Shadow of the Raven

by Tessa Harris

  Thomas tucked his napkin into his stock. “And the excise man won’t see a penny.”

  Peter Geech suddenly seemed keen to focus all his attention on placing a fork on the tray. “Sir?” he queried with a shrug.

  Thomas smiled. “Come, come, Mr. Geech. There’s no need to play the innocent. You ply a lucrative trade in smuggled goods on the sly.”

  Geech proceeded to set down a plate of cold meats in front of Thomas. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Dr. Silkstone.” His eyes slid everywhere but on his guest.

  “So your late-night excursions into Raven’s Wood are for pleasure?”

  The landlord’s head whipped ’round and his eyes fixed on his accuser. “How do you know . . . ?”

  “I saw you and Coutt go up to the woods. Meeting with your business associates, were you?”

  The color suddenly drained from Geech’s face. It went as pale as the pastry on the mutton pie he had just served. From somewhere, however, he managed to draw on a little courage.

  “You can’t prove it, Dr. Silkstone.”

  “What about the note: Beware of Raven’s Wood?” Thomas reached for a bill, written in Geech’s scrawl. “ ’Tis your hand and no mistake. I found it in Mr. Turgoose’s pocket.”

  “It don’t prove I killed the mapmaker, nor young Coutt.”

  Thomas fixed him with a glower. “Ah, yes. Coutt. Shocking business. You should’ve seen the poor lad’s body, all twisted and burned. It—”

  Panic now registered on the landlord’s reddening face. “I didn’t kill him!”

  Thomas could tell he had touched a raw nerve. “I’m not saying you did, but I do know you are involved in a smuggling ring in the woods.”

  The accusation riled Geech. He paused for a moment, like a cornered rat, then hissed his reply through thin lips. “ ’Tis your word against mine, and you are . . .”

  The innkeeper could not bring himself to say the word “American,” but Thomas took his meaning and was able to trump him.

  “I am afraid I can prove it, Mr. Geech. You see, I have samples from your secret stash of smuggled goods at the ruins. Tobacco and your famous gin,” he told him. “But I shall not go to the law if you answer me this. Were you with Coutt on the night he was murdered?”

  Geech bit his lip. His customary swagger suddenly deserted him. He stood back from the tray and his gaze dropped.

  “ ’Tis to my regret I was not, Doctor,” he said.

  Thomas sensed that the landlord might wish to unburden himself. “Will you sit?” he said, gesturing to a second chair by the grate.

  Geech accepted the invitation, sighing deeply as he sat. He looked at his hands and fingered his knuckles.

  “It was my wife, see. She had the gripes again. We was busy here, and besides, she didn’t want me to leave her.”

  Thomas thought of the businessman he had seen in the bar. “But you had an order to deliver and so you sent Coutt on his own?”

  Geech swallowed hard and nodded.

  “So you helped the boy load the gin, then saw him off. But something went wrong, didn’t it?” Thomas rose and walked to the mantelshelf.

  Geech began twisting his fingers. His face was reddening and he was becoming increasingly agitated, shifting in his seat. “Piece of piss, I said it would be. Just deliver the gin and get the money.” For a second he looked up, but then let his gaze drop once more.

  Thomas pictured the rendezvous in the woods. This so-called businessman, dapper and sophisticated, was no fool. He called himself the Raven. Sir Theodisius had told Thomas all about his exploits. He was a notorious highwayman turned smuggler in the area. He paid a good tailor and drank fine French wine. He would drive a hard bargain and he would not stand for being duped. He would have checked his goods before taking delivery.

  “Only you didn’t keep your part of the bargain, did you?” pressed Thomas. “Did you?” he repeated, looking down at the miserable innkeeper. “When he tasted your gin, he knew you’d deceived him. Water, was it, or did you fill the barrels with the piss the night-soil men couldn’t collect?”

  It was as if the doctor had plunged a knife into the landlord’s guts and twisted it. Geech’s head jerked up and his face was contorted.

  “We couldn’t make enough. We were that busy that week.” He began to crumble.

  Thomas had come to the nub of the matter. He bore down on the landlord. “So you let the boy draw the smuggler’s fire. He pleaded with him. Told him he had no idea that there was water in the barrels, because he didn’t know, did he? You deceived him in the hope you would get away with deceiving the Raven. Only he was too smart for you, wasn’t he? He took out his pistol and he shot young Coutt as he pleaded for his life.”

  The landlord’s shoulders slumped. He closed his beady eyes for a moment, then, through his shame, Peter Geech mouthed an affirmation. With his thin lips quivering, he mumbled, “I knew if I didn’t deliver the goods, he’d make me pay in other ways.”

  Thomas frowned. “What did you say? Who would make you pay?”

  Geech looked up and retreated in his chair, as if regretting his aberration.

  Thomas eyed him warily. “Does Sir Montagu Malthus have a hand in this, Geech?” he asked him.

  The landlord shook his head vigorously. “No, Doctor,” he replied. “He knows nothing of this, I swear.”

  “Then who—?” Thomas broke off and in the silence the realization dawned. “It’s Lupton, isn’t it? You are paying him money to run this smuggling ring under his protection.”

  It had troubled Thomas seeing Geech and Coutt break the curfew the other night. The pair had driven the cart, laden with contraband gin, virtually under the noses of the Boughton thugs who were there to impose the emergency law, and yet they were allowed to pass unimpeded.

  “Has Lupton sanctioned this operation?” he pressed.

  Geech gulped hard, as if he wanted to swallow the words that were already halfway up his throat.

  “I can’t say, sir.”

  “Can’t, or won’t, Mr. Geech? I am sure you would be able to tell the excise men were I to inform them of your little racket.”

  Such a threat seemed to loosen the landlord’s tongue, and he could force down his words no longer. He nodded. “Aye, sir. He lets us do it in return for a cut.”

  Thomas remained stony faced. “How much?”

  “Half, sir.”

  He had guessed as much. Lupton had a vested interest in the continued terrorizing of the village by this so-called Raven and his ruthless gang. He suspected, too, that it was these brigands who had attacked Turgoose and Charlton. It was a bungled attempt at robbery that had gone seriously awry. It would make sense that Lupton would not wish them to be caught and tried for murder, thus depriving himself of a lucrative source of income. He and Malthus were trying to pin the blame on innocent villagers, indeed, the very villagers who were so vociferous in their opposition to enclosure. By making an example of them, Lupton was hoping his problems would be dealt with in one fell swoop.

  “Thank you, Mr. Geech,” Thomas said to the landlord. “You have been most helpful.” He picked up his knife and fork and began to eat. For the first time in many days, he found himself feeling very hungry.

  Chapter 42

  Under cover of darkness that night, Thomas rode to Boughton Hall. Tethering his horse by a wall that had fallen into disrepair, he climbed over it and skirted the lawns, arriving undetected at the drawing room window. Through the pane he could see Nicholas Lupton, sitting by the roaring fire, surrounded by the elegant splendor to which he had no right. Seeing him thus, a brandy in his hand, enjoying the accompaniments that his usurpation brought, stirred Thomas into action. Grasping the handles of the French doors, he flung them open.

  Hearing the intrusion, Lupton leapt to his feet. Craning his neck into the gloom he called out, “Who goes there?”

  Seeing Thomas stepping out of the shadows, Lupton lunged for the bell by the fireplace.

  “I would advise you to
hear me out, sir, if you value your own position,” Thomas told him, hastening toward him.

  Lupton arched a brow and regarded Thomas with a sentient look, as if he feared what he would say next. “What is your meaning, Silkstone?”

  “My meaning, sir, is very plain,” said Thomas. “Unless you want me to inform Sir Montagu that you are in league with local smugglers and are taking a cut of their profits to line your own pockets, I suggest you tell me the truth about Lady Lydia.”

  The color rose in Lupton’s cheeks and he opened his mouth to let out another laugh, only this time it was tinged with nervousness, not the customary derision. “You have been digging in the dirt again, I fear. ’Tis your word against mine, and Sir Montagu would never believe you over me.” He spat out his words so that spittle flecked his lips.

  Thomas refused to be fazed. “You forget Sir Montagu is a lawyer used to dealing in evidence.”

  “And where is yours?” Lupton jabbed an aggressive finger in the air.

  “It is lodged with a third party, as it happens, which is under instruction to hand it over to the relevant authorities if I have not returned by midnight,” replied Thomas. On his way to Boughton, he had stopped off at Mr. Peabody’s apothecary shop in the High Street and delivered a sealed parcel into his hands for safekeeping. In it were the samples of the tea and tobacco Thomas had collected from the woods, which could be used in evidence against the smugglers and connect them to the surveyor’s murder and to Coutt’s.

  Lupton’s shoulders rose in anger. “You are lying, Silkstone!” he boomed.

  Thomas knew he was taking a dangerous gamble, but he managed to keep his nerve. “You are the one who will be clapped in chains if Sir Montagu ever finds out that his trusted steward is playing him for a fool.”

  Lupton flashed a look of horror at Thomas. “What are you saying, man?” he protested indignantly.

  The doctor laid bare his thoughts. “It is my supposition that Turgoose and Charlton inadvertently stumbled across, or came close to, the old ruins, the place where the smugglers store their loot—the very smugglers who give you a cut of their ill-gotten gains.” His eyes flared as he accused Lupton. He was about to turn the tables and play the steward at his own game. “The Raven, Lupton. I am sure the name means something to you.”

  “I know of him,” replied Lupton after a moment. “He is a highwayman and a common thief.”

  “Who also goes by the name of Seth Talland, does he not?”

  Lupton’s neck suddenly jerked back into his shoulders. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Silkstone!” he remonstrated loudly—a little too loudly, as far as Thomas was concerned.

  “The Raven and Seth Talland are one and the same, are they not?” the doctor persisted. It had come to him as he was interrogating Geech earlier that evening. He recalled the well-dressed man at the bar, talking to the innkeeper a few days back, and the gesture he had made, stroking his earlobe. Talland had made the exact same movement on the witness stand. “You were double-dealing, were you not? Not content with protection money from Geech, you were turning a profit from smuggled goods yourself. The prizefighter disguised himself so he could act as your go-between, and when Geech tried to shortchange your man, the stable lad paid with his life.”

  “You cannot prove it!” blurted Lupton.

  Thomas nodded. “I’ll admit it would’ve been hard had I not been able to trace the murder weapon.”

  “What?” The steward’s brows dipped.

  Thomas nodded. “You see, the pistol that killed Jeffrey Turgoose also killed Aaron Coutt.” Professor Hascher had been able to measure the caliber of the shot that killed the stable lad. It was exactly the same as the one that felled the surveyor.

  Lupton snorted. “But this is ludicrous.”

  Thomas felt relieved to be stepping on solid ground. “It is fact, sir, and can be proven. The pistol belongs to Sir Theodisius Pettigrew and is the same one that was planted in the Diggotts’ dwelling. I cannot prove that Talland killed Mr. Turgoose yet, but I am working on it.”

  “Then you are wasting your time,” the steward mocked. He reached for the glass of brandy he had discarded earlier and took a gulp.

  “You know I can make life very awkward for you, Lupton.” Thomas was determined not to leave empty-handed.

  “So what do you propose?” Lupton took another gulp.

  “A deal,” replied the doctor. “If I drop my investigations into Aaron Coutt’s murder, you will tell me the truth about Lady Lydia.” He paused, his eyes boring into Lupton’s. “She is alive, is she not?”

  In the firelight glow, Thomas could see the steward’s neck shrink back into his shoulders. His nerve had been rattled and his ensuing silence condemned him. Thomas knew he had him, just as surely as if he were a worm wriggling on a hook. He stared at him for a moment, watching him writhe, before offering a way out.

  “So,” he said, his voice tinged with victory. “You will tell me where Lady Lydia is being held.” This time his words came in the form of an order rather than a question.

  Lupton, whose gaze had fallen to the floor, now lifted his head and shook it as if in a daze. “I cannot tell you,” he replied, his head lolling from side to side.

  Thomas set his jaw. “So you are prepared to be exposed to Sir Montagu?”

  Again Lupton’s head swayed. “I cannot tell you because I do not know,” he snapped. “Sir Montagu refused to tell me. He said the secret would be safer that way.” He looked at Thomas in the same manner that a deeply religious man might react if asked to recant his long-held convictions. The anatomist found himself believing him.

  “But she is alive?” asked Thomas, trying to coax Lupton with a softer tone. At first the steward remained sullen, but the doctor persisted. “The body in the crypt is that of Miss Annalise Kent, is it not?” He craned his neck to try to latch onto Lupton’s eyes. “She became so distraught after Lady Lydia’s departure from Bedlam that she was given the means to take her own life by a clerk in the pay of Sir Montagu, who then seized the opportunity to announce her ladyship’s death.”

  The steward threw a grudging look at Thomas, but remained silent.

  “But Lady Lydia is not dead, is she?” The anatomist’s patience was wearing thin. “Is she?” He raised his voice.

  “If I tell you, will you stop meddling in affairs that do not concern you, Silkstone?”

  Thomas regarded Lupton for a moment. He had the upper hand and, although he did not relish it, he knew only a fool would throw it away.

  “I shall tell Sir Montagu nothing of your little ruse, as long as you tell me if Lydia is really dead.”

  Lupton drew breath; then slowly, as if realizing his defeat, he began to shake his head. “No, she is not,” he mumbled.

  “What did you say?” pressed Thomas.

  Lupton bit his lip, as if trying to stop his mouth from forming the words, but their power overcame him. “Lady Lydia is not dead,” he repeated reluctantly.

  It was all that Thomas needed to hear for the moment. He inhaled deeply, then exhaled slowly, like a man filling his lungs with fresh air for the first time in days. It was the confirmation he had so craved, the news that he had been so desperately seeking.

  “Thank you,” he said softly, his stifled breath fleeing from his lungs as he spoke. “I am most grateful.”

  Chapter 43

  The sound of his horse’s hooves thundered in his ears as Thomas rode directly to Draycott House the following morning. He felt the blood course through his veins and a surge of energy, or anger—he was not sure which—wash over him. Not only was Lydia alive; he knew where she was. Draycott House. Of course. Franklin, his white rat, had sown the seed in his brain when he had rushed back to his cage after he’d been disturbed, but events in Brandwick had sidetracked Thomas’s time and energies. How stupid, how blind he had been. Convinced she had been shut away in some private institution, he had ignored the most obvious location for her incarceration. At least he could be thankful that
she was no longer in that hellhole they called a hospital. A memory of her emaciated frame draped in that terrible restraining garment flashed into his mind. He saw her tear-stained face, her shorn head, and heard her pleas to be rescued. He had felt so impotent at the time. He had been totally powerless, but it was clear from the look of anguish on Lydia’s face that she no longer trusted him. Her view of him had been skewed by Sir Montagu’s lies. She was convinced that Thomas was responsible for her awful fate, and her faith in him had not merely waned; it had completely disappeared. Somehow he needed to rebuild her trust in him, but first he had to find her.

  Riding across country, he made good time. The ground was still damp after heavy rain, but the roads were passable. The journey by coach from Boughton to Draycott would normally take two hours in such conditions. Thomas had done it in under an hour. He had ridden his horse hard and arrived at the steps of the house spattered with mud and damp with sweat. Inside he was still seething. He had been played for a fool by Sir Montagu Malthus yet again. Striding up to the door, he did not even bother to pull the cord, but walked straight into the hallway.

  A flustered butler appeared. “Sir, can I help you?”

  Ignoring the man, Thomas stormed in and looked about the entrance hall. There was a door on either side of the staircase. He stormed up to the first and opened it. The room was empty. He slammed the door shut. He tried the second.

  “Sir!” pleaded the butler.

  “Where is she? Where is Lady Lydia?” Thomas shouted angrily, flinging open the second door. “Lydia! Lydia!” he called.

  Suddenly a voice boomed from the half landing. “Really, Dr. Silkstone, have your manners deserted you?”

  Thomas looked up to see Sir Montagu glowering down at him, his broad black shoulders hunched over the banisters.

  “I’d heard colonists were unsophisticated, but this sort of behavior will not be countenanced.”

  Thomas marched to the foot of the stairs. “I know she is here, Malthus. Let me see her!” he demanded.

  The lawyer seemed unconcerned. He floated down the stairs without a sign that he had undergone surgery barely three months previously. Following closely behind was Gilbert Fothergill. “And what if her ladyship does not wish to see you?” Sir Montagu asked. His voice was tinged with a smugness that infuriated Thomas.