The Scent of Death (48 page)

I sat up and pushed aside the plate. I was beginning to follow her drift. ‘Your mistress’s chamber communicates directly with the closet, does it not? There’s an inner door between them?’

‘Yes, sir – it was open an inch or so for air, but you couldn’t tell that from the other side on account of the curtain in front. I dared not move when they were in the closet for fear they’d hear me. But I could not help hearing them.’

I began to eat again. ‘What were they saying?’

‘The gentleman said all that was right and proper about poor Judge Wintour. And then he said he had a proposal for Mrs Arabella. Said he knew all about Mr Pickett.’

I choked on a piece of gristle. ‘Mr Pickett? Are you sure, child? Quite sure?’

She nodded. ‘It’s not a name I’d forget, sir. Not after that night at Mount George.’

‘What did he say next?’

‘I couldn’t make head nor tail of it, not for five or ten minutes. They were still in there, still talking, back and forth, but in whispers.’ Mehitabel’s face crumpled like a dirty rag. ‘And the poor judge lying there dead before them. Then Mr Townley said your name, sir, and my mistress said, loud and clear, “Where is he, you devil?”’

In my agitation I pushed aside the tray, rose from the chair and began to walk about the room. ‘What else?’

‘I couldn’t hear, sir. Not until the end, when my mistress repeated something he’d said. “Norman’s Slip,” she said. And he said, “When the tide is on the turn, that’s the best time.”’

‘Norman’s – are you quite sure that’s what he said?’

‘Yes, sir. I heard him as clear as a bell. But the strangest thing was that Miriam laughed when he said it. I’ve never heard Miriam laugh since I came to New York.’

‘She was with them in the room? You didn’t say.’

‘Of course she was, sir. It wouldn’t have been seemly otherwise.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course it wouldn’t.’ I took up a candle and rummaged among the muddle of papers on the table, looking for a tide-table. ‘But why should Miriam laugh?’

‘I don’t know, sir. But she was cheerful later too, while she was packing the clothes for her mistress. It’s not like her.’

‘What’s she like?’ I asked suddenly. It was not a subject I had troubled to think much about because Miriam was a servant and a slave at that.

‘Sour as a crab-apple now, sir. She’s very close with the mistress but keeps her distance with everyone else. But she used to be different when her brother was alive. I remember them when I was a girl at Mount George – the two of them were always laughing and singing. They were twins, you know. That must have made it worse when she had to kill him.’

‘What?’

Mehitabel stared at me. ‘That’s what changed her, sir, having her brother’s blood on her head.’

‘Her brother?’

I sat down heavily. I was in a desperate hurry to be gone but I knew I could not go without knowing more. ‘Are you telling me that Juvenal and Miriam are brother and sister?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Surprised, the girl stared at me. ‘Everyone knows that. Miriam said he was going to kill the mistress next, which was why she had to shoot him. Her own brother – how could she? But you have to choose sometimes, don’t you, sir? You have to choose who you love more, who you owe your duty to. And she chose to kill Juvenal.’

Juvenal. My dark shadow.

The intellectual faculty has a curious capacity for making sudden discoveries. Or, rather, in a blinding revelatory flash, for placing a new interpretation on the data it already has at its disposal. Is this what the poets call inspiration?

In an instant I was on my feet. In the time it took me to reach the hall, shouting for Josiah, the truth and its implications had burned themselves on my mind.

Juvenal had met Arabella when she married his master, Jack Wintour, in a union that had brought neither party happiness. True, Juvenal was a negro but he had the address of a gentleman and I knew he had been well enough to look at as a young man.

What if Juvenal and Arabella had lain together? What if the result had been a girl-child with dark skin? Henrietta Barville.

Now the idea had hatched itself, the rest followed in an instant. In those days at Mount George, early in her marriage, Arabella must have hoped that the child growing in her belly would be Wintour’s. But the girl had been black and Arabella’s adultery was written for all to see in the colour of her child’s skin.

So much now became clear that had been obscured. When Froude discovered his long-awaited heir was a black bastard, no wonder he had inflicted such a savage punishment on Juvenal, one that made it impossible for him to father another child. When Froude wrote to Judge Wintour, no wonder he said their grandchild had been stillborn.

Nor was it strange that Juvenal had killed Froude when he had the opportunity.

Miriam falsely claimed to have killed Juvenal to protect her mistress on the night when Froude died and Mount George was destroyed. Arabella had supported her. The truth was that the mistress and the maid had conspired to allow Juvenal to escape. The women had brought Henrietta Barville with them to New York – a negro infant of no account; a slave’s child. There was no one left to provide another version of events.

No one except Roger Pickett.

Even in his mutilated state, Juvenal had remained a jealous lover. Miriam became his eyes and ears in the Wintours’ household. When Pickett became a threat to Arabella and her child, Miriam would have told him, which had led to Pickett’s murder in Canvas Town. When Jack Wintour returned, she would have reported on his behaviour to her brother. It had been soon after Wintour had hit his wife in the garden that he had been attacked, almost fatally, on his own front doorstep.

Similarly, both his nocturnal assaults on me had been because, even in his ruin, Juvenal did not brook rivals, particularly o
ne who had been enquiri
ng about the death of the young informer, the mulatto Taggart. I realized now that Juvenal had been responsible for two other deaths – that of Virgil, the runaway who had been hanged for Pickett’s murder; and that of Taggart, who had borne false witness against Virgil and thereby brought him to the gallows.

Juvenal’s child had died and been buried with his surname for all the world to see. Surely that must have hardened his heart still further?

For then had come his attack on our expedition to Mount George, culminating in his murder of Jack Wintour, his former master and his lover’s husband.

Yes, Juvenal had been a jealous lover. Hence his desire to castrate me when he learned from Miriam that Arabella and I had become lovers.

Oh yes. I understood everything now as I stood in the hall and pulled on my greatcoat while barking orders at Josiah and the porter. Everything, though I did not know it, except the most important thing.

A savage wind was blowing off the river. The moon was up but its light was fitful, for clouds were moving steadily across the sky. It was very cold, colder than I had ever known.

When I had left Warren Street, the grandfather clock in the hall was striking half-past three. The tide had turned almost half an hour earlier. There was no one I could take with me from the house for the only male servants who remained to us were old Josiah, the porter, who was even older, and the boy who did the fires. I scribbled a note for Marryot and left it with Josiah for him to send round as early as he could in the morning.

Under my cloak I had a pistol in my pocket, one of the pair I had carried when we were in the Debatable Ground. I had also brought Juvenal’s axe, which I had thrust into the belt securing my coat. My hat was tied to my head with a scarf that had the additional benefit of concealing and protecting the cut on my cheek.

I met no one until I encountered the patrol manning the barrier near Vauxhall Gardens on the Greenwich road.

‘There’s a woman,’ I said with a wink as I showed the sergeant my pass. I swayed slightly. ‘Lovely girl. She hates waiting, Sergeant.’

He chuckled and handed back my papers. ‘Don’t we all, sir?’ He gestured to his men to move the barrier aside for me.

I gave him a shilling. ‘Get yourself something warm to drink,’ I advised him. ‘It’s a cold night.’

‘Not if there’s company in your bed, sir,’ he said.

I walked on. I had chosen a plausible excuse to be out at this hour for several houses in this direction had become little better than bordellos; others provided lodgings for gentlemen who preferred the convenience of keeping their mistresses at a safe distance from the temptations of the city.

My eyes adjusted to the lack of light and I made good time on the road, which the authorities had recently cleared of snow for the benefit of the army. Norman’s Slip was out towards Greenwich, a short way beyond the foundry. I had been there once last summer with Townley. The slip itself was protected by a small mole and there was a yard containing a warehouse on the shore beside it. The yard was surrounded by a high brick wall set with spikes and broken glass. Though it was close to the city, Norman’s was a secluded place. A short lane serving nowhere else connected it to the road.

Mr Townley held the slip and the yard on a five-year lease from a Loyalist merchant who had fled to England at the outbreak of hostilities. There was a good deal of trade, legal and illegal, between New York and Jersey throughout the war. Our outposts in New Jersey, at Paulus Hook and elsewhere, were in constant need of supplies. Major Marryot had told me once in his cups that they found Norman’s Slip useful at Headquarters for it served as a private place for people to cross the river without the tedious necessity of official sanction.

To this day, I do not know whether I made the right decision in going directly to Norman’s. The terms of my commission from the American Department gave me the powers of an observer, nothing else. I was not authorized to order soldiers hither and thither. But perhaps I should have gone to Headquarters, roused Marryot if he was there and then tried to persuade him to intervene with a sufficient force to make a difference. That would have been the prudent course of action, appropriate to a clerk in a government department; that would have been what Mr Rampton would have done. But, even if my efforts had gone as smoothly as possible, it would have taken me until dawn to reach Norman’s Slip with a party of soldiers.

By then it would have been too late. Even the geography of the affair was against me: Norman’s was not far away from Warren Street, whereas Headquarters was much further and in the opposite direction.

I could be certain only of this: there was a bridge of ice across the Hudson to the Jersey shore, and Norman’s Slip was a secluded spot from which to make the crossing. I could not be sure that this was the night chosen for the attempt but, whatever Townley’s plan might be, delay could only make it riskier for him.

The going became harder when I turned into the lane. It was covered in frozen snow, which had fixed itself into hard, unforgiving ruts. On either side were thick hedges that reduced the light still further but at least gave some protection from the biting wind.

At last I came to the double gates into the yard. They were shut fast. But in front of them was a pile of fresh horse-dung that had not lain there long enough for it to freeze. It was a good omen. I waited a moment and listened. I heard nothing.

I knocked on the wicket set into the gate. A dog began to bark inside. Its chain rattled as it leapt about in a frenzy. There was the sound of a door opening.

‘Who is it?’ a man demanded. He snarled at the dog, which fell silent.

‘Message for Mr Townley,’ I said, wondering if Townley would have been alerted by the dog. ‘Open up, man, and quick – I’m chilled to the bone.’

‘Who are you? What message?’

‘It’s Mr Savill,’ I said. ‘Hurry – Government business, and I’m pressed for time.’

The man drew back two bolts and opened the wicket. Two men, one armed with a musket, the second with a heavy stick, studied me by the light of a lantern. One of them was probably the watchman. The other I recognized from my visits to Mr Townley’s house, where he served as the porter. Hope surged through me: his presence must mean that Townley was here; and if Townley was here so, almost certainly, was Arabella.

‘It’s Oliver, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘I’ve seen you often enough at Hanover Square so I should know your face by now.’

‘Beg pardon, sir,’ he said, opening the wicket for me to step through. His breath smelled of rum. ‘Didn’t realize it was you.’

‘No matter. Where’s your master?’

‘Down by the slip, sir.’

‘With the others?’

‘Yes, sir.’

I don’t believe he had any suspicion of me. I was fortunate – Townley’s habit of secrecy was so ingrained that he kept his own counsel whenever he could. The porter knew me merely as an honoured visitor to the house. I guessed that this was not the first time that he had been called upon to assist on one of these nighttime expeditions and that such comings and goings had become almost routine to him.

‘Are they all here?’

‘Just his honour and Mr Noak, sir, and the lady and her maid. I came over with them from the house.’

‘Excellent. I know my way from here. Stay in the warm while you can.’

With obvious relief, the two men retired into a cabin with a stove that had been built against the wall by the gate. In the grey half-light, I struck out towards the river with a confidence I did not feel. The bulk of the warehouse lay between me and the slip itself.

I rounded the corner of the building, which took me out of sight of anyone who might be watching from the cabin by the gates. Footsteps were approaching from the direction of the slip. Pulling off my gloves, I ducked into a recessed doorway leading to the darkened warehouse. I took out the pistol but did not cock it for fear of the sound the mechanism would make.

A tall man came into view. It was too dark to see his features but I guessed it was Townley coming to see what the dog’s barking was about.

I stepped out of the doorway and rammed the muzzle into his cheek. ‘Be silent.’