Dark Waters (36 page)

Reynolds froze, his mouth gaping.

‘Tom Wilson? Drowned?'

‘It looks like it.'

This was not a lie: it
did
look like it. I glanced at Fidelis, who gave me a judicious half-smile. I went on.

‘I think you regularly played at cribbage with both Mr Satterthwaite and Mr Wilson. Do you have any reason to think anyone wished them harm? Or would do this to cause your party harm, for both men were actively of your party, I believe?'

The news of Wilson had turned Reynolds's face a greyish white. His lips trembled. He glanced at Destercore who, equally thunderstruck, had let the document he'd been studying fall from his fingers. Reynolds turned to him and spoke in a hoarse whisper.

‘Peters? Is it possible?'

‘The scoundrel!' growled Destercore, bending to retrieve his paper. ‘By God in heaven, I shall see him hanged.'

I looked from one to the other.

‘You know something to implicate Peters in this?'

Without reply, Destercore stood, went to the harpsichord, and took up a letter that lay there.

‘Mr Cragg, I received this yesterday. Perhaps it is right that I acquaint you of its contents. It is from Lord Carburton.'

He cleared his throat and read:

‘Dear Mr Destercore,

‘I have been ill the past few weeks and am only now able to deal with correspondence. You ask about Hamilton Peters, that was lately my factotum. I regret to say that I cannot give him a good character. He was engaged to accompany me to Italy and, although he carried out his duties tolerably well, I discovered when we were back in England that he had been deceiving me. My journey's object was to see the sights of Rome; his, by attaching himself to my household, to make contact with the Pretender, which I believe he did on at least three occasions. I learned this, only on our return, from one whose business it is to collect intelligence about Jacobite sedition. I accordingly dismissed Peters from my service. I regret this unavoidably tardy reply.

‘I am, Sir, yours, etc., Carburton.'

Destercore lowered the letter and stared unblinkingly at me.

‘So you will understand, Cragg, when I tell you I have dismissed the man, but too late, it seems. I had no idea that he was such a villain, or I would have had him arrested and delivered to prison.'

‘Do you know where he is now?'

‘No. I gave him his marching orders in this very room. He gave me in return a thin smile, with a certain derision about it, then turned about and left the house.'

‘It's true, sir,' said Mrs Bryce with emphasis, as if Destercore's word were not to be relied on. ‘It was the last we saw of the fellow. He banged the door behind him and, you know, we lent him a key because he was in and out of this house writing for Mr Destercore, and he never left that key behind him, the thoughtless so-and-so. So we can say it, can't we, Mr Reynolds? We never liked him.'

In reply Reynolds only grunted, uncomfortable at being publicly joined with Mrs Bryce in an opinion.

‘Well,' said Destercore, ‘it is no use taking this to the corporation to have Peters pursued. There is no direct evidence and the burgesses are Tories to a man. They will not act.'

There was no dissent from this and another silence followed, until Fidelis stood and made as if to stretch his frame. He strolled across to the window with its view over Fisher Gate and looked out for a moment, then spun around and produced his watch.

‘I should be on my way, Mrs Bryce. Thank you for the excellent coffee.'

I too rose and made my farewells, but not before advising Reynolds and Destercore that I might need them as witnesses.

‘The inquest may find Peters responsible, and then the burgesses will have to act,' I said.

‘Huh!' grumbled Reynolds. ‘The fellow will be miles away by then.'

Chapter Twenty-four

O
UTSIDE THE HOUSE
, on Fisher Gate, we lingered for a moment. Next door to Mrs Bryce stood Miss Colley's lodging and, next to that, Wilkinson's pie shop.

‘I saw you observing from the window,' I said. ‘Could Satterthwaite have been shot from Mrs Bryce's house?'

‘No doubt of it.'

‘Last night you were sure it was from Wilkinson's.'

‘I'm sorry if I gave that impression. I could not have been sure. The mathematics of the bullet's trajectory are impossible to work out with precision, because we cannot know for certain the exact postural direction of Satterthwaite's body when it was hit. I considered the pie shop most likely for non-mathematical reasons – Jotham Allcroft works there, and we both know he has reason to blame Satterthwaite for his father's death. But, in truth, the bullet could have been fired from any nearby house on the north side.'

We began walking slowly towards my office.

‘I hope you're not suggesting that Miss Colley could have taken the shot.'

He laughed.

‘No – let's rule her out. But we now have two serious suspicions: one against Jotham, and the other, a new one, against Hamilton Peters. He had a key to the house, and could have entered privately, because neither Reynolds nor Destercore was in the room, since both were at Porter's organizing the tallies. The only question is – and it is a hard one – why would Peters shoot Satterthwaite?'

‘Well, to swing the vote to the Tories, obviously. To frighten off Reynolds's and Hoghton's supporters.'

Fidelis shook his head.

‘Don't be hasty, Titus. We are already suspecting Peters of poisoning Allcroft. Why? To swing the vote to the Whigs. So we must make up our minds. Did he kill Satterthwaite and Wilson for the Tories, or Allcroft for the Whigs? Or did he do none of the murders?'

I sighed. The new information about Peters was forcing us to adjust our view of all these deaths. Knowing Fidelis would pounce like a cat on an ill-considered reply, I spoke carefully.

‘After hearing what Lord Carburton said about him, it does not look likely that he killed Allcroft. You heard my mother-in-law – who is not to be contradicted on the near side of never – maintain that John Allcroft was a staunch Jacobite: king-over-the-water, commemorative medals, Oak Leaf Day, all that. Peters had been in Preston before and if it was on Jacobite business, he would have known Allcroft's affiliations, and might have met him. And, if he did, he cannot have poisoned him, surely.'

‘There's an “if” there, which would have to be resolved.'

‘Why else would Peters come here?'

Fidelis did not reply, or open his mouth again for the rest of our walk.

At the office I instructed Furzey to collect Wilson's body and bring it to the vestry, then went through to my sanctum where Fidelis was waiting. He was humming to himself a tune which, after a moment, I recognized as ‘Rule Britannia!'.

‘Well, we know where we can begin to look for Peters, at any rate,' I said. ‘And the windmill is not miles away.'

‘We saw him there the day before yesterday, before he was dismissed. By now who knows where he may be? But anyway, I think his whereabouts are irrelevant.'

‘You don't think Lord Carburton's letter means he should be pursued?'

‘I see a paradox in the letter. It purports to damn Peters as a scoundrel, but I have come around to your view – that it tends to clear him, in these matters at least. I think we must look elsewhere for our murderer.'

‘But he may still have murdered Satterthwaite and Wilson, surely.'

Fidelis wagged his finger at me.

‘When I hear the word “surely”, Titus, I at once look for the flaw in the assertion.'

Resolving never to use the word again in his presence, I persisted.

‘The relevant point is, we now know that Peters is a Jacobite, a High Tory, who comes in disguise to the Preston election, having been here before a year earlier. Furthermore, shortly afterwards, we have a spate of suspicious deaths, including those of two prominent Whigs, one of whom was shot, possibly from a room to which Peters had access. How can he not come under suspicion?'

‘Because the murders of Allcroft, Satterthwaite and Wilson are linked. I am convinced of it. Not to mention the death of your relative. However, I am curious to know what Peters was doing at the windmill on Tuesday.'

‘At the moment we saw him he looked as if he was waiting for someone – on the lookout, in fact.'

‘Who owns that old windmill?'

‘I don't know, but Furzey will. Let's ask him.'

I called for my clerk but, unfortunately, he had already left on his mission to Middleton's garden. I say unfortunately because, had he been there to answer my question, I would have been spared a good deal of trouble later.

*   *   *

Fidelis had patients to see and I had a few matters of business to put in hand, which kept me occupied for another half-hour. Then I went through to the house for dinner.

No sooner had I sat down – to a good plate of mutton chops in caper sauce – than Elizabeth mentioned a subject I had quite forgotten in the flurry of recent events: Maggie Satterthwaite. The news was startling.

‘I have been to visit her.'

‘Oh? How does she?'

‘I have not seen her. She is gone, Titus.'

‘How can she have gone? Gone where?'

‘Nobody knows. She has absconded.'

‘From the town cells? That's impossible without bribing the warder.'

‘She wasn't put in the town cells. They are so filthy that, when the aunt from Longridge arrived at last, she persuaded Mayor Biggs to consign her niece to house custody. Biggs lodged her with Oswald Mallender, who undertook to lock her safe in a room he has at home just for these occasions. Seemingly he didn't lock her safe enough because this morning, when his wife went in with Maggie's breakfast, the window was wide open and she had gone.'

‘How?'

‘Mallender is a fool, of course. The windows had barred gates across them. He swears the bars were secured by bolts on the outside, but he probably forgot to fasten them.'

‘I doubt that. He is a fool, but a conscientious one. She must have had help from outside. You were with her yesterday. Did she talk much?'

‘In fits. She is a contradiction, I think. She is very proud of being known as the prettiest unmarried girl in town, but burdened by it too. She is angry that the loss of her virginity has been made so very public. But she is not sad that it
is
lost.'

‘What would be the point? Split milk…'

‘What I mean is, she is not ashamed, Husband. She only complains about how the men of the town treat her, knowing as they do that she has already been with a man.'

‘Which was one of them, presumably.'

‘No, no. She swears it was a stranger passing through, a traveller at the Ferry Inn when she worked there – you remember?'

‘Ah, yes – the reason for her dismissal by your uncle and nieces.'

‘When he dismissed her, my uncle called her a common whore, or something like that, but the stranger who seduced her – I am sure she did love him, and still does.'

‘A love wholly undeserved on his part, the rat. Did she name him?'

‘No. She does not speak of him. She regrets only that now any man considers he can have her. Young and not so young, married and single, her grandfather's friends even – they all try their luck, it seems. She told me that now, without her grandfather's protection, she will be fair game for all, and eventually…'

She let that eventuality trail away into silence as we finished our meal. Then, as she loaded our empty plates on a tray, she added one further thought.

‘I know I said Maggie was little more than a child. But now thinking about it, I feel something else about her – something reserved, or even hidden. But I cannot see it yet.'

‘We all have something to hide, Wife,' I said.

I was holding the door for her to pass through with the tray. She paused and, turning her head, planted a kiss on my mouth.

‘I sincerely hope you hide nothing from me, Titus.'

‘Not from you, my love. From the world, perhaps, but not from you.'

*   *   *

After dinner I took a pipe and a few minutes in which to forget all this confusion of feeling, and dramatic incident, by reading my Chaucer. But the fabulous incidents from
The Man of Law's Tale
began to become entangled in my mind with the real things that Elizabeth had been relating to me.

Chaucer's lawyer tells of the bewitchingly beautiful Constance, daughter of the Emperor of Rome, who is sent across the Mediterranean to make a diplomatic marriage to a Mahometan sultan. Her charm, and her Christianity, antagonize the mother-in-law who has Constance cast off alone in an open boat. She drifts until she beaches in Northumbria, of all places, where the king, naturally, marries her.

I was already thinking of Constance as one of those girls who are too beautiful to be allowed to control their own fate. And sure enough, new mishaps come her way. A would-be seducer whom she has scorned takes revenge by murdering the king's mother and leaving the bloody knife in Constance's hand while she sleeps in the same room. The king returns and finds his wife arrested and awaiting execution. Despite his grief for his mother, he makes a thorough investigation, and ‘
by wit and sotil enquerynge
' uncovers the real evildoer.

At this point I was imagining myself as the King of Northumbria, subtly inquiring into a wrongful accusation – or, to put it the other way, I was thinking of the king as the town coroner. And then I came to Chaucer's words about what he had uncovered: ‘
al the venym of this accursed dede
'. ‘
Al the venym,
' I repeated, and suddenly asked myself, was Maggie's case the same – a pretty girl adrift in a sea of circumstance? A fury of false accusation? It was then that I made a resolution: I would do all I could for her.