“No, girl,” the publican said, reaching into his pocket. “You’ve a friend in me. Here’s two quid, and give my best to your Aunt Gower. If you’re down this way, I’ll feed the both of you.” He wiped a tear from his eye and turned away to his bean pot. St. Ives found a five-pound note in his own pocket and gave it to her, although not without misgivings. Still and all, if he refused her, his own soul was quite possibly damned. The worst that could come of being generous was that she would spend it, but then someone else would gain.
The two men watched her dart out the door. She would run, of course, Aunt Gower or no Aunt Gower, but at the moment that meant nothing to St. Ives. It occurred to him as he was walking back up the road to deliver the confession to Fisk, that he might give strong consideration to what he would tell Alice, who often accused him of sentimental gallantry.
Chapter 27
The Moral Question
ST. IVES FOUND his home and his bed a haven once again, but now it had been scoured of unclean spirits, and the course of early summer had steadied, the rocks and the shoal water behind them. “Tell me about this morning,” he said to Alice, “now that we’ve finally got a moment of peace.”
“I can tell you that when I cleaned the blood from Larkin’s face she clung to me as if I were her mother,” Alice said to St. Ives. “It put me out of sorts, despite the fact that her bloody mouth, or at least her teeth, had been tearing off a man’s ear. I believe she’s been raised by tigers.”
“Gilbert tells me that she quite admires you—more than admires you. You have that same effect on Finn and of course on Eddie and Cleo. Children are notoriously good judges of character, you know. But you had started to tell me what had happened along the river. You mentioned a derelict boat.”
“Well,” she said, “it was an odd thing. The lot of us were sitting on that bit of meadow upwind from the tannery shortly before you arrived, eating a basket of food put up by the publican at the Malden Arms. A girl hurried out of the trees some distance upriver, where a rowing boat was drawn up onto the shore. I took little notice, but Larkin sprang up and stated that the girl meant to steal their boat.”
“Their boat?” St. Ives asked, fixing the bed pillows behind him. “Larkin has no boat.”
“Larkin and Finn had borrowed the derelict boat, it turned out, in order to cross the river on the way to rescuing me from prison. They meant to return it on the way home.”
“Ah,” St. Ives said, “a borrowed boat rather than a stolen boat. We can put the moral question to Vicar Hampson when we see him. It’s beyond my powers.” There was the sound of rain and wind from outside, and from time to time he heard small voices from downstairs, where the children were allegedly sleeping. He wondered how they found so much to say to each other.
“I’ve chosen to ignore the moral question altogether,” Alice told him, although if we can discover the boat’s owner we should compensate him. But as to what happened next, it was Mother Laswell who saw that the girl was none other than Clover Cantwell, and as soon as she mentioned the name, Bill leapt up with a wild look on his face and would have taken off at a run if Mother hadn’t held onto his gaiters like a terrier. Clover was knee-deep in the river by now, climbing into the boat, and the tide was falling.
“Larkin was in a fit of pique, and she offered to borrow a second boat so that she and Finn could bring Clover to justice. Although I have a high regard for Larkin’s powers, I decided to disallow it, and Mother agreed. Both of us were done up, and Larkin, of course, must not be provoked. As for Clover, she contrived to disappear beneath the thwarts, lying down on the deck, and by the time she passed the ferry dock she was far out on the river and the boat appeared to be empty.”
“She had no idea that Davis was dead,” St. Ives said, “and she was in fear of being caught—far more fear of Davis than of the police. She assumed that purchasing a rail or coach ticket might well be deadly. It seems somehow fitting that we provided the boat for her escape.”
“I don’t know that it’s fitting, although I take your meaning.”
St. Ives considered the five-pound note that he had given Clover in the name of her Aunt Gower—money that had gone downriver rather than up. Perhaps he would not mention it to Alice at all.
“Should I have told Constable Brooke about Clover’s flight?” Alice asked.
“Surely you do not want the poor girl pursued.”
“In what sense is Clover a ‘poor girl,’ Langdon?”
“She’s been looking after her dowager aunt in Maidstone, working in those conditions at the mill.” He shrugged, as if he had made his point.
“And doing the bidding of a man so wicked that air would scarcely allow itself to occupy his lungs.”
“Her signed testimony attests to that. She gave me the evidence willingly. It was the completest thing—all mysteries solved.”
“Her testimony was her alternative to being hanged. Tell me. Did you believe her tattle or did you merely feel sorry for the girl?”
St. Ives looked up at the tapestry and considered this. The spray of candle-lit stars looked back down upon him like so many eyes. “Some of both. It seemed to me that the world had cheated her. I have no idea of the extent of her guilt or innocence, but I’m certain that Henley Townover would have murdered her as he had the others—four bodies so far, and Pink into the bargain. Davis I don’t count, for the man was as evil as his master, and we’ve no idea what happened to Jenks, who might have fled after murdering Pink. Henley Townover will hang, and no one will mourn his disappearance out of the world. So you see, I don’t much mind that Clover outran her fate, and I have an aversion to women being put to death.”
“Women but not men?”
“Yes, on the whole, although perhaps it doesn’t stand to reason. I’ll put it on the list of questions to ask the Vicar.”
“Good enough.” She looked at him for a long moment, and then said, “I’m happy that you’re a deeply sentimental man, Langdon, but I wouldn’t want to think that Clover Cantwell outwitted you.”
“Outwitted me?” St. Ives said. “Not for a moment.”
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
River's Edge Page 13
