The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 3 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  Tonneman set his cudgel outside and closed the door. He hung his hat and coat on a hook, and sat on a low oak bench beside Racqel. How he wanted to put his head in her lap and let her stroke his hair. She’d asked him to respect her year of mourning, and he’d promised, but it was not easy. If only he could take her in his arms and –

  “What is the news?” Racqel said, as if she knew what he was thinking.

  Antje placed steaming mugs of tea in front of them. “Yes, tell us. What a bad end for that little schemer.”

  “Schemer? You mean Gretchen Goderis?”

  “Yes, of course. Everyone knew she wanted Margarieta’s money and poor Margarieta was such a sad and lonely woman. But I don’t think Gretchen was alone in this.”

  “Everyone knew? I didn’t know. How could I not know? And you think she had partners?”

  Racqel laughed. Her hand rested on Tonneman’s, almost as an afterthought, then as if too close to the fire, she pulled away. “I did not know. Perhaps she was taken in by other schemers.”

  “You are a nice woman, Racqel,” Antje said. She piled cookies on a platter and set them on the table.

  “If you know so much, Antje Ten Eyck, who then is the strange child in the portrait with Margarieta I saw in the van Lundt house?”

  That puzzled Antje. She stood there, floury hands on her round hips. “Strange child?”

  “Moon faced, perhaps two or three years.”

  “There were no children that anyone knew of, as long as we’ve been here.”

  “Well, maybe it was before you arrived. Who would remember such a thing?”

  Antje and Racqel exchanged knowing looks. “Tonneman, you booby,” Antje said. “Who would recall family histories going back years?”

  “I don’t know. You’d better tell me before I lose my temper and blow the house down.” He grinned at Racqel.

  “Reverend Megapolensis.”

  “He’s younger than we are. How would he know?”

  “Not that one, the old man, his father. He knows everyone’s history.”

  “The old man? I thought he went back to Amsterdam.”

  “No. He’s been very ill. I hear he’s still living on his farm up past Maiden Lane.”

  Wednesday, 1 December. Early Afternoon

  It was the odd bit of warmth that made Pos open his eyes. He shut them immediately against the glare of light. His head hurt like the Devil himself was pounding on it, and he groaned.

  “He’s alive, father, thank the Blessed Lord.” A woman’s voice, sweet enough for Pos to open his eyes again.

  “Where am I?” His lips were so stiff he could hardly speak. His words were Dutch.

  A young woman in grey was looking down at him with concern. Her white ruffled cap covered most of her hair, except for a lock or two, brick in colour that had broken loose around her ears.

  Pos sat up. Melted snow streamed from his clothing. The man she called Father wore black and had a white beard. Quakers, or that like.

  “I am Abraham Fallows,” the old man said in English, “This is my daughter, Ruth.” He was a lean man, of unusual height. “Your horse took a fall and you lay buried in a snow bank. Were it not for my daughter on her way to the milking, you might have frozen to death. Your horse, no worse for the fall, came to our barn in search of food. We have rubbed him down and fed him.”

  “Well, I thank you, sir,” Pos said, in English. He was sitting on a blanket in front of the hearth. His stomach growled. He smelled fresh bread and hot food. “Now I must be on my way.”

  “You have travelled all the way from New-York?”

  “I have. I am Deputy Sheriff in the city, Lodowyk Pos. I have business in New Haven.”

  The woman smiled. Near as tall as her father, she had a face as sweet as her voice, and her eyes were a greyish blue and filled with humour. She took a kettle from the fire. “You will have time for tea and stew.”

  While his daughter prepared the meal, Fallows helped Pos to his feet. “The Devil came for you with his evil intoxicants and would have had you, were it not for my daughter.”

  Late that evening, more sober than he cared to be, Pos stopped at the tavern opposite the New Haven city hall and with the aid of a little trick he knew with three playing cards, managed to buy drinks all round at no cost. And along the way he gained an impressive bit of knowledge.

  He had a long, restful sleep in a stable he shared with his horse before riding back to New-York, fairly certain that he had the answer Tonneman required.

  Thursday, 2 December. Afternoon

  Old Reverend Johannes Megapolensis had retired after the peace treaty with the English two months previously. He lived with his son Samuel and daughter-in-law Elsbetta and their five children on his small farm off the Bouwerie Road. His parcel of land was closer to the village than that of the much larger estate of his old friend Pieter Stuyvesant. Services in the old Stone Church were now conducted by Johannes’s son Samuel.

  The farmhouse had been added on to significantly, as Elsbetta, a large, agreeable woman, produced additional children.

  It was Tonneman’s second attempt in two days to speak with the old minister, who was feeling too poorly to have visitors.

  “Papa, see who’s come to visit.” Johannes was snoozing in a chair in front of the fire, breathing asthmatically. Elsbetta brought another chair for Tonneman and spoke gently, but with raised voice, to her father-in-law. “Sheriff Tonneman.”

  The old man opened cataract milky eyes and blinked rapidly. “Tonneman.” He coughed and sat up in his chair and thought for a moment. “I am retired. I cannot give you religious advice, except you must attend church, which I assume is still a rare practice for you.”

  Tonneman smiled. “I am a lost cause.” The Sheriff paused. “I have come to ask you to search your memory.”

  Elsbetta appeared with mugs of tea and bread and butter. She buttered the bread for her father-in-law and put the mug in his palsied hand.

  “My memory? I may be good for that, if for nothing else. What is this village coming to these days, with the English in charge? Has this to do with the wretched Gretchen Goderis?”

  “Wretched, you say? I thought she was a poor, innocent servant girl.”

  “Poor perhaps. Innocent? That I would never say. Is this why you’re here?”

  “No. Let her lie in peace. I came to ask you about Margarieta and Claes van Lundt, after they arrived from the Old Country. You were here then.”

  The old man frowned, coughed, spat into a nose cloth. “I was here, yes. We were all so young. It was our beginning.”

  “Was there a child? There is a painting in the manor showing a child with Margarieta.”

  “A child?” He closed his eyes. “I do not remember . . .”

  “An odd child, moon faced –”

  “No. Wait. There was a child. A boy, yes, moon faced, yes. A strange afflicted child.”

  “Strange?”

  “In the head. Touched by God – or the Devil.”

  “And afflicted you say?”

  “The eyes. Most peculiar. Unnatural. How she doted on the hapless lad.” The old man shifted in his chair and drank from the mug of hot tea. “Yes. I remember now. A tragedy. We must trust God. It is His will. Minuit went back on his word and the Indians raided the farms. Innocent people were slaughtered, burned alive in their houses. The van Lundts had come into town and left the child with a maidservant. The house was burned to the ground with everyone in it.”

  Friday, 3 December. Afternoon

  Though he had not yet wet his throat with a tankard of beer, Lodowyk Pos sang as joyfully as if he’d quaffed his fill. “There was an Indian maid, tra la, who lay in the glade with a brave, tra la, of a paler shade, tra la. La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.” Over and over the Captain sang his silly ditty. And when he wasn’t singing he was laughing.

  At the first inn he came to he added drinking. Singing, laughing and drinking. And thus Pos spent a delightful afternoon going into one inn after anoth
er until he finally left the last one, mounted his steed and made his way to New-York where Tonneman awaited his report. Pos was certain he’d taken care of his duty. And quite well at that.

  “An Indian maid lay in the glade, tra la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.”

  Pos had a head full of happy songs and thoughts and laughter. It wasn’t often that he came out a step ahead of Pieter Tonneman, and he was anticipating the moment when he told his friend the Sheriff his news.

  What neither Pos nor the man who called himself John Lundt realized was that each was travelling the same road. Albeit in opposite directions.

  Lundt rode van Dincklagen’s horse past the sleeping sentry and out of the village with a sackful of the fat old lawyer’s money and several silver vessels that he was sure would fetch him a fine price in Fort Orange.

  His future in New-York, he well knew, was in doubt, given his poor performance. It wasn’t his fault. He had been told the barest essentials. And he saw no reason to linger in hopes of the compensation he’d been promised, for he had no wish to end his miserable life like that unfortunate wretch, drowned like a rat in a Jew’s trough. The man who had paid his debts and gotten him released from debtors prison in New Haven on the condition that he pretend to be the old lady’s heir was not one to anger. He’d been warned sure enough at the trough.

  Lundt was so intent on seeing that his sacks of plunder did not take flight as he rode that he didn’t notice the rider coming toward him until it was too late.

  “Hoy, you!” Pos shouted. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Van Dincklagen’s horse shied and Lundt flew off, crashing into a snow-covered bramble along with all the silver loot clanking and banging like so many dissonant church bells.

  Friday, 3 December. Afternoon

  It was coming on to late afternoon when Tonneman, impatiently awaiting Pos’s return, thought to stop by van Dincklagen’s house and check on young Lundt. As he tied Venus to the hitching post in front of van Dincklagen’s house, the door burst open.

  “Help! Help! Thief!” Helga, van Dincklagen’s servant girl, stood on the stoop wailing. Her cap was askew and her yellow hair streamed from under. “Oh, sir, oh sir, thank the good Lord you’re here.”

  “What’s happened?” Tonneman moved the distraught girl aside and there was Lubbertus, in as much disarray as his servant girl.

  Hangdog, Lubbertus said, “While I was tending to my accounts, young Lundt managed to drink my brandy and make off with everything that wasn’t pegged down.”

  “Not everyone is as kind and trusting as you, my friend,” Tonneman said. “He can’t have gotten far. I’ll find him and a few nights in our jail will teach him manners.”

  Tonneman gave Venus a reassuring pat on her flank and mounting, rode off after the rascal Lundt, thinking he was no nearer in solving the murders of Gretchen Goderis and Willem Stael.

  As Tonneman arrived at the Broad Way Gate, Dolittle emerged from behind the guard shed. “So many travellers today,” the Londoner said, edging toward the waning embers of his small fire. “Carts and wagons and walkers and even one man running as if the Devil himself was biting his arse. You’d think it was a parade before the King.”

  Tonneman suppressed a smile at the stain on the front of the soldier’s breeches. In this weather the man’s pissy breeches would likely freeze.

  “Did young Lundt pass this way?”

  “Not long. Made enough noise to –”

  “Wake you?”

  “Pshaw, Sheriff. I do my duty, but the hours are long and the cold gets into me bones. And with nobody to talk to –”

  Tonneman would have moved off, but what had Dolittle said? A parade? “Who else has come through the Gate since Lundt?”

  “The blacksmith, Baalde.”

  “Baalde?”

  Dolittle shrugged. He pointed beyond the Gate. “You can probably still see him with his horse and cart though he’s such a rude fellow, I don’t know why anyone would want to talk with him. I asked him where he was off to and he told me he was hunting meat and I would do as well if he didn’t find what he was looking for.”

  Tonneman saw no sign of Baalde, not even cartwheel tracks in the crusty snow, but the man could have gone off the road anywhere in search of game. No matter. It was not Baalde he was seeking.

  At the third bend on the road to New Haarlem, Tonneman heard shouting and laughter echoing through the snow-covered hills. It was always so when he came upon the Red Rooster, hardly more than a hut under a stand of pines, but a thriving, noisy tavern owned by the Spaniard, One-Eye Vega. Vega always had a crowd when word came that he’d received a shipment of sack, the strong, light-coloured Spanish wine.

  Among the horses tied to the hitching post were Pos’s and next to Pos’s was van Dincklagen’s stolen steed. Side by side.

  “A fine thing,” Tonneman said aloud. He dismounted and tied Venus to the rail. “We won’t be long,” he told her, noticing where wheel tracks in the snow trailed off the road and around to the back of the Red Rooster. Dirk Baalde?

  In spite of the shoulder-to-shoulder drinkers and the thick haze of pipe smoke, Tonneman spied Pos and Lundt side by side, unsteady on their pins, singing and slobbering, clinging to each other. They would have been lying on the dirt floor were it not for the crowd of drinkers giving them no room to fall. But Pos had not forgotten his duty completely. Hooked on his left arm – the one he wasn’t using for drinking – were the sacks of stolen goods.

  “Greetings, Sheriff,” One-Eye Vega yelled above the noise, and there came a sudden hush. “Have a drink, on me.”

  “I thank you, but I’m here on business,” Tonneman said, signalling Pos outside with his thumb. When Pos and Lundt stared back at Tonneman with bleary eyes, he strode toward them, slapped the drinks from their hands and seized Lundt by the seat of his breeches and the scruff of his neck. To Pos he said, “We have a lot to talk about. And it’s jail for this thief.”

  “Wait,” Pos shouted, suddenly more sober than he’d appeared. “Don’t take the lad back yet.” He followed Tonneman outside.

  “And why the bloody hell not?” Tonneman demanded.

  “Because,” and here the not-so-drunk Pos beamed, “I’ve solved our bloody mystery.”

  “Bah,” Tonneman said, dropping Lundt. “Don’t you move, Lundt, you’re naught but a thief and a thankless wretch.”

  “My name is not Lundt, Sheriff. I am John Tatlock.” The young man struggled to his knees. “I –” His eyes rolled up and with a small groan he fell over backward.

  The arrow had come out of nowhere.

  Friday, 3 December. Late afternoon

  Dolittle blinked his eyes rapidly. He was weary and his replacement, Merriweather, the lazy sot, was late. But what was this? A procession was coming toward him. The Sheriff first, holding the reins of blacksmith Baalde’s bay mare, which was pulling Baalde’s cart. Then Captain Pos followed on his horse, leading a trussed-up Dirk Baalde, afoot, snarling like a beast, and still another horse brought up the rear.

  Lying in the cart Dolittle saw the newly arrived young Lundt, half dead he appeared, a red fletched arrow piercing his right shoulder.

  Word travelled quickly, probably because Dolittle’s replacement had arrived and Tonneman had told Dolittle to have physician Ditmar Wolters meet them at City Hall. Now the streets were filled with townspeople who became yet another procession as Tonneman’s made its way down the Broad Way to City Hall and the jail.

  “Put him in irons,” Tonneman told Pos. “You can be sure Baalde wasn’t working alone.”

  “You’ll never get away with this, Tonneman,” Baalde yelled. “I have friends.”

  “Friends?” Tonneman gave a coarse laugh. “Friends in Hades, for all the good it will do you.”

  By the time Tonneman had the villain Baalde in irons, the physician had arrived and removed the arrow from Tatlock’s shoulder.

  “What did you need me for?” the physician complained. “The arrow hit bone and went no
further. You could just as well have plucked it out yourself and not bothered me.”

  Wolters was nothing but a barber and a drunkard, at that, Tonneman thought, and decided to ask Racqel, whose father had been a physician, to look at the wound and prepare a poultice of the medicinal herbs she collected and stored.

  “What is the meaning of this, Tonneman?” Bridge said, shoving his way through the crowd. “Governor Nicholls –”

  “I’m on my way to White Hall to give my report to the Governor.”

  “You can tell me, Tonneman, and save yourself the bother.”

  “Now, Bridge, old friend, what kind of Sheriff would I be if I didn’t report to our esteemed Governor myself?”

  “Hoy, Tonneman!” Lubbertus, moving like a heavy old horse down Pearl Street, hailed Tonneman. “The news is good, they tell me.”

  “Everything lost is found,” Tonneman said.

  “Very good, but I hear young Lundt has been woefully wounded.”

  “Baalde shot him with an arrow. And his name is not Lundt. It’s Tatlock.”

  Lubbertus looked askance.

  “It’s a long story, and we’ll have to wait until our young and doltish thief has recovered to get the whole of it, but what I can tell you is that Pos has come from New Haven and knows more of the story than I do.”

  “Well,” Lubbertus said. “I have a good feeling about young Lu – Tatlock, you say? I will have my servants bring a pallet and he will stay with me until he’s recovered.”

  “Lubbertus, you are a good Christian.”

  And this is how John Tatlock came to be transported to Maiden Lane to the home of Lubbertus van Dincklagen, where his wound was treated with a poultice containing various herbs by a mysterious woman clothed entirely in black, even to the veil that concealed her face, and where, with the additional care and attention of Lubbertus, he soon recovered.

  Wednesday, 8 December. Evening

  Lubbertus van Dincklagen’s great chamber was richly furnished with ample pieces of furniture to accommodate his girth, beautiful carpets and draperies, all of which he’d either brought with him from the Old Country or bought from traders passing through. He’d had his servants arrange a grand chair set behind a banquet table in the centre of the room. Helga had put out mugs of hot cider and the room was lit by two massive candelabra and the blazing logs in the hearth on the back wall.