Mawgan had blanched at the mention of hanging.
It seemed that he had indeed been sent to Portugal to make sure Lord Barclay never came home. He had waited patiently for the war to dispose of his lordship, which it had stubbornly refused to do for more than a year. Then, when they were in the hills one day, he was out looking for firewood—he really was, he swore to it—when he was surprised by a group of French soldiers, who were scouting behind enemy lines. They realized he was English, but before they could do anything to him he told them he could lead them to a far more valuable prize in the form of a British reconnaissance officer out of uniform and on his way to perform a top-secret mission behind French lines, his head full of secrets, his wife with him. He would lead them to the pair if they would let him go. They did, on a very loose rein, and he took them to Lord and Lady Barclay and then made his escape to raise the alarm.
“I had no choice,” he said sullenly. “It was me or them, and why should it be me? I had put in more than a year of my time out there in that hell. I did not kill him for all that. You cannot put that murder on me.”
Percy spoke up though he was there on sufferance, he knew, not being any sort of officer of the law himself.
“You might be advised to speak the whole truth, Mawgan,” he said, “considering the high stakes for which you play.”
They all turned surprised faces his way.
“You want us to believe,” Percy said, “that foraging alone for firewood in hills that were potentially dangerous, you allowed yourself to be taken by surprise? And that your captors let you go free to lead them on what might well have been a wild goose chase?”
“May I remind you, Mawgan,” Sir Matthew said, “of the possible consequences to you of being tried for the murder of Henry Cooper.”
“I saw them,” Mawgan blurted out after a short silence. “But they were going the wrong way. It was the only real chance I had had in more than a year, short of killing him myself. I took off my shirt and tied it to my musket and held it up and showed myself. It was a breezy day.”
“You did have your musket with you, then?” Sir Matthew asked.
“Of course I did,” Mawgan said scornfully. “I went in under a flag of truce and told them what treasure I could lead them to if they would swear to let me go. Luckily two of them spoke English. They asked me why, and I told them it was personal. The rest happened as I said. I did not kill him. Lady Barclay can vouch for that.”
“Not directly,” Sir Matthew agreed, “though it might be argued that you sold him into his death. But there may be others too, Mawgan. There have been a number of deaths and maimings with obvious connections to the smuggling trade. We may very well be able to get you for murder yet. At the very least I believe you will be spending many years behind bars and set to hard labor.”
Percy let himself out of the room and closed the door behind him. He was not sure if he felt triumphant or not. Actually he felt a bit flat, he decided. He supposed he had imagined the climax as involving him in a fierce sword fight on the cliff path, himself against half a dozen cutthroat villains, and then a descent to fight off a dozen more in order to get inside the cave to rescue a trussed-up Imogen before the unusually high tide got to her first. And then a desperate climb up the cliff face, her fainting form over one shoulder, because the tide had cut off access to the path. Cheers and accolades from all and sundry. A weeping, grateful woman, himself all ardor down on one knee, proposing marriage—again—and bearing her off to the altar and happily-ever-after with church bells ringing and flowers cascading around their heads.
Sometimes, even in the privacy of his own mind, he could embarrass himself horribly. He ought to write the story and have it published by the Minerva Press—under his own name.
But there was something anticlimactic about this less glorious end to the business, satisfactory though it was in all essential ways. They had undoubtedly got the leaders. Ratchett, when confronted again, would find himself unable to maintain any pretense of innocence in light of his great-nephew’s confession and the evidence of the books that had been found. It did not necessarily mean that smuggling would stop in the area for all time, but it did mean he could control it on his own land, and it would be considerably weakened elsewhere if it did somehow survive.