‘The lad were terrified,’ Woods continued. ‘He made little sense. He were gabblin’ on about the dark elves – I couldn’t make head nor tail of what he were sayin’.’
‘What was Alby Kilby doing in Middleton?’
‘Doctor Wallace said Kilby had ridden over to Middleton to pay his doctor’s bill. He’d had some medicine for his wife a while back.’
Lavender nodded and remembered Kilby’s sickly wife back in The Angel Inn. Across the yard the blacksmith’s apprentice worked the groaning bellows amidst an angry shower of sparks from the glowing furnace. ‘What about Jed Sawyer?’
Woods shrugged. ‘He were just passin’ by, I think. He’d disappeared by the time I got back down to the street – so had Kilby.’
Lavender saw the worried look on Woods’ face. ‘What’s the matter, Ned?’
‘It’s Kilby.’ Woods struggled to find the right words. ‘There’s somethin’ about him – the way he stares. I thought he were a gentle man the other night in The Angel but I’m not so sure now.’
Lavender nodded and remembered how Kilby had stood glowering on the footpath, watching them as they rode out of Market Harborough.
‘I know this is daft, sir, but I think we need to find out what he were doin’ on the night of Sculthorpe’s murder.’
‘I know what you mean about Kilby,’ Lavender said. ‘But I suspect we’ll find a dozen or more witnesses in Market Harborough who’ll tell us he was working in his tavern all night when Sculthorpe was murdered.’
The two men paused thoughtfully for a moment, then Woods shrugged. ‘With respect, sir, I’m not sure we can believe Billy Sculthorpe. Perhaps we shouldn’t read too much into this. One minute he were fine, chattin’ away to me, and the next he were howlin’ like the Devil himself had come after him.’
‘The poor fellow is probably still in shock following the attack at his home,’ Lavender said.
‘Captain Rushperry said he weren’t a reliable witness.’
Part of Lavender wanted to agree with Woods – but a part of him resisted. ‘That’s what we thought about Matthew Carnaby last November in Bellingham,’ he said quietly. ‘We overlooked him as a potential witness.’
The blacksmith returned from stabling Lavender’s horse and resumed his rhythmic hammering of a horseshoe on the anvil.
‘The mute fellah?’ Woods asked.
‘Yes, but it turned out Matthew Carnaby could read and write and that he held the key to the mystery. Ignoring Carnaby was a grave mistake on my part – and the poor gypsy girl paid for it.’ The hammer hit the anvil and the high-pitched ring punctuated the silence that followed his words.
Woods nodded sadly. ‘You shouldn’t blame yourself, sir.’
‘I just don’t want to make the same mistake again,’ Lavender said. ‘This case is difficult enough and we can’t afford to overlook any clue to the identity of these murderers. This is one of the few leads we have got. Billy Sculthorpe has just heard a voice that frightened him.’
‘Well, I don’t know what to make of it all,’ Woods said. ‘We know Constable Sawyer weren’t involved in the murder – and the doctor seems like a decent fellah even though he does have the initials J.W. I’m not sure he looks like he’s capable of assaultin’ anyone. It’s been a while since I’ve seen such a scraggy fellah.’
‘Yes,’ Lavender agreed. ‘Doctor Wallace is ill and weak. I doubt he’d have the strength to take part in such a vicious assault – and there is no clear motive.’
‘I suppose he could have hired some fellahs to do the work for him,’ Woods suggested.
‘Oh, well done, Ned.’ Lavender’s voice rose with fresh hope. He hadn’t considered this option before. ‘And by the same logic – his wife could have done the same.’
‘His wife?’ Shock flashed across Woods’ face. ‘Why would she want to murder Sculthorpe?’
‘I don’t know but let’s keep our minds open.’
Briefly he told Woods about his strange interview with Lady Anne Fitzwilliam. ‘She had already worked out from the coroner’s report and Doctor Wallace’s statement that Sculthorpe had been poisoned – and she clearly suspects that it wasn’t accidental.’
‘Gawd’s teeth! Did you mention that you found Mrs Wallace pickin’ mushrooms this mornin’?’
‘No, I didn’t. We need to know more about her – and let’s find out what Alby Kilby was doing on the night of the murder. Our pool of suspects is growing.’
‘Oh, and there were somethin’ else, sir.’
‘Yes?’
‘Billy said again how those thievin’ coves “had got it wrong” when they were searchin’ for his father’s gold.’
Lavender stared at him thoughtfully. A loud hiss and a billowing cloud of steam emanated from the forge as the blacksmith immersed the glowing red horseshoe in a pail of water.
‘Yes, I remember Billy said that yesterday.’ He paused for a moment, then frowned. ‘Do you think we’ve missed something, Ned?’
Woods shrugged, his broad face expressionless.
‘Let’s go back to the Sculthorpe house,’ Lavender said. ‘Let’s take another look.’
Lavender forced open the creaking unlocked door of Sculthorpe’s dilapidated cottage and they stepped inside into the musty gloom of the hallway. Woods ducked his head beneath the low doorframe and followed him up the short flight of wooden stairs to the spot on the landing where he knew Billy Sculthorpe had been attacked. Lavender frowned and tried to picture the scene witnessed by the young man on that fateful night. It was dark. Three shadowy figures with blackened faces moved around his mother’s bedchamber, one carrying a piece of furniture. There wouldn’t have been much time. Billy would have only had a quick glance before the men moved towards him, blocking out his view.
‘“They got it wrong”,’ he said quietly to himself. ‘Come on, Billy: what was it they got wrong?’
The narrow bed with its frayed coverlet stood against most of the side wall. The chairs were still piled haphazardly on a chest of drawers in one corner. The faded rug had been pulled back, exposing the gaping hole beneath the floor, the splintered floorboards thrown down beside it. William Sculthorpe had told the thieves his money was hidden in the corner beneath the floorboards of his late wife’s bedroom above the kitchen. Lavender’s eyes rested on the heap of stacked furniture in the corner behind the door. His eyebrows knitted together across his brow. What if . . . ?
‘Help me clear these away, Ned.’ He moved to the stack of furniture in the corner, grabbed the upturned legs of a spindly chair and tossed it across the room onto the bed. Together they lifted away the rest of the furniture and dragged the chest of drawers across to the other side of the fireplace. Lavender crouched down and whipped back the fringed edge of the faded rug. A smile of satisfaction spread across his face when he saw what lay beneath.
‘Gawd’s teeth!’ Woods exclaimed. ‘So the old fellah had two secret hidin’ places up here!’ An area of the floorboards, about a yard square in size, had been chopped into lengths for easy removal. Years of dust had caked the gaps in between the wooden planks but there was no doubt they had uncovered another secret storage place belonging to William Sculthorpe.
‘What do you suppose –?’
‘Pass me the poker,’ Lavender interrupted. ‘The time for speculation is over, Ned. With any luck, this cavity will contain some answers to the mysteries that bedevil us.’
Using the poker and Lavender’s pocketknife, the two men levered up the wooden planks. ‘No one has moved these for a while,’ Woods grunted.
With a loud crack and a shower of dust, the last piece came away from the floor. They peered down into the hole. A heavy wooden box, blackened with age and fastened with a rusty clasp, lay in the void. They hauled it out with difficulty and Lavender attacked the lock with his knife until there was a satisfying click.
‘Heaven and hell!’ Woods exclaimed when they lifted the creaking wooden lid. ‘More popery!’
A large, solid gold cruci
fix and a string of amber rosary beads lay on top of a pile of battered ledgers and a Bible. The pungent, spicy odour of church incense mingled with the scent of unwashed clothing emanating from the heap of black and white material beneath the ledgers.
Tucked around the edges of the box were bulging leather money bags. Lavender reached out for one, opened it up and poured the contents out into the box. A large mass of golden guineas glinted in the sunlight. Lavender scooped up a handful and let them trickle back down between his fingers, trying to assess how many lay there. Thirty, perhaps? Fifty?
His constable whistled softly and grinned. ‘Just look at those yellow boys!’ he said. His eyes shone as they flitted between the gleaming coins in Lavender’s hand and the other bulging pouches. ‘Young Billy-Boy were right when he said those thievin’ villains had “got it wrong”.’ The bloody sapheads pulled up the floorboards in the wrong part of the room and piled the damned furniture on top of a tidy round sum!’
Lavender felt a wave of satisfaction flood through him. He shared Woods’ excitement.
‘William Sculthorpe obviously kept two hoards of money in here.’ He pointed to the other gaping hole in the room. ‘Sculthorpe directed the thieves to the hoard beneath the floor by the window, probably hoping they would never find this cache.’
‘Judgin’ by the difficulty we’ve just had with those damned floorboards,’ Woods said, ‘Sculthorpe hadn’t touched this particular treasure box in a while. What shall we do now?’
‘Let’s empty this methodically,’ Lavender said. ‘You take charge of the coins and I’ll deal with the ledgers.’
Carefully they removed the top layer of guineas and stacked them on the floor. Out next came the ledgers, which Lavender stacked beside him. As each layer was removed more money bags were revealed. Woods added another half a dozen to the growing pile.
‘There must be a ruddy fortune in here!’
Lavender returned to the box, pulled out the clothing and examined it. The first item was a high-collared, black woollen cloak. He raised an eyebrow at the fine quality of its white silk lining. Beneath the cloak they found an oval-shaped garment of rich purple and ruby brocade. Simply shaped, with a hole in the centre to pull over the head, it was intricately embroidered with gold and silver religious imagery. He ran his finger over the fine golden silk of the embroidered crucifix and smiled. At last they were getting somewhere with this case.
‘What is it?’ Woods asked.
‘It’s a chasuble.’
‘A what?’
Lavender didn’t reply but leant forward to rummage deeper into the pile of clothing. The smell of frankincense and myrrh became stronger with each layer he removed.
Woods wrinkled his nose in disgust. ‘What a stench!’
Lavender pulled out several white, long-sleeved linen vestments and a plain black, long-skirted cassock. Below them lay a long golden cord cincture to tie around the waist of the cassock and a richly embroidered, white silk stole. At the bottom of the box were several more rosary beads and a few text books in Latin, which he glanced at curiously before placing them beside the ledgers. They were dull religious tracts. Finally, they found the source of the smell – a silver-gilt box containing the aromatic incense. Beside it lay an ornate, pointed thurible on a long silver chain, which a priest would use to waft the scent of burning incense around the place of worship. The final item Lavender withdrew was an embroidered rectangle of white linen.
‘Well, at least now we know the truth about William Sculthorpe’s profession,’ he said with a sigh of relief.
‘We do?’ Woods grabbed the last of the leather money bags from the bottom of the box.
‘Yes.’ Lavender held up the piece of white linen. ‘This is an amice worn by a priest during Mass. William Sculthorpe was a Roman Catholic priest.’
Chapter Sixteen
‘Gawd’s teeth!’ Woods dropped the bags of coins to the floor. The clang echoed around the old cottage. ‘He were a what?’
‘He was a priest, Ned – a Catholic priest. These are the vestments and robes of a Catholic priest and I think it’s fair to assume they belonged to William Sculthorpe.’
‘Heaven and hell!’ Wood’s mouth flapped open and shut like the mouth of a fish dragged out of the river. ‘How can that be?’ He stared hard at Lavender, his grey eyes clouded with confusion. ‘Sculthorpe were a married man with a son!’
‘I don’t know,’ Lavender replied. ‘Like you, I thought a priest’s vow of celibacy was for the duration of their life. I need to seek clarification.’
Lavender picked up the chain of the silver thurible, lifted it above the empty box and let it swing slowly backwards and forwards. ‘It has only been legal for priests to take Mass in Britain since 1791,’ he said. ‘Before this they were hounded by the authorities, arrested and imprisoned. If William Sculthorpe was a priest in his youth, then his would have been a shadowy existence. He would have flitted from one place to another like a ghost hiding in priest holes, attics and cellars – and occasionally finding refuge in the homes of the wealthy Catholic aristocrats. Secrecy would have been second nature to him.’
‘You mean wealthy Catholics like Lady Anne Fitzwilliam at Rockingham Castle?’ Woods asked.
Lavender nodded. ‘At least now I understand the curious relationship between Sculthorpe and Lady Anne. At one point in their lives, Sculthorpe must have been her priest and confessor. They had developed a close relationship over the years, more of a friendship than the relationship we normally see between a mistress and her servant.’
Woods shuddered. ‘The thought of that superstitious Latin chantin’ – not to mention the confessin’ malarkey – it makes me very uneasy,’ he admitted.
Lavender smiled. ‘Why? Do you have something to hide, Ned? A few sinful thoughts, perhaps?’
‘No.’ Woods’ face crumpled with disappointment. ‘Betsy don’t allow me to have sinful thoughts.’
Lavender laughed and turned his attention back to the dusty ledgers stacked on the floor beside him. His fingers itched to open them. ‘Lady Anne talked about a great service Sculthorpe once rendered unto her for which she had rewarded him generously,’ he said. ‘She was obviously beholden unto her priest for something – but she wouldn’t tell me what or why.’ He tapped the ledgers thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps the answer is in here.’
‘I still don’t understand where young Billy and his ma fit into this.’
‘Neither do I,’ Lavender said. ‘I suspect the answer to their mystery lies back in London, where Sculthorpe met his wife and where Miss Bennett told us Billy was born.’
Woods raised his eyebrows. ‘You goin’ back to London?’
‘I may have to.’
‘So what shall we do now?’
Lavender roused himself. ‘You count up the coins, Woods, and I’ll go through the ledgers.’
Woods hesitated and Lavender glanced up. ‘I’ve often found I add up much better on a full stomach,’ his constable said. ‘That breakfast we had were pathetic.’
‘Well, you’d better pay a visit to Mrs Tilley’s bakery and purchase some pies,’ Lavender said.
Woods didn’t hesitate. He disappeared through the door and thundered down the stairs of the cottage. The door slammed, the cottage shook and a tiny shower of plaster fluttered down from the ceiling.
By the time Woods returned, Lavender’s own stomach was rumbling. He pushed aside the ledgers, sat back on the late Mrs Sculthorpe’s bed and enjoyed the succulent pastry and rich filling of his pie. Warm sunlight continued to pour into the room through the dirty window. He glanced out into the overgrown garden and watched the new foliage on a huge oak tree ripple and gleam like malachite and emeralds.
Woods pulled up a chair and joined him with his own pie. ‘I’ve been thinkin’,’ he said, in between mouthfuls. ‘Perhaps Sculthorpe and his missus weren’t married after all. Perhaps she were some sort of housekeeper for him and maybe Billy were her nipper.’
‘Perhaps,’ Lavender said. �
�This would certainly explain why the Sculthorpes had separate bedchambers, although such an arrangement is also common with elderly couples when one becomes ill.’
‘Maybe Sculthorpe let her use his name to stop the gossipmongers and their tittle-tattle.’
Lavender nodded and reached for his hip flask to wash down the pie with some brandy. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his mouth. ‘I have had a cursory glance at the account ledgers,’ he said, ‘and it looks like Sculthorpe kept separate accounts for his two caches of money.’ He pointed towards the stack of leather money bags on the floor. ‘If Sculthorpe’s tally is up to date, the coins in those money bags should amount to six hundred and thirty pounds.’
Flakes of pastry flew down the front of Woods’ coat as he spluttered. It took him a moment or two to recover from the shock. ‘So what with these yellow boys and the other money stashed away at the bank in London – Sculthorpe were flush in the pocket!’
‘Yes, his total savings amount to nearly seventeen hundred pounds – a significant amount.’
‘I don’t know much about priests,’ Woods said, ‘but this seems like a hell of a lot of plate for a religious man to collect. I always thought most of them were as poor as their cathedral mice.’
Lavender nodded, then frowned. ‘You’re right, Ned. I’ve wondered if he came by this money honestly.’
‘Do you still think he might have been a moneylender?’
‘It’s a possibility.’
‘What about the stash he kept beneath the floorboards under the window?’ Woods asked. ‘Were there hundreds of yellow boys in there too?’
‘According to the ledgers there were thirty-nine pounds and eleven shillings in that hoard. That seems to have been his money for day-to-day expenses. The larger amount we have uncovered today must have been his savings.’
‘Thirty-nine pounds?’ Woods gave a hollow laugh. ‘There’s over six hundred pounds hidden in this part of the room and those thievin’ coves only find thirty-nine pounds?’
The Sculthorpe Murder Page 12
