Death at Gallows Green (22 page)

The barn was a huge half-timbered building, two stories high, with a loft above. With Kep's leash in her hand and Bea directly behind, carrying the shielded lantern, Kate moved cautiously along the wall to a small side door. She pushed it open. They stepped quickly through and stood within, listening intently.

After the damp chill of the foggy night, the barn felt dry and almost warm, and the air had a soft, furry quality. As Bea held up the lantern, Kate saw that there was a heavy double door at one end, made of wood, with a bar across it, fastened with a rusty hasp. The dirt floor was littered with straw, and two spotted cows stood in stalls in a far corner, their liquid eyes turned curiously to the light. Somewhere a rooster clucked nervously, and there was a stirring in the straw in the loft.

“Rats,” Bea whispered. “They're not nearly as nice as mice. It's hard to make a pleasant drawing of a rat.”

But Kate was not concerned with rats at the moment. She had dropped to one knee and was holding Sergeant Oliver's shirt out to the collie dog. “Can you sniff him out, boy?” she asked, with not the least idea in her head what to expect. The whole affair might be a wild-goose chase. “Can you find him?”

But if Kate had not the proper confidence, Kep did. Sensing a great game, the dog thrust an eager nose into the shirt and snuffled with enthusiasm. He stood still for a moment, his head cocked as if he were considering the matter, then dropped his nose to the barn floor and began to move in a zigzag fashion, randomly at first, then with greater design, and finally with purpose, his tail a silken flag.

Standing beside Kate, Bea raised the lantern. “It looks as if he has discovered something!”

Kate watched the dog with mounting excitement. This expedition had been a very long chance. Had she been a wagering woman, she would not have placed high odds on the outcome. But it looked as if Kep had succeeded in finding a scent. Was it that of his master? He was near the far wall, beside a stack of filled sacks, pawing at the floor and whining eagerly.

Kate ran to him in a rush, followed by Bea with the lantern. It took considerable effort to move him away from the spot in the earthen floor that so excited him—a clear space that had been swept free of the hay that littered the floor elsewhere. In the center was a large, irregularly-shaped dark stain, where something had been spilled onto the earth. As Kate raised her eyes, she saw that the partially-cleared track extended from this point across the floor to the side door, like a path. Something heavy had been dragged from this point to the door. A body!

Bea bent over, holding the lantern low for a better view of the dark spot. “Kate,” she whispered, touching it with a fearful finger, “can this be a
blood
stain?”

Kate stood up. “I believe it is,” she replied. “I believe we have found the spot where Sergeant Oliver was shot.”

Beside Kate, Kep stiffened and growled low in his throat. From the other side of the door Kate could hear the murmur of low voices. She and Bea froze, staring at one another in petrified fright.

While they were occupied, the pirates had crept up on them and blocked the door. They were trapped in the barn. And there was no way out!

“G
rain thieves, you say?” Edward Laken asked, turning away from the small coal stove where he was making a supper of cabbage, potatoes, and plump pieces of sausage. It was late evening when Charles had located him in his whitewashed two-room cottage behind the Dedham gaol.

“That was Carter's idea,” Charles said. “It sounds reasonable to me.” He watched with no little admiration Edward's deft stirring of the pot. He himself had always had to endure the tender mercies of one cook or another. Once when he had dared to reconnoiter the kitchen in search of tea and a sandwich, the cook had been so horrified at his effrontery that she had served notice on the spot.

“And to me,” Edward said, and fetched the bread from the cupboard. “There've been rats in the granaries many times before this.”

Charles indicated the envelopes spread out on the table. “My guess is that Artie came upon a large cache of wheat somewhere—sacks of grain stolen from several different farms. To authenticate his discovery, he filled his pockets with samples of the grain, intending perhaps to lay watch and apprehend the thieves. But he was surprised and murdered.”

“It makes sense.” Edward spooned out a plate of cabbage and potatoes and added a chunk of satisfyingly greasy sausage. He set it in front of Charles. “A crew takes the threshing machines about from farm to farm, on hire. The wheat is cut and threshed and sacked and tallied in the field, then stored in the farm's granary until it is sold or used. And of course there's no guard on it.”

Charles poured mugs of the ale he had brought. “So anyone can help himself to a dozen sacks or so,” he said, pushing the ladder-back chair to the table and sitting down. “It isn't difficult to juggle the tally, either, so the farmer never misses it.”

“A dozen sacks from a dozen farms amounts to a fair harvest, especially when you've not the expense of ploughing and planting.” There being a deficit of chairs, Edward sat on an overturned box. “But a cache of stolen grain might be hidden in any granary hereabouts,” he added, slathering butter on a crusty slab of bread. “I wonder where Artie happened on it?”

“I've got an idea about that,” Charles said. “After supper, we can walk there. It's no more than a mile.” He began to eat. “By the way, I've located Tommy Brock.”

“You don't say!” Edward exclaimed. “The elusive Mr. B. comes to light at last. How did you manage that?”

Charles glanced up from his cabbage and potatoes. “Actually, it was Miss Ardleigh who managed it—how, I have yet to discover. She sent word this morning that Brock has a cottage behind the Pig and Whistle in Manningtree. I haven't actually talked to him yet, however. I rode over this afternoon, but he was out working, according to the landlady. She expected him back on the morrow.”

At the mention of Miss Ardleigh, Charles saw, Edward's face had become thoughtful. Charles applied himself to his supper, trying to decide what to say. If Ned did not already know about Bradford Marsden's suit, it would be kind to give him advance notice so that he might prepare himself for the likely outcome. Miss Ardleigh, however, was more independent than any woman Charles had ever known. She was perfectly capable of refusing a baron-to-be and accepting a village constable, if that was where her affections lay.

Charles frowned. But if Ned had won her heart, why the devil had she given Marsden permission to call? One would have thought that she would have the wit to reject Marsden's proposal before he made it. The whole thing was such a muddle that he finally decided to say nothing. He and Ned finished their supper in silence, smoked the cigars Charles had brought while they did the washing-up, and set off into the silvery dark, their path half-lit by a moon high above the ground fog and by Ned's bull's-eye lantern, which cast a golden halo around their feet.

C
ontrary to her mother's belief, Betsy Oliver was not in bed when the Misses Ardleigh and Potter called to borrow Kep. She was, in fact, sitting at the top of the narrow stairs in her pink-flannel nightdress, her elbows on her knees and her fists jammed under her chin, listening to what was said in the kitchen. When Miss Potter remarked that she and Miss Ardleigh intended to go ratting, Betsy scowled horribly for a moment or two, then stood up and squared her shoulders.

If they could take Kep ratting (although she couldn't fathom why they fancied Kep—the dog was a
tracker,
not a ratter, and a lazy layabout where work was concerned), she could take Mr. Browne on the same errand. And when the hunting was all done and over, they could compare their catches (although not where Mother could hear), and she could gloat. And gloat she would, to be sure, for the owl was a superb hunter who much preferred rats to mice and larger rats to smaller, and could be counted on to best that lazy Kep any night of the week. Her father had once read her a poem called “The Pied Piper.” When he had come to the lines where the sound of the rat made his heart go pit-a-pat, she had laughed out loud. She and Father had agreed that it was exactly how Mr. Browne must feel when he made to dig his talons into a cowering rat.

The spirit of the game dispelled any sleepiness, and she ran lightly to her tiny corner room under the low thatched roof, skinned out of her nightdress, and pulled on a pair of breeches and a dark-blue shirt. She tucked her hair up under a black woolen cap and climbed out the window. Her descent down the drainpipe was executed with the careless panache of long practice. When she reached the ground she darted toward the shed, keeping to the shadows, and slipped through the door. As she did so, she heard the voices of Miss Ardleigh and Miss Potter, who were leaving by the front way.

“Who?” Mr. Browne inquired querulously from his perch by the window. Jemima Puddle-duck, nesting for the evening in a box of straw, pulled her head out from under her wing and uttered a drowsy quack.

“And where have
you
been?” Betsy demanded, hands on hips. Jemima had gone missing that afternoon. Betsy had searched everywhere for her, to no avail.

Jemima put her head under her wing again. Of course she wouldn't tell where she had been, for she was still trying to find a place to lay her eggs undisturbed and raise a family. Probably she had found one, and she intended to keep it secret.

“Pay no attention to Jemima,” Betsy told Mr. Browne. “She's obsessed with ducklings.” She slipped her hand into the leather gauntlet sleeve her father had contrived for her.
“We're
going ratting.”

Mr. Browne's golden eyes glittered and he clicked his sharp beak in anticipation of dinner. She found an old gunnybag, then released the owl from his perch. With the bird on her arm, she stole through a hole in the garden hedge, went around the brick wall at the back corner, and set out through the fog.

Fifteen minutes later, under a misty moon that turned the drifting fog phosphorescent and set the trees to glimmering as if they had been dipped in mercury, Betsy and Mr. Browne crossed the pasture and fetched up at the stone wall above the barn at Highfields Farm, where she knew the hunting to be better than anywhere else in the neighbourhood. When the owl returned with his prey, she planned to drop his kill into the gunnybag. Allowing Mr. Browne an interim snack or two would only delay him and dull his appetite. If their catch of the night were to exceed that of Kep and his two borrowers, the owl's desire for dinner would need to remain sharp.

The night was chilly, but for the next little while, Betsy kept warm by busying herself with the owl. In fact, the two of them were enjoying quite the most remarkable success—a success at least partly attributable to the fog that was draped like a diaphanous shawl over the trees and fields, softening even the ominous sound of the owl's wing beat.

Indeed, it might have been the fog that explained what happened next. For to Betsy's great surprise, while she was sitting on the wall, waiting for Mr. Browne to return from his third sortie (his first two quite dead victims were safely in the bag), she glimpsed the shadowy forms of a dog and two shawled women—one of them carrying a lantern that cast huge, wavering shadows against the barn wall. They crept furtively along the side of the barn, opened the door, went inside, and shut it behind them. The moon moved behind a cloud.

Betsy stifled a surprised exclamation. She should have thought that Miss Ardleigh, who had evidenced quite a little interest in the barn, would think to go hunting there, and coming along the lane, would be considerably delayed. Her surprise also held not a little envy. Why hadn't
she
thought to take Mr. Browne into the barn, where he might hunt in the warmer, drier place? A seat in the hay would have been far more comfortable than her perch on the fence, where the cold of the stones penetrated through her breeches and the silvery dark was distinctly chilly. And there were far more rats in the barn than in the hedgerows. She drew down her brows and gritted her teeth. Her opponents had displayed a devious ingenuity with which she had not credited them.

Mr. Browne came back crestfallen and empty-clawed from his third flight. But Betsy praised and stroked him anyway, and released him with a special word of encouragement. As if to show her his gratitude, he returned with a brown mole of substantial size, with enormous whiskers and a very long tail. Betsy congratulated him on his skill and cunning, popped the mole into the bag with the rats, and released the owl once again, confident that she and Mr. Browne would outshine the ratters in the barn.
They
were unlikely to find a mole.

And it was in that mood, with the celebration of victory in her heart, that the second surprise of the evening overtook Betsy. It was a scratchy burlap sack that smelled horribly of fish, dropped over her head. She bit and spit and cried and wriggled, but despite her efforts to escape she was flung to the ground, held down by an invisible knee and several hands, and rolled up in the sack as neatly as if she were the raisin-and-currant-and-sugar-and-butter filling in the roly-poly puddings her mother made with a rolling pin: her ankles trussed, her arms pinned to her sides, her nose and mouth filled with the stink of rotten fish, and her heart pounding in terror.