Death and the Chevalier

by Robin Blake

  ‘If he were a naughty ferret refusing to quit a rabbit hole, we’d smoke him out,’ I said, returning to the siege with the smoke-smell still in my nose.

  ‘Titus, I believe you’ve hit on it!’ said Fidelis.

  He thought for a few moments, then sprang up from the stool.

  ‘There must be a tin bath. I need a tin bath, some blankets and a bucket of water. The stairwell up to the attic will make a fine chimney. Titus, you keep watch while I get the things we need.’

  He plunged down the stairs while O’Higgins bustled in and out of the second-floor bedrooms until he had made a pile of six or seven blankets. Fidelis returned with a bath and a boy carrying the water. He placed the bath at the bottom of the attic stairs and put a heap of blankets into it, laid another blanket on the floor and poured water over it, then wrung it to make the material uniformly damp. He found some paper and, burrowing among the blankets in the bath, made a cavity at the bottom in which he kindled a fire with the paper and a candle.

  As soon as the blankets in the bath began to catch fire, he covered the whole with the damp blanket to keep the contents merely smouldering, but lifted it up from time to time to release the smoke. Soon, by carefully controlling the amount of air in the fire, he was producing smoke in thick, choking quantities, cloud upon cloud, which obediently drifted up the stairwell and into the attic. From time to time he sprinkled more water to dampen the covering blanket.

  We waited, listening for Abel Grant to react. We could hear him moving around restlessly and coughing.

  ‘We could rush him now,’ said O’Higgins. ‘His vision will be doubtful.’

  ‘No, it’s too soon,’ I said. ‘And he may yet give up or fall unconscious.’

  ‘How will we know if he does that?’

  ‘He will come down before. He will have no choice.’

  Fidelis removed the covering and dropped another blanket into the bath, waiting until it was just flaring up before lowering the cover once more. Thick smoke streamed inexorably upwards.

  Another ten, fifteen, twenty minutes passed. Outside there was the hint of dawn. The quantity of smoke that had accumulated in the attic was now spilling back out and down to where we were standing. Our throats were scratchy, our mouths felt begrimed. I thought how much worse it must be for Abel Grant crouching in the very thick of it. I imagined him with his mouth and nose pressed to the floor where there were still remnants of breathable air. Still we heard his wracking coughs. I did not feel sorry for him.

  We waited a little longer and there came a moment when no more coughing was heard.

  ‘He’s passed out, or died,’ said O’Higgins. ‘I’m going up.’

  He undid his neckerchief, wetted it in the bucket of water and tied it around his mouth and nose. Fidelis pulled away the blanket covering the bath and splashed water into the smouldering mass inside to put out the fire, then followed O’Higgins’s example. As I began to remove my own neckerchief, he stayed my hand.

  ‘One of us ought to stay down here,’ he told me. ‘Keep an eye on the stairs in case he breaks out.’

  A moment later they had both drawn their pistols and run up the stairs into the smoke.

  The condition of the attic was different from what they expected. The smoke was thinner and the air more breathable. Fidelis and O’Higgins set about searching the three attic rooms. They opened cupboards and poked the spaces beneath the beds with broom handles. They tested the windows and found them securely locked. Grant was not there.

  This was soon explained. Grant had opened the roof hatch that Tom Garnish told me of, letting the worst of the smoke escape and giving himself a new lease on life.

  ‘He must be out on the roof,’ Luke Fidelis called down to me. ‘I can see the end of the stepladder that he used to reach the hatch. He pulled it up after him.’

  ‘I’ll go down to the street and see what I can see,’ I said.

  I ran down, ignoring the questions the members of the household threw at me, and reached the street. Looking up while walking backwards, I established a vantage point from where I could see – with the dawn-lit sky behind – all of the near side of the snow-covered roof up as far as the ridge. Against the snow, the open hatch appeared as a dark square through which wisps of smoke still drifted upwards. Lying half across it was the ladder Grant had used. Looking further up, I saw the chimney pot from which smoke was also rising, and to this the figure of Abel Grant was clinging with every appearance of fear. He was looking desperately around for an escape route – a vain hope as Garnish Tower rose two storeys above its neighbours, and there was no safe way of climbing down except to go back through the hatch.

  But there was, it turned out, another means of climbing up, for now I heard a splintering sound, and one of the two dormer windows in the roof was forced violently open. Presently, the figure of O’Higgins squirmed out, put a toe on the sill and vaulted with extreme muscular strength upwards to sit astride the ridge of the dormer’s own little roof. What followed was extraordinary. O’Higgins drew out his pistol, which he carried stuck into his belt. As he did so, Grant’s right hand let go of the chimney and went to draw out his own pistol, which was similarly disposed. Finally, I saw the head of Luke Fidelis poke out of the hatch, surrounded by smoke, and with it his extended arm, and a pistol in hand pointing at Abel Grant.

  It was impossible to tell who fired first: all three guns went off as near together as made no difference. Nor was it possible to see exactly why Abel Grant’s other hand left the chimney and went up towards the sky, leaving him teetering and unsupported. He did not teeter long but began to slide inexorably down the slope of the roof, gathering speed as he went. As children, we used to go down snowy hillsides on greased sacks in much the same way. But we would pull up when we met level ground. What Grant met was empty space as he launched off the roof, issuing at the same time a terrible scream. The scream was abruptly terminated as he smashed down on to the cobbles not five yards from where I stood. The impact destroyed his skull and broke his body to horrifying effect.

  I looked down at this once handsome figure lying before me, gruesomely disfigured and splayed every whichway, like a puppet whose strings have been cut. Earlier I had felt no pity at the thought of him stifled by smoke in the attic. I felt none for him now.

  After a few minutes Fidelis and Barty joined me in the street, their faces streaked with soot and sweat.

  ‘We’ll need one of those blankets to wrap him in,’ I said, nodding at them. ‘I suggest the Garnish twins as carriers.’

  Fidelis was squinting up at the roof of Garnish Tower.

  ‘Their girls are puzzling over how to get the twins’ bonds undone,’ he said. ‘So there’s plenty of time to see first to his safety.’

  He pointed up to the roof where the highwayman still sat astride the ridge of the dormer roof, waving his arms and shouting for rescue.

  ‘How did you get up to the roof hatch, Luke?’ I asked as we rode out of the maze of weinds and ginnels around Water Street. Ahead of us the Garnish twins were carrying between them the corpse of their former leader. ‘The ladder had been pulled up.’

  ‘I put the stool on the upturned bath,’ he said. ‘It got me just high enough to poke my head and my gun out.’

  ‘You might have followed my lead,’ said O’Higgins, riding behind us. ‘There was a second window, you know.’

  ‘That was a move to be made by someone anxious to die. Not me.’

  ‘I am no more anxious to die than you, Doctor,’ said the highwayman, pulling up his horse just as we came to Church Gate. ‘Which is one reason why I must leave you now.’

  ‘What is the other?’

  ‘That I have a beautiful woman waiting for me.’

  He wasted no more time saying goodbye but kicked his horse and clattered off down towards the Church Gate bar and the top of Ribbleton Lane.

  ‘You know,’ I said, when he had gone out of sight, ‘I was convinced Madame Lachatte had become the mistress of the Chevalier.�
��

  I told Fidelis about the passage Madame Lachatte had marked for my attention in The Fortunate Mistress.

  ‘It is not surprising you thought that,’ he said, ‘since it indicates Roxana had fallen in love with a royal prince.’

  ‘But in Madame Lachatte’s case it was not a royal prince; it was only the Prince of Flicks.’

  We put our horses to walk up Church Gate.

  ‘You know what must follow this death, Luke?’ I said.

  ‘Obviously,’ he said, ‘an inquest. And I suppose you want me to cut open the body and tell you whether he was struck by a bullet from my direction or Mr O’Higgins’s.’

  ‘You forget,’ I said. ‘It is not my business. This death happened in the jurisdiction of the town, not the county. But I think if you are called on to do this office, you should consider a third possibility.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That the ball which hit Abel Grant and precipitated his death came not from your gun, or from O’Higgins’s, but from his own. That, at least, is my own conclusion, speaking as a witness to everything that happened.’

  Fidelis gripped my arm.

  ‘Not for the first time, I am impressed by your tactical acumen, Titus. That suggestion may save me a lot of trouble.’

  We arrived at the church, where the verger had risen early to prepare for a special Saturday service celebrating the departure of the Pretender. He was disconcerted when I demanded the key to the vestry outhouse, as I used to do when still Coroner of the town, in order to store corpses prior to inquest. Reluctantly, though, he bowed to precedent and we left Grant’s remains behind before going the short remaining distance to my house.

  On the step of the house we encountered a man splendidly accoutred in scarlet uniform and cockaded tricorn hat, with two other redcoat soldiers carrying muskets in attendance. He raised his hat courteously.

  ‘Mr Titus Cragg?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I present the compliments of the Duke of Cumberland. His Grace will require the use of your house for the quartering of some of his officers tonight.’

  ‘Oh? And what if I happen to refuse?’

  The officer drew himself up to his full height.

  ‘I’m afraid, Mr Cragg, you would regret that happening. You would regret it very deeply indeed.’

  EPILOGUE

  The Crime of Count Blackheart:

  A Broadside Ballad

  Old Dancy was a Lord

  A Lord of High Degree

  All mighty with the sword

  As he was thought to be.

  A Count from o’er the water

  To Dancy Castle came;

  Black-hearted was his nature

  And Blackheart was his name.

  Young Lady Elinor Dancy

  She had a beauty rare.

  Count Blackheart took a fancy

  To have her, then and there.

  He went into her chamber

  Where she lay fast in bed

  And straight away did blame her.

  ‘I am bewitched,’ he said.

  ‘Your beauty makes me do this.

  Your beauty makes me sin.

  It’s you that drives me to this.’

  And straight he did begin.

  But now the door did open,

  Old Dancy strode inside,

  Saw Elinor’s honour broken

  And heard how Elinor cried.

  ‘Oh foul and fell Count Blackheart,’

  He said, ‘unclasp my wife

  And come with me apart,

  For I must take your life.

  Black your blood will flow,

  Black will be its clots,

  And black will be the crow

  That on your gibbet squats.’

  ‘Old man, speak not too soon,’

  The Count did straight declare.

  ‘Come with me to your doom.

  Come down the winding stair.’

  And so they both descended

  Into the castle court

  And there the pair contended

  A battle bruised and fraught.

  The castle walls resounded

  As Blackheart’s ball and chain

  Lord Dancy’s scutcheon pounded

  Again and again and again.

  Lord Dancy strove to answer

  Count Blackheart’s fierce attack.

  He feinted like a dancer

  While turning not his back.

  He strove with all his might

  To give the Count reply

  And with a swingeing smite,

  He made his helmet fly.

  But his old sword was blunted,

  His breath would soon abate.

  ‘Old man,’ Count Blackheart grunted,

  ‘Prepare to meet your fate.’

  Elinor at the casement

  A hundred feet above

  Looked downward in amazement

  And feared for the man she loved.

  She leaned out in alarm

  As tiring Dancy dodged

  Then all at once her arm

  A potted herb dislodged.

  It toppled off the sill

  And fell at a rapid rate

  Down through the air until

  It smashed on Blackheart’s pate.

  The Count spoke not nor cried

  Nor gave a deathly rattle.

  He just fell down and died

  And so ended the battle.

  Lord Dancy he was spent

  It took him half an hour

  To gather up the strength

  To climb again the tower.

  But then, with tears and laughter,

  The husband hugged his wife,

  And happy ever after

  They lived and loved their life.