A Christmas Visitor by Anne Perry

Ashton Gower had killed his brother, nothing would deter him from pursuing justice. Such strength was disturbing.
    “When I think of it,” Antonia replied, “he actually spoke very little. He only answered me.”
    “He didn’t say where he was going, or why he wanted to walk at that hour?” Benjamin persisted.
    “Not really, just for the air,” she answered. She looked uncertain. “I thought he wanted to think.”
    “Outside, on a winter night?”
    She said nothing, now deeply unhappy.
    Henry was gentler. “Did he suggest you should not wait up for him?”
    She had to think for a moment. “Yes. Yes, he did say something like that. I don’t remember exactly what.”
    “So he expected to be gone an hour or more,” Henry deduced.
    “An hour?” Benjamin questioned.
    “By the time Joshua had got over his excitement and gone to bed, and then Antonia herself had,” Henry replied. “It sounds as if he intended to go asfar as the stream. What lies beyond it? Where is this Viking site, exactly?”
    “Farther down the stream,” she said. “Just above the lower crossing before you get to the church. He wasn’t going to the site. There’s nothing really beyond the higher crossing, except a copse of trees, and a shepherd’s hut. Do you suppose he was going there? What for?”
    There was only one answer, and it hung in the air like an additional darkness.
    “If it was someone he didn’t trust, he’d have taken the dogs. They’d have attacked anyone who threatened him.”
    “Or he was going to see someone he trusted,” Henry said.
    Antonia stared at the fire. “Or there was no one else. He slipped, that’s all, just as Dr. Leighton said.”
    Benjamin’s face was bleak. “Which could not have been Gower. We are no further forward.”
    Another thought occurred to Henry. “Unless he went with the purpose of helping Gower, perhaps to offer him some kind of assistance in getting himselfwork, or some establishment in the community again.”
    Ephraim’s eyes opened wide. “After what Gower had been saying about him? But if he was, why there, of all places? And in the middle of the night!”
    “Judah might have helped him anyway,” Antonia said quietly. “He helped all kinds of people. But I can’t think why meet there!”
    “Neither can I,” Benjamin agreed coldly. “What happened? Gower killed him for his trouble? Or else when Judah slipped, just left him there to drown? I know the man was a swine, but that’s inhuman.”
    “If he did, we’ll prove it.” Ephraim stared at him. “I’ll see him answer for every word, every act. He’ll never blacken a Dreghorn name again.”
    Antonia smiled and nodded, her eyes brimming with tears.
    But alone upstairs in his room, Henry looked out of the window toward the vast, snow-bleached expanse of the mountains under the star-glittered sky, and thought what he had not dared say to the family.He had known Judah well, they had been friends for years, shared all manner of things both with words and in silence. They had understood the emotions that were too complicated to explain, and talked all night of the philosophies that lent themselves to endless exploration.
    Judah would not have met alone with Ashton Gower to offer him help, after Gower had accused him of fraud, at the stream or anywhere else. He was far too sophisticated not to realize that Gower could then blackmail him with the threat that he had helped only to hide his own guilt, and Gower would do that. That was the kind of man he was, and Judah knew it.
    The more Henry weighed the facts they had, the less any answer fitted them. Each one left loose ends and questions unanswered. He drew the curtains across and prepared to go to bed. Tomorrow he would have one more journey to make to the station at Penrith, and one more time to break the news.

    In the morning the thaw had set in and everything was dripping. Much of the snow had melted and there were long streaks of black over the hills where the