by Jake Lynch
For Luke, however, there was further annoyance as the piece unfolded, since it turned out that Purcell – or whoever had written the libretto to accompany his music – had got the story wrong. Who did these modern dramatists think they were, tampering with classical literature to suit themselves? He soon recognised the plot of the opera as based on the legend of Phyllis, which he had studied in Greek. A famous beauty, she married Demophon, King of Athens, and fell pregnant with his son – but the husband sailed away to war before the boy was born.
A grieving Phyllis visited the shore nine times in hopes of seeing his returning ship, but in vain; and on the last occasion she drowned herself in anguish, leaving her child motherless. Whereas, in this version, there was no child; her lover was called Philander – the name of her father in the original story – and Phyllis’s suicide had been cast in more lurid terms, committed by stabbing herself. The candelabras guttered against the dusk beyond the dining hall windows as the lead soprano voiced the closing words with gusto:
Her ponyard then she took
And held it in her hand
And with a dying look
Cried, thus I fate command.
At this, the diva mimed the plunging of a knife into her heart, lest the image be lost on the audience, before continuing:
Philander! Ah my love I come
To meet thy shade below.
Ah, I come, she cried,
With a wound so wide
There needs no second blow.
In purple waves her blood
Ran streaming down the floor
Unmoved, she saw the flood
And blest the Dying hour.
Philander! Ah, Philander, still
The bleeding Phyllis cried
She wept a while
And she forced a smile
Then closed her eyes, and died.
As he clicked his tongue in irritation with the artistic liberties the composer had taken, and agitated over events that might – for all he knew, stuck in here – be unfolding even now at the tavern opposite, Luke felt a sudden and startling shift in his perspective on the week’s events. Several puzzling details, which he’d up to now dismissed as inconsequential, suddenly began to make sense. Added together, they might even supply answers to several crucial questions.
*
Taking his leave of Captain Sutherland as the company quit the stage to rapturous applause, Luke walked along Fish Street in a fugue, his mind whirring and reeling over the insights now opening up, and their implications. By the time he had traversed the short distance to the main gates of Christ Church College, however, his dazed and befuddled condition was all but fully dispelled, and replaced by absolute clarity as to what they must do next.
Chapter 58
Back to the Abbey
‘Robshaw!’ Luke thrust open the great oaken door, causing his deputy and the two military officers to jump in alarm. ‘You’re coming with me.’
‘Where to?’
‘The abbey ruins. Come, let’s knock up the duty ostler at the Guildhall and get a couple of horses. Ed and Tom, if you can stay here and keep watch – we’ll be back later on.’
‘What are you going to do there, Luke? ’Tis dark,’ his brother asked.
‘I’ll explain later. No time to lose.’ By the time they were mounted, the gibbous moon – which had waxed almost to fullness over the week – was high in the clear evening sky, so the horses could be trotted on their way out of the city to the west, slowing to a walk only as they reached more uncertain footing across the meadow, which gave Robshaw a chance to catch up.
‘What we doing here then, Master Sandys?’
‘We’re going to see your ghost, Robshaw.’
‘My ghost?’
‘Yes – I thought at the time, even you couldn’t be talking complete nonsense.’
‘Why thank you, sir. I think…’
‘So, what was it you reckon you saw?’
‘Jiggered if I know.’
‘Very well then, I’ll tell you. Remember when we questioned Unsworth, what he said to us before we left him in that parlour?’
‘A few things,’ the deputy replied noncommittally.
‘The man who called on Harbord earlier, on the day he was killed – said there was someone he should meet, now he was back in Oxford. That not strike you as odd?’
‘Why, I suppose so.’
‘Well it did me, but of course it went straight out of my mind. At that stage we didn’t know Harbord had ever been here. But Thomas Millington told me, when I took his picture in today at All Souls, that Harbord had been a student at Brasenose.’
‘But you was reading from that file what the Bobs gave us, and it said he went to Holland, or some such.’
‘Indeed – but according to Millington, that was later. He fled Oxford when he got a girl pregnant.’
‘The rogue!’
‘That figure you saw, Robshaw, when we were at the abbey the other day, who looked like a younger version of Harbord – that wasn’t his ghost; you just thought it was, because of the marsh fever. Nor was it his brother.’
‘No?’
‘No: I believe it was his son.’
There was a pause as this startling claim sank in.
‘So what’s Harbord’s son doing at the abbey?’ Robshaw queried.
‘Why, ’tis as Silver told me – all those so-called vagabonds have a tragic tale to tell.’
‘Aye – they would.’
‘And Millington remembered that the mother drowned when the boy was an infant – like Phyllis.’
‘Phyllis?’
‘In the opera I’ve just seen, a character from Greek mythology. Only it got the story wrong, but never mind that now. Silver reckoned the vagabonds at the abbey were mostly orphaned, or abandoned in childhood.’
‘So, who was that feller, then, as called on Harbord?’
‘That’s what we’re here to find out,’ Luke replied. ‘This is the Old House; ’tis Friday, and well after dusk now – remember the note we found in Harbord’s pocket. So, we’re inviting ourselves to their fish supper.’
As the pair pushed their way through the bushes and around the tumbledown facing wall, someone shouted out ‘Strangers!’ and a row of faces – illuminated by the campfire in the middle of the old quadrangle – turned to them in unison, accompanied by the unmistakable swoosh of several blades being drawn from scabbards.
‘Silver?’ Luke called out – and was relieved at the answering call from the gloom at the far side of the hearth.
‘Sandys, is that you? Welcome, old fellow.’ Whereupon the assembled throng relaxed, conversation resumed, and the constables suddenly realised they were hungry, as the cooking aromas assailed their nostrils.
‘So, what brings you back to the abbey?’ the cleric enquired, as they cradled platters of grilled fish.
‘We’re looking for someone, who we think might be here,’ Luke replied.
‘What I thought was a ghost,’ Robshaw added.
‘Yes, it seemed a strange tale at the time. Well, come with me and you can have a look around.’ At a discreet distance, they circled the campfire, scrutinising the faces of the ‘vagabonds’ – and others, well-wishers and friends who supported their efforts to create and sustain their own community here, and had come along as guests for the evening.
Luke and Robshaw exclaimed at the exact same moment: a face, caught in the dancing firelight, with the distinctive aquiline features they had last seen, drained of life, on the body of William Harbord.
‘By God – that’s him!’
‘Silver, we need to speak to that man.’ The priest followed the line of Luke’s pointing finger.
‘Ah! You’ll do well to get much sense out of him, I’m afraid. That’s poor Billy. A simpleton. I wonder…’ He led them round to behind where the man was sitting; touched his shoulder and, when he turned, beckoned him to follow. As he rose, Luke noticed the older man he’d met on their previous visit to the abbey getting up a
s well. Seated a few yards away, he’d been watching the proceedings with interest.
Luke looked into Billy’s face. He was about the right age – in his mid-twenties – to be Harbord’s son, if the late MP’s time at Oxford had come just before his own; and the physical resemblance was, indeed, striking. It was easy to see why the ailing Robshaw should think he’d seen a ghost. But, whereas the politician’s eyes had gleamed with cunning when they’d met at The Unicorn and Jacob’s Well, this unfortunate character’s gaze reflected only dull, if amiable incomprehension.
Chapter 59
‘You’d better tell us everything’
There was a sound of throat-clearing from behind the constables and Birch as they led Billy a little way away to a nook of the old ruins that was illuminated by a shaft of clear moonlight.
‘Can I help you, sirs?’ a voice from the shadows enquired, a little gruffly. Luke turned, and the owner of the voice stepped into the light.
‘Ah – Master Fletcher, is it not?’
The man’s face registered recognition, tinged with something else. Apprehension?
‘Master Sandys. We met…’
‘When we came with Kempster’s men, yes.’
Luke stole a swift look at his friend, who signalled with a nod that Fletcher could be trusted.
‘Do you know this man, sir?’
‘I do indeed. What d’you want with him?’
Now he had renewed reason to size him up, Fletcher was, it seemed to Luke, perhaps in his sixties, and with a distinguished bearing, albeit having clearly seen better days. His coat, for instance, was of a good cut, but somewhat frayed around the collar.
‘As you know, sir, we’re looking into the murder of a Member of Parliament earlier this week in Oxford: William Harbord.’ At the mention of Harbord’s name, Billy issued an indeterminate noise, somewhere between a groan and a whimper, his face now contorted with what seemed like a conflict of emotions.
‘It’s all right, Billy,’ Birch said, and the older man laid a hand on his arm in reassurance.
‘We believe this man to be Harbord’s son – can you confirm that?’
Fletcher let out a sigh that seemed to diminish him slightly in size, and left its mark in a perceptible deepening of the sad-looking wrinkles around his eyes.
‘Aye, sirs, I can confirm that Billy here is indeed the son of William Harbord.’ Robshaw gasped, but Luke was not to be delayed.
‘Thank you, sir. And is he any relation of yours?’
‘His full name is William Fletcher. He took our family name at birth, since Harbord had abandoned him by then.’ He caught Robshaw’s look of puzzled enquiry. ‘My name is Martin Fletcher.’
The deputy looked meaningfully at Luke, clutching his arm.
‘M. F., sir! The initials!’
‘Yes, I’m coming to that.’
Luke turned his attention back to Fletcher. ‘Did you write your initials on a note and give it to Harbord, asking him to come and meet you here this evening? “The Old House”, Friday at dusk?’
‘That I did.’
‘Four magpies – four for a boy?’
‘Aye. I thought I might have to leave the note at the inn, if he wasn’t there. So I didn’t spell it out – drew a picture he’d understand, instead, when it reached him.’
‘So it was you who came to call on Harbord at The Unicorn and Jacob’s Well on Monday, the day he was killed?’
There was a pause, as Fletcher evidently wrestled with some inner dilemma.
‘That it was,’ he said at last, in a subdued tone.
‘I think you’d better tell us everything, Martin,’ Birch said.
They sat down on a tumbledown portion of wall, and Fletcher began his tale.
‘I’m retired now, sirs, but I made my career at sea. Rose to be a midshipman for the East India Company. So, I’d follow news from home in letters from my dear wife, Anne, God rest her soul.’ The clergyman made a sympathetic murmur.
‘So, anyway, one time, over twenty years ago now, I opened a letter urging me to hurry home. Our daughter, Marian, was in trouble. But I was unlucky: the note had been kept for me poste restante at Tangier, to pick up on our voyage east. Only we never put in there, on account of an outbreak of yellow fever on board. By the time I got the message, we were on the way back to England – but too late.’
‘What happened?’ Luke asked him.
‘It was that Harbord,’ he said, his voice thickening with anger and sorrow. ‘He’d turned Marian’s head with false promises and, by the time I got home, she’d had his child.’
‘And where was Harbord himself?’
‘Oh, he’d left in a hurry. Went back to his family estate in Norfolk, ’twas said. If I could’ve got a hold of him then, the scurvy knave!’
‘He betrayed you?’ Luke suggested gently. Fletcher turned to look at him eagerly, gratitude in his eyes mingling with concern that he was, perhaps, now all too well understood.
‘Aye – he betrayed us.’ He looked distantly into the cavorting flames.
Luke prompted Martin to continue.
‘So, when you heard he was back in Oxford, you confronted him?’
‘I wanted him to come and meet his son, to see the lives he’d ruined.’
‘Lives?’
‘When she realised Harbord was never coming back, poor Marian tried to abort the pregnancy. It didn’t work, as you’ve seen – she bore the child. But we always wondered if that was the reason why Billy wasn’t quite right.’
‘I heard she was drowned?’
‘Drowned herself, more like. Stepped into the river at Osney in a flood that winter, and was carried off. We never found her.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it, indeed.’
‘Broke my wife’s heart. I left her at home to bring up the boy.’
‘And you stayed at sea?’
‘I told myself I was helping, taking voyage after voyage, sending money for them – but in truth, I was running away.’
‘When did you come back here, then?’ Robshaw asked.
‘Why, that would’ve been just over five years ago, when Anne died. I swore off seafaring, and came home to bury her, but, of Billy here, there was no sign. Then I agreed to help Reverend Birch collect goods for these poor folks, and I found him again, after all this time.’ A tear rolled down Fletcher’s cheek and glistened momentarily in the pale moonlight, before he brushed it away.
‘You said before, he doesn’t live with you,’ Luke remembered.
Birch cleared his throat.
‘Billy actually likes it here, Luke. It may not be much, but it’s home – at least to him. The others tolerate his strange ways, and are kind to him.’
‘And he’s provided for?’
‘As you’ve seen. And Martin chips in, when we need help.’
Luke pressed on with questioning Martin Fletcher.
‘So, what happened, when you turned up at The Unicorn and Jacob’s Well, and spoke to Harbord?’
‘Why, of course, he got straight on his high horse. “I don’t owe anybody anything” – they were his exact words.’
‘The rogue!’ Robshaw said again.
‘But he took your note?’
‘Had to, I reckon – only way to get rid of me. Raised voices were beginning to attract the attention of his “friends”. I’ll warrant they never knew about the family he’d abandoned.’
‘And did you see him again, after that?’
Fletcher paused, evidently debating with himself, then rubbed his eyes before resuming his narrative.
‘I’d walked out to call on an old shipmate, lately come to live at Kennington. He took a post as deputy keeper at the manor. Anyway, we got to jawing about old times, and took a drink or two,’ he said, with a nervous glance at the vicar. Birch gestured at him to continue.
‘So, by the time I set off back to town, it was late. Night watch waved me through at Bacon’s, and I was walking up Fish Street, past the inn, when all of a sudden the door opens, and who
should it be on the threshold but Harbord?’
‘What was he doing, popping his head out at that time?’ Robshaw cut in.
‘Yes, I wonder… So – what happened next?’ Luke asked.
Fletcher glanced at the young man, who had now resumed his seat with his back to them – content, apparently, to watch the fire and rest in the companionship of his fellow vagabonds – then again at Birch, who once more nodded at him to go on.
‘Well, of course, my blood was up. I told him what for, didn’t I?’
‘Bet he loved that,’ Robshaw said.
‘Drew his dagger on me, so he did!’
‘The rogue!’ It was the deputy’s favourite epithet all of a sudden, but Luke signalled him to be quiet, and leant forward.
‘You’re sure about that – he drew a weapon on you?’
‘Sure as I’m sitting here talking to you.’
‘And then?’
‘Well, then it all got a bit confusing. He jabbed his blade toward me, and I caught hold of his wrist. Now, I’m not the man I was, but I always had a strong arm.’
‘So…?’
‘So, by the time I walked away…’ Fletcher set his jaw before continuing. ‘By the time I walked away that night, I’m pretty sure I’d turned his own dagger on him, still in his hand, and it skewered him through the vitals.’
