The Sudbury School Murders (16 page)

"You heard him say that?"

"Certainly, I did. He said so at the top of
his voice. The scullery maid in the kitchen must have heard."

"What did Jeanne say to that?"

"I could not hear her as well. But she tried
to soothe him, from the sound of it. Said things like, ‘it does not
matter’ and ‘you must not take on so.’"

"I wonder," I mused. "Was he speaking in
jealousy, or was he afraid she might have revealed something to
me?"

"Well, I cannot tell you," Marianne said. "I
could not press my ear to the door, because Mrs. Albright was
standing in the hall. She was listening, too, if I am any judge.
Neither of us heard enough to satisfy our curiosity."

"Did he stay long?" I asked Marianne.

"Most of the night. That is, if the creaking
of the bed frame was any indication. I had to sleep with my pillow
over my head again."

I did not wish to think about Sutcliff in bed
with the gracious Jeanne Lanier. I murmured, "I wonder how long it
creaked on Sunday night?"

Marianne shrugged. "All night, hard and long,
as far as I know. And her gasping and moaning. I don't know when he
left, but I could find out if you like. Mrs. Albright is a nosy old
body; she likely knows. Or I can ask Jeanne directly. Women like to
chat about their men, you know, either to claim theirs is better or
to disparage him."

I tried not to shudder at the thought of
ladies sitting nose to nose comparing the faults of their
gentlemen. "Very well, but have a care."

"I always take excellent care of myself,
Lacey."

We reached the house. She slid from the
horse. In the polite world, she would have invited me in for
breakfast or coffee, but this was far from the polite world, and
doubtless she wanted me to leave her alone. Revelations about one's
inner secrets can be rather embarrassing.

As the door closed behind her, I spied Jeanne
Lanier looking out of a window in the upper story. Tree branches
grew against the house, and she peered through them as though
wondering who had ridden to the door. When she caught my eye, she
smiled and nodded a greeting.

I tipped my hat to her, then turned and took
my leave.

I rode back along the canal, preferring the
quiet, cool green of the towpath to the main road where I'd have to
dodge the mail coaches and other wagons. More boats plied the canal
now, floating silently along the smooth trail.

When I approached Lower Sudbury Lock, I heard
argument. The lockkeeper stood on the bank, hands on hips, and
directed his invective to a boat beyond the lock. I rode past on
the towpath to look.

A narrow boat had sidled up to the lock from
the south and west. This one was full of people, children with
brown faces, women who covered their heads with gaily covered
scarves, and one young man who lounged in the stern smoking a
long-stemmed pipe. A goat stood tied in the bow, nibbling in a
bored manner on straw.

An older man, his skin brown with sun, his
steps slow and sure, led a fat horse along the bank

The man leading the horse stopped at the
lock. The barge continued its forward momentum until it bumped the
gates. The lockkeeper was glaring at the bargeman, not moving to
turn the cranks. "Best go back," he spat. "Don't want you up here.
Your kind have already done enough."

The Romany man simply stared at him, black
eyes enigmatic.

"Let him through," I said on impulse.

The lockkeeper glared at me. "Rutledge wants
them cleared out." He curled his lip as though to say I ought to
have known that.

"I will explain to Rutledge. I wish to speak
to them."

The lockkeeper looked as though he'd like to
hurl me into the canal and let the Roma fish me out. He settled for
a black stare, then turned to the pumps.

The lock gate slowly opened. The Romany led
his horse forward, and the boat coasted gently inside. While the
lock filled with water, lifting the boat, women, children, goat,
and all, I asked the Romany man point-blank whether Sebastian
D'Arby was his relation.

He looked at me. Intelligence glinted in his
eyes. "He is my nephew."

He must be the uncle who so disliked
Sebastian working at the Sudbury School. "You know that he has been
accused of murder," I said.

"I heard," the man responded dryly. "I knew
that no good would come of him mixing with the English."

"You told him so," I said. "Did you not? On
Sunday night. You spoke--or rather, argued--for a long time."

"Aye." He did not ask how I knew.

"Where did he meet you?"

"Down past Great Bedwyn. We moored there for
the night."

"What time did he reach you?"

The man shrugged. "The Roma are not
interested in time. We know morning, afternoon, night."

I gave him a skeptical look. He caught my
gaze, and his lips twitched. "Perhaps half past ten," he said.

"How long did he stay?"

"It is important, is it?"

"I wish to help Sebastian," I said
impatiently. "I seem to be the only person in Sudbury who does not
believe he murdered Middleton."

The Romany looked me up and down. He looked
neither angry, nor pleased. "He stayed a good long time. Until just
before sunrise."

"Sunrise? Are you certain?"

Sebastian had told me he'd returned at two
o'clock, long before sunrise. He'd sworn so on oath to the
coroner.

"Aye," he said. He smiled, showing brown
teeth. "I do recognize sunrise, English man."

I ignored that. "What did you do when
Sebastian left you?"

He shrugged. "Pulled up our mooring and
started west. I was angry at young Sebastian, did not much want to
see him. So we went back down, toward Bath."

"We didn't," said a voice behind him. "We
didn't right away."

We both turned. A woman stood on the deck of
the barge. She was younger than the bargeman and wore a bright blue
shawl around her shoulders. "We did not turn to Bath right away. We
floated Sebastian up toward Sudbury, at least as far as Lower
Sudbury Lock."

She had a fine voice, soft and contralto. The
voice did not match her face, which was quite plain. She had thin
lips and a narrow nose, nothing remarkable. Her dark eyes, however,
reminded me of those of ladies in Spain, who watched soldiers march
by and promised them delights if they turned aside.

"At sunrise?" I asked.

The older man scowled at her. She gazed back
at him, undaunted. "Just before. It was still dark, the sky just
gray."

"You did not call the lockkeeper to open the
lock for you?" I asked.

"We had no need. Sebastian stepped off the
boat, and we went back the other way. The next lockkeeper down let
us through."

So they had been at Lower Sudbury Lock at
sunrise. And the lockkeeper had not heard them? Nor had he heard
Middleton's body being deposited in the lock.

"We move like ghosts," Sebastian's uncle
said. He smiled again.

The lockkeeper bent over his wheels, cranking
them to shut off the pumps. He turned the gear to open the gates.
"Bloody Romany," he muttered.

The Romany moved the horse slowly forward,
pulling the barge into the canal. I turned my horse next to
his.

"Then you were at the site of the murder," I
said. "Tell me what you saw."

The Romany raised his grizzled brows.
"Nothing to see. Canal quiet, land waking to the day. Nothing
more."

"A shadow," the woman said. Again Sebastian's
uncle glared at her; again, she took no notice. "A shadow by the
lock gate. Someone staying hidden. I could not see who."

Not Sebastian. The murderer? Why the
murderer, though? The doctor had said the body had been deposited
at least four hours before it was found, and it was found at six
o'clock, just after daybreak. Why should the murderer linger?

"If Sebastian was with you at sunrise,
according to your evidence, he could not have placed the body in
the lock," I said. "He could not have killed the groom. Will you
tell the magistrate this?"

The Romany spat. "Will the magistrate listen
to me?"

I thought of the magistrate and his treatment
of Sebastian. I thought of Rutledge and the constable. They all
believed the Roma to be liars. Sebastian's uncle was no fool. "I
know a magistrate who might," I said slowly.

I was thinking of Sir Montague Harris, the
magistrate of the Whitechapel house in London. He had intelligence,
and he actually listened to my ideas, as farfetched as they
were.

Sebastian's uncle faced me, angry. "Sebastian
has forsaken us. He does not like Romany ways. He would rather be a
slave to Englishmen and lust after a girl with pearl-white skin.
What need has he of us?"

The woman looked sad. "Must we abandon
him?"

"He has abandoned us," the Romany said
fiercely. The children on the boat had gone quiet, watching their
elders with large eyes. "He has abandoned you."

I tried to placate him. "I am certain
Sebastian does not mean to desert you entirely. He seems fond of
you all."

"Does he?" The Romany looked me up and down,
black eyes snapping. "Then why does he refuse to return to us? That
night I argued with him long, yes. And he agreed to nothing. Not
anything I said could persuade him, nor could his spending the rest
of the night with his wife."

I stared at him, dumbfounded, while his last
words struck me. "His wife?"

The Romany jerked his thumb over his
shoulder, and I looked again at the young woman standing patiently
on the deck. "Aye. Young Megan. She is Sebastian's wife."

*** *** ***

I left the Roma on the bank of the canal. I
forgot all about breakfast and charged back to Sudbury to persuade
the constable's housekeeper to let me see Sebastian.

Sebastian looked slightly better but still
gazed longingly at the door when the plump woman let me in.

I called Sebastian a bloody fool, and then
told him why. He flushed and would not meet my eyes. "It is true
then," I said. "She is your wife, and you were with her that
night."

"She is not my wife," he growled. "We were
never married in a church, with an English license. My uncle
decided she should be my wife about one year ago and brought her to
live with us."

I remembered the first time I had visited
Sebastian here, remembered the constable's housekeeper telling me
that a Romany woman had tried to see Sebastian. Sebastian had
blushed and said it had been his mother. I knew now that the
visitor must have been Megan. She must have come to see whether he
was all right. A wife who loved her husband would do that.

"And you spent all of Sunday night with her?"
I asked. "On your family's boat?"

"Yes," he said.

"Then why the devil did you not say so?"

He looked at me as though I'd gone mad. "In
the magistrate's court? With Miss Rutledge's father looking on, to
take her the news of all that happened?"

I let out a sigh. "So you lied because of
Miss Rutledge. I take it from your reluctance that Miss Rutledge
does not know about Megan?"

"No," he said.

"Good God, Sebastian. You cannot have it both
ways."

He looked at me defiantly. "That is why I
took the post at the Sudbury School. To work and have money so that
I no longer have to be Romany."

"Megan seems to care about you."

"Megan is an obedient woman. She does what
her father tells her, she does what my uncle tells her."

Belinda Rutledge, on the other hand, must
seem like a tragic heroine to him, a pretty young woman dominated
by her father and chafing at her bonds. Why settle for dutiful
kindness when one can have passionate devotion?

"Megan said that she would be willing to tell
the magistrate that you stayed with her," I said. "That you did not
return to the stables at two o'clock, but left your family at
sunrise."

Sebastian's brows knit. "I do not wish her
to."

"You would prefer to hang for a murder you
did not commit?"

He shook his head, a little desperate.
"No."

"You are the most stubborn young man I have
ever met, Sebastian. I like you, but your head is in the wrong
place."

He gave me a pleading look. "The magistrate
will not believe Megan, in any case. She is Romany."

"That is possible. What you need is an
independent witness." I thought a moment about the shadowy figure
Megan had seen hovering near the lock. I had some ideas about that.
I also thought about Megan and her patient eyes. Sebastian was an
idiot.

"You are a fool, Sebastian," I told him. "Did
you plan to elope with Miss Rutledge? Even if you managed to marry
her, your family would never accept her, and her family would
banish her. Life is long, my young friend. Do not make it more
difficult than it already has to be."

He, of course, did not believe me. "I love
Miss Rutledge," he said stubbornly. "I would die for her."

"Perhaps. But would dying for her do her any
good? Duty is difficult, and well I know it. But sometimes it is
all we have."

Sebastian studied his strong, brown hands. I
was asking him to chose between losing his life and losing the
woman he loved. To him, at twenty, each choice was equally foul. To
die in ignominy or to live in wretchedness must seem the same to
him.

"I believe Megan will try to make you happy,"
I suggested.

He looked up at me, a rueful smile on his
lips. "Then you do not know her."

I was puzzled. "She did not seem a shrew to
me."

"No. She is quiet and obedient, as you
say."

Still his eyes held a glint of something I
did not understand. I conceded that I knew little of Megan save my
brief conversation with her. But perhaps I'd grown jaded and bit
cynical about love. A quiet, plain woman determined to do her duty
seemed a restful choice over storms of emotion.