The Duke's Agent

by Rebecca Jenkins

  ‘That were all arranged with the steward. It’s been a bad year,’ protested Mr Boyes. ‘Mr Crotter agreed – the rabbits, sir, they’re mortal bad. Steward said His Grace would rub out arrears on account.’ Mr Boyes tailed off and jerked his head meaningfully. Jarrett followed the line of his eyes to the coins.

  ‘The heriot,’ Jarrett said.

  Mr Boyes nodded with satisfaction. ‘Aye. Steward’s right.’

  Jarrett raised an eyebrow and consulted his papers. ‘Mr Crotter has left no account of a waiver. The arrears stand. We shall speak of this again. For now I shall take this on account.’ He took up the money and writing out a receipt he handed it to the man. ‘I shall be by to visit you in the next week. I must warn you, Mr Boyes, that if we cannot settle this matter His Grace may be forced to evict.’

  Mr Boyes’s dull features came alive in a look of resentful belligerence. ‘It were arranged,’ he blustered. ‘I paid me heriot. I always pays the steward. You haven’t the right.’

  ‘Mr Crotter is no longer with us, Mr Boyes, and in truth I have the right. The time has come for His Grace to reclaim his own – heriot or no.’

  Mr Boyes blew himself up like a malevolent toad. He fixed the agent with a killing stare, breathing hard.

  ‘Good day to you, Mr Boyes.’

  The force of the glare did not waver. His face bunched up in a caricature of fury, Mr Boyes rose and stumped off.

  It was ever a mistake to imagine that simple folk were bound to be endowed with innocence and good humour. Mr Rousseau’s theories concerning the nobleness of simple natures merely indicated his lack of experience of the peasantry. Jarrett cursed James Crotter for slipping so easily out of the consequences of his actions by the simple expedient of dying before his comfortable fire, a drink at his side. He watched Boyes elbow his way out down the stairs, muttering explosively for the edification of all those he passed. Charles would need to look about for a new tenant. A man freshly married, perhaps, eager to work hard for himself and his fledgling family, while lacking the capital to start on a bigger farm. Yes, a small tenancy like that at Marsh Fields should be let to a young couple starting out in life, not wasted on some crafty simpleton. He made a note to look out for such a pair. He knew the whole room was watching him. It had to be allowed that agents were not a popular breed but, even so, he could see he was not making a particularly good impression in Woolbridge. He openly returned the stares. He was not one to run from a fight. Besides, he had a fierce dislike of cheats and sneaking fellows. He could feel impatience rising in his veins like bitter sap. He would have to guard his temper if he was to get through these two days without incident.

  A new group approached the table. There were three men. The central figure who formed the focus of the group bore himself with the bent posture of age. He had sparse yellow-white locks and pale watery eyes; fine silvery bristles dusted his chin and cheeks giving him an unkempt air. Glancing at the man’s hands as he hobbled towards him, Jarrett suspected that his visitor was not carrying his years as well as he might. He was flanked on either side by a couple of tall, sturdy lads, whose meaty figures would have served as an excellent illustration to that popular song about the roast beef of old England. As the older man lowered himself into a chair his two guardians remained standing, observing Jarrett from their heights.

  ‘Samuel Gibbs, at your service,’ announced the old man, ‘of Fiddler’s Croft.’ His unorthodox visit to Fiddler’s Croft had prompted Jarrett to research that tenancy. One item of information he had gleaned was that Samuel Gibbs was due to turn seventy-five that year. Jarrett would have wagered his horse Walcheren there and then that the man sitting before him was not even sixty years old, despite the hunching up of his shoulders and his quivering hands. The agent leant back to survey the group and addressed himself to the seated man.

  ‘I am, as you know, new to these parts and know not a soul by sight. Is there perhaps some person who can vouch for you?’

  The tension in the man’s frame was evident about the line of his shoulders, but to give him his due his expression only registered rustic bewilderment.

  ‘Your honour?’

  ‘Vouch for you – some person who can swear that you are who you say.’

  ‘By my word, I am Samuel Gibbs,’ he insisted.

  The two bullies crowded closer to the table. Jarrett stood up calmly taking account of his position – how far the oak table protected him and how far it trapped him in that corner of the room. ‘Since I wish to be certain whose word it is I am taking, I fear I must ask for some independent testimony. Perhaps the parson or his clerk? The vicarage is but a step away; it will be a simple matter to send for the clerk.’

  Jarrett snapped his fingers to attract a waiter. As he gestured, his attention shifted from the belligerent figures before him. The whole room full of people was turning towards a commotion that rose up the stairs. He had a glimpse of Jasper Bedlington, the innkeeper, bobbing white-faced, propelled before a wave of newcomers. The crowd parted and Justice Raistrick strode across the room towards him. The lawyer dominated the wedge of onlookers behind him, his solid figure in his mulberry coat marked out against the brown fustian jackets of the farmers. Jarrett stepped forward to greet him. He was not going to find himself trapped to be browbeaten behind a table.

  ‘Mr Raistrick, good day to you.’ Jarrett welcomed the man, outwardly unruffled by this unexpected development. ‘May I inquire the purpose of this intrusion, sir? This is the Duke’s audit and these people, I fancy, are not among his tenants.’

  ‘My compliments, Mr Jarrett, but this audit must be suspended. I have come to request your presence on a matter of urgency. A matter of murder.’

  As he heard these words, Jarrett saw that one of the figures standing behind the Justice was the parish constable with his long staff. The man looked ill at ease.

  Jarrett rapidly reviewed what he knew, trying to make sense of the tableau. Murder? The man was making such a scene as this because of the handbill he had carried from the George? Jarrett scanned the bold face before him, considering the possibility that the man was mad. Yet there was nothing wild or fanatical about his manner. The magistrate dominated the room with his confident presence. Jarrett sought out Jasper Bedlington in the crowd. What did the innkeeper make of it all? Mr Bedlington was looking from one face to the other, his normally cheerful countenance at a loss.

  ‘I am here in my capacity as Justice of the Peace, Mr Jarrett. My officers and I are on our way to inspect a body that has been discovered.’ The magistrate paused to give his next words due emphasis. ‘It lies on the Duke’s land up at the old manor. I would not wish to trespass without your presence. You have taken that property as your own, I believe?’

  ‘I am lodging there, yes,’ agreed Jarrett automatically. He did not like the triumphant way Raistrick looked about the crowd at this admission. He seemed to say Mark that, as if he had just made some material point for the prosecution in a court of law. Jarrett felt his face muscles stiffen in distaste. He was tiring of the fellow’s cat and mouse games.

  With an open, graceful sweep of the hand, in the manner of a host rather than an interloper, the magistrate resumed. ‘I do not take this liberty lightly – but murder cries out for justice. And aware as I am of your interest in the pursuit of justice, Mr Jarrett, I felt sure that the Duke’s agent would wish to assist me in this investigation.’

  Although he addressed the agent, Raistrick played to the crowd. All eyes were riveted on the lawyer’s face. Jarrett sensed he had few supporters in that room. The handful of substantial tenant farmers had left some time earlier. Those who remained were the poorer sort, ill-educated men who were unlikely to have much sympathy for a Duke’s steward.

  The agent turned to address the room. ‘At Justice Raistrick’s request, I am suspending this audit. I shall return as speedily as possible to resume our business. In the meantime I hope you will continue to enjoy the Duke’s hospitality, so ably provided by Mrs Bedlington. Master Jaspe
r,’ he continued with a smile to the innkeeper, ‘would you be so kind as to have my horse saddled?’

  The publican stepped up, his shoulders well back and his chest pushed forward, his outline reminiscent of an offended pouter pigeon. ‘Indeed sir, directly,’ he agreed with aplomb. ‘And I shall be coming o’long with you, sir. I’m Overseer of the Poor of this parish and as an officer of the vestry it is my duty to go.’ He squared up to the Justice as if he expected to be challenged, but Raistrick merely shrugged with a curt, ‘So be it.’

  As they mounted up in the yard, a gathering crowd pressed about them, murmuring and speculating. Jarrett addressed the magistrate who sat casually on the back of a tall grey. ‘Is it necessary that all these people should accompany us, Justice Raistrick?’

  The magistrate eyed him sardonically. ‘Does the Duke’s agent mean to suggest that the peace of their parish is not these people’s business?’ he asked. ‘It is an Englishman’s right and duty to defend his neighbours. I would not have justice do her business in the shadows – let them come if they’ve a mind; I have nothing to hide.’

  He let the last statement hang in the air, keeping eye contact to suggest an unspoken question. The dumb show was not wasted on the crowd. Jarrett acknowledged the skill of the man. He was a consummate manipulator.

  ‘Your opponents must tremble when they face you in a court of law, sir,’ he murmured as the cavalcade set off.

  Raistrick caught his words. ‘My enemies do, sir,’ came the reply.

  As they rode out of Woolbridge by way of the abbey toll bridge, Jarrett turned over in his mind what scene the magistrate was set to spring on him. Whose might the body be? He was certain Raistrick meant trouble for him by it, whosoever the victim. He thought of the poacher. But just then he chanced to look back and caught the welcome sight of Duffin, picked up in the skirts of the crowd of townsfolk that trailed behind them. Their eyes met without acknowledgement. So it was not Ezekiel who lay dead. Who then? Jarrett watched Justice Raistrick as he rode ahead, talking to the man who guided them. The discoverer of the mysterious corpse was a young man who assisted Dickon Pace the gamekeeper – this much he had picked up. Since every question merely provided the Justice with another opportunity to deploy his stratagems, Jarrett was determined not to plead for details. The secret would be unveiled soon enough.

  The cavalcade turned down towards the river and approached the bridge by the folly. Jarrett grew uneasy. Was Crotter not the only one to die at the old manor? He had not searched the grounds surrounding the house. Could another body have lain concealed there all this time? The following horses dropped back to make their way across the narrow bridge. The guide stopped abruptly and pointed down into the gorge below the folly.

  ‘There,’ he called out, ‘down below Lovers’ Leap.’

  The rain of the night before had buffed up every colour in that beautiful place. Summer foliage of vivid viridian framed the steep gorge. The table of white rock they called Lovers’ Leap stood out, brilliant and stark against the green. Beneath the outcrop of rock the rich earth fell away into a wall of stone, terminating in steps of sealskin rock at the water’s edge. And there on a ledge, in a pool of shadow amid the intensity of the vibrant colours, lay the corpse that had once been Black-Eyed Sal.

  It took a moment for his mind to take account of what his eyes told him; to associate the neat doll laid on the muddy shelf below with the vital, bewitching girl of the churchyard.

  ‘’E looks all cut up.’

  A busybody and her companion were watching him, their sharp faces brimming with curiosity. Jasper Bedlington moved protectively towards the younger man.

  ‘I reckon we’d best go down, sir,’ the innkeeper said in a low voice. He held Walcheren as Jarrett dismounted as if he needed something to do. ‘However did the lass end up there? Sally Grundy. Whoever would have thought…’ The innkeeper shook his head in disbelief.

  The magistrate and his party threaded their way through the woods beyond the bridge to pick a path down to where she lay. The onlookers crowded on to the bridge to watch. Duffin and his dog had somehow attached themselves to the official party. Ezekiel seemed to be on good terms with the parish constable, whom he addressed as Thaddaeus.

  Jarrett followed the magistrate and his officers. They moved in silence, concentrating on the uncertain ground beneath their feet. One by one they ducked their heads beneath the web of thin branches that whipped and scratched. His nose caught the pungent, acid smell of wild garlic crushed under foot. As they dropped down into the gorge the noise of the river encompassed them. They stopped and started as broad steps of rock fell away into narrow shelves or dwindled into a bare lip protruding from the flinty wall. At last they found their way to the narrow platform where the corpse lay.

  Sal was stretched straight on her back, her delicate arms folded across her body. Her eyes were closed and her blind face turned up to the rock that rose some thirty feet above the river bed. A smooth pool of blood fanned out about her head. The damp material of her heavy skirts had been moulded decently about her legs. The outline of her fineboned features was no different from when she was alive, but never before had Jarrett been so struck by the meaning of the human spirit. The fine lustre had passed from the skin and the luxuriant tangle of her black hair was reduced to a sodden mess. What lay on that ledge was but the debris of a life. The vibrant, alluring spirit he had hoped to capture one day had evaporated.

  ‘She’s been moved – from down that way, I’d reckon.’ Ezekiel Duffin pointed to a trail of three red spots that led away from the shelter of the overhang and vanished in the rain-washed stone beyond. The bewildering noise of the river meant his companions read his words in his face more than heard them.

  ‘How can you be sure of that, Ezekiel?’ shouted the parish constable over the barrier of sound.

  Duffin threw him a scornful look. ‘Can’t you see? She’s been laid out – out of the reach of the river maybe.’

  He pointed out the clear line that marked the height of the flood from which the waters had now receded. Crouching down, Duffin gently lifted Sal’s head. Blood dripped slowly through the web of her dark hair. The neck was broken. He examined the pale arms, his manner quaintly respectful. ‘Joints stiff – she’s been gone a few hours.’ The settling blood in her body gave the underside of her limbs a purple hue. He pointed out the mud and the scratches on her skin. ‘Looks as if she fell,’ he said to the men who leant over him to catch his words.

  ‘Or was pushed,’ shouted Raistrick.

  Duffin ignored him, reading the ground around the body. He leant forward, gesturing to a brown mark on the rock. ‘Footmark!’

  The poacher uncovered the clear bloody impression of a footprint drying into the porous stone, then sat back on his haunches, his sharp grey eyes searching the ledge. ‘He carried her up …’ he muttered to himself. Following the direction of the short trail of blood spots, he climbed from the ledge, taking care to swing himself down, away from the obvious route. Examining the approach to the shelf, he found the remains of another brown stain held in a foothold. ‘Looks like he stepped up here, Thaddaeus,’ he told the constable. Duffin tried out his theory. He had to stretch his stride to make it. ‘If he did it carrying her, he’s a tall man,’ he said and returned to squat by the footprint next to the body. The parish constable leant over him in rapt attention, blocking the sun. ‘A working man’s shoe,’ Duffin told him. ‘Aye, Thaddaeus, that’s a straight-lasted shoe, that is.’

  The parish constable and his assistants helped Duffin to search some more. The poacher did his best to read the ground ahead of their well-meaning feet, but no one found any further physical details to witness to what had happened in the gorge. At last, when they were all near stupefied by the massive sound of the water, the magistrate laid a hand on the constable’s shoulder.

  ‘Take up the corpse,’ he ordered, his powerful voice rising above the river’s roar. ‘We have seen all we are likely to here.’

  Raist
rick stood back as the parish constable organised two hangers-on to carry the body back up to the road. They sent up for a hurdle and some rope, while Duffin wrapped her dripping head in a cloth in preparation for lifting the body on the stretcher. Jarrett recognised Nat Broom, one of Will Roberts’s circle he had overheard drinking at the Queen’s Head. The men picked her up, Nat Broom at her head, another man he did not recognise at her feet. They slung her between them with little feeling. Her crimson petticoat, torn and stained with damp, flopped back as they lifted her. The fine white stockings she had taken such care with were smeared with mud.

  ‘You always were after her to lift her skirts, eh, Sam!’

  ‘Show some respect, animal!’ Jarrett snarled.

  The men flinched at the fury in his tone. The one called Sam looked shamefaced; Nat Broom was sullen and muttered under his breath. They tied her body to the stretcher, her head bundled up in cloth – a trussed up, faceless thing. The two men set off to haul their burden back up the cliff.

  Raistrick was watching him from a distance. Jarrett turned away, staring down at the churning brown water flecked with creamy scum. He was well used to death but this one had caught him unawares. As the men struggled to lift the body up the steep wall of rock, one of Sal’s shoes worked free. It bounced from rock to stone to come to rest a few paces from where he stood. Jarrett bent to pick it up. The buckle that twinkled in the sunlight hung loose. A flapping motion caught his eye and he looked back up the gorge. A shawl, dyed in the same brown tones as the earth below, was caught in a tree at the edge of the white rock – a tattered banner leading the eye to the site where Sal met her end. The poacher’s dog, Bob, was at his side watching him with bright, earnest eyes. With Bob at his heels, he followed the men climbing up the side of the gorge.

  Leaving the constable and his helpers to edge their way up the steep bank with the corpse, the rest of the party went ahead to inspect the table of rock. It formed a natural platform from which to view the gorge and the landscape beyond. It was a favourite spot for courting couples which local custom had dubbed Lovers’ Leap in tribute to some forgotten legend of blighted love. Up above the deep gorge the noise of the river was dulled to a menacing rumble, as if an unruly god were barely contained below. Perhaps it was the painted colours of nature refreshed by rain or the fine square shape and even surface of the rock, but Jarrett was reminded of a theatre stage with the view beyond as its backdrop. The shawl, fluttering from the twisted tree clinging to the edge of the gorge, bore mute testimony to the tragedy that had taken place. It was here that the magistrate found a cluster of scarlet threads caught in a patch of crushed brambles.