The Duke's Agent

by Rebecca Jenkins

  The abrupt sound of a chair being thrown back on a stone floor came from the next room. Jarrett turned his head to the noise. He was weary of this present farce. What galled him most was the attempt to strip him of his character. In the army a man’s rank was assumed on sight, detailed in silver lace and the shape of a coat. Here he found himself shorn of all props – servant, accoutrements, character. He felt the assault at his very core. He could acknowledge the skill of the strategy but in truth the move had shaken him. The audacity of that man! For a Justice of His Majesty’s Peace to cast public doubt on the authority of written credentials. A gentleman’s word should be accepted by a gentleman – how else could affairs be managed? Then, of course, Raistrick was no gentleman. And so far the strategy was proving effective, with Sir Thomas out of town and the parson a weak fool. He should have known better than to imagine he could descend alone on such far-flung estates and expect to restore the Duke’s ancient rights without a fight. True, the extent of the neglect had not been anticipated, but he might have approached the task with more caution. Jarrett shifted his weight irritably. The bruising from last Monday’s attack had not yet disappeared and the old wound in his side was troubling him.

  With his usual impeccable sense of timing, Tiplady had chosen their arrival in York the week before to stage one of his ‘stomachs’, as he called them. Jarrett gazed out at the sky. It was absurd but he could not recall the cause of their recent quarrel. Some inn servant who had shown Tiplady insufficient respect? He had forgotten. In any event, Tiplady had hinted, as he periodically did, that, driven to ill-heath by his present situation, he was considering better offers of employment. And Jarrett had been in such a foul mood he had told the man to take his leave and go plague another poor fool with his croaking.

  Alone under guard in the Queen’s Head Jarrett acknowledged his fault. Tiplady had been suffering from a head cold and they had both been tired from days of travelling. Jarrett contemplated his slim hands. He missed the old raven. At least Tiplady knew who he was. The banner of blue sky beyond the window taunted him. This was a day to be out on the moors – a good gallop would shake off these frets. He sighed. Walcheren would be missing him. He wondered whether he might get permission to visit the stables. He was about to venture out in search of his hosts when Mrs Bedlington clumped down the stairs at the end of the passage to fetch up face to face with her husband as he came from the tap.

  ‘I’ve had her rest a while in my room, poor soul. She’s not well,’ Mrs Bedlington shook her mob-capped head at Mrs Grundy’s plight. Her husband’s face mirrored her own. In that moment they were clearly a pair, as if married life together had given them a common imprint.

  ‘There’s a boy just come from Mr Gilbert, Polly. He’s finished with his examination and wishes to know where he is to send the corpse, for Mrs Munday says she’ll not have it in her house.’

  ‘Well, isn’t that just like the man!’ exclaimed his wife. ‘Fine Mr Gilbert cannot be bothering himself to wait but must be rid of the trouble directly, for all he’s known a hundred corpses. Have him send the poor girl here, Jasper. We can lay her decently in the parlour.’ Dismissing her spouse with a fond squeeze on the arm, Mrs Bedlington peered into the fug of tobacco smoke that marked out the area of the tap. ‘They’re getting a mite lively,’ she commented. ‘Ah, well, so long as they’ve means to pay. It’s an ill wind, as they say.’ She turned her broad face to smile at her guest in the parlour. ‘Is there anything you might be wanting, Mr Jarrett?’

  Her habitual deference in his present circumstances struck Jarrett as at once soothing and so ludicrous he laughed out loud. ‘Forgive me, Mrs B. My absurd situation,’ he explained apologetically, recognising a tinge of hurt in the kindly face before him.

  As he spoke the rowdiness flowing from the tap hushed. Mrs Bedlington swung round to the odd silence behind her. Mrs Grundy stood, a grey phantom at the bottom of the stairs. The innkeeper’s wife hurried up to the woman, enveloping her cold, still fingers in warm hands.

  ‘Now, Mrs Grundy, you should be resting. This is no place for you. The tap’s all crowded and filled with smoke.’

  The grey woman’s eyes looked at her, as if from a great distance. To Jarrett, watching unnoticed, Mrs Grundy did not appear to utter a single word. Mrs Bedlington held a one-sided discussion which ended in her leading Sal’s aunt off towards the kitchen in search of a cup of tea.

  The hubbub of conversation in the next room was rising in volume. Every now and then more emphatic voices were distinguishable above the din. Jasper Bedlington returned from his errand. His face was creased with two plump worry lines between the eyebrows. He fixed round eyes on his guest.

  ‘That Nat Broom’s been stirring again, Mr Jarrett.’ He meant the statement to be an exclamation but a touch of doubt crept through. ‘And all because you came without a man with you. I told him it was nothing but nonsense. Your valet is to follow any day now – I told him.’ The innkeeper’s expression appealed for confirmation.

  ‘I am expecting my man Tiplady to follow from York,’ replied Jarrett, forcing a smile. ‘Indeed, I was in hopes he might arrive today – as you know, I am exhausting my supply of clean linen.’

  Relief was clear on the innkeeper’s face. ‘That’s what I told him!’ he exclaimed. ‘That Nat Broom, he must always be making trouble. Mind you, sir, he’s not the only one. I heard Josiah Boyes say you were not yourself – not the Duke’s agent at all but a counterfeit.’ Mr Bedlington snorted his contempt. ‘And who crammed him with that tale? He never thought that up himself. Josiah Boyes has no more fancy in his head than a goose at Christmastide. He’ll have learnt his tune from another, I’ll be bound.’

  More evidence of his enemy’s strategy, no doubt, reflected Jarrett as the innkeeper cocked his head to listen to the drinkers in the next room. Surely even Mr Raistrick’s audacity could not carry off such a plot. This was England in the nineteenth century, not some melodrama of bandit kings at the Haymarket theatre. And yet, if this tale could be properly worked up he would be well suited to a conviction for murder. The sounds of the crowd next door took on an increasingly ugly note. As if on cue, the nervous features of Constable Thaddaeus appeared in the doorway. Studiously avoiding Jarrett’s eyes, he took the innkeeper aside.

  ‘I’m wondering, Jasper, if we’d not best get the gentleman away to the toll booth. He’ll be more snug there, for the lads are getting very warm.’ He pricked up his ears at the sound of another chair being thrown back. ‘Very warm. If the gentleman would follow me up the stairs, quiet like, we could maybe get down the gallery steps into the yard.’

  Before this plan could be put into action there was a distraction. A lad appeared at the street door of the Queen’s Head. His half-excited, half-solemn air caught the attention and a stillness washed over the sea of voices. The lad walked straight-backed through the tap, his cap held before him. Behind him followed two men carrying a hurdle. The outlines of the body they bore were reduced by the coarse cloth covering it to an indistinct mound the length of a woman: two little peaks for feet at one end and a smooth, rounded lump at the other, where the material stretched taut over the once lively face. The chill thought of death slithered about the room as Sal’s remains passed through.

  Mrs Bedlington appeared to break the spell. ‘You were to bring her through the yard door, Matthew!’ she scolded, nearly oversetting the young lad with a smart clip over the ear. ‘Have you no decency! Bring her through to the parlour, this way!’

  Huffing with indignation Mrs Bedlington led the little procession through the passage. She came to stand beside Jarrett, keeping a sharp eye on the two men, as they laid the body carefully on two tables pushed together.

  ‘Good thing poor Hannah Grundy were not here to see that! She’s in the kitchen. Took it in mind to bake me a batch of scones, poor dear.’ She lifted the shroud a moment and glanced beneath. ‘Well, at least the doctor left her tidy,’ she commented to no one in particular. Her plump hands twitched the drape of
the cloth here and there, smoothing it. ‘It’ll do her good to have something to occupy her.’ Mrs Bedlington’s manner towards the corpse struck Jarrett as remarkably commonplace. She moved as if she were arranging a bed rather than a shroud. In her presence death became almost homely. The innkeeper’s wife surveyed her handiwork dispassionately.

  ‘Go fetch some candles from Molly in the kitchen, Jasper my love,’ she ordered, then slipping a coin to the two bearers she swept them out. ‘You tell them in the tap to stay where they are. She’s to have as much peace and decency as I can give her!’ She spoke with unexpected fierceness, then turned her back abruptly and began putting up the shutters to darken the room.

  ‘Mrs Grundy says Miss Henrietta has given her permission to fetch Sal to Longacres for the laying out,’ Mrs Bedlington confided in a discreet whisper as the room dimmed, casting her rounded features in shadow. ‘Miss Lonsdale’s gone visiting this morning but she’s promised to be by for her this afternoon.’ In profile Mrs Bedlington looked sceptical. ‘I’ll not have a word said against Miss Henrietta for she’s a good sort of gentlewoman, but I can’t see a lady like her knowing what to do with a corpse.’

  Conjuring up Miss Henrietta’s composed features, Jarrett reflected that Miss Lonsdale looked likely to prove calmly competent to almost any task.

  ‘I am certain the matter will be easily arranged, Mistress Polly,’ he commented as he helped her manoeuvre a particularly awkward shutter into place.

  ‘Why, that is good of you, Mr Jarrett, sir!’ Mrs Bedlington responded with unwarranted energy. ‘I should have known that you would come to Miss Henrietta’s aid, being such a gentleman.’ She emphasised her conviction with a congratulatory pat on his coat-sleeve. ‘The Longacres household has been short of a proper man since Mr Lonsdale died near two years past now.’

  Her confident misinterpretation of his mild commonplace caught him unawares. Jarrett himself hardly imagined that Miss Lonsdale would welcome his assistance. In any event, it began to appear doubtful he would be at liberty to make the offer. He was wondering whether to make an effort to correct this little misunderstanding in case it might grow into some larger embarrassment when his hostess’s eyes fixed on something over his shoulder.

  ‘Oh, drat!’ she protested mildly.

  Mrs Grundy had appeared in the room. Mrs Bedlington eyed her uneasily. The cook’s stout figure seemed adrift in a half-conscious world. The sound of her breathing was acute against the ambient silence of the parlour. Listening to the painful wheezing of the old woman’s breath through her tired lungs, Jarrett could almost feel a sympathetic pain in his own. Mrs Grundy lowered herself into the chair he drew up for her by the head of the body. She acknowledged no other presence in the room. Carefully, her hands with their purple swollen knuckles reached out. With methodical neatness she folded back the grey shroud to uncover the beautiful face. She smoothed the symmetrical fold she had made and gently patted it.

  ‘Wild and wilful,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, my bairn, what has your mischief brought you to?’ Her body picked up the rhythm of her absent-minded hand and she began to rock, abandoned in her grief.

  *

  The investigation was recalled at five o’clock. Constable Thaddaeus was nervous as he escorted Jarrett into the chamber. The drink and the sight of Sal’s shrouded body had stoked the fires of righteous anger among the crowd, while the impotence men feel at the whiff of death fuelled bluster to cover the fear. Several men stuck their thumbs in their waistcoats and threw back their heads at him as Jarrett was ushered up the stairs and into the council chamber. He noted the bravado poses, sturdy legs planted out in belligerence, solid bodies set to confront him – the stranger, impostor and even murderer. As the constable struggled to force a way for him through the press, one voice carried above the rest.

  ‘He didn’t arrive by post; his luggage came up without him. He said he rode over from York – had business on the way, so he said. Who’s to say if he came from York at all?’

  Jarrett was puzzled. The man was a stranger to him. The speaker saw the agent through the crowd and he raised his voice a notch.

  ‘The innkeeper knows. He was there. I was in the tap at the time and I heard him.’

  Someone jostled Jarrett and he nearly lost his balance. The violence was deliberate. Jarrett swung round to his attacker. Whoever his assailant was, he was not yet confident enough to face him. The encircling figures blended into one corporate identity. The hostile expressions told him they were all against him. He knew only his supposed status as Duke’s agent held them back. If Raistrick could but strip that away he was done for.

  He was conscious of Constable Thaddaeus shifting from foot to foot at his shoulder, making a nervous mumbling sound. In a brief moment of weakness Jarrett was tired of standing alone. With an effort he straightened his shoulders and picked out the most prominent man in the group. As he held the stare the edge of his vision caught a movement to his right. The man who had spoken, emboldened by the attention brought by his tale, executed a smart shuffle towards him and spat. Jarrett did not flinch. The rest of the chamber was noisy but in the space in which they were locked he could hear the short, excited breathing of the men confronting him. Raistrick strode among them.

  ‘Now, boys, clear a way. We must get started.’

  The ring fractured and grudgingly a way opened. The lawyer was back at his table shuffling papers. Jarrett took out his handkerchief and wiped the gob of spittle from his cheek.

  ‘Gentlemen.’ With an ironic bow to the company he made his way to his seat. His leg hurt and the chair was hard. He would not give them the pleasure of seeing him slouch. He eased out his damaged leg and tried to appear alert.

  The witness, Ned Turner the carter, was not yet in the chamber. The proceedings restarted with the report of Mr Gilbert, the surgeon who had examined the victim. Mr Gilbert was a plain little man. His voice had a trace of Edinburgh precision about it. The faint accent contributed to a general impression that the good doctor valued himself pretty highly in the measure of men and anticipated that others would do him similar justice. Mr Justice Raistrick took up the questioning as before.

  ‘Mr Gilbert, you have examined the deceased?’

  ‘I have, Mr Justice Raistrick. It is my opinion that the victim fell to her death from a height. The scalp covering was split and there was considerable blood lost. That wound, however, was not the likely cause of death. The victim died from her neck being broken – perhaps by striking a stone or some similar object. I remarked a circular discoloration or bruising of the skin about the base of the neck, which mark is consistent with a sharp blow.’ Mr Gilbert spoke in a careful, didactic tone. He adjusted his little round glasses on his pointed nose and settled himself more comfortably in his position centre stage. In his discourse he had turned and was now lecturing the vestry as if they were a jury.

  ‘I observed bruises on the side and back of the torso, and scratches on the arms; these, along with mud and scraps of leaves and twigs caught in the hair and a tear in the red petticoat the victim wore – a tear matching some threads Justice Raistrick, I believe, himself recovered from bushes at the edge of the rock they call Lovers’ Leap’ – the little surgeon bowed in the Justice’s direction – ‘these are all indications which would lead any reasonable man to conclude that the victim fell to her death.’

  ‘Would Sally Grundy, this poor young woman,’ the lawyer underlined this phrase with a graceful gesture somehow evocative of the pathos of the girl’s fate, ‘have died outright?’

  Mr Gilbert inclined his head slightly as he applied his mind to this question. ‘No man of science could claim to judge with any certainty. The victim might take a few moments to die from such an injury. In some cases there has been some considerable jerking about of the limbs noted in the shock of the final spasm.’

  The watching faces reflected the mood of the chamber as light passing over water. Raistrick stood master of it all, like some pagan god conducting the elements. One could
not help but be drawn to the man. Here was a being whose whole power rested in his own form and abilities, without the advantages of birth or connections. Wealth – no doubt he had collected wealth; but watching the lawyer conduct the emotions of the pressed pack of human beings surrounding him Jarrett felt certain that even if he were robbed of all he owned he would, given time, recoup, rebuild and re-emerge strong and powerful once more. With his voice and that one simple gesture Raistrick conjured up for his audience the tragic picture of the beautiful, defenceless young woman cut down by a stranger’s deliberate malice.

  ‘The victim would not have been able to turn herself on her back and fold her arms neatly across her breast?’

  Mr Gilbert permitted himself a little smile in recognition of this joke. ‘Oh, no; dear me, no. That would not be possible.’

  ‘And in your expert judgement, Mr Gilbert, can you suggest the hour that Sally Grundy might have met her death?’

  ‘I fear science cannot instruct us as to the precise time of death. However, I would propose that if the victim was last seen near half past nine on Wednesday evening – as the storm broke near eleven o’clock that night, and the body was found sheltered above the line of the flooded river – simple deductive reasoning would indicate that the victim died between the hours of close to ten and eleven o’clock that night. Rigor mortis was well established when the remains were discovered.’ Ever the pedant, Mr Gilbert took off from this statement to wander with pleasure in the byways of qualification. ‘It is to be regretted that as the onset of that condition is varied, it is not possible to deduce with any scientific accuracy how long the body might have lain in the gully.’ Here the surgeon embarked on a lengthy tale of an instance from his experience when rigor mortis was delayed in the corpse of a child kept warm by a fire for two days by a grieving mother who would not accept that God had gathered her child to Him. The tale was reaching its most affecting part when a commotion was heard outside. The long-awaited carter had arrived.