Death and the Chevalier

by Robin Blake

  ‘Greetings, Mr Grant,’ Fidelis said. ‘But should I not perhaps call you Mr Abel Bigelow?’

  There were three or four seconds of silence and then Jack Fingers slapped the tabletop in sudden pleasure.

  ‘Ha-ha!’ he cried. ‘Upon my word, that is good! What a subtle mind you have, sir. I had meant to spring a surprise, but you have smoked out the truth even without my helping you to it.’

  Fidelis’s complacency did nothing to soften my own surprise. To me, the sudden appearance in the room of Abel Grant (or whatever his name was) remained incredible. And why Fidelis had addressed him as Bigelow was even further beyond my comprehension.

  ‘You have me wrong, Doctor,’ said the man. ‘I am not Bigelow.’

  ‘Grant is not your alias?’ said Fidelis sharply. ‘It is not your nom de guerre?’

  ‘No. It’s the name I was born with.’

  ‘Then … let me think,’ said Fidelis. ‘In that case, your mother was Grant before she was Bigelow. You are her bastard!’

  ‘I am her son,’ he said. ‘I do not say bastard.’

  ‘No matter. And are you, then, the son who was at Limmington’s house when the poor fellow died?’

  ‘I have no brother, if that is what you’re asking.’

  ‘Your mother doted on you, of course. That was why she falsified the time of her master’s death. To give you time to get away.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I suppose so,’ Grant muttered, glancing sideways at Jack Fingers. That glance told me much. He was more afraid of the highwayman than he was of telling the truth.

  ‘It was not very clever of her,’ observed Fidelis, ‘as what matters is not the moment when Limmington breathed his last; it is when he received the injury that caused to him die. And at that moment you were indeed present, weren’t you?’

  Grant’s single visible eye narrowed. His contused lips opened to give an answer when I butted in.

  ‘Wait a minute, I have a question before we get into all that. How did you come into the service of James Barrowclough, Grant?’

  ‘Sir John Barrowclough,’ Grant said. ‘He’s got a parcel of land at Penwortham. And he knew old Limmington. Politics in common, they had. He was sometimes at the house when I was young.’

  ‘So Sir John was your first benefactor.’

  ‘Called me a likely lad and said I could start at the Hall as pantry boy.’

  ‘A charming story and all beside the point,’ cut in O’Higgins, who had been listening closely to our exchanges. ‘The man’s a murderer. He killed his mother’s employer, which is petty treason by my reckoning, all for this bag of gold.’ He pointed at the bag. ‘My gold.’

  ‘But it isn’t the only killing he’s accused of,’ I said. ‘By a wonderful chance I have heard him denounced this very afternoon not only for the assassination of a Highlander named MacNab on Sir John Barrowclough’s estate, but also having a hand in the beheading of MacNab’s corpse and that of his companion. The result is that the rebel army is out for Abel Grant’s blood.’

  I said this as much to inform Grant as O’Higgins. I looked at Grant. He answered me with a look of controlled alarm. O’Higgins, however, chuckled in delight.

  ‘Well, well, well, what a pickle you are in, Abel Grant. What a doleful dilemma, between the military execution and the bloody assize. And it is a dilemma from which you are indeed going to die, on one side of the horns or t’other. People want to hang you, whichever direction you look.’

  ‘I have to go to the privy,’ said Grant.

  ‘Are you beshitting yourself?’ jeered O’Higgins. ‘Not surprising, I will admit. Paddy, take him out to the jakes and never take your eye off him.’

  ‘The question is what do we do with him?’ I said when Paddy and Grant had left the room, followed by the bulldog.

  ‘Who is this “we”?’ asked Jack Fingers. ‘It seems to me, as to what is done with him, that the call is mine.’

  ‘And yet you sent for me and Doctor Fidelis. Why?’

  ‘Pride. I must prove to you that I was right. That I am not to be treated with the contempt you showed me at the Swan Inn.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Fidelis. ‘We grant that you were right about the money. It was never taken by any Highlanders. What do you propose to do with him?’

  ‘I am undecided between a quick death and a slow death. Or I may spare him altogether. He is nobody’s fool, not even mine, and he held out longer than most under the fists and boots of my men.’

  We had been talking for five minutes or more when the bulldog came back in alone. O’Higgins said, ‘What the devil are they about back there? It never takes as long as this for a condemned man to void his bowels. Joe! I say, Stumpy! You couple of dozey dimwits. Get out there and see what’s what.’

  Both of them seemed to have fallen asleep over their ale. Now they woke up with a start and scraped back their chairs.

  ‘Yes, chief,’ they said in unison.

  They went out and we heard them calling for Paddy. Then, ‘Oh Christ! Chief! Chief! Come out here.’

  We all went tumbling out. The backyard of the house was covered in paving. This was itself covered in black ice and we scarcely kept our footing so that it took a few seconds before we were secure enough to see the great mass of Paddy lying on his back athwart the threshold of the privy, with the bulldog snuffling at him. Paddy was groaning and breathing in rattles and whistles. Fidelis, stepping forward, pushed the dog aside and knelt beside the fallen man.

  ‘He’s been stabbed in the belly. A deep wound. I doubt we shall save him.’

  O’Higgins thrust his head through the door of the privy.

  ‘That little windfucker’s gone! He’s flit.’

  The wall at the back of the yard was five feet high. Even in his enfeebled state, and spurred by desperation, Grant could have vaulted it. O’Higgins ran at the wall, skidded for a moment, then hurled himself over. Joe and Stumpy got over the wall more laboriously and disappeared into the dark beyond, following after the sound of their chief’s curses.

  We heard a woman’s shriek and the highwayman’s stream of blasphemy and invectives fading. Fingers had already gone through the house opposite and into the street on the other side. There was a moment after that when the only sound we heard was Paddy’s laboured breaths, which by now had turned into an unearthly snore. Seconds later, the snoring stopped.

  ‘He delivered a hefty stab,’ said Fidelis, feeling for a pulse. ‘And I fancy it was with Paddy’s own knife, as it is not longer in his belt.’

  He concentrated briefly on what he was doing and then stood up.

  ‘Well, he’s dead. It seems we now have a three-times murderer on our hands.’

  ‘And quite an actor,’ I said. ‘I would say Mr Abel Grant was by no means as badly injured as he pretended.’

  ‘Very likely. And a fat man, taken by surprise while standing on iced flags like these … No, Paddy wouldn’t have had a great chance.’

  ‘Come on, Luke, there’s no time to lose. We must leave while we can.’

  We went back into the house and through the room in which we had taken wine with O’Higgins. Acting on an impulse, as I passed the back of the highwayman’s chair, I lifted the bag of gold and hid it under my cloak.

  ‘Titus!’ Fidelis hissed. ‘What in God’s name are you doing with that bag?’

  We had come out of the front door into Back Weind Court, pulling it shut to keep the bulldog inside. Pip appeared from the shadow of a doorway, accompanied by Bawty.

  ‘This money can be put to better use,’ I said. ‘I mean to see that it is.’

  The scene at my house was one of social and military confusion. A group of officers had come to hold a conference with the Marquis and Captain Brown. Soldiers stood around on our steps and in the hall, conversing and showing each other papers, while messengers came and went, running across Market Place or along Fisher Gate, bringing orders, lists and rolled-up maps.

  Opening the dining-room door, I found the meeting was in progress,
with half a dozen bottles of my best French wine open. Presiding over this committee, the Marquis d’Éguilles sat in my chair, enjoyed my wine and burped with satisfaction after making a successful frontal attack on my food. His back was half turned away and he did not notice me as I smartly shut the door again and went into the kitchen, where Fidelis and Pip had gone ahead of me. Bawty’s reunion with Suez was a noisy affair until I ordered them out into the back garden to sniff around for rats.

  Matty was washing dishes with the fury of a woman driven to the limits of her tolerance.

  ‘They are without shame, master. They thrutch into the house asking for the Marquis and Captain Brown, and when I show them in the dining room, they demand bread and cheese and wine and soup and I don’t know what. I wish the mistress was here, that’s all. I wish she was.’

  ‘I wish she was here too, Matty. You must give them nothing more now, which you will say is by my own orders, and I trust they will respect that. They’ll be gone from Preston first thing tomorrow and then we can forget about them.’

  I told her we would go into my office. Luke and I took candles with us and went through. I unlocked my safe, put the bag of coin inside and locked it again.

  ‘When he finds it gone, he’ll come straight here demanding it back with threats,’ said Luke.

  ‘Of course, he will, but this is not the best night on which to threaten us. We have a dining room full of well-armed soldiers.’

  ‘He will come anyway. You saw his temper. He is a man of violent action, which he conceals under jests and irony. He will not, however, find the loss of his gold amusing.’

  I went back into the hall to lock the front door. The arrivals of rebel soldiers had ceased by now, and though the dining room was still full of them, the hall was deserted. But just as I was turning the key, there came a furious hammering from outside.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I said.

  ‘Titus! It’s Elizabeth.’

  There was something in her voice, a catch in the throat, an unnatural pitch, that did not sound right. I quickly unlocked and pulled open the door. Elizabeth was there in travelling cloak and bonnet, her eyes narrowed in anger. Behind her stood Jack Fingers.

  ‘My dearest Elizabeth,’ I said, ‘what in all thunder is this?’

  The highwayman answered me before she could.

  ‘Mr Cragg, I feel most fortunate to have met your pretty wife just as she was mounting the step of this house. Naturally, I did not waste the opportunity to have her help me inside, so I—’

  Elizabeth interrupted him angrily.

  ‘I was coming home. This scoundrel accosted me, found out who I was and put a pistol to my back. He promises he will discharge it unless you admit him to the house.’

  I had been ready to repel Jack Fingers, but I never foresaw that he’d have my wife as a hostage. I took a step back, forcing myself to be calm.

  ‘Then so I must. Come in, sir. I believe I know why you’re here. Elizabeth, may I present Mr Jack Fingers, alias Shamus Fingal O’Higgins, alias Jaime Sigginho, et cetera, et cetera.’

  Elizabeth maintained her steely composure. She tossed her head back.

  ‘The highwayman? I might have known. You are a man notorious for his contemptible treatment of women.’

  ‘I regret the need to have you play hostage, madam,’ said O’Higgins smoothly, ‘but your husband has a thing of mine, for which – if he does not give it back – someone must die. If that be you, no one will be sorrier than myself. Is that clever doctor here, by the way? I should willingly kill him in your stead.’

  Fidelis stepped out of the shadows at the back of the hall and gestured towards the dining room.

  ‘Release Mrs Cragg and come through, sir,’ he said. ‘There you shall see how we may satisfy you.’

  Fingers pushed Elizabeth a step or two forward, but a burst of laughter was heard from the dining room and the highwayman froze in alarm.

  ‘Ah! If you have company in there, then so shall I out here. Open the front door again, Cragg.’

  He started to move backwards again, pulling Elizabeth with him. I opened the door as requested, and as O’Higgins reached it, he gave a piercing whistle. Seconds later Joe and Stumpy came running out of the dark and up the steps to back up their chief. Joe (or perhaps it was Stumpy) held a pistol while Stumpy (unless it was Joe) brandished a long and pointed knife.

  ‘I will not be tricked a second time,’ said O’Higgins. ‘Give me what’s mine here and now, and I’ll be on my way.’

  Fidelis and I exchanged glances. With a slight movement of the head, Fidelis indicated the door that connected the house with the office. I said, ‘Then you must come into my business room, where my safe cupboard is.’

  I opened the door and led the way through, followed by Fidelis and O’Higgins – with Elizabeth still in his clutches – and finally Joe and Stumpy, who were ordered by O’Higgins to guard the door.

  ‘Now,’ I said. ‘Shall we all sit and lay down our arms and have a civilized conversation?’

  ‘There’ll be no laying down of arms,’ snarled O’Higgins. ‘And no civilized conversation. I simply require you to give me the sack of gold coins.’

  ‘Shall we light some more candles first?’

  I took a taper and went to the sideboard, in one of whose drawers there were fresh candles.

  I had lit three when the door from the house opened and Matty stood there holding a lit candle of her own. Joe and Stumpy, both stationed on the hinges side, were tempor-arily shut out of affairs by the swinging door.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ she said. ‘But the Marquis wants to see the master.’

  D’Éguilles stepped past Matty and into the room, his figure splendid in a silver-threaded coat which shimmered in the light of Matty’s candle. I heard a gasp from Elizabeth.

  The Marquis looked from myself to Fidelis, then interrogatively at O’Higgins, who scowled at him.

  ‘What’s this popinjay doing in here? Get rid of him, Cragg. I want to get on with the business.’

  ‘Monsieur,’ the nobleman began, addressing me, ‘je veux bien vous entretenir au sujet de—’

  But whatever it was he wanted to talk about, we never knew, because quite suddenly Bawty and Suez, who had been re-admitted to the house by Matty, burst into the room behind the Marquis, barking angrily. In the way that dogs can, they immediately saw the human threat facing them and launched towards O’Higgins. Before they could reach him, there was a deafening explosion as Joe (or perhaps it was Stumpy) pushed the door back and fired his pistol out of the shadow. The consequence of this was a squeal and a thump as Bawty went heavily down. Suez, however, was not deterred. He leaped at the wrist of O’Higgins’s right hand, which was holding his pistol, and snapped his jaws around it. O’Higgins let go of his gun with a yell and at the same time loosened his grip on Elizabeth who, with a twisting of her body and a stamp on the highwayman’s foot, was able to release herself entirely from his hold.

  Fidelis jumped forward to deal with O’Higgins, who was hopping on one foot and cursing as he was still seized by the bite of Suez’s mouth. Fidelis wrestled him to the ground and, to pacify him, punched him once or twice in the face before removing Suez from his wrist. I myself swung around to deal with the remaining threat, the knife wielded by Stumpy (or possibly Joe). With as hard a chopping motion of my hand as I could muster, I struck the man’s forearm and was rewarded with a grunt of pain and the blade clattering to the floor. His head went down towards his wounded arm and I brought my knee up sharply to crack it against his chin, which collapsed him entirely. I then remembered I had a pistol of my own, took it from my coat pocket and held its point against Joe’s (or conceivably Stumpy’s) forehead, forcing him down to join his comrade on the floor.

  This small engagement was not quite finished, however. For a brief moment everyone was still, as in a tableau. Then there came a quick movement by Elizabeth towards the Marquis, and almost at once a second gunpowder explosion. The Marquis squealed – it is the
only word for it – and fell to the floor, his hands both going to his groin. I turned in astonishment and looked at my wife. She was standing above him with Jack Finger’s pistol smoking in her hand.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Gruff interrogative cries were heard in the hall; then the pounding of feet, the swishing of swords unsheathed. Two pistol shots had been more than enough to interrupt the council in the dining room and bring the soldiers tumbling out to see what the matter was. Shouldering Matty aside, they packed the doorway to view the scene in my business room.

  On the floor lay the writhing, shrieking figure of the Marquis, who was bleeding copiously from the groin. Fidelis knelt beside him, trying to see the extent of the wound, while on the other side of the room Jack Fingers struggled to his feet and glowered at my dog, who stood guard before him, his teeth bared. Joe and Stumpy, disarmed and discouraged, made no attempt to rise, while Bawty could not have done so. She had been shot through one haunch. Elizabeth, meanwhile, had stepped away from the Marquis. The gun that she’d snatched up off the floor – O’Higgins’s gun – hung from her hand, still oozing wisps of smoke.

  ‘Will someone go into the dining room and clear the table?’ said Fidelis. ‘And give me a hand here, you men.’

  Three of the officers came forward, hoisted the suffering Marquis and got him out of the room, leaving a thick trail of bloodspots. A fourth at my request drew his pistol and covered the three highway robbers, who were now gathered together in a corner of the room. Then I went to Elizabeth and, with my arm about her shoulder, guided her out of the room.

  I took her into the kitchen and sat her on the rocker by the fire. I knelt before her and took her hands in mine.

  ‘My dearest, what brought you back?’

  ‘To do what I have now done, husband. I knew that man would again be in our house. I came back home to punish his rape to the utmost of my ability.’

  ‘I do not say he is not deserving, but should you not rather say “would-be rape”?’