An Unlamented Death: A Mystery Set in Georgian England (Mysteries of Georgian Norfolk Book 1) (22 page)

It would be tedious to include all the pauses, the periods of gasping for breath and groans of agony that punctuated Mr. Harmsworthy’s story. Thus it will be set down here as Adam recalled it later. Telling his tale drained every last reserve of the dying man’s strength. Only his utter determination to present the truth at the last kept him alive long enough to finish what he wished to say. It was that experience, of eyes bright with fever, a voice rent with pain, and an icy hand clutching his arm, that burnt Mr. Harmsworthy’s words into Adam’s memory. Burnt them with such clarity that he could relate them to Mr. Wicken later with near-perfect accuracy.

I
was
, as you say you know, born in Ireland, in a grand house not far from Dublin, and I am an only child. My parents were part of the so-called Protestant Ascendancy: a group of English gentry who owned the best land in the country. Even so, this elite huddled in Dublin itself for fear of the peasants who worked the land on their behalf. My father was a cold and distant man, some years my mother’s senior. He had no interest in me, save as the necessary heir.

I worshipped my mother as only a lonely and neglected son could. She was beautiful, fashionable and loving in a random way – when she remembered my existence. For the bulk of her time, she gloried in the many balls, assemblies and routs that took place in that city. My father took no notice of these events, but she never lacked a suitable male companion. He took no notice of that either.

Since I was alone so much, I grew into a withdrawn and solitary boy. None knew, or cared, that this solitariness was my armour against the petty cruelties of my fellows.

When I was ten, my father died leaving little but debts. Under his will, my guardianship and affairs passed into the hands of an uncle, for my mother showed little inclination to take any greater notice of practical matters than she had during her husband’s lifetime. She was still under the age of forty, still beautiful and still, it seemed, determined to remain a star of fashionable society. Where she obtained the money I had no idea, though the perpetual parade of different men through her house whenever I was there should have told me. To me, she was still a vision of distant perfection. To the rest of society, she was the merriest of widows. She was also the mistress of a succession of rich, elderly men, the secret lover of a good many younger ones, and a scandal waiting to break.

Thus my life continued until I was sixteen years old. Then, one summer, the world changed for me. I met Michael O’Dowd.

O
'Dowd was seventeen and a papist
. He was also handsome, charming, witty and athletic; in short, everything that I was not. Why he noticed me I never knew. He talked, I listened and I fell in love. For the first time in my life, I had a friend. Soon I had a lover too.

Of course, before long my uncle found out and his rage was fearful. I think he cared little about my discovery of my true sexual nature. All that mattered was that I was close friends with a papist. O'Dowd was forbidden any further association with me.

Worse was to follow. My uncle arranged to send me away to live with some remote relatives in Glasgow. My mother too was sent abroad. Her affairs had become ever more outrageous until scandal could no longer be averted. We were both cast out from the family to be forgotten. I never saw her again.

Since I had next to nothing, I was to be trained for the church. Nothing else was possible to keep me in the style of a gentleman. Yet fate, so cruel up to now, intervened. My mother’s step-brother, a man I had never met, died childless and left me his estate in Norfolk. Thus here I came and here I have been ever since. I believed myself content, if not happy, and thought I should remain thus for whatever period of life was allotted me.

All that changed in April of this year. One day, late in the afternoon, someone came to my door. That itself was unusual, for few ever sought me out. My manservant answered their knocking, then came to tell me that two men were seeking to speak with me. Being curious about who these men might be, I agreed to see them, never imagining that my past should be returning to bring me yet more pain. Into my room that day came none other than Michael O’Dowd. He was older, a little bulkier, but yet the same man I had been torn from in Ireland all those years before.

His tale was soon told. As a result of my uncle's actions, he was seized with the deepest hatred for everyone connected with those who wielded power in Dublin. His father, it seemed, had been blind to the boy's nature. Now he knew, he professed total revulsion. It was too much for O'Dowd and so he ran away from his home. No one tried to find him.

For a time, he wandered, working where he could and begging where he could not. For a while, he was the plaything of a papist bishop, then of a petty local clan chieftain. Eventually, he took up work with a printer and was taught the skills of that trade. And all the time he sought out those whose grudges against the English banded them together. Yet even he could see that they had little chance of turning their wishes for freedom and reform into actions. That was why, when a few years later he heard of the rebellion and revolution in the American colonies, he sailed for the west. There he determined to make a new life for himself, far from Ireland and its bitter history.

For a while, he prospered. He found work again as a printer and bookseller, making enough money to afford a comfortable house and a few servants. He served in the local militia. Yet all the while his heart burned at the injustices he had suffered in his past. He told himself to stay content with what he had, but it was too hard.

At length a sad destiny found him. One day, he fell in with a group of men as eager as he was to bring the same kind of revolution to Ireland as had proved so successful in America. Like them, he believed that since the Americans had succeeded in winning their freedom from English laws and English kings, the Irish might do the same. All that was lacking was money, weapons and leadership. They might prevail upon the French king to furnish the first two, if they could convince him that the native Irish would provide the third.

W
hen revolution gripped France itself
, the time seemed ripe at last. Surely the new French republic would help them. It must be time to turn from plotting and scheming to stir up popular revolt amongst the poor and dispossessed of Ireland.

Sadly, most of these Irish patriots had been absent, like O'Dowd, for many years. They too easily mistook their dreams for reality. They saw French peasants bringing down the power of the nobility. They missed noticing the mass of educated, middle-class, professional men who acted as their leaders. In their minds, Ireland was a powder-keg awaiting the spark of their fervour to erupt into rebellion. As Michel now admitted, what he found when he returned was far different. Peasants there were in plenty, but so weighed down by hunger, deprivation and years of hopeless servitude that they no longer had the will to resist. Of a middle class, there seemed little enough sign outside Dublin and The Pale. There he found lawyers and doctors, but few who would risk what they had to help peasants they despised much as the gentry did. Worse, the Irish who had stayed in that island, and suffered the full weight of English attempts to root out rebellion, had no wish to be instructed by those who had left. They had their own groups and hierarchies. These ‘Americans’ should go back, they said. How could they be trusted when they had already deserted the cause once?

Thus O'Dowd, and the Frenchman who stood alongside him in my house on that day in April, soon found themselves isolated. Alone and confused, they tried to carry on, but someone, maybe a spy or a disgruntled native, betrayed them to the authorities.

Now at last they fled, always but one step ahead of those who pursued, and tried to find some way to reach France and safety. In the end, a group called The United Irishmen offered help. They too rejected O’Dowd ‘the American’ as an ally, but they would not give the English the satisfaction of capturing him.

O'Dowd said they were directed to travel to England and seek out a man known to the United Irishmen on the east coast. He would take anyone out to a waiting ship on payment of enough gold. Neither had much money, but it was the only chance they had. They pooled their remaining funds and agreed to the plan. In reply, they were told that a smuggling vessel would be waiting for them on a certain night. All they had to do was make their way to a village called Gressington in Norfolk, contact and pay the ferryman and await until the appointed time and tide.

I
t was
chance brought them to me. When they went to the inn, O'Dowd heard someone mention my name. Since it is an unusual one, he questioned how long the man of that name had lived in the area. It was a risk, of course, but had it been a cousin or someone else he did not know, he would have told them he had been mistaken and left it at that. If I was indeed the Henry. Harmsworthy he had known living there, what better place to hide? Who would look for a wanted man in the magistrate’s house?

O'Dowd was as persuasive as always, telling me the delay would be no more than a week at the most. If this location proved impossible, they would be told of some other place where the smugglers might meet them. Yet to see him again – to relive for a few days the closeness we had once shared – was enough. I agreed at once to let them stay. I told my servants that one was an old friend from my school days – that at least was true – and the other a French nobleman fleeing persecution by blood-thirsty peasants. My solitary ways now came to their aid and mine, for few ever came to my house and they were safe enough if they remained within.

Then another person came to my door one afternoon: the Archdeacon of Norwich. He was hot on the trail, as he claimed, of some supposed cell of devil-worshippers and sexual deviants who met close by. On his way to Gressington to meet his informant, his chaise had broken an axle, so he could not continue in that way. This meeting was imperative, for he would be given the names of these men. Then he could expose their wickedness to the public gaze. I thought he was mad, yet his words terrified me. The last thing I wanted was to have anyone, even the church authorities, paying close attention to what was happening in the area around my home.

I tried to put him off, but he grew angry and demanded that I take him to Gressington at once. Indeed, with all the righteous zeal of the worst kind of fanatic, he shouted that I
must
take him. If I refused, he would assume I myself was a member of this group he believed in. Was it not said in these parts that I was odd and reclusive? Was it not a matter of wonder that I had never married?

His wild words grew ever wilder and I had no choice but to agree to his request, taking as long as I could to get ready and have the chaise prepared. Even then, I clung to the hope that along the way I might be able to convince him that no such coven of devil-worshippers existed and he must be the victim of a cruel hoax.

My hopes were, of course, fruitless. At the churchyard, he demanded I waited to bear him away again. I agreed readily enough, for I wished above all things to keep him under observation and see what might result from his meeting. As you know, no one came. Yet far from being aware, as any rational person would have been, that this proved the tale was false, he grew more and more angry. Soon, he was convincing himself that I was indeed part of this Hellfire Club or whatever. I had delayed in leaving my home in order to send word to my associates to waylay his informant and make away with him. All I wished was to stop his ranting lest he bring others to the churchyard. So I stepped towards him to try to calm him down.

At that, he started back and must have caught his heel on something, for he fell full-length upon the ground, striking his head on some stone that was hidden in the grass. I thought he was dead.

Alas, it was soon proved that he still lived. Even as I hesitated, unsure whether to leave him there or try to move the body where it might be better hidden, I heard him groan. Then he started to make feeble efforts to raise himself, muttering something about me trying to murder him.

What I did next will haunt me until my death. It seemed to me that only his death could still his tongue and keep my guilty secret – and O'Dowd – safe. If he died there, people would assume he had been set upon by robbers or smugglers. Few questions would be asked. In a moment, I had wrapped my cloak into a soft bundle and was pressing it down over his face. For a little while, I could feel movement, then all went still and I knew him to be dead indeed.

You will think me an arrant coward, doctor, but all that I could think of was to get away. I went at once to my chaise and set off for home as fast as I could. There I said nothing to anyone. Instead, I spent a sleepless night trying to concoct a story. One that might account for my presence at the churchyard, should anyone have seen me, yet keep me free from suspicion of involvement in the archdeacon’s death. By morning I had a feeble tale ready.

I
did not need it
. The authorities seemed full of eagerness to put the death down as an accident and loath to make any further enquiries at all. I spent a few days in great apprehension – not helped by your attempts at the inquest to ask the exact questions any sane person would turn to at once – then all was quiet. I had escaped, or so I thought.

The rest you know. The authorities let the smugglers feel they were safe. Then they provided the ideal opportunity to carry out illegal activities unmolested. The trap was sprung and all were caught, including O'Dowd and the Frenchman.

Would they betray me? I did not know and I did not wait to find out. Once again I fled, this time back to Ireland, where I hoped to carry news to Michael’s family and friends of what had happened to him. It was not to be. None would talk with me. I left cryptic messages and heard nothing in return. I was in despair, wandering around Dublin with neither destination nor purpose.

Thus it was that I started to feel uneasy, as if someone was watching me. Who might this be? I did not know, yet now Dublin felt hostile. I determined to leave as soon as I could find a passage. I sent a letter to my steward to arrange for him to leave a horse for me at Lynn, then made my way back to England, as fast as I might without arousing suspicion.

The feeling of being watched now grew. Worse, I was helpless and alone. I always carry a pistol on the road for my protection, so I determined that I would take my own life rather than face questioning. I knew myself to be a murderer and a traitor to my country. My life would be forfeit in any case. Perhaps I could at least avoid the shame to my family name. If I went to the gallows, I would blight other lives as well as my own.