A Christmas Visitor by Anne Perry Page B

been since they were taken out of Geoffrey Gower’s safe.” He spoke quietly, although the crunch of their footsteps on the frost-hardened grass might well have disguised their voices, had anyone near an open window been listening. “There was time and opportunity for someone to have altered it … changed it for another.”
    “You mean put a forgery in place of a genuine one?” She saw what he meant immediately, and there was fear in her voice. With the hood of her cloak up he could see little of her face.
    “Yes,” he replied.
    “You believe Gower?” It was a direct question, filled with incredulity, but asked nonetheless.
    He could not answer immediately, not with complete honesty.
    “Mr. Rathbone?” she demanded, gripping his arm and pulling him to a stop.
    “I don’t believe Judah would have done such a thing, for any reason whatever,” he said unhesitatingly. Of that he was absolutely sure. “But he may have trusted people he should not have.”
    Her voice was very low. “Have you told that to anyone else?”
    “No.” He was smiling in the dark, but it was self-mockery, there was no pleasure in it at all. “I have spent all my ride back from Penrith and a good deal of the evening trying not to do so. But it is a possibility we have to face.”
    “You are sure there was opportunity?”
    “Yes.”
    “Who? If not Gower, why would anyone else? He was the only one who would profit from such a stupid forgery!”
    They started to walk again, heading farther away from the house, and anyone who might look out and see them.
    “He made the date into the one that would meanthe property was his!” she went on, still holding his arm. “The other date would have left it as Peter Colgrave’s, as it was. Then we bought it. No one else had anything to gain from changing it.”
    “There is no answer that fits the facts,” he told her. “Ashton Gower swears that the deeds were not forged, the expert says that they were. The forged date favors Gower.”
    “Yes. Isn’t that proof?”
    The thought he had been fighting against all day crystalized in his mind.
    “What if the forgery is not a change at all?”
    “But that makes no …” She stopped. “Oh, no! You mean if the forgery is an exact copy of the original, date included? So Gower was telling the truth when he said the deed was genuine? Then it was replaced by an obvious forgery, with exactly the same date, so Gower would be disbelieved—lose his land!”
    “Yes.”
    “That is terrible! But who? Colgrave?”
    “Perhaps. Or anyone else who thought they might be able to buy the estate cheaply.”
    “Judah bought it from Colgrave, at the price he asked. He was in a hurry for the money. I think he had debts. Maybe someone else expected to buy, and didn’t get the chance. That could be anyone!”
    “Maybe someone else had already found the Viking hoard and knew what it would be worth,” Henry pointed out. “Colgrave didn’t, or he would have asked a far larger sum.”
    “And Gower believes it was Judah.” Her voice was somber and tight with strain. “Perhaps he really didn’t do it, is that possible? Without knowing it, Judah sent an innocent man to prison!”
    “Yes, it is possible.” He loathed admitting it. “Of course it is also possible that he is as guilty as sin of killing Judah,” he added. “Somebody did. No one else we know had a reason—except the real forger.”
    “Perhaps Gower has enemies, too?” she suggested. “He’s a most disagreeable man. Is it possible he is the real intended victim, and Judah is only the means they use?”
    “Yes, of course it is. And I don’t know where we would even begin to look for them!”
    She bent her head. “This is terrible!” she said in a whisper. “We have to know! Don’t we?”
    “I think so. Could you rest with it unanswered?”
    “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter for me. When it’s over, when we’ve silenced Gower, I’ll go back to America again. I have the