Pickett followed her gaze, and found that the churchyard was rapidly emptying as the vicar’s congregation dispersed to their homes. The vicar still stood in the doorway, nodding as he listened to a lengthy monologue from an elderly lady, and Harry had transferred his fickle attentions to a flaxen-haired damsel in a print dress, but aside from these few, Pickett and Mrs. Avery were very nearly alone.
“Yes, it is no doubt foolish of me,” she added quickly, no doubt discerning his thoughts, “but—well, when one lives alone, one tends to fall prey to any number of fanciful notions! When Avery was alive, I never—but I shall not bore you with all that! My house is the last but one on the High Street, just past the bookseller’s shop. Do say you will join me for tea tomorrow! I believe I can make it worth your while.”
“Why tomorrow?” Pickett asked, unable to completely repress the hint of impatience that crept into his voice at the thought of yet another delay.
“Not here,” she said again, shaking her head emphatically. “When one is a widow, people are inclined to talk.”
For his part, Pickett thought people would be much more inclined to gossip about a widow entertaining a man privately in her home than they would about a conversation that took place in the churchyard within full view of anyone who cared to look. But then the widow demurely lowered her head. With her face hidden from his view, Pickett was forcibly reminded of another young widow clad in the unrelieved black of mourning, and the way her so-called “friends” had turned on her in the days following her husband’s murder.
“Very well,” he found himself saying. “What time do you want me?”
6
In Which Are Seen Two Opposing Methods of Investigative Work
“If you can have an assignation, I don’t see why I can’t have one,” Harry grumbled as they made their way back to the Cock and Boar.
“It’s not an assignation,” Pickett insisted, not for the first time.
Harry gave a snort of derision. “You may say that, but I’ll wager the Widow Avery has her own ideas on the subject! If she wanted to talk to you privately, why didn’t she do it there in the churchyard? There was no one else to hear.”
Pickett had thought the same thing, but now he found himself compelled to defend the widow’s actions—or, perhaps, his own acceptance of the lady’s invitation. “She was right when she said people are prone to talk. Widows are sometimes held to a different standard from other women.”
Something in his expression must have given him away, for Harry regarded him with a knowing look. “And you—or rather, your wife—should know, eh?”
They had reached the inn by this time, and so Pickett was spared the necessity of making an answer. He stopped before the counter that served as both bar and registration desk, and the innkeeper’s daughter brightened at their appearance, although the coy glances she cast toward some point beyond Pickett’s shoulder gave him to understand that it was not he who brought the blush to her cheeks.
“Tell me, have you seen Mr. Brockton come in?” he asked.
“Why, no, sir,” she said, shifting her attention from one young man to the other. “He wasn’t at church, then?”
“Apparently not.”
The girl expressed her disappointment that her suggestion hadn’t been more helpful, but could offer no further assistance. Pickett placed a silver shilling on the counter and slid it across to her.
“I would be obliged to you if you’ll let us know when you see him come in,” he said. “You might let him know, too, that we’ve been asking for him.”
She snatched up the coin eagerly, promising that when Mr. Brockton put in an appearance, Pickett and his colleague would be the first to know. With this he was forced to be content, but at the top of the stairs he turned to Harry.
“You can go on to our room. I’m going to have one more try at bearding the lion in his den.”
Harry readily agreed, and a moment later Pickett was knocking once more on the door next to theirs. Once again, there was no answer.
“I don’t suppose our man could be a Nonconformist,” Pickett speculated without much conviction as he joined Harry in their room. “I believe some of those Methodist sermons can run rather long.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to drag me off to some other church next Sunday!” exclaimed Harry, who had already shed his blue coat and was in the process of unbuttoning his red waistcoat.
“No, for by next Sunday I hope to be back in London,” Pickett said emphatically.
Harry regarded him with a quizzical expression. “You sound awfully sure of yourself. Do you have such high hopes for the widow, then?”
Pickett let out a long sigh. “Wishful thinking, I’m afraid. Until we can discover why Brockton sent for us, our hands are tied.”
“Look here,” Harry began haltingly, with none of the impudence that usually characterized his conversation, “do you suppose the fellow might be—I don’t know—unable to meet with us?”
Pickett frowned. “Exactly what are you suggesting?”
Harry gave an uncomfortable little laugh. “I guess I’m wondering if he might be dead.”
Pickett regarded his colleague with new respect. In fact, he had wondered that very thing—more than once, in fact, but his suspicions were influenced by the case he had worked a month earlier in the Lake District, in which his contact had been murdered before Pickett could discover the reason for his summons. He had not expected the same discernment from Harry Carson, and acknowledged somewhat ruefully that, once again, Mr. Colquhoun knew what he was doing.
“Go ahead, tell me I’m barmy,” Harry said with a nervous laugh, breaking the strained silence. “It won’t be the first time I’ve heard it.”
Pickett shook his head. “No, no, it isn’t that. In fact, I’ve wondered the same thing. It’s too soon to jump to any conclusions, but we must consider the possibility.”
“So, what do we do now, chief? Comb the area for a body?”
“Not just yet. First we need to find someone—anyone!—who can tell us about Brockton.”
“Exactly what is it that you want to know?”
Pickett sank onto the foot of the bed with another sigh, this one of frustration. “Anything would be an improvement. At this point, I’d settle for knowing what the fellow looks like.”
“In that case, I’m your man,” declared Harry, quite in his old manner.
“Oh? And how is that?”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, that game pullet downstairs seems to fancy me.”
“The innkeeper’s daughter, you mean?”
“If there’s another one, I hadn’t noticed her. You take the Widow Avery; I’ll take our host’s daughter.”
“I was thinking of starting out with the stables. Unless he came on the stage, Brockton must have left his rig, or else a hack, there. I shall have to inquire.”
“Why not let Thomas do it?”
“What’s that?” Pickett asked, with an arrested expression.
“Let Thomas do it,” Harry said again.
“You’re determined to steal my valet, aren’t you?”
“Not at all,” Harry assured him. “Thomas is putting up over the stables, so he’s bound to have formed some connections there. They might talk more freely to him than they would to either of us.” As Pickett pondered the practicality of this suggestion, Carson enlarged upon it. “Of course, if he finds that assisting in an investigation is more exciting than ironing your neckcloths—well, I can see why you might not want to tempt him.”
“I’ll have you know I trust Thomas implicitly!”
“Of course you do,” Harry agreed. “Just not so much that you would let him take part in the investigation, when he’s dying for a piece of it.”
“Just not so much that I would put an amateur in a position where he might literally die for a piece if it,” Pickett retorted. In a more moderate tone, he added, “You may never have been in a spot where your life was in danger, but I have. I would never intent
ionally put someone else in that position.”
A more perceptive person than Harry Carson might have noticed Pickett’s expression and deduced that he was no longer thinking of his valet. But at that moment there was a light scratching at the door, and it opened to reveal Thomas bearing an armload of wet linen.
“I’ve taken the liberty of washing your things, sir, and Mr. Carson’s, too,” he told Pickett. “Mind you, I wouldn’t usually do such a thing on a Sunday, but I didn’t know when else I might get dibs on the laundry room. I’m afraid I’ll have to hang them in here to dry. I could do it in the stable, but I didn’t think you’d want your shirts smelling like horse.”
“No, thank you,” Pickett said emphatically. “I’m sure we can tolerate being a bit crowded while they dry.”
“I say, Thomas,” Harry put in before Pickett could shush him, “you wouldn’t mind asking a few questions around the stables, would you?”
Thomas brightened at once. “Me? You mean it, sir?”
As this last was directed toward Pickett, he was obliged perforce to agree. “We still haven’t been able to run this Mr. Brockton to ground. Mr. Carson thought you might have formed some connections in the stables, and that they might be more likely to talk to you than they would to either of us.”
“Well, I won’t deny that me and a few of the lads got up a game of nine-pins after they’d fed and watered all the horses,” Thomas admitted. “Still, I wouldn’t want it to be known that I suspected them of anything havey-cavey.”
“We don’t suspect anyone of anything,” Pickett put in quickly. “We just want to find someone who has seen the elusive Mr. Brockton.”
“I’ll see what I can find out, sir,” Thomas declared stoutly.
“In the meantime, perhaps you could do something about this loose button,” his master continued, displaying the one at the band of his left wrist and at the same time giving Thomas a subtle reminder of the real purpose for which he had been allowed to accompany Pickett on the journey.
Having dispatched Thomas on this errand and Carson to see what he might discover from the innkeeper’s beauteous daughter, Pickett spent a quiet afternoon in the room, listening for any sound that might suggest Mr. Brockton’s presence in the room next door. Having nothing else to do with himself, he twice walked down the corridor and tried knocking on the door again, but with no more satisfactory results than he’d had before. He supposed he might write another letter to Julia, but he had very little to tell. He’d made no progress on the investigation at all beyond an assignation—there was that word again—with Mrs. Avery the next day, and he had no intention of divulging such a thing to his wife, lest she draw the same conclusions as Harry Carson had done. In fact, there was nothing he could say to her but I’m very lonely and I miss you very much—in other words, requiring her to pay a shilling only to be cast into a fit of the dismals.
He brightened somewhat when Thomas returned from his errand, but the valet’s report was not encouraging.
“No one in the stables has seen hide nor hair of anyone named Brockton, although I asked ’em all,” Thomas said.
“And none of the rigs in the stable belong to him? None of the hacks?”
Thomas’s gaze faltered. “I couldn’t say, sir. I didn’t think to ask ’em that.” Seeing that this was the wrong answer, he was eager to make amends. “I can go back down and ask, sir. I can be back in a trice—”
Pickett sighed. “Never mind, Thomas. That won’t be necessary.”
“I’m sorry sir,” Thomas said, clearly feeling some further commentary was called for. “I didn’t know—I didn’t think—”
“It’s all right,” Pickett assured him, and tried hard to mean it. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine, for sending you on such an errand without any preparation.”
“Yes, sir,” Thomas said, albeit with so hangdog an expression that Pickett felt compelled to offer some further consolation.
“Look, Thomas,” he began haltingly, “you should know that this occupation is not nearly so exciting as Mr. Carson makes it sound. In fact, I should say any investigation is nine parts tedium. Still, if you’re that interested in—that is, if you’re no longer happy in service and have a mind to try something else, I would—I would be glad to speak to Mr. Colquhoun on your behalf.”
The valet’s eyes grew round. “You’d do that for me, sir?”
“If you wanted it, yes. You should be aware, though, that a man on the Foot Patrol earns quite a bit less than you’re being paid as a valet. It’s not until one is promoted to principal officer and can accept private commissions that one has the opportunity to earn real money.”
“Yes, sir,” Thomas said, nodding his head vigorously. “I understand.”
“You should know, too, that I would dislike very much to lose you as a valet,” Pickett confessed. “I don’t know where I would find another one who wouldn’t look down his nose at me as if I were something he’d discovered stuck to the bottom of his shoe.”
“I’m sure anyone ought to consider himself lucky to have an employer as easy to please—”
The door flew open to admit Carson, breathing heavily and stuffing the tail of his shirt into the waistband of his breeches with more regard for haste than fashion.
“Carson?” Pickett stared in bewilderment as his colleague slammed the door shut behind him and leaned against the panel as if to barricade it. “What the—?”
“Had to—get away—” Harry panted. “Escaped—out the window—”
At last, Pickett thought, we seem to be getting somewhere! Aloud, he asked, “Who was it, Carson? Who was after you?”
“Father,” was Harry’s breathless reply.
“Your father?” echoed Pickett, bewildered.
“Not mine—hers.”
“Whose?” Pickett asked in growing impatience.
“Nancy—innkeeper’s daughter.”
Revelation dawned. “Devil take it, Harry, can’t you question a possible witness with your breeches up?”
“Of course I can!” retorted Harry, bristling at this slur upon his investigative skills. “But why would I want to? Far more pleasant with ’em down, you know,” he added with an impudent grin.
“We didn’t come to Dunbury for your personal enjoyment! Did you manage to discover anything useful, or were you too busy er—um—” Pickett’s attempt at a stern reproof was considerably hampered by his inability to come up with a suitable word for his colleague’s actions that was not insulting to Nancy, however obliging that damsel might have been.
Harry, recognizing Pickett’s dilemma, did nothing to help him, but observed his struggles with wicked amusement.
Seeing no assistance was to be had from that quarter, Pickett returned to his original question, this time without embellishment. “Did you find out anything useful?”
“I’m afraid not, chief. Nan says she’s never seen Brockton.”
“What, never?” Pickett asked, his embarrassment forgotten. “But if the fellow wrote his letter from here two days before it arrived in Bow Street, and then it took us another two days to get here—why, he must have been here for five days at the least reckoning!”
Carson shrugged. “Maybe he likes to keep to himself.”
“Maybe,” Pickett said doubtfully. “But in that case, where is he? He hasn’t been in his room.”
“Maybe he never wrote from Dunbury at all, but from some other location entirely,” Carson continued.
“You may have something there,” Pickett conceded. “I’d wondered the same thing myself.”
Carson nodded sagely. “Of course you did.”
“And just what is that supposed to mean?” demanded Pickett.
Harry’s blue eyes grew round with something that was apparently supposed to be innocence. “Why, nothing.”
“If you’ll recall, I mentioned such a thing to Mr. Colquhoun when he first assigned us to the case,” Pickett insisted, unwilling to let the insult pass.
Carson shrugged. “
Anything you say, chief.”
Pickett was far from satisfied, but recognized he had no choice but to let the matter drop. “Be that as it may, Brockton must have been on the premises by the evening we arrived.”
“How do you figure that, sir?” asked Thomas, who had moved to the fire and was now rearranging the two shirts hanging from chairbacks to dry.
“Because the innkeeper’s daughter didn’t seem at all surprised at our asking for him. If there was no one here registered under that name, surely she would have said so—unless, of course, she took one look at Mr. Carson here and everything else went right out of her head.”
Carson grinned appreciatively. “It probably wouldn’t be the first time. Nor, hopefully, the last. That’s why I don’t intend to be taken in by any female for a long, long time.”
“My dear Carson,” Pickett said pityingly, “what makes you think you’ll have any choice in the matter?”
Pickett himself, at least, had not. After a disappointment in his youth (a disappointment which, looking back, he now recognized as a lucky escape) he’d guarded his heart for five long years—until one look at Julia, Lady Fieldhurst, standing pale and frightened over the body of her murdered husband, had crumbled his carefully maintained defenses to dust.
“Someday, some woman is going to make you eat those words,” he predicted with a confidence born of experience. “And when she does, I hope I’m there to see it—and laugh.”
PICKETT WAS NOT LAUGHING the next day, however, when Mr. Edward Gaines Brockton had still not materialized. The more he thought on the matter—and he’d had plenty of opportunity for thinking, as it seemed to be the only thing he could do unless and until he ran his quarry to ground—the more Pickett became convinced that the man’s presence in Dunbury had more to do with business than pleasure.
“If he had friends or family in the area, surely he must have been staying with them, rather than putting up at an inn.” As was his usual habit when deep in thought, he paced the floor, expounding this theory to Harry while Thomas listened in. “It stands to reason, then, that he must have some business here—some legal matter, perhaps, or a commercial enterprise. If you’ll recall, I said I thought he might be a merchant, based on his letter.”
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