Til Death Do Us Part (34 page)

‘I'm most grateful for your kindness, Sir, but I have a maid and a cook-housekeeper, and also I've taken a coachman into my employ who is more than capable of dealing with any intrusions. He's an honest, sober fellow whom I'm know very well, since his father and grandfather both gave lifelong service to my late husband's family.'

He escorted her out to her closed carriage, and when he saw the exceptionally powerful build of the uniformed coachman he exclaimed, ‘By God, Ma'am! I pity any intruder who might try to get past this fellow! He looks like a champion prizefighter.'

T
om bent double as his stomach heaved and he retched violently, but only a froth of saliva came from his gaping mouth because the last of his stomach contents had already been agonizingly voided minutes before.

He heard Amy's fist clumping on the privy door and her anxious voice. ‘Tom, are you being sick again?'

He wiped his streaming eyes and foul-tasting mouth and gasped. ‘I'm alright, my love! It must be something bad I ate, that's all. I'll be perfectly well in a moment or two.'

‘What d'you mean, something you ate?' There was asperity in her tone now. ‘I haven't never give you anything bad to eat!'

He opened the privy door, still clutching his painful stomach.

‘This is naught to do with my breakfast, Amy. It's the result of an experiment I made last night.'

‘What experiment?' she demanded. ‘I never saw you making such.'

‘Well it's done with now.' He grimaced in wry humour. ‘And I'm very pleased to report that it's been an unqualified success.'

Even as he spoke the pain eased. ‘And now I'm as fit as a butcher's dog.'

‘And as mad as a March hare!' she rejoined. ‘And Blackwell's man has just brought these summonses for you.' She handed him several sheets of paper.

‘Then I'd best deliver them as soon as I'm washed and shaved.'

‘Are you sure you're alright now?' she queried.

‘Yes, I'm very sure.'

She reached up and pulled his head down, then abruptly pushed his head back and scolded. ‘Oh no! I aren't going to kiss you until you've cleaned your mouth. Don't you dare to do any more experiments that makes your breath stink like it does now.'

‘I can promise you that I won't,' he agreed fervently.

The previous night he had deliberately abraded a patch of skin on his lower back, and rubbed into it a portion of the Reverend Winward's salve. The resulting attacks of vomiting and diarrhoea, and his general feeling of debilitation, had convinced him that the salve had poisoned and killed George Creswell.

As was customary the coach coming from Birmingham halted at the base of the Fish Hill, and the driver, Richard Humphries, shouted, ‘Everybody who aren't a cripple must get off here and walk up this hill. Me team can't draw all you lot and the baggage up it. It's too long and steep.'

Before any of the passengers could reply, he added for the benefit of an inside passenger, who was an old adversary, ‘And there's no need for you to start bawling and scrawking, Widow Potts. I knows very well that you'm too fat to move your arse. So you stay seated and me poor team 'ull just have to haul their bloody guts out. But if one o' the poor buggers drops dead wi' a heart attack, you'll be to blame!'

The passengers exited the roof and inside seats to the accompaniment of a screeching tirade of threats and abuse directed at the driver by the Widow Gertrude Potts.

With straining bodies and snorting breaths the team drew the coach up the long steep hill and stopped as it reached the flat central plateau, where Widow Potts thrust her bonneted head out of the window and screeched.

‘Don't stop here. Go straight on to the shop.'

‘I'll do no such thing,' Richard Humphries flatly refused. ‘I'm waiting here for the rest of 'um.'

‘But I can't wait. They'll have to walk to the shop as well, because I can't bear another moment in this dirty, foul-smelling box.'

‘Then get out and bloody well walk!'

‘Alright! I will! And if I should collapse and die on the way, then may you rot in Hell, you evil, callous swine!'

‘Well, if by chance I do go to Hell, I knows very well who'll be roasting on the spit next to me, don't I? It'll be you! You nasty old bitch!'

Gasping out another tirade of insults, Gertrude Potts laboriously levered her squat gross body from the vehicle, shook her walking stick at Humphries, and waddled on towards the crossroads, some hundred yards distant.

When she reached the chapel at the crossroads she decided to wait in its porch for her fellow travellers, Charles Bromley and his sister, to pass by.

‘I'll teach Humphries a lesson. I'll pretend that I've collapsed and make Bromley bring a summons against the bastard for forcing me out of his coach.'

When she entered the porch she noticed the reward poster pinned on the wall and peered closely at it. Then she sucked her breath in sharply.

‘That description fits that Debt Collector!' She screwed her eyes to read the small print at the bottom of the poster. ‘And Bromley's done this notice! I'll wager he's pocketed the reward money as well, and he's said nothing to me about it because he's keeping all the money for himself. Well, I'll teach the sly bugger not to keep secrets from me!'

She left the porch and waddled purposefully towards the lock-up.

Carrying the summonses, Tom was exiting the building as his mother arrived, and he greeted her politely.

‘Hello, Mother. Can I be of service to you?'

She didn't prevaricate. ‘When did you give Bromley the money?'

Tom was momentarily taken aback. ‘What money?'

She scowled and screeched, ‘Don't make mock of me, you vile unnatural beast of a son! You and Bromley have shared it between you, and cheated me out of what's rightfully mine!'

Tom held up his hand. ‘Pray calm yourself, Mother, and explain to me what you're talking about?'

‘I'm talking about the money for naming him that was found dead at Bradley Green!'

Now Tom made the connection with the reward notice, and questioned, ‘Are you claiming that Bromley told me the identity of the dead man?'

‘Of course I am, you stupid blockhead!'

Excitement sparked in Tom's brain, and instantly he decided that in this matter to lie to her was justifiable. ‘Very well, Mother. If you can satisfy me that Bromley was lying when he said that you knew nothing of this dead man, then you'll receive the same amount in full sum, that Bromley and I divided between us.'

As words poured from her, Tom's excitement rapidly mounted, and when she finally fell silent he immediately brought her five gold guineas from his strongbox. Then he suggested casually, ‘It might well be to your advantage not to tell Bromley about this conversation we've had, Mother. Because so long as he believes that the secret he and I have shared concerning the reward money still holds, who knows what other secrets that he keeps from you, he may confide to me?'

Her eyes hooded, her mouth pursed, then she nodded and waddled away.

Tom stood still, his concentration centred on evaluating what he had heard.

His mother had confirmed for him the connection between Langlois and Winward, regarding the newspaper advertisements for a bride. Coupled with what Harry Pratt had told him, he now firmly believed that both men were frauds, and had colluded in the murder of George Creswell.

As for the Bradley Green dead man, Tom decided, ‘I'll go to Birmingham tomorrow and find out if he were indeed a Debt Collector employed by the
Aris Gazette
.'

A
s she did every morning, Ella Peelson was sitting up in bed closely examining her reflection in a looking glass. The bruises and swelling on her features had disappeared, the scars were paling, but the flattened nose and broken snags of teeth remained to disfigure her.

This morning, as on every morning, her hatred of the men she knew as Christophe de Langlois and the Reverend Geraint Winward throbbed virulently.

‘Are you awake, Ma'am?' Milly Styke called from outside the bedroom door.

‘Yes, my dear, come in.'

The girl entered carrying a tray with a bottle of gin and a glass upon it. ‘Dora and Sean and the other men has had their breakfasts, Ma'am, and Sean has seen to the dogs as well.'

‘Tell Sean I'll speak to him presently. You and I shall go in the pony-trap to the churchyard in a couple of hours, to lay a wreath on your mother's grave. We'll go to the mason's yard after that, and you shall pick out a nice headstone for your mother.'

‘Oh, that'll be lovely for her, Ma'am.' The child's face beamed with pleasure as she placed the tray on the dressing table beside the bed. ‘Nobody from our family has ever had anything to mark where they lays. We've always been paupers, you see.'

Ella Peelson drew the girl to her and kissed her rosy cheek. ‘Well you'll never be a pauper again, my dear. I shall make sure of that. Now go and tell Dora to come up to me.'

It was near to midday when at the end of the straggling main street of Feckenham Village a respectably dressed, middle-aged woman handed an urchin a folded note.

‘Me feet am badly, me little duck. Take this to the Old Black Boy, will you, and then come back here to me and I'll give you a penny. Just give it to somebody who works there and tell 'um it's for Parson Winward.'

The urchin sped away.

Walter Courtney scanned the brief note and frowned. ‘What does that holy cunt want now, I wonder. Ah well, I suppose I'd best do as he asks.'

The sun was shining as he left the Old Black Boy and walked at a leisurely pace to the church, passing a pipe-smoking, smock-clad man lounging against a wall and an untended pony and trap parked near to the lych-gate.

Courtney went through the churchyard and walked around the church, heading for the vicarage. When he disappeared from view, Milly Styke and the heavily veiled Ella Peelson came out from the high-hedged paupers' plot of the churchyard and walked quickly to mount the pony cart. As Ella Peelson drove it slowly past the lounging, pipe-smoking, smock-clad Sean Peelson, he gave her a single nod.

‘Hello, Geraint. This is a pleasant surprise,' Horace Mackay greeted as he opened the vicarage door.

‘What do you mean, a surprise?' Courtney challenged jocularly. ‘You must know me well enough by now to know that any note from you receives my immediate attention.'

‘Note? I've not sent any note,' Mackay told him.

Courtney took the note from his pocket and waved it under the other man's nose. ‘Read it!'

Frowning in puzzlement Mackay did so, and shook his head. ‘This note is not in my handwriting, Geraint. And it's not addressed to you by name or signed by me either. It merely says, “Please come to the church as soon as possible.” It could have been sent by anyone to anyone, and obviously it's been delivered in error.'

‘Yes, that must be so,' Courtney accepted, but inwardly the sense of uneasiness which had been troubling him since Thomas Potts had taken the salve from Orchard House now intensified.

‘Will you take some refreshment with me, Geraint? We can make a day and night of it,' Mackay invited.

Courtney forced a smile. ‘I regret I cannot, my friend. I have much work to do. So I must bid you good day.'

Instead of returning to his lodgings he walked out into the solitude of the countryside, thinking hard about Thomas Potts.

‘How do I stop the bastard poking his nose into my affairs? I could kill him, but if he's confided any suspicions of me to others, his murder could bring them hotfoot after me.'

Two hours had passed before a solution finally came to him, and he smiled ironically.

‘But of course! The simplest way to spike the bastard's guns before I leave is to introduce myself to Lord Aston this very day.'

W
hen Alfie Bennet came to the lock-up both he and his horse showed the effects of long and hard travelling. Tom welcomed the man and sat him before the kitchen fire.

‘Rest yourself, Alfie. Amy will cook you some breakfast, while I see to the horse.'

When Tom returned he waited until his visitor had eaten and drunk his fill, before asking, ‘How did it go, Alfie?'

‘Well, after I give 'um your letter I had to hang about the place for days, and sleep where I could, Master Tom; and then a bloke come and told me he'd read your letter, and he give me this 'un to bring back to you.'

He fumbled in his satchel and handed the sealed letter to Tom, who quickly opened and scanned its content, then let out a whoop of satisfaction.

‘Is it what you wanted, Master Tom?' Alfie questioned.

‘It most certainly is, Alfie. But this must be our secret. So tell no one where you've been.' Tom pressed gold coins into the other man's hand. ‘You've well earned these, Alfie. I have to go out now, but you stay and rest as long as you wish. My wife will get you any further refreshments you'd like, won't you, Amy?'

‘O' course I will, and gladly.' She smiled, and Tom hurried from the lock-up.

‘What is so urgent, Constable Potts, that you must disturb my brief hours of leisure?' Joseph Blackwell demanded tartly.

‘It's this, Sir.' Tom presented him with the letter. ‘I've just received this from the Commandant of the East India Company, Military Academy at Addiscombe.'

Pursing his lipless mouth, Joseph Blackwell studied the letter closely as he marshaled his thoughts, and after a long pause he told Tom, ‘I fully accept that this information from Lieutenant Colonel Houston proves that about seven years ago a certain Major Christophe de Langlois was cashiered from the Company's Madras Army. But if it is he who placed the advertisement which led to him meeting and marrying Phoebe Creswell, then he has committed no crime in doing so.'