The inn had filled up with travellers from a coach bound for Exeter, and the dining room had become a little boisterous with men and women glad to stretch their legs and already a little the worse for wear with the drinks they’d consumed. There was singing and laughter from the tap-room. Some travellers were being shown up to rooms, many of them, Blackdown mused, here for the fair.
A man sat beside Blackdown at the long table. He was probably aged about thirty, thought Blackdown, a little younger than himself, but he was tending towards the fat, red-faced and balding. He grinned at Blackdown and guzzled his small beer noisily.
‘Hard to beat the Blue Boar,’ he said to Blackdown. ‘Chicken, sauce, potatoes, carrots and cheese and eggs, all for a shilling. Down London way it’s far meaner fare and fare more expensive for the privilege.’ He looked at Blackdown. ‘But you’re a man who knows London, I’ll wager, judging by the looks of you. Are you here for the fair?’
‘What is it to you?’ said Blackdown shortly.
‘This man is being civil, is all,’ he replied.
‘This man tries to take a drink in peace,’ said Blackdown.
‘Apologies,’ said the man, lifting his beer. He slurped it down and emptied his tankard. ‘You’re Thomas Blackdown, right?’ he said quietly.
‘I may be.’
‘I know you are. I made enquiries.’
‘It’s none of your business who I am,’ said Blackdown.
The man’s beer-wet lips stretched into a smile. ‘I’ve made it my business. I knew your brother, Jonathan.’
Thomas Blackdown’s eyes gave nothing away. ‘In what way did you know my brother?’
‘I know how he got himself killed, that’s what I know.’
Blackdown’s body stiffened. ‘I know how he was killed. What I need to know is who killed him.’
The man sucked in a breath that seemed to rattle in his throat. ‘I can help you with that, too.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Harvey Grey.’
‘And who is Harvey Grey to know such a thing?’
‘Let me tell you, Mr high-and-mighty Blackdown, this Harvey Grey knows many things, and so it will be wise of you not look down your nose at me in such an ill manner.’ His voice was low, deliberately so. His eyes darted nervously this way and that, scanning the people in the inn. ‘I haven’t got much time. This is not the place to discuss such a thing. I can reveal all. How your brother came to meet his end and who is responsible. Such a tale I can tell you would not believe.’
‘You’ll tell me now!’ snarled Blackdown under his breath. He’d removed a pistol from his coat and had slid it under the table. The end of its barrel now pressed into the man’s side.
‘Which is why I chose to tell you here, amongst a crowd. I’ve heard how cold you can be, but you’re not foolish enough to do anything in a packed place such as this. And shooting me won’t do you any good now, will it? A dead man is hardly likely to talk, is he? You soldiers, you shoot first and think later.’
‘Don’t toy with me, Grey. What is it you’re wanting? I sense there’s more to this.’
‘I need to get away. I need money. I need lots of it. You pay me what I ask and I’ll tell you everything I know about your brother’s death, and about goings-on so fantastic that it will make you drop pale in shock.’ He rose from the table. ‘So put the gun away, Mr Blackdown; it’ll do you no good. Do you like to see a good show?’
‘I hate shows.’
‘I thought as much. I’ll wager there’s little room for pleasure in your heart, is there? Well tonight you will have to swallow your disdain and attend the show being put on by Pettigrew’s company in Shafter’s barn at the northern end of the town. You know of it?’
‘I remember it,’ he said dryly.
‘It begins soon, in an hour or so. Be there. You can’t miss me - I’m playing the Prince Regent in a grand farce. I’ll send someone to fetch you afterwards. Then we’ll talk in detail. If you are not prepared to pay handsomely for this then don’t bother turning up. I have to go now or I shall be missed.’
‘If I find you were involved in Jonathan’s murder then I’ll pay you everything you deserve, make no mistake.’
‘Your threats don’t scare me, Blackdown. They are nothing compared to what awaits me should word get out I said any of this. I have far more to be afraid of than you.’
Harvey Grey hurried from the inn. Thomas Blackdown’s meal was brought to the table and set down before him. Though the smell of roasted fowl rose up to make his mouth water and reminded him he hadn’t tasted anything decent in weeks, his hunger was pushed aside by his racing thoughts, and he found he could not concentrate on anything as base as eating. He forced the meal down quickly and went outside into the darkened street.
The man might be a fraud, he decided, but there was only one way to find out.
Shafter’s barn, the largest available in the vicinity and traditionally used for such events, had been cleared and the impressions of a crude stage created at the far end. An impression because there was no stage as such; a wooden frame had been constructed over which had been draped tattered green curtains. Paper screens decorated with gaudy paintings of castles and mountains stood at either end to give the semblance of wings. The orchestra consisted of two old men sitting on stools with fiddles at the ready, a small battery of chairs placed before them for those in the audience that wished to pay more for the dubious privilege. Boxes, hay bales and anything else that came to hand provided the only other seating in this makeshift theatre, and those that didn’t find a seat sat on the hay-strewn floor. The whole was lit by lanterns and candles in candle holders, and when these ran out then by candles pressed into lumps of clay.
Thomas Blackdown stood at the back of the barn leaning against one of the walls with his arms folded, and he watched the excited people filing in to the sound of a beating drum and taking up their places. It was rare entertainment for them, and he sensed from the infectious cloud of jollity that hung over field workers and town dwellers alike that for an hour or so they might shrug off their hard everyday lives and escape into another, altogether more colourful world.
Presently the barn door was closed and a single trumpet announced Commodore Pettigrew as he stepped through the curtains to the front of the stage. He gave a large and meandering speech about transports of delight and other such embellishments, most of the words, Blackdown guessed, hardly understood by the majority of spectators, but applauded all the same for their undoubted eloquence, wit and brilliance. He wore the same silver-laced hat, but had put on a bright red coat whose shiny brass buttons glinted magically under the twinkling lights. He told everyone not to miss coming to his ‘marvellous field of entertainments, amusements and delights’ over the next few days, where they were guaranteed to find treasures of the orient, fortune-tellers, a cow that dances like a fine lady, puppets so real they almost breathe, acrobats, magicians and creatures from nightmare and fairytale gathered together in one place for them to marvel at or to curl their toes.
‘Do not miss the pig-faced woman,’ he said in a melodious, sing-song voice, ‘whose limbs are as fair and delicate as any lady, but whose snout pokes from beneath her bonnet; do not miss seeing the Mermaid of the Grand Banks, captured by a whaler; or the duck-boy, whose mother was scared by a mallard that flew into the room during childbirth – a boy born with hands and feet all webbed and enabling him to swim as easily as the mallard that brought about the sad transformation.’ The audience gasped at the prospects and a positive murmur went around the enthralled audience. With that, Pettigrew announced the first act. ‘For your delectation and delight, we, Commodore Pettigrew’s Most Marvellous Company of Entertainers Extraordinaire, take you back to the glorious 18th of June 1815, and present an exhilarating and most accurate account of the decisive and much lauded Battle of Waterloo!’
A loud crash on a bass drum, followed by a huge puff of gunpowder, made the audience gasp. There were the sounds of horses hooves rattled o
ut on coconuts, and Napoleon, in she shape of a white-faced dwarf with circles of red on his cheeks, pranced through the gap in the green curtains on a hobbyhorse, much to the delight of the audience who jeered and booed good-humouredly, shouting ‘Down with Boney!’. They laughed when he fell from his horse and struggled to right himself.
Thomas Blackdown rolled his eyes and watched the crude play take shape. The man who played the Duke of Wellington, with a large false nose fastened to his face with string, posed on a box covered with green cloth to make it look like a hill, directing his army of three noble soldiers against Napoleon’s comedic two. Somewhere along the line, the French lost their breeches and had wooden bayonets shoved up their backsides, thus chasing them off the stage to thunderous applause and shouts of ‘God save Old Nosey!’ as the Duke bowed and accepted his many plaudits. Then there followed an audience between the Duke of Wellington and Harvey Grey dressed as the Prince Regent, almost unrecognisable under the heavy makeup and padding that made him look almost round. He was given turnips to eat from a trough, and grunted like a pig as he did so, and the audience cried with laughter at the scene. But they fell quiet when King George stumbled through the curtains, dressed shabbily in a long white robe, his beard reaching to his waist. He stood there briefly and said he might be mad, but no more than his government. He asked the audience how their cattle were doing, and what of the harvest, and that received three cheers and the almost universal cry of ‘God bless you, Farmer George!’
The gaudy tableau finished and a large construction covered by a decorated canvas was pushed to the front of the stage by two burly stagehands. Pettigrew whipped off the canvas and the audience gasped to see a set of gallows, a noose hanging portentously from the crude affair.
‘Behold!’ cried Pettigrew. ‘The queen of death! The taker of souls! The gallows! Who would cheat death?’
A pretty woman, with red feathers threaded through her long golden ringlets, was led by two players dressed as soldiers up wooden steps onto the base of the gallows. She had her hands tied behind her back, and before a black bag was placed over her head she cried out: ‘Oh, please forgive my sins! For I have murdered my lover and his blood is on my hands!’
The audience booed her and her head was covered by the black bag, the noose lowered and secured around her slender, vulnerable throat.
‘See how the villainess quakes!’ Pettigrew said dramatically as the two soldiers stood aside. ‘For soon she must meet her maker and answer to Him that sees all!’
Pettigrew put his hand on a lever. The audience went deathly quiet as expectation bloomed around the room like a cold, creeping mould. He yanked the lever and the young woman’s feet plummeted into the base of the gallows. She hung there, the noose taut, her slender, still form swinging slightly, and a groan went up from the audience, a number putting their hands to their mouths in shock. Then the lights were dimmed as the corpse was lowered by the soldiers.
‘But she does not die, for lo! Her ghost walks among the living!’
He pointed to the back of the barn and the young woman with the red feathers in her golden hair appeared in the open doorway.
The audience first gasped their disbelief and then erupted into a roar of approval and applause.
‘How did you do it?’ someone asked as the gallows was covered over and wheeled away.
‘There is no trickery, only magic!’ Pettigrew responded, pleased with the reaction. ‘But behold, our ghost now becomes the knife thrower’s target. She came to the front, taking a bow, and was trussed ceremoniously to a rough cross, a large potato placed on her head and one in each of her outstretched hands.
He watched disinterestedly as the knife-thrower tossed his blades. Watched as the woman gave her bows and went off stage. Blackdown looked around for Harvey Grey but there was no sign of him. Perhaps it had been a hoax after all, he thought.
A boy tugged at Thomas Blackdown’s coattails. He looked down as the young lad placed a piece of paper in his hand and scampered away. Stepping outside into the cool air, Blackdown unfolded the paper and read the uneducated scrawl: MEAT ME AT THE BAK OFF THE BARNE.
Night had drawn its cloak over the land. The hills black against the slightly lighter hue of the sky. Blackdown trudged down by the side of the long barn, the noise from the appreciative crowd inside booming. There was a single lamp burning, hung by a nail onto a stout wooden beam hammered into the ground, but its light did little to put a dent in the encroaching night.
‘Grey?’ he said quietly. There was no response, only the shifting of the leaves on trees beside the barn. Thomas Blackdown pulled out his pistol and cocked it, stealthily going round to the back of the barn. He heard the moan of a cow, hooves trampling soft ground behind a wooden fence, their shapes vague in the gloom. ‘Where the devil are you, Grey?’ he said, his voice seeming overly loud.
A cheer went up from inside the barn.
Something was wrong, he thought.
He went to the wooden beam and lifted off the lantern, shining it before him. He saw something on the ground shift under the thin breeze. He bent down and picked it up. A tiny red feather. His eyes narrowing he pocketed the feather and searched further ahead and came across scuff marks on the ground, pointing in the direction of the fenced-off cows. He followed the trail. The cows backed off at seeing him, the lantern lighting up the whites of their suspicious, glaring eyes.
As they retreated he saw the body lying face down in the mud, a thick dark pool of blood forming a gruesome pillow for its head. Blackdown clambered over the fence, set the lamp down and turned the body over.
It was Harvey Grey.
His throat had been cut, so deep it had almost severed the head from its shoulders.
9
The Exchanging of Feathers
‘His acting was bad, but it wasn’t that bad,’ said Commodore Pettigrew, looking down at the lifeless body of Harvey Grey. ‘Though many have thought it so and threatened just such a punishment.’ He shook his head solemnly, taking off his hat. Others from the theatre company gathered round. He raised his hands. ‘What am I to do without a Prince Regent?’
‘The man is dead,’ said Blackdown, ‘and all you care about is where your next Prince Regent will come from?’
Pettigrew stared deep into Blackdown’s eyes. ‘A dead man is relieved of making a living. A living man has to continue making it. Life must go on.’
There came the sound of laughter and the scraping of violins from inside the barn. Life did indeed still go on, thought Blackdown. ‘He said he wanted to meet me,’ said Blackdown. ‘He had important things to tell me.’
‘Harvey Grey never had anything important to tell anyone,’ said Pettigrew, ‘other than the tales he thought were important, like playing the London stages, which, I’ll wager, were more products of a drink-sodden imagination. But whichever way you look at it, he’s not going to say anything now, is he? And he’s left me in the lurch as well. Inconsiderate, selfish bastard that he was!’
‘Perhaps someone wanted him to keep quiet,’ said Blackdown.
‘He was attacked because he owed people money,’ Pettigrew said flatly. ‘There was never a more ardent, or more hopeless a gambler than Harvey Grey. He’d been threatened before. Seen it with my own eyes. And thus he lies here with his gizzard slit like a goose at Christmas because of his infernal betting. He’d put a wager down on anything, from a racing snail to a cockfight. Well, Harvey Grey, it caught up with you good and proper and I should have put money on the outcome myself, for I would be wallowing in guineas now!’
The sound of horses’ hooves pounding the soft soil of the field caused them all to turn their heads to the sound. Blackdown saw Pettigrew roll his eyes as two riders wearing black leather hats and blue coats studded with glinting brass buttons came thundering up to them. Their mounts were old and heavy-set farm horses that didn’t appear to appreciate the energy they’d had to expend. They snorted disdainfully. One of the men dismounted.
He was relatively yo
ung in years, and his ill-fitting uniform seemed to hang on him, making him look even more ungainly than he was. ‘We received word about the murder,’ he said, tying the horse’s bridle to the fence. He stepped closer to the group of people and stared down at the corpse, his nose wrinkling. ‘Who is he?’ he asked.
‘Harvey Grey,’ said Commodore Pettigrew. ‘My Prince Regent…’
The man squinted confusedly at Pettigrew. ‘Is he dead?’
Blackdown laughed hollowly. ‘I don’t think it is a second mouth that has opened up in his throat, do you? Of course he’s dead. Who are you? Parish constables? Night watchmen?’
‘I will not be counted amongst their inferior numbers,’ he said disdainfully. The young man moved closer to Blackdown, his eyes growing colder. ‘I am an officer of Sir Peter Lansdowne’s Blackdown Horse Patrol, and will be treated with the respect that post confers on me. More to the point, who are you, sir?’
‘I don’t know of any Blackdown Horse Patrol,’ said Blackdown.
‘Then you had better learn of it. We are here to keep law and order. Sir Peter Lansdowne had the company formed, following a model that has been successful in London – the Bow Street Horse Patrol.’
‘You fight crime?’ said Blackdown, suppressing a chuckle. He looked at the man’s leather belt which housed a wooden truncheon, a beat-up cutlass and a worn old pistol. ‘I suspect the criminals are shaking in their boots.’
The young man’s face was seen to colour, even in the dim lantern light. He withdrew his truncheon and rapped Blackdown’s chest hard with it. ‘Do not think to mock or cross us,’ he warned.
‘We don’t mean trouble,’ Commodore Pettigrew interrupted.
BLACKDOWN (a thriller and murder mystery) Page 8