The Duke's Agent (27 page)

A yellow bird huddled in a wicker cage that rested on a high stool framed at the mouth of the passage leading into the yard. On top of the cage crouched a brindled cat with a tattered ear. With rounded haunches and head held low, the animal watched its frozen prey through the twisted willow shoots. The mauled ear scarcely twitched as Jarrett and Duffin approached.

‘We'd have better brought company,' Duffin remarked in a doom-laden voice.

‘We have not come for a fight. After the exertions of last night I doubt this Sergeant Tolley wishes to draw the further attentions of the magistrates.'

The poacher gave a sceptical grunt and brushed the cat from the bird cage as he passed. The animal skittered off with a furious look.

‘Daft bugger,' he commented. ‘I'll bide here.' Duffin stopped in the penumbra of the doorway. Jarrett glanced back. It was mildly surprising how successfully one of the poacher's bulk managed to blend into the grey of the passage. Duffin had a curious gift of immobility that made him easy to overlook when he wished it so. Jarrett stepped out into the bright morning.

Sergeant Tolley sat sunning himself in the yard overlooking the busy river, a pack of young men lolling about him. Jarrett judged Duffin's concern unwarranted. These lads looked in no condition to pose a threat to anyone. Grimy-faced and befuddled they slumped, blinking in the bright
sunshine. He recognised several faces he had first glimpsed in Will Roberts's company at the Queen's Head soon after his arrival in Woolbridge. Will himself was missing. From a distance Roberts's father-in-law had the benign look of a prosperous family man – mutton-chop whiskers and a receding hairline; a solid frame, spread firmly between two trunk-like thighs. He was talking and did not choose to be interrupted. His eyes, like pieces of boiled meat leached of all goodness, slithered over the newcomer. The sergeant's was a homely face with no one at home.

It appeared that something had offended the proprietor of the Swan Inn. He sent a stalking look about his followers. For all the marks of exhaustion there was a wariness about the lads in the yard. A skittish note of tension permeated the movements of even those competing to look most at ease in this hard man's company.

‘I'll take no disrespect – not from any man alive, high or low.' The sergeant's voice, like his stare, was a tool of his trade. He built it up with skill and careful timing into a bellow that had the semblance of a gale, conveying a similar threat of destruction. ‘I'd soon as wring the neck of any man that crossed me. Know what I'd do? Do you?' Sergeant Tolley stood up. He swaggered a few steps to snatch up a chicken scratching in a corner of the yard in surprisingly swift hands. ‘I'd sooner bite his head off than have any man disrespect me,' he declared.

The tableau was absurd yet Sergeant Tolley had a quality of ingrained menace about him that gripped the attention. The bird struggled with all its puny vitality against the ring of muscle and bone that imprisoned it. A ridiculous, clumsy, feathered, straining thing. The sergeant opened his vast mouth and stuffed in the jerking head. With a snap and a wrench and a soft ripping sound, there was a spurting wound where the head had been. Red, red blood seeped between yellow teeth and dribbled over the pasty chin. The sergeant
spat the head on to the table. Slowly, deliberately, he leant over to pull a handkerchief from about Joe Walton's neck. The youth drew back from him then braced himself, his fair skin flushing with shame. He stared out of round fascinated eyes as the hard man wiped the gore from his lips. Tolley, his eyes full of contempt, lifted up his head and laughed. And with the staccato start of a line of muskets, his lads began to laugh with him.

A small-boned young woman with the face of a guarded child appeared carrying a tray of drink. She kept her eyes down as she distributed the mugs, weaving a pattern among the tables that seemed to draw her inexorably towards the man who was the centre of this universe. As she paused in profile to him, Jarrett saw the high bulge she carried under her heavy skirts. He heard again Nat Broom's malicious voice back at the Queen's Head: ‘whatever the skirt's condition.' The baby looked to be due soon. If this was Will's new wife, as he assumed she was, Roberts's impending fatherhood put a new complexion on things. Jarrett examined the girl who had secured Will Roberts's affections in spite of all Sal's charms. He doubted it was her physical attractions that had got the lad to the altar – terror of her father, more like. And yet there was a wan vulnerability about the girl's underfed frame that solicited protection. Her face wore the unnaturally blank expression of the abused. Lack of visible emotion is the best defence the defenceless can hope for. As his daughter laid a mug by him, the sergeant flung the mangled corpse on to her tray. A few drops of blood settled on her thin hand.

‘That's for the pot,' he declared. The chorus of laughter punctuated his words.

Jarrett caught a glimpse of doe eyes framed by long lashes. A spurt of anger caught him off guard. He was tired of men like Tolley. The army had taught the sergeant well. Jarrett would wager no line had ever broken under fire with Tolley
at its heels. He had all the tricks – the sneer, the hard stares, the random eruptions of viciousness – all the bully and show by which petty tyrants force their inconsequential wills on less determined men. Tolley's kind were the backbone of military discipline. Discipline of the kind that had tethered two thousand men of the 68th to their indefensible post in the West Indies until disease shattered the regiment and fewer than two hundred remained to be shipped home. That same discipline which, three years later, had mired hundreds of fresh recruits to the 68th in the Walcheren marshes to rot away with swamp fever. Blind, unreasoning, brutal wilfulness.

With the lordly air of a pasha in his court of infidels, Sergeant Tolley deigned to acknowledge Jarrett's presence.

‘You, stranger! What do you want here?'

He stowed the anger away and surveyed the man.

‘It does not concern you, innkeeper. I have come in search of Mr Roberts, Will Roberts. I understand he dwells here?'

Mrs Roberts darted a bird-like glance up at a window. He followed its path. There was a face at a window. It was a brief glimpse, but now he understood the talk of Sal's ghost walking. Will Roberts had the face of a haunted man.

Sergeant Tolley spread himself at ease. Secure in the yard of his inn he was free of the army now. Jonah Tolley had no more need to bow and scrape to officers and gentlemen.

‘I make it my concern. You'll not see him,' he said flatly. ‘My son-in-law's poorly. A weakly man is young Will.'

A familiar voice piped up. ‘Might be something he ate, sergeant!' Jarrett recognised the narrow features of Nat Broom.

The sergeant belched theatrically. ‘More than likely. Has a tender stomach, does our Will.'

The lads laughed again. They were perking up at the prospect of a common victim to taunt.

‘Are you here too, Mr Broom?' commented Jarrett mildly. ‘I must congratulate you on a wide acquaintance.'

The sergeant cast his sycophant a look that made Nat shift uneasily. Out of the corner of his eye Jarrett saw the young woman take a step towards him, as if seeking his protection against the expression on her father's face. He had a strong impulse to vent some of the anger he had bottled up over the years. All those times he had stood by in the name of order to watch ruthlessness ride roughshod over humanity. His irritation spread to encompass Roberts. He was a fine tall young man. Was he too much of a coward to protect her from all this? He searched the sergeant's pebble eyes. Compared to Roberts's grieving face they were the windows to a soul that reflected no trace of feeling. Maybe Miss Lonsdale's assessment of the lad was right. After all, Will had married the girl. Perhaps Roberts had done all he could and his all had simply not proved enough.

The church clock across the river chimed the hour. He was late for the Colonel's session. It would serve no one's purpose but Tolley's if he were to get into a fight with the man. Jarrett placed his words clearly in the tense air of the courtyard for all to hear.

‘Please inform Mr Roberts that Mr Jarrett called to see him. The Woolbridge magistrates are now meeting at the Queen's Head and wish to speak to him in connection with the recent death at Lovers' Leap.'

For all his conviction of his own strength, Tolley's years with the army had not taught him how to counter the effortless superiority of the officer class.

‘You have no business with Will,' he blustered. ‘That mad trollop killed herself. Will has nothing to say to any of you – away with you now! I'm sick of the sight of you.'

It had been many a long year since Raif Jarrett had flinched before a sergeant's roar. ‘See that Roberts receives my message. Tell him it will be better for him if he comes himself. It would be a pity if the soldiers have to be sent.' He bowed to Mrs Roberts with a polite smile. ‘Good-day.'

*

Colonel Ison's petty session met in Mr Bedlington's upper assembly room. The Reverend Prattman was sitting close to the Colonel's elbow, wearing the solemn Sunday face of a well-behaved child. The Chairman of the Bench looked up as Jarrett entered.

‘Ah, Mr Jarrett! You are late. We can start. Mr Raistrick has sent word he will be delayed – some affair of a man's face cut in an alehouse brawl. You know Sir Thomas, I believe, and the parson, of course. Now, what news, Mr Jarrett? I have had no luck in tracing this Tallyman fellow of yours.'

Colonel Ison was at his most brisk. He vibrated with the bottled energy of a highly schooled thoroughbred fretting to be off. Sir Thomas of Oakdene Hall, after greeting Jarrett with a soft smile, appeared at a loss how to behave towards him. His anxious eyes drifted about the room until he settled into an exquisitely polite contemplation of a spot just before the end of the Colonel's nose which avoided the necessity of acknowledging the agent's presence.

‘As to that, Colonel, I have intelligence that the villain has been seen again at the tavern called the Three Pots down on the river. If some men may be sent down there with due despatch, I have hopes he might be apprehended.'

As he spoke, Jarrett's mind calculated the impact of this fresh information. A man's face cut in an alehouse brawl? Duffin had told him that the Tallyman had a liking for that ‘chalking trick of cutting a man's face to make his point'. And Raistrick was there to deal with the problem before him. Jarrett tensed against the thought. Whatever progress he made, it seemed as if the lawyer was always ahead of him.

‘You think this Tallyman will give us answers, Mr Jarrett?' The Colonel's question recalled his attention.

‘I believe him responsible for the murder of the Stainmoor crofter, yes. And I would be glad to examine him about circumstances surrounding James Crotter's death.'

‘But James Crotter was not murdered!' The parson was shocked.

‘No, I think not, Mr Prattman, but certain papers were taken from the manor at the time of his death and I have reason to believe that this Tallyman knows what took place there.'

Colonel Ison expelled a heavy breath that puffed out his cheeks.

‘Well then, gentlemen, it seems we should send for Captain Adams. He can take a party of militia down to the river district – the Three Pots, you say?'

‘Yes, sir. The murder bill from the churchwardens at Brough carries a description of the felon.'

‘As I recall, there was a witness to that murder, was there not? The victim's son? It is inconvenient for me to be away from London at this time. Let us expedite this matter. I propose we send Constable Bone over to Stainmoor to fetch this boy. If he can identify our man we will have a murderer.'

Sir Thomas surfaced from his dreamy distraction.

‘Poyston goes at quite eight miles the hour – even on the moor roads,' he announced. ‘So much more expeditious. Constable Bone may sit with Poyston on the box.' The baronet's vague face clouded a moment, then cleared. ‘Boys are slight enough, I dare say. The boy may sit between them.'

Eyeing the vacuous face with some wonder, Jarrett realised that Sir Thomas was offering his carriage and personal escort to the constable.

‘That is a gracious offer, Sir Thomas, and timely,' Colonel Ison responded smoothly. ‘Most timely. You are able to start at once?'

Sir Thomas agreed he was. Parson Prattman appeared to have been rendered speechless by this extreme generosity. He bobbed his head several times in the baronet's direction, a repressed smirk of approval on his rosy features. Sir Thomas basked, blinking, amid the congratulations.

Jarrett's brusque cough made him start. ‘I should report, sirs, that Miss Grundy's actor friend proves to be a dead end.' Drawing out Lady Yarbrook's letter, he gave a brief account of his trip to Gainford.

‘A pity,' sighed Colonel Ison, removing the spectacles from his nose and casting the letter aside. ‘Ah well! To work, gentlemen. Let us set the hunt after this Tallyman fellow, eh?'

The meeting dispersed – Sir Thomas to his carriage, the Colonel to summon Captain Adams and the constable, and the parson to hurry to his vicarage to exclaim over the whole affair with his clerk. Jarrett descended the stairs alone. There was still no sign of Raistrick. He had the uneasy sense that this game was already lost. He gathered himself up. The Colonel had at least set an official pursuit in motion. There was still a faint hope that the Tallyman might be apprehended before the lawyer magistrate got wind of it. Once the villain was in custody then at last he might have the chance to unravel this mystery.

Mrs Bedlington's jolly face peered up at him from the foot of the stairs.

‘You have visitors, Mr Jarrett.' To his astonishment she winked, adding a little tap on his forearm. ‘In the parlour – Miss Lonsdale.' Curiosity crept into her voice. ‘She's brought Mrs Munday and that Maggie Walton with her.'