Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman (5 page)

He was familiar with this particular gibbet, which was of unusually impressive size. Two tree trunks set ten feet apart supported several heavy horizontal boughs bolted four feet distant of one another; the top rail was of a substantially greater thickness than those below it, and one end jutted out beyond the tree that supported it. The carcasses of foxes, weasels, stoats, and even a badger were nailed at intervals along the length of the beams, with a line of birds, mostly crows, on the lowest rail forming a depressing underscore to the larger animals hanging above them. It was an ugly and dispiriting sight and one, he believed, that truly proclaimed the ignorance of the country dweller at that time. But it did nothing to prepare him for the appalling spectacle at the far end of the gibbet's heavy top rail.

The shock of what he saw made it hard for him to focus for a moment, and then the image before him sharpened into dreadful clarity and he felt his stomach convulse and his gorge rise as his mind finally caught on to what his eyes were telling him. He was looking at the body of a young man dangling like a shabby, broken doll in front of him, his feet barely six inches off the ground. He was hanging by his neck; he must have choked slowly to death. Lord Montfort struggled for reason and found none. The dead man's head drooped downward and to the left in the stiff, unnatural pose of a body that has been made to die. The tight noose had dug deeply into his neck, his face was distorted, and his tongue protruded black and swollen between lips drawn back in a fearful grimace. The crows had been at work where his eyes had once been.

Lord Montfort turned his head away and gave himself a moment before he made himself look back again and then he had to force himself to take in the terrible details. The murdered man's arms in the torn coat of his evening suit were bound tightly behind his back, and his legs had been bound twice, just above the knees and again at the ankles. Inconsequentially, he noticed that the body was missing a shoe; the other one, a black patent leather evening shoe, was still on his foot.

In Lord Montfort's entire life he had never seen anything as fearsome and atrocious as this pitiful scrap of humanity proclaiming the anguish of his death as clearly as if he still had words to speak. He heard Stafford's cry of horror as he rapidly gained the privacy of a large tree and was violently sick.

Lord Montfort managed his horror, and his stomach, though he still felt bitter bile rising in his throat. He suddenly became desperately cold and felt a startling snatch of fear in his chest. It was only absolute discipline that stopped him from crying out. The yellow hair, even though it was plastered with mud and rainwater, was an unmistakable clue to the victim's identity, as was its slight, youthful build. He knew, with absolute certainty, he was staring at the body of his nephew, Teddy Mallory.

“I know who this is,” he said quietly, his heart hammering in his chest and adrenaline coursing through his body, causing the muscles in his legs to cramp and the hair on his nape and his forearms to rise in stiff, harsh prickles. It was difficult to breathe in the clearing. The trees shut out the air. The sight of the eyeless sockets of foxes and birds hanging alongside Teddy made him feel panicky and terribly nauseated. He fought down a natural urge to turn and make for home. His senses were so heightened that he could hear the rain pattering on the canopy of leaves high overhead, the rustle of small animals and birds foraging in the undergrowth around them, and his pulse sounding inside his head, loud and slightly accelerated. Above this, coming insistently toward him, was the homely sound of a pony trotting up the dirt track toward the wood.

He turned to Cartwright, who had avoided looking at the body of the murdered man ever since they had arrived. Lord Montfort realized that Cartwright had probably recognized Teddy Mallory when he had first found the body. His orderly countryman's mind would have had difficulty in understanding that a member of the aristocracy, born and bred in the county, could possibly be found so thoroughly abused, dead and covered in mud, swinging from his gibbet. He was evidently struggling with what he had found, and Lord Montfort noticed that his hands were trembling.

He walked over to Cartwright and rested what he hoped was a reassuring hand on the older man's shoulder. Offering comfort to his gamekeeper helped Lord Montfort to recover his wits. Stafford emerged from behind his tree wiping his forehead and mouth with a large blue handkerchief, and the three men waited for Colonel Valentine, who, driving up in the pony and trap, was more than equipped for what he found waiting for him.

Lord Montfort knew Colonel Valentine reasonably well; he appreciated Valentine's reserved, courteous manner and believed him to be fair-minded and steady. He had certainly contributed well in his capacity as chief constable for the county town of Market Wingley and its surrounding villages and smaller towns. He knew the colonel was a retired professional solider, a veteran of the Boer Wars. Valentine had probably had enough excitement in Africa to last a lifetime and had retired to this pleasant backwater where nothing ever happened, except the odd drunken brawl on a Friday night, petty theft, and of course poaching. It suddenly flashed into his mind that in the old days the executed bodies of criminals—highwaymen, footpads, and murderers—were hung in cages at well-traveled intersections of the country's highways, a dreadful warning of the consequences of a lawless life.

Leaving the pony and trap at the edge of the wood, Valentine walked toward Lord Montfort carefully inspecting the ground and the surrounding area as he made his approach. He stopped and took a long, thorough look at the area under the gibbet before joining Lord Montfort, who was now standing apart from Cartwright and Stafford. “Terribly shocking thing to find. I had hoped you would wait and let me be the first to arrive. Looks to me like it's young Teddy Mallory. Would you agree?”

“Yes, I am afraid it is.” As he heard himself acknowledge that the dead man was his nephew Lord Montfort felt grief and anguish for a young man who had been a part of his household since he was a boy. His throat constricted and he put his hand up to his eyes and felt tears seep through his fingers. He pushed back hard into the corners of his eyes to stem the flow of misery and sadness.

“It looks as if some motor vehicle has been drawn up under this arm of the gibbet. Unfortunately, the rain has been going on long enough to disguise any real activity.” Valentine paused in thought for a moment or two before continuing.

“When we get back to the house, I would like to go straight to your study to begin my inquiry. Can we rely on your men here not to talk about what has happened?”

“Undoubtedly.” Lord Montfort's voice sounded hoarse, as if it were about to break, and he made the supreme attempt to pull himself together. “Where do you want them to take Teddy's body?”

“Somewhere under cover, your carriage house would do. If you would wait awhile, I need to make sure everything is carried out properly.”

Lord Montfort stood under the shelter of a large tree and watched as Colonel Valentine gave instructions to Cartwright and Stafford. Stafford was sent off in the pony chaise to bring Constable Standish from the village and Cartwright was sent with him to bring up the dray from the home farm.

Lord Montfort's feet felt like ice; he was cold through and through. He almost envied Valentine: busy and purposeful as he investigated the ground under the gibbet and jotted down notes in a small book pulled from his coat pocket. As Valentine finished up and started to walk toward him, Lord Montfort heard the dray's engine coming up the track from the home farm toward the wood.

 

Chapter Six

When Lord Montfort returned to the house with the chief constable, he felt like an altogether older and quieter man than the one who had left his house, more than two hours earlier, so decisively in the company of his gardener and gamekeeper. As he approached the terrace door he saw that Hollyoak must have been waiting for them. His butler walked ahead to open the door into his study.

“Hollyoak, show Colonel Valentine to the telephone room and then wait for me in the hall, please.” He watched Hollyoak usher Colonel Valentine into the pokey room that had been built into an out-of-the-way, dimly lit corner of the hall, which offered minimal privacy in its cramped and stuffy interior, before gaining the sanctuary of his study.

Lord Montfort did not dare allow himself a speck of respite from the locked-down self-control he had summoned up in Crow Wood. There were many miles to go, he realized, before he could allow himself the indulgence of introspection. In the few moments he gave himself, before Valentine returned, his face showed a fleeting glimpse of the cold horror he felt. He had never particularly liked Teddy and his brutal end now added considerably to his confused emotions.

He believed his sister's only child had been quite terribly spoiled throughout his life. When Teddy was eight years old, and his father had been killed in a shooting accident, he had become the sole focus of his mother's life, when she had time for him at all. On her brief visits to England, Christina Mallory spent days with the boy at Montfort House in London, lavishing attention on him and including him in her busy social life. But her visits were few and far between and inevitably bored with playing mother, she increasingly returned to the sophisticated pleasures of the Marlborough set in Biarritz or Baden Baden, abandoning her son to the comparatively dull and prosaic existence of family life at uncle's house in the country, This on-again, off-again arrangement had proved disastrous for Teddy. As the years had gone by Teddy, now at Eton, had become more isolated from his mother and had turned away from the simplicity of Talbot family life at Iyntwood. Lord Montfort thought of himself as a well-intentioned man, and as Teddy's legal guardian he had tried hard to show patience and forbearance toward his nephew, while he daily thanked God that Teddy was not his son. As he tried to come to terms with Teddy's death, he believed he had let his nephew down. He believed he had let his sister down, too.

He sat down at his desk and began to make up the list of his guests, as Valentine had requested. As he wrote down their names he was aware that each of them would be severely impacted by Teddy's death simply by staying in his house. He was finishing this task when Valentine came back from making his telephone call to the coroner's office.

“Will you tell me a little about your nephew, Lord Montfort? I know he is your sister's only child and that he was up at Oxford … Christ Church wasn't it? What sort of young man was he?”

Before he answered, Lord Montfort paused in thought. What kind of young man had his nephew been? At any other time, it would have been so easy to answer this question. Now it was impossible with the image of Teddy hanging from the gibbet. It was as if his mind refused to obey direction, hopping from one inconsequential thought to another in the strangest way. With a great summoning of effort he forced himself to answer the question.

“He was on the whole rather a difficult young man; I had trouble getting through to him, which seemed to get worse as he grew older. Yesterday morning I received a letter from the proctor at Oxford in which he told me that Teddy had been expelled for cheating at cards. I heard the rest of it from Harry later on.”

“Oh I see. Did Teddy keep company with Lord Haversham?” Valentine asked, and Lord Montfort was grateful for Valentine's matter-of-fact question that included his son, as it helped him focus on the reality of the situation.

“They shared few interests. Harry moved in different circles.”

“What do you know about this cheating business?”

“The proctor's letter was to the point with very few details. But Harry told me that Teddy had set up some sort of informal gambling club at Oxford: high stakes games and so on. It appears that there were quite a few young men involved. Teddy was caught by one of them, cheating.” He stopped for a moment; he had been appalled when his son confided this news to him yesterday.

“Must have been quite a showdown.” Valentine's voice and expression were noncommittal.

“Yes, I expect it was. Harry said it got quite rough, not that he was there,” he hastily added. “Of course Teddy denied it because … well he would, wouldn't he?” Lord Montfort paused and then added, “The stakes were quite large apparently…”

“Any idea how large?” Valentine asked.

“I don't know exactly. Harry named a sum that was almost preposterous, it's probably hugely exaggerated.” As he related his conversation with Harry, he was aware that no one in his family knew yet what had happened to Teddy. They would have to tell everyone in the house.

“I would like to talk with Lord Haversham as soon as possible since he was up at Christ Church with his cousin and the other young men here in the house who knew Teddy at Oxford. Let's see now, that would be Oscar Barclay also up at Christ Church and Ellis Booth at Balliol, am I right?”

“Yes, that's right.”

Lord Montfort turned his head as Hollyoak returned and announced that a Detective Sergeant Hawkins and Constable Dixon had arrived at the house for Colonel Valentine and, with an expression of disapproval on his face, that Theo Cartwright had come at Colonel Valentine's request and Hollyoak thought it best to keep Cartwright in the gun room until he was needed. The gamekeeper's boots were very muddy.

“Thank you, Hollyoak,” Lord Montfort said, grateful to hear that his voice sounded quite normal. “You should know in complete confidence that it was Mr. Teddy who we found in Crow Wood.” He walked out into the hall with Hollyoak and politely accepted his butler's condolences.

“Hollyoak, please make yourself available to Colonel Valentine. Now I want you to round up all our guests and gather them together in the long drawing room. Important you don't say why. Colonel Valentine will address them.” He turned to go back into the study but, realizing that Valentine's investigation was now under way, decided it was time to leave him to it. The only thing he could think of was that he wanted to be with his wife.