Death of a Radical

by Rebecca Jenkins

  “You said there were two men—one after the other. Who was the other man, Miss Bedford? Did you know him ?”

  Lally was thinking of the moment Favian had held her, heart to heart in the darkness. She would, she told herself fervently, cherish the memory for the rest of her life. Mr. Jarrett was waiting for her answer. She nodded.

  “Lieutenant Roberts,” she said.

  His left hand lay flat against the grain of the oak panel; his right hand encompassed the smooth, cool brass. This was foolishness. He turned the door knob. Cheerful sky-blue curtains were pulled back around the four-poster bed. The slippers embroidered by his mother’s hand were set neatly on the rug beside it. A table had been placed in the light of the tall, narrow-paned windows. It was disordered, as if the untidy scholar had just stepped away a moment. Scraps of notes were pinned into the soft plaster of the wall above it. The little vandal! No thought to housekeeping. That would have to be replastered.

  There was a black leather-bound book a hand’s span high lying on the desk. He frowned. What was Grub doing with his notebook? He would never have thought the boy a thief. As he picked it up, he realized it was not his after all—there were gold initials tooled into the leather: F V A. It was the twin of the notebooks he himself had carried for years. A paper label stuck into the inside cover declared it supplied by the very stationer he patronized in Paternoster Row. Odd to think Grub had been carrying about the same notebook as he. He flicked through it. A third of the pages were covered in Grub’s thin, erratic hand. It was not a journal but a scattering of notes—thoughts, ideas, tumbled down one after the other. The passages in ink were blotted and smudged where Grub’s fingers lagged behind his thoughts. The pattern was strangely familiar. His own notebooks were punctuated with sketches. Grub’s were peppered with snatches of poetry—quotations that pleased him and other lines of his own. Grub was not a particularly good poet. He inclined toward the kind of contrived, overblown sentiment Jarrett found tiresome. Perhaps he might have improved had he lived.

  The boy’s prose was more lively. Jarrett came upon an entry marked with the date of Favian’s journey up north. It seemed he had taken against a fellow passenger—a woman whom he depicted as a troll of loathsome habits. A piece of paper slid out. It was a receipt from the Royal Hotel, Leeds, for a pint of porter and a dish of broiled pigeon. There was a raised mark on the surface that caused him to turn it over. Grub had penciled two words heavily underscored on the back: yellow gloves. What was it Miss Bedford had said? He pretended to be busy, taking out a bit of paper and his pencil—all so that I should not think he had noticed me watching … But why yellow gloves? He slid the bill back into place and turned the page. A quartered sheet dropped to the floor. He picked it up. It was a cheaply printed ballad, “The Weaver’s Lament.” “Your mouth is shut and you cannot unlock it,” he read. “The masters they carry the key in their pockets.” He heard an echo of Grub’s eager voice in the painting room: My desire is to write real songs—songs to rouse everyman’s heart. A ballad, you see. I am working on a ballad …

  Grub’s verse changed. There were a few fragments in the old style—a half-formed sonnet, “The Snare,” about a scarlet handkerchief belonging to a lady with tresses of night and eyes that pierced the soul. He smiled, thinking of young Miss Bedford. There were word combinations, some impatiently scored through, others circled, and verses of another kind, verses with more life to them: the beginnings of a fresh composition, “The Hand in the Glove.”

  There’s not a mechanic throughout the whole land

  But what more or less feels the weight of his hand.

  That creature of tyranny, baseness and pride

  Mangles men crying Progress! And other such lies.

  If Watson and his friends were in truth the colonel’s radicals, Grub would have been no threat to them. He would have offered his whole-hearted support.

  As he laid the notebook aside, his eye was caught by a single sheet of paper. He picked it up.

  My dear Sticks—

  A chance encounter with your brother in Leeds the other day put me in mind of the letter I owe you …

  He had never finished it. Grub must have begun the letter soon after his arrival. The first paragraph mentioned “cousin Raif” three times. The boy had been so very young. He thought of how Grub had cut him in the theater the previous night and a lump rose in his throat.

  The boy had told him of this encounter in the painting room. Mr. Strickland’s compliments … Francis Strickland. That Grub should have run into him. Then again, the region was unsettled. He thought of the colonel’s informant. It came to him in a flash of memory: standing in the yard when Mrs. Bedford had issued invitations to her deathly “entertainment.” There had been another Woolbridge connection in Leeds with Grub that day. He would have come to the Royal Hotel to collect his niece. Jarrett dropped the letter back on the desk and left the room.

  Half an hour later Matt the footman answered the bell ringing in the morning room. Mr. Jarrett handed him a letter.

  “Get this to the post as quick as you can.” He put his hand in his coat and drew out a shilling. “Go now,” he urged. “There’s another for you if you catch the down stage.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  He rode up Quarry Fell with the button Grub gave him wrapped in a clean handkerchief in his breast pocket. He fancied he could feel it over his heart. A pure world of virgin snow spread out left and right highlighted by delicate strokes of copper where dried grasses broke the surface. If he stood again where they had found the boy perhaps, in the daylight, he could discern something more of what had happened there. They made good time. Despite being dragged out of his warm stall with the taste of barely digested feed in his mouth, Walcheren was on his best behavior. They jumped down a bank into the cross lane to Pennygill. The thorn tree was up ahead. The pristine snow was soiled. Miss Lonsdale’s words in the courtyard, the night before, came to mind: Once it falls to earth it is only a matter of time before people trample it and everyone is complaining of the mud …

  The man Duffin saw on the pack-horse trail: where had he come from? He stood up in his stirrups examining the lie of the land. Knot Hill was to his right. The pack-horse trail crossed the lane behind him, running on around the foot of the hill toward Grateley Manor. Thanks to the shadows thrown by the lantern the man carried, Duffin’s impression had been restricted to clothes and build. A gentleman’s clothes and hat; the poacher had been adamant about that. Not many with clothes like that came up here—though a man might borrow or steal, of course. He looked north, tracing in his mind’s eye the line of the pack-horse trail curving down to join the Carlisle road. In this isolated neighborhood a man on foot would have most likely come from Dewsnap’s farm, or the Anderses’ place or perhaps High Top. He thought of Mr. Hilton and his strapping sons. Their bulk ruled them out. Duffin had described a slimmish man of average height. He heard voices and the rumble of cart wheels. Over the branches of the thorn tree a familiar head was bumping up the lane toward him.

  “I was only sayin’ …” Mr. Hilton’s voice had a harddone-by lilt. Beside him on the bench sat a woman whose small face looked out resentfully from a carapace of efficiently wrapped shawls.

  “Tsk!” responded his wife impatiently. Their two great sons rode in the bed of the cart behind them. One had his face turned away, staring across the moor. The other watched his parents.

  “Now da …” the youth contributed sheepishly. Mr. Hilton pushed out his lips. Jarrett was reminded of an offended baby. Mrs. Hilton glanced over and jabbed her husband under her shawls.

  “Why, Mr. Jarrett!” Mr. Hilton hailed the duke’s agent in a joyful voice. He hauled on the reins and the cart came to a halt. His face composed itself into a ludicrously solemn expression. “We heard,” he said dramatically, “of your great loss.” Jarrett inclined his head, embarrassed to be the object of such sympathy. “He was something to you, eh?” The duke’s agent glanced down in a sort of acknowledgment. “That’s ha
rd, that is.” The farmer paused decently. A glint entered Mr. Hilton’s eye. “I’m told it were murder.” His wife twitched beside him. “Now, Mrs. H. There’s no call to be botherin’ yourself.” He gave his wife’s shawl a pat. “She’s not feelin’ too clever,” he confided. “I’m not happy her riding out this weather but she do love the fairs. She’s a powerful decided woman this one,” he ended proudly. His wife looked faintly scornful. The cart rocked as their sons shifted their weight.

  “Now da!” they chorused.

  “So was it murder?” Mr. Hilton prompted, ignoring them.

  “I fear so, Mr. Hilton. Perhaps you may help me,” said Jarrett, continuing over the farmer’s excited exclamation. “There was a man seen in this neighborhood last night. An average-sized man dressed genteelly, wearing a low-crowned hat.” He swung round in his saddle, pointing behind him. “Over there, on the pack-horse trail.”

  “A gentlemanly man, you say?” responded the farmer. “Well, there’s none of that sort up here, not since old Mr. Lippett passed. He was a well-dressed man. Nothing but the best for him. Everything neat and proper to the day he died.” Behind Mr. Hilton, Jarrett saw a thought cross the face of the younger son. His brother caught it too and widened his eyes. The younger boy tipped his head sideways toward his brother and mumbled something.

  “What is it, Thomas? Speak up!” their mother cut in.

  “Her?” responded the elder boy to his sibling. He pulled the corners of his mouth down around his bunched-up chin in a dubious expression. “Could be right,” he agreed. Jarrett looked to Mrs. Hilton for clarification.

  “The Anders girl,” she translated. “Has a gentleman caller—well, that’s what’s said.” She tilted her head back and spoke down her nose disparagingly. “Not that any o’ us ever laid eyes on him. Comes at odd times when there’s none about.”

  “Whist woman!” exclaimed her husband, astounded. “Mary Anne Anders! What you sayin’? Matthew Anders and his brothers would never have that! Powerful careful of that lass they are.” He leaned toward Jarrett to make his point. “She’s all they’ve got since her brother died. Chopped his hand in the spring of ’09 and went with a putrefaction, just like that. Grand send-off, mind. Whole Dale turned out. ’Twas before your time, Mr. Jarrett,” he added consolingly, as if the duke’s agent might feel cheated to have had no part in such a funeral.

  “And no one has any notion who this gentleman caller might be? How curious,” Jarrett said. “How long has this been going on?” The sons shrugged in unison. Their father puffed out his cheeks and declared it all a piece of foolishness but Mrs. Hilton pursed her lips as if there was something else that might be said in different company. Alerted by his posture that Mr. Hilton was winding himself up to deliver one of his endless monologues, Jarrett collected his reins.

  “I must not detain you,” he declared. “Mrs. Hilton will be growing chilled. Good day to you all.” He touched his hat and rode on.

  Dewsnap’s farm squatted like a comfortable hen in the curve of the land at the end of an open track. He rode up into the deserted yard. Not even a dog barked. He dismounted.

  “Anyone at home?” he called. No one answered. Were they all at the fairs? He turned toward the house. A sense of movement behind him made him swing round. Red-headed Billy Dewsnap was standing in the door of a stone shed with a stick in his hands. Jarrett walked toward him. The youth’s face was white against the shadows. The muscles in his neck moved as he swallowed.

  “Mr. Jarrett,” he said. He filled the low doorway. Jarrett did not check his pace. At the last moment the lad fell back a step and let him by.

  “Billy. Has everyone gone to the fairs and left you on your own?”

  The smell suggested the shed had once been a byre but it was at present untenanted. Strips of light slanted through a roughly boarded window. At some point in its history a wooden partition had divided the room. The strut that once supported it remained in the center of the space. A rope was secured to it at breast height. The ends dangled to the floor. Billy moved in front of the post.

  “Dogs,” he said by way of explanation. There was a scatter of dark marks on the flags. Billy scuffed straw over the stains with his booted foot. Jarrett looked steadily at him. “Brought in a rabbit,” Billy said. He turned aside to set the stick he carried against the wall. “What can I do for you, Mr. Jarrett? Folks are all gone to town. I’m to follow quick as I can.”

  “I am trying to trace a man, Billy. He was seen on the pack-horse trail last night. He was coming from this way. Dressed in a gentleman’s coat and a low-crowned hat—know anything about it?” Billy shook his head.

  “Nay.” His broad Dalesman’s features were placid. His previous tension had dissipated. They watched one another a moment. Billy, it seemed, was prepared to wait him out.

  “I’ll let you get off to town then.”

  As he rode out of the yard Jarrett thought of the shed. That good strong rope was tied too high for dogs. And a dog ripping a rabbit would have left smears not splashes on the stone. Had more than drink been dispensed at Dewsnap’s farm the previous night? He might believe in an interrogation, had there been more marks on Grub’s body. He thought of Dickon Watson’s response on the fell. There had been tears in his eyes; but, then again, he had seen guilty men cry before. This business had him suspicious of everyone. He imagined a child using that rope in the shed to swing around the post like a merry-go-round. It could be no more than a game. So what if Billy had been wary when he first rode up? Tenants were often uneasy when the agent came to call—and Billy was alone in the place. He turned Walcheren’s head toward the Dewsnaps’ neighbors, the Anderses. Miss Anders’s gentleman caller intrigued him. Perhaps there were answers to be found there.

  A view opened out down the sweep of the valley. The sky was a delicate confection of oyster pink and blue shaded with featherings of gray. All around the ground sparkled under the sun. The air was so clear he could distinguish individual roofs in Woolbridge across the shining ribbon of the river. There was movement on the Carlisle road. A troop of tiny horsemen were turning up the cross lane to Pennygill. He whisked Walcheren about.

  He caught up with them just as they were taking the spur round to Grateley Manor—four troopers riding behind two officers. Lieutenant Roberts raised his hand and his troop came to an orderly halt.

  “Mr. Jarrett!” It was Colonel Ison, all bundled up with watery eyes and wind-chapped cheeks. He wore fur-lined gauntlets that made his reins difficult to manage. He slipped in his saddle as his horse fretted. With an effort, he righted himself.

  “Colonel, Lieutenant,” Jarrett greeted them, “what brings you out here?”

  Colonel Ison struggled to compose his expression into something approaching cordiality. “My condolences on your …” he stopped, recalling that he had no formal knowledge of what the victim had been to Mr. Jarrett. He began again. “Mr. Adley, a foul crime. A tragedy. I will, naturally, be calling on the marquess to express my personal regrets. I would have done so before now but that there is business that cannot be delayed.” He pulled back his shoulders. “We are on our way to arrest the man,” he declared astonishingly.

  “The man, sir?” The colonel could not conceal his satisfaction at Mr. Jarrett’s reaction.

  “Mr. Adley’s murderer,” he replied smugly. “We go to arrest him now.” The colonel clapped his heels to his horse. “You follow if you will,” he called back over his shoulder. The troop fell in behind him with a clatter of shod hooves.

  The party advanced at a brisk trot. Grateley Manor appeared on a rise above a plantation of trees. It was a desolate location, its sparseness accentuated by the blanket of snow. The riders hunched themselves against a knifing wind. The house was forbidding from this aspect, showing almost windowless walls built to withstand attack in a time when marauders swept down from the border. The approach brought them round to a more recent frontage, barely softened by a portico and a couple of beds planted with hardy shrubs.

  The
door was opened by a servant, whose skirts hung bell-like over her ample hips. They stopped short of the floor to reveal surprisingly small stockinged feet thrust into gray felt slippers. The maidservant’s eyes drifted over the colonel’s shoulder to the troopers. One was a fine-looking young fellow. The colonel reclaimed her attention.

  “Colonel Ison to see your mistress.” Arethusa looked down at his muddy boots.

  “She’s suppin’ tea in t’parlor. Are you comin’ in?” she asked dubiously. “I’ve just washed t’floor.” Colonel Ison glared at her from under his fierce eyebrows.

  “Damn your impertinence! Tell your mistress, woman!” He turned to Lieutenant Roberts. “Have the men search the outbuildings,” he commanded and swept in after the affronted maid. Jarrett followed. The passageway was so dark the lamps were still lit. The maid’s slippers clung loosely to her feet. They slapped along the flags. She knocked on a door and opened it.

  His first impression was of comfort. Although the windows set in the thick walls were small, clear light streamed in from the snowy landscape outside. Before a good fire, a sofa and a wing chair were drawn together on a fine Indian carpet woven in rich reds and blues. The fireplace was very old. It bore a stone cartouche with a painted crest featuring a sheaf of corn tied with blue cornflowers. Miss Lippett sat in the wing chair, a piece of sewing in her hands. On the sofa, dressed in a sage-green riding habit, her skin bright from her recent exercise, was Miss Henrietta Lonsdale. She was in the act of raising a wide-bowled teacup to her lips. She set it on its saucer, holding it before her, an expression of the liveliest curiosity on her face. A patch of sun illuminated the graceful arch of her hand as she held the cup in its place. The contrast between the subtle tones of her skin and the gleaming blue and white of the porcelain cup pleased him.