Read Online A Christmas Visitor by Anne Perry - Free Book Online Page A

around Antonia. She had perhaps done exactly this same grim task, and knew how it felt.
    It was left to Henry to go to the top of the chest of drawers where the dark suit was folded, dry and stiff from river water and heavy traces of sand and silt.
    He opened the jacket and looked at it carefully. It had been little worn, perhaps no more than a year or two old, and made of excellent quality wool. It was beautiful cloth, probably from the fleeces of Lakeland sheep, but the label inside was that of a Liverpool tailor. It told him nothing at all, except the taste of the man who had worn it, which he already knew.
    Then he looked in the pockets one by one. He found a handkerchief, stained by water, but still folded, so probably otherwise clean. There were two business cards, a shirt maker in Penrith and a saddler in Kendal. In the wallet there were papers, some of which looked like receipts, but were too smudged to read, a treasury note for five pounds—a lot of money; not that anyone had assumed robbery. The last item was a penknife with a mother-of-pearl handle set with a silver, initialed shield. Presumably any coins would be in his trouser pockets. Henry was about to look when Antonia’s voice stopped him.
    “What’s that?” she said sharply. “The knife?”
    He held it up. “This? A penknife. He would have one, to sharpen a quill.” It was a very usual thing tocarry. He did not understand the strain and disbelief in her face.
    “That one!” she exclaimed, holding out her hand.
    He passed it to her.
    She turned it over, her eyes wide, her skin bleached of color.
    “What is it, Antonia?” Benjamin asked. “Why does it matter? Isn’t it Judah’s?”
    “Yes.” She looked at each of them in turn. “He lost it the day before he died.” The words seemed to catch in her throat.
    Benjamin frowned. “Well, he must have found it again. It’s easy enough to misplace something so small.”
    “Where did he lose it?” Henry asked her.
    “That’s what I mean.” She stared at him. “In the stream. He was bending over and it fell out of his pocket. He searched for it, we both did, but we couldn’t find it again.”
    Ephraim said what Henry was thinking. “Maybe that’s why he went back the night he died.” It was obvious in his face and his voice that he loathed admittingit, but honesty compelled him. “It’s a very nice knife. And it has his initials on it. Perhaps it was a gift, and he cared very much about losing it.”
    “I gave it to him,” Antonia said. “But he didn’t lose it at the stones where he was found.” She had to stop a moment to struggle for control of her voice.
    There was utter silence in the small dressing room. No one moved. No one asked.
    “It was by the bridge a mile and a half farther down. The two stones set across the water above it.”
    “Farther down!” Benjamin was incredulous. “That doesn’t make any sense. It …” He did not say it.
    Henry knew what they were all thinking. It was in their faces as it was in his mind. Bodies do not wash upstream, only down.
    “Are you absolutely certain?” he said quietly.
    “Yes.”
    It was the proof they needed. Judah had been moved after he was dead, and left where it looked as if he had fallen accidentally.
    “Are there any sharp rocks at the lower bridge where he lost the knife?” Henry pressed.
    “No! Just water, deep … and gravel.” Antonia closed her eyes. “He was murdered … wasn’t he?”
    Henry looked at Benjamin, then at Ephraim, then at last back at Antonia.
    “Yes. I can think of no other explanation.” He felt stunned by the reality of it. Judah’s death had made no sense and they had all been convinced that Ashton Gower was capable of murder. Henry had believed it himself. But it was still different now that it was no longer theoretical but something from which there was no escape.
    “What are we going to do?” Naomi asked. “How do we prove that it was Gower? Where do we begin?”
    Ephraim put