The Sudbury School Murders (2 page)

A door at the end of the line of stalls led
to the quarters for the groom and his stable hands. A man emerged
from this door just then. He was tall and burly, with black hair
under a coachman's hat.

I stared at him. I recognized him--or thought
I did.

He saw me, stopped, then ducked back into the
shadows of the doorway.

"Who was that?" I asked Sebastian.

He looked up, puzzled at my tone. "Mr.
Middleton," he answered. "The groom."

I had not seen this Middleton since my
arrival. I usually visited the stables very early in the morning,
and Sebastian alone prepared my mount.

But I knew Middleton. Or at least, I'd seen
him before, in London. He had once been the lackey of a man called
James Denis.

James Denis was a criminal, or should have
been labeled so. He was a gentleman to whom wealthy gentlemen went
when they wished to obtain a fine piece of art that was
unobtainable, to gain a seat in Parliament that was already filled,
to succeed in whatever enterprise they wished. In return, they gave
their loyalty and a high percentage of their wealth to Mr.
Denis.

I had encountered Denis far more often than I
cared to. He had helped me once or twice, but he had also
threatened me and once had his lackeys kidnap me and beat me to
teach me to respect him. He wanted me to fear him, and my friends,
like Grenville, advised me to, but Denis had only succeeded in
making me very, very angry.

I watched the door, but the man did not
reappear. "What do you know about him?" I asked Sebastian.

He shrugged. "Not very much. He's a coachman,
or was. He's very good with horses. A gentle sort with the
beasts."

"How long has he been here?"

"Don't know."

I moved to the stable hands still leaning on
their rakes and asked them. Like Sebastian, they eyed me in
surprise, but answered. Middleton had been employed at Sudbury for
six months.

I might have been mistaken, I told myself. I
had only glimpsed the man. But I did not think so. Why one of James
Denis' men should have taken up a post in Berkshire, at a boys'
school, I hadn't the faintest idea. But if I was right, this boded
no good.

*** *** ***

"You sure it was him, sir?"

Bartholomew held my coat in one hand, his
stiff-bristled brush in the other. The blond giant had stopped and
stared, wide-eyed, when I'd announced what I'd seen.

"No," I answered. I drank the thick coffee
Bartholomew had brought after my supper. The quarters allotted to
me consisted of a rather plain but cozy room on the top floor of
the Head Master's house. My windows looked over the meadows behind
the school and the line of trees that marked the canal. "He did not
come out again, and I could not go charging in after him. He looked
just as surprised to see me."

"But he must have heard you'd come here,"
Bartholomew said. "That's why he's kept scarce whenever you came to
take a horse, I'd wager."

"Well, if he is Denis' man, why is he here?"
I wondered. "Did Denis send him to keep an eye on me?"

"Could be, sir. Or could be he's quit of Mr.
Denis. Or could be he doesn't want Mr. Denis to know where he
is."

"True." If I was correct about who he was,
Denis had once sent the man Middleton to my rooms in Covent Garden
to fetch me. Denis generally employed pugilists and former coachmen
to serve as rather menacing bodyguards and lackeys. This one had
been no less menacing than any of the others. I had refused the
summons. Bartholomew's presence had helped, and the man had left in
defeat.

I had never seen him again. Though I'd
visited Denis not long ago, while pursuing the affair of the Glass
House in London, Middleton, as far as I remembered, had not been
there.

"Well, it's interesting," Bartholomew
remarked. "What are you going to do?"

I lifted my cup. "I will let it lie for now.
He obviously did not want me to see him. But I'll watch. I do not
trust Denis, nor any man associated with him."

"No, sir." Bartholomew resumed brushing. "Of
course, it does no harm asking about in the kitchens. Why he's
here, I mean."

"Your curiosity might prove as dangerous as
mine, Bartholomew," I said.

"Yes, sir."

I turned the conversation back to the pranks
that Rutledge wanted me to investigate, and frowned in thought. "I
wonder whether one house has seen more of the pranks than the
other. It would be difficult, for instance, for a boy in this house
to get into Fairleigh at night."

"The Fairleigh boys would chuck him right out
if they saw him." Bartholomew grinned. "And not in a nice manner,
would they?"

The houses, the Head Master's and Fairleigh,
were similar in amenities and distribution of boys, but the two
houses were fierce rivals, each convinced that members of the other
were weak and ineffectual. It is common thing among mortals, I had
observed, that when placed even arbitrarily into this or that
group, they immediately begin to defend themselves against all
other groups. I do not exclude myself from this phenomenon. In the
army, I valiantly defended the honor of the Thirty-Fifth Light
Dragoons, and would have done so with my life. And of course, I
esteemed the abilities of the light cavalry over the heavy. Still
more serious was the manner in which cavalry viewed the
infantry--that body of foot wobblers who could not shoot straight
even standing on the ground and dug into place.

I fully admitted to prejudice in my views--I
had realized once that if someone were to come along and paint a
red or blue spot on each of our foreheads, we who had the blue
spots would congregate to other blue-spotters and come up with
reasons why we were infinitely better than the red-spotters.

The Fairleighs contended that they were
superior to the Head Masters and vice versa. Therefore, if any Head
Master boy were caught sneaking into Fairleigh uninvited, said boy
had better be fast on his feet and good with his fists. In
addition, news of such a break-in would be all over school the next
day.

Therefore, the prankster must either be a
master of infiltration and deception, or there must be more than
one.

I continued to drink my coffee, and
Bartholomew and I continued to speculate on the pranks until I
sought my bed and slumber. The matter of Middleton, for the time,
was dropped.

But the matter reasserted itself almost
immediately. Bartholomew woke me early the next morning to tell me
that Middleton had been killed in the night, his body fetched up in
a lock of the nearby canal.

* * * * *

Chapter Two

I had to saddle a horse myself in order to
ride out to the canal the next morning because Sebastian and every
other stable hand had abandoned their posts. Bartholomew boosted me
aboard then followed me on foot to Lower Sudbury Lock and the crowd
gathered there.

This canal was one leg of the Kennet and Avon
Canal, which bisected England from Bath to Reading. I was told that
over one hundred locks raised and lowered water so that canal boats
could navigate across the heartland of England. The intricate locks
and arched bridges were fairly new, the canal having been completed
and open for use within the last decade.

This morning, my only interest in the canal
was in the body of the hapless groom that floated in it.

The gates of the lock were closed, and a
barge waited quietly on the lower side. The pumps clanked as the
lockkeeper, a fleshy man with lank hair and sweat-stained clothes,
turned the sluice wheel. Water noisily drained from the lock to the
flat pond that housed the excess water. The parish constable, a
sturdy man of about forty years, stood on the narrow parapet of the
lock, peering over the side.

Bartholomew fell into conversation with a
village lad, then reported what he said to me. "Lockkeeper found
him not an hour ago. Came out to open the gates for the barge, and
there was Middleton, floating all peaceful. They tried fishing him
out with a boat hook, but couldn't catch him. Constable said send
in the barge to get him out."

The waiting canal boat was long and narrow,
its flat deck filled with goods. One bargeman watched from the
tiller, while the other stood on shore, his teeth working a piece
of straw. He held the barge horse, a large beast, which lowered its
head to crop a patch of grass.

The lock was a simple mechanism, but one that
had changed England forever. Locks allowed barges to move up or
down hill without having to portage. Locks on this particular
canal, I'd read, were a marvel of engineering.

Sebastian the stable hand leaned to watch
near me, his swarthy face wan. He wore the same garb as any stable
lad, dusty breeches, boots, and shirt, but his blue-black hair,
thick-lashed brown eyes, and dark skin betrayed his Romany
origins.

The lockkeeper closed the pumps and cranked
open the gates. The bargeman slapped the horse's side and guided
the boat into the lock.

Relative peace descended, broken by the soft
sound of canal water lapping at the gate. I watched while the man
on the barge dragged the corpse onto its deck. I expected the boat
to back out again, but the bargeman signaled for the lockkeeper to
close the gates. He did so, and then rushing water drowned the
silence. The water rose slowly, the pumps struggling to drag water
back in from the pond.

Once the boat was level with the upper part
of the canal, the lockkeeper opened the gates. The horse, used to
the procedure, pulled the boat silently into the canal beyond.

The constable trudged to the boat and put his
foot on the deck. The bargeman and his partner obligingly hauled
the corpse out onto the green bank.

As one, we crowded round to see. Middleton
lay still, his eyes closed, his body bloated, an ugly gash across
his pale throat. Now that I could look at him closely, I saw that
he was indeed Denis' man.

The constable heaved a sigh, hands on hips.
"Nasty business, eh? Now then, one of you lads run for the surgeon.
Though it's obvious he died of having his throat cut, we might as
well get it put down right."

Bartholomew whispered to me, "Think Mr. Denis
killed him?"

"I would be surprised if he did," I answered.
"Somehow, I imagine Denis is . . . neater. Likely we'd not have
found Middleton's body at all."

"Are you going to tell the constable who he
was?"

"I have no reason not to."

When I could draw the constable's attention,
I took him aside and explained what I knew about Middleton. The
constable showed no recognition of the name Denis, thanked me for
the information, then said that there was no accounting for the
trouble into which foolish Londoners could land themselves.

Bartholomew and I drifted away from the
others, looking over the scene.

The lock and pumps stood near the lock house,
where the lockkeeper lived. The pond for excess water lay serenely
under the clouded sky not far away, a thick stand of trees lining
its far bank.

"I wonder that the murderer bothered to drag
the man to the lock," I said. "Easier I'd think to drag him to the
pond. He'd not be seen in the woods and would not have to pass so
close to the lock house and risk awakening the lockkeeper."

"Unless," Bartholomew suggested, "the killer
pushed the dead man into the canal, then opened the lock when the
chap floated to the gate."

"Which would make still more noise. Unless
our lockkeeper is very hard of hearing or an unusually sound
sleeper."

"Or he killed the man himself."

I studied the lockkeeper who stood silently
outside the ring of men around the body. "Perhaps he did. Although
I hardly think he'd hide the body in his own lock. Why not send him
downstream? Or not bring him to the canal at all?"

"What should we do, sir?" Bartholomew gazed
up at me, blue eyes gleaming with eagerness.

I had asked Bartholomew for help in two
previous investigations, and he had obviously decided that he would
help me again.

"I think we should have a care," I answered.
"Someone near this place does not mind slicing throats."

Bartholomew looked startled, as though he'd
not thought of that. "You say truth, sir. Where Mr. Denis is
concerned, it's best to go carefully."

He followed me as I moved on, looking about.
The Sudbury School rested on a rise of land above the canal. To the
west and north, up the canal, lay the village of Sudbury. Trees
lined the towpath, the narrow lane that the barge horses traversed
with their guides. The canal widened as it curved to the east,
shaded by cool trees, its banks shrouded in mist.

The pond that held the water for the lock lay
on the west bank of the canal. I rode to it carefully, scanning the
undergrowth for any disturbance. I found none. I likewise found
nothing in the mud surrounding the pond, except tracks of deer and
smaller creatures that had wandered here for a drink.

I suppose I wanted to find two distinct sets
of footprints, the dead man's and the killer's, and broken bracken
that designated a struggle. A fresh set of footprints leading back
to the killer would have been most helpful as well.

A doctor had arrived by the time Bartholomew
and I returned to the lock, looking rather nauseated as he stooped
over the corpse. I wondered whether he was the sort of doctor who
examined his patients from across the room, pronounced what was
wrong with them without touching them, and then prescribed an
expensive tonic and collected his fee.

The constable set the stable hands and the
lockkeeper to scouring the brush and the canal for the knife. He
and the doctor decided to wrap Middleton's body and have him taken
to the parish church to be held for the coroner's examination. The
constable declared his next task was to report to the magistrate
and asked me, hesitantly, to break the news to Rutledge.