Farce

When I first noticed the letter in the mail, there was something about the gold embossing on the front that spoke of possibility. Its words radiated out, filling me with newfound hope. I’ve never really been the adventurous type. All my life, I’ve been the one who waits to be told what to do and where to go. It’s never been something I’ve chosen for myself. Which is why I cannot believe I answered the letter. It wasn’t even addressed to me.

Up until that point, I’d been tending horses on my auntie’s farm. Each day, I woke up with the sun to clean out the stables and feed the horses. There were ten stallions under my care, each one of them a beauty. My favorite was Ginger, her reddish-brown mane and love for carrots contributing to her title. Since my parents had died seven years ago, I’d been working for my aunt and uncle in exchange for their guardianship. I liked my job and the time I spent outdoors, but it had been hard to slowly watch my cousins make their way in the world while I stood on the sidelines. Jenny and Rose had both moved about twenty miles away after marrying the eligible Winchester brothers, James had started an apprenticeship with the town apothecary, and Thomas was…well, no one knew exactly what he was up to. About a year ago, he’d just disappeared without warning. But I knew that wherever he was, it had to be somewhere more exciting than here on this farm.

I once again envisioned the letter’s commanding yet elegant handwriting. It was a formal request for the town’s magistrate to depart within a week’s time to settle a dispute in London. There were no further details provided, other than money for the fare and an address written across the bottom of the page. The problem was, we didn’t have a magistrate. Our farm was about two miles from the nearest village, which itself was so small as to be almost unincorporated. The only clue as to how the letter had ended up with us was the word “Elmdale” scrawled across the lower corner of the envelope. Elmgrove was the name most commonly used to refer to our farm, and it seemed as though the courier had failed to notice his mistake.

I planned to begin my journey tomorrow morning. It felt like my chance to make something of myself. When else would I have the money to go to the city? I also knew that tracking down the rightful magistrate would be too difficult and time-consuming. Besides, I’d handled enough disputes for a lifetime between my cousins. When Jenny stole the heart of Rose’s first love, I had been the one to keep Rose from burning half the house down in an attempt to get back at her sister. And James had a short fuse himself, often yelling at the farmhands whenever he thought they’d made a mistake. Often, it was just James looking for trouble. The trick was to remind James that he’d be the one responsible to report to our uncle if anything went wrong. So, while I didn’t know what the conflict was about, I knew I couldn’t miss my chance to go to London.

Early the next morning, I snuck out to the stables to get Ginger. She was my ticket out of here before I caught the train closer to the city. Her head nuzzled my arm as I led her out the door of the stable.

“Shhhh, it’s okay, girl. Let’s get you out of here.” With the ease that comes only with seven years of practice, I hopped onto her back just as she started to gallop off into the countryside. It was late spring, and the valley was awash in velvety hues of green. The foliage whipped past us as we sped off, the tiny farm disappearing into the background. Ginger deftly jumped over fallen logs as sharp branches poked my skin. I gathered we had about a day’s journey until we reached the train on the outskirts of London that would bring us to our destination.

After an uneventful few hours passed, I pulled the reins to signal to Ginger that she should slow down to a trot. We stopped at the nearest stream to refresh ourselves. Ginger’s head dipped down into the cool water as she drank. I looked around us to make sure we were alone. I’d heard that these trails could be dangerous for young women traveling alone, and I hadn’t left the farm since the day my aunt and uncle had brought me there after my parents’ funeral. It was quiet, the stillness of the clearing interrupted only by the sound of Ginger dipping her head into the water.

And yet, something didn’t feel quite right. I glanced around us again, this time a flash of white catching my eye.

“Who’s there?” I called into the clearing, half-expecting a curious fox from the forest to pop out. This time, a rustling sound preceded the flash of white that now came from just a few feet away. I could see the gleam of large black boots stepping towards me.

As the boots began to reveal the tall figure of a man dressed in a ragged white shirt, I realized with a sense of dread that I had come across the highwaymen. These men always travelled in packs and they made their way in the world by stealing whatever they could get their hands on from unsuspecting travelers on the road. For all I knew, they could have been following me for the past few miles. Or perhaps I’d had just the dumb luck needed to stumble across their den.

“Hey, lovely, you got anything for us? My men and I could sure use whatever you got to offer. Got any smokes or –?”

I didn’t wait to hear the rest of his statement. Knowing this situation couldn’t possibly end well, I grabbed Ginger’s reins and took off into the forest. The man had stepped into the clearing alone, without a horse, but it was possible his partners were already prepared to chase after me.

Maneuvering the reins, I urged Ginger to go faster still. She picked up speed, the trees all but blurring into indistinguishable outlines that gave me tunnel vision. Once I dared to look behind me, but I couldn’t see anything. On and on we rode, until I was sure we were alone.

The sun continued its descent into the western sky, the air beginning to cool around us. The rickety wooden sign on my left indicated we were about two miles out from St. Albans. From there, I’d catch the train. I tried to collect myself, but I began to feel as though I were on a fool’s errand. Why had I imagined I could endure this journey when I knew next to nothing about life outside Elmgrove, our tiny, little corner of the world? And what did I really know about conflict, outside of the petty goings-on with my extended family? My encounter with the highwaymen underscored my naiveté and I hoped I wasn’t going to pay too high a price for my lack of judgement.

Once we reached the train station, I brought Ginger to the nearby corral that I had known would be there thanks to careful questioning on my part…my uncle had never suspected a thing when I asked him about traveling from the countryside to the city. He’d never fathom that I wanted to leave, nor believe that I had the ability to. I stroked Ginger’s mane and kissed her nose, vowing to return for her as soon as the magistrate business was concluded. I then exchanged my gingham dress for a pair of well-worn trousers and a long black overcoat, this time thanks to Thomas’s neglected clothing. After tucking my hair into a cap, the transformation was complete. The train awaited and so too did London’s newest magistrate.

*******

Dark clouds obscured the sky as thunder rumbled up above. A light drizzle clouded my vision further as I banged my fist against the heavy wooden door. The tiny cottage, resembling a shed more than a home, took up the remaining space behind the rowdy bar off of Main Street. I banged my fist against the door again, this time gaining a few splinters in my hand. The door inched open a crack, revealing the darkened contours of a face but nothing more.

“Is this the property of John Freeler?” I half-growled, surprised at the intensity of my voice. “I need to speak with him right away.”

It had been almost a week since I’d arrived in London. The address from the letter had led me to the shabby home of a town official working for the mayor. The urgency of the situation had kept him from questioning my identity beyond gruffly inquiring if I was “that damn magistrate from god knows where.” He had informed me of a conflict involving 10,000 stolen pounds and two suspects who denied any involvement in the theft. They had been the only two men found at the scene of the crime and each man blamed the other.

Apparently, matters of theft were my specialty, thus why they’d called “me” in. My investigation with the first man, Mr. Leonard White, had revealed nothing of particular interest. But he’d slipped for a moment when I’d asked him how he knew the other man, a Mr. Bruce Jaff.

“Why, he’s the man who held me hostage while he robbed that bank. Grabbed me by the collar as I was walkin’ down that street yonder and near broke me collarbone. He dragged me into that bank to do his dirty work…Freeler never told me nothin’ ‘bout that,” he muttered to himself.

“Who’s Freeler?” I inquired.

“Nothing, never mind. All’s you need to know is that Mr. Jaff is to blame for this whole damn charade.” And that was all I could get him to reveal.

So here I was, an undercover magistrate/amateur sleuth/disguised farmhand from the English countryside investigating a puzzling bank robbery.

“Open up, Mr. Freeler!” I demanded, eager to understand how this man was connected to the case. The man slowly opened the door of the cottage, revealing a thick mess of ruffled dark hair and a sharp jawline. As the light from the nearby streetlamp illuminated his face further, I began to tremble from shock. This was no random criminal. The wrinkles around his eyes and half-grown stubble had changed his face slightly, but not to the point where I could no longer recognize the face of my long-disappeared cousin, Thomas.

“Thomas, is that you?” I whispered. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Squinting at me in the darkness, he sized me up. After a moment’s consideration, his mouth widened, and he began to laugh. “My God, it’s really you. Chelsea, I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you.”

“Where have you been? Why are you here in London, Thomas? Everyone’s been worried sick about you. We thought you were dead!” I suddenly couldn’t keep the questions from coming, as I realized how much I’d missed my favorite cousin over the last year. He’d always been the one to make me laugh, more a brother than a cousin, really. I hadn’t expected to see him ever again, and certainly not in the context of a crime investigation.

“Woah, woah, slow down for a moment, Chels. I can explain everything. But first, you should probably come in before someone sees us. Do you want any tea?”

“No, I don’t want your stupid tea. I want an explanation of why the hell I’m finding you this way. Are you involved in this bank robbery? And why did you leave?” I did my best to fight the tears that were rising to the surface, long overdue from the stress of the week’s adventures.

“Okay, okay, calm down. I suspect I left for some of the same reasons as you,” he began. Setting two cups onto the rickety dining room table, I watched as the steaming brown tea filtered down into the china. Pushing one cup towards me, he continued.

“I felt like I was going nowhere in Elmgrove. Jenny and Rose moved on, James was unbearable to be around, and I had a feeling you would find yourself one day, too. I just couldn’t take it anymore. At best, I would’ve lived under Father’s shadow. The easiest way was just to leave.”

“But Thomas, why am I finding you like this? What’s really going on?”

He let out a long sigh, running his hand through his overgrown hair. “Look, times have been tough since I first came here. I wanted to become a lawyer, but I didn’t have the money to enroll in school. I’ve been working at the tavern out front to save money, renting this cottage at half price to help with the expenses. But it’s just not enough. So, I went looking for other jobs that might help me save more money. Long story short, I ended up freelancing for the police force as an amateur private investigator. I’ve been following Mr. Jaff for a long time but needed a way to officially trap him. We set up a bank robbery involving a business deal with him. All we needed was for Mr. White to play hostage. Course I didn’t entirely fill him in on everything that was going down, but you can’t tell actors everything, can you?”

“Thomas, you were always telling tall tales back at Elmgrove. Can I really trust what you’re saying…that you’re some undercover detective?

“Well, Chels, I guess you’ll just have to take another leap of faith. It brought you here, didn’t it?”

*******