The Scent of Death (51 page)

Standing in the hard winter light by the window, Marryot’s face was very pale. ‘I cannot believe it,’ he said. ‘It’s impossible. Not Mrs Arabella.’ He had the stricken expression of a man forced to accept what he desires to deny.

‘But you must have had my note,’ I went on. ‘I gave it to Josiah to send to you in the morning. I told you I was gone to Norman’s Slip where I feared there was some villainy afoot.’

‘You did not mention Mrs Arabella,’ he said, clutching at a straw.

‘Of course I did not. I hoped to persuade her to return, and that we could hush up the entire affair. You know as well as I do that the deaths of her husband and parents-in-law
must have temporarily unhinged her reason. Even now, sir, I hope we can find a way not to sully the poor lady’s memory. We who were her friends owe her that, if nothing else.’

Marryot changed colour and turned very red. He limped about the room in silence for a moment. Then he turned back to me.

‘Then what did happen at Norman’s Slip?’

‘When I got there I told the watchman and Townley’s porter I had a message for their master. They let me into the yard and found my own way to the slipway. Luckily the moon came out at that moment and I saw the three of them on the ice – Mrs Arabella and her maid, with Noak between them. They were making for a light on the Jersey shore.’

‘And Townley? Where was he?’

I remembered the recessed doorway of the warehouse where I had left his body. ‘I have no idea. And I was in too much of a hurry to find out. I followed the others on to the ice. Noak shot at me.’ I hesitated. ‘Mrs Arabella spoiled his aim and saved my life. I believe she regretted her decision to flee and I could have brought her back safely to New York. But she panicked and fled downstream where the ice was less solid. I – I pursued her but to no avail.’

My sorrow bubbled beneath the surface. I turned my head away. But I did not weep.

Marryot cleared his throat. ‘I know the rest, Mr Savill. The patrol saw it all.’

The following day, they let me outside to walk in the grounds of the college, now much disfigured by the impedimenta of war. This became a daily outing. Clossy or a medical orderly would walk with me, and the soldier guarding my door would trail after us. They kept me away from other patients. I was not quite a prisoner and not quite free.

In my former life, I should have chafed at the restrictions that hedged me about. I should have despised my weakness of body and mind. But now I felt numb.

During our walks I often glimpsed the North River, still sheeted with ice. It was probable that Arabella was still there, a prey to fish, in thrall to the dissolution of death, waiting to be drawn out to sea by the tide.

What remained of her body was no longer of any significance. She had become yet another victim of this foolish war. She was as one with the rebel prisoner whose rotting corpse Noak and I had seen from the deck of the
Earl of Sandwich
on our first morning in New York.

Aye, I told myself as I plodded along, there is a circularity in these things.

Four days after Marryot’s second visit, an orderly came to my room and told me that I had a visitor. He conducted me to a small sitting room usually reserved, he informed me, for the use of the superintendent of the hospital.

The room was empty. I warmed myself by the fire as I waited. I assumed that my visitor was Marryot but, when at last the door opened, it was Mr Carne who entered. He was alone. He bowed briskly and motioned me to a chair. I had glimpsed him with the Commandant that night at Hicks Tavern but I had not talked or even bowed to him since the day I found Jack Wintour’s body.

‘Well, sir,’ he said in his brusque American way. ‘So you’ve fallen into a scrape again. The question is: did you in fact fall into it or did you jump? To put it another way: are you a fool or a knave?’

‘Neither, I hope, sir.’

He stared at me with his pale eyes. The skin on his face was seamed like a patch of sun-baked mud. ‘I’ve talked to Major Marryot and to the officer commanding the patrol that brought you in. I’ve searched the Wintour house in Warren Street and questioned the servants. I regret to say I was obliged to look over your private papers.’

He paused but I did not speak. I knew he would have found little to interest him there.

‘Were you attached to Mrs Arabella Wintour?’ he said suddenly.

I did not reply.

‘It would not surprise me at all,’ he went on. ‘Nor would it surprise some of the Wintours’ remaining servants.’

‘I have lived with the Wintours for these last eighteen months. Of course I was attached to the family. And they, I believe, to me.’

‘I had in mind an attachment of particular warmth.’ He gave me a wintry smile. ‘It’s a pity that the maid wasn’t there. Miriam Barville. She would know. But she fled to the rebels along with Samuel Noak and God knows where she is now.’

I shifted in the chair. My injured leg was growing stiff.

Carne sighed. ‘Which leaves you, Mr Savill, as my principal source of information. You know that Noak was a spy?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I did not know until the end.’

‘You met him on the passage from England?’

‘Yes. Quite by chance. He told me he had a clerkship waiting for him here. The morning after we landed he came to me and said the position was no longer available. He begged me to mention his name if I chanced upon a gentleman in want of a clerk. As it happened, Mr Townley said his own clerk had just died.’

‘Which was a lie, it seems,’ Carne said. ‘I’ve talked to his former clerk. So did you, I understand. If you are telling the truth, that would suggest that Noak and Townley used you to effect their meeting. But, if Noak was a rebel spy, then so was Townley. Would that surprise you?’

I shrugged. ‘Not particularly. I follow your reasoning.’

‘Then pray follow it a little further. We found papers at Townley’s house that support this theory. Suppose it’s true. Why should Noak spend so much time at Warren Street?’ Carne looked up at the ceiling as if hoping he might find the answer there. ‘To spy on you? That’s possible, but you do not strike me as a man who is careless about what he writes or says. Why else? Was the man consumed with passion for the charms of Mrs Arabella? Again, it’s possible – but not likely. Or was there some other reason? Was it connected in any way with the lady’s inexplicable decision to flee across the ice with Mr Noak?’

‘Perhaps they were eloping together,’ I said.

Carne looked sharply at me. ‘You speak in jest, I think. But indeed it’s as likely as anything else.’

‘She was distraught, sir, I do know that. Everyone she loved had died. She was not acting rationally.’

‘Townley was murdered at Norman’s Slip. Who killed him?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘He was hit on the head with a heavy implement,’ Carne said. ‘He was a tall man, too. So it’s unlikely to have been one of the women. Say it was Noak. Why? Because he feared Townley would betray him? To shut Townley’s mouth? If so, was it connected with whatever took Noak to Warren Street?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why did he keep visiting the Wintours’ house? That’s the question at the heart of this. Was there something there he wanted? Did he take it with him to Jersey?’

I did not speak. I wrapped myself in silence and tried not to think of anything at all. After a while, Carne stood up and clapped his hat on his head.

‘To be frank, sir, this affair is more than a puzzle,’ he said. ‘It’s an embarrassment. The alternative is that it was you who killed Mr Townley because he tried to prevent you from chasing after Mrs Arabella. And that would be even more of an embarrassment to us all, both here and in London. Good day to you.’

I did not see Mr Carne again. The following afternoon, I received a letter from Major Marryot, who wrote that the Wintours’ house was now shut up and that he had given orders for my possessions to be removed to the Broad Street office. Three days later I was discharged.

Dr Clossy wished me well and gave me a pass which would ensure the guards would let me leave the grounds of the college. An orderly conducted me to the gates and, out of the goodness of his heart, offered to summon a chair for me. I had no idea where I would go or what I would do.

A coach was standing a few yards up the road. As I was waiting for the chair, a door opened and a man climbed down. His shoulders hunched against the wind, he took a couple of steps towards the gates. He saw me standing there with my valise beside me. He took off his hat and bowed.

I saw his face clearly then. It was Mr Ingham, the manager of Townley’s warehouse in Brooklyn.

‘Forgive me, sir, I did not mean to startle you,’ he said with a quick smile, for I must have betrayed my surprise. ‘My mistress ordered me to meet you with a coach.’

My brains were still addled. ‘Your mistress?’ I repeated.

‘Mrs Townley, sir. Major Marryot told her that you would probably want to go to your Broad Street office at first. But if there’s somewhere you would prefer?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘That would do very well.’

‘She also reserved an apartment for you at Fraunces’s Tavern. Major Marryot thought it probable you had not settled on where you would lodge when you left here and that it might serve you for a night or two. But the arrangement is easily countermanded if it’s not to the purpose.’

I was too weary to be suspicious. Besides, the orderly was standing by and had heard the entire conversation so what was there to fear? I allowed myself to be assisted into the coach. I had no more power to direct my actions than does an automaton that strikes the hour on the old clock at the bidding of invisible machinery.

I stayed several weeks at Fraunces’s Tavern while I waited for my replacement to arrive from England. A curt note from the Commandant’s aide-de-camp informed me that I should remove my belongings from the Broad Street office. He also told me that, since the affair of Mrs Arabella Wintour’s death was in manner of speaking
sub judice
, I was not to speak of it to anyone on pain of imprisonment.

It gave me the strangest sensation to see my clothes, my books and my papers again. Many of them had come from Warren Street. Carne and Marryot had pawed over them in search of explanations and answers. Through these familiar things I glimpsed myself in another time and place. I saw a stranger.

I found one item there which was not familiar – a small, hard object like a brown rock; it had been tossed among the jumble of letters and memoranda as if it might once have been used as a paperweight for them. I opened my penknife and scratched its surface. I saw the sparkle of gold beneath.

Who but Arabella could have put it among my papers? She had left me a keepsake before she went.

I lowered my head and for the first time I wept. I wept for Arabella. I wept for Juvenal, even, and for Townley. I wept for me.

I was questioned again by both Carne and Marryot. Later, I was brought before a Board of Inquiry, which consisted of four senior officers with nothing better to do, and asked the same questions, to which I gave the same answers. They could not shake my story. They could prove nothing.

The following day Mr Carne paid a visit to me at Fraunces’s.

‘It has been decided that you may leave New York when your replacement arrives from the American Department,’ he said. ‘On one condition, sir: that you do not speak of this business to anyone, here or in England. You accept?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘We do not want scandal. We have heard nothing from the rebels or Mr Noak, which suggests they do not see any advantage in telling the world, either. So General Clinton thinks it best to let sleeping dogs lie.’

I bowed and thanked him. As he left, he paused at the door. He looked at me steadily for a moment without speaking, as if searching for the truth in my face. He turned and closed the door behind him.

I set my affairs in order. On a cold morning, I walked to Warren Street and knocked at the familiar door. The house looked smaller and shabbier than I remembered.

I did not recognize the porter who let me in. I asked for Josiah and he came to me in the hall. To my great embarrassment he seized my hand and kissed it.

He told me that the house and the remains of the Wintours’ estate now belonged to a remote cousin in Canada. In the meantime, the house had been requisitioned by the army and a dozen officers were billeted there. Josiah and the other servants, including Mehitabel Tippet, had been retained for the time being.

I gave him a present of money to distribute among them and wrote down my sister’s address in Shepperton. I would have offered to buy him if I could.

I went to the negro burying ground where the child of Arabella and Juvenal lay. The flowers were long gone. Snow and ice had destroyed the little wooden cross, leaving its fragments by the side of the grave. I arranged for a stonemason to cut and install a small, plain marker. I ordered him to carve on it Henrietta Barville’s name and the dates of her birth and death.

Hetty-Petty. In my mind, the lost children of the two Mrs Wintours mingled and became as one.

I had written to thank Mrs Townley for her kindness when I had reached Fraunces’s Tavern. I heard nothing in reply for some weeks. Eventually, however, after the board of inquiry, I received a note inviting me to call at Hanover Square any morning of that week.

There was a new porter at the house – the man I had seen at Norman’s Slip that night was no longer there. I was shown into the parlour on the left, which had formerly served as Townley’s outer office. Mr Ingham was perched on the clerk’s stool where Mr Noak had once sat. He greeted me cordially.

‘Have you left Long Island?’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said with a smile. ‘Mrs Townley asked me to return to my old post. She has assumed the direction of her late husband’s affairs, you see, and she believed my knowledge of them might be of use to her.’

He showed me into the inner office that had been Mr Townley’s domain. Now the room belonged to his widow. She was sitting at her husband’s desk with an account book open before her. She rose and curtseyed when I entered. She wore mourning, of course, but she looked far more cheerful and at ease than when I had last seen her.