by Robin Paige
“That was Carter’s idea,” Charles said. “It sounds reasonable to me.” He watched with no little admiration Edward’s deft stirring of the pot. He himself had always had to endure the tender mercies of one cook or another. Once when he had dared to reconnoiter the kitchen in search of tea and a sandwich, the cook had been so horrified at his effrontery that she had served notice on the spot.
“And to me,” Edward said, and fetched the bread from the cupboard. “There’ve been rats in the granaries many times before this.”
Charles indicated the envelopes spread out on the table. “My guess is that Artie came upon a large cache of wheat somewhere—sacks of grain stolen from several different farms. To authenticate his discovery, he filled his pockets with samples of the grain, intending perhaps to lay watch and apprehend the thieves. But he was surprised and murdered.”
“It makes sense.” Edward spooned out a plate of cabbage and potatoes and added a chunk of satisfyingly greasy sausage. He set it in front of Charles. “A crew takes the threshing machines about from farm to farm, on hire. The wheat is cut and threshed and sacked and tallied in the field, then stored in the farm’s granary until it is sold or used. And of course there’s no guard on it.”
Charles poured mugs of the ale he had brought. “So anyone can help himself to a dozen sacks or so,” he said, pushing the ladder-back chair to the table and sitting down. “It isn’t difficult to juggle the tally, either, so the farmer never misses it.”
“A dozen sacks from a dozen farms amounts to a fair harvest, especially when you’ve not the expense of ploughing and planting.” There being a deficit of chairs, Edward sat on an overturned box. “But a cache of stolen grain might be hidden in any granary hereabouts,” he added, slathering butter on a crusty slab of bread. “I wonder where Artie happened on it?”
“I’ve got an idea about that,” Charles said. “After supper, we can walk there. It’s no more than a mile.” He began to eat. “By the way, I’ve located Tommy Brock.”
“You don’t say!” Edward exclaimed. “The elusive Mr. B. comes to light at last. How did you manage that?”
Charles glanced up from his cabbage and potatoes. “Actually, it was Miss Ardleigh who managed it—how, I have yet to discover. She sent word this morning that Brock has a cottage behind the Pig and Whistle in Manningtree. I haven’t actually talked to him yet, however. I rode over this afternoon, but he was out working, according to the landlady. She expected him back on the morrow.”
At the mention of Miss Ardleigh, Charles saw, Edward’s face had become thoughtful. Charles applied himself to his supper, trying to decide what to say. If Ned did not already know about Bradford Marsden’s suit, it would be kind to give him advance notice so that he might prepare himself for the likely outcome. Miss Ardleigh, however, was more independent than any woman Charles had ever known. She was perfectly capable of refusing a baron-to-be and accepting a village constable, if that was where her affections lay.
Charles frowned. But if Ned had won her heart, why the devil had she given Marsden permission to call? One would have thought that she would have the wit to reject Marsden’s proposal before he made it. The whole thing was such a muddle that he finally decided to say nothing. He and Ned finished their supper in silence, smoked the cigars Charles had brought while they did the washing-up, and set off into the silvery dark, their path half-lit by a moon high above the ground fog and by Ned’s bull’s-eye lantern, which cast a golden halo around their feet.
31
Anything like the sound of a rat
Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!
—ROBERT BROWNING
“The Pied Piper of Hamelin”
“Oh, Mother, Mother, there has heen an old man in the dairy—a dreadful ’normous big rat, Mother, and he’s stolen a pat of butter and the rolling pin.’
—BEATRIX POTTER
The Roly-Poly Pudding
Contrary to her mother’s belief, Betsy Oliver was not in bed when the Misses Ardleigh and Potter called to borrow Kep. She was, in fact, sitting at the top of the narrow stairs in her pink-flannel nightdress, her elbows on her knees and her fists jammed under her chin, listening to what was said in the kitchen. When Miss Potter remarked that she and Miss Ardleigh intended to go ratting, Betsy scowled horribly for a moment or two, then stood up and squared her shoulders.
If they could take Kep ratting (although she couldn’t fathom why they fancied Kep—the dog was a tracker, not a ratter, and a lazy layabout where work was concerned), she could take Mr. Browne on the same errand. And when the hunting was all done and over, they could compare their catches (although not where Mother could hear), and she could gloat. And gloat she would, to be sure, for the owl was a superb hunter who much preferred rats to mice and larger rats to smaller, and could be counted on to best that lazy Kep any night of the week. Her father had once read her a poem called “The Pied Piper.” When he had come to the lines where the sound of the rat made his heart go pit-a-pat, she had laughed out loud. She and Father had agreed that it was exactly how Mr. Browne must feel when he made to dig his talons into a cowering rat.
The spirit of the game dispelled any sleepiness, and she ran lightly to her tiny corner room under the low thatched roof, skinned out of her nightdress, and pulled on a pair of breeches and a dark-blue shirt. She tucked her hair up under a black woolen cap and climbed out the window. Her descent down the drainpipe was executed with the careless panache of long practice. When she reached the ground she darted toward the shed, keeping to the shadows, and slipped through the door. As she did so, she heard the voices of Miss Ardleigh and Miss Potter, who were leaving by the front way.
“Who?” Mr. Browne inquired querulously from his perch by the window. Jemima Puddle-duck, nesting for the evening in a box of straw, pulled her head out from under her wing and uttered a drowsy quack.
“And where have you been?” Betsy demanded, hands on hips. Jemima had gone missing that afternoon. Betsy had searched everywhere for her, to no avail.
Jemima put her head under her wing again. Of course she wouldn’t tell where she had been, for she was still trying to find a place to lay her eggs undisturbed and raise a family. Probably she had found one, and she intended to keep it secret.
“Pay no attention to Jemima,” Betsy told Mr. Browne. “She’s obsessed with ducklings.” She slipped her hand into the leather gauntlet sleeve her father had contrived for her. “We’re going ratting.”
Mr. Browne’s golden eyes glittered and he clicked his sharp beak in anticipation of dinner. She found an old gunnybag, then released the owl from his perch. With the bird on her arm, she stole through a hole in the garden hedge, went around the brick wall at the back corner, and set out through the fog.
Fifteen minutes later, under a misty moon that turned the drifting fog phosphorescent and set the trees to glimmering as if they had been dipped in mercury, Betsy and Mr. Browne crossed the pasture and fetched up at the stone wall above the barn at Highfields Farm, where she knew the hunting to be better than anywhere else in the neighbourhood. When the owl returned with his prey, she planned to drop his kill into the gunnybag. Allowing Mr. Browne an interim snack or two would only delay him and dull his appetite. If their catch of the night were to exceed that of Kep and his two borrowers, the owl’s desire for dinner would need to remain sharp.
The night was chilly, but for the next little while, Betsy kept warm by busying herself with the owl. In fact, the two of them were enjoying quite the most remarkable success—a success at least partly attributable to the fog that was draped like a diaphanous shawl over the trees and fields, softening even the ominous sound of the owl’s wing beat.
Indeed, it might have been the fog that explained what happened next. For to Betsy’s great surprise, while she was sitting on the wall, waiting for Mr. Browne to return from his third sortie (his first two quite dead victims were safely in the bag), she glimpsed the shadowy forms of a dog and two shawled women—one of them carrying a lantern that ca
st huge, wavering shadows against the barn wall. They crept furtively along the side of the barn, opened the door, went inside, and shut it behind them. The moon moved behind a cloud.
Betsy stifled a surprised exclamation. She should have thought that Miss Ardleigh, who had evidenced quite a little interest in the barn, would think to go hunting there, and coming along the lane, would be considerably delayed. Her surprise also held not a little envy. Why hadn’t she thought to take Mr. Browne into the barn, where he might hunt in the warmer, drier place? A seat in the hay would have been far more comfortable than her perch on the fence, where the cold of the stones penetrated through her breeches and the silvery dark was distinctly chilly. And there were far more rats in the barn than in the hedgerows. She drew down her brows and gritted her teeth. Her opponents had displayed a devious ingenuity with which she had not credited them.
Mr. Browne came back crestfallen and empty-clawed from his third flight. But Betsy praised and stroked him anyway, and released him with a special word of encouragement. As if to show her his gratitude, he returned with a brown mole of substantial size, with enormous whiskers and a very long tail. Betsy congratulated him on his skill and cunning, popped the mole into the bag with the rats, and released the owl once again, confident that she and Mr. Browne would outshine the ratters in the barn. They were unlikely to find a mole.
And it was in that mood, with the celebration of victory in her heart, that the second surprise of the evening overtook Betsy. It was a scratchy burlap sack that smelled horribly of fish, dropped over her head. She bit and spit and cried and wriggled, but despite her efforts to escape she was flung to the ground, held down by an invisible knee and several hands, and rolled up in the sack as neatly as if she were the raisin-and-currant-and-sugar-and-butter filling in the roly-poly puddings her mother made with a rolling pin: her ankles trussed, her arms pinned to her sides, her nose and mouth filled with the stink of rotten fish, and her heart pounding in terror.
The rats had put Betsy in the bag.
32
No female Rat shall me deceive
Nor catch me by a crafty wile
—Roxbury Ballads, 1866
“So it’s Highfields Farm you have in mind,” Edward said over his shoulder, as they strode purposefully along the ridge above the River Stour.
“What’s your opinion?” Charles asked. He was trying to walk close enough behind Edward to utilize the lantern light, but far enough back to avoid treading on his heels. “If you were caching stolen wheat, would the barn at Highfields be a reasonable place to hide it?”
“It would,” Edward replied decidedly. “The barn is only a field’s length up from the river. And it’s below the locks, giving easy access to the estuary and the quay at Manningtree. If a barge or a flat-boat were pulled in below the barn, grain could be hauled there by wagon and readily ferried to a larger boat, or even to a ship moored at Manningtree.”
Charles negotiated a rickety stile after Edward. “Who owns the farm?”
“Sir Thomas Morrell, of Ipswich. He let it last year to a man named Napthen, who comes from over Harwich way. It’s said that Napthen isn’t much of a farmer, and the evidence points that way. The fields are idle, save for the odd cow.” He skirted a fresh pile of dung in the path. “How’d you get onto Highfields, Charlie?”
Charles grinned into the dark. “Miss Ardleigh again, I fear.”
Edward turned back a surprised face. “Indeed?”
“Quite,” Charles said dryly. “She heard word of it from little Betsy.” It was interesting to speculate how much of the information regarding this matter had come from the distaff side.
Edward stopped in the middle of the path. “I don’t suppose I should ask how the child came by such facts,” he muttered.
Charles chuckled. “It appears that the young lady was out prowling with her owl one night when she saw a group of men—including, it seems, the elusive Tommy Brock—driving a wagon. They were hauling sacks from Highfields Barn to a boat on the river. Exactly the scenario you surmised.”
Edward’s mouth was set, his voice sour. “Her father let her roam too freely, like a boy. Agnes will have to curb that one.”
“I hope not,” Charles heard himself replying rather to his own surprise. “A young woman growing up in these times needs a sense of adventure.”
The thought of Miss Ardleigh came unbidden to his mind. If Betsy grew up with anything like Kate Ardleigh’s sense of adventure, she would be fortunate. On the other hand, she might also find herself in serious trouble now and then—especially if she took after Kate’s apparent interest in criminal mischief. He grinned wryly. That was an interest that would likely be curbed, however, when Kate became Lady Marsden.
Edward wheeled about with an impatient sound and started off again. “Adventure be damned. A girl who goes prowling about at night may not live to grow up. These people, whoever they are, have already killed once—and a police officer, at that. Who’s to say they wouldn’t murder a child?”
Or a woman, Charles thought, remembering that Miss Ardleigh had persisted in ignoring his earlier admonitions of caution. But that was something he could not worry about just now.
“I see no boat,” he remarked, looking down the hill where the broad, green meadow gently shelved into the river. “No sign of a barge.”
“Are you expecting activity tonight?”
“I don’t know,” Charles said. “But the barn is just up the way there. It might be well to shutter the lantern.”
A little distance down the path, Highfields Barn emerged, a solid shape out of the shrouding, silvered fog. The silence was broken only by the heavy beat of an owl’s wings and its sharp predatory cry, uttered once and then again.
“There’s a side door,” Edward whispered, his voice eager, a man ready for action. “And no sign of life. The farmhouse seems dark, too. Shall we risk a look inside?”
“By all means,” Charles said. “My guess is that if our quarry were on the premises, there’d be a wagon. Anyway, if they’re in there, we’ve cornered them.”
“Like rats,” Edward said feelingly.
Charles moved forward, carefully, looking all around. But caution did not seem warranted. No boat, no wagon, and the countryside was cloaked in a profound stillness, as thick and palpable as the fog. At the door, they paused once more.
“I’ll go first,” Charles said. “You follow.” Edward seemed about to say something, then nodded. Cautiously, Charles pushed the door inward with his foot and flattened himself against the wall. Hearing nothing, and seeing that the interior of the barn was dark as pitch, he stepped quickly over the threshold, Edward on his heels.
Inside, there was the thick, dusky odour of animals and stored hay and paraffin, as if a lantern had been recently extinguished. All was quiet, cloaked with a heavy, foreboding stillness, and the air itself seemed to have weight. From a nearby corner came the sound of a large rat rustling in the hay. Charles took an uneasy step forward, groping along the wall. He was overtaken by the intuition that he and Edward were not alone in the barn, and the hair rose on the back of his neck.
Then he heard it, a throaty, menacing growl. He stopped, and Edward bumped into him.
“Someone’s here,” Charles said.
“Could merely be a dog shut in to guard the animals,” Edward said quietly. “Or kill rats. I heard one rustling just a moment ago—a big one.”
“Someone’s here,” Charles insisted, low. “I feel it.”
His insistence was corroborated with a sharp, light sneeze. A female sneeze. Charles scowled. “The lantern, Ned,” he said.
Edward unshuttered the lantern and held it up. “Show yourself,” he commanded. “In the name of the Crown.”
At the very edge of the lantern’s pale circle, Charles caught sight of a hesitant form. He took two steps forward.
“Miss Ardleigh?” he demanded, incredulous.
For answer, there was another sneeze.
“Miss Ardleigh!” he exc
laimed.
Kate Ardleigh stepped into the circle of the lantern’s glow. “Good evening, gentlemen,” she said with consummate courtesy, as if this were her drawing room and he and Edward her guests. The brown shawl that covered her head fell back to reveal her russet hair, tendrils escaping untidily around her face, framing it. Behind her Miss Potter stifled another sneeze, and a collie dog—Agnes Oliver’s dog Kep—wagged its tail furiously at the sight of Edward. “We did not expect guests,” Miss Ardleigh added dryly. “I fear you were not properly announced.”
Edward chuckled. Charles, however, was too out of sorts to be amused by the woman’s deuced playfulness or swayed by her physical attraction.
“Don’t you two have the sense to know that you are in danger?” he asked roughly. “What in God’s name brought you out in the middle of the night?”
“We have come ratting,” Miss Potter said. “Anyway, it is not the middle of the night. It is scarcely ten.”
Charles ignored her. “What the devil gave you the idea to come here?” he demanded of Miss Ardleigh. “This is no place for a woman.”
But as he heard the harshness in his words, he knew also the passion and ambivalence that prompted it. If the woman lacked the sense to fear for herself, he feared for her. He feared because he cared. And he cared, paradoxically, because she had the courage and fortitude to undertake adventures like this one, when other ladies of far less heart were flirting through a waltz or being escorted to dinner by a handsome partner. What irony! He could not have her here, in danger, and yet he would not have her anywhere else. And the worst of it was that she was not his to command or protect. He could not in good conscience concern himself about her, more than in a friendly way.
But Miss Ardleigh could know nothing of the conflict that swirled within him. She pulled herself up, her grey eyes cool and steady, and spoke with a dignified reserve.
“We came here in search of the spot where Sergeant Oliver was killed. And we have found it.”
