Page 43 of By Any Means

“Only just here,” Chary deduced triumphantly. “Did you walk it? Or had you needed to find another sympathetic wagon driver?”

Laurie grinned. It was too much handsome, too soon against the dawn, far too blinding. Then—as he stood and slowly approached—too close and sharp-edged. “Only just,” he confirmed. “A night train to Bangor. And then a carriage. Did you sleep any? That twelve-hour train ride is brutal on the knees. But I bet you get a private compartment, padded and gilt.”

Chary shook his head. “No.”

Laurie Tulley, anti-capitalist reporter, could not be there in Berryfield, right in front of him. He simply couldn’t be there. No matter how nice he’d been yesterday. That had been, and probably was still, all act. “You promised you’d leave me be, but here you are. Am I never to be rid of you?”

Laurie touched his own brow. “This looks worse this morning.”

Of course it does. I was almost murdered! “Why, thank you. I would like for you to leave.”

Laurie was now before him at the buffet, which had been perfectly laid out. (Had he done that?) He poured from the silver coffeepot, put cream just how Chary liked it, and offered cup with saucer.

He must’ve done it. There was nobody else there this early. How curious.

“Sit down and have your coffee, Chary Wright. I wanna talk.”

“Telegrams are quite efficient. Invented just for the purpose.”

Laurie held the cup out farther. “And expensive. Not so private. No proof of life before my eyes.”

Proof of life? Chary should’ve been panicking. Instead, he felt still dulled from yesterday’s fatigue, floating on a raft of inevitability. This would’ve happened eventually, surely. “It’s my brother who’s dead.”

Laurie’s gaze was steady. “Yes. But someone tried to kill you, too.”

Chary’s relief was hot, tingling. Laurie’s concern had nothing to do with him. Well, something to do with him but not for the reasons he’d feared. Maybe things weren’t so dire after all.

Chary took the cup and saucer and sat. Laurie sat, too, and then was quiet; and it was strangely natural-feeling, to have breakfast sitting kitty-corner from the man who could ruin him with a few strokes of pen—indeed, one telegram would do it—the man who would find all of the scandal and answers he sought now within his reach.

By the time Laurie spoke again, the cream on Chary’s second coffee had risen to the surface and congealed, and a little breeze had begun clearing the fog away from the windows, promising a hot, dry afternoon.

“Nobody let me in, you know.”

Chary nodded. He knew this, if not only from the state of Laurie’s shoes but because Brasher didn’t spend his nights in the house. None of the staff did, in fact. Mrs. Simon, the cook, was due a little later, closer to nine. Chary hardly ever ate actual breakfast in the breakfast room. He had maintained its Victorian superfluousness for the day he had guests—and he never had those.

“You’ve made yourself very free with the stove and icebox, too.”

“I can boil a pot of coffee, sure.”

Chary should not have felt like he ought to say thank you for doing so. That was absurd. “What is your point? That I’m not safe here after all? That anyone could come in and, say, poison the salt?”

Laurie fidgeted with his cup—a fairly plain bone porcelain, with a gold trim and plated handle only, so he couldn’t have found much objectionable there. “Not exactly, no. A source of mine was attacked yesterday. A gaffer at Brooklyn Glass. He didn’t make it.”

“No.” Chary set down his cup. It made a fragile, tinny sound. “My God. Another one?”

“Yeah. So, I don’t wanna let you out of my sight, not even way out here in Nowhere, Maine.”

“I am safe here. But I’m very sorry, Laurie. Truly.”

The man shrugged in a way that wasn’t a dismissal at all but an uncomfortable shift of thick shoulders. “I’ve never had a source die before. Be killed. I’ve written some things where I thought they might’ve been targeted, after publication, but never…” He huffed. “In medias. In the thick of it. Never because I was poking around, asking questions.” He rubbed at his lips, and when he glanced over to Chary, his gaze was hot and upset. “And not finding any damned answers.”

“I…” Chary felt he had to offer something. “There are no secrets worth killing for at Wright Glass, I told you.” He flushed saying it, though it was perfectly true; there weren’t any—that he knew of.

“Mmm. At Wright Glass. There’s a qualifier if I ever saw one.”

Chary realized, under Laurie’s knowing dark-brown stare, that he’d thoroughly lost any ability to demand Laurie leave his home. The rich man doth protest too much.

“It’s the truth. I’m sorry. I have nothing more to offer you.”