The Straw Halter (17 page)

When she woke the next morning she burst into tears. The dream had been so real. Slowly she brought her mind back to the present and went across to the tiny window to look down
on rooftops and chimneys and far, far below, the courtyard where she had stumbled as she ran so that Sir Richard Choicely would not see her.

A
gnes thought a great deal about the past after Richard Choicely’s visit. Betsy was obviously missing and would have to be found. It seemed that the Choicelys and her husband Daniel had no idea where she was, but both were searching.

‘Reckon as to how young Richard Choicely stands the best chance of finding her,’ she mused to herself. ‘The farmer hasn’t the time or the means.’

She thought of the owner of Chasebury Manor as young Richard because that was what he had been when she was involved with his family all those years ago. She had made plans then and she would make plans again now. Not murder of course, there was no need; Richard was not like his brother physically or in any other way, but he had as good as admitted to her that he knew Benjamin was Betsy’s father.

Her heart was pounding now and she felt more alive than she had for a long while. She would make the family pay for Ben’s wicked betrayal twenty years ago.

She had known then that there was no chance that he would marry her but she had loved him passionately and longed for his child. She would have been all right because she would have fought for hush money. His child would have been beautiful
and clever and he would have set them up and visited
sometimes
. She would not have been jealous of whomever they made him marry because he would still have come to her and the wonderful hours of their lovemaking would have been all she needed.

But it never happened. In all the months, almost a year, when she regularly met him deep in the woods, when she listened for the sound of his horse and that first glimpse of her hero and lover, she never got pregnant.

When she knew her sister was carrying his seed she wanted to kill her. Instead she murdered her former lover and later married a man from the village who died four years later, leaving her with two sickly and dull children. Comparing them to the bubbly and beautiful Betsy she transferred her venom from the mother to the child.

Now if, after all this time the Choicely family were prepared to admit the truth she would take what was her due. Betsy, that little upstart shouldn’t have a penny for herself.

But she had to do it through Betsy and Betsy was missing. She gave little thought as to why, or even what had brought this searching for her about; it was sufficient that they were all trying to find her. Unless her niece had told Daniel, the only people still alive who knew the full story were herself, Betsy and, it would seem, Sir Richard Choicely. Well he wouldn’t push
her
around as his brother had pushed her sister.

She drew her lips tightly together. The first thing to do was to find her missing niece. When she did she would have to work out a way of threatening her so that she, Agnes, could have a share of the money.

At the forefront of her plans was the fact that she could be rich if she went about things in the right way. A cottage and an
amount of money each week for the rest of my life, she thought. That’s not much to ask for what I went through. The only
difficulty
will be in getting these things from the Choicelys when they have got away with it for so long. Richard might give Betsy money but she knew neither of them would look after her.

Agnes let the matter bide for a while. She said nothing to her brother who, she realized now, must have told Richard where she lived. As it turned out this was all to the good. Jack Salden was as greedy as his sister but, no matter what his suspicions were, he had never known for sure and he had been too young at the time to work out what was going on.

The idea came to Agnes as she lay in bed that night, going over in her mind Richard’s visit and what he had actually said as he was going through the door. It was when her temper flared and she had felt again the jealousy of twenty years before.

‘He was mine until that night,’ she recalled shouting, and then his reply as he misunderstood her words. ‘Is Betsy yours or your sister’s?’

She felt her blood rising so that it nearly choked her. ‘Got you,’ she said aloud. ‘Benjamin Choicely, though you are dead and gone you will pay me for what I went through.’

Jubilantly she sat up in bed and waved her arms around. She had to convince Richard that Betsy was really
her
child and already a scheme was forming in her head. She could tell him her sister had pretended the child was hers to protect Agnes, who was walking out with a local lad. She would say that her sister, already married and with a large family, could have passed the child off as her husband’s, even though he was seldom home.

As she was now the only one alive who knew the real truth, she could bully Betsy into supporting her with money if the girl
believed that her aunt was her mother. Agnes had always enjoyed a challenge and this one would go some way towards giving her what she thought of as her proper due.

Richard Choicely wouldn’t know that none of her family would have lifted a finger to help another, any more than that brother of his would. Oh yes, clever Sir Richard had set the thing in motion himself with his remark, she thought.

She tried to recall the rest of that conversation but it wasn’t easy. She had got angry and had shouted the truth: that of course Betsy was her sister’s child, but she could always say she was in a flurry and repeating the story that was put around at the time. Now there was no longer any need to protect her sister’s memory, nor her own reputation, and she could tell the truth, that the child was really hers. Yes, that’s what she would say. That part would be fairly easy, the difficult bit would be tracing Betsy. Because if they couldn’t find her there would be no money.

By the following morning Agnes knew what she was going to do. Go to the woods, those same woods just outside Chasebury where she and Ben had made love so often, and watch for Richard. If he took the carriage he would obviously leave from the front entrance but if he rode, which she was sure he often did, then she would track him. It would take time and patience but she had plenty of both now.

During the next few days she found out he had a fiancée named Lily Aston-Jenkins. That made things really easy because she only needed to find where she lived and how often he visited. Some of his other trips would have to be looking for Betsy and she would shadow him on those whenever she could.

She was hampered inasmuch as she had no transport to call on, but she had her legs and they had not let her down yet.
Chuckling to herself she thought that Richard would do the work in finding her niece and she would step in at the last moment and claim Betsy as her own child.

For the first week there was nothing except sore feet and tiredness but the following one saw her in the lane near the Aston-Jenkins’s place.

Richard had ridden over earlier one afternoon and today she had walked but halved the journey by cutting across fields. She sat on the verge with some bread-and-dripping brought from home and waited to see what would happen next. It was very quiet apart from insect sounds and after a while she decided it was time to explore.

Because Richard was there and could recognize her she stayed away from the front of the house and went to the servants’ entrance. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do; probably mostly kill time waiting for him to return and try to see where he went next.

The more she thought about it the more she felt certain that he was the one who could lead her to Betsy. She believed he had no idea where Betsy was now, but he seemed determined to find out. She had spoken to her brother Jack and discovered this wasn’t the first time Richard Choicely had been to their village. ‘Pretending he was a friend of Lord something or other,’ he had told her, ‘but he was from Chasebury right enough. He was one of them – ’e didn’t fool me.’

Better not be too much in the open. She hurried along a narrow path and, spying a couple of bushes shielding the side door from part of the garden she decided to take refuge behind them. From here she could watch without being seen for no one was likely to wander round near the servants’ quarters except the servants themselves.

A happy thought struck her as she realized this could be another source of knowledge about Richard Choicely’s
movements,
for staff usually knew far more about the comings and goings of the big house than they should.

There was another thing: Betsy had been in service before she married the farmer so perhaps she had gone back to that life now. Someone from these quarters might know where she was; it could be worth while to try and talk to one of the servants.

By now Agnes was feeling happier than she had for years as she foresaw her dream of revenge and money coming closer. From being a sour might-have-been it was rapidly becoming a sweet possibility.

She was taking a huge bite from her bread-and-dripping when she heard footsteps. Cautiously looking round from her hiding place she could scarcely believe her eyes when she saw her niece hurrying along and letting herself into the servants’ quarters.

When Agnes saw Betsy entering the servants’ domain of Clover Court she could have shouted for joy. Did Richard Choicely know that his niece was working for his fiancée’s parents? Hardly likely, she reasoned, or he would not have been looking for her. At last things were going right for her.

She stayed behind the bush for a few moments longer to stem the excited trembling of her body. She had found Betsy and she knew that so far the others looking for her had no idea where she was. How best to turn this to her own advantage? If she told either of the others she would lose control of the situation. If she told Richard only she still wouldn’t be in a good position.

She needed to put her plans into action quickly now. First she had to convince Richard Choicely that Betsy was
her
daughter
and not her sister’s child. And she had to do it before she revealed where the girl was working and before Richard found out for himself where she was.

Another thought came into her head. Had Betsy deliberately found herself work here to have access to Richard if she wanted it? The possibilities were endless but so far she, Agnes, had all the cards. Fate truly had played into her hands today. Moving cautiously so as not to be seen from any windows she walked quickly along the path that led to the back lane.

She had only gone a few yards when she realized that her bag containing her purse and the remains of the bread-and-dripping were by the bush where she had been hiding. She turned and went back, not seeing the man who emerged from a private path a few yards further along.

Richard Choicely, for it was he, saw her and after a few seconds spent waiting to see if she reappeared, hastily went after her. He kept to the side of the hedge a good distance behind and she never looked back. Once into the open area she kept her head down and made for a bush not too far from the kitchen door. She wasn’t running but for a fairly bulky woman she was going pretty fast, he thought. She reappeared, clutching a canvas bag, just as he reached the end of the lane. She stood there for a moment and as he covered the distance between them she said, ‘Why, it’s Sir Richard Choicely, isn’t it?’

‘It is. What have you got in the bag?’

‘My purse and I had some bread-and-dripping in there, but I’ve eaten that now.’

‘What are you doing here?’

She had her answer ready, ‘I was out walking and saw this lane and wondered where it led. I put my bag down while I
looked around because I saw I was in a private garden, then thought I had better not stay. When I got out into the lane again I remembered my bag so I came back for it.’

‘Do you know whose house it is?’

‘No,’ she lied, ‘whose house is it?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Only that you should not be here. You are trespassing.’

‘I know that now but I didn’t at first. I’ve done nothing wrong,’ she said. ‘I told you, I came back for my bag.’

He knew there was nothing he could effectively do or say. She wasn’t stealing although she might have been looking around with a view to doing just that. He had no proof.

‘Just don’t come here again,’ he said, his normally gentle voice harsh. ‘These people are friends of mine and if I find you have been here, for whatever reason, you will be in trouble.’

As she turned to go he added, ‘Don’t doubt that. I shall make it my business to enquire and there will be big trouble if you are found here again.’

‘I am not a thief,’ she retorted, ‘if I had come to steal I would not be having a picnic in the grounds.’ She took a couple of steps, then looked at him.

‘Go on,’ he said, ‘you’ve had fair warning. As it happens I don’t think you came to steal. I don’t think you wandered in here by accident either. Maybe you had come to look and check the place out for someone else, but I shall be watching
everything
very closely from now on, so don’t try any tricks.’

She moved towards the alleyway into the back lane and he followed her closely. At the bottom she turned to him and said, ‘You think you’re so high and mighty, don’t you? You could be in for a shock soon when you learn the real truth about Betsy’s birth,
Sir Richard
. You were too young to understand what was
going on at the time, but I shall tell you the truth soon.’ She set off quite quickly along the back lane.

Richard decided against returning to the house and reporting the incident. It would be difficult because Agnes would be sure to let them know she knew him and that he had in fact called on her.

He wondered what she was doing there. Who was she looking for? Him possibly, maybe to see if finding him would lead her to Betsy. She was a cunning woman and, he was sure, a murderess also, but as yet he had no proof. At that moment he hated his elder brother. He was no closer to finding Ben’s daughter Betsy and at a time when he should be happily contemplating his own wedding he was trying to sort out the mess Ben had left even all these years after his death.

Once the serving of meals was finished and the pans washed the kitchen staff had time to spare before the last of the dirty crockery came down. It usually wasn’t long but Betsy often stepped outside the door for a breath of fresh air. She did so this evening. She thought she had heard voices a few minutes before but no one came to the door and when she went out everything was quiet and peaceful.