifty yards away-Mr. Roderick Lacey. If he'd been too ill to give a judgment, Brigadier Easton might have stepped in, a man equally as adamant about the letter of the law. Robert and Helena had been wise not to chance that either one of them would be lenient.
'What happened to Braxton's body?' I asked. 'How did Robert hide what he'd done?'
'I never knew. Robert found me a horse, and I fled. I rode across country until I came to a posting inn, in a town in Cambridgeshire where no one knew me. From there I took a mail coach into Cambridge. I met a woman on the coach who felt sorry for me and decided to look after me. She thought me escaping an unhappy home. She let me stay with her a time, then she heard that her acquaintance, Mrs. Edgerton, was looking for a gentlewoman to be her companion, and she sent me to her.'
'You never heard from Robert Buckley again?'
'Never. Not until this day have I heard a thing from Parson's Point. Robert must be quite grown now.'
'Robert is twenty and married. He has a boy of his own.'
Helena gave me a look of apprehension. 'What will you do? I have told you this because you were once my friend, and I know you were a friend to Terrance. Everything about Mr. Braxton can hardly matter now, can it?'
I privately agreed with her. Braxton had been a thief and a trickster and had duped two youths for his own gain. Cooper had been a thief and a bone-breaker and had tried to kill me and Denis, a man who'd graced him with his trust. Both Braxton and Cooper had died by the hands of the people they'd betrayed. Rough justice.
Robert should not have covered up the crime. But he'd been ten years old, afraid and uncertain. He'd done what he'd done.
The murder in the past was understandable, and perhaps not really murder. A frightened and angry child had struck out and killed without meaning to. But that did not change the fact that Robert had murdered again in the present.
I did not say this to Miss Quinn. She'd had enough guilt and regret in her life, and I would not pile on more.
I took her hands in mine. 'I will say nothing.'
Her eyes widened. 'You would keep silent? Why?'
