Page 36 of Love Among the Shadows
He reached the last cottages. Beyond them the road narrowed and ran between hedges. Here, the wind laid dust in a fine skim over the ruts. Tobias marked his own step without seeming to do so. He made prints where the dust lay deeper. Forty paces later he glanced down. No second tread cut his line. It was a habit, nothing more.
He checked the time against the sun. He would reach Doughty within the hour if he kept the lane and turned by the old stones. He was not certain what he meant to do if the man met him with the same mild stare and the same full alibi. He would ask again. He would listen. Men repeated a lie with too much neatness. Truth was seldom neat.
He came to a field gate that sagged on its hinges. The hedgerow beyond threw shade across the road. The air cooled under it. He set his step into the cool and heard something behind him shift. Not a footfall. A small change, as if the lane itself had taken breath.
He did not stop. He adjusted his hat and let his head turn a fraction. The hedge to his left showed leaves still and bright. The hedge to his right showed a single twig newly stirred, then still again.
He went on. He counted a slow ten. At the tenth count he stooped and set his fingers to his boot as though to tighten thelace. He waited three beats longer than comfort required. The lane kept its peace. He rose.
A bend ahead made a brief blind. It was the sort where one might walk a quarter of an hour or more without meeting a soul. He did not like it, and would on any other day have chosen another path. He preferred the open ground, where a man might see who came behind. He touched the page in his pocket and felt the edge of the paper with the name upon it.
“Mr Hatch.”
The voice came soft and level. Its coldness, joined with the stealth of its approach, told him at once who stood behind. It was the killer. He knew it instinctively. This was the very reason he had moved with such care since leaving home, and why he had spoken to no one of what he had found, nor where. The man had discovered his handkerchief was lost, Tobias thought. He had hoped it might be taken for a trifle dropped in haste, not known to have been seen and claimed by him.
He turned, knowing he must aim for the hand and not the face. There was no profit in seeking features when the assailant would assuredly strike with his hand.
Yet he turned too late. A gloved hand was already raised, a square of white cloth spread neat across the palm. It came against his mouth and nose with sure precision. The scent struck him at once, sweet and heavy, the same false sweetness that had clung to the handkerchief in his drawer.
He jerked his head aside and dragged in half a breath. He drove forward, meaning to pin the attacker to the hedge. The hedge tore his sleeve, sharp pain anchoring him. He stamped down hard on a foot. The handkerchief shifted a fraction.
He seized the wrist of the assailant with both hands. There was strength in it, controlled and steady, not brutish. He bent low, then snapped his head up, striking. The man grunted, but the cloth returned, patient and deliberate. Tobias ripped atthe glove, tearing a seam. He took it as proof he still had hold of himself.
He twisted, throwing his weight, trying to fall upon the pocket with the note. The man countered with a knee, forcing him back against the hedge. The cloth pressed again. The sweetness thickened in his throat.
He fought still — an elbow to the ribs, a clawing hand at the mask of his attacker, another wrench at the finger-joints — but his body began to falter, each order from his mind delayed, as though travelling too far.
His vision blurred. Still, he made himself think of the paper. The name. He raked once more at the glove, hoping to leave a mark the owner could not hide.
The cloth held fast. The strength in his arms ebbed first, then in his legs. The hedge pricked his back like a row of pins, keeping him upright a moment longer than he had earned. He wondered if his attacker was Richard Doughty. How could he know he was coming to question him? Had he been watching his every move since the murder of Wickham? The build was not unlike his, yet with the mask close upon the face, he could not be certain.
He tried to count one more time to keep himself aware of his surroundings. One. The paper. Two. The name. Three—
The number fled him.
Light tilted. The ground came fast. His last thought was not of his foe, but of the drawer at his desk, the cloth within, and the hope that someone would see what he had seen.
Then there was only quiet, complete and untroubled, as if the lane had never known a step upon it.
Twenty One
The market at Meryton bore all its accustomed bustle. Carts rattled along the cobbles, their wheels splashing the mud from last night’s rain. Women leaned over stalls, fingering ribbons or pointing at fruit, while their voices rose in a hundred separate bargains. The air smelled of damp straw, fresh bread, and the faint iron tang of the butcher’s knives being sharpened.
Elizabeth Bennet walked with her sisters among the crowd, her arm linked with Kitty’s, while Lydia flitted ahead, darting like a swallow between stalls. Mary followed behind, lips pursed and eyes fixed upon the list she carried. Elizabeth, whose errand was less defined, allowed herself to be drawn toward a milliner’s table where a bolt of ribbon in the softest blue caught her eye.
She had just lifted it for Jane, thinking how well it might set off her sister’s fair complexion, when the first words of trouble pierced the hum of the market.
“Found him, they did—out on the lane near the Green,” cried a voice, shrill and eager. “Laid out like a sack of meal, poor fellow. Tobias Hatch, gone to his Maker, and not by any natural means, I’ll be bound.”
Elizabeth’s head turned at once. Mrs. Harper, the butcher’s wife, stood planted before a cluster of neighbours, her broad cap trembling with the energy of her speech.
The words spread quick. One stall-keeper repeated them to another; a girl with a basket whispered them to her mother; within moments, the ripple became a tide. TobiasHatch’s name rolled across the market until every ear had caught it.
“Another murder?” Kitty whispered, her fingers tightening upon Elizabeth’s arm.
Elizabeth’s heart gave a throb. She had known Mr Hatch only in passing—his quiet nod in the street, his mild manner when exchanging greetings with Mr Bennet—but the idea of such a man found lifeless in the road filled her with dismay.
Mary, at her side, muttered something about providence and the vanity of earthly pursuits, but her words were drowned by Lydia’s eager cry: “Murder? Do you suppose the officers will search every house? Shall they come to Longbourn, Lizzy, and ask us questions?”
