Page 30 of A Gentleman in Possession of Secrets (The Lord Julian Mysteries #10)
“A brace of hounds would be an extravagance for a household of half a dozen men. Canines require meat, and what’s the point of shooting birds to feed the hounds when…
Oh. I see. We’re on the vast Stadler property, and the family does not keep hounds, though Lord Standish would call himself a hounds and horse man, if you asked him.
Strother has aspirations in that direction too. ”
“Right. No hounds kept by the Stadlers, and that scat was the sign of a large dog. The tracks I found a few yards away confirm the conclusion.” The beast in question was quite sizable, in fact.
“If you were poaching, perhaps with the landowner’s tacit consent, would you bring a big canine along with you? ”
“Proper poaching is supposed to be done under cover of darkness, so I don’t see what…
” Carstairs stopped, his horse shuffling to a halt behind him.
“You mean to imply that a poacher would not want his notably large canine companion leaving tracks all over creation to announce their passing. As a gamekeeper, even I’d notice such evidence and mention it to the captain. ”
We reached the bridle path Strother and I had traversed only days ago. “Are you a gamekeeper, Carstairs? I confess you look more like a younger son down on his luck.”
He was pleasant company, alternately jocular and quiet. To make the leap from pawprints to penury to trespassing required a nimbleness of the imagination that Dutch, at least, lacked.
“As it happens, I am a younger son, but as for luck, I am awash in luck.”
You don’t sound like it. I mounted up rather than contradict him. He climbed into the saddle too.
“You maintain a diplomatic silence,” he said.
“Ever the gentleman. You are correct. I am the second son born to Lord Dunsford, Baron Dunsford, and as such, I was given a choice of the Church or the military. My oldest cousin chose the Church and discouraged me from that path. Until Papa can finagle Cousin Peter into the living at Dunsford’s local pulpit, poor Petey is doomed to meager wages, ailing beldames, and weak tea. ”
“Papa scrounged up a commission for you?”
“Captain in a cavalry regiment. Worst mistake of my life. Wellington hated us, and we deserved his ire. There is a difference between being able to stick in the saddle and having the skill to actually ride.”
A vast difference. “But you were among officers, your regiment fairly well provisioned, and you survived.”
I watched the ground beneath as the horses ambled along. The path was pretty, passing under the arching oaks, meandering along the stream, but not that well traveled. Perhaps that’s why Strother chose it, rather than to ensure he could be easily encountered by tenants.
“We come to the lucky portion of my existence,” Carstairs said. “I survived. I transferred into a rifle battalion. I survived yet longer. All across Spain, the push up into France, and even Waterloo. On my worst days, Caldicott, I must still be grateful for the very fact of survival.”
His cousin might be the parson, but Carstairs was capable of a gentle sermon. “As must we all.”
“My younger brother was not so fortunate. I walked away from battle after battle. Bullets missed me by inches, sabers were swung at my very head, my horses went down, and more bullets missed me by inches precisely because the beast fell when he did… and here I am, upright and hale.”
A not-so-gentle sermon, rather. “How did he die?”
“Damned lung fever at university. He wasn’t sickly by nature, so he didn’t take illness seriously.
From his perspective, a head cold was nothing to worry about, not compared to the whole French Army.
The head cold progressed into influenza and lung fever, and my baby brother was three weeks dead before my older brother could bring himself to write to me with the news. ”
Rain had obliterated much of the tracks previously laid on the bridle path, but we reached a place where the path passed under a bridge, an ancient arched construction no doubt of Roman provenance.
Some considerate engineer had left enough room on the riverbank that a towpath might have been fashioned where the bridle path lay.
I brought Atlas to a halt in the blessed gloom beneath the bridge.
“Is this why you became a demon in battle?” I took out my flask and drank sparingly. “You were trying to get yourself killed?”
“I was not purposely risking my life, but I was unleashing my fury on the French. I should have stayed home. I should have made sure the tutors were more conscientious. I should have never complained in my letters that soldiering was mostly gratuitous hardship.”
“Instead, you tramp the captain’s woods, keep an eye on his infantry, and brood.
” A change of subject was in order, though condolences were too.
“Your sainted brother of all people would tell you to lay the grief aside at the first opportunity. Do you notice anything odd about the tracks here under the bridge?”
“They’re dry.”
“Look along the edge of the path, Carstairs. Pawprints.”
“Large pawprints, and that’s either a large riding horse or a small draft animal. Strother’s gelding is a bit pigeon-toed, and this beast travels straight. I’d say whatever equine left these tracks is of Atlas’s generous dimensions or perhaps larger.”
“You’ve been paying attention.”
“Trying to. You are right that I brood too. I grant myself one hour a day to wallow and pine and be bitter, but then I go about my appointed rounds as best I can. Jasper would never countenance grief turned into a ridiculous fixation, you are right about that too. I will always miss him, but I must also be grateful that he was around as long as he was. What do you make of this horse-dog duo?”
“I’m not sure. Let’s meet up with the other fellows and see what their morning has revealed.”
By agreement, we gathered back at the captain’s house for lunch.
I considered dropping by the inn to look in on the ladies, assuming they had lingered in the area, but Hyperia had not asked that of me.
More to the point, the fortnight’s grace intended to facilitate amassing of the ransom money would be up in a day, and we’d found no sign of Hannah or the hoard.
When we reached the portion of the path that swung away from the river, I halted Atlas again. “I’d like to stop by the belvedere if you don’t mind.”
“Take a gander at the landscape?” Carstairs asked. “Look for smoke rising from deserted chimneys?”
“Yes, and for places we might have neglected in our searching thus far. Tell Dutch and Dorset that they eat all the victuals at their peril. I’ll be along shortly.”
He gave me a keen appraisal, reminding me that a baron’s younger son, of necessity, was a shrewd fellow.
“She’s very pretty, your Miss West. Coombs put out the company tea service.”
And the fresh shortbread. “She’s very sweet, too, and we are engaged to be married, so no more need be said on the matter.”
Carstairs’s smile went from sad to smug. “Dorset just lost a bet. Good day, my lord.”
He kneed his horse onto the diverging track and left me alone with my thoughts, where I preferred to be. I’d had much of his life story out of him in the course of a short hack, and that was a symptom of our shared military experience.
Barriers eroded on campaign. Among officers thrown ceaselessly into one another’s company, confidences were inevitably shared along with regrets, dreams, and hopes. I preferred to work alone in the field in part for that reason.
A man who allowed his inmost thoughts to escape into the keeping of any other fellow lounging around the campfire was a man with vulnerabilities. He might have friends, too, but he most certainly opened himself up to betrayal.
I returned to the belvedere and again ascended to the lookout. All was yet sunny and green, and no helpful plumes of chimney smoke rose up from suspicious locations. None rose from the manor house either, though the summer kitchen was apparently in use, as was the laundry.
I descended along the gloomy twisting staircase and considered what Carstairs and I had found.
A large canine loose on the property, or in company with somebody riding a good-sized horse.
Town dandies often kept sizable dogs as companion animals, mastiffs being currently in fashion.
Strother struck me as exactly the sort to keep such a pet as an ornament.
At the bottom of the steps, I paused to put my blue specs back on, and the little recess where the captain had left his billets-doux caught my eye.
I’d wedged the stone loosely into place when I’d visited the previous day. Its position was minutely different now.
Interesting. I followed up that discovery with a more careful examination of the stone steps, finding faint hints that somebody had made the ascent with boots wet enough to leave an outline in the coating of dust ever present in outdoor structures.
I was still pondering my findings half an hour later when Coombs set a tower of sandwiches before me in the captain’s breakfast parlor.
“Cider or ale, my lord?”
“Ale, please, or meadow tea if you have it.”
“Spearmint or peppermint?” His old eyes gleamed with satisfaction to be able to offer a choice.
“A blend of both, with a dash of honey.”
“Very good, sir. Most refreshing.”
“Ale’s not good enough for you?” Dorset asked, grinning over his half-empty plate. “More for me and Dutch.”
“Ale goes right through you,” Dutch said. “Learned that on my first march.”
“My lord,” Carstairs said, setting down a tankard of cider. “You have learned something. Best spit it out. The news is doubtless bad.”
“Not bad, puzzling.” I waited until Coombs had rejoined us, because he was assigned to the same mission we all were. “We’re looking for Miss Stadler and for the gold. Somebody else is looking, too, though I can’t say whether they hope to find the lady or the treasure.”