A Date with the Executioner

by Edward Marston

  ‘That’s neither here nor there,’ said Hannah. ‘If I’m honest, I’m afraid that the very sight of the man will make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I’ll be in no state for the reasonable debate that Mr Fleet is suggesting.’

  ‘The deadlock has to be broken somehow, Hannah.’

  ‘Why must I make concessions?’

  ‘All that the letter asks is that you recognise Mr Mundy’s readiness to accept change and agree to search for a compromise acceptable to both of you. You’re under no pressure to do anything that offends you.’

  Hannah picked up the missive again but she had no time to read it again because Paul had just returned to the house. Coming into the room, he embraced Hannah then gave his sister-in-law a kiss.

  ‘Dirk tells me that there’s been nothing to report,’ he said. ‘It’s as I thought. Nobody will dare to come back because they know we’re on guard now.’

  ‘Hannah’s had a letter from Mr Fleet,’ said Charlotte. ‘He’s calling a truce.’

  ‘What does he say?’

  ‘You can read it for yourself,’ said Hannah, ‘but only after you’ve told us where you’ve been and who you’ve seen. I’m not yet ready to make a decision about the play. In any case, it pales beside a murder investigation. What have you learnt?’

  Paul told them more or less what he’d told Ackford and Huckvale at the gallery. He believed that the dinner party had been stage-managed in order to make possible a meeting between Bowerman and Laetitia Somerville. Who had actually devised the scheme, he was not sure, but Sir Geoffrey Melrose and Rollo Winters had been willing accomplices. Now that the relationship had ended with Bowerman’s murder, both men had tried to distance themselves from any guilt. The two women listened open-mouthed to the revelations.

  ‘Miss Somerville is capable of such villainy?’ asked Charlotte.

  ‘Oh, I think she could do much worse,’ said Paul. ‘What now seems clear is that she and the so-called Captain Hamer are working together.’

  ‘Does that mean they’re lovers?’

  ‘I’m not sure about that, Charlotte, but their guilt is incontestable.’

  ‘Then they should be in custody,’ said Hannah. ‘Why don’t you and Peter arrest them and take them before a magistrate?’

  ‘It’s too early for that. Lock them away and we might never find out who killed Mr Bowerman because they are the only people who can lead us to the killer. Someone is venting his spleen on them by trying to incriminate them. Frankly,’ said Paul, ‘I’m more eager to catch the man who did murder Mr Bowerman rather than those who plotted to have him shot dead in a duel. Once that’s done, Peter and I can round up Hamer and Miss Somerville.’ He looked at Charlotte. ‘By the way, where is my brother?’

  ‘He rode off to see someone who lives near Epping Forest,’ she said, glancing up at the clock on the mantelpiece, ‘but he should be back by now.’

  Leonard Impey had feared the reproaches of his old friend and client and he had good reason to do so. What Peter brought back from his visit to Jacob Picton was a letter of blistering criticism. It not only accused the manager of naivety and incompetence, it severed a relationship that had lasted for over thirty years. Impey collapsed into his chair and shrugged helplessly.

  ‘It’s all true, Mr Skillen. I deserve to be skinned alive like this.’

  ‘Mr Picton did have some words of praise for you, sir.’

  ‘Well, there’s not one of them in his letter. What did he say?’

  Peter told him of his visit to Epping Forest and how devastated the old man had been when he learnt what had happened. While he had never met a Mrs Mallory, he’d remembered an Edith Loveridge only too well. She’d wormed her way into Picton’s social circle by means of a friendship with one of his daughters-in-law. They’d shared an interest in painting and, between them, produced a number of landscapes of the surrounding countryside.

  ‘So she didn’t come to London in search of an artist, as she claimed,’ said Impey, sourly. ‘Edith Loveridge, alias Arabella Kenyon, actually was one. But how could she forge Mr Picton’s calligraphy so convincingly?’

  ‘I asked him that,’ said Peter.

  ‘What was his explanation?’

  ‘He wrote her a letter of thanks when she gave him a watercolour of the house. The painting impressed him and used to be on a wall in his study. As a result of my visit, I expect that it’s been destroyed.’

  ‘And was he absolutely sure that she’s now posing as Mrs Hester Mallory?’

  ‘He was prepared to put his life savings on it, sir.’

  ‘So before she deceived me, she insinuated herself into his affections.’

  ‘Mr Picton never really liked the woman and, of course, he never advanced her any money. When I told him the name that she used in London, he was livid.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘His wife’s name is Hester.’

  ‘It was very cruel of her to utilise it in such a way.’

  ‘At least we know a lot more about her, sir.’

  ‘But do you know enough to catch her yet?’

  ‘I feel that I’m getting closer,’ said Peter. ‘That’s all I can claim.’

  Impey puffed his cheeks and went off into a world of his own. All that Peter could do was to wait. When the manager eventually came out of his daydream, he apologised profusely.

  ‘I owe you profound thanks for finding out the truth, Mr Skillen.’

  ‘I won’t give up until I’ve caught up with the lady.’

  ‘What about this murder enquiry in which you’re entangled?’

  ‘My brother has taken the lead there,’ said Peter. ‘I’ll stay involved through him. As for the woman Mr Picton called “the fatal temptress”, he had some advice.’

  ‘It’s in his letter. Since I’m such an easy prey to beauty, he urges me to retire.’

  ‘That’s a matter for you, sir. In the short term, there’s something you could do that might be of help to me. Warn the other banks that there’s a viper in town.’

  ‘You know quite well that I can’t do that,’ said Impey. ‘If one makes a huge error of judgement, one doesn’t want to advertise the fact to one’s competitors.’

  ‘That’s not what you’d be doing, Mr Impey.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘There’s no reason why anyone should know what really happened in this office,’ explained Peter. ‘I’m not going to tell them that you were fleeced. My intention is to warn them that you were approached by a forger but that you were clever enough to discern the forgery. They’ll look on you favourably, sir. You’ll become something of a hero in the banking world.’

  ‘Will I?’

  ‘You’ll also be making it more likely for the woman to be caught. If I pass on the warning to other managers, it may well be that one of them has been approached by her to transact business. Miss Kenyon wants to make as much money as she can before disappearing from the city. Let’s prevent her from doing that.’

  ‘Yes, but in a sense we’ll be telling them a lie. I was fleeced.’

  ‘It’s a necessary deception,’ said Peter, ‘in order to save others. Members of the banking fraternity will thank you for alerting them and know what to do if Miss Kenyon or Mrs Mallory knocks on their doors. I urge you to let me raise the alarm, sir. You will stand to gain for it,’ he pointed out. ‘If I can catch this woman, you may well get your money back.’

  Impey laughed with relief. ‘Then do it, Mr Skillen. Do it instantly.’

  Rawdon Carr was troubled by the news that his friend’s house had been spied upon. Calling on Hamer that afternoon, he was told about the confrontation with the Runners. The accusation that they were in league together had been a sobering moment for them.

  ‘That would have ruined everything,’ said Carr, uneasily. ‘How did you extricate yourselves?’

  ‘We browbeat them,’ explained Hamer. ‘Between us, Laetitia and I reduced them to snivelling wrecks. We forced them to apologise and away they went.�
��

  ‘Don’t ignore the warning, Stephen. They caught you together. That’s what alarms me. What if it had been someone else? Had the Skillen brothers linked you and Laetitia, they wouldn’t have been put to flight quite so easily.’

  ‘We realise that.’

  ‘I suggest that the two of you keep well apart for a while.’

  ‘We’ve already agreed to do that, Rawdon.’

  ‘That’s a sound decision,’ said Carr. ‘Stand by it.’ He changed tack. ‘Have you had any more thoughts about Eleanor Gold?’

  ‘Indeed, I have. I’ve been trawling through my memories of her. At the time, of course, I was swept away by her charms – and they were considerable. I always knew that someone like her would have a colourful past. Eleanor was very experienced.’

  ‘Then she’d have sensed that you were tiring of her.’

  ‘That’s more than possible.’

  ‘So she might well have plotted her revenge. It looks as if it might have involved stealing that dagger.’

  ‘I’m inclined to agree.’

  ‘If she stole it, who actually used it?’

  ‘I don’t know, Rawdon. It can only have been one of her former conquests, I suppose. Living as a courtesan, she will have had dozens of admirers.’

  ‘Did she ever mention their names?’

  ‘Oh, yes. She sometimes teased me that, if she were not with me, she could still be enjoying the perquisites of being Sir James Babington’s mistress. She made it sound like a life of endless indulgence. I had to remind her that Sir James lost a leg in a riding accident.’

  ‘What was her response to that?’

  ‘Eleanor said that his income of forty thousand pounds a year was adequate consolation and that it helped her to overlook his physical shortcomings.’

  ‘How did they part?’

  ‘She always maintained that it was on the best of terms.’

  ‘Then she could easily have gone back to him.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been wondering,’ said Hamer, running a hand across his chin, ‘and there are a couple of other names that have popped into my mind.’

  ‘Let’s start with Sir James,’ suggested Carr. ‘I can make discreet enquiries about him. If he’s recently acquired a new mistress, she might turn out to be Eleanor Gold. Ah, I see a problem,’ he admitted. ‘Would a one-legged man be capable of stabbing someone in the back?’

  ‘Sir James is a politician. Back-stabbing comes naturally to him.’ They traded a laugh. ‘Seriously, he’d never do his own dirty work. He’d hire an assassin. But this is all conjecture. I can’t be certain that he’s in any way involved. Eleanor might have returned to someone else altogether. I can give you at least another four names.’

  ‘We’ll divide them up between us.’

  ‘Thank you, Rawdon. You’re always so helpful.’

  ‘My motive is pure self-preservation,’ said the other with a grin. ‘I’m a partner in the enterprise. If you and Laetitia fall, then so do I.’

  ‘Well, it won’t be the Runners who bring us down. The people we must fear are these anonymous enemies who know far too much about us. That disturbs me. Then again,’ he continued, ‘we have Paul Skillen and his brother creeping up on us. I’d hoped you’d have dealt with them by now.’

  ‘I promised to divert them,’ said Carr, ‘and I’ve kept my word.’

  ‘What have you done?’

  ‘You’ll soon see, Stephen. The Skillens will no longer be a nuisance to us. They’ll have an urgent problem to solve.’

  Jem Huckvale was accustomed to dealing with a whole range of customers at the gallery, from nervous young men who wished to learn the noble art of self-defence to overconfident ones who felt they were expert swordsmen and who needed someone on whom to practise. Huckvale had even taught a woman how to handle a bow and arrow. When she was there, Charlotte handled all the bookings and recorded the names neatly in the ledger. Checking the list, Huckvale saw that his next task of the afternoon was an hour with one Mr Philip Needham, who wished for instruction in shooting. It was only when he actually arrived that it became clear that Needham was a man of the cloth. Of medium height, he was a solid individual in his thirties with a pleasant smile and a sense of other-worldliness about him. When he stepped into the shooting gallery, he answered the question burning its way into Huckvale’s brain.

  ‘Why am I here?’ he said. ‘That’s what you wish to know. Why does a priest who abjures violence of any kind want to become proficient with a gun?’

  ‘You wish to defend the church – is that it?’

  ‘Metaphorically, I defend the church every day and I do so with a combination of faith and prayer. I was called, Mr Huckvale. Do you know what that means? I heard the voice of God one day and it drew me to labour unceasingly on His behalf.’

  ‘Have you ever held a weapon before, Reverend?’

  ‘I’ve held the Bible, the greatest weapon in the world against sin.’

  ‘What about pistols?’

  ‘They are foreign to me and I must learn to fire them. Every summer, you see, we hold a church fete and one of the events is a shooting match. It’s won by the same obnoxious person time and again. My parishioners begged me to find someone to displace him as our champion.’ He gave a bow. ‘That honour falls to me.’

  ‘Then I will do my best to turn you into a winner,’ said Huckvale, ‘though it may take several lessons to do so.’

  ‘I’ll come every day if necessary.’

  Though he seemed an unlikely pupil, he was clearly dedicated. That would make the task much easier. Huckvale had taught far too many people who began with an enthusiasm that quickly diminished and made them half-hearted. Needham was acting out of commitment. The first thing he was taught was how to handle the weapon. Huckvale pointed out its constituent parts and warned him never to carry it with him if it was loaded. When Needham had memorised everything, his instructor turned to the target and explained how to hold the pistol straight. After loading the weapon, he fired it and hit the centre of the target.

  Needham applauded him. ‘That was magnificent.’

  ‘I do it many times a day, Reverend. Practice makes perfect.’

  ‘Then let me start practising at once. Please load it for me.’

  Huckvale obeyed then handed him the pistol. Squinting at the target, his pupil planted his feet in the way he’d been told and extended an arm. On the point of pulling the trigger, he suddenly swung round and held the pistol against Huckvale’s skull. His voice became harsher.

  ‘May God forgive me for it,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid that I’ve been lying to you. I can fire this as well as anybody, especially from close range. Please don’t give me the opportunity to do it, Mr Huckvale.’ He nudged his prisoner. ‘Start moving.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘We’re leaving by the backstairs. I have a friend waiting for us outside.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘No more questions,’ said the other, jabbing him in the ribs.

  ‘But I work here. I have other people to instruct.’

  ‘I’m the one giving the instruction now,’ said Needham. ‘If you dare to call for help, it will be the last time you ever utter a single word. Do you understand?’

  ‘You’re not a priest at all, are you?’

  ‘Be quiet and do as you’re told.’

  A second jab in the ribs hurt even more and made Huckvale wince. He was helpless. As long as the weapon was held on him, he was at the mercy of someone who was strong, ruthless and armed. Huckvale was pushed unceremoniously down the backstairs and along the corridor to the rear door. After the attack by the two dogs, it had been reinforced but it offered no protection now. Compelled to open it, Huckvale drew back the thick bolts then turned the large key. The door swung back on its hinges. Waiting for him outside, Huckvale saw, was a short, thickset man with a sack in his hand. It was the last thing the prisoner remembered because his head was struck hard from behind by the butt of the pistol an
d he fell forward into oblivion. He didn’t feel the sack being put over his head or realise that the man outside the door picked him up with ease and slung him over his shoulder.

  The carriage was only yards away. Huckvale was bundled into it.

  His visit to a third bank introduced Peter to Harold Oscott. The manager was a rotund man of middle years. Peter sensed that he was not entirely welcome. Whenever he’d called at the other banks to deliver his warning, he’d met with interest and gratitude. Oscott, however, had the look of someone who floated on a cloud of self-importance. The first thing he did when Peter was shown into his office was to consult his watch and shake his head.

  ‘I can only give you two minutes, Mr Skillen,’ he said.

  ‘You might find that I require rather more than that.’

  ‘I have appointments to honour. As it happens, there’s a particularly important customer about to arrive.’

  ‘He will be obliged to wait.’

  Oscott spluttered. ‘You can’t come in here and tell me how to conduct business,’ he protested. ‘If you’re from Mr Impey, as you claim, then you should confine your business to his bank.’

  ‘I come in the spirit of fellowship, sir. Bankers should support each other.’

  ‘We are rivals, sir. We thrive on competition.’

  ‘Are you saying that you won’t accept advice?’

  ‘Not if it comes from Impey or any other manager. This bank maintains the very highest standards and has done so for many years. Our reputation speaks for itself. That is why we’ve been so successful under my aegis.’

  ‘Mr Impey thwarted an attempt at fraud.’

  ‘That’s his concern.’

  ‘It may also be yours, sir,’ said Peter, annoyed by his peremptory manner. ‘Other bank managers have been more receptive to what I have to say. That makes your attitude all the more surprising.’

  ‘Good day to you, Mr Skillen,’ said the other, looking at his watch again. ‘Your time has run out. I need to speak to genuine customers.’

  ‘One of them may try to defraud you.’