Cheating the Hangman (10 page)

‘Seems the wind is getting cold, Master. Best if I walk them a while?’

‘I’m sure you should.’ Then from the corner of my eye I saw movement. I laid a hand on his shoulder, and drew him close to my side. His heart was racing. ‘But perhaps not yet.’

Although it was the busiest time of day, when you would expect the hamlet to be deserted and all its able-bodied inhabitants in the field, a crowd of men was gathering, with the same air of menace as before. None spoke to me directly, though one, painfully thin with wild eyes, was clearly the most agitated. Eventually, pushed forward by some of his colleagues, he stepped forward, his arm jerkily emphasising each point.

‘Haven’t you learnt nothing? We don’t want your sort round here. You and your gentleman’s ways, thinking that just because you’re full of juice you can have anything you fancy. There’s Molly dead because of your like, and her mother, of a broken heart. And now it’s my Sarey you’re a-visiting. Food and fine clothes. We know what you’re after. And I’m telling you, you lay so much as a finger on my wife and I’ll—’

‘You’ll what, Jim Tump?’ Mrs Trent emerged from the cottage, arms akimbo. ‘The good rector brought food I cooked and clothes I made. Aye, and a toy that lad whittled too,’ she said. ‘How else did you expect them to get here? And don’t say you didn’t need them, because if ever a wench needs some nourishment and some half-decent clothes ’tis your Sarey. Yes, and you shut your mouth too, John Broadwell. Could your good wife afford to give her sheets? Mended sheets, ’tis true, but sheets and shoes. Kindly step inside, Jim, and tell her how fine she looks with her hair combed and a clean shift. Or are you afraid to look her in the eye, with all your crude suspicionings?’ She gestured to the doorway.

Like a naughty child, he did as he was bid. There was absolute silence.

At last he emerged, actually carrying Joseph, wrapped in a shawl that was clean but clearly not new or expensive. ‘Thank’ee, Mrs Trent. And thank’ee for the other stuff, Master,’ he muttered to the ground, as if that was what Sarey had ordered him to say. Then he actually looked at her. ‘And is it really ours to keep?’

Her smile was stern. ‘As long as you look after that lad the best you can, which I shall check on, you can rest assured. And I’ll bring other stuff when I come, because he’ll grow, and with a bit of food inside her, Sarey will fill out. There’s a nice pork pie in that basket. You might want to try a bit yourself.’ She let me hand her into the gig and take my place beside her before nodding graciously. ‘I still have ears in this village, don’t you forget. Thank you, Dr Campion.’

I think it was meant as a signal to drive off, but poor
Jim took it as a cue for him. Tugging his forelock, he said humbly, ‘Thank you, Dr Campion.’

It was not until we were clear of the village that I allowed the horses to slacken their speed.

‘Thank you, Mrs Trent, for saving our bacon back there. And thank you for your excellent counsel. Everything we saw there bears witness to its wisdom. It grieves me that neither the mother nor the child will enjoy the luxury of new clothes—’

‘As to that,’ she interrupted me with a quiet laugh, ‘I think I can recall that Sarey’s godmother, who went into service at the same time as I did, had a nice little position in the north. I shall write to her and suggest it is time to be generous, if she can. And who will know if she is rich or as poor as a church mouse? Because it’s all England to a China orange that Sarey can’t read.’

‘And you intend to practise a little harmless deception? My dear Mrs Trent, how can I ever thank you enough?’

Burns, having served us all to sherry, did not withdraw to the side of the room, but took up an authoritative position by the fireplace. In response to his quiet but meaningful cough, Hansard smiled and gestured: the butler was one of us, temporarily, with information to impart.

‘As you know, I sent young Henry to Lord Wychbold with one of your notes, Dr Campion, and William to Lord Hasbury with the other. I understand that both went straight to the servants’ halls, but that while Henry delivered his directly to Mr Clopton, the butler, William accepted a mug of ale, meanwhile leaving the message on the table. I understand that horseplay took place.’

‘Something very deeply annoyed Mrs Heath,’ Maria affirmed.

Burns bowed. ‘Indeed, ma’am. And, regrettably, by the time Mrs Heath had silenced everyone and restored discipline, there was no sign of the letter. When eventually William recovered it, the loose wax had parted company with the paper it was meant to seal. I have rebuked William
sternly, sir and ma’am, and I do not think he will ever be so negligent again. But the long and the short of it is that everyone knew the contents before it was delivered to His Lordship.’

‘Assuming that all the servants could read.’

‘Indeed so, Dr Campion. But one of them read the contents aloud to the others. You will understand that Lord Hasbury’s staff will have been augmented by his guests’ servants so one does not know whom to blame. It is a sad business, sir, and I can only offer my apologies for my part in it.’

I got up to shake him by the hand. ‘The fault – the carelessness – is all mine, Burns. I put you to a great deal of trouble. More, I exposed poor William to ridicule from his peers. Let us go down to the servants’ hall so that I may apologise in person.’

Burns recoiled as if I had bitten him. ‘But, sir – remember the hour. Everyone will be completing preparations for dinner.’

‘In that case I will come down after dinner.’ From the tail of my eye I could see that Maria was minutely shaking her head. Of course, that was when the servants would rightly be taking their ease. ‘Or perhaps … perhaps you would send William forthwith to the library, where I may speak to him alone.’

‘Make a public apology to a servant? One of the lowliest of the servants? I could not believe my ears, my dear Campion,’ Toone drawled as I returned.

Thank goodness Jem had not yet arrived: there might have been fisticuffs in the Hansards’ drawing room. On
the other hand, Jem had a much stronger sense of the social hierarchy, so perhaps he would have surprised me by endorsing Toone’s sentiments.

‘In fact, I did rather more than apologise. I asked him to write down a list of people who were present when he was tormented and to recall if any left precipitately. He will hand it over to Burns to deliver with the tea tray.’

Before any of my friends could comment, Burns announced the arrival of Jem, and also declared dinner to be ready; as usual, as long as he was in the room we kept our conversation general, though I did regale them with the story of my surprise visitor at matins. From there it seemed a short step to an account of Mrs Trent’s aplomb in dealing with Jim Tump, and extended praise of the lady herself.

It was not, however, until Burns left us to our own devices that something of much more moment was raised: Maria’s endeavours to make the damaged face of the dead man appear like that of a living being.

She shook her head in irritation. ‘I fear I raised our hopes in vain and wasted a great deal of Dr Toone’s time. Had I been working at first hand, as it were, I might have done better, but I can see that that would have been quite ineligible.’ She glanced at Jem with a rueful grin. ‘If Tobias’s enquiries find Mr Snowdon, then we may have more success – assuming that he has not already quit the area, of course.’

‘May I see what you have done?’

‘All three of you may: Edmund arrived only minutes before you did. I should imagine Dr Toone is heartily sick of the originals and what I have done, so we will excuse him if
he prefers. The sketches – I dare not call them likenesses – are under lock and key in Edmund’s study.’

‘In a different light, perhaps they will be more illuminating,’ Toone conceded, rising as we did to adjourn. In other words, he wanted to be present if and when any startled recognition took place.

‘I concentrated,’ Maria declared, as Hansard produced the drawings from his desk, ‘on trying to make acceptable to a bystander the damaged flesh that Mr Snowdon had depicted. Astonishingly he had been close enough to the poor corpse actually to take measurements, so I know that I have the outline of the face correct. And I know where in relation to the eyes and mouth the ears would be. So this is my most basic effort.’

The face was round, rather than long, with two double chins. The ears were notably large. She had not attempted to include any features, hardly surprising given the mass of flesh and bone that had been all that remained of a human visage. The cheeks had met the forehead with no sign that there might be eyes beneath the swelling – though Toone had assured me that the crows would soon have found them.

The second sketch added some wispy hair, the third an old-fashioned wig – the sort a doctor or clergyman might have favoured before the powder tax.

Then, perhaps as her confidence increased, Maria had essayed adding a simple stock and the shoulders of a coat. She smiled apologetically.

‘I was merely letting my pencil take charge,’ she said, tucking the drawing behind the others and tapping them all into a neat sheaf. ‘Without his eyes, nose and mouth, what
sort of sense can I give of him? I might have made him a military man, but Dr Toone says that he had never had a hard life.’

‘There were no signs of wounds or other injuries – no scars at all,’ Toone explained. ‘My friends, Mrs Hansard has worked a minor miracle with very little to aid her. Even so, I know not what we are to do with her handiwork. Perhaps,’ he added less brusquely, ‘we should keep it safe until we have a suspect we can confront with them and observe his reaction.’

‘Meanwhile, I should imagine that Burns is ready to produce William’s list,’ Hansard said, once again locking the sketches and Snowdon’s originals in his desk. He rarely took such precautions, trusting his servants implicitly. When I caught his eye, he gave an apologetic shrug: he did not wish anyone to identify the second artist lest they react as Jem had done. But when I asked for one or two for my study, where I could glance at them from time to time to catch an image unawares, as it were, he obliged. He did not need add, as he rolled them carefully and tied them securely, that they were for my eyes only.

The writing on the list that Burns discreetly laid beside me was ill formed, but clearly William’s memory was more finely tuned than his hand.

Now was not the time to scrutinise it, however: Maria was being importuned by Toone to sing again to his accompaniment. She offered me at first as a substitute and then as a fellow singer, an invitation swiftly seconded by Hansard, who freely admitted, rightly, to having a voice like a crow.

Just as we embarked on our second duet, however, Burns tapped on the door. It seemed that both Hansard and I were needed to attend an elderly parishioner’s deathbed. Toone eyed the decanters and us. To my great pleasure, he asked for his coat too, and the three of us went into the chill spring night to do our duty, accompanied for part of the way by Jem. As we left, Maria thoughtfully picked up William’s list.

The good doctors could offer no more than kind words and a quantity of laudanum to their patient, who was dying in agony of a disease that had rendered a giant of a man a virtual skeleton. He was alert enough to mouth some of my prayers with me, but then, with his family gathered around, he slipped into unconsciousness and quite soon into merciful death.

Toone fretted on our cold, dark ride home. ‘Until we can see exactly what happens inside the body to take it to that point, we have no chance of curing even common diseases. Our herbs, our simples, are no more than fleas biting an elephant – though neither Edmund nor I would dare admit that to ourselves, let alone our patients.’

‘You would cut open Farmer Smart?’ I asked, disbelieving.

‘Indeed. And why not? Surely you believe that the most important part of us is our soul? So when the soul departs to its Maker, a mere husk is left behind. All we do is inter the husk for the worms to do their work. I for one would like to be as useful after death as before. Pray remember that, both of you, if I predecease you. And I warn you,’ he added with a laugh, ‘that should either of you be in my care
when you shuffle off your mortal coil, I shall certainly wish to find out what deprived me of your company.’

‘But this would be to treat the dead man as a criminal – a man hanged for his crime, moreover!’

‘Neither you nor I nor the foulest murderer would feel any pain. My friends, now our legal system is, thank goodness, less keen on hanging people for trivial crimes, there is a terrible shortage of bodies for medical students – our doctors of tomorrow – to anatomise. Am I not right, Hansard? Exactly so. We must shed our prejudices.’

Neither of us could think of an adequate response, so we completed the rest of the ride in silence. It was too late to ask for the results of Maria’s thoughts about William’s list, so I made my farewells. I had, after all, a home of my own, with Mrs Trent improving daily as my housekeeper. After her triumph today I did not wish to discourage her. In any case, tomorrow I would have to discuss with my churchwardens Farmer Smart’s funeral.

Thank goodness they were decent, hardworking men, both the vicar’s warden, George Tufnell, a miller, and the people’s warden, Henry Mead. Once he had been a thatcher but a combination of a bad fall – he still walked with a pronounced limp – and a legacy from his godfather meant that he no longer plied his trade. Neither had been a warden long; afraid of making mistakes, they were perhaps overzealous, but if that was a fault I have certainly known far worse ones. Our meeting, assisted by Mrs Trent’s ale and some surprisingly good cheese biscuits, went very pleasantly – a stark contrast to my encounters with Boddice and Lawton.

When they had departed, leaving me with a welcome
sense that all would be well and unobtrusively organised, I wandered into the kitchen to ask Mrs Trent’s advice.

‘Visit Clavercote without me to lend you countenance? Dr Campion, if I might make so bold, I would not. Not to visit Sarey Tump.’ She eyed me as if I was mad.

‘But there are some duties a priest must do: I cannot leave the sick or the dying on their own simply because some hungry and brutalised men resent a clean, well-fed man trying to do good.’

‘In that case, Dr Campion, my advice would be to ask Jem to go along with you: a fine, strong man as he would make anyone think twice before raising a hand against you. And don’t go at night. You don’t want to end up like that other gentleman, do you?’

‘So I need to persuade the sick to die during daylight hours.’ I tried to sound rueful, not bitter. ‘Or I could get a very large, fierce dog. Perhaps if Matthew’s Salmagundy sires a litter: he’s very good at scaring away poachers, I gather.’

‘Go on with you, Dr Campion, do. Now,’ she said, looking at the clock, ‘I’ve some nice cold beef here, and some pickles. It’s not often you take luncheon, but perhaps those cheese biscuits will have given you an appetite?’

I could not feel that they had, but she had her pride, just as I did. It dawned on me that each afternoon she must spend her time preparing a dinner I might or might not eat. Last night the smell of roasting beef must have filled her kitchen – and the only ones to appreciate it were her and young Robert. Even as conscientious a parson as I did not prepare sermons for weekdays when I only read the service to myself.

‘There is nothing that I would like more,’ I declared.

But as I worked my way through the beef, I found another reason for acquiring a dog – an uncomplaining hungry dog, with a preference for tough meat.