BLACKDOWN (a thriller and murder mystery) (11 page)

‘The exchanging of feathers,’ she said. ‘How curious! A sign, perhaps?’

‘You live dangerously. I could have killed you.’

‘I live dangerously every day.’ She pointed to tiny scars on her arms and neck. ‘I have often been unfortunate, whenever he has been at the drink and misses the potato, or cabbage, or whatever is in season – I much prefer the vegetables to be large, as you can understand, but the audience would have him throw at a grape if they could. They hope and pray that one of these days a knife will go through my forehead, or cuts a vein and I die. I suspect they are slightly disappointed when the knives cleave potatoes.’

‘Why do it?’

‘I have to make a living. But it is not all danger. By day I am The Mermaid of the Grand Banks.’

Blackdown smiled thinly. ‘You don’t look like a mermaid.’

‘You don’t look or act like the son of a Lord, but looks can be deceptive.’

‘Did you kill Harvey Grey?’

‘He was already dead when I found him,’ she said. ‘As I stared at the body I heard someone coming so I hid behind the barn. It was you I heard and saw.’

‘Did you see who killed him?’

She shook her head. ‘No sign of anyone. It must have happened in an instant.’

‘His body was still warm,’ said Blackdown. ‘And the blood still flowed. Do you know who might have wanted to silence him?’

‘Silence him?’

‘He was murdered to prevent him talking to me.’

‘He was not liked. It could have been for any number of reasons. But I’m not here to talk about Harvey Grey. I need your help.’

Thomas Blackdown lit a taper from the candle and lit two more candles. He saw her face more clearly, and it was even more beautiful than he first realised. Especially so without the thick paint that had caked her face as a knife-thrower’s assistant. He was taken aback by the effect it had upon him, and he found he had to avert his gaze.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I have business of my own to attend to. I don’t see how I can be of any help to you.’

‘I have heard all about you, from my Robert.’

‘Robert?’

‘Robert Caldwell,’ she said.

‘I don’t know of any Robert Caldwell,’ he said, though the name struck familiar. He could not place where he’d heard it.

‘He knew of you, which is all that matters. He was a private in the 2
nd
Guards. You were his captain. Captain Thomas Blackdown. He fought alongside you in Spain, and then at Waterloo. He told me how brave you were, how you would throw yourself upon the enemy without the slightest regard for your own safety. He spoke highly of you, as did many of your men.’

He sifted through his memories. Many faces sprang to mind, but could not place the man. There had been so many of them over the years. And so many had died under his command. ‘What do you seek?’ he asked. ‘I can’t promise anything, mind. But for a fellow Guardsman I will see what I can do.’

‘He is missing and I need to find him. He came home from the wars and could not find employment, so he took up with Pettigrew’s company as an odd-job man, being skilled with a hammer and saw, and good with animals, and that is where I first met him. He loved me for who I am, the first man to truly do so. We became betrothed, and were soon to be married. This time last year we were in Blackdown – then as now, for Pettigrew plays in the town every year – and my Robert went missing. Not one word did he leave. He took neither clothes nor money nor food. One night he simply disappeared.’

‘You searched?’ asked Blackdown.

‘Everywhere. I asked at this inn, I asked at the other inns, I walked about town talking to all I met. But none had seen him. Commodore Pettigrew had some sympathy and sent out a search party, but they came back with the news that it looked like he’d absconded. He told me he had many people do that, and it is a fact, I know. People join and leave us regularly when they grow bored of the travelling or find better employment…’

‘Or find another woman,’ said Blackdown.

Her face hardened. ‘Not my Robert. He was faithful to me. We were to be married.’

‘Many men promise faithfulness. Few seem to deliver.’

‘You cannot paint all men black, Mr Blackdown, or compare them to yourself. He was a good man. He was a fine soldier and was going to be a fine husband. Are you to condemn him so readily? He spoke of you with respect, and you speak of him like a dog.’

Blackdown sighed and shook his head. ‘What is your name?’

‘Sarah Jones.’

‘Well, Sarah Jones, I still do not know what help I can be to you.’

‘Others have gone missing, too.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘What others?’

‘Other men who have been recruited on our travels. Especially those who have been soldiers. And they mostly disappear when we reach Blackdown. I notice two more of our company have already absconded. One of them had also been in the army, an ex-fusilier, and recruited by Pettigrew for the troupe in Bristol.’

‘Perhaps they found better arrangements.’

‘In Blackdown? It is hardly a place brimming with opportunities, unlike the bigger towns and cities. I once spoke to Callisto of this and he told me to mind my own business or he couldn’t promise my safety.’

‘Callisto? Who is Callisto?’

‘He is Commodore Pettigrew’s prize-fighter and wrestler – the Mighty Callisto, as he is called. An Italian by birth, ran away to sea as a boy and was captured and pressed into His Majesty’s navy. He has been with Pettigrew’s many years. So you see, something is not right for even Callisto to be afraid, Mr Blackdown, and I think my Robert was somehow involved. When I heard you were the very same Thomas Blackdown my Robert served with, I could not believe my good fortune. And to see the way you upbraided that young Horse Patrol officer upstart lifted my heart. I said to myself, here is a man who knows his own mind and will not be afraid to stand up to anyone. Here is a man who can find out what happened to my Robert and bring him back to me.’

‘You picked my lock,’ he said in reply.

‘What of it?’

‘So what other acts of thievery and duplicity are you capable of? What is your game here?’

‘There is no game! A woman learns whatever skills she has to learn in order to get by in a cruel world, Mr Blackdown. Some of us are not born into privilege. Some of us have to scrape a living. I did not wish anyone to know I came here, so I asked around to see where you lodged, then sneaked up and let myself into your room to wait for you. The young servant you obviously paid to watch your room was too loose with his tongue and his eyes were more on the women than your door. I’d ask for my money back. Harvey Grey paid with his life for agreeing to meet with you. I do not wish to have my own throat cut. Not before I find my Robert.’ She rose to her feet and retrieved her cloak, fastening it about her. ‘But it appears I made a mistake coming to see you. You are obviously not the man my Robert made you out to be. You are a cold-hearted man devoid of compassion. I’ll leave you to your miserable life full of suspicion and hate.’ She drew the hood over her head and went out of the door, closing it softly behind her.

Thomas Blackdown paused for a moment or two, struggling with his thoughts. Then he bound to the door and opened it, but she was already scuttling down the stairs and working her way through the press of bodies towards the main door.

He was mystified at the impression she’d left on him.

Mystified also at her tale of disappearing soldiers.

Shaking his head he went inside his room and to the window. He looked out onto the street and saw the cloaked figure of Sarah Jones hurrying down the street, swallowed up almost immediately by the deep shadows.

It was the sound of an army on the move. Thunderous, deafening. Thousands of boots striking the earth, the hooves of many horses, the calling of men, the clinking of harnesses and the deep rumble of a multitude of carriage wheels. It was the sound of war and of death. An army arrayed before him, muskets at the ready, a hedge of sharp-tipped steel bayonets pointing towards him. As one the men stopped and raised their muskets, an order barked out, and the air was rent by the sound of thunder…

Thomas Blackdown awoke from his lurid nightmare. Sat up in his bed.

The dream faded, but disconcertingly the sound of the army remained.

He slipped from the bed and went to the window. The street below was filled with cattle being driven to the market, men slapping the beasts with sticks to keep them on track, shouting at them. The hooves kicked up a cloud of dust. A seeming river of flesh sweeping swiftly beneath his window. Next came sheep, and pigs and geese, children as well as men and women driving them on, heading for the pens that had been specially constructed to house the annual market.

He splashed cold water onto his face from the bowl on the washstand in order to drive the dregs of sleep from him, and to drive away the lingering effects of the recurring dream. He dressed and went downstairs to take his breakfast. The landlord came up to him and handed him a letter.

‘This was delivered for you this morning, Mr Blackdown,’ he said. ‘A boy from Blackdown Manor.’

Blackdown thanked the man and sliced open the seal. He unfolded the letter. It was from Addison. He had arranged a meeting with Lord Tresham for ten o’clock that morning. Blackdown took out his pocket watch. He had an hour. Idly he wound up the watch, his mind casting back to his meeting with Sarah Jones. He was finding it difficult to forget her.

Her husband-to-be had most likely slipped away to find another woman, or slipped back to an abandoned wife. He’d known so many soldiers who promised love and marriage with no intention on delivering against those promises. That she had been led a merry dance by him and yet was blind to it was nothing new in his experience. But the information about the other missing soldiers piqued his interest, if, indeed, it wasn’t all a product of her young imagination. Perhaps he should see her again. After all, he had been unduly curt and she’d left with a bad impression of him. But did he really care what she thought about him? It hadn’t bothered him in the past what people thought. He shook his head to free himself of the strange feelings being stirred in him like the long-stagnant mud from a river bottom, and set about his breakfast.

He collected his horse from the stable. It seemed reluctant to allow him to mount it. ‘You’re a stubborn thing, that you are,’ said Blackdown, patting its neck. It shook its head in annoyance. ‘But we’ve got to get along so there’s no point in fighting it.’

He rode the five miles to Lord Tresham’s house, riding over once familiar countryside but which now seemed to belong to a different age, a different man. It was a land now soaked through with bitter memories, as alien as any of the foreign lands he’d traversed as a soldier; a land he would be glad to be shut of as soon as his business here was finished. A land that itself had turned hostile and poisonous towards him, its people suspicious and angry. Even his horse didn’t like him.

Lord Tresham’s house was, if anything, grander than Blackdown Manor. Where Blackdown Manor had been allowed to fall into disrepair and ruin, their neighbour had made large and impressive additions to his already sprawling stately home. The Tresham’s were relative newcomers to the area, their family going back a mere three hundred years, but the family’s influence had long been powerful and was even now on the ascendant, unlike that of the Blackdowns, whose star, it seemed, was fast burning out. Or being snuffed out, thought Thomas Blackdown. The blackening of his father’s name had been a deliberate act, and for reasons he had yet to get to the bottom of. What’s more, Thomas Blackdown believed his brother’s death was somehow connected to it.

Blackdown was met at the foot of grand stone steps that marked the entrance to the stately home by a servant, who summoned someone to take his horse. He was led inside, the shining opulence standing in marked contrast to Blackdown Manor’s faded grandeur. Lord Tresham, or Lord Tresham’s wife, had been keen to follow fashion and there was an exotic feel to the entrance hall, liberally peppered with Chinese vases and screens, and walls decorated with Chinese-inspired silk wallpaper, gilded tables with Moorish designs lining the walls and sitting on colourful tiles imported from the East and laid out in complicated geometric designs.

‘My boy!’ said Lord Tresham when Blackdown was shown into the parlour. He rose from his seat and strode over to him, holding out his hand to shake. ‘It has been so long since I last saw you! But how you have grown into a man!’ He pumped Blackdown’s hand up and down vigorously.

The man was far older than he’d remembered, thought Blackdown. But it had been over twenty years, he had to remind himself. Lord Tresham was an old man now, his body bent, his thin hair all but white, but his kindly face remained, his once luminous eyes a shadow of their former self but still as warm and inviting as ever they were. His voice was feebler, and yet it awoke many fond memories in Blackdown.

‘It is good to see you again, Lord Tresham,’ he replied.

‘Lord? What is this Lord business? You may call me uncle, as you always used to, and no more of that Lord nonsense!’

Blackdown smiled. ‘Uncle Tresham,’ he said.

‘There, the years have fallen away just like that!’ he said. ‘Forgive me, I must introduce you to my guest and my daughter.’ He turned and held out his hand. A man had risen from his seat. A man in his middle years, tall and straight, elegantly dressed, a man whose good looking though serious face gave nothing away. ‘This is Sir Peter Lansdowne.’

The man stepped forward and took Blackdown’s hand. It was the firm grip of a man who knew his superior position. ‘A pleasure to meet you, Mr Blackdown.’

‘Sir Peter,’ said Blackdown. ‘I’ve had the honour of running into your Blackdown Horse Patrol.’

He smiled. ‘So I hear. A sad affair at the barn last night and further justification, if justification is needed, as to why I put into the field a paid force to keep law and order.’

‘And this is my daughter, Julianne,’ said Lord Tresham.

Julianne Tresham was seated by the fireplace, a fine low-cut, sleeveless Grecian style dress in sleeveless pastel-blue accentuated her slender figure. She must only just be into her twenties, Blackdown thought. She had a soft round pretty face, framed by brown hair in ringlets, earrings shimmering beneath it. He could understand why Jonathan fell for her. She held out her small hand for Blackdown. He grasped the fingers lightly.

‘A pleasure,’ he said. It is good to meet with you at last,’ said Blackdown. ‘I have heard so much about you.’

‘All good, I hope,’ she said brightly.

‘All good. From Addison, and he never speaks ill of anyone.’

‘Please, take a seat, Thomas!’ Lord Tresham enthused. ‘And take a drink with us.’ He took a decanter and began to pour out wine into a glass.

‘I can see the Blackdown likeness,’ said Lansdowne, his fingers wafting in front of his face. ‘You have the look of your father, and your unfortunate late brother.’

‘Some things we have no control over,’ Blackdown replied. ‘For good or for ill.’

‘You father was a regular at the clubs in London,’ Lansdowne continued. ‘I often saw him at White’s and Brookes. I myself prefer Brookes, for that is where the best gaming is to be found.’

‘Sir Peter here has a reputation for gambling,’ said Lord Tresham. ‘Macao, faro, hazard, he will chance his hand at any and all.’

‘I play to win,’ said Lansdowne with a thin smile and a bright spark in his eye.

‘And indeed you do!’ said Tresham. ‘Did you know he once took £200,000 at a game of whist? He had many unfortunates running with their tails between their legs to Howard and Gibbs the money-lenders!’

‘As I say, I do not gamble, I play to win,’ Lansdowne said. ‘It is a fool who gambles. Do you not agree, Mr Blackdown?’

‘It depends upon the stakes,’ he replied. He was trying to work out what was going on behind those frosty eyes. ‘And the risk.’

Lansdowne nodded slowly. ‘I hear you are not averse to taking risks yourself. The tales of your bravery abound. But bravery and foolishness are close companions, wouldn’t you say? It is difficult to say where one ends and the other begins.’

‘A successful outcome is considered bravery, and an unsuccessful one but foolishness,’ said Blackdown. ‘People have a habit of shifting between the one and the other to suit their fickle moods. I care not what people think.’

‘I first met your father in the Clarendon Hotel,’ Lansdowne continued. ‘It was kept by a French cook called Jacquiers, and was the only place in London where one was guaranteed of getting a genuine French dinner, a place where one never paid less than two or three pounds for the convenience, and a guinea for a bottle of champagne or claret. You father was a frequent visitor and it was well known he liked his French dinners.’

‘What are you driving at, Sir Peter?’ Blackdown asked.

‘Why, I drive at nothing, Mr Blackdown. It was an observation, nothing more. I merely say it because it is sad that he has been barred from the places he loved to frequent; barred from mixing with others of his class and standing. It is a sobering thought that one moment one might be dining on boiled fowl, oyster sauce and apple tart with the Prince Regent at White’s, and the next confined to one’s house dining on plain, local fare. The thought of such a narrow existence makes me shudder.’ He rose from his seat. ‘My apologies but I have to be leaving. I have matters relating to my estate that need to be taken care of. It has been a pleasure meeting the son of Lord Blackdown. Please pass on my good wishes to your father, and I hope you will do me the honour of calling on me one day. You will be most welcome.’

Blackdown assured him he’d consider it and the man made his goodbyes and left.

‘Sir Peter can seem a little bluff,’ said Tresham, ‘but he is a good man with the interests of the local people at heart.’

‘I’ve no doubt,’ said Blackdown, unconvinced by the lack of warmth in Tresham’s voice.

‘You are so like Jonathan,’ said Julianne. ‘Sir Peter was right; the likeness is quite terrific, and at the same time unsettling. It is as if he were here in the room again.’ Her eyes looked to fill up and Lord Tresham went over to sit beside her, taking and patting her hand.

‘It came as such a shock, Thomas, to hear of your brother’s death. And to be taken from us in such an inhuman manner…’ He realised the effect his words had on his daughter and he squeezed her hand tight. She pulled it away. ‘I insisted Julianne and Jonathan were still to be married, in spite of all that spy business with your father. In spite of your father’s reluctance to offer the couple his blessing. Of course, there were calls from others for me to call off the wedding. To be associated with a spy would blacken our name, too. But your father and I have been long-standing friends; I could not abandon him to the hyenas. In any event it all proved groundless, the accusations an elaborate fabrication. But as you are aware, the harm had been done, and it set your father off down a costly litigious route that will be the downfall of him if he does not call a halt to the many actions he has against powerful men. Slander is almost a fashion these days, and I have had to bear my fair share in defending your father.’

‘Yet you buy up his land,’ said Blackdown evenly.

‘Would you have it go to outsiders?’

‘It was at my insistence,’ said Julianne.

Thomas Blackdown looked to her. ‘Yours?’

‘To save the Blackdown land being split up and going out to greedy speculators and developers, who readily swoop down like vultures. When it was put up for sale I suggested my father buy it and thus put it in our safekeeping until such a time as the Blackdowns can afford to buy it back. My father does not wish to see an end to such a long and fruitful dynasty.’

‘It is true,’ said Tresham. ‘I did it with your father’s best interests at heart, but he has not seen it so and now reviles me. We have not spoken since before your brother’s death. You must forgive your father, Thomas. His mind has been turned, first by the death of your mother, his wife, and in turn by both the absurd charges against him, and then by the death of Jonathan. He is not the man he once was. It was not right of him to cast you out like he did, to abandon you and disown you. Blackdown Manor and its lands are rightfully yours as the eldest child, but I am afraid there will soon be very little of it left, and I can only do so much to help protect my friend’s property and what is your legacy.’

‘I care not about any legacy,’ said Blackdown. ‘It is a dark mantle I can well live without. But I applaud the kindness you have shown towards my father. And my brother,’ he said, looking at Julianne. ‘He must have loved you very much,’ he said to her. ‘I cannot understand why father was against the marriage.’

‘He has been unwell…’ she said. ‘Not himself.’

Blackdown turned to Lord Tresham. ‘How did the accusations come about? I hear there were certain papers found.’

Tresham nodded. ‘They came to light in London.’