by Sara Fraser
After a moment Ainsley chuckled admiringly. ‘I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. You’re a bloody genius, Walter! Now, what’s next? Because I could do with getting back to the Unicorn and having something to eat and drink. Especially to drink!’
‘Sadly your breakfast must wait a while.’ Courtney was apologetic. ‘I’m sorry about this, but I need you to do an errand for me which is of the utmost importance for both of us.’
Ainsley shrugged resignedly. ‘Oh, very well. Where is it to?’
‘Back to the lodging house. I need you to give this to the keeper.’ He handed over a small canvas-wrapped, heavily sealed package, then produced a bottle. ‘And here’s something to sustain you on your journey.’
He uncorked the bottle and gave it to the other man. ‘Try this, my friend, I’m sure you’ll find it very palatable.’
Ainsley took a swig of the drink, and gasped with pleasure. ‘It’s powerful stuff!’
‘It’s the very finest French brandy!’ Courtney chuckled. ‘By the time you reach Birmingham you’ll be riding on air.’
Ainsley took another, larger swig, and laughed. ‘I feel I’m near doing that already, Walter.’
‘Be off with you now, and come and see me tonight at the Black Boy. I’ll have another of these waiting for you.’
‘I’ll look forward to that.’ Ainsley saluted and rode away with the bottle once again raised to his mouth.
‘Goodbye, Archibald.’ Courtney bared his teeth in a satisfied smile. ‘The way you’re glugging that drink you could well be dead even quicker than I expected. So give my best regards to the Devil when you meet him.’
In the early hours of the morning Phoebe Creswell had risen to care for her father, and now was taking a nap in her own bedroom when Pammy Mallot rushed to wake her and proclaim excitedly, ‘Christophe’s come back, Phoebe, and he looks so handsome, I swear I could eat him! And he reckons that the Company has give him what he asked for. So everything’s going to be alright!’
A fiery blush spread over Phoebe Creswell’s thin, sallow features and she pleaded breathlessly, ‘What shall I say to him, Pammy?’
Pammy Mallot hugged and kissed her. ‘You’ll tell him that you love him, you silly wench! And you’ll tell him that you’ll marry him on whatever day he cares to name!’
‘But what about my father?’ Phoebe’s smile faltered. ‘I’m all he has. What’s to become of him when I wed Christophe?’
‘That elixir Geraint’s brought us is already making your dad better. I can tell it is. And you’re forgetting what else Geraint’s told us, you daft little besom,’ the older woman chided fondly. ‘About how he’s been praying to the Good Lord for you and Christophe’s and your Dad’s happiness, and that the Good Lord has come to him in his dreams and told him that his prayers had been answered, and that all would be well. Now you get yourself up and put your finery on, and I’ll do your hair so you looks real pretty. Because your sweetheart has already told me that he wants you to be his lawful wedded wife before this week is out!’
FIFTY-ONE
The Old Black Boy Inn, Feckenham Village
Friday, 28th March
Morning
Though the outside trapdoors of the cellar were wide open the sickly odour of rotting flesh that had assailed Tom’s nostrils when he entered the building was now an all-enveloping nauseating stench as he descended the indoor cellar steps and joined Barry Blake at the side of the coffin.
‘Does you see what I mean now, Master Potts? This bugger’s near to driving me out of house and home, and he’s already losing me trade. Some of me regulars says that they won’t stay drinking here wi’ this stink up their noses. He’s turning green and purple all over, and the way he’s blistered and all swelled up, I reckon he could bust open at any time! He’s got to go!’ the innkeeper stated irately, and added warningly, ‘And if you don’t get him shifted this very morning, then I’ll have him chucked on to the nearest muckheap! And I wants his horse and tack cleared off me premises as well.’
Tom looked down into the coffin and ruefully acknowledged, ‘You have good cause for complaint, Master Blake. I can only assume that he must have had some severe disorder of the internal organs to have caused such a rapid condition of putrefaction.’
He experienced a twinge of foreboding as he visualized Amy’s reaction when this corpse arrived at the lock-up. But he was forced to accept that in this emergency it was his only immediate option.
‘Do you know where I might obtain the hire of a horse and cart hereabouts, Master Blake? If so, I’ll move this man immediately.’
Blake’s mood changed instantly. ‘I’m sorry if I was a bit short wi’ you, Master Potts, but you can see my point, can’t you? Nobody’s been able to put a name to him yet even when his face warn’t so blistered and swelled up. So there aren’t much chance of anybody recognizing him now, is there! And anyway, there’s nobody left who wants to pay to come down here to view him.’
‘The horse and cart, Master Blake?’ Tom reminded.
‘You go and tell Johnny Turl at the Smithy, up past the church there, that I sent you, and he’ll drive you wherever you wants to go. If you wants you can leave the dead ’un’s horse and tack here with me for the time being, and I’ll only charge for its fodder.’
Tom left the inn, eagerly drawing in the fresh air to clear the taste and stench of the death from his mouth and nostrils, and asking himself doubtfully, ‘Will it really serve any useful purpose to keep him at the lock-up? Within another day or so at this rate of decomposition he’ll be virtually unrecognizable anyway, except perhaps to his own mother.’
Engrossed in his thoughts he was not aware of the woman on the opposite side of the road until she called to him.
‘Constable Potts!’
He looked round to see Maud Harman coming towards him from the church lych-gate.
‘Good morning to you, Mrs Harman.’ He doffed his tall hat.
‘Have you just come from the pub?’ She smiled. ‘It’s a bloody vile stink, aren’t it?’
‘Terrible, Ma’am,’ he agreed wholeheartedly, and smiled in return. ‘Is that why you’re here, instead of in the pub?’
‘No, I’ve just been acting as witness at a wedding. They’re strangers here and I don’t know them, but they’re friends of Reverend Winward and he sent for me to come in haste and do it, because the woman who was meant to couldn’t come. He’s promised me a new bonnet and ribbons as well for me trouble.’
‘Well, that’s a nice gesture on his part,’ Tom observed.
‘Oh, he’s a lovely man, so he is.’ She caught hold of Tom’s arm. ‘Come on wi’ me. They’ll be coming out in two ticks. You must see the groom; he’s wearing such a splendid uniform, you’d think he was royalty to see him.’
Tom good-naturedly allowed her to lead him to the lych-gate as the wedding group were emerging from the church. But when he saw that group he did a double take. They were four in number: the bride and groom and two clergymen. He blinked in surprise as he recognized the bride.
It was Phoebe Creswell, smiling radiantly up at her groom, who stood tall, handsome and dashing in the scarlet, blue and gold uniform of an army officer. As Tom looked at the officer the memory of what Amy had related to him about the clash between Harry Pratt and Gertie Fowkes jumped into the forefront of his mind.
Because his father had been a military surgeon, Tom had spent many years of his boyhood and youth in close company with soldiers. Now he identified that the man standing beside Phoebe Creswell was wearing the uniform of an officer of a British regiment of the line.
‘So, it looks as if Harry Pratt is right! But why did Pammy Mallot, and Phoebe herself, say that her husband-to-be was a Major of the East India Company Army? Were they merely egging the pudding? Or is that what he himself has told them?’
The wedding group walked round behind the church towards the vicarage and disappeared out of sight.
Tom’s suspicions were now fully roused, and he deci
ded that when he had dealt with the problem of the dead man’s rotting corpse, he would be having a talk with Harry Pratt.
Walking closely behind the newly wedded couple, Walter Courtney’s features were radiating smiling contentment as he reiterated constantly, ‘I do declare this day has most definitely been made one of the happiest of my life, by my witnessing you two love birds being joined in Holy Matrimony, “’til Death do you part!”’
In his mind however there burgeoned an uneasy presentiment of encroaching danger.
‘Why was Tom Potts in company with Maud Harman to watch us leave the church? What’s behind his interest in this wedding?’
In Redditch a heavily veiled woman wearing the sombre black of mourning was reading the reward notice pinned to the outer door of St Stephen’s Chapel. By her side a small girl, also clad in mourning clothes, touched the woman’s gloved hand and asked, ‘Did I do right to tell you about this poster, Ma’am?’
‘You did indeed, Milly.’ Ella Peelson caressed the girl’s cheek with her fingers. ‘And as reward you shall have whatever treat your heart desires, this very day.’
FIFTY-TWO
Redditch
Friday, 28th March
Afternoon
For a full twenty minutes Amy had stood blocking the front doorway of the lock-up, stubbornly declaring over and over again, ‘You’re not bringing that coffin in here! It smells vile!’
‘But there’s nowhere else I can put the poor man. It’s my duty to keep him in a secure place until after the inquest.’ Tom reiterated the point over and over again.
And the muscular Johnny Turl kept interrupting with ever increasing irritability, ‘I’ve got to get back to me smithy! If you pair don’t make your minds up bloody quick, I’ll chuck this bugger off me cart right here on this very spot!’
As always in the Needle District a crowd of interested spectators had quickly gathered and divided into partisan divisions, vociferously applauding each repetition voiced by their chosen protagonist.
‘Please, Amy, let me bring him in. It’s my duty!’ Tom was pleading now.
‘Over my dead body!’ Amy remained obdurate.
‘That’s it! I’ve had enough o’ this nonsense!’ Johnny Turl shouted, and with a display of tremendous muscular strength he lifted the rope-bound coffin off his cart and thumped it down at Tom’s feet. ‘I’m off!’
He got back on to the cart seat and whipped his horse into movement, leaving Tom staring after him in dismay.
As the partisan divisions either cheered or booed Turl’s retreat, another cart accompanied by three bulky figures clad in filthy smocks, faces half hidden by droopy-brimmed slouch hats, each carrying a broad-bladed shovel, large jug and rope-handled wooden cask, came up to the lock-up door.
The cask-laden cart carried with it a rancid stench and the crowd, cursing in disgust, quickly retreated from it.
‘We’em come for the shit, Master Potts.’
Tom was shocked to find himself facing the corpulent, toothless wife of Ezekiel Rimmer, accompanied by the wives of Porky Hicks and Dummy; and to his self-disgust experienced a tremor of alarm that they might be here to take violent retribution for the arrest of their husbands.
Sally Rimmer laughed raucously as she saw his reaction. ‘Give you a shock, ’as we! Well you’ve no need to moither yourself, Master Potts. We don’t bear no malice against you. In fact you did us all a favour when you took them useless, wasting, drunken bastards to Worcester Jail, didn’t he, girls?’
Her companions heartily agreed.
‘So, Master Potts, if you’ll kindly step aside, we’ll clear your privy now. It’s still the same charge at fourpence. But we does a much cleaner job of it than them three bastards. Don’t we, girls?’
The girls heartily seconded her.
Amy called from the doorway. ‘Mistress Rimmer, do you have an outhouse or shed that you can keep locked up tight and safe from robbers?’
‘I does, me duck. Me outhouse where me husband did his skinning. An army couldn’t break into it when it’s locked up tight, I can tell you.’
‘Then how do you fancy storing this dead man in it for a few days? My husband will pay you well for doing so.’
Tom turned to her in shock at her intervention, but even as he did so he realized that it might be a very good way out of this present impasse.
He turned back again to Sally Rimmer and smiled. ‘But it will have to be on the strict condition that I hold all the keys to the outhouse, Mistress Rimmer, and will have sole entry while the coffin remains there.’
‘So you shall, Master Potts. You’se got Sally Rimmer’s sworn oath on it. You can come down wi’ us now and see it locked away. Then we’ll come back up here and clear your privy. Girls, get this dead ’un on the cart.’
Led by Tom and Sally Rimmer the party and the spectators travelled towards the Old Laystall attracting attention and jeering gibes from passers-by at Tom’s expense.
‘Now you’re doing the job you was born to do, you lanky bleeder! Body snatching!’
‘Look at Jack Sprat, the new funeral mute! He’s got just the right face for it, aren’t he!’
‘Be careful, Potts! Watch out that they don’t mistake you for an extra-long turd, and shovel you up wi’ the rest o’ the shit!’
‘They ’uddn’t bother shoveling him up because there aren’t enough meat on him to feed a single bloody pea!’
At the Laystall adults and children swarmed out from the hovels clamouring to know who was in the coffin, but Sally Rimmer shouted at them to make way, and her helpers carried the coffin through her house and out to the windowless shanty at the rear. She un-padlocked and flung open its door, proclaiming proudly, ‘I told you that a fuckin’ army couldn’t break into this when it’s locked up tight, didn’t I, Master Potts?’
As Tom followed the coffin-bearers into its reeking interior, he thought wryly, ‘They’d die of asphyxiation if they tried to stay and occupy it, that’s for sure.’
Sally Rimmer demonstrated the lever-operated roof shutter.
Tom thanked her and asked for the padlock keys.
She handed them over. ‘There’s only these two, Master Potts, and now you can lock the door behind you and be sure that nobody can get in here unless you yourself lets ’um in.’
Tom thanked her again, closed and padlocked the door, then said farewell and made a hasty retreat from the Laystall.
‘I reckon you’ve missed a chance of earning a few bob, Sally,’ Porky Hicks’ wife observed. ‘I reckon a few down here who hadn’t got time to walk to Feckenham ’ud probably have paid a penny or two to have a good long look at the dead bugger now he’s on their doorsteps.’
Sally Rimmer’s gums bared in a grin as she winked slyly and produced another rusty key. ‘There aren’t no flies on me, girls, apart from the ones I lets tickle me quim when I’m feeling fruity.’
Her two friends laughed uproariously.
As Tom walked back up the long slope towards the flat plateau of the town centre, the memory of the wedding party he had seen at Feckenham Church came into his mind, and with it the recollection of Amy’s account of Harry Pratt’s irate clash with Gertie Fowkes.
He reached the plateau and was in sight of the Horse and Jockey Inn, standing on the east bank of the Big Pool.
‘That’s where Harry Pratt drinks mostly, isn’t it? I’ll see if he’s there.’
He found the half-drunk Bellman sitting by the fireside in the empty tap room and wasted no time in sitting next to him.
‘I was in Feckenham this morning, Harry, and you’ll never guess who I saw coming newly-wed out of the church.’
‘I don’t need to guess,’ Pratt snorted irritably. ‘Because I knows for sure who was wed there this morning. It was Phoebe Creswell and that cunt who’s trying to make out that he’s in the bloody Madras Regiment.’
‘How did you know it was them getting wed?’ Tom asked.
‘Because I was in Beoley this morning, and I saw ’um setti
ng out, so I called in at the house and asked Pammy Mallot what was going on. She was bloody narked because Old George Creswell was took very bad again first thing this morn, so she had to stop and look after him and couldn’t go to the wedding.’
‘Apart from the uniform, what else makes you disbelieve the man’s story?’ Tom queried.
Pratt scowled. ‘Three simple questions that he couldn’t give me answer to: the Madras Regiment’s battle cry, “Veera Madrassi, adi kollu! adi kollu!” That means “Brave Madrassi, hit and kill! Hit and kill!” The regiment’s motto, “Swadharme nidhanam shreyaha.” That means “It is glory to die doing one’s duty.” And he said that the regiment is recruited from Bengal, which is in the Calcutta Presidency. When I knows for sure that the Madras Regiment is all recruited from the Nair warrior clans of the Madras Presidency.
‘I was at the Battle of Assaye with ’um and saw ’um win their Elephant Crest for their bravery, and got to be good friends wi’ some of ’um afterwards. So I knows one thing for certain. Cris-bloody-summat de Lan-bloody-summat-else is no more a fuckin’ Major o’ the Madras Regiment than I am!’
Tom fully accepted what he had been told. ‘Well then, Harry, it seems very likely he’s a fortune-hunter, out to get Phoebe Creswell’s money.’
‘That’s bloody certain, that is!’ Pratt agreed vehemently ‘And I knows how he got to meet Phoebe Creswell in the first place. Because a few days ago I was reading a month-old Worcester Herald, and saw the notice put in it by an officer looking for a wife, and asking for any replies to be sent to XYZ, care of Charlie Bromley’s shop. And I remembered that back in January, Phoebe Creswell give me a letter addressed to that very same XYZ, care o’ Charlie Bromley’s shop.’
‘Do you still have that Worcester Herald, because if so I’d like to read it?’ Tom enquired.
‘I do, and I’ll drop it in at the lock-up first thing tomorrow for you,’ Pratt told him, then continued, ‘And there’s another thing that seems fishy to me as well. A couple o’ weeks ago I saw that fat parson that was with ’um this morning, down at the bottom o’ Beoley Mount talking ever so furtive wi’ the soldier boy, and I thought then that they was hatching summat between ’um. So it stands to reason, don’t it, that if one of ’um is up to no good, then they both am.’
