by Mike Ashley
“They were simply delivered,” he repeated grimly. “That is all you need to know, I think.”
“Indeed, Mr. Wroth,” I said sharply. “I think not, Sir.”
His eyebrows rose superciliously.
“Really?”
“No, Sir. I have some rights in this matter. It may not have occurred to you, Mr. Wroth, but I have compromised my reputation to some extent in trying to secure the receipts. I feel I have a right to know how they were returned to you and by whom.”
He looked down at the purse on the table, his fawn-coloured eyes veiled. When he spoke, it was politely, almost gently.
“I acknowledge that you may feel you have some rights, Captain Nash, and if you have compromised your reputation on our behalf, I thank you.” The veil lifted slightly and his eyes flashed like the tips of arrows. “Though the less said about ‘compromise’ the better, for all our sakes.”
He looked at me directly. The expression in his eyes was plain enough. By protecting their name, I would be protecting my own.
“On the contrary, Mr. Wroth,” I answered, meeting the challenge. “It is my duty to make a report, of sorts, to the Mansion House.”
He blinked.
“Concerning our business?”
“Concerning four deaths, Mr. Wroth. All of which could be connected with the receipts.”
“You have no proof of that!” he said harshly.
“Do you think not?” I said, and paused. His eyes met mine searchingly, then they shifted away.
“I have not been entirely idle,” I went on. “But since I must protect my reputation and as I have obviously forfeited your family’s confidence . . .”
He picked up the purse and extracted more coins. He regarded me steadily as he laid out six pieces on the tabletop.
“Captain Nash, if I were to give you my word that none of these deaths are the responsibility of my family, would you . . . could you consider making your report to the Mansion House without involving our name?”
He moved the coins towards me suggestively.
“I don’t see how I can, Mr. Wroth, in all conscience.”
The hand moving the coins fell abruptly away.
“Do you connect the deaths with my family?” he asked coldly.
“Murrell was blackguarding you, Sir. He died. His assistants died too. Very violent deaths. As for d’Urfey, he was your cousin’s closest companion.”
“But we are not involved, except fortuitously.”
I remained silent. He regarded me bitterly. Then the arrogant façade crumbled and the beseeching, almost supplicating look that I had seen on his face before came into it again.
“My grandmother is dying,” he said quietly. “I would like her to die in peace.”
“And ignorance?” I asked.
His head jerked back.
“Ignorance?”
I stood the bluff.
“Mr. Wroth, how much do you know of your antecedents?”
He flushed. I saw that I had struck home. Suddenly I was convinced that Pelham had told me the truth.
I had a brief and wild revelation. Oliver Wroth knew that he was the rightful heir (if one disregarded Pelham’s malicious insinuations about his own conception). Knowing this, one could only guess at the disorder of his feelings. His grandmother’s wilful refusal to recognize his true status must goad him beyond endurance. The realization that he could never prove his claim and the thought of losing both title and fortune to a worthless bastard must be almost more than he could bear. He was a young man with a cool head and a strong stomach, that was plain to see. Had he sought a desperate remedy for his wrongs? Knowing that he had no legal means of coming at his inheritance, had he sought to gain something of his own fortune by stealth?
Without fully grasping the extent of his motives, I felt strongly that he had been a prime mover in all this. The idea was fantastic, but no less possible for all that.
I observed him very closely as I said: “Sir Harry Pelham says that there are no receipts, Mr. Wroth. He also says that Lord Wroth is his natural son and Miss Kitty his natural daughter. If that is so, I am addressing the real Lord Wroth.”
He flushed again and when he replied his voice seemed curiously sealed-off.
“Pelham lies in both cases, Sir. My cousin is who the world thinks he is and the receipts were delivered into our hands last night. This affair is over.”
He scooped up the money. All at once he seemed to have regained his composure. He regarded me with the old, crisp arrogance.
“If you will state your expenses, Captain Nash, we shall draw a line under your account. As for your dealings with the Mansion House, you may tell them what you will. If you incriminate my family unnecessarily in the deaths you mentioned we shall, of course, take measures.”
The fawny eyes glared at me. Generations of privileged and haughty ancestors looked out from behind them.
“I shall do all I can to protect my grandmother while she lives,” he said quietly. “When she is gone, I shall come into my own.”
My revelation turned slightly arsy-varsey. I had misjudged him. He was not the man to blackguard his own kin. I now saw why he wished to protect his cousin Kitty. She would be his most valuable witness when he came to claim his rights by Law. And she would undoubtedly be safer under Pelham’s protection.
Under the bright pressure of those eyes, I glanced away.
There came an urgent knocking on the door and almost before Wroth could call out the door opened and Chives entered with undignified haste. He was oddly flustered for so impassive a man. I would not have imagined that his careful face could betray so much passion.
“What is it, Chives?”
It took some time before Chives could make himself understood, so great was the extent of his outrage.
“It’s the master, Mr. Oliver! His lordship! He’s been taken!”
“Taken? Taken where? By whom?”
With shaking hands, the old servant proffered a letter sealed with a rusty pin.
“We found this on Knottersmole Common, Sir. His Lordship was out there all morning shooting pigeon. I sent to remind him that dinner would be early today – and Grimes came back with this. It had been nailed to a tree by the lake. His lordship’s gone, Sir. There’s no doubt of it. We’ve searched everywhere.”
Wroth looked up from the sheet of paper. I saw that on the outside in roughly printed red block-capitals were the words: “LADY WROTH. IN ALL HAIST.” The paper looked to have been handled by a number of none too cleanly fingers.
“My cousin has been kidnapped,” Wroth said. He handed the paper to me.
The letter read: “IF YOO WONT TO SEE LORD WROTH ALIV AGEN, FOLOW OUR COMANDS TO THE LETER. GETT HOLDE OF 5000 GNS. LD WROTH WILL SEE HIS MANI AFFTER YOO GIV UP THE RIJE. DO NOT TRY AND BAMBOOZ UZ OR CAKLE TO THE RUNNERS. NEETHER RAMP UZ ELS HIS LDSHIP WILL DYE AND THE OLDE LADIE WILL MAK A NEWE WILL.
“WEE WIL GIV YOO 2 DAYS TO GET THE RIJE. PLAIS THE GNS IN A BOKS AND WAYT FOR MOR TIDINGS.”
“I don’t understand half that jargon,” Wroth said, his eyes bleak.
“Just thieves’ cant, Mr. Wroth,” I answered and could not forbear adding: “The writer seems anxious that you should not offend her ladyship.”
His eyebrows rose in the familiar way. “Sir?”
“The letter seems to be directed more towards you, Sir, than her ladyship. Despite the fact that it’s addressed to her. It is as though they feared that you might neglect to pay out, Mr. Wroth, unless you are reminded that her ladyship ultimately holds the purse-strings.”
The tawny eyes glittered. He snatched the paper from my hand and snapped: “I will remind you, Sir, that our business is at an end. Chives, show the Captain to his horse.”
He bowed and walked stiffly from the room.
Chives coughed discreetly from behind a diplomatic hand.
“Her ladyship wishes to see you, Captain,” he said.
As we climbed the gloomy stairs, I had an inner convictio
n that I was about to be replaced in my former capacity; and a nagging conviction, also, that I already knew the answer to the case.
The clue, I felt sure, lay in the composition of the kidnapper’s message. The thieves’ vocabulary struck a false note somewhere. It was too literary in tone, while the spelling and the grammar were altogether too much contrived!
There was no lack of eyewitnesses to the kidnapping, though their versions of what had happened left more holes in the evidence than otherwise.
A stolid farmhand, working in a field adjoining the common, said he had seen a man who resembled his lordship in build and colouring, enter a black phaeton in company with an older man. He described this man as wearing a grey coat and kneebreeches. His lordship had not seemed to object to being carried off.
A drayman passing the east entrance to Stukeley (the nearest gate to the common) had seen a black and silver chaise standing beneath a clump of trees. But he had not seen his lordship or his kidnapper enter the carriage. Another witness (a milkmaid) said a gig had been driven away by a fellow wearing a beaver hat and a grey coat.
It would seem that Lord Wroth, who in my estimation was not by nature a quiet lad, had gone quite docilely with his kidnappers. Although he carried a fowling-piece, he had yet been constrained to leave the woods without a struggle. The elderly gamekeeper who had accompanied him to flush the birds had gone for half a mile before becoming aware that the birds that took to the sky at his coming were returning, unshot at, to the trees. Needless to say, he had seen nothing of his master’s disappearance.
The crime appeared to have been planned in advance. The black and silver carriage had been seen in the vicinity on many days prior to the abduction, and for a number of nights, dogs in neighbouring kennels had been disturbed by prowlers. Or so willing witnesses hastened to tell me.
Among the eyewitness accounts that I collected, two completely contradictory ones stood out.
A servant at a house in the village said that at three o’clock on the day of the kidnapping, she had seen the black carriage pass by with two men in the back who appeared to be struggling with each other.
Against this was the story of the toll-keeper who, at the same time, had seen a black phaeton going in the opposite direction – that is, towards London. There were two men inside, one at the reins and the other partially concealed by a blanket. The driver had flung a handful of coppers in the toll-keeper’s face and had cried out that his passenger was “taken sick with the buboes”. The carriage had sped with uncommon speed towards London, which had scarcely surprised the toll-keeper, considering the patient’s alarming disorder.
In all these conflicting statements only two facts remained constant. Firstly, the carriage, though variously described as a phaeton, a chaise, or a gig, was always black. Secondly, and a detail that I found more rewarding, in all the descriptions the kidnapper was described as being dressed in grey.
When the toll-keeper added the information that the driver’s voice was curiously hoarse – as “thick as cheesecloth” was the way he put it – I felt that I was a long way on to retrieving his lordship and my reputation.
I knew only one grey man with a very hoarse voice who could have an interest in abducting Lord Wroth. Yet I feared that he might have little interest in returning the boy to his “mani” alive!
XXIII
Roach’s Landings stank as menacingly as ever in the glaring noonday heat. Wizened brats sailed their boats and fished in the foul gutter as I made my way through a herd of swine snuffling at the piled refuse in the unpaved street.
I climbed the greasy stairs, leaving behind the stench of rotting vegetables corrupting the air and exchanged it for the equally foul stuff that passed for ventilation in the grey man’s lodgings.
Just as I placed my foot upon the last flight, I hesitated. The dull murmur of voices drifted down the stairs. I could detect the hoarse tones of the grey man and another strong, harsh voice.
As daintily as a dancing master, I passed up the remaining stairs and tripped like a peewit across the dusty boards to an alcove set at an angle to the grey man’s attic. A filthy cloth hung from a rod, giving some protection. Swiftly I eased myself into the narrow confine of the alcove and arranged the frowzy cloth to hide me from any who should mount the stair.
I set my ear to the wall.
The harsh voice seemed to explode in my ear. He could not have been a foot away beyond the wall.
“You ain’t very bright, ‘Coffin’,” he said. “Not at the best of times! I reckon the blackie bedevilled your wits. You should never have got caught up in the likes of this.”
The grey man swore hoarsely. “Pike off.”
“Where are the papers?” the harsh voice demanded.
Smith’s bravery was only temporary. A note of pleading crept into the grey tones as he said patiently: “I’ve told yer – over and over. They’re where they always was – with Himself.”
The harsh man spat.
“It’s true,” Smith whined.
“My master wants them receipts. And I’m to take them back with me. Remember what overtook Betty.”
The crude menace in the voice brought an image into my mind. The mad carnage made of that poor black woman with her flowering wounds.
The warning must have affected Smith likewise. I had to strain to hear his cringing reply.
“That game’s finished. We been fleeced. We all been fleeced. He’s made gawneys of us all.”
“Stow that tale, Smith, or I’ll tap your claret.”
A note of desperate sincerity crept into the grey man’s tone, so urgent that his wraith-like voice almost acquired substance.
“Hang me, if it’s not true.”
The other man laughed coarsely. “Hanging’s too quick a death!”
Countless cracks of light showed through the diseased plaster. I applied my eye to the largest one and squinted through it.
The grey man, stared back at me disconsolately. For a moment it threw me into a confusion. He seemed so close and his scrutiny was so intent upon me that I imagined he must have seen the glimmer of my eye between the crack. Then I saw more clearly that his gaze was fixed upon a spot a little to my left, which meant that his interrogator stood behind the door.
The grey man’s face seemed greyer than ever. His grey shape seemed to reject the light. His eyes, as I could see, stared with desperate hatred at a point some four feet above the ground. I wondered whether the object of his loathing was a knife, a pistol, or a sword.
Whatever it was, I resolved to come to his aid and for that purpose edged towards the door. A hearty shove would easily burst the flimsy wood and the force of my entry would throw the man off balance – if he remained behind the door. Smith and I could settle the resulting argument between us. At all events, I must save the grey man. He was my only hope of finding young Wroth.
What happened next occurred with such dazzling speed that I was taken completely off-guard. The fact that it took place out of sight confused me further. In shifting my position I must have disclosed my presence in some way, though I thought I had moved as lightly as a Ratcliffe fog.
Smith’s unwelcome guest must have turned slightly, momentarily distracted by the sound and, quick as a cat, the grey man had attacked. I heard his breath whistle with the effort of it and I felt the wall shake as a weighty body fell against it. Immediately after, there was the deafening roar of a pistol shot reverberating among the rafters, followed by an uncanny silence.
A muffled oath, a groan. Somebody stirred. Sword in hand, I kicked at the door. It flew open and struck against an object lying behind it.
The gargantuan body of Pelham’s coachman lay humped against the wall with the life fast ebbing out of him. His hands clutched weakly at his neck from which hung a knife like a bright red barb. My face was the last thing he saw on earth. He snarled feebly, the blood bubbling from his mouth as he died.
The grey man, too, was sinking to his knees, his hands slipping loosely over the
bed on which the Negress had met such a terrifying end. I caught him as he dropped face forwards and turned him to the light. Blood soaked my hand.
Unaccountably he was not mortally wounded. The bullet had torn through his right arm only, leaving it a shattered mass of blood, flesh and bone-splinters. He would never again throw a knife with such devastating effect, but he would live to mount the scaffold.
His eyes were beginning to glaze. They seemed suddenly to shrink and to retreat inwards. His skin was the colour of congealed gravy. He fainted in my arms, spotting my linen liberally with his blood.
I patched him up, inexpertly using the bed linen to stem the flowing blood. I am no surgeon, but I did my best for him. For all his grey exterior he was as sound as a horse, and like a horse could have been bled of two quarts. He had survived enough in his lifetime – the pox at least to judge by the condition of his skin – and he would live to contract gaol fever. When I had finished with his arm, I filled his mouth with brandy; he choked slightly, his eyes opened resentfully and were filled with a dull sort of recognition.
“Where’s Lord Wroth, ‘Coffin’?” I asked.
His lips twisted with a weak defiance. “Pike off,” he whispered.
I poked gently at his arm. A wave of nausea flushed the grey face. He swore again, though not so bravely. I reached for his broken arm. He whimpered in anticipation of the pain. My outstretched finger menaced his well-being as I asked again: “Where is Lord Wroth?”
There was no more fight left in him, but he still strove to make a profit from his situation. There is truly no honour among thieves! The informer is the principal support of the law. If one does one’s crime with a confederate, and if one has little faith in him, it is always soothing to know that one can run off to the Justice, save one’s own neck by telling the whole tale, and perhaps receive a substantial reward in addition.
In his half-fevered state, Smith strove to make such a bargain. My hovering finger brought him up against the reality of his situation. I was in no position – and no mood – to strike a bargain. He howled like a dog before fainting away.
“Where is Lord Wroth, and who is ‘Himself’?” I asked, as he recovered consciousness.
