For Deader or Worse

by Sheri Cobb South

“Why should you do such a thing?” demanded the squire. “Buckleigh may have just returned from his honeymoon, but by gad, you’re still on yours.”

  “Yes, and the murdered man was connected with my wife’s family,” Pickett pointed out. “It seemed the least I could do, under the circumstances.”

  Sir Thaddeus regarded his son-in-law with something akin to approval. “I’m obliged to you, Mr. Pickett.”

  “What will happen to the man’s family now?” Pickett asked. “Mrs. Pratt and the children, I mean?”

  Sir Thaddeus sighed. “I suppose I’ll settle some sort of pension on the man’s widow, or offer the oldest boy a place in the stable. Either way, it won’t approach the wages poor Tom was earning—to say nothing of whatever windfall the fellow thought he’d found.”

  “I shall take a basket to Martha Pratt this afternoon,” Lady Runyon announced with the air of the Lady Bountiful, leading the pragmatic Pickett to wonder just how long she expected this contribution to last, given that it would have to stretch to feed no fewer than six mouths. “Julia, would you care to accompany me?”

  “Yes, thank you, Mama,” Julia said, exchanging a loaded glance with her husband. “John, if you have no objection—?”

  “None at all,” Pickett assured her. “I’m sure I can find something to do with myself.”

  In fact, he already knew exactly what he intended to do, and only wished he might have done it twenty-four, or even forty-eight, hours earlier. And so, after Julia and her mother had set out for the Pratts’ cottage, he changed back into his old brown serge coat and his own sturdy walking boots (reflecting as he did so that, since his introduction to his wife’s family, he seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time changing his clothes), and set out for the gamekeeper’s cottage he’d been obliged to abandon so precipitously on the day the groom’s body had been discovered.

  No smoke rose from the stone chimney today, nor was there any other sign of life. With a growing sense of foreboding, he knocked on the door and, receiving no answer, turned the knob and found that the door opened in his hand. It was, he thought, almost as if someone had wanted him to come inside.

  “Hullo?” he called into the stillness. “Is anyone there?”

  There was no response, not even the muffled sound of movement in the loft above that he’d heard on that previous occasion. Just as before, he armed himself with the poker from the fireplace—it was not at all the done thing to bring a pistol along on one’s honeymoon—and started up the stairs.

  There was no interruption this time, from Major Pennington or anyone else. He reached the top of the stairs and found himself standing in a space minimally furnished as a bedchamber. A curtain of faded muslin hung in the single window, and an old iron bedstead with a thin mattress had been positioned beneath the eaves. A cracked and spotted mirror hung from a nail driven into a beam, and beneath it a pitcher and bowl of chipped porcelain stood on a rickety washstand. The furnishings were far from luxurious, but the cottage contained everything necessary for an extended stay.

  Everything, that is, except the person who had lived here as recently as two days earlier. Whoever it was—and Pickett had his own suspicions about that—had cleared out, removing any personal effects that might have offered some clue as to the identity of the recent resident. Heaving a disgusted sigh, Pickett crossed the loft to the window and twitched the curtain back. From this height, he could look out across the downs over which he had ridden on Sunday afternoon with Julia and her father. Nearer at hand, he noticed a tree with a low-hanging limb near the front corner of the cottage, the churned-up ground beneath bearing signs of recent disturbance by a horse’s hooves.

  He turned away from the window and let the curtain fall, then drew up short. Just before the faded muslin had blocked out the sun, he had seen a brief flash of light on the boards of the floor. Without turning back to the window, he stretched his arm behind him and lifted the curtain. Sunlight shafted across the scrubbed planks, and there, near the top of the stairs, a tiny pinpoint of light gleamed. Fixing his gaze on the spot so as not to lose it, he released the curtain and slowly crossed the room until he found what he’d missed upon first entering the loft. He stooped and picked up a small metallic object that had fallen between the floorboards. It was a single golden earring from which a pearl dangled. He allowed it to roll this way and that in the palm of his hand, watching as the light from the window played along the gold wire.

  “I could be wrong,” he said into the stillness, “but I don’t think gamekeepers’ wages run to pearls.”

  * * *

  Julia and her mother loaded Lady Runyon’s basket onto the seat of the squire’s dog cart and, with Julia at the reins, set out for Tom Pratt’s cottage. They arrived to find Mrs. Pratt looking strained and weary—small wonder, Julia thought, after what she had endured over the last three days.

  “That’s right kindly of you, your ladyship,” Martha Pratt told Lady Runyon, accepting the basket she offered. “Won’t you come in?”

  Neither Julia nor her mother wished to impose on the woman at such a time, but to reject her offer of hospitality would be perceived as a slight, as if they considered themselves too good for their present company. They entered the modest abode and took the chairs Mrs. Pratt indicated. The children were conspicuous by their absence, and Martha Pratt explained that they were in the loft above, taking their naps.

  “I haven’t yet thanked you for your help at the inquest, your ladyship,” the widow continued once they were seated.

  “It was no trouble at all,” Lady Runyon assured her. “I was glad to be of assistance.”

  “My Sally usually isn’t so fussy,” Mrs. Pratt said by way of apology. “I can’t think what came over her.”

  “Children seem to have a way of sensing when their parents are distressed,” Lady Runyon observed, then added with a little smile, “Besides having an instinct for knowing when they must be still and quiet, and doing precisely the opposite.”

  “Lud, yes,” agreed Mrs. Pratt, her countenance lightening somewhat. “When I think of some of the things mine have done in church, I wonder Mr. Pennington hasn’t barred the door against us.”

  There followed a series of reminiscences about the misdeeds of their various offspring, and Julia, although unable to enter into the conversation, had to admire her mother’s way of finding common ground between two women of very different stations. As the conversation continued along these lines, however, she began to feel like an outsider. Her mother and Mrs. Pratt, for all their dissimilarities, belonged to a sisterhood of which she could never be a part. Now, as Mrs. Pratt poured into her mother’s sympathetic ear her fears for her children’s futures, Julia could not but be struck by the unfairness of it all. Here was Martha Pratt with five children to feed and no visible means of support, while she, Julia Pickett, had four hundred pounds per annum with which to provide for a child, and could not have even one.

  “And the worst of it,” concluded the widow Pratt, “is that they may never know what happened to their Papa. Whoever killed my poor Tom might never have to pay for his crime.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Julia spoke up at last. “Mr. Pickett is very good at his work, so I believe there is every chance that he will be able to discover who did this terrible thing to your husband.”

  The widow’s response was not what she might have hoped. “I hope your man will watch his back,” she said doubtfully. “We’ve all seen what this fellow is capable of.”

  It was an unfortunate observation. For the first time, Julia wondered if it was a mistake on her husband’s part to let anyone know of his interest in the case. If the killer were to learn of his investigations, would he dismiss the Bow Street Runner on account of his youth (as others had done, to their sorrow), or would he feel compelled to eliminate a potential threat? The image of Tom’s dead countenance with its staring eyes and slit throat loomed before Julia’s consciousness, and she had a sudden and horrifying vision of her own husband
meeting the same fate. Bile rose to choke her, and she scrambled to her feet.

  “Pray—pray excuse me,” she stammered, and all but ran from the cottage.

  Outside the house, she paced the tiny garden, taking deep but ragged breaths, and considered her options. Once again it was borne in upon her that her husband’s occupation was potentially dangerous. But his present commitment, she reminded herself, was not an obligation to his magistrate, Mr. Colquhoun, or even to the King, whose peace he was charged with keeping. Instead, it was a voluntary pledge.

  Could she persuade him to give it up? She feared not, for quite aside from hoping to win her parents’ approval, he seemed to consider himself under an obligation to them to obtain justice for their servant.

  Failing in persuasion, could she perhaps seduce him into abandoning the idea? This approach might prove more effective, and would certainly be more pleasant to attempt, regardless of the result. Still, the fact that they were staying in her parents’ house was undeniably problematic in carrying out such a strategy. No, her arguments would have to be limited to the verbal variety, and she admitted that they were unlikely to move him. He was not a gentleman born, but he had his own brand of honor, and it would certainly be satisfied with nothing less. She smiled a little at the thought, conceding that she would not have changed him even if she could.

  Gradually she became aware of a soft whimpering sound, and realized she was not alone. She looked about for its source, and saw a small boy curled up behind a shrub growing beside the cottage door.

  “I beg your pardon,” she said. “I didn’t see you there.”

  The boy made no reply, but sniffed loudly and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

  “Was Tom Pratt your papa?” She knew the answer even as she asked the question, for the lad bore a striking resemblance to his mother.

  “Yes’m, your ladyship.”

  Julia sat down on the front stoop. “Oh, I’m not a ladyship, not anymore. I’m a ‘missus,’ just the same as your mama.” In a more serious tone, she added, “I’m sorry about what happened to your papa. I know you must miss him.”

  The boy nodded sadly. “Aye, I miss him, but he don’t miss me none. He hated me, you know.”

  Julia was rather taken aback by this pronouncement, but quickly rallied. “He hated a fine big boy like you? How could he?”

  “It’s true,” the lad insisted, but he crawled out from behind the bush and sat down on the stoop beside her, which she considered a good sign. “He yelled at me. That was the last time I ever saw him,” he added, and a fat tear rolled down his round, smooth cheek.

  She put a consoling arm about the boy’s thin shoulders. “He may have yelled at you, but that doesn’t mean he hated you. I suppose it seems very unfair, but sometimes parents are cross and out of sorts with their children for reasons that have nothing to do with the children themselves.”

  The child shook his head. “Papa wasn’t cross and out of sorts. He was happy, saying as how we were gonna be rich.”

  Julia recalled certain evidence given at the inquest that morning, and wondered if the child might have stumbled upon something that could have a bearing upon his father’s death. Certainly Tom would have lashed out at the child if he had unwittingly done something to put the man’s newfound wealth at risk. “Rich? That must have made your father very happy indeed!”

  The lad nodded. “Yes, ma’am, most days he was. But then I come into his and mama’s room to fetch him for dinner, and he yelled at me. Told me to get lost, he did.”

  “How very odd,” Julia murmured. “What was he doing when you came to fetch him?”

  “Nothing, leastways not that I could see. He was just bent over the grate, like he’d just put something on the fire.”

  A bill of sale, or a blackmail note ... Her husband’s words at inquest came back to her. If this child had, however innocently, interrupted his father in the act of burning something incriminating, it could certainly have provoked a tongue-lashing.

  “There it is, then,” she declared confidently. “He could not have been angry with you, for there was nothing in your actions, or in his, to provoke such a response. Depend upon it, he was thinking about his sudden windfall, and trying to decide how best to spend it. Should he buy something frivolous, or spend it on something the family needs?”

  “He’d just come in with a new bonnet for Mama,” the boy put in.

  “Was it the one she wore this morning? I noticed it, and thought how pretty she looked in it. But what if, after he’d bought a gift for your mother, he’d discovered that one of the shutters needed replacing, for instance, or the chimney should be cleaned? I can assure you, such things always happen at the worst possible times.”

  “You think Papa might have been worrying about that, and thinking he shouldn’t ought to have spent the money?”

  “Very likely, for grown-ups fret over the silliest things, you know. Why, your mama is quite probably worrying herself frantic about where you are at this very moment, when anyone can see that you are quite safe sitting here with me!”

  He glanced rather guiltily behind him toward the rear of the cottage, leaving Julia to infer that he had made his escape through the back door.

  “I don’t want Mama to worry,” he said.

  “No, indeed! I should return to my bed if I were you, and dwell no more on those cross words of your father’s. Think of happy times you had together instead.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The boy stood and, after a moment of awkward hesitation, leaned forward and planted a wet, smacking peck on her cheek. “Thank you, missus.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  Julia remained in the garden until she judged the boy must be safely back in his room, then re-entered the cottage, where she found her mother and Mrs. Pratt had not yet exhausted the subject of motherhood. Lady Runyon glanced up at her daughter’s entrance, and something in Julia’s face made her rise to her feet. “I fear we have trespassed on your hospitality much too long, Mrs. Pratt. I shall stop by from time to time to see how you and the children are faring.”

  “We’ll be all right, your ladyship,” the widow said. “It won’t be easy, I know, having five mouths to feed, but I can’t be sorry to have the children. Tom is gone, but at least I’ve got something to remember him by.”

  Julia and her mother said their goodbyes, and mounted the dog cart for the drive back to Runyon Hall.

  “Julia, my dear, is something wrong? Have you taken ill?”

  Julia shook her head. “No, Mama. That is, I felt unwell for a moment, but I am quite recovered now.”

  Her recovery suffered a setback when they reached the house and discovered that Pickett had gone for a walk from which he had not yet returned. Julia told herself she was merely impatient to report her findings concerning the Pratt child, but deep in her heart she knew better. I hope your man will watch his back ... We know what this fellow is capable of ... Martha Pratt’s words echoed in her head, and were not entirely silenced even when Pickett came walking up the gravel drive some half an hour later. Still, it was not until they retired to their room after dinner that they had an opportunity for private conversation.

  “I hope you were not too bored this afternoon, being left to your own devices while I was gone with Mama,” Julia said apologetically. “What did you find to do with yourself?”

  Pickett shrugged. “Oh, this and that,” he said vaguely, then picked up the coat he had discarded and took something from its inside breast pocket. “Tell me, my lady, do you recognize this?”

  She looked at the gold and pearl earring in the palm of his hand. “Why, yes, I do! It belonged to my sister. Did you find it upstairs?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “I confess, I am surprised. Papa gave a pair of them to Claudia for her eighteenth birthday. I had assumed she must have taken them with her when she married Lord Buckleigh. Shall you give it to Mama? I wonder if she will be pleased to have it, or wounded that Claudia did not find them wor
th taking with her to her new home.”

  “I would be obliged to you if you said nothing to your mother just yet,” Pickett said.

  Julia regarded him with a puzzled frown, aware that there was more to this simple request than he was letting on. “Certainly, if that is what you wish.”

  “But tell me about your visit to Mrs. Pratt,” he urged. “Did you discover anything of interest?”

  She was well aware that he was trying to change the subject, but since she had indeed discovered something of interest, she was willing to let him have his way, albeit not without making him pay a price. Slowly and deliberately, she sat down at the dressing table and began plucking the pins from her hair.

  “I think you may have been right when you suggested Tom may have been involved in blackmail,” she said, regarding his reflection in the mirror. Briefly she described her encounter with the Pratt child, including the boy’s conviction that his father had hated him, and how he had arrived at such a conclusion.

  “And Tom was burning something?” Pickett asked sharply, wrenching his attention away from the sight of golden curls tumbling over bare white shoulders. “Did the boy say hair—where—it had come from?”

  “No, for he didn’t actually see his father putting anything on the fire,” she reminded him. “Only that he was bent over as if he had been interrupted in the process of doing so. But what reason could anyone have for blackmailing a groom?”

  “I think you have it backwards, my lady. I think Tom was the one doing the blackmailing.”

  She bristled at this assertion. “One doesn’t like to think of persons one knows doing such a thing.”

  “One doesn’t like to think of persons one knows being murdered, either, but it happens—as you, of all people, should know. And how well, really, did you know Tom Pratt? What could anyone of your class truly know of his life, or of what demons might have driven him?”

  “Yes,” she said slowly, conceding the point. “Yes, I see what you mean. And the letter, or whatever it was that Tom was burning?”

  Pickett considered the question. “It could have been a reply from his victim, telling him what he might do with his threat, but given what happened later, I should think it more likely that the victim agreed to his demands and offered to meet him at a particular time and place. And we both know what happened to Tom when he got there.”