A Christmas Visitor Read Online Free PDF

eyes.
    Henry stood still for a moment or two, watching him walk slowly, crunching through the snow, until he reached the stone wall of the churchyard, and then was lost behind the yew branches.
    He went back to the stable yard, and by the time he returned, Benjamin was waiting for him.
    “I want to see Leighton, if he’s still the doctor here,” he said, taking his horse from Henry and mounting. “If not him, then whoever is. I don’t know how Judah could have been stupid enough to slipon the stepping stones. He’s lived here all his life. Where was he going, anyway? What was he doing crossing the stream alone at that time of night? Why did he go out at all?”
    “I don’t know,” Henry admitted, keeping the horses in step, side by side as they rode toward the village. “Are you sure it matters now?”
    Benjamin looked at him sharply. “Of course it matters! It doesn’t make any sense. There’s something wrong, and I intend to get to the truth. Ashton Gower has to be silenced, and permanently. We can’t let Antonia live in fear that he’ll start up again.” He was angry with Henry for not understanding; it was clear in his face and the tone of his voice.
    Grief and confusion were wounding him and Henry understood that. Still the response stung, and it was an effort to control his own reaction. He had liked Benjamin all the years he had known him, as much as he had liked Judah, and the sense of loss incurred was no stranger to him. It was many years since his wife had died, but the memory was still there.
    It was still snowing very lightly but the wind had dropped. Fifteen minutes later they were at the doctor’s house and the horses by the gate. It was another quarter of an hour before he was free to see them.
    “Terribly sorry,” Leighton said to Benjamin. “Dreadful thing to happen. Good of you to come up, Rathbone. What can I do for you?” He was a thin man, full of nervous energy but with a grave voice, nearer Henry’s age than Benjamin’s.
    Benjamin’s face was slightly flushed, as much from helpless anger as the sharp edge of the cold outside. “There’s a lot about Judah’s death that makes no sense,” he replied. “I wanted to find the truth of what happened.” He stood in the middle of the room, lean, broad-shouldered, skin burned brown by the sun of the Holy Land, his face hard.
    Leighton had been a country doctor for twenty years. He understood grief and the anger that prompted men to fight it. He leaned against the bookcase and regarded Benjamin seriously. “The facts are simple. Judah went out for a walk at about half past ten in the evening. There was a half moon,but it was still extremely dark. He took a lantern, which was found washed up on the banks of the stream a few yards from where he was. When he did not return home, some little while after midnight, Antonia became sufficiently alarmed to send out the male servants to search for him. They found his body caught in the rocks of the fall a short distance below the stepping stones.”
    “I know all that!” Benjamin said impatiently. “Henry told me. What was he doing there? Why did he go out at all? Why did he try crossing icy stepping stones at night? Where was he going? How does a strong man drown in two feet of water? The stream isn’t running fast enough to sweep anyone off their feet, even at this time of the year. I’ve fallen off those stepping stones a dozen times, and got no worse than wet clothes!”
    “You can fall off a horse a hundred times and get no worse than bruises, or a broken collarbone,” Leighton said reasonably. “But the hundred and first fall can kill you. Benjamin, don’t look for reasons where there are none. He slipped in the dark andfell badly. He struck his head on the stones and it knocked him senseless. If it hadn’t, no doubt he’d have climbed out and walked home again. Tragically, it did.”
    “How do you know he struck his head when he fell?” Benjamin challenged. “How do you