‘Here,’ Eliza murmured, setting down his arms. She heard the sound of an animal snorting nearby and guessed it to be Richard’s horse. Walking quickly, she found it tied to the gatepost and began to unfasten the tethering.
‘What are you doing?’ a deep male voice wheezed, seeming to reverberate in the trees so that the whole of Sussex could hear.
Eliza jolted, dropping the reins and suddenly losing her composure as she whipped around to be faced with a man on horseback. She strained her eyes and knew it was him—Mr Honeysett.
Her own shock at seeing him was nothing compared to the look of total surprise and disbelief etched on his face to see her alive.
‘What? I don’t…’ he began, his raspy voice faltering to an incomprehensible murmur. ‘Where’s Richard?’ he demanded, kicking the horse into action. ‘Richard! Richard!’
Eliza hurried the short distance back towards Nightingale Cottage, close behind the horse.
‘What have you done?’ Mr Honeysett shouted, when he was almost upon his son’s lifeless body.
‘What he be deserving,’ Eliza said calmly, despite crumbling on the inside. Their plan to make Richard’s death look like he had fallen from his horse had failed. She tried to wade through her sludgy thoughts to think of what to do next, but she just couldn’t.
‘You two wicked, wicked girls,’ he screamed. ‘Richard!’
Eliza watched as his hands rose dramatically to his chest, his face contorted in agony. He began to dismount, yelping in pain as he swung one leg over the horse’s back.
A bolt of pain seemed to strike his entire body and he twitched, losing his grip on the saddle. He tumbled backwards, his left foot twisting in the stirrup, and smashed into the side of the horse then to the ground.
‘Help me!’ he croaked, moments before the horse jumped, reared up then began to gallop up the hill, dragging him behind.
The deathly sound of his tortured wail, fading off into the distance rang noisily through Eliza’s ears, as she stood dumbstruck, fixed to the spot.
Eerie silence returned.
‘Oh my Lord,’ Amelia mumbled. ‘What ever do we be doing now, Eliza?’
It took Eliza several seconds to compose herself and gather her thoughts. Finally, she spoke.
‘We be doing what we said already—in the morning, if he ain’t found before, you be pretending to have found him and fetch help. Right?’
Amelia nodded. ‘Yes,’ she answered breathlessly. ‘Let’s be going inside and I be fixing us a nice hussler-and-squencher to steady the nerves.’
‘Go ahead, I be right there,’ Eliza replied. The idea of a pot of beer with a shot of gin was exactly what she needed right now.
Eliza gulped in long and large mouthfuls of air as one of her oldest and dearest friends ventured back inside the house that had been their prison for the past month. They had even begun to dare to believe that he might not come.
But now it was over.
The inescapable shadow that had lingered over them since their days at the Westwell Workhouse had finally lifted, but with such terrible consequences. Two of her oldest friends and her husband had died. She had missed her eldest daughter’s wedding. She could never ever return to the Black Horse or her former home.
She knelt down beside the body of her son, as tears ran down her cheeks and fell onto his forehead. Running her fingers gently over his face, she closed his eyes.
She was determined to have a future. To draw on the strength and spirit of the America Ground. To live out the remainder of her life as a true American.
Epilogue
The vice clamping down on his insides tightened as Morton entered Portsmouth. All the way here he had consciously switched his thoughts from thinking about what he was about to discover. Or not discover. His lips were parched and his throat felt dry and constricted, like it was an effort to swallow. He reached for a bottle of water, took a long swig, then tossed it back onto the empty passenger seat beside him, wishing that Juliette could have been here. She was good at calming him down, at rationalising his mind when it became turbulent, as it was fast becoming right now. He didn’t know what he would do—could do—if the looming visit to Roy Dyche failed to produce any leads.
Stop it! he told himself. Think about something else.
He thought about the lengthy email that he had received this morning, from Bunny. It was, in her own inimitable manner, full of exclamation marks and italics. She said that she had spent the entire night reading and re-reading the Lovekin Case file and that she had totally accepted his findings. Bunny had gone on to confirm that she was handing everything to do with the case over to East Sussex Archives, including the indentures and the America Ground flag. In a one-line postscript, she also said that she would be extending an olive branch to her siblings, then thanked Morton for his time.
The satnav instructed Morton to turn off into Old Manor Way—Roy Dyche’s road—and the wrenching sensation inside him intensified as he slowed to check for house numbers. The road was a wide and quiet residential street populated by post-war semis, each fronted by a low brick wall and short front garden.
‘The destination is on your left,’ the satnav announced, without any inkling of the gravity of her words.
Morton pulled over outside number 58 and took a deep breath.
Reaching behind him for his bag, he stepped from the car, wondering if his weak legs would actually be able to carry him up the path.
Come on, Morton! Get a grip! he rebuked himself.
Another long breath and he began to walk towards the house. He rang the bell and waited.
A woman who looked
