The Doublet Affair (Ursula Blanchard Mysteries)

by Buckley, Fiona

  Which way? Main stairs? Back stairs? I reconnoitred, listening at both stairwells. From the top of the main staircase, I could hear Ann’s voice, speaking on a note of protest, and Leonard answering her, irritably. They were in the hall, but moving away from me. I tiptoed to the back stairs, but someone was talking near the foot of it—the Logans and Joan, by the sound of it. I tried the main stairs again, cocking my head. I could still hear Ann’s voice but it was further off now. I took a deep breath, and started noiselessly down.

  The staircase descended into a space where the partition between the hall and the long room stopped short and the two rooms opened into each other through a wide archway. Creeping forward, I peered into the hall. It was empty. The Masons’ voices came from the parlour, which opened off the other end. The parlour door was open, but only a little and with luck, the Masons wouldn’t see me cross the hall. The door to the porch was halfway along the opposite wall. On tiptoe, I ran.

  I was out on the porch, down the steps, out in the courtyard. The mastiff stood up, but recognising me, lay down again without barking. I noted that, as usual, the outer gate stood wide. I turned left and sped past the kitchens, stooping to avoid notice through the windows, and darted through the archway to the stables. No one was about, but Bay Star was there, ready saddled and tied by the mounting block. Thanking providence that I had thought of ordering her to be saddled before I went indoors, I ran towards her. Dale appeared, hovering doubtfully at the top of the stairs from Brockley’s rooms. I signalled to her to come down, which she did, all in an anxious flurry.

  “Ma’am, what’s happening? You’ve been so long and you’re all put about!”

  “Explanations later,” I said breathlessly, tightening Bar Star’s girth. “Quick!” I whisked off the halter which was on over the mare’s bridle, bunched my skirts and scrambling up the steps of the mounting block to put myself into the saddle. “Come on, Dale!”

  Obediently, Dale also clambered on to the block and on to Bay Star’s back behind me, hitching her own skirts up and sitting down astride.

  “Oooh, it’s awful without a pillion saddle! It’s all slippery!”

  “Don’t you dare fall off! Hold on to me! Oh God!”

  I had been lucky so far, but good fortune rarely lasts. There were shouts from the kitchen and Redman burst out of the door, loudly demanding that I should stop. Mason, Crichton and a distressed-looking Pen ran out after him, followed by Ann, who snatched Pen back. Meanwhile, Thomas had erupted from the stable, and another groom from the harness room. I wrenched Bay Star’s head round, pointed her at the gate, and drove my heel into her. She went like a loosed arrow. Redman actually tried to block the way, arms outstretched, but I swore at Bay Star and threw her forward, straight at him, and he jumped aside.

  We hurtled through the arch into the courtyard. Edwin Logan was crossing it, and Redman, running after me, bellowed at him to shut the outer gate. He tried to obey, but Bay Star was past him before he came within yards of it, and we were through the gatehouse and out in the lane. The shouts faded behind us as we thundered down the lane, with Dale’s arms wrapped round me like ivy round an oak.

  “Dale, please!” I gasped. “I can hardly breathe.”

  It was only a quarter of a mile to the village, and at the speed we were going, it took us hardly any time to get there. I slowed down as we reached the houses, for there were children playing in the road, not to mention fowls pecking and a dog nosing at the gutter. The place was busy, the day’s work well under way. The cottage chimneys gave off hearthsmoke and a darker smoke came from the forge. Women were chatting by the well or sweeping dust out of open cottage doors. We attracted stares, even when we slowed to a trot: possibly because Dale looked odd, bumping behind me; possibly because Bay Star was champing with excitement and foam was flying from her bit; possibly because we gave off urgency and desperation like a smell.

  “There’s the vicarage!” said Dale. “And the church.”

  She mentioned the vicarage first because it was so much the bigger of the two, standing beside its church like a mare beside a foal. I pulled up outside. “All right, Dale. Slip down now.” I felt in my pocket for the note and also for my purse. I counted out some coins, and as Dale descended to the ground, I handed them to her. “Two weeks’ wages. You may need some money and—well, it’s just in case I don’t get a chance to pay you later.”

  “But, ma’am!”

  “And here’s the note. Here comes Dr. Forrest. Give it to him. I hope he’ll do as it asks. Plead with him if necessary! I’m off! I’ve got to do my best. The innkeeper could disguise a bit of beefsteak with a sharp sauce and maybe glue a piece of straight oxhorn on a white pony’s forehead and get away with it, but I can’t cheat. I’ve got to serve up genuine gryphon and saddle that bloody unicorn.”

  Dale, understandably, gaped.

  “Never mind, Dale. I haven’t lost my wits, don’t worry. Goodbye.”

  I applied my heel to Bay Star again and was away, leaving Dale in the road outside the vicarage, with the job of convincing Dr. Forrest that I was not demented or drunk and that my note must be taken seriously.

  I could only hope that she was equal to it.

  • • •

  I was still aflame with rage and excitement, but after a mile or two I slowed the pace, because it was over half a day’s ride from Lockhill to Windsor and I must take thought for my horse. I must also, I said to myself, think carefully about Brockley. His failure to return might be just a matter of a lame horse or the need for a rest. In that case, he would surely have gone to an inn. A lone female making enquiries at inns after a missing manservant would have an odd appearance, but I would have to do it.

  I had an odd appearance anyway. The weather was mild and clear and the main track to Henley was busy, with people driving carts or riding on horseback, or trudging along on foot. Many of them glanced at me with puzzled interest. A young woman riding alone, and with an air of purpose such as mine, was an unusual sight. People, in the main, are civil, however, and mind their own business. No one troubled me.

  If I found no trace of Brockley along the road, then I would in due course arrive at Windsor. What then? Did I ride straight to Mew’s door and demand news of Brockley?

  If Mew was a conspirator, or even simply a criminal, I would be walking into a trap. What could I hope to achieve, alone?

  The grim truth was that, far from stopping to rest or meeting with any accidental mishap, Brockley had probably walked into the trap ahead of me. He had known the risk beforehand, but forewarned wasn’t always forearmed, as I had discovered for myself. Brockley’s body might already be rolling along in the depths of the Thames, on its way to the sea. He might never be seen or heard of again. Dawson and Fenn had been found only by chance.

  In that case, all my haste was a pointless response to panic with no common sense behind it.

  As I left Henley after a fruitless enquiry or two, I decided that I might as well let Bay Star go at her ease. It would be no use at all to enter Barnabas Mew’s premises until darkness had fallen.

  Enter Mew’s premises? At night? The thought had taken shape in my mind without warning, and I came up against it as though it were a wall. Was I considering that? But Brockley had been going to search Mew’s basement for evidence of conspiracy, and it was in the basement that I must look for him. If he were not to be found, then I should myself seek the evidence we needed. To do that, I must get in after dark and go down into the cellar myself. It was the only way. It was a horrible prospect, but obvious. If Brockley had come to harm there, then it was because he constituted a threat. If the only thing I could do for him now was to find the secret which had killed him, then I must try.

  I had summoned help, but I dared not wait for it, because I did not know for sure if it would come. Unless and until I knew for sure that Brockley was dead, I could not give up hope that he was alive, perhaps a prisoner, and if I could rescue him in time, I must.

  I rode on, grimly thinki
ng this over. At Maidenhead, I stopped at the Sign of the Greyhound, where the landlord recognised me. He was obviously surprised to see me travelling alone, but I forestalled any questions by asking my own. Did he remember my man Brockley, and had Brockley lately passed that way? “He went on an errand for me and hasn’t come back. I’m worried about him.”

  Brockley, it seemed, had indeed called at the Greyhound late the previous evening. He had stopped for half an hour, taken a meat pie and a beaker of ale, and given his horse a nosebag. “I don’t know which way he was bound, but he was all right then,” the landlord said.

  I bought some food to take with me, and set off again, going briskly once again, because it had occurred to me that perhaps I would be wise after all to make the best speed I could, in case I were pursued from Lockhill.

  I was still thinking. I had deliberately given Barnabas Mew a chance to send a man to kill me, or else to contact Lockhill and get someone there to do it. He had taken the chance. In the last twenty-four hours, my life had been attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, twice over.

  Was Mason responsible for these attempts? It would be a bitter thing for his family if so, but it was all too likely. Crichton was probably in it too. He had certainly consented to the lie about the tapestries. But Crichton took Mason’s orders. When Dawson listened at a door in Lockhill, had he been listening to Mason giving the tutor instructions oddly unrelated to education? What orders had Mason given about me, I wondered, and to whom?

  Redman and Tilly, with their silly accusations, I thought, must have come in very useful, the triumphant fruit of the seed which had been planted so carefully before my arrival. I wondered if Mason had really believed Mew’s lies on the subject of my reputation or if I heard it from Mew was merely an excuse, a façade of innocence. Mason and Mew could well have concocted the slander together. Not that it mattered. Mason was certainly making use of it now. He was in a position to order me out of his house with every appearance of righteousness. I could then be disposed of somewhere else, where suspicion wouldn’t point to him.

  How had he meant to do it? He had tried to send an undergroom with me. The two Lockhill undergrooms were young lads, open-faced and friendly, not at all like potential assassins. But I could be wrong about that. Mason might have meant to send me off with my killer. Or else to send me into another ambush. He could have other accomplices—men in the village, perhaps.

  Having thought things out that far, I turned off the road and covered quite a segment of my journey by riding across country. It was a nuisance, but it felt like a wise precaution. I got lost once, but I hailed a farmer who was taking muck to his fields in a donkey cart, and he put me right. I ate my packet of food, which consisted of ryebread, cheese and a wrinkled last year’s apple, as I went along, and both Bay Star and I drank from a stream. By late afternoon, I was in Windsor.

  I rose right past Barnabas Mew’s shop, and had to quell a ridiculous impulse to dismount, tether my horse, walk into the shop and ask if Brockley had been there. It was difficult to believe that nervous, humble Mr. Mew could really be dangerous, that it wasn’t safe to walk into a perfectly ordinary shop and say, “Have you seen Mr. Brockley?” but I had had warnings enough that the danger was real.

  I did, in fact, dismount and go into a shop, but it wasn’t Mew’s. It was well away from the clockmakers, and sold lanterns. I was going to need one.

  I bought a candle-lantern, stowed it in my saddlebag and betook myself to the Antelope Inn. Here I did enquire after Brockley.

  “He was here with me, only yesterday,” I said to the landlord. “He was on a speckled grey cob then, but he came back to Windsor yesterday evening, riding a chestnut.”

  “Did he now?” The landlord was a large, self-assured man with an aggressive manner. “I’ve not seen your man, mistress, no, but the horse—would it be a gelding, sixteen hands, maybe eight years old, with a narrow white blaze and one white sock on the off fore?”

  “Well—yes, that sounds right. You’ve seen it?”

  According to Dale, the horse which Brockley had purloined from Lockhill so that he could ride back to Windsor without overtaxing Speckle, was Mason’s second mount, a very good animal. Brockley had got away with it by simply declaring that he had permission, and Lockhill being Lockhill, which meant disorganised, no one had questioned it. When Dale described the horse to me, I knew which one she meant. It was called Blade, because it had a dagger-shaped white streak down its nose. It certainly stood about sixteen hands, and it had a white sock, too, though I couldn’t recall on which foot and I hadn’t the slightest idea how old it was.

  “Seen it?” said the landlord. “I’ve got it! There’s a horse like that running about loose in my paddock. The paddock was empty last night, but this morning there was this horse in there, grazing. My ostler called it in with a sieve of oats and fetched me to see it. I took a look at its teeth and I’d say eight years old or thereabouts. I told Martin to give it some water and leave it in the paddock for the time being. And I’ll tell you something else: I had a look round, wondering if it was a stray that had got in through a break in the hedge. I couldn’t find any breaks, but under the hedge I found a saddle and bridle. Someone came in the night and turned that there horse out in my paddock a’purpose. The tack’s in my harness room now.”

  I went to inspect both horse and tackle. It was impossible to be perfectly sure—chestnut horses with white markings are as common as dandelions in spring, and the saddle and bridle were plain and anonymous—but it was highly likely that both steed and tack were Brockley’s.

  If so, he had reached Windsor. He had put his horse in the inn’s pasture, hoping no doubt to return for it before long, and then he had gone in the darkness to Mew’s shop. And vanished.

  “Stable the horse,” I said to the landlord, “at my expense. I’ll talk to you further tomorrow. I shall need a room for the night and a meal of some sort as well.”

  “And Mr. Brockley?”

  “I hope,” I said, “that he’ll be here by morning, but if not, as I said, I’ll pay the bill for the horse.”

  “I’m not that worried about the horse,” said the landlord, frankly. “What I’m worrying about is you. Were you meeting this fellow here? You’re not running away with him, are you?”

  Another of them! Redman, Tilly, and now this.

  “No,” I said, “I am not. He is my manservant and is at the moment carrying out a commission for me. I expected to meet him here.”

  Once more, I was overwhelmed without warning by a longing for Matthew. If only, if only, Matthew could be here to help me now. When I bade him farewell at Lockhill, I had had a mad urge to confide in him, but I knew I had been right to resist. Even if he were not entangled in this business, he might still sympathise with it. Even for Brockley’s sake, I dared not tell him the truth.

  How I wanted to investigate Mew’s shop in the company of someone large and tough, though! Matthew would be my preference, but the landlord of the Antelope would do! What if I told him everything and asked for his help?

  But he probably wouldn’t believe me, and if he did, he wouldn’t let me come with him. He would go alone into danger, as Brockley had, and it is a heavy burden, to know that you have sent men into peril.

  So I stood there steadily and looked him in the eye until he shrugged and gave over questioning me. Then I asked to see my room and ordered my supper. There was no parlour to spare this time and I’d have to eat at the same time as everyone else, the landlord said, but when I said I would take the meal in my room and not join the rest of the guests at the long table in the main dining parlour, this seemed to allay his suspicions about me.

  “Quite right. A lady travelling alone should keep her privacy,” he said.

  I was now so nervous that I felt sick rather than hungry, but I knew I must eat if I could. Also, I was thinking ahead. I asked, therefore, for half a cold chicken as well as a wedge of hot veal pie and a dish of preserved plums. Some of it might prove useful during the
night to come.

  CHAPTER 18

  After Dark

  Before eating, I went out again, to reconnoitre on foot while there was still some daylight left. I put up the hood of my cloak, in case Mew should be about.

  I was becoming very frightened of the danger and difficulty which lay ahead. I must go out after dark, find my way to Mew’s house—which would be occupied—break in and enter the cellar. Only for Brockley’s sake could I have contemplated it at all.

  My only chance of getting in would be from the rear, as Brockley himself had said. All the doors, back or front, would certainly be bolted, and the lockpicks would therefore be useless. But according to Brockley, in that back room where I had seen what could be the cellar entrance, the window might be vulnerable.

  Walking through Peascod Street, I looked keenly at the shops and cottages to either side. Most of them adjoined each other, but there were a few alleyways giving access to the rear. Such an alley ran between Humfrye’s, the apothecary, and the next shop along, a bakery. I counted the shop doors between Mew’s and the apothecary—I would look very foolish if I burgled the wrong house—then I made for the alley.

  At the far end, I found myself on a path which ran past the back gardens of the shops and houses. On the other side were sheds and paddocks. I saw animals grazing: horses, a cow or two, a few goats. Beyond the paddocks lay ploughland, turning grey in the gathering twilight. I turned left along the path, meaning to inspect Mew’s fence, and was abruptly accosted by a loud voice from the direction of the bakery.

  “Here, who are you? What are you a’doing of, prowling about along here when it’s nearly night? What are you after?”

  A gate creaked and the owner of the voice appeared, male, bulky, clad in workaday clothes with twine holding his baggy breeches in at the knee. He was inquisitive and frowning. To judge from the flour dust on the breeches, this was the baker in person.