Cheating the Hangman

by Judith Cutler

  But there seemed to be nothing about him except a gentlemanly openness. Turning to face us and making his bow, in his buckskins and mirror-bright boots he confirmed my impression of a fashionable young man, but by no means a fribble, so I was tempted to dismiss the notion that he was Mr Julius Longstaff, the effeminate poet, whose hair was in any case alleged to be flowing. It was hard to estimate his age. His figure was slender enough to suggest padding in the shoulders of that coat, and his voice boyishly light.

  ‘Will Snowdon at your service, Dr Hansard,’ he declared, offering Edmund his hand. ‘And at yours, Dr Campion. I hear, gentlemen, that the skills of an artist are required. Might I offer you mine?’ he added with a polite smile. ‘I assure you that I had the very best of drawing masters when I was young, and have seen enough accidents on the hunting field not to swoon at the sight of gore. I am staying with a distant cousin, who lives in general a retired life, so you need not fear any indiscreet gossip emanating from my lips.’

  As one, Edmund and I bowed.

  But Edmund raised a warning finger. ‘I must warn you, Snowdon, that the corpse we have is not … freshly injured. Decomposition has set in. It is currently packed in ice, but even so …’

  ‘If I shoot the cat, gentlemen, I will do even that with discretion. But I thank you for your warning. I understand a warm day is likely. Presumably the sooner we embark on this enterprise the better. My horse is waiting.’

  I marvelled at such assurance in one so young. ‘Will you be able to make notes as well as draw what Dr Toone requests?’

  Hansard laughed. ‘Worry not, Tobias. I will do that.’

  Should I speak to Snowdon now, in front of Edmund? But that would be to embarrass him and to divert attention from the urgent matter in hand. I would – must! – question him later, and in private.

  Edmund sensed that something was troubling me, and patted my shoulder. ‘You return to your parish duties, Tobias – which will soon include conducting a burial service, of course.’

  Indeed, nothing sounded more pleasing than giving young Robert another riding lesson and then visiting my parishioners. Having shaken both warmly by the hand, I returned to the breakfast room to bid a temporary farewell to Toone and Maria, accepting with alacrity her invitation to return to sup with them later.

  ‘While Dr Toone is here, and while you all have so much work to do, we will keep town hours,’ she said. ‘So we will look for you at six this evening.’

  I was about to leave when there came a thunderous knocking at the front door. In silence we listened as Burns admitted someone.

  There was an immediate soft scratch on the door. ‘It’s from Orebury House, ma’am,’ Burns declared. ‘One of Lord Hasbury’s guests has been taken ill and His Lordship desires Dr Hansard’s immediate attendance.’

  Maria raised an expressive eyebrow. ‘My dear Burns, you must learn to give messages more accurately. I believe I heard not desires but demands, did I not?’ Her smile forgave Burns, but not the man cooling his heels in the hallway. She turned to me. ‘So, Tobias, it looks as if your secretarial skills may be needed after all.’

  Despite the beauty of the day, the experience was as vile as I had feared. Toone, who had borrowed one of Hansard’s hacks, did his best to ameliorate the stench, soaking thick wads of linen in some sort of herbal decoction, in which lavender predominated. With these he bade us cover our mouths and noses. Neither of us assistants demurred, though Snowdon surprised me by recollecting an Arabian souk where visitors to a leatherworks had been offered sprigs of mint to crush against their noses. Next Toone swathed us in garments not unlike the surplice with which I had forced myself to cover the remains of the man now before us. Then he began to examine, Snowdon to sketch and me to write. His carrying voice meant I was spared close contact, but Snowdon must needs be in immediate attendance; to speak the truth, I doubt if any older man could have dealt with the situation with more efficiency and less emotion.

  Toone dictated many and detailed notes. In short, he confirmed Hansard’s opinion that the crucifixion had taken place after death – neither the hands nor the feet had bled. Probably the blows to the back of the skull, which I had been fortunate enough not to see, had killed him. The attack on his face had probably been simply to prevent anyone identifying him. But the killers had been unable to obliterate some clues. The man, who Toone put in his forties or fifties, was decidedly well fed, with soft muscles and hands clearly unused to any sort of manual labour.

  ‘A gentleman?’ Snowdon ventured. ‘At very least, not a labourer.’

  Toone shot an ironic glance at me. ‘It depends on how one defines a gentleman. Given the fact that he has been emasculated and the relevant organs thrust into his mouth, we might hazard that someone considers him guilty of ungentlemanly behaviour.’

  ‘That would be a terrible vengeance!’ Snowdon gasped. ‘So many of our class may treat their social inferiors as mere playthings, but they assume, usually correctly, that a fat purse will buy off a furious swain or father. Punishment like this – it is beyond the bounds of civilisation.’

  ‘What if his sin was beyond the bounds of civilisation?’ a quiet voice demanded.

  As one we wheeled round. ‘Hansard!’ Toone was the first to speak. ‘Come, Tobias, if Hansard is right, what sort of crime might it be?’

  ‘I think,’ I said slowly, ‘that Edmund might be close to the mark. Someone must have done great evil to be dealt with like this.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Our work done, Hansard invited Snowdon to take pot luck with the rest of us, telling him cheerfully that we would not be changing our dress. He seemed to be on the point of accepting when Toone declared that he for one would rid himself of the odours that had soaked into his very skin by spending ten minutes under the pump, and suggested we might want to do the same.

  ‘We know no relationship between foul miasmas and illness, but I for one deem it as necessary to be rid of them as it is to remove the scent of the stables when one dines.’ He looked round, as if challenging us to dispute with him.

  Snowdon nodded his agreement, but said, ‘Forgive me, my friends, if I do not join you in your ablutions, but already my kind hostess will be looking for me. I would thank you for a most enjoyable day, but we all know that the epithet is inaccurate. But it has been most stimulating, and a surprising pleasure to recover skills I so rarely use these days.’

  ‘Another day, then Snowdon—’

  ‘Alas, provided that my relative’s health improves I shall soon be quitting the county. Your servant, Hansard – gentlemen.’ He made an elegant bow, retrieved his horse, and left at a canter.

  Leaving the county – without my having established if he had actually been the young man galloping from Eliza Fowler’s deathbed. I cursed my stupidity. Should I ride after him? Even as I whistled for Titus, I realised that to do so would look very particular. But he had left none of us with means of contacting him again. All I could do was follow the rapidly retreating figure with my eyes, trying to not lose which direction he was following.

  I raised my anxiety with some embarrassment as we headed wearily back to Langley Park.

  ‘I am hardly surprised you felt unable to challenge him,’ Toone said. ‘A well set-up young man may ride where he pleases, Toby.’

  ‘Even if he has seduced and abandoned a maiden who then takes her own life and that of her babe?’

  ‘But you have no evidence of that. Just that a girl has been betrayed by someone. It might be— Dear God, we know what it is like in these remote villages! There is one in Staffordshire where inbreeding is so pronounced that I am surprised that Hansard here has not studied it in connection of those damned pink or blue flowers of his.’

  Hansard flushed. He had long since abandoned his genetic experiments to spend more time with his beloved wife.

  ‘So you think it would have been ungentlemanly to raise the issue?’

  ‘In front of us, tactless in the extreme – which is why I am sure you did no
t attempt it. Tell me, Hansard, what did you make of …’

  From then they exchanged medical observations I preferred not to hear. Soon, however, as the three of us operated the Hansards’ pump for each other, we were laughing and joking like overgrown schoolboys and good fellowship was restored.

  Maria had made sure there were blazing fires in our chambers; another was filling the drawing room with warmth when we gathered. The only chill came from Toone, when Burns announced Jem. Jem and Toone did not find it easy to be in one another’s company: for all his protestations of French egalitarianism, Toone was one of the bon ton in drawling accent and indeed behaviour. Jem, however, while still very much aware of the dangers of putting himself forward, enjoyed such social freedom at Langley Park that he was ready to prickle at Toone’s unconsciously patronising attitude.

  Maria treated Jem as she treated me – as the favourite son or nephew she had never had. ‘The very least I could do,’ she declared, summoning Jem to sit beside her, ‘was to invite you to this cadaver party of ours: you will be as interested to hear the results of Toone’s post-mortem examination as I.’

  ‘Indeed I will. And I come with my own contribution, which is a message for Toby from Mead and Tufnell, the churchwardens: they have spoken to every able-bodied man in the village – indeed, they questioned me, most thoroughly – but to no avail. No one has seen or heard anything of the crime; no one has anything unusual or untoward to report.’

  ‘I am heartily glad of it. I would not want any in my flock to have been associated with a crime like this.’

  As Burns entered to pass round sherry or Madeira, the conversation turned to Hansard’s chief business of the day – his visit to Orebury House’s guest.

  ‘Alas, I saw no Paphians in states of undress. No young sprigs sliding drunkenly down banister rails. No one rode his horse up the staircase. All I saw was a patient with a case of gout. A gentleman with more hair than wit suffering an attack of gout. The worst gout in the world. And I was to provide an instant cure. A tale I hear so often, Toone – and you? And what, pray, is your most popular cure?’

  ‘Tinted water. At the same price as the best claret. Popular because my patients believe that exorbitant cost means extreme efficaciousness. And if they drink more of it than they do of claret it does indeed seem to be efficacious.’ Toone eyed the sherry decanter, but declined another glass.

  As if by common consent we kept conversation general during the excellent supper, which included, after soup and a plate of salmagundi, a fricasse of chicken, some tiny buttered potatoes and a raised ham and leek pie. Should the occasion merit it, Maria was more than capable of producing a table overburdened with delights; for more intimate dinners such as tonight’s, she confined her cook to producing a few dishes of total excellence. The wine as always was the best Hansard could afford, it being his express opinion that poor wine was bad for the health. He never did square this with the amount of vintage wine and port consumed by gout sufferers from the Upper Ten Thousand.

  The covers removed, and Burns, having set fruit and nuts on the table, withdrawn, Toone rose, no doubt expecting Maria to adjourn to the drawing room, there to pick at a piece of embroidery until we gentlemen had deemed our conversation at an end. However, this was not the way in the Hansard establishment when there were no female guests. Maria, neither moving from her place nor favouring him with an explanation of her unconventional preference for champagne over port, declared, her voice and mouth prim, but her eyes alive with curiosity, ‘And now, gentlemen, you may report to those of us not privileged to be with you today what you have found out about the poor man Tobias found in the wood. Jem, confined in his school, has probably heard nothing but the wildest gossip, while I was forced to spend the day examining the contents of my linen press so that I could not walk down to the village and make sly enquiries.’

  She and Jem listened intently as Toone gave a succinct and intelligible account of our findings and his conclusions. To illustrate his first point he passed round one of Snowdon’s sketches.

  Jem stared in disbelief. ‘My dear Mrs Hansard—’

  She took it and examined it carefully, as much, I suspect, for the draughtsmanship as for the anatomical detail. ‘This is very fine work, Toone. You have found an admirable illustrator.’ She turned to Jem. ‘I wish I could have done as well.’

  He blushed deeply. ‘But if not you—’

  ‘A chance visitor to the area, Jem,’ Edmund cut in, aware of Toone’s irritation at the prolonged interruption.

  Swiftly Toone resumed his narrative, tactfully refraining from passing round any further illustrations, and veiling his account of the mutilation in Latin terms. ‘To sum up,’ he said at last, ‘we believe that the man was dead when he was nailed to the tree.’

  Maria coughed. ‘He was not a small man. No one man could have inflicted so many injuries, nor, of course, lifted him up and driven in those nails. To drive so many to this collective madness … Does not this suggest that he had done enormous harm, perhaps to more than one person?’

  Jem appeared understandably reluctant to voice his observation. At last, with a sigh, he said, ‘Surely this evil crucifixion, at such a sacred time of year, suggests only one thing! Devil worship! I did warn you of rumours about Lord Wychbold and his evil cronies, did I not?’

  ‘Devil worship? What sort of ignorant superstition is that?’ Toone demanded.

  ‘Come, man, you have heard of Lord Wharton and of Sir Francis Dashwood! The Hellfire Club?’ Whether Edmund wished simply to defend Jem or actually agreed with his theory I could not say.

  ‘But that was disbanded fifty years ago!’ Toone exclaimed. ‘We live in different times now.’

  ‘Of course.’ Hansard bowed. ‘But in the absence of a village constable to investigate the crime—’

  ‘And what would a mere chawbacon do anyway?’

  Hansard ignored the interruption. ‘It is incumbent on us to explain fully to both Hasbury and Wychbold exactly what we have been doing. You, Campion, alerted Wychbold to the situation immediately, did you not, but he has shown surprisingly little interest in our activities. To be sure, I did not expect him to come himself to ensure our depredations on his ice were kept to a minimum, but I would have expected regular enquiries.’

  ‘And indeed,’ Maria added, ‘regular offers of refreshment. He was not to know that I sent you off well provided for.’

  Maria could not know that none of us had been able to eat a crumb. Not even Toone, who had shamefacedly admitted that he felt unable to touch bread with a hand so tainted by his work. Moreover, he had spent as much time as Hansard and me cleansing himself of the nauseating odours. The good food we had handed over, still in its basket, to the workers come to consign the corpse to the rough coffin made by Lord Hasbury’s men and carry it to St Jude’s for burial. Needless to say, Edmund bade them make vigorous and immediate use of the village pump before they touched any.

  ‘Indeed not,’ I said tactfully. ‘So it seems to me that in all courtesy we should pay a morning call to apprise him of the latest developments.’

  ‘In other words, to question him. Excellent. Now, I really feel that we gentlemen have earned a glass of my favourite brandy. It was a present from a grateful patient so I cannot tell whether duty was ever paid on it, I fear.’ He rang for Burns, who returned with the decanter and glasses, and, without being asked, another glass of champagne for Maria.

  It was she who, contemplating the pretty play of bubbles, asked, ‘How came Mr Snowdon to know of your need of assistance? He arrived remarkably swiftly after you wrote to Hasbury and Wychbold. I wonder which of them suggested he came.’

  Burns, who had been attending the fire, made almost visible attempts not to eavesdrop.

  Toone, who had already downed his brandy and was waiting for Burns to offer him more, turned astounded eyes on her. ‘What the devil has that to do with anything?’

  As Burns bowed himself swiftly from the room, she permitted herself the slightes
t twitch of her right eyebrow, which I had seen reduce pert housemaids to tears and now brought an unlikely blush to Toone’s cheeks. Then she replied equably, ‘I know not. But as a keen student of the relations between different households in a parish, I would like to know. Which of the noble lords whom you asked for assistance is on sufficiently good terms with him or his hostess to know of his genius with a pencil? You tell me that his hostess is supposed to live a quiet life away from society, yet the talents of a guest are known. Furthermore, her acquaintance did not wait till their next meeting to reveal casually that her guest might be interested. Hasbury or Wychbold must have either told her to her face or sent a messenger with wings on his heels.’

  Jem looked merely puzzled. Toone’s frown deepened. Afraid that the brandy might talk again, I said quietly, ‘It is a question I might not be able to put directly when I see Wychbold. But as we all know, indirect questions are often more effective than a direct interrogation. Pray, Edmund, will you wish to accompany me tomorrow morning?’

  ‘I fear not. My services are already bespoken by the aristocratic toe at Orebury House. Toone, a second opinion – and some of your coloured water – might suggest how serious the present condition is. Unless, that is, you wish to resume your visit to your Stratford friends?’

  ‘They do not look for me for a day or so – or more. So I would be honoured to accompany you.’

  ‘As would I,’ Maria interjected. ‘I have some pickled eggs that Mrs Heath may find of use. It is a long time since we spoke.’

  Hansard and I exchanged a glance: this signified that Maria was going to press for backstairs gossip, something of which he wanted to disapprove, since it allied her with a class she had now left, thanks to their union. I had no such strong feelings, sometimes suspecting that did she not keep herself so busy, she might have experienced pangs of loneliness, so short was she of having a close confidante. No one could doubt the strength of her and Edmund’s mutual passion, but I recalled how isolated I had felt without a friend of the same sex until Edmund had absorbed me into his life. On the whole, then, I thought her visits to women continuing in the profession she had left did her good, not harm.