The Ghosts of Greenwood

by Maggie MacKeever

  Sir John wished he might take to his. In one hand, the Earl held a dueling pistol, and in the other his musket. “You fired that shot?” demanded Sir John.

  “I expected it would bring you.” Dickon gestured with his musket. “You might want to take a close look, and quickly, before the crowd arrives.” The Chief Magistrate dismounted, keeping firm grip on his own horse’s reins. The Earl stepped to one side.

  Sir John bent over the figure sprawled on the ground. Blood matted the fallen man’s auburn hair, its source a neat little hole between his eyes.

  “Dead,” said Dickon. “I’ll wager he has been for some time.” With one boot, he nudged a horseshoe. “I found this, along with the dueling pistol, beside him on the ground.”

  Hoofbeats pounded up behind them. Men’s voices scolded as horses drew back hard against the reins, unsettled by the smell of human blood. Word spread quickly among the crowd that a man was down.

  And not just any man. The huntsman spoke for them all. “ ‘Tis Master Connor, rest his soul. The devil’s claimed its own.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  A conference was underway in the Castle’s Long Gallery, a narrow room with windows on three sides, and on the inner wall a fireplace. Scattered about its length were a miscellany of antique chairs, benches and chests. Ancestral portraits adorned the wood paneling. A Jacobean hall screen extended from the floor almost to the ceiling at one end of the room.

  Lady Bligh was seated on a gilt painted sofa with brass claw feet, Casanova stretched across her lap. Her hair was ginger, her gown peach, and her expression grim.

  “The hunt harked to Dorset’s signal,” said Sir John, who was uncomfortably ensconced in a high-backed chair ornamented with thistles in full bloom. “No one saw anything out of the ordinary en route. Or will admit to seeing anything, at any rate. By the time he was discovered, Connor Halliday must have been dead a minimum of two hours, which means that he was shot about the time we joined the meet. In all the confusion, any evidence was destroyed.”

  “If evidence there was.” Hubert turned away from a portrait of the third Baron’s favorite mistress, a lively-looking lady with a naughty twinkle in her slightly protuberant blue eyes. “The man could have shot himself.”

  “An awkward way to do it, don’t you think?” Lady Bligh commented. “I believe a shot to the temple is generally preferred.”

  Sir John rubbed his own temples. “The pistol found beside the body hadn’t been fired. Connor Halliday didn’t die by his own hand.”

  “Dueling pistols come in pairs. If you found one pistol at the scene, the murderer most likely carried the fatal weapon away with him.” Dulcie stroked Casanova in a practiced manner that caused the cat to squirm in an excess of ecstasy. “As would be obvious to anyone with a modicum of common sense.”

  Sir John ignored this suggestion that his own common sense might be lacking. “How did you pass the morning, Humboldt?”

  “Or, to be precise, the fateful hour?” Humbug might have posed for a portrait himself, so dazzling were his checked trousers and wasp-waisted coat of bright primrose. He arranged himself artistically on a robustly carved oak bench. “After our cozy family breakfast-party dispersed, I proceeded to the village. I see that you are curious as to why I should have done so. You don’t consider me one to thrill to bucolic delights.”

  “What I consider you,” the Chief Magistrate uttered wrathfully, “is beside the point. Continue, if you will.”

  “Witness me eager to be of service.” Hubert smoothed one flawless cuff. “Now, where was I?”

  “In the village,” said Lady Bligh. “Don’t make me wish you had stayed there.”

  “Dear aunt, I shan’t allow you to take a rise out of me! Especially when I know you wish no such thing.” Bluebeard, who had been blending nicely with the monkey, bird and fruit-embellished mantel frieze, opened a curious eye. “Coxcomb,” he observed.

  “Feather-duster,” parried Hubert, and returned his attention to Sir John. “It is the festive season, after all. I felt in need of some holiday spirit and good cheer — of which, you may have noticed, there is precious little here! Good cheer I found in plenty; there’s to be a cockfight this afternoon. The holiday spirit was provided by Abel Bagshot, who has in his cellar some fine old ale. By the bye, Dulcie, since when have you taken on the role of Lady Bountiful? The man waxed positively ebullient about a Patent Warm-Air Stove.”

  The Baroness awarded her least favorite nephew a sharp glance. “Keep to the point.”

  “Anything to oblige you, dear Dulcie. From the inn I wandered around the village for a time — what amount of time I cannot guess, due to the quality of Abel’s ale — and then returned to the Castle, where I found the two of you exchanging confidences. There. That is the whole. How fortunate that I’m not in need of an alibi.” Came a pregnant pause. “Ah, I see that I am in need of one. I don’t imagine that either of you would care to inform me why I should come under suspicion? I thought not. If you mean to discover the whereabouts of everyone who might possibly have shot Connor Halliday, you will have a busy time of it, Sir John.”

  That much, at least, was fact. “I didn’t say that you were under suspicion,” the Chief Magistrate snapped.

  “You didn’t say I wasn’t,” Hubert retorted. “Which isn’t surprising, considering our previous association, though I might point out that to allow oneself to be prejudiced by past indiscretions is fatal to the deductive process. From all accounts, scores of people wished Connor Halliday ill. Even some of us! Happily, we are all accounted for. Dulcie and Austen and Livvy were here; Jael took herself off to explore the tinkers’ camp; I was chatting with Abel Bagshot; and Dickon was most providentially with you at the crucial time.”

  Dulcie flicked open her snuffbox. “People are already saying that Connor was shot by his brother’s ghost. Although one is inclined to wonder how a ghost managed to hold a gun.”

  Sir John refused to be distracted. He repeated, “The tinkers’ camp?”

  Hubert shrugged. “I gather, kindred spirits. The tinkers are a free and restless people. Like Jael, they thrive best when allowed to range afar.”

  Sir John saw no purpose in continuing a discussion destined to range in that manner. “Can it be possible, Dulcie, that you have nothing to say?”

  “I’m thinking, John. One of us must.” Having put the Chief Magistrate in his place, Lady Bligh continued: “A man doesn’t go out for an early morning ride with a dueling pistol in his possession unless he means to meet someone he has reason to distrust.”

  “Pistols at dawn?” asked Hubert. “Bravo, aunt! However, I must most reluctantly remind you that Mr. Halliday’s reputation would not inspire many people to meet clandestinely with him. You do have your work set out before you, Sir John! Any one of the fox-hunters could have fired the fatal shot, then joined up with the others. It would be damned unusual if everyone set out on time.”

  “In that case, why was the shot not heard?” Dulcie paused to take a pinch of snuff and sneezed, thereby disturbing Casanova, who thudded to the floor, considered his options, then draped himself across Sir John’s boots. “Fortunate that Connor wasn’t shot with a musket. Since this is hunting country, practically every villager has one.”

  “This is poaching country also,” Hubert reminded her. “Or it was before Connor brought in his man-traps. He might have done well to remember that poachers often kill forbidden game simply so they may have food to eat.”

  Lady Bligh chose to ignore her nephew’s unprecedented compassion for his fellow man. “No one could have predicted which way the fox would leap, or that Dickon’s horse would suffer an injury, causing him to take the shortcut through the copse. I’ll wager the corpse wasn’t meant to be found so soon.”

  Hubert tented his fingers together. “I can see it now. Connor Halliday setting out armed with a dueling pistol to confront his brother’s ghost.”

  “Ghost. Ghostie, ghostie, ghostie!” Bluebeard stretched out his wide wings.
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  “Yes, my darling, ghostie,” said the Baroness. “Now hush.”

  “Shut your bone box,” agreed Bluebeard and, in perfect imitation of his mistress, sneezed.

  Sir John didn’t believe in ghosts. He did believe Hubert Humboldt had gone to the village, but remained unpersuaded that Humbug had spent the entire morning there. The Chief Magistrate was unlikely to forget that the Honourable Hubert had enjoyed a successful career as a highwayman until the memorable occasion when he’d waylaid Sir John’s own coach. If not for Dulcie’s intervention, and the tarradiddles spun by Jael, the erstwhile Gentleman would have danced the sheriff’s waltz. Instead he had emerged unscathed, to receive from a doubtless deranged relative an inheritance that replenished his perennially empty purse and made it possible for him to take his inamorata on a brief sojourn abroad.

  If only they’d remained on foreign soil. Instead, they had returned to interfere with his well-earned vacation. Life, decided Sir John, was sometimes most damnably unfair.

  Moreover, he wasn’t fond of cats, especially the cat currently threatening the welfare of his footwear. Cautiously, he tried to shift his position. Casanova dug in his claws.

  “The thing was bungled,” Dulcie announced. “The second pistol should have been left beside the body, the pistol from which the fatal shot was fired. Odd, is it not, that the culprit should have been sufficiently familiar with firearms as to inflict so neat a wound, and at the same time so unfamiliar as to be unaware that a shot fired at close range leaves a different appearance than one fired from afar?”

  “Definitely a theory!” applauded Hubert. “In which case the loss of the horseshoe was another oversight, if the horseshoe was lost at the same time, which remains open to doubt. All you need do is discover the owner of those pistols, Sir John. And determine why Connor Halliday allowed his murderer to get close enough to shoot him between the eyes.”

  “Indeed!” said the Chief Magistrate, scathingly. “Easy enough to learn who made the piece, certainly; far less easy to discover who owned the thing when any identifying marks have most likely been filed away. A man’s not apt to commit cold-hearted murder with a pistol that can be easily traced. Once we do discover the owner, we will probably also discover that the pistols were stolen from him.” He cast a fulminating glance upon his hostess. “A quiet country holiday!”

  “Dear John.” The Baroness rose gracefully, leaned down as easily as a woman half her age, and scooped Casanova up into her arms. “I could hardly foresee that such an event as this would cut up our peace.”

  Sir John suspected that Dulcie foresaw more than she chose to share. Still, he said, gruffly, “For me to blame you because someone saw fit to put a period to Connor Halliday’s existence would be the outside of enough.”

  To Hubert’s disappointment, for that gentleman was deriving great amusement from the spectacle of Bow Street’s Chief Magistrate being reduced to lovestruck schoolboy status by his Machiavellian aunt, Dickon and Ned entered the room. “What’s this I hear?” Ned demanded. “Connor Halliday is dead?”

  “I must say,” murmured Hubert, who saw his way clear to doing a rare good deed, “that your reaction to this news is much calmer than Livvy’s was. She took one look at Sir John — who had a fair amount of blood on his clothing as result of kneeling by the body — and fainted dead away. No, don’t distress yourselves! Livvy is now ensconced in her bedchamber. On last glimpse, Austen was attempting to amuse her with a game of backgammon, while Jael was explaining how to catch a fish with one’s bare hands. One first tickles its throat, I gather, and then lifts it out of the water by its gills.”

  Lord Dorset’s expression had grown increasingly thunderous during this explanation. “I do not care,” he snarled, “to discuss Livvy with you.”

  Clearly, Dickon had interpreted his wife’s reaction as grief for Connor, instead of concern for himself. “Good intentions,” lamented Hubert. “Coz, you are too quick off the mark.”

  “Am I, by God!?” the Earl exclaimed.

  “You are,” Dulcie informed him. “I have always deprecated your tendency to leap before you look.”

  “You found the blacksmith?” interjected Sir John, before further insults could be exchanged.

  “I did.” Dickon awarded Hubert one last dark glare. “Rather, I found his apprentice sitting on a distant wall, straining to see the pack. It took no little time to make him understand my question, and then I had to endure a lecture about the difference between a donkey’s shoe and that of a thoroughbred. In short — which the conversation wasn’t! — the lad thinks that no shoeless horse was taken there this day, or recently, but can’t be sure.”

  “A shoeless horse,” mused Dulcie. “I recall hearing of a local beast that invariably pulled off a fore shoe before he’d gone over a half-dozen leaps. Nothing was wrong with the horse’s hoof; he did it by catching the hind shoes with the fore. No amount of ingenuity could cure him of the habit.”

  “Interesting,” Hubert said. “Don’t you think so, Sir John?”

  The Chief Magistrate contemplated the tedious necessity of tracking down a horse that habitually cast off a shoe. “I don’t think anything. I’m simply trying to fix in my mind the various events of the day.”

  Lady Bligh returned to her gilt sofa, Casanova draped over her shoulder like some furry boa, perfectly complimenting her peach gown and ginger hair. Lord Dorset paced the length of the Gallery and then turned back. Hubert propped his elegantly shod right foot on his impeccably clad left knee and contemplated Bluebeard, who had flopped over on his back with feet extended straight up in the air.

  Sir John glanced at Ned. “You met up with Dorset at what point?”

  “In the stable.” Ned’s face was pale. “I had gone out riding. We arrived there at the same time. Has Lady Halliday been informed of her stepson’s accident? She will be distressed.”

  The Baroness tilted her head away from Casanova, who was purring loudly in her ear. “Even those who disliked Connor must be distressed by the news of his death. The locals will rally to Lady Halliday, now that he can no longer keep them away. I wonder, where is the missing temple key?”

  “How do you know the key is missing?” Sir John asked.

  She cast him an exasperated glance. “For heaven’s sake, everyone knows it’s missing! Except, apparently, Bow Street. Which leads me to further speculation about the disposition of the Halliday estate. The missing brother is likely to inherit, I imagine. Who may or may not have been recently glimpsed in the neighborhood.”

  “Ah,” said Hubert. “The mysterious twin. Who may or may not remain with us in this vale of tears.”

  “Surely someone would have noticed had both brothers been skulking about Greenwood,” Sir John objected. “Moreover, they were bound to have crossed paths.”

  The Baroness arched an eyebrow. “You subscribe to the theory of a mysterious assailant? Maybe even, a vengeful shade? And no, Bluebeard, we do not care to hear about ghosties again.”

  Could a parrot look disgruntled? Sir John half-expected the bird to protest.

  Definitely, he’d been spending too much time with Lady Bligh. However, he was not yet sufficiently muddled to divulge his own suspicions. “I subscribe to no particular theory, yet. It grows increasingly urgent that we discover whether Cade Halliday is alive or dead. ”

  “ ‘We?’ ” repeated Dulcie. “I do not suppose that you refer to myself.”

  Sir John refused to meet her gaze. “I have sent for Crump.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mr. Crump, peace officer on the staff of the Chief Magistrate of Bow Street, did not care for the country. Yet here he was, prepared to ruralize. One did not defy Sir John, not if one wished to remain in a position to earn the reward money that made one considerably plumper in the pocket than otherwise. Therefore, Crump packed his necessities — pipe, Occurrence Book, the pistol that customarily resided in his waistband — and set out, muttering beneath his breath all the while.

  Not for Cru
mp, despite reward money past and yet to come, was the rich man’s means of travel by post. Due to the urgency of the notice and the slimness of his purse, Crump had no choice but to embark in a mail-coach, its exterior covered with baskets containing game and turkey, oyster-barrels and the like. There were no other passengers, parcels and game being more profitable and less difficult to transport. Inside the coach’s cramped interior was room for a single person to sit down. Crump had barely squeezed his portly self into the cramped space when the coach jolted forward in a manner that made him wish even more fervently that he might have stayed at home.

  With the greatest skill and by the narrowest margin, the coachman maneuvered his vehicle out of the inn-yard and into the narrow street, in the process inflicting a minimum of damage on horses, coach, and the postilion’s long copper horn. Crump soon grew very familiar with that instrument, which when properly blown could rouse a horse-keeper from slumber, if not the dead from their graves. Four feet long, the horn terminated in a bell shape. It had a narrow bore and a German-silver mouthpiece, and two sharp, agonizingly unmelodious, tones.

  Six horses drew the vehicle. As it set out, so did the coach proceed. All went on well enough, if uncomfortably, until a restive leader swerved to escape a randy rooster that strayed out into the road. The coach toppled over, baskets and parcels and all. Crump emerged unscathed, but the coach suffered a broken axle, and the guard a broken arm. Crump continued his journey in a carrier’s cart.

  Dusk had fallen by the time he arrived at last in Greenwood. For the duration of his visit, which he prayed would be brief, Crump secured a small chamber upstairs at the Four Nuns. The sparsely furnished room was reached by a staircase carved into the thickness of an outside wall.

  After stowing his belongings, smoothing the scant fringe of hair that adorned his balding pate, and in general tidying his person — Crump liked to make a good appearance and generally, despite a garish taste in waistcoats, achieved a dapper air — he went in search of the public rooms. As Crump understood the situation, a man had been found shot to death. Sir John believed this occurrence had been not accident but murder, which it was left to Crump to prove.