“Yes,” Prudence answered. “I had some money from the sale of my family’s estate, so I paid our way to America.”
“So you were on the ship with Shamus?” Edilean asked.
“I was,” Prudence said, and her entire face took on a glow.
“How lovely,” Edilean said.
“How strange,” Angus muttered, then moved his leg away from Edilean before she could kick him.
“He’s such a kind man, but he’s been ill treated all his life. Shamus wants to start over, where people don’t judge him by what his father did.”
“Like loosening the cinch on a girl’s saddle?” Angus muttered.
“He would never do such a thing! He’s a kind, thoughtful man.” Prudence gave Angus a look that let him know what Shamus had told her of him.
Angus glanced at Edilean as though for sympathy, but she’d always liked Shamus. Angus moved aside the leather curtain over the window and glanced outside. “We’re almost there.” He looked back at Prudence. “I want you to tell me how you came to shoot James.”
Everyone in the coach was quiet, their eyes fixed on Prudence.
“I didn’t mean to,” she began. “I was... Shamus and I were...”
“In Cuddy’s room over the carriage house,” Harriet said impatiently. “We all know that, and, by the way, I think you paid Cuddy much too much for the use of his room.” Harriet looked at Edilean. “Ever since he helped you that night when you and—” She broke off for a moment. “Anyway, I think Cuthbert takes too much liberty on himself.”
“Did he embezzle half the year’s profits?” Edilean shot back at her.
“I did that because—” Harriet began but Angus cut her off.
“You two can settle this later. I make it a rule to never argue when there’s a dead body in the same carriage with me. Now, Mrs. Harcourt, you were saying?”
“Please don’t call me that,” Prudence said. “I can’t bear the name. I will be glad to take Shamus’s name of Frazier. We—”
Angus gave her a hard look.
“Yes, right, back to the shooting. I looked out and saw a light in the kitchen of the house, and I thought it was Harriet and that something was wrong, so I went inside. But when I got there, the light had moved to the parlor. There was James, filling a bag with the silver candlesticks. I guess I made a sound because he turned around and he had a pistol in his hand.
“He said, ‘But you’re dead.’
“I tried to think quickly and I said, ‘Yes, I am and I’ve come to take you to the grave with me.’
“He said, ‘Like hell you will,’ and he aimed the pistol at me. I leaped, we tussled, the gun went off, and he fell to the floor. Dead. I believe I screamed.”
For a moment the others were silent as they looked at her. Each of them knew that her story was a fabrication, but no one said anything. A wrestling match with a pistol does not leave one person with a bullet hole squarely in the middle of his forehead. In his midsection perhaps, but not in his head. Besides, they all knew that the pistol Prudence had used belonged to Cuddy.
Harriet and Edilean looked at Angus to see what he would say.
“It’s as I thought,” he said. “It was self-defense.”
“Yes, clearly,” Harriet said, and looked at Edilean, who said, “It couldn’t be anything else.”
No one looked at the other for fear their doubts would show.
Angus was glad when the carriage halted. “We’re here. I think it would be better if I went in and talked to the young man alone. He and I know each other, but not all that well, and I’m afraid this might be a shock for him. I’ll sort it out, then we can all go home. All right?”
The three women nodded and sat there while Angus got out of the coach. When they were alone, Edilean looked at the others and said, “Who’s going to get out first?” Since by the time she finished the sentence, she was half outside, it was a rhetorical question. Prudence, by sheer size, was second, and Harriet came last, smoothing her hair and trying her best to look as though she were on a mission that was nothing like what they were actually doing.
Harriet glared at Edilean in her masculine clothing and started to speak, but Edilean gave her a look that made her close her mouth.
The three women went into the house of Matthew Aldredge, the three Scotsmen behind them.