Page 28 of A Treacherous Treasure

The ache in her chest was so bad, she wondered if she was dying. Would she die of a broken heart, as many widows had been known to do?

She turned to see Mrs. Heywood had fainted on the sofa.

All the men were in the funeral procession, so the women present—Arthur’s aunt, cousin, and Mrs. Heywood’s brother and sisters—fanned her face with their handkerchiefs.

It might not be fashionable to cry, but it was very fashionable to faint.

While everyone was gathered around Mrs. Heywood, Rebecca slipped away and went up to her room. “Thank you, God, that this day and night are almost over.”

~ ~ ~

Thomas rode out, the day after Arthur Heywood’s funeral, toward the hole beside a big rock, next to a copse of trees on the Heywood property, quite close to his own property line.

Thomas had been checking at least once or twice a day, but he had yet to catch anyone at the place where Rebecca Heywood had seen the strange man digging, nor had any more progress been made on the hole. They had either decided to abandon their digging for a while, or they had abandoned it for good. The latter seemed unlikely.

As he neared the hole, he dismounted and led his horse through the trees, where he could more easily observe without being seen. And as he crept as quietly as he could through the trees, he noticed movement.

He stopped and tied his horse to the nearest tree, took his pistol from his saddlebag, then moved forward.

A man was digging. He paused to wipe his brow with his sleeve.

He appeared to be a large man. Thomas crept closer, trying to get a better look at the man’s face, but he was facing away from Thomas and his hiding place. Still, he looked strangely familiar.

Thomas watched him for several minutes. He was quite slow at digging, and he often stopped to wipe his face. At this pace, if there was a treasure buried there, it would take him many hours to unearth it.

Finally, the man put down his shovel, picked up a leather bag, and sat down on the large rock. He drew a cloth bundle out of the bag and unwrapped it and proceeded to eat. As he did, he looked around, turning his face so that it was in full view.

The man was familiar because he was the constable, Mr. Fogg.

Thomas eyed the rifle that lay on the ground next to the rock on which Mr. Fogg was seated. He could shoot him where he sat, in the arm or the leg perhaps, but how could he be sure the Justice of the Peace, or the coroner Pursglove, would believe Thomas over Fogg? And how convenient for the constable, as he had been investigating a murder that he himself had committed.

Thomas pondered his options as he watched the man eat his bread and cheese.

He might walk out of the trees, his pistol aimed at Fogg, and demand that he tell Thomas what he was doing. But Fogg might refuse to tell him anything. And if taken before the assize, or in front of the Justice of the Peace, he could be found innocent, as there was no real evidence against him.

Thomas continued to watch the man, deciding to wait until he had some kind of real evidence against him. But he would need to warn Rebecca Heywood, and soon, that she must not trust the constable. Most likely he was the man who murdered her husband, as well as the man who had shot at her and chased her.

He chafed at the idea of letting the man go, of not confronting him and forcing him to confess what he had done. But since he needed evidence against him, he might just let Fogg carry out his intentions, for now, and see where it led.

~ ~ ~

Rebecca slept much of the day after Arthur’s funeral, with Mrs. Heywood’s guests staying in the house. But by the end of the week, her mother-in-law was accompanying her brother and his wife to their home in Kent, with no definite plans to return.

Truly, Rebecca would be left alone to manage the estate, having never been taught anything by her mother-in-law about its management. But if Mrs. Heywood could do it, so could she.

Rebecca came downstairs before dinner to make a show of being friendly and hospitable to Mrs. Heywood’s guests before they took her away to Kent.

“Undoubtedly Arthur could not have suspected that he would die so young and without an heir,” Mrs. Heywood said to her brother’s wife, Mrs. Millet, while Rebecca was expected to talk to Mrs. Millet’s sister, who was almost completely deaf—and almost completely ignored by Mr. and Mrs. Millet.

“It is a shame,” Mrs. Heywood went on, “that this fine estate should be left this way. Who knows what will become of it or who should get control of it? It will probably be sold off bit by bit, you know.”

Mrs. Millet cleared her throat, then whispered something to Mrs. Heywood, cutting her eyes over at Rebecca.

Rebecca’s cheeks burned.

She could no longer excuse her mother-in-law’s rudeness as the product of her grief and strong feelings of pain and loss. And Rebecca was not sorry that she was leaving and going to live with her brother. Her only worry now was that she would not stay with them but would return to Heywood House.

She prayed for her mother to be able to leave London soon, the sooner the better, to come to her and help her. Her mother would advise her.