Anne Perry - A Christmas Visitor

No one argued with him. As he stood up he glanced at Henry. They had not asked him to do anything specific, but the question was in Benjamin’s eyes, and Ephraim’s also as he rose.

“Oh, I have one or two things to be about,” Henry said, excusing himself as they parted in the hallway, he to go upstairs, change into heavier clothes, then head out to the stables to borrow a horse. He was not willing to tell them what he intended. He looked further ahead, and for that he needed to speak to Judah’s clerk in his offices in Penrith.

He rode out quickly, hoping not to be seen. He did not wish to be asked his purpose, not yet.

As he climbed the steep road eastward, the wind behind him, he turned it over in his mind. What if Benjamin were to discover that it was not practically possible for Gower to have traveled the distance in the time he had? What if Naomi’s questions actually proved Gower’s innocence, not of intent, but of being able to have committed the act himself? If they failed to prove Gower’s guilt, what lay ahead after that? He wanted to find something, a next step to take, other answers to seek. Was there anyone else Gower could have used, willingly or not? Might there have been an ally in the original case, someone who had not come to light then? Did anyone else profit from that tragedy, or from this?

It was a fine horse, and he found the ride exhilarating, his mind sharper.

There was always the major possibility that in their loathing of Gower and his appalling accusations, they seemed not to have considered whether Judah had other enemies. He had been a judge for some time. There was little enough crime of any seriousness in the Lakes, but it did exist. He must have sentenced other men to fines or imprisonment.

Who else bore him grudges? He did not think for an instant that Judah had been corrupted in anything, but that did not mean that others could not imagine it. Many people refuse to accept that they, or those they love, can be in the wrong, or to blame for their misfortunes. In the short term, it seems easier to blame someone else, to let anger and pride encase you in denial. Some live in it forever. Some accept their own part only when all vengeance has proved futile in healing the flaw that brought them down. The longer you persist in blaming others, the more difficult it becomes to retreat, until finally your whole edifice of belief rests on the lie, and to dismantle it would be self-destruction.

Who else, apart from Gower, might exist in such a self-made prison? He needed to know, just in case the grief and the anger, the lifelong hero worship of an elder brother, had blinded Ephraim and Benjamin to other thoughts.

Henry did not imagine even for an instant that Judah was guilty as Gower accused. He had known Judah well, and loved him as a friend. He had seen him more clearly, having no childhood passions or loyalty of blood. Judah had had faults. He could be overconfident, impatient of those slower of thought than himself. He was omnivorous in his hunger for knowledge, untidy, and he occasionally overshadowed others without realizing it. But he was utterly honest, and as quick to see his own mistakes as anyone else’s, and never failed to apologize and amend.

Henry needed to know the truth, all of it. They could not defend Judah, or Antonia, with less.

By the time he arrived he knew exactly what he wanted to do. It took him only a few inquiries at the ostler’s where he left the horse, before he was sitting in the office of the court clerk, a James Westwood, who received him with grave courtesy. He sat behind a magnificent walnut desk, his spectacles balanced on the end of his rather long nose.

“I can tell you nothing confidential, you understand,” he warned pleasantly.

“Yes, I do understand.” Henry nodded. “My son is a barrister in London.”

“Rathbone!” Westwood’s face lit up. “Really? Oliver Rathbone? Well, well. So he is your son? Fine man.” He smiled. “I still can’t tell you anything confidential. Not that much of it, mind you. Nasty business. All very foolish.”

“The estate was in the Gower family?” Henry began. He repeated essentially what Antonia had told him.

“Precisely,” Westwood replied. “Originally the estate was in the Colgrave family. Then Mariah, the widow of Bartram Colgrave. She married Geoffrey Gower and had two sons by him. One of them died as a child, the other is Ashton Gower. But the whole thing was much smaller than before they built that big house, and of course long before they found the archaeological site with all the coins and so on. But I’m ahead of myself.” Westwood coughed and cleared his throat. “The widow, Mariah Colgrave, brought not only the land, but a great deal of money to her second marriage. With it Geoffrey Gower purchased more land, and built that house that is the center of the estate now. When he died, it passed to Ashton, his surviving son.”

Henry was puzzled. “Then what was it that was forged? And how could Ashton Gower be responsible? It seems to have happened before he was born. How could Peter Colgrave have had any right to it? He wasn’t in direct descent.”

Westwood pursed his lips. “It’s not the estate itself, it’s the date of it that’s at issue,” he explained. “It all hinges on whether the extra part of it, which includes the house, the better part of the land, and the place where the Viking hoard was found, was purchased before Wilbur Colgrave died, or after.”

“Who was Wilbur Colgrave?” Rathbone was following it with difficulty.

“Bartram’s brother, and Peter Colgrave’s father. A matter of which way the inheritance went, you see?” Westwood said. “Before and it should pass to Peter Colgrave, after and it passes to Mariah, and then to her son, Ashton Gower.”

“Didn’t they know that at the time?” Henry still did not understand. “And if it was a forgery, then Ashton Gower was not even born, so he couldn’t possibly be to blame.”

Westwood waved his finger in the air. “Ah, but it was only questioned when Mariah died, just over eleven years ago. Before that everyone took it for granted.”

“Well, if Mariah forged it, or Geoffrey did, it is still not Ashton Gower’s fault!”

“That is the crux of it!” Westwood said, his face sharp with interest in the problem. “The forgery was recent! They knew that from the ink on the paper, even though whoever did it lifted all the seals off the old one, the family one, and reused them. Very clever, but the rest of it was rubbish!”

“Then why didn’t Wilbur Colgrave claim the estate, and the money, at the time? It was rightfully his!” Henry pointed out.

“That is a very good question,” Westwood agreed keenly. “He is a bit of a scoundrel, and rumor has it that he was always more than a little in love with Mariah—his brother’s wife. By all accounts, she was a real beauty in her day. They even said she paid for the land with personal favors.”

He blushed very slightly. “Least said the soonest mended, I think. Anyway, the part that concerns Judah Dreghorn is that when Ashton Gower came to claim his inheritance, Peter Colgrave swore that the Gower deeds to the estate were forged, and it should be his, as heir to Wilbur Colgrave, who was the younger brother and heir to Bartram, rather than his widow, who forfeited it on remarriage. It was entailed, and supposed to remain in the Colgrave name, except that Wilbur died, too, leaving his widow and child, Peter. All rather a mess.”

“And Ashton Gower took advantage to try to prove the estate was his by forging a new deed with the right date for Mariah, and thus for him?”

“Precisely,” Westwood agreed. “But it failed. The land went back to the Colgrave family, the only one left—Peter. Which was probably where it should have been all the time.”