The Landowner's Secret Read online

  ‘What time is it? We can’t be late for the Salvation Army.’

  ‘We’ve time. Elizabeth isn’t even—’

  ‘I can hear her coming now.’

  Robert moved to her and shifted the book aside.

  ‘Alice …’

  ‘There’s not time for this talk now, Robert. I have to …’ she touched her hair again and muttered in annoyance at all the escaped strands. Risking a slapped hand, Robert ran his fingertip gently down her reddened cheek; it was creased in spots from the lace on her sleeve.

  ‘Alice … I swear I’d no idea.’

  And if he had known, what would he have done about it? Somehow—and shamefully—he couldn’t see himself tossing the letters into the fire, or disposing of them in any way. It was a time of his life that had lasted years, beginning with a courtship between two people too young to think sensibly, and turning into a betrothal as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

  Martha Wright was connected to a huge portion of his life; more than half of it, in fact.

  Did he still love her? He told himself not.

  ‘I believe you.’

  His wife’s softly spoken words took him by surprise.

  ‘You believe me? That I didn’t know?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘As easily as that?’

  She touched her cheek where he had, seemingly annoyed with the creases she discovered there.

  ‘I saw how you looked when you saw those letters, Robert. You didn’t know they were there. But, the thing is—’ she shook her head. ‘The thing is that I told you everything I could think of before we married, except about seeing Ian that one time. You should have told me this.’

  Before he could make another apology, she smiled sweetly.

  ‘But it’s no real problem now it’s out. It’s not like we married for love, is it.’

  ‘Alice …’

  Elizabeth came into the room, and his wife dropped her voice to a whisper.

  ‘Not now.’

  ***

  While Alice and Elizabeth met with the town’s most respectable and discussed the distribution of clothing and food and other charitable activities, Robert dropped by the magistrate’s, and then sent a telegram to Adelaide.

  He met his wife once she’d finished her meeting, leaving Elizabeth to linger and catch up with friends.

  ‘I can come back for you later,’ he offered when he found Alice standing in the midst of a small crowd, head held high and eyes bright as she carried on a conversation like a Farrer wife trained to play the part of Mrs Bountiful.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said, and took his arm firmly in the kind of closeness she’d been avoiding for days.

  ‘I think,’ she began once they were free of the building—and the curious eyes—and wandering more or less aimlessly. They’d ended up on Monaro Street, as usual. ‘It would be a good idea to not to have a grudge about this.’

  Robert didn’t need to ask what this was.

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Well, not quite that simple, but—’

  He would never hear what her but, her condition on her forgiveness, was, because a stagecoach rounded the corner at that moment, and if Robert hadn’t grabbed her quickly she would have been run down by the horses.

  ‘My God!’ he said once they’d stumbled aside. Alice coughed on a mouthful of dirt and dust but quickly recovered.

  The coach travelled a few dozen more yards before it skidded to a stop, the horses rearing up and neighing, dangerously agitated. One of the doors swung open a way, and then shut again with the sudden change in momentum.

  ‘What in the world is—Alice!’ he made a grab for her arm when she would have taken off after it, but she whirled back to face him, shaking her arm free.

  ‘It’s September,’ she said, reminding him, and then took off again.

  There was no stopping her, so Robert jogged after her, and then overtook her. He was one of the first to reach the vehicle, save for a man who’d emerged from The Dog and Stile and was doing a half-decent job of steadying the horses.

  It was a Cobb & Co coach, he realised as he reached it. It should be transporting passengers from other towns, from the cities further north. It would have come to them via the Great South Road, a route that was largely abandoned and largely exposed to anything—and anyone.

  ‘God,’ he said under his breath when he reached the driver’s box. The man was slumped to one side.

  Others were arriving fast now, drawn by the unexpected excitement and stepping right in to do what they could.

  ‘I’ll take him,’ he said to whomever was nearest; he didn’t take the time to look. The man was bleeding from somewhere, badly enough it was visible even from Robert’s viewpoint on the ground. ‘Are there any passengers?’

  The man behind him hopped up on the step and glanced in the window.

  ‘It’s empty in there.’

  A murmur came from the injured driver, ‘They all jumped out before the bridge and took off.’

  Robert wasted no time. Knowing it was going to be hell for the fellow, he hoisted himself onto the step and dragged the driver by his jacket until he was close enough to pull from his perch. The angle was awkward, and Robert worried he was doing even more damage with his actions, but the spooked horses wouldn’t hold steady for much longer and he couldn’t well do much for the fellow in his seat.

  They rocked badly for a moment as the vehicle moved a couple of paces forwards and then another one back, and it was only through sheer bloody determination that Robert kept both his grip and his footing. Legs braced, arms straining, he found his balance again and then, with the weight of someone at least his own size over one shoulder, he hopped backwards onto the dirt, hoping to God that he didn’t land in a pothole and break an ankle.

  As he landed, knees buckling under the weight, the driver stoically gritted his teeth and refused to cry out, but the movement had exposed the extent of the wound he clasped. Robert let go of him, and he slumped in the dirt. Through so many layers of clothing and dust it wasn’t possible to see clearly, but he had the dreadful suspicion the wound had been caused by a bullet, and Robert knew with sinking certainty that Alice’s worst fears had come to truth.

  Good God, he thought once more as he inspected the man from various angles and tried to figure out how to lift him again, don’t let Ian have been the shooter.

  ‘This will not be fun,’ he warned the moment before he planted a boot in the dirt, tucked a shoulder under the driver’s least injured side and hefted. There was no point in prolonging the process.

  This time the man, a grizzled, stubbly, prematurely aged fellow, did cry out, but there was nothing for it. Ignoring the loud swearing, Robert stepped back from the coach, looked around and made a choice. Marching him over to the newly laid pavement beside the shops, he deposited the man onto the cleanest spot he could find, and set to work.

  There was nothing for it but to tear at the bloodied clothing right there, in the middle of the street. The physician’s office—just like the police barracks—was too far away to carry a fellow over to for help.

  ‘A bullet wound?’ he asked as he freed the man from one side of his jacket. It was a slow process, made more difficult by the groans and flinches each movement earned.

  ‘Sure was. Damn, this bloody hurts.’

  Robert’s jaw hardened. ‘Where did it happen?’

  He received no answer; his patient’s eyes had closed.

  A shadow fell over them and a man, not much more than a boy, emerged from the shop he’d stopped in front of, eyes taking in the manic scene with disbelief. Robert glanced at him, discerning the chap wasn’t about to swoon at the sight of the blood.

  ‘Can you find me a knife?’

  The kid was gone in an instant.

  With the man losing consciousness, it was far easier to remove the other half of the jacket.

  ‘Here, Robert.’ Alice appeared at his side, kneeling on the hard ground and offeri
ng up her shawl. Bunched in her hands, she pressed it against the driver’s side when more blood welled.

  Robert stole a quick look at her face, saw that her colour was pale but her expression was steady. He inclined his head in thanks.

  The kid returned with the requested knife, and Robert took it with a murmur and began to work on the seam of the injured man’s waistcoat. The shawl was steadily turning red. That bullet likely hadn’t come out, and it needed to if he was any judge of anatomy.

  ‘Oh Lord, Robert. What more can I do?’

  What he wanted his wife to do was be away from the grisly sight, even though she’d not flinched at the scene so far. Looking up briefly, taking in the chaos of townsperson after townsperson emerging from houses and shops, all of them moving towards the danger, he came to a decision.

  ‘Be very careful of your safety, but see if you can find me the physician.’

  ‘All right.’ She was up on her feet and gone immediately.

  Robert gave up on removing more clothes and simply pressed the shawl against the wound even harder. He hoped both that Walter Dunn was home, and that his wife ran fast.

  Chapter 18

  Alice slipped between two men who ran in the opposite direction, and then dodged a pony someone had parked in the middle of the street and abandoned in all the excitement. She focused on the sounds of her feet kicking up dirt with each step, because it was a lot better than thinking about all that blood …

  A police constable dashed past on the other side of the street, and someone screamed in distress. They were a little bit late, Alice thought as she hopped over a discarded glove, landed on a foot mostly healed from its last misadventure, reached Mrs Hobson’s shop, and crossed the road.

  It was happening, she thought with frustration as she passed the post office and then reached the end of the street, turning right at the park. A nursemaid walked with a couple of small children, the largest of the two carrying a ball and chattering away as Alice passed. Further off a man strolled, his large dog bounding off after a stick. They’d not yet heard of the drama only around the corner.

  Despite her warning, and despite her idiotic hope her brother would’ve come to his senses in the past few months, it was happening all the same.

  She hopped up onto the pavement to avoid a horse, and dashed past the magistrate’s house to the newer structure beyond. Pounding on the door, she grunted with impatience when there was no immediate answer, and stepped back enough to look up at the building’s second storey, squinting in a search for movement at any of the windows.

  ‘Come on, hurry, hurry,’ she muttered, and then knocked on the door again.

  She didn’t know much about wounds, but she was certain that driver’d been shot. And if they were shooting at stagecoaches again, then Barracks Flat’s violent history was coming back to haunt them.

  ‘Hurry,’ she said more loudly as she rapped her knuckles on the door again. ‘Come on, come on.’

  And then suddenly it was pulled open. Alice nearly fell through it in surprise before righting herself and finding herself face to face with Mr Dunn himself.

  ‘You’re needed,’ she said, and then gasped for breath. ‘Gunshot on Monaro Street.’

  The physician dashed back with her the way she’d come, he carrying his bag, and Alice hugging spare rolls of bandaging to her chest. The man moved fast enough that a time or two Alice struggled to keep up, but desperation kept her feet moving, even when she thought she’d no breath left to move with.

  ***

  Once relieved of his position with the driver, Robert found himself standing uselessly in amongst the onlookers. Alice had disappeared somewhere at the request of Mr Dunn to collect water, and he hoped Elizabeth was still occupied with the charity, because he was loath to drag her out into the middle of all of this.

  He looked down at his hands but saw no blood on them, not a single sign of what he’d just been doing. Such a short time had passed since Alice had left the meeting, and yet it seemed like it’d been hours.

  In amongst the growing crowd, Robert caught a glimpse of fine scarlet fabric, a flash of movement between the duller browns and greys of the others gathering around.

  The woman—for it was a lady’s dress that’d caught his attention—appeared again, a little further along, and this time Robert changed his direction, moving back towards the stagecoach.

  ‘Mrs Wright?’ he called out, even though the din on the road carried his words away before they’d even reached her.

  With so much chaos around nobody was paying the woman much attention, but the fineness of her clothes and the way she stood apart from the others … Something was very wrong if such a lady had moved towards the stagecoach instead of away from it.

  Moving faster, he tried again. ‘Mrs Wright?’

  The woman stopped when she hit a barricade of onlookers, and then pulled a face and dived into the fray, physically separating one person from another in a display of strength Robert didn’t know she had.

  He moved a young lad aside himself and kept his focus on his former fiancée’s mother as she came to another barrier in the crowd and all but stamped her foot in frustration.

  ‘Robert, what’s wrong?’ Alice had reappeared from somewhere.

  ‘I don’t know.’ However the dread that was building deep in his belly was warning him of something he didn’t yet understand.

  Throwing propriety to hell, he walked faster and closed the distance until he could grip the older woman’s arm, and then bent to speak directly in her ear.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ He kept his tone low but steady, feeling the tension that ran through Tom Wright’s wife, tension that reminded him of a panicked animal about to bolt. ‘Who are you looking for?’

  She swivelled to look up at him, and her eyes were dark and wide. Robert didn’t know if she’d even recognised him, but she didn’t pull away.

  ‘The coach came from Goulburn,’ she said in a clear, even voice, and then looked back towards it.

  Goulburn. The understanding hit Robert with a jolt.

  ‘It came from Goulburn? Are you certain of that?’

  ‘Yes.’ She surged forwards then, but her progress was again hindered by the avid onlookers. Robert heard her mutter of frustration, and he bent to speak to her again.

  ‘Mrs Wright, there were no passengers.’ He’d been told that, hadn’t he? But even as he said it he stepped forwards too, using his bigger hands to break a pathway through a cluster of tightly packed shoulders and gossiping heads.

  ‘How do you know it’s from Goulburn?’ he asked over his shoulder to the woman who followed. His voice sounded disturbingly calm even to his own ears.

  He forced his way through a narrow gap and felt the firm pressure of a hand gathering the fabric of the back of his coat, felt the tightness of the grip Martha’s mother had on him even through the layers.

  With another push and another shove, they broke through to the other side of the crowd, and Robert regarded the large stagecoach with trepidation. More often than not the vehicles were stacked with luggage and heaped with people. Even so far into the country, he’d expect to see more signs of life …

  The grip on the back of him grew tighter still for a moment, and then the lady released him, taking a faltering few steps ahead before she turned back his way. It was the look on her face that finally convinced him she wasn’t delusional but terrified.

  ‘I came into town to meet her this afternoon,’ she whispered.

  ***

  Once she’d delivered the physician and his bandages to his patient and found the requested water, Alice had all but been declared superfluous, and she’d stepped back from the commotion as people older and more male than her muscled their way in, determined to be seen being part of the biggest excitement the town had seen in years.

  Frustrated, Alice stood back, watching the drama evolve around her. The shakes were coming on, a late reaction to the surprise, and even though the afternoon was warm, she suddenly
felt the loss of that shawl.

  She’d caught up with Robert only very briefly before he’d been distracted by someone else. Unlike him, she hadn’t the height or power to keep up in the crowd, and eventually had stepped back from him.

  She had to find something to do or else the shakes might take her over entirely, but right then she was being engulfed where she stood. Nothing brought people out in droves like blood and danger.

  Getting up onto the tips of her toes, she looked this way and that. Nobody paid her much attention, so she ducked around to the other side of the stagecoach and muscled her way through the growing crowd, sneaked past a man or two who didn’t even seem to notice her go by. Because of her size it was easy enough to manage.

  The coach was unmoving now that someone had dealt with the horses. There were splotches of old mud kicked up in a spray along the side, and the paint was cracked in a place or two, thanks to the extremes of the weather. Alice stretched up even higher in search of Robert or Elizabeth or even Mr Adamson, but her view was obstructed by the carriage’s immense height.

  Grunting again, she was about to edge further around, hoping to find a familiar face at the back of the vehicle, when it lurched suddenly. It dropped on the opposite side under someone’s weight as they hopped up.

  ‘Robert!’ she called uselessly when she saw his face appear through the window on the other side, but someone jostled the coach in that instant, and she was forced to take a step back. If everybody was going to insist on crowding around until the bloody sun set, she’d crawl under the vehicle in a minute. It was high enough, and it seemed an easier way to make it back around to where she wanted to be.

  She was contemplating doing just that, weighing up how much damage it’d do to her reputation, when the coach’s door came level with her face, and she noticed something she hadn’t before.

  A neat, clean hole had been made in the door’s centre. It was a little hard to see at first because of the dark colour and the angle of the shadows, but now Alice stared at it, comprehending, but not understanding.

  The driver had been shot then, she concluded. But he couldn’t have been shot by that bullet, not unless he was directing the horses from inside a cabin.