Savage Magic (11 page)

Various names are mentioned with regard to this society of Sybarites: Sir Henry is one, as is Sir John Cope, who is neither a member of White’s nor any other club the gentlemen Graham speaks to can recall. ‘If Cope was made a member, I would resign forthwith,’ says an elderly baronet. His young son smirks at this, and winks at Graham, as if to suggest that Cope might be a scoundrel, but he is also a reliable guide to the source of the brightest entertainments.

Graham does not return to Bow Street from White’s until the late afternoon. Several cards have been left for him. Two newspaper correspondents have called at the office, one from the
Times
and one from the
Chronicle
. He will not speak to them – he never does – but it forces him to steel himself for the next day’s papers, and for questions from the Home Secretary. A letter has arrived from the doctor at Brooke House, with an update on the progress of Abigail Horton. He reads this immediately, imagining the slightly hysterical little man, Bryson, whose manner is both ingratiating and annoying. The letter is unclear, written hurriedly and apparently without purpose – a cursory update by an uninterested functionary. Its existence worries Graham more than any of its content. Why write at all? He makes a note to visit Brooke House when he can, and perhaps even to consider placing Abigail in another institution – the Hoxton madhouse, perhaps, of which he has heard good things.

There is no news from Abigail’s husband, Charles Horton, but it is still early for any reliable information to have emerged. If indeed anything reliable can be perceived within stories of bewitchment and evildoers.

But Horton’s presence in Thorpe Lee House has now taken on a different aspect, one that has been apparent to Graham ever since the first elderly gentleman at White’s had drawn a connection between Wodehouse and Sir Henry Tempest. In the same week that he has despatched an officer to the country residence of Sir Henry, one of that gentleman’s friends has been cut to pieces in his own bed. Horton, it would seem, has inserted himself into another dark metropolitan story, alongside Graham. He notes, somewhat grimly, that the two of them are doomed to be conjoined in such circumstances.

He scribbles a quick letter to be sent to Horton at Thorpe Lee House, asking for information and tasking the constable with speaking to Sir Henry about Wodehouse and the Sybarites. He knows Horton is likely to be lashed by the sharpness of Sir Henry’s tongue when the matter is raised, and his relief at not having to raise it himself does him little credit. He takes the letter to Bow Street’s Conductor of Pursuits and Patrols, and asks that one of the mounted patrol take the letter directly to Thorpe the next morning.

The light outside is fading. Thinking of Horton in Surrey has injected a new urgency into him. He will visit Sir John Cope immediately.

THORPE

Sir Henry’s dogs are kept a good way from Thorpe Lee House for reasons of noise, but still they can be heard barking sporadically from the house, as if a hunt were passing by in the woods behind. Horton asks directions from a tired-looking Mrs Chesterton, who shows him where to go from the kitchen door at the back of the house.

‘Are you quite well, Mrs Chesterton?’ Horton asks before he leaves. The woman’s eyes have heavy bags underneath them. The day has caught up with her.

‘Bad night, dear,’ she says, the
dear
tacked on with some exhaustion, as if she’s forgotten quite who he is. ‘All these awful things as have been happening. It’s a wonder any of us sleep at all.’

She walks back into the kitchen, closing the door against the September chill.

The kennels are hidden from the house, across the lawn and through a ribbon of ash trees. The structure resounds with howls and barks as Horton comes within fifty yards of it; the noise is sudden and enormous, as if the dogs had been waiting for him. The old gardener, O’Reilly, is limping around to no immediately apparent purpose, but the chorus of barks alerts him to Horton’s approach. He stands and watches the constable. The cacophony behind him becomes more feverish; Horton wonders how many dogs Sir Henry has in this place, and this is the first question he puts to the gardener.

‘Two dozen,’ O’Reilly says. ‘Leastways, that’s what it was. Twenty-two now.’ He, like Mrs Chesterton, seems suddenly exhausted.

‘That seems an extraordinary number of dogs,’ says Horton.

‘Do it? No sense of that, for meself.’

‘Would they attack me?’

‘Them? Nah, they’s friendly. Noisy buggers but friendly. If you war a fox, now. That’d be different.’

‘They’re kept in there day and night?’

‘Aye. I lets ’em out to run around twice a day.’

‘Shall we let them out now?’

‘Aye.’

The gardener takes a key from his pocket and unlocks the door of the big shed.

‘You always lock it?’

‘Oh, aye. Sir Henry’s very particular ’bout that. Says he’s heard as others have had their dogs snatched. We keep a close eye on ’em.’

He opens the door, and a barking, jumping stream of dog bursts from the shed, sniffing round the gardener’s damaged foot, running up to Horton and investigating before swirling out onto the grass. The smell of the dogs is rich and, to Horton, unusual. As a city man and a sailor, he is not used to dogs, though he likes them and is comfortable around them. He puts down his hand to allow some curious hounds to sniff, and pats the occasional panting head.

‘Tell me about the night the two dogs were killed, O’Reilly.’

The gardener is watching the animals run and fight and shit, and sniffs sadly.

‘Found ’em out on the lawn in front of the house. Morning, it was. Early morning. I’m usually first one up. They’d been left dead. Throats cut.’

‘So it had happened the previous night?’

‘Reckon so.’

‘And the dogs had been locked up? The shed was still closed?’

‘Aye. All locked up.’

‘No one heard anything?’

‘No. I don’t live in the house, but those as does said they didn’t hear nothing at all.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘Cottage over yonder.’ He indicates towards the tree-line, unhelpfully. ‘I didn’t hear nothin’, neither.’

‘But the dogs would have had to be taken out of the shed.’

‘But that couldn’t have happened; no one heard anythin’, and you’ve seen the noise they put up. Maybe those dogs didn’t get back in when I let ’em run about. Maybe those two ran off somewhere, and was killed and brought back here.’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Only explanation, to my thinkin’.’

The old gardener sniffs again and wipes his cheek. He considers the deaths to be his fault, Horton can see.

‘Did you bury the dogs?’

‘Nah. Burned ’em. No good buryin’ dogs round ’ere. Some fox will dig ’em up. Vengeful little buggers, they is.’

A small white-and-grey hound runs up to them and barks at the gardener, who strokes its head as it stands up on its hind legs and paws his thigh.

‘What happened when you hurt your foot?’ asks Horton. The gardener looks at him, and Horton sees a flicker of anxiety in his eyes.

‘What do you mean, what happened? Was an accident, is all.’

‘What kind of accident?’

‘Was digging, wasn’t I? Put the shovel into my foot. Hurt like bloody buggery.’

‘Have you had that kind of accident before, O’Reilly?’

‘Why no, of course not. I’d have no bloody toes left, would I?’

‘So did something distract you? Did you take your mind off what you were doing?’

The gardener starts shouting at the dogs, shaking his head.

‘Come on, now! Come back here! Come on, you buggers!’

The dogs start to come back.
Not much of a play for them
, thinks Horton.

‘O’Reilly,’ he says, having to raise his voice over the growing noise of the dogs again. ‘Something distracted you, didn’t it?’

‘I can’t say. Wouldn’t be right.’

‘O’Reilly, if you saw something, you have to say. This is already a matter for magistrates, O’Reilly. There could be trouble, for you.’

Again, this is probably untrue, but O’Reilly wants to say something, and Horton is determined to midwife it, however difficult it turns out to be.

‘Thing is, I don’t even know why I was out there.’

‘Out where?’

‘In the garden. It was bloody well dark.’

‘It was night?’

‘Aye, it was. It was like I found myself out there. Diggin’ up a bloody flower bed.’

Or, thinks Horton, a fairy ring. What had the gardener called it?
Hag track
.

‘’Twas like I’d been dreamin’ and walked in my dream. Thought I was dreamin’. Thought that was the only explanation.’

‘Explanation for what?’

‘For Miss Ellen bein’ there.’

‘Miss Ellen?’

‘Aye.’

The old man pulls an ancient dirty rag from an ancient dirty pocket and wipes his ancient dirty nose, to no perceivable effect. He looks into the trees.

‘In there. She was in there. In the trees.’

‘In the middle of the night?’

‘Aye, she was.’

‘What was she doing?’

‘She warn’t doing nothing. She was just standin’ there, lookin’ at me.’

‘Did she speak?’

‘Not to my recollection, no.’

‘Has this happened before?’

The old man frowns, his eyes looking into the trees, as if his memories could be discovered in there among the fallen leaves.

‘Not that I can remember, no.’

After lunch Horton walks into Thorpe village to meet with the local vicar. Walking has long been his spur for thinking, and this is a considerable distance, though with rather less to see than the Wapping streets he is used to. He realises as he walks that his eyes and attention are normally occupied by people – what they are doing, who they are talking to, whether they are happy or sad or sullen or angry or afraid. It is in the faces of people that Horton reads the story of his own neighbourhood.

But there are no people at all on today’s walk. Thorpe Lee House and its neighbour (called, mystifyingly and confusingly, Thorpe Lee) are perhaps a mile from the village of Thorpe proper, across the same flat and swampy fields Horton saw on his carriage ride the previous day.

He tries to ponder what the servants told him. His brain is tired; he had slept little the previous night, and not just because of the moans and groans of the oddly haunted residents. He has not slept through the night since Abigail departed, almost a month ago. The sleep he does find is fitful and broken and unsatisfying, and his dreams are of the same nature as his daytime thoughts: random, disconnected, without pattern. Formerly he had been used to pondering on cases in a strange double-minded way. One part of his mind would churn through the information he had acquired, while the other part watched it, seeking out patterns but also monitoring the world around, in touch with its surroundings while its counterpart worried away at facts and evidence like a natural philosopher watching a dying bird in a jar.

But he is even more tired than usual today. He wonders if this, perhaps, lies behind the odd neglect of Thorpe Lee House. Perhaps the servants are exhausted, and if O’Reilly’s tale turns out to be true – of Miss Ellen’s night-time walks in the woods – perhaps Sir Henry’s strange family are tired, as well. O’Reilly’s tale is odd, no doubt, but the oddity has no edge to it, is dull and inconsequential, as if it doesn’t have the energy to present itself fully.

Thorpe village is a charming place, but to Horton’s eyes still strangely devoid of people. Its old redbrick houses, many of them of quite old construction, cluster around a crossroads. A substantial residence, Thorpe House (the naming of houses here is sturdily unimaginative), occupies the north side of the village, behind an opulent red wall which is entirely different in its random curves to the stark commercial walls Horton has become used to in Wapping. The red brick of the houses is matched by the quickening redness of the tree leaves, such that the whole place looks like it is fired from within.

The church, St Mary’s, stands some way back from a road alongside this wall, within another cluster of houses and against a bank of trees. Its graveyard is on three sides, the front guarded by an enormous oak. The church looks very old and in places in need of repair; its tower, like all the houses of Thorpe, is made of red brick, and covered in thick ivy. Horton goes inside, but there is nobody there.

Coming out again, he spies another large house nearby, which through a sequence of paths and fencing suggests a kinship with the church. He walks up to the door. His knock is answered immediately by a man dressed all in black, his wispy hair hardly covering his grey scalp. He smiles at his visitor, and his mouth is almost devoid of any teeth.

‘Would this be the residence of the vicar of St Mary’s?’ asks Horton. The man is a butler or steward, he assumes. The local vicar certainly puts on airs.

‘It would be.’

‘I wonder if I might trouble him for a word or two. My name is Horton. I have been asked by Mrs Graham up at Thorpe Lee House to investigate several incidents up—’

‘Oh, you mean the witch. Come in, come in.’

He steps aside, and Horton, somewhat surprised, is let into the house, which is grander than he might have expected for a country vicar.