Sword and Song

by Roz Southey

  “Crompton, ask the grooms to prepare my carriage – the new one we bought for jaunts around the countryside. Hopkins, you will drive of course.”

  “I have my own coach and coachman,” Heron said.

  Alyson laughed. “You can’t take a travelling carriage on a pleasure jaunt! Much too uncomfortable, particularly with a lady on board. Too stuffy. I had this one made for my wife – it’ll be ideal. And my coachman has been familiarising himself with the local roads, precisely so he can drive the ladies about. He’s a perfectly safe driver – no less an exacting critic than Ridley will witness to that. My dear Heron, I do feel guilty all this has happened on my land – it offends my idea of how a host should look after his guests. At least allow me this small gesture of compensation!”

  Heron conceded gracefully; there was nothing else he could have done.

  Alyson nodded to Crompton. “The horses for Mr Fischer and myself, and the carriage for Mr Heron. Do you plan to go straight away?”

  “In an hour, perhaps,” Heron said.

  “And tell my wife where I am going, Crompton.”

  “I believe Mrs Alyson has just gone out riding, sir.”

  “Very well. Then give her the message when she returns.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The servants withdrew. Alyson took Fischer’s arm and guided him inside. Heron and I were left alone on the terrace.

  “I take it,” Heron said, “that the purpose of the exercise is to allow you to ride on to Newcastle to examine the book without the fact being widely known.”

  I nodded. “And Esther must come for her own safety. We cannot risk the killer attacking her.”

  And I mused again on the look the murderer had given me as he stood over Heron. He wanted to make a game of it but I would not play by his rules. The important thing was to gain justice for Nell – and justice she would have.

  Alyson’s new carriage was painted a tasteful powder blue, the Alyson coat of arms on the doors. I saw Heron grimace at the ostentation of it all. It didn’t please Fowler either, when he came out with a rug for Heron’s knees.

  “An open carriage!” he demanded in outrage. “He can’t go out in that! What if it rains?”

  I looked up at the cloudless sky. “I don’t think that’s likely. And he’s dressed sensibly.” In dark brown, I noted.

  “There’ll be a draught. The wind’ll whistle by when you’re driving at speed!”

  “That’s undeniable.”

  “And that coachman looks the sort to go at a ridiculous rate round every corner – he’ll probably turn the carriage over before you get out of the grounds!”

  “He drove the Alysons up from London – I think he’s competent enough.”

  Fowler glowered. “Our own coachman’s perfectly capable – why go for this fellow we don’t know?”

  But Heron was calling for the rug and Fowler handed it up to him, clearly wanting to fuss, but not being allowed to. Behind us, Hugh came out of the house and exchanged a few words with Alyson. Hugh was in a smart, dark-coloured coat, with a snow-white cravat, black breeches and strong riding boots; Alyson, in yellow, was looking critically at the carriage horses.

  Fowler was muttering irritably. “I’ve just to get my greatcoat and I’ll be ready.”

  “You’re not coming,” I said.

  I’d never been afraid of him, but seeing the look on his face at that moment, I knew he was a dangerous man.

  “You have to talk to Crompton, remember,” I said. “I want to know who’s threatening him.”

  For a moment, I thought he’d defy me. Then he said, “You let him get hurt again and you won’t live long enough to regret it.”

  And he strode back into the house.

  34

  The countryside is very pleasant but I do not wish to linger in it. There are too many flies.

  [Letter from Retif de Vincennes, to his sister, Agnés, 18 June 1736]

  A footman stowed a huge hamper under one of the carriage’s seats. Then Esther arrived with her maid, Catherine, who was armed with another rug. There was a great deal of fussing to get her settled in the carriage – plenty of time for me to admire her. She was dressed in a gown of palest amber, with a sprigging of tiny green leaves, and falls of lace about her elbows; her shoes were dark green, high-heeled and beribboned. She was wearing a fortune; the yards of material that went to make up the skirt draped over the hoops had probably kept the mercer in food for a week. And all that was supposed to be mine if I married her. All that wealth, given to a man who was accustomed to living on sixty pounds a year.

  How the devil do you keep the accounts straight when you’re dealing with so much money?

  We were ready at last. The grooms had brought Mercy round for me while Hugh was seated on a grey that looked half-asleep. We rode out of the park safely enough, despite Fowler’s gloomy prediction, turned for Newcastle, went through half a dozen hamlets. In the carriage, Esther and Heron conversed; Catherine looked at the countryside but seemed troubled. Hugh and I clattered along behind. Hugh was in a good mood, whistling a Scots dancing tune; I noticed, however, that among the folds of his coat thrown across the saddle in front of him, something glinted. He’d brought his pistol.

  Dogs barked at us, sheep scattered in panic, hay carts refused to budge. I was on edge, waiting for an attack, scanning every hedge, every wood we passed through. The plan was for us to have our picnic then drive on to Blackett’s house. Hugh would stay with Esther and Heron to counter any threat to them. I would push on to Newcastle. If we didn’t linger too long over the picnic, I should arrive in Newcastle before dark.

  The coachman said he knew of a pleasant place for a picnic not far off the road, about three miles north of Newcastle and one or two miles from Blackett’s house. He didn’t tell us it was approached through trees down a potholed track of half a mile or so; the carriage bounced unpleasantly – I saw Heron’s hand tighten on the carriage door. Esther leant forward to speak to Catherine, who was beginning to look ill.

  We came out of the trees at last. A wide meadow stretched ahead of us, with a slight rise to our right and a faint track leading through the grass. I heard the hum of a river close by. Hugh and I tied our horses to the back of the carriage and pulled open the door.

  Esther looked at me doubtfully. “Catherine is not at all well.” The maid tried to protest, but it was obvious that she was sickly pale.

  “Just a little travelsick,” the coachman – Hopkins – said cheerfully. “A bit of a sleep’ll do her a world of good. Tell you what, I’ll take her on to the inn. Got to take the horses on anyway – can’t have them standing around. When d’you want me to come back for you?”

  “Which inn?” Heron said.

  “Black Pig, sir. Just a couple of bends further down the road. Half a mile maybe. Tumbledown cottage next to it. Respectable place – landlord’s wife’s the schoolmaster’s sister.”

  Catherine was feebly refusing to leave her mistress; Esther might be unconventional but Catherine knew her duty was to chaperone her. Esther hushed her. “You’ll be a great deal better if you can lie down.”

  There was some consultation and an exchange of money so Catherine could pay for a room for an hour or so and whatever refreshment she wanted; Hopkins was given money by Heron for beer and stabling the horses. Hugh and I manoeuvred the hamper out of the carriage and took one of the rugs, leaving the other for Catherine. Hopkins turned the horses expertly and started the carriage down the potholed track through the trees again. I wondered if Catherine would make it to the inn before being sick. Esther was unhappy. “I should not leave her. There is nothing worse than being ill on your own.”

  Hugh and I carried the hamper along the faint track through the grass; Heron and Esther came behind, Esther leaning on Heron’s arm. Her high heels were not suitable for walking on grass; several times she turned over her ankle. Once she muttered, then caught my eye and straightened with her best aristocratic air.

  At the top of the rise, w
e looked down on a kind of dell, or little valley, bisected by a stream that fell over small rocks with a pleasantly musical murmur. One side of the dell was bordered by a wide and slow river; on the far side of the water, cows came down to drink in a meadow filled with wild flowers.

  “Very pretty,” Heron said with such a lack of expression I couldn’t tell if he was being ironic or not.

  Esther was hobbling. The wide skirts of her gown were already grass-stained. She had difficulty negotiating the slope of the dell down to the flatter land near the stream where Hugh was laying out the rug, but when I went to help she gave me an irritable look. Conventional clothes were evidently taxing her temper. She had some difficulty positioning herself on the rug but once she was settled she looked very elegant with her skirts billowing around her. One of the few trees in the dell sheltered her from the worst of the sun.

  Hugh threw open the hamper. Crompton had thought of everything. Beneath a tablecloth were wine glasses, two bottles of wine, cloth-wrapped ham, cheese and bread, and a parcel of chicken legs. Small individual dishes held rich, sugary desserts. There were plates to eat off, napkins to wipe our hands.

  And, nestling in the bottom of the hamper, a pair of duelling pistols.

  “Do you think he knows more than we do?” Hugh asked as Heron capably loaded the pistols with the ammunition Crompton had also thoughtfully provided.

  I handed round glasses of wine. Crompton must have raided Alyson’s own private cellar; the wine was a cut above the fare we’d enjoyed up to now. “Crompton? He knows who the servant is.”

  “Which servant?”

  I was reclining in the sun and it was making me sleepy. Sleepy and content. To sit in comfort with friends, drinking excellent wine and enjoying desultory conversation seemed to me at that moment to be the height of pleasure. With difficulty, I dragged myself back to the present. “The murderer’s accomplice. Or one of them.”

  “Patterson thinks there are three villains,” Heron said.

  “God help us!” Hugh muttered.

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  “A servant could have left the notes for you,” Esther said. “And intercepted the letter you sent to Mr Demsey.”

  I nodded. “I mentioned Fischer’s book in that note – I suspect our murderer was still hoping at that stage that we wouldn’t connect it with the book Nell was killed for. The note told him we hadn’t yet made the connection – but it must have worried him that we might.”

  “There is an anomaly here,” Heron said. “If a servant made the muddy footprints in the dining room, he must have been one of the attackers in the wood. But the attackers were slight, and I believe you said the servant is probably burly – judging by the man Mrs Jerdoun saw in the wood.”

  “Two servants?” Esther suggested, frowning.

  “And he has to be a house servant too,” Hugh said. “One of the outdoor servants – a groom, for instance – wouldn’t have been able to walk about the house unchallenged.”

  “Then we are back to Crompton,” Esther said. “He is surely the most likely candidate. Why are we not questioning him?”

  “I have,” I said. “But he won’t say anything. I’ve asked Fowler to talk to him.”

  Heron raised an eyebrow. “Do feel free to order my servants around as you choose, Patterson.”

  “And the servant involved in the plot will of course know who the apprentice is!” Hugh said, triumphantly.

  “There is no apprentice,” I said. “According to the spirit in the lodging house, he is little more than a vagabond, coming and going as he chooses. We were misled. If you think back to what Maggie said and what the chapman said, I think you’ll find they assumed he was an apprentice because of his youth and his bad taste in clothes.”

  “Clothes,” Heron said, sipping at claret. “Why are you so interested in clothes, Patterson?”

  “Consider the situation,” I said. “It was a warm evening – no one needed to wear a greatcoat. Someone from the house flung one on to disguise his clothes, but he had to act in a hurry or he would have changed his shoes too – he was wearing shoes where boots would have been more suitable.”

  Esther contemplated her smart, beribboned, high-heeled, muddy shoes. “Alyson’s livery is ostentatious. If you’d seen someone in scarlet and gold you would have known it was a servant.”

  “The attackers weren’t wearing scarlet and gold,” I said. “Or I would have seen it when their greatcoats flapped open. They were dressed in dark clothes.”

  “So the servant changed his clothes,” Hugh said.

  I shook my head. “Then why didn’t he change his shoes too? And he would never have passed for normal when he went into the drawing room. If he was to pass unnoticed, he needed to be in livery.”

  Hugh chewed on a drumstick. Esther said uneasily, “So you don’t think it was a servant after all? You are suggesting one of the guests is involved?”

  I accepted more wine from Heron. “A guest could have dealt with the notes as easily as a servant.”

  They were all looking bewildered; I said, “Let’s go back to basics. Everything that’s happened is because of Fischer’s legacy.”

  “What is so special about that legacy?” Esther asked. “Why should someone steal both book and sword?”

  “I think we’re dealing with two separate crimes,” I said, “although they may have been committed by the same person. The book, I think, was originally disposed of by Fischer’s cousins – they thought it of no value, and it made its way eventually to Charnley’s shop from where it was stolen. I think the thief at that time had no idea it belonged to Fischer. It was merely suitable for his purposes.”

  “And the sword?”

  “That’s more simple,” I said. “It’s valuable. Someone has stolen it to sell.”

  “But why should anyone steal a severely damaged book?” Hugh mused.

  “Ah,” I said. “Now that’s one thing of which I’m absolutely certain – thanks to Lizzie Ord.”

  “Enlighten us,” Heron said dryly.

  “Because it’s damaged. According to Lizzie, the spine’s hanging by a thread and the glue’s giving way. The covers were coming away from the boards.”

  Esther stared at me. “Oh, no. Charles, tell me it is not so simple!”

  I nodded. “Leaving room for a document to be slipped between the cover and the boards. Then the hiding place could be sealed up – ”

  “What kind of document?” Hugh demanded.

  “That’s why I want to have another look,” I said. “But if you ask me to guess, I’d suggest it’s a map. An accurate surveyor’s map of a piece of woodland currently in dispute.”

  They stared at me. “Good God,” Hugh said. “You’re not telling me William Ridley’s behind all this!”

  35

  There is nothing more pleasant than a stroll in the early evening, but confine yourself to your host’s grounds, or you will be importuned by every poor man in the area.

  [A Frenchman’s guide to England, Retif de Vincennes

  (Paris; published for the author, 1734)]

  We chewed the matter over for a few minutes. Esther and Hugh were incredulous although Heron said that in his opinion Ridley was capable of any dishonesty he thought he could get away with. I gathered there’d been talk of a coal co-operative whose members would share the cost of producing, transporting, and shipping the coal south, and Ridley had in effect sabotaged the entire affair to gain some advantage of his own.

  Esther was, however, adamant Ridley wasn’t involved. “I saw the two men who attacked you in the wood, Charles! The one who ran away was young and fit. The one who held the horse was older and I admit I did not get a close look at him, but he was by no means as plump as Ridley! Taller, too, I would say – a well-built man, not a fat one!”

  “Sounds like Crompton to me,” Hugh said. “Charles, why don’t you see he’s the one!”

  The conversation became unprofitable, going round and round over the same ground. The
sun was sinking down the sky, and Esther shifted out of the increasingly chill shade of the tree, to sit in a pool of sunshine. It was about time the coachman returned; I got up and climbed the slope out of the dell to the point where I could look down on the track.

  No sign of the coach. I jogged back down to the others. Was there any polite way to ask Heron how much money he’d given the coachman and whether it was likely the man could have got roaring drunk at his expense?

  “I think we need to get going,” I said, “and the coach isn’t back yet. I’ll walk to the Black Pig and turn the coachman out.”

  “Want me to come with you?” Hugh asked.

  “No, no, I’ll be quicker on my own.”

  Esther glanced up. “If Catherine is not recovered, or if she is worse, do not make her move. Tell the landlord to give her a chamber and everything she needs, and we will call for her on our way back tomorrow. Tell him to call out the doctor or apothecary if necessary.”

  I agreed, although I doubted I could persuade Catherine to desert her mistress. She’s a determined woman and I suspect she’ll probably be on her deathbed before she gives in to weakness.

  Heron called to me as I was turning away. He was holding something out to me – one of the duelling pistols Crompton had packed in the hamper. “It would be foolish to take any risks,” he said.

  “Is it loaded?” I’m nervous around pistols, all too aware of my incompetence.

  “It is my experience that pistols are generally pointless when they are unloaded,” Heron said, dryly. “Unless you are facing a very gullible adversary, which these plainly are not.”

  I took the pistol from him gingerly, surprised by how light it was – or how well balanced. “Careful,” Heron said. “It will fire if you so much as twitch.”

  I gave him it back in a hurry. “Thank you, sir, but I have an even better weapon in my armoury – I can run very quickly.”