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Julia scooped them up from the back of the hovel and brought them to his bedside.
‘Can you show me everything?’ he asked. ‘And check pockets, seams, linings.’
‘What for?’ Julia sat down on a milking stool she had found and picked up the jacket, trying to ignore the stains.
‘I don’t know.’ Hal fell silent, obviously weighing something up in his mind. Julia began to feel along the seams, flexing the stiffened plackets and probing the padding. ‘He tried to kill me,’ Hal said suddenly, making her drop the garment.
‘What, here in the hut? He was looting?’
‘No, on the battlefield. He tried to get to me the night before the battle, I think, but Max went for him. I thought he’d just got too close. Then, we charged the guns. Will was hurt.’ Hal paused, obviously reliving it in his mind. ‘Their cavalry ran, we got to a gun, and he turned—I thought he was going to say something, but he struck straight for my heart. I don’t know why the blow didn’t kill me. It was deflected off something, I felt the pain down my arm, my leg—and then there was a God-awful noise—a shell I suppose, blew us both up. I assume they picked us up together and dumped us in here.’
‘This is why he didn’t kill you.’ Julia picked up the shattered mother-of-pearl cover of her notebook. ‘You had it over your heart.’
‘Then you saved my life twice,’ Hal said, and his eyes were dark as they rested on the ruined book. ‘Keep that somewhere safe.’
Julia tucked it into her pocket and picked up the jacket again. ‘But why would a British trooper want to kill you?’
‘He was paid to. He told me just before he died.’ Hal took swallow of a fresh mug of coffee. ‘Good money too. I was flattered.’
‘Who?’ Lurid visions of outraged husbands ran through Julia’s mind. Or Major Fellowes. Then she remembered. ‘Hebden?’
‘That was my guess. But the description didn’t fit.’ He lay back, his head turned to watch what she was doing.
The jacket revealed no secrets, nor did the overall trousers, the shirt or the leather stock. Julia tossed each aside, then picked up a boot.
‘Try the heels.’ It took some prising with his pocket knife, but the heels came away at last, revealing a hiding place in each, full of gold coins. ‘I think I’ve earned those,’ Hal commented as Julia put them care fully aside. ‘What about his pack? There will be a rope somewhere.’
The pack contained nothing of any interest, except a rope coiled at the bottom, just as Hal had predicted. Julia pulled it out, and it slithered un pleasantly in her hands.
‘Ugh.’ She dropped it on the bed, and Hal picked it up left-handed, running the multicoloured length through his fingers. ‘It feels alive.’
‘Silk,’ he said. ‘It is what they hang peers with.’
‘But you aren’t a peer,’ Julia said, puzzled.
‘No, but the man who killed Hebden’s father was.’ She waited, biting her lip, while Hal frowned into space.
‘I had better tell you everything,’ he said at length. ‘You are marrying into a family in the midst of a mystery—a dangerous and probably scandalous one.’
She listened while he spoke, trying to keep the characters straight in her mind, separate the old history from the present events. ‘So Stephen Hebden the jewel merchant is also a half-Romany called Stephano Beshaley who blames not just the family of the man who was hanged for his father’s murder—your sister in law and her sister and brother—but also the Carlows, because he thinks your father did nothing to prevent the crime. He is also bitter about his father’s legitimate connections because he was thrown out of the family home and sent away to an orphanage.’
Hal nodded. So she had got that straight. ‘And for some reason he decided last year to begin attacking these people he hates so much.’
‘Yes. He’s a couple of years older than I am. I knew him as a child, a little. I wonder if it is because he is approaching the age his own father was when he died that it is obsessing him now.’
‘That is hardly a good enough reason to try and kill people.’
‘Yes, but this is the first attempt at something lethal. Up to now he seems to have wanted to bring scandal and disgrace, not death.’
‘You have another enemy?’ Julia ventured, folding her hands tightly in her lap to prevent herself smoothing back the lock of unruly hair that kept falling across his brow. She wanted to touch him all the time: it was disconcerting and left her oddly breath less and distracted.
‘A good many,’ he admitted with a grin. ‘But none of them with Hebden’s calling card.’ The rope lay like a dead snake across his thighs. ‘And there’s something else. Rumours are beginning to spread about the circumstances surrounding the murder. People are wondering why my father was so adamant that his best friend was guilty. Because if he were not
, then the spy escaped undetected.’
‘They say that your father was the spy?’ she asked, too surprised to be tactful.
‘No-one is saying it out loud. But it can be made to fit. If he was, then he had disposed of the two men who were about to unmask him.’
