The Dead Songbird (The Northminster Mysteries) (34 page)

“I think we should move your mother to a warmer room,” said Carswell, intervening gently. “This is a terrible shock for her.” Miss Pritchard seemed to be rallied by being made to be useful, and together they helped her from the room.

“This is going to cause some difficulties,” Lord Rothborough said when they were alone. “A more politic man would have given him warning, Vernon. His family might be spared a great deal if you had allowed that. It is dreadful how these things punish the womenfolk. He could perhaps have slipped away to the continent.”

“My Lord, I trust you are not being serious?” Giles said. “If he is guilty, he will have to swing for it. There can be no bending the law because of his position or profession.”

“The Dean of Northminster hanged for murder – the ballad sellers will have a field day. The populace already has scant respect for the clergy and this will not help. And of course the Dissenters will use this to have an excellent pop at the Established Church.”

“I think the Church can survive a little mud slinging.”

“At least he did not get his mitre,” said Rothborough with a shudder. “That is a mercy for which we should at least be grateful.”

***

Felix made up a mild sedative for Mrs Pritchard, and, with Miss Pritchard, helped her into bed. She was still shaking with shock, but gradually the opiate and the warm room calmed her.

“You’ll need someone to watch her.”

“I will not leave her,” said Miss Pritchard, who stood by the bed, her mother’s hand in hers.

“And you... you are...?” he searched for what to say.

“I will be all right,” she said. “Thank you – you have been so kind, when you have every right to be furious with me.”

“Would you like me to fetch Mr Watkins?” he said, after a moment.

“He will be busy with the Festival,” she said. “I don’t wish to disturb him.”

“Will that go on now?”

“I think it should. More than ever. Music is a great defence in time of trouble, and we have plenty of that, don’t you think?” She sighed and turned back to her mother, who was now sleeping peacefully, and passed her hand over her forehead. “Oh, how is she going to bear all this? How do people bear it?” She adjusted the cover and went over to the window. “I think it made me mad when I knew what he had done. For which I apologise, Mr Carswell, for what it made me do to you. I did not mean –”

“That really doesn’t matter.”

“You made me an offer, and it was so kind, and I was most ungracious. I do hope you do not think I am really so false. I am not like that. It was just that things were so complicated. In other circumstances, then...”

She looked across at him, her eyes red and wet with tears, her face blotchy, her hair half falling down, and he saw the beauty in it. He thought of all those odd moments of intimacy he had shared with her, and how she seemed to understand him. If she were married to Watkins, it would no longer be possible to continue with any sort of friendship with her, and the thought pained him.

She put out her hand to him.

“I am so sorry,” she said again.

He took her hand briefly and squeezed it.

“Will you be all right? I have to go and check on one of my patients. She lost a baby this morning and I am not sure she will pull through. But I can come back later.”

“Then you must go at once. We will manage here.”

So he left and walked briskly down from the Precincts to the Jackson’s house. The heavy rain of the previous night had cleared but the wind remained, ferocious, pursuing people down the steep, damp cobbled streets of the city like a wild animal. On entering the Jacksons’ house, the door slammed violently behind him, and the rather crone-like old neighbour, who had come in to help, muttered to him about the darkness of the day and God’s wrath. He wondered, as he made his way upstairs, what she would think of the Dean being arrested for murder. It would probably sound like the End of Days to her.

He was glad to discover that Mrs Jackson was much improved, and although weak and miserable from her loss, Felix felt that she would recover her full strength with some careful nursing, though it might be inadvisable for her to attempt another pregnancy. This was a delicate matter to discuss with a man and his wife at the best of times. Now, as Jackson pumped his hand and thanked him heartily for all he had done, was not the moment to tell him that he ought to embark upon a course of chastity for the sake of his wife’s health. One of the chief prizes of marriage could not be easily relinquished, Felix thought, imagining himself in Jackson’s boots. How would he feel being asked to forswear that?

As he walked back to the Unicorn, he debated the question. Did all men, he wondered, live in this same torment with which he was afflicted – this constant, distracting longing for sexual congress? Perhaps other men felt it less in the first place. Perhaps it was schooled by marriage, and domestic affection, but that brought miseries of its own. Was it better to watch a wife almost die of childbirth or suffer a miserable existence as a bachelor, being reduced to getting dirty comfort from whores?

He stopped to remove a stray piece of paper that had attached itself to his boot and found he was looking at the flyer for the Handel Festival that evening.

“Mrs Morgan: Airs from Handel’s Oratorios: Esther, Messiah and Theodora.” How extraordinary was the effect that her name had on him, even when it was on a rain-sodden scrap of paper.

He threw it to the ground. He felt he had put his foot into a man-trap.

Chapter Forty-four

Predictably, Dean Pritchard went silent. He refused to speak a word until he had seen his solicitor. He asked for old Mr Eames, but since he was the coroner he could not be asked to act, and young Mr Eames, who might have been acceptable, had gone away for a few days. In the end, Giles had asked Mr Johnson to see him. Mr Johnson was not as lofty a personage as Mr Eames, having his practice among the middling sorts of Northminster. However, he did have a good grasp of the criminal law, being an energetic Methodist with an active conscience which often prompted him to work for no fee. He had often caused problems for Giles in front of the Justices, having a strong sense of vocation to defend the indefensible, and he accepted the challenge of acting for Dean Pritchard with a mixture of properly Christian regret and intellectual excitement.

Giles was waiting impatiently to hear the outcome of their first interview, when he was brought a message from the one of the constables he had set watching Mrs Ridolfi. She had indeed left the house in the Minster Precincts, and had gone to the Greyhound Tavern from which she had not yet emerged.

He left at once, taking a sergeant and two constables.

The Greyhound in Bridle Street was a dusty establishment, much in need of a lick of paint. A quick enquiry with the landlord revealed that no-one was staying there under the name of Morgan, but there was a tall burly Welshman, calling himself Jones, who had come back very late last night. “Almost didn’t let him in, but he was a loud-mouthed bugger, I didn’t want to cross him,” he said.

“And he’s had a visitor this afternoon?”

“Aye, a woman came in just after noon. A classy piece.”

“Take me to his room, would you?”

He led Giles and his men up a dark, twisting stair smelling of boiled cabbage, stale beer and tobacco smoke.

“That’s the one,” said the landlord, banging on the door. “Open up now, Mr Jones, I’ve more visitors for you.”

There was a few moments’ delay and then the sound of the door bolt being drawn. The door opened, revealing Mrs Ridolfi. She looked Giles squarely in the eyes as she stood back to let them in.

“Where is he?” he said, looking about the shabbily furnished room. There was no sign of another occupant. “Where is Morgan?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I told you that this morning.”

“Is there another way out?” Giles said to the landlord.

“Down the backstairs,” said the landlord. “Takes you into the kitchen and out through the yard.”

“You stay there, ma’am,” said Giles and went down to the kitchen.

The kitchen boy confirmed that Morgan, alias Jones, had left about half an hour ago. “And in a black fury,” the boy said.

He went back upstairs and found Mrs Ridolfi seated on a stool in the window, watched over by Sergeant Baines.

Giles glanced about the room, noting the disordered bedclothes, the flush of her cheeks and the fact that she had taken off her cloak, bonnet and gloves.

“You must have known I would have had you followed, ma’am,” he said.

She shrugged, and adjusted her collar. The primness of her attitude now seemed assumed and he noted her hair was arranged differently from how it had been a few hours ago. There was something clumsy about it now, as if she had put it back up without any assistance.

“Did Berthe do you hair this morning, Mrs Ridolfi?”

“What has my hair to do with anything?”

“Men notice these things more than you think,” Giles said. “It looks different from how it was earlier, as if you have had to take it down and put it up again. Why might that be, I wonder?”

“What an extraordinary thing to say,” she said.

“You must expect me to be a little insolent, Mrs Ridolfi, since I find you here, in these compromising circumstances. When you have lied to me about his whereabouts.”

“I do not know know where he is,” she said. “I told you so, this morning.”

“That is feeble,” he said. “He has been here with you – that is clear enough. You told me that you had not the least idea where he is, and yet here you are, having consorted with him.”

“Consorted, what do you mean by that?”

“What do you think I mean?”

“I do not like to say what you are thinking, sir,” she said. “And I am very shocked that you could think such a thing.”

“This little performance will have to stop, Mrs Ridolfi. It will get tiresome very quickly. You told me yourself you had feelings for Mr Morgan. Everything about this room indicates you have acted upon them. And the fact that you are protecting him still only confirms it.”

“Do you mean to imply –?”

“Yes,” he said. “You and Morgan are lovers and together you have conspired to send those letters to your sister-in-law. Your hand is all over them and you shall not shift the blame easily from yourself, not now you have proved yourself such a liar. If you had been straight with me, Mrs Ridolfi, and told me he was your lover, and not led me this foolish dance, then things might stand a little better for you but now... well...”

She glanced up at him.

“Yes, yes, all right, yes, I did make some of them!” she said after a minute. “But he made me do it. I had no choice about it. I told you he was wicked, did I not? He made me do it. I could not say no. That is what he is like. That is what he has become!”

“And that is why you came here today?” he said. “He forced you?”

“Yes, yes!” she said.

Giles nodded but he still had a nagging doubt in the back of his mind. He wondered who was really at the root of the plot. She was happy to claim to be Morgan’s puppet, but it was it not equally possible that she might be pulling his strings?

“So why do you think Morgan has come to Northminster?” he said, sitting down again. “Did he tell you what his intentions were?”

“No.”

“Did you expect him?”

“No.”

“But presumably you told him that you were all coming here? He knew just where to send the letters and where to find you.”

“Yes, I told him that.”

“It was part of your scheme, yes, of course.”

“
His
scheme. He made me, I told you that, Major Vernon!”

“How?”

“I am sorry?”

“How did he make you do it? Did he threaten you? Or hurt you? There must have been some coercion, I think, to make you do something so out of character. It takes something considerable to drive a good woman to a criminal act.”

“I told you – he made me do it. That is how he is.”

“How precisely?”

“Is it important?”

“Yes, I wish to establish the degree of his culpability – and how responsible you are. So it is important. Vagueness will not help you at all, Mrs Ridolfi, and you are going to need all the help you can get. What you have done is no small thing, I hope you understand that and are ready to co-operate fully with me. Yes?” She nodded. “So this scheme, let us begin with the scheme – when and how did that come about?”

“I cannot honestly remember,” she said with a little shrug. He very much doubted her honesty in that moment.

“Come now,” he said. “You must remember something. Perhaps you will remember better if we were to have this conversation at the constabulary headquarters, ma’am.”

“Do you mean to arrest me?”

“Yes. But the more you co-operate the better it will be for you. I wish to save you some pain and humiliation by getting the full story. If you please, ma’am?”

He hoped this flourish might nudge her into more revelations, but at the same time he took out his notebook to show her that whatever she said would be on record.

Now she nodded and sat, every inch the submissive woman, her hands folded in her lap, her head slightly bowed.

“So tell me about this scheme of Morgan’s, that you were apparently forced into. Did he tell you what he intended by it?”

“To give her a good scare,” she said.

“For what reason?”

“I told you – she humiliated him. He wanted her to feel something of the pain she had caused him.”

“And so he hit on this idea?”

“Yes.”

“It is rather a strange business. Vicious threats – which are threats – or are they not? Does he intend to act on them, do you know?”

“Of course not!”

“But you say he is a monster of wickedness and depravity. Why are you so certain he will not act on them? If he has taken so much trouble and recruited you, by whatever means, to do this thing, how do you know that?”

“Because he... he is not so far gone as that. He means only to scare her. That is all. Is that not bad enough that he has been driven to it?”

He got up and walked up the room a little, and then turned back to her.

“You are so protective of him, even now,” he said. “I begin to worry that... well, it is often the case that a woman who is so protective of a man is often his greatest victim. I see a great deal of this. Has he ever been violent towards you?”