Cheating the Hangman

by Judith Cutler

  ‘I have a hunch. Shh.’

  Together we walked on tiptoe to the stable. When our eyes got used to the dark we could pick out horse and stable lad curled up together. Robert was still whispering in the great soft ears. In a moment he would talk himself to sleep – infinitely better than crying himself to sleep. ‘Just in case, Titus. That’s what it was. Nothing soppy. Just in case …’

  I pressed Jem’s shoulder – we were to return without waking either of them. In fact we were seated again at the kitchen table before either of us spoke.

  ‘We may have misjudged him and Susan,’ I said mildly, topping up his tankard. ‘According to Dan, there was some trouble – a to-do – earlier. Keble says he offered “the wench” a guinea to stop her crying. And Susan wouldn’t go upstairs on her own – in fact I’ll wager she is sharing Mrs Trent’s room even now. As for that romp in the hay, my guess is that Robert took Susan to the stables ‘just in case’ the men – whichever of them or both – misbehaved again. He is but a child, surely, and you will remember that her affections were rather embarrassingly engaged elsewhere.’

  ‘Indeed they were.’ He laughed sadly at the hopeless passions of first love. ‘But surely by now she must be looking for a beau in the village – which I would be the first to agree that young Robert is not.’

  Cribb, now asleep, twitched and turned, as if chasing a dream butterfly.

  ‘You are nine-tenths asleep yourself, Toby. I am, too. Go to your chamber; I will use young Robert’s bedroll down here beside Cribb. If anything untoward happens, call me.’

  I was too weary to argue. If I thought anything as I dragged my way upstairs it was a vague wish that the immaculate Binns might have been at hand to drag off my boots. But I had used a bootjack before and could do so again. And before I slept I must plan the next day’s sermon.

  To my amazement it was Binns himself who brought my shaving water the next morning. ‘And I must respectfully suggest, Dr Campion, that speed is of the essence if you are to be ready to take the morning service at St Jude’s. Pray allow me to assist.’

  ‘Indeed – great heavens, is that the time?’

  ‘It is indeed. If you will be still, sir, I will endeavour to apprise you of this morning’s activities while I shave you. Your stable lad arrived at Langley Park betimes, I gather, with a letter for Dr Hansard, the contents of which he shared with my master, still in his bedchamber. The gist was that the village schoolmaster considered that Dr Keble and his colleague Mr Wells were too inebriated to take proper care of their patient, whose groans they had failed to hear and whose medicine they failed to administer. Dr Hansard and Dr Toone were invited to come here to give their professional opinion. Naturally, knowing that you lack a valet, I offered my services, and here we all are. Dr Hansard has warned your churchwardens that Divine Service may start a few minutes late, but you can hear that the bells are already ringing. One moment, sir! You need two boots …’

  ‘… You obviously know, my friends, why I cannot insult you by offering a half-considered sermon this morning,’ I said with an apologetic smile, as the last member of my congregation settled down. To my amazement, as I had scurried into church, my surplice like a sail behind me, all my flock raised their hands in applause. One or two had actually called out a blessing on me. I was very near to tears. ‘But let us worship God with joy in our hearts as we sing our first hymn …’

  Mrs Trent’s breakfasts were second to none, whatever else defeated her. Today she had to feed a small army – though fortunately without any actual military men, who had resentfully slunk off, still full of righteous indignation over what they saw as their Turkish treatment. The only thing that made her baulk was being required to sit down with us, so that we might thank her for her heroism the day before. Maria had warned us that the good lady would find it excruciatingly embarrassing, so we kept our meal short – my excuse being that there must be enough left over for Susan, waiting on us with unusual dexterity, and Robert to share. Jem, Mrs Trent and I had apologised for ever having doubted them, and I had passed over Keble’s guinea. Since I found a half-guinea to reward Robert for work well outside his remit, they were both happy, but, on Robert’s advice, both handed over their new-found wealth to Mrs Trent – ‘Just in case,’ Robert said solemnly, but with a glance in my direction that was almost impish.

  The news of Dan cheered us; for all their personal faults, Captain Keble and Wells and their fomentation had apparently saved his leg. Now there was a question of what should happen next. Maria suggested once again that he should be removed. She was tactful enough not to mention her previous apprehensions and her insistence that he should be guarded, simply pointing out the rectory was not a hospital, and that as soon as he was deemed well enough to travel, he should be taken to somewhere where he could recover his strength without burdening Mrs Trent.

  To my surprise, Mrs Trent did not protest that she did not mind the extra work. She and Maria exchanged a glance that suggested that the matter might have been discussed in private beforehand, and that Maria might have been more explicit. In fact, Mrs Trent suggested that Dan might find a safe haven on a farm in Worcestershire run by a second cousin who would find some extra income useful. With our approval she would write to him tomorrow to see how much he would charge for bed and board – and also to ask if he might be able to offer Dan work as he got stronger.

  To my surprise Toone, who had been very quiet, drawled that he would pay the piper, by way of apology for the behaviour of a man he had once thought a gentleman. No one argued.

  Predictably my appointment with the two Clavercote wardens was far from satisfactory.

  I would have much preferred to interview them in my study, but it still bore more relation to a soldier’s billet than a gentleman’s reading room, and I had expressly forbidden Mrs Trent and Susan to set foot in it till the morrow. Considering the dining room the most formal alternative, I sat with my back to the window, the bright sun playing on their resentful faces. Jem sat almost invisibly in the furthest corner, taking notes.

  ‘I was amazed that you were absent from yesterday’s gathering – amazed, disappointed and indeed insulted,’ I began. ‘And horrified that, suspecting violence might occur, you did nothing to prevent it. I hesitate to ask if in fact you hoped for a violent outcome – that you hoped to be rid of your troublesome priest.’ I suspected that they might not immediately place Longstaff’s version of the quotation. Indeed, I doubt if they recognised this. ‘Indeed, I wonder what has already happened to the curates whom Archdeacon Cornforth asked to replace Mr Coates. Let that be my first question. The curates, gentlemen – are they leading a nascent Sunday school or are they dead, hanged by an angry mob?’

  Boddice looked at Lawton; as squire he should do the talking. Lawton fidgeted at the unwelcome honour.

  ‘Well?’ My father could not have spoken more coldly.

  ‘As we told you, they weren’t satisfactory. They couldn’t preach, couldn’t—’

  ‘I am less concerned with the negatives than with the positives. Are they still alive?’

  ‘Lord bless you, yes, sir. As far as we know,’ Boddice added with a sudden rush of honesty. ‘We just told them not to come back – paid their fees till the end of the quarter, too.’

  ‘How uncommonly generous. So how do you propose to fulfil your legal obligation to hold regular worship? After all,’ I added dryly, ‘had things gone as someone planned, I might have been otherwise engaged.’ I leant forward, pointing from one to the other. ‘Very well, gentlemen, which of you planned my death? First of all as I quitted your village by night, secondly, when that venture failed, by lynch mob yesterday?’

  They stared, twin gargoyles of terror.

  ‘Answers, gentlemen!’ I counted silently to twenty. ‘Very well, I have no alternative but to ask Lord Hasbury, in his capacity as magistrate, to question you.’ I half-rose. Fully rose. ‘You may go. You may expect to face me in a court of law.’

  Boddice broke first. ‘Please,
sir – it weren’t like that. We were shocked as you by that dreadful attack – and then you go and care for the man what did it. Even the Good Samaritan didn’t do that, did he?’ he added ingratiatingly.

  Staring down at him from my full height, I said, ‘I fear you are misinformed. But let that pass. Yesterday’s outrage. Tell me about that, if you please.’

  They exchanged furtive glances. I did not dare let my eyes stray to Jem, lest we both succumb to a fit of unseemly giggles: how many times had my father spoken to us like that when we had been caught in some boyish escapade?

  ‘We had this note, sir. Just a piece of scribble. It said we weren’t to be there under pain of death.’

  ‘Pain of death,’ Boddice echoed solemnly. ‘And our crops razed and cattle killed if we told anyone.’

  ‘Of course you recognised the handwriting? No? So where is the note?’

  ‘Burnt, sir.’ Lawton’s eyes opened wide as if the question were stupid. ‘Like it said to do.’

  ‘So you are alleging that some evil person is giving you orders to do things which you suspect are illegal. And I suppose that if you had not paid off the curates the fate that nearly befell me would have befallen them. Yes or no?’

  ‘They were more persuadable than you.’

  ‘How very convenient. Now, you have no doubt heard of the offer I made when I was about to be hanged. If any of the malefactors – any who conspired to kill me – is brave enough to step forward and confess to me, then I will be as merciful as I can. That does not necessarily mean,’ I added, as I had failed to do the previous day, ‘that they will get off scot-free. But I suspect I would be kinder than a magistrate, do not you?’ I looked them up and down. ‘Very well, gentlemen – you may go.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was good to wake in my own bedchamber, even though it was less grand than the one at Langley Park. When she brought my hot water, Susan was bright and cheerful, telling me that Dan continued to improve. She pulled back the curtains with vigour, with a slightly disparaging look at what was obviously a grey day. It seemed an omen: today was the day I had to do what I dreaded. No, there was no argument.

  No one said anything to shake my unspoken resolution: ‘If you want your breakfast in peace, sir, you should make haste. Today’s the day Mrs Trent and I are going to clean your study and make everything right and tight again. Mrs Trent says Robert must help too – she says if the rugs aren’t beaten properly the smell of those ciggirillows will linger.’

  Naturally I did as I was told.

  Soon after ten, however, the carrier’s waggon drew up outside, draining all my optimism. He would be delivering my new clothes – I had ordered buckskins as well as a coat to go with the boots and other essentials I had bought when I was gadding about the shops with Toone. Surely this was an omen.

  Binns, who had remained at the rectory to care for Dan, materialised beside me as I regarded the packages with disfavour and laid them unopened on my bed.

  ‘If you would permit me, Dr Campion, I can have the creases out of these in a trice. You bought a new hat and boots, I understand? Perhaps I might cast my professional eye over those too. It would not do to visit Orebury House looking anything other than your best. Your hair … I have not mentioned it before, sir, but the cut has lost its shape somewhat. Oh, and not your bands, sir, not for Lord Hasbury, if you are to pay him a morning visit today. Nor even a simple stock. A neckcloth it must be.’

  Willy-nilly, then, I was to be turned from my humble self into a man fit to greet a duke. Clearly the day I had been dreading had chosen itself. I told myself that in any case I needed to speak to Lord Hasbury, keeping him abreast of the activities in Clavercote: I did not want him to use all his judicial might yet, but he should not be kept in the dark, lest the coroner, Mr Vernon, question him about the background to the murder. As far as I knew no date had yet been set for the inquest, nor a location requisitioned.

  Within an hour, I was mounted on Titus, who was the picture of equine health. My father would have disdained as unmanly anyone who presented himself in a workaday gig, in the absence of a curricle or phaeton, neither, of course, a suitable vehicle for the life I had chosen.

  The venture felt momentous, but all around me people went about their workaday lives. Mrs Trent was chivvying Susan over some fancied omission; Robert, the mat-beating apparently over, was polishing horse brasses; the gardener whistled as he tied netting over the peas. As I rode past the village school I could hear childish voices repeating parrot-fashion the words Jem had said a moment before. The blacksmith swore as a horse fidgeted. At Langley Park I would have had support and encouragement aplenty, but to seek it would have felt wrong. Bearding my father in his temporary den was like facing down the mob two days before. It was a matter for me and me alone.

  My Lord Hasbury was still in his chamber, his butler told me, his voice reprimanding me for seeking a man of his tastes before noon. As for My Lord Hartland, he would summon Walker to take up my card.

  ‘You could not have come at a more opportune moment,’ my old friend declared quietly as he led me upstairs. ‘His Lordship is not sleeping well. Dr Hansard says that it is because he is unable to take any exercise – a strange notion, but one the doctor clings to. He says that any day now he may take the air, and that soon he may be able to ride a little, but in the meantime he wants something to occupy him.’ He stopped at the first landing to look me up and down. ‘I see there is no Stultz or Weston round here, sir, but there is nothing wrong with that waistcoat.’ His eyes took in my buckskins and boots.

  ‘Nor is there a bootmaker to match Hoby’s,’ I agreed with a laugh. ‘All one may do here is look the gentleman.’

  ‘Which I have to say you do, Master Toby. Or will do in a moment, if I may make so bold.’ He gave two delicate tweaks to my neckcloth, and left me to inspect some morally improving paintings, huge and ugly, which had clearly been relegated from more public locations in the house, while he told my father of my desire to see him. Never had the concupiscence of the elders seemed less attractive.

  Although I had resolved to make no more than a formal bow as I entered the room, I found myself on my knee at my father’s side, kissing his hand. For a moment I fancied his hand rested on my head, as if in blessing. But he growled, ‘Is this how the clergy are supposed to greet people? Take a seat. No, that one, so I can see you better.’ He pointed with his walking stick.

  Tongue-tied, I obeyed. It was hard not to stare at the man before me, resplendent in a magnificent frogged brocade dressing gown. He had aged a great deal in the six – no, seven – years since we had last met, and he had lost weight – something which he could afford to do, though he had never been fleshy. I was sure, however, that as soon as Edmund declared him well enough to travel, he would head for London and his tailor. His gouty foot, swathed in bandages, was propped up on a stool. Beside him, on a delicate mahogany table, were a newly ironed copy of the Times and a carafe of what I suspected was some of Toone’s coloured water.

  To my chagrin I still could not speak. But I asked myself how many sickbeds I had attended. All I had to do was employ some of what Edmund occasionally disparaged as professional patter. Even so, I had to swallow hard; if I had to force the words out, they had to be reasonably intelligent words. My father would not wish to be patronised simply because he was an invalid.

  ‘I am sorry to hear that you have been so unwell, sir,’ I said. ‘Hear – and now see,’ I added, in a foolish gabble. ‘Has the gout spread beyond your foot?’

  ‘Not as far as my brain – though it sounds as if the bang on the head that sawbones friend of yours tells me about addled yours.’

  ‘Indeed, it probably did. And being bled left me as weak as a kitten – probably as stupid, too.’

  He glared at me under eyebrows that had grown greyer and bushier. If anything his eyes were more piercing. They were always cold. ‘So why are you here?’

  The truth came out unbidden. ‘To make my peace with you, sir
. And to ask for your help in a matter of some moment.’

  ‘My help! Can you not see that I am crippled? Dear God!’

  ‘Your foot may be diseased, sir, but your brain and hands are not. Between them, they can accomplish what no one else in my acquaintance can. No one,’ I added firmly.

  ‘Hasbury is awake on every suit: ask him.’

  ‘Hasbury was remarkably helpful when I found the corpse on Wychbold’s land, but has shown no interest in any of the strange goings-on round here since. He is hosting a houseful of guests, sir, and can hardly spare the time to assist a mere country priest. Even if that priest is your son, sir.’

  ‘Hmph. He has a secretary – of sorts. Burford, or something like that. Would not he be of assistance in whatever you are doing, which I tell you to your face is not the sort of business in which a man of the cloth should be meddling. No, nor a gentleman either. Even in this benighted part of the world.’

  ‘Alas, sir, we are so benighted that we lack even a parish constable. And the man to whom I would have turned, the rector of Clavercote, in whose parish these distressing events took place, has taken himself to the Continent, to take the cure.’

  ‘With Napoleon … Dear God, he is more foolish than you, sir! Has no one bid him return?’

  ‘No one can. It seems that not even the bishop knows his direction.’

  ‘You are trying to tell me a man can simply— but surely he has left behind him his curate?’

  ‘He never had one, sir.’

  ‘Is he under the hatches? A gambler, perhaps?’

  ‘I know nothing of his financial affairs. Indeed, sir, to my shame I never met the man.’

  ‘Never met—!’

  ‘He never responded to the card I left and never made me a welcoming morning call. There have been church functions to which we were both summoned, but I never knowingly encountered him there. Certainly we were never introduced.’