Death at Dawn: A Liberty Lane Thriller

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Then, after his signature, a scrawled postscript.

If you’d care to write to me before then, address your letter to poste restante at Dover. I shall infallibly check there on my arrival, in the hope of finding pleasant reading for the last stage of my journey.

As I re-read it, I was seized with a panic that he might at that very moment be stepping off a boat and posting to Chalke Bissett, not knowing I was waiting for him less than a mile away. I ran downstairs, secured paper, pen and ink from the landlord and – lacking a writing desk – stood at the cracked marble wash-stand in my room to scrawl a hasty note.

Dearest Father,

I am here in Dover at an inn called the Heart of Oak. Anybody will direct you to it. I could not tolerate the company of La Basilisk one hour longer. So you need not brave her petrifying eye and we may travel straight to London. Please forgive your disobedient but loving daughter.

I didn’t tell him in the note, and never intended to tell him, that the real reason I’d fled the house of my mother’s elder sister was that I couldn’t tolerate her criticisms of him. She’d never forgiven his elopement with my mother and used every opportunity to spray poisonous slime, like a camel spitting.

‘Your father the fortune hunter …’

‘He is not. He had not a penny from my mother.’

‘Your father the Republican …’

‘He’s always said it was wrong to cut off the head of Marie Antoinette.’

‘Your father the gambler …’

‘Do not all gentlemen play games of hazard occasionally?’

She called me argumentative and said I should never get a husband with my sharp tongue.

*

I sealed my scrawled note and was waiting on the steps of the poste restante office as it opened. When I handed it over the counter I asked if there were any more letters waiting for Mr Thomas Lane. Three, the clerk told me, so I knew I hadn’t missed him. I strolled by the harbour for a while, watching the steam packet coming in and passengers disembarking. The novelty of my escape was wearing off now and I was beginning to feel a little lonely. But that was no great matter because soon my father would be with me and a whole new part of my life would be starting. My father had talked about it back in September, nine months before, as he was packing.

‘I’m quite resolved that if I have to leave you again it will be in the care of a husband.’

I was folding his shirts at the time.

‘Indeed. And have you any one in mind?’

‘As yet, no. Have you, Libby?’

‘Indeed I have not.’

‘Sure?’

‘Sure.’

‘Then we can look at the question like two rational beings. You agree it is time you were married?’

‘So people tell me.’

‘You mean the match-making matrons? Don’t pay any heed to them, Libby. They’d have any poor girl married by the time she’s off toddlers’ leading strings. People should be old enough to know their own minds before they marry. Thirty for a man, say, and around twenty-two for a woman.’

I was twenty-one and six months at the time.

‘So I have six months to find a husband?’ I said.

He smiled. ‘Hardly that. In fact, I am proposing that we should leave the whole question on the shelf …’

‘And me on the shelf too?’

‘Exactly that, until I return next summer and we can set about the business in a sensible fashion.’

He must have seen the hurt in my face.

‘Libby, I’m not talking about the marriage market. I’m not proposing you trade your youth and beauty for some fat heir to a discredited peerage.’

‘I don’t think they’d rate higher than the second son of a baronet,’ I said, still defensive.

He came and took my hand.

‘You know me better than that. I’m not a young man any more.’ (He was forty-six years old.) ‘I must think of providing for you in the future. I shan’t die a rich man and Tom has his own way to make.’

‘I’d never be a burden on Tom, you know that.’

‘I’ve not been as much of a father to you as I should. But I have tried to give you the important things in life. Your education has been better than most young women’s. You speak French and German adequately and your musical taste is excellent.’

‘That reminds me, I’ve broken another guitar string.’ I was uneasy at hearing myself praised.

‘And we’ve travelled together. You’ve seen the glaciers of Mont Blanc at sunrise and the Roman Forum by moonlight.’

I was wonderfully fortunate, I knew that. When I was back with my father it was easy to forget the other times, lonely and homesick in a cold French convent, or boarded out with a series of more or less resentful aunts or cousins. It was almost possible, though nowhere near as easy, to forget the glint of my brother’s handkerchief waving from the rail of the ship as it left Gravesend to carry him away to India, and the widening gap of dark water.

‘Couldn’t we just go on as we are?’ I asked. ‘Tom will come back one day and I can keep house for him and you. Do I really need a husband?’

He became serious again. ‘The wish of my heart is to see you married to a man you can love and respect who values and cares for you.’

I watched the steam packet go out again, arching sparks from its funnel and trailing a smell of coal dust. In three hours or so it would be in Calais, then perhaps bringing my father back with it. Around noon I felt weary from my early start and went back to my room. I took off my dress and shoes, loosened my stays and laid down on the bed. I must have dozed because I woke with a start, hearing the landlord’s voice at the bottom of the stairs, saying my name.

‘Miss Liberty Lane? Don’t know about the Liberty, but she called herself Miss Lane, at any rate. Give it me and I’ll take it in to her.’

As his heavy footsteps came upstairs I pulled my dress on and did up some essential buttons, heart thumping because either this was a message from my father or my aunt had tracked me after all. But as soon as the landlord handed me the note – adding his own greasy thumb-print – I knew it had nothing to do with Chalke Bissett. The handwriting was strong and sprawling, a man’s hand. The folded paper was sealed with a plain blob of red wax, and a wedge-shaped impression that might have been made with the end of a penknife, entirely anonymous. I broke the seal and read: … take the liberty of addressing you with distressing …

‘Bad news, miss?’

The landlord was still in the room, his eyes hot and greedy. I gripped the edge of the wash-stand, shaking my head. I think I was acting on instinct only, the way a hurt deer runs.

‘I must go to Calais. When’s the next boat?’