The Ladies Of Eastgarrow – Episode 13
knew about it, how she would rage! Despite their friendship, and the influence Thomas had in the household, there was no possibility that a lady’s maid could be released to go to London, even without Celestine’s anger. Thomas went alone, and Celestine moped without him until her mother wondered if she were ill. It looked to Em as though the girl was about to confess her love for the tutor.Em had to wait for her friend’s return to hear the new information.“It’s a tale with twists and turns,” Thomas said. “Let us sit again on the log and I will relate it.”
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Just before Patrick Delaine left his position at Kilkenny’s Gunsmiths and went to work for Mr Benson, a gun was sold to a man whose description matched that of the ruffian in the lane. The gun was a new one, and poorly constructed.“Kilkenny was ashamed of the item,” Thomas told Em. “He said that he had taken on a new apprentice in a hurry, knowing that Delaine was about to leave. The new man was charming, and persuasive, tempted, no doubt, by the salary gunsmiths pay their apprentices. This new man convinced Kilkenny that he had experience, and even produced a letter of recommendation which later proved a forgery. “The gun that he crafted misfired, and injured its new owner badly. This customer, a man Kilkenny suspected of being a criminal, came back once his injuries had healed to find whoever had made the gun. At least, that is what Kilkenny believed. Kilkenny found his shop broken into and his papers much disturbed. I think this criminal found, in the empty shop, details pertaining to Mr Delaine’s identity, who he believed had made his faulty gun.”“So you think it was this criminal who was in Garrow that day with Mr Delaine, threatening him?”“Did their conversation look like that to you?”Em nodded. “Certainly it did. And now I understand that great scar I saw on the man’s face.” Her shoulders fell with relief. “But now at least we know that, even if this man was his murderer, Mr Delaine was innocent: he made no dangerous weapon and he injured no-one.” A tear fell from her eye. “But how dreadful to die through such a mistake, Thomas.”Thomas put an arm round her shoulder and they waited for a moment until she recovered.“But now we need to find that man,” she said. “The man who may have killed Mr Delaine.”“Kilkenny gave me the name one Daniel Weir. Kilkenny was ashamed that he had not dealt better with the matter. He knows he should have warned Delaine as soon as the shop was broken into. The new apprentice, who’d since been dismissed, was never sought out by this man Weir, and Kilkenny should thus have suspected that Delaine might be in danger.”
