When the Devil Drives (28 page)

The landlord was ready to be helpful, especially since I'd tipped him well, but had seen or heard nothing of my friend and his chariot in the early hours. We met with the same result at three other inns, including the main coaching establishment. When the Alpha coach drew into the yard, heading for Southampton via Staines and Egham, I bought tickets for us, travelling on the outside. Even after our wash, we were hardly fit company for inside travel and it helped conserve our small store of money. The day was overcast and drizzling. We were both so tired by then that, in spite of the jolting and the chatter of the other outside passengers, we dozed, leaning against each other, for most of the journey and only woke up when we arrived at the Red Lion in Egham soon after midday.

It was a prosperous looking inn, red brick and thickly thatched. The landlord came out smiling a welcome, even for two bedraggled passengers climbing stiffly down from the top of the coach. The smile was tilted to one side because a shiny pink burn scar the shape of a horseshoe covered most of the right side of his face. I decided there was no need to produce my story of a carriage accident and simply asked if we might engage a room. He looked puzzled at our lack of luggage and the fact that I hadn't requested separate accommodation for my maid, but he offered a comfortable room at the back.

‘The bed needs making up, ma'am, but if you care to wait in the parlour I'll have tea sent in while the girl's seeing to it.'

He brought the tea in himself, probably out of curiosity. I didn't mind that because it gave me a chance to talk to him.

‘I wonder if you've met a friend of mine, a Mr Legge. He was in Egham a few days ago and I think he might have stayed here.'

A simple assumption. The Red Lion, as the coaching inn, would have more horses than any of the other establishments in town. If looking for Amos, always head where the horses were.

The landlord smiled his lopsided smile. ‘Mr Legge, yes he stayed here twice. Ten days or so ago, the first time, then last Friday, turned up just when I needed him.'

‘Needed him?'

‘Saved one of my best horses, Toby. He'd got lockjaw from a cut. Some woodenhead had hired him and not noticed he was hurt. By the time we knew, it was set in so bad I thought there was nothing for it but to put him out of his misery. I was just going inside for my pistol when Mr Legge arrives from London. I tell him what's happening and he says to let him look at Toby. So he looks, then he says to fetch him the clippers and all the mustard I've got in the house. “Mustard?” I says. He says, “Yes, dry or mixed, no odds.” So I fetch them and he clips that horse as close as a billiard ball, so you could see the skin. Before he arrived, the poor beast was in too much pain to let anyone put a hand on him, but Mr Legge says something to him and he stands still enough. Then when he's got him clipped, he rubs in the mustard all over him, then tells me to bring two good thick horse rugs and he straps them both on Toby, one over the other. Then he fetches in a couple of buckets of water and says to leave Toby quiet for two or three hours, either he'll do or he won't. “If he pulls through,” I says, “you can have all the beer you can drink any time you like.” He says, “I'll hold you to that.” So we have a drink and a pipe or two, and when we look in a few hours later, there's the horse standing there, rugs soaked through with sweat, but right as rain. “Where did you learn that trick?” I says. So he says he learned it off a gypsy back home and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, so now what about that beer?'

Even hearing him tell the story made me feel better, it was so like Amos. Amos's first visit, ten days ago, must have been the one where he discovered something that led to the attack on him in Hyde Park. Then there'd been the second visit five days ago.

‘He's gone then?' I said.

‘Yes, went off early Monday morning.'

‘Do you know where?'

‘I know where he went first. There's a friend of mine down near the race track, breeds horses.'

‘And he didn't come back? Were you expecting him?'

‘Well, I was and I wasn't. He didn't have any luggage with him, apart from what he carried in a little saddle bag, and he took that with him.'

‘And you had no idea where he might be going after the horse breeder?'

‘No.'

But this time, there was a hint of doubt in the no. I looked him in the eye.

‘I didn't ask him,' he said. ‘He was friendly enough, but when it came to asking him questions, it was so far and no further. For instance, when he came here on Friday, I couldn't help noticing he'd got a shiner of a black eye. “You've been in the wars then?” I said. He didn't answer, just drank his beer. But I'll leave you ladies to your tea, then.'

He went as far as the door, then hesitated. ‘Mr Legge isn't in any kind of trouble, I hope.'

‘I'm sure he's not,' I said. ‘I'd just like to talk to him, that's all.'

He might have said more, but coach wheels sounded outside. ‘You'll excuse me. I'll get the girl to show you up to your room.'

The room was small and clean, most of the space taken up by an enormous feather bed. Tabby gazed at it longingly. Her face was pale and pinched and I guessed she was in more pain from her wrist than she'd admitted.

‘Rest,' I said. ‘Just take off your dress and shoes and lie down.'

‘What will you do?'

‘Go out for a walk. Don't worry, I won't be away long.'

I turned onto a field footpath. Across the river, a white house stood among the trees on Magna Carta Island, where the barons had made King John sign the great charter more than six hundred years ago. When I was ten years old, my father had brought me and my brother Tom there from London on a summer day. It was a sacred spot, he told us, the foundation of our freedom from arbitrary power and false imprisonment. The barons, to be sure, were no friends to the common people, being concerned only with their own rights, therefore not such good men as Tom Paine or William Cobbett. Still, we should stand quietly and remember that this was where the idea of liberty, for England and therefore all the world, began.

At the time, I had tried hard to keep my mind on what my father was saying, because I knew it was important to him, and why he and my late mother had named me as they had. But I'm afraid my attention had wandered to the race course alongside the river, where men were exercising horses that gleamed bright bay against the close-cropped grass. Quite likely, my father had to struggle to keep his own attention from straying because he dearly loved a good horse.

On this autumn afternoon there were no horses out on the race course and my father's words came back to me with more force than when he spoke them. For three young women at least, life had been cut short. If somebody could kill them and not face justice, then what was the point of the barons and their charter? I stayed beside the river until the sun was almost down and walked back to the Red Lion.

Our landlord's name was Mr Webster. The horseshoe burn came from when he'd been apprentice to a blacksmith and a touchy pony had kicked out, driving the red-hot shoe onto his cheek. Tabby and I learned this after our dinner, when I invited him into the parlour where we'd had our meal served, to take a glass of claret with me. (I'd relented and let Tabby have gin and water.) I think he found me a puzzle. Here I was, unescorted by a gentleman, sharing bed and board with my maid, sovereigns in my pocket but not so much as a saddlebag with a change of linen. Luckily, he'd decided that a friend of Amos Legge was entitled to the benefit of the doubt. I repeated what I'd said about Mr Legge not being in trouble, but admitted I was concerned about him.

‘He was attacked by several men in London ten days ago,' I said. ‘That's when he got the black eye he didn't want to talk about. I think he might have met the men who attacked him on that first visit here and come back to find them last Friday.'

He drank some wine and nodded. ‘He had something on his mind, I know that much.'

‘That first visit, did you notice who he talked to?'

‘No. We were that busy, with everybody coming and going from the castle. I noticed him, of course, because of his height and his appetite. Ate two platefuls of rabbit stew and a loaf of bread straight off. I remember he said he'd come down from London to deliver a horse.'

‘You didn't see him taking a particular interest in anybody?'

‘No.'

‘Or arguing or being threatened?'

‘No. He didn't strike me as an argumentative kind of a man. As to threats, who in his right mind would try to threaten a man who looks as if he could pick up a fair-sized pony and carry it half a mile?'

‘The second time he came here, last Friday, did you notice anything different about him?'

‘I'd say he was keyed-up. When we were drinking in the snug, he kept looking around, as if he expected to see somebody he recognized. He was asking me questions, too.'

‘What about?'

He jerked his chin over his shoulder, towards a room next door. As far as I remembered, it was a parlour much like the one we were sitting in, only larger. It was a place where respectable coach travellers, male or female, might take their twenty minutes' rest while the horses were changed without venturing into the more rustic public room.

‘Them, mostly.'

He seemed to take it for granted that I'd know what he meant. I didn't. ‘Any questions in particular?'

‘He wanted to know if there were any gentlemen who drove a black chariot. None this side of the park, I told him. Plenty the other side.'

I'd nearly jumped out of my chair at the mention of a black chariot, but our landlord didn't notice because his professional ear had caught a sound he was expecting.

‘Here come the next lot. Just in time to pick up the Bristol to London. You'll excuse me, ladies.'

He drained his glass, put it down on the table and left hurriedly. Tabby looked at me.

‘What lot's he talking about?'

‘I don't know.'

I stood up and half-opened the door onto the passage. People were walking into the larger parlour. A couple of what looked like ladies' maids were chattering together, carrying hat boxes, followed by a kindly-faced older woman who might have been a housekeeper. Then two middle-aged men, wearing a blue uniform and a grey-haired gentleman with a discontented expression, annoyed to find himself in servants' company. Before they were settled, the wheels of the vehicle that had brought them rolled away. By now, it was pitch dark outside.

‘So was it our ice people Mr Legge was looking for?' Tabby said.

‘I think so, yes.'

The thought of it terrified me. Amos was simply out for revenge, not knowing about the bodies and the ice store, but that wouldn't save him. We sat and waited, Tabby sipping her gin and water. A gentle hum of conversation came from the parlour next door, none of it loud enough to make out. Who were they? About twenty minutes after their arrival, a coach horn sounded outside and the stage coach from Bristol to London clattered into the yard. We watched from the window as the people from the parlour came filing out and took their places inside and on top. It left looking dangerously overloaded.

As the sound of its wheels died away, Mr Webster came back to us. ‘May I get you anything, ladies?'

By then, I'd decided to admit my ignorance. ‘Who are they?'

He looked surprised. ‘From over there.' Another jerk of the chin.

‘Over there?'

‘Castle staff.' Then, probably because of the amazed look on my face: ‘With the castle staff, if they have to go up to town for anything, it's easier to bring them across the park to here, then they can go on the regular services to London.'

I'd been a fool. With everything else on my mind, I'd forgotten my geography. To the west of Egham and Runnymede was the open space of Windsor Great Park, and several miles beyond the park, the castle.

‘So those people were all castle servants?'

‘Yes, or servants of the ladies and gentlemen staying there. A lot of them at present, up and down from London all the time.'

‘And the blue uniforms, are they some kind of local militia?'

He smiled. ‘That's the Windsor uniform. The higher sort of the men servants wear it. Then there's the grand version that her majesty's regular visitors wear to dinner.'

‘So it was the household servants Mr Legge was asking questions about?'

‘Anything to do with them, but the horses and carriages mainly. I wondered if he was hoping to do a bit of business with them. “No chance here,” I told him. “They're a close lot, keep themselves to themselves.”'

A lad's head came round the door. They needed a new barrel in the public room and Mr Webster had the keys to the cellar.

‘Just one more thing,' I said. ‘What was the name of the breeder Mr Legge went to see on Monday?'

‘Jack Dunn. Used to work at the Royal Mews, but came into a bit of money and set up on his own. I'll tell the girl to take a warming pan up to your bed.'

We slept, exhausted. I woke in the dark and lit the candle, shielding the flame from Tabby who was still asleep, curled up like a puppy. Without the workhouse clock to wake her, she'd have no idea of time. I dressed as quietly as I could. We'd tried to brush the worst of the mud off our clothes the night before, but my skirt and petticoats were still stiff with it, the leather of my shoes cold and damp. Downstairs, a girl was raking out the ashes in the parlour grate and looked surprised to see a guest up so early. I told her I'd be back and unlatched a side door to the stable yard. Outside the yard there was just enough light to avoid the flooded ruts in the road as I walked towards the race course. Horse people are early risers, and I didn't want to waste another minute in looking for Amos. The stable buildings looked ramshackle from a distance but the yard was neat, with water buckets ranged by the pump and a couple of lads filling hay nets in an open barn. A terrier came rushing up to me, with the high-pitched barks of its kind.