The Duke's Agent

by Rebecca Jenkins

  ‘I know where you went that night. You followed Sally Grundy to Lovers’ Leap in these very clogs here,’ he brushed one shoe with a careless finger, ‘and hid by the white rock, in a bush out of sight. What did you see?’

  Maggie gave a hiccup and twitched. He caught a glimpse of blue pop-eyes watery with tears. He cocked his head closer to catch the mumbled words.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I didn’t mean wrong! I didn’t!’ she wailed, suddenly animated and loud. ‘Sal was took. The spirits took her. I never should have gone. I never should!’

  Jarrett ran a perplexed hand through his hair. God preserve him from hysterical females. Henrietta Lonsdale was fussing over the wench. She shot him an accusing look as if he were Torquemada himself. Was it his fault the girl was soft in the head? With a combination of bullying, measured sympathy and a glass of strong spirit supplied by Mrs Bedlington, the women gradually coaxed Maggie into coherence. The girl fixed her reddened eyes on Jarrett’s face like a timid mongrel, eager to please but fearful of cuffs. Cautious in case she might fragment into another storm of emotion, Jarrett began with a slightly lopsided smile.

  ‘What did you see that night up on the rock, Miss Walton?’

  ‘Maggie,’ prompted Henrietta, conscious that formality was more likely to oppress than impress the girl.

  ‘Maggie,’ repeated Jarrett dutifully.

  ‘I didn’t see – not much. It were dark and I was frightened. I didn’t think Sal would go so far and the storm started. And I was afraid of the ghosts – them spirits that walk out on stormy nights.’

  ‘But Sal went to meet someone at Lovers’ Leap?’

  Maggie nodded hard, like some wooden toy. Now that she had begun her confession she seemed eager to unburden herself, as if the gentleman held the hope of her absolution.

  ‘And you could see Sal – just a little, through the branches?’

  Maggie bobbed her head again.

  ‘And what did you hear?’

  ‘The wind was blowing and the trees made such a noise – and the river was rushing and roaring.’

  ‘What else did you hear?’

  The girl squirmed in her seat and began to gabble again. ‘Sal was possessed. She was talking and crying out. She cried out to the good Lord and his angels and cried him shame and flung her arms about.’ Maggie flung out her own thin arms in imitation. ‘And the good Lord sent down a lightning bolt and threw her into the river for doing wrong!’ Tears overflowed the pink eyes and she ended in a convulsive gulp.

  ‘Not again, girl!’ Jarrett exclaimed. ‘Steady now,’ he resumed in a more measured tone. ‘You said Sally Grundy was speaking – who was she speaking to? Who did you see there on the rock with her?’

  ‘No one! I saw no one. There were demons on the rock that night. Only Sal saw them!’

  The fear the girl had suffered that night appeared to have driven the last remaining particles of sense from her brain. She was convinced that Sal had been tumbled from the rock by supernatural agency in punishment for a sinful life. While biddable in other ways, Maggie was utterly determined on this tale. Her face assumed the stubborn, cunning look of the foolish who know what they know. She could not be talked out of her belief by reason, sense or scolding.

  ‘If you don’t believe me, ask him!’ she cried out. ‘He’ll tell you!’

  Jarrett spun round in the direction of her pointing finger. Will Roberts filled the doorway. The perfect apparition to illustrate such a gothic tale.

  ‘Will Roberts – were you there?’ Jarrett heard himself ask. Henrietta glanced at him, astonished at the agent’s composure.

  ‘Not at the rock, but after,’ insisted Maggie, stamping her foot in frustration. She sprang up and ran to Will, grasping his coat in her conviction. ‘You tell them! You know. Will, you know I’m telling the truth!’

  Save for his obvious physical solidity, Will Roberts might as well have been an apparition for all the reaction he gave. His bemused eyes stared out over the head of the girl who hung on his coat. There was a moment of silence, then both Mrs Bedlington and Mrs Munday bore down on the unfortunate Maggie; two ample, bustling figures, determined on confining the rising tide of hysterics.

  ‘There’s no sense to be had from this one,’ Mrs Bedlington pronounced flatly. ‘We’ll be in the kitchen if we’re needed. You’ll be wanting a bit of peace.’ Casting a shrewd look at young Will as she passed, she ushered Mrs Munday and her weeping lodger from the room.

  Will rubbed a big hand over his face. The pale skin clung to hollows and plains, accentuating its gaunt beauty. The mournful eyes seemed to notice Miss Lonsdale for the first time.

  ‘Miss Henrietta. You were always good to me.’ His voice was soft and slow. He trailed off and hung his head. Henrietta stepped towards the towering youth, her face full of compassion.

  ‘Oh, Will.’ The quality of her voice made Jarrett’s heart jump. The emotion set up a counter-twinge of annoyance. He might have little skill with hysterical kitchen-maids but Captain Jarrett was well versed in the ways of men. Such feminine sympathy would only unman the lad further.

  ‘Perhaps you should leave us, Miss Lonsdale?’ he suggested quietly.

  Roberts raised his head. A weary child in a six-foot frame.

  ‘No, Miss – will you stay?’

  ‘Of course I shall stay, Will,’ Henrietta responded at once. There were tears in her eyes as she led him to the window seat. ‘You shall sit here and tell me what you have come to say – and Mr Jarrett shall listen. You went to meet Sally Grundy that night, did you not?’

  The young giant nodded. He gave her a side look and a half-smile, struggling to hold back the tears that welled up in his averted eyes. She smiled back in encouragement.

  ‘Why would you meet so late?’ she asked brightly.

  He swallowed and began to answer by rote, nodding his great head as if to mark time. ‘Had to slip away so my father-in-law wouldn’t know. Drink’s usually got the sergeant by ten or so.’

  Jarrett watched Sal’s lover encourage himself with another dip of his head, then the sad eyes came up to fix on Miss Lonsdale’s face with a simple directness.

  ‘When I got there it was well dark and the storm was blowing up. It was a daft night to be out. Sal was there before me. We’d often met there. She was not in her right mind. She was speaking strangely. Didn’t understand the half of it. She kept flinging up her arms and moving about. She cried on about shame and men putting off their honours and how she was withering and I’d exiled her for money. I tell you, she was raving. She was as one possessed. She’d have never spoken those words in her right mind.’

  Will’s story was carried on by its own momentum. Jarrett could imagine the young man rehearsing it to himself again and again, evolving it into a ritual that contained the pain.

  ‘I saw she was too close to the edge. I said: Don’t be daft, lass, step back from there. But she wouldn’t hear me. There was a flash of lighting and she must have slipped – it all happened so quick. She just fell. It was black as pitch. I couldn’t find my way down. I near fell after her. She was on the rocks, all twisted. I sat by her such a long time, then the breath came out of her and I knew she was gone.’

  ‘And you lifted her up?’ Jarrett asked.

  The great head with its melting eyes turned to him. ‘The rain had started. River was rising. I couldn’t let the river take her. Sal was always afeared of drowning. I couldn’t carry her up.’ A sudden note of hysteria sprang up in Will’s voice. He braced his muscles against it, then settled back once more. ‘It was too steep. So I laid her on a piece of rock where it was dry. I closed her eyes and I left her there.’ He appealed to Miss Lonsdale who sat silent at his side. ‘There was no one to ask for help. No light anywhere.’

  Jarrett drew his attention back. ‘So you made your way back to town and you met Maggie Walton?’

  ‘What was she doing out that night? It was madness. She gave me such a start – leaping out at me and gabbling on abou
t demons and Sal being taken.’

  A spark of annoyance flared out from beneath the numbness and for a moment the confidence of youth reasserted itself. ‘I thought she’d seen the blood on my coat, but it was dark and the silly baggage thought the ghosts had taken Sal. She hadn’t seen me at all. So I let her think it. I told her to go home and stay safe in her bed and tell no one – for who would believe her? I got back to the Swan and he was up. Just my luck. Drink hadn’t taken that night.’ Unconsciously Roberts wiped a grimy hand against his breast as if to clean it. ‘He saw the blood on my coat. He made me tell him. He said: You’re nothing. You’re a little bit of a man.’ Jarrett could hear the sergeant’s sneering intonation faithfully represented by his brow-beaten son-in-law. ‘Where’d your wife and your new baby be if they hang you for that whore? You hold your tongue and say nought. But I canna hold my tongue, Mr Jarrett. I have no peace. I must speak though they hang me. I’d be dead soon any road if I’m to go on like this.’

  The lad was utterly weary. Jarrett’s blue-grey eyes were keen as they watched him.

  ‘Did you kill Sally Grundy, Will?’

  ‘She died because of me.’

  ‘You caused her to fall?’

  ‘No, I never! I’d have given my life for Sal. I would – even though I sent her out of her mind by marrying another.’ His voice broke on an edge between reproach and shattering bewilderment. ‘Oh, Sal! What did you do it for? You weren’t that kind. If I’d have thought it, I never would have gone out that night.’

  The agent stood up and walked away to leave Roberts to compose himself. Behind him Miss Lonsdale was murmuring to the boy about how it could not have been his fault; he was foolish to speak so. He had a new wife and a baby on the way. His family needed him. What kind of man would he be if he let this tragedy pull him down and them with him? Jarrett rubbed the back of his neck and stretched out his shoulder blades trying to release the tightness there. Miss Lonsdale clearly believed the boy. He watched the posture and the desperate way the lad tried to listen to the woman by his side. Jarrett sighed. The story was plain foolish, and tragic enough to be true.

  There were sounds of bustle outside in the yard. Duffin’s laconic head appeared at the open window. The grey eyes under the brim of his disreputable hat were lively and he moved with a spring in his step.

  ‘Here’s Captain Adams back,’ he announced. ‘He’s mustering some lads in the yard. There’s a bit of bother between the Three Pots and the Swan – he’d appreciate some help, if you’re free.’

  Will Roberts was at his side. ‘Trouble at the Swan? Mr Jarrett – I must go,’ he pleaded. ‘I swear on my life I’ll come back and face the magistrates but I must see my Mary safe, sir. She’s got no one but me.’

  Miss Lonsdale added her voice. ‘Let him go, Mr Jarrett. I’ll vouch for Will’s character. I know you can trust him to return.’

  He met the force of her conviction, acknowledging it by a half-smile. With a gesture of his hand he let the boy go.

  ‘I’ll keep an eye on him,’ Duffin said. Jarrett watched the increasingly familiar shape of the poacher swing off at a smart pace out of the yard and down the hill.

  ‘Hurry on, lad,’ he heard him urge as Will raced out after him. ‘Things were getting a touch hot last I saw.’

  The yard had filled with people. Captain Adams, supported by a couple of grim-faced burghers, was drawing up a company of six militia men in red coats. There was the ordered confusion of assembling men and gun-barrels and powder being checked. An excited boy dashed up.

  ‘Captain Adams’s compliments, sir. He says there is a riot started down in the river quarter and he asks whether Captain Jarrett would be so good as to lend him his assistance, sir.’

  Exchanging a grin with a remarkably cheerful looking Captain Adams who stood some thirty feet away from him across the yard, Jarrett replied, ‘My compliments to Captain Adams. Tell him I shall join him directly.’ As the boy raced off he added, ‘And saddle my horse!’

  He felt a touch on his sleeve and turned to Miss Lonsdale at his side.

  ‘You do not believe Will killed her?’ she asked. The grey eyes were startlingly passionate in such a refined face.

  ‘No, Miss Lonsdale, I do not.’

  ‘So you will not permit the magistrates to charge him with her death?’

  ‘I promise,’ he replied soberly, ‘to do my utmost to persuade Colonel Ison that Sally Grundy fell to her death by accident.’ He laid his gloved hand over hers a moment. His sincerity appeared to satisfy her.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Your horse, Mr Jarrett.’ The stableboy had brought Walcheren. He swung up on to the bay’s back.

  ‘Could you do something for me, Miss Henrietta?’

  Her first name had just slipped out. For a still moment he waited for her to recoil, but the dove-grey eyes held his gaze.

  ‘I am ready to do anything I can to assist you in this matter, Mr Jarrett.’

  ‘I am grateful, Miss Lonsdale. Will you ask Lady Catherine whether Sir Thomas has a copy of Volpone, an old play by Ben Jonson? I believe Sir Thomas is a collector of rare volumes.’

  ‘The play Lady Yarbrook was rehearsing, Mr Jarrett?’ Henrietta was puzzled. ‘What interest could there be in that?’

  He smiled. She was a quick-witted woman, but there was no time to elaborate. Captain Adams called over to him. The party of militia were setting off at a jog-trot down the hill. Jarrett gathered up his reins and kicked Walcheren on.

  ‘Borrow me a copy, if you can, Miss Henrietta,’ he called back over the melee. ‘I shall explain at our next meeting.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Walcheren led the way down the steep hillside. High buildings closed in overhead and the big bay stepped into a triangle of deep shadow. The swift transition from light to shade momentarily blinded Jarrett. Hairs rose at the back of his neck as he found himself in another place. Here was that immediate stillness into which sounds drop like coins; every sense straining to decipher distant noises channelled down alleyways and reflected over rooftops. His body tensed with that half-sick, half-exhilarated feeling, the anticipation of ambush. Behind him, Captain Adams slowed his men to a cautious pace. Jarrett’s eyes adjusted and he caught movement beyond a stall protruding across the mouth of a courtyard. A walnut-faced crone was putting up her shutters. She was bent and slow but determined. She huffed and puffed and muttered to herself as she fixed her defences into place.

  ‘You get to your work!’ she scolded, turning her back. ‘Racketing about on a Tuesday! Eeee! Lazy, no-good buggers.’

  The old witch dispelled the tension. His memory was playing tricks on him. Up ahead erupted the sounds of heavy shoes pounding on packed earth. A couple of young louts issued out of an opening, bodies as dense as young calves and features pinned up in an irreverent grin of excitement. They saw the rider and the red coats behind him and skipped back to dodge down a ginnel. Jarrett had the vivid sense of arriving after an action. He picked up the pace, curious to see what evidence it had left by its passing.

  Two streets came together at the river bridge. It seemed as if the whole human life of the quarter had gathered there. Skiffs and barges huddled at viewing points on the river. Spectators crowded about doorways and leant out of windows. Scanning the scene, it occurred to Jarrett, as it had before, that physical type does not necessarily distinguish a fighting man. Some of the burliest bargees floated in mid-river, encouraging or deprecating from the safety of their craft, while on shore wiry little scrappers threw punches and gouged and kicked as indomitable as bantam cocks. Here and there knots of girls concentrated on a particular contest, glee distorting their faces with something vicious and primitive. Down at the river edge an old man was batting a broom furiously at two golden-haired urchins who rolled in the mud fighting like rats.

  This was not an ill-natured skirmish. No knives, just hard heads, fists and feet, with the occasional assistance of moveable objects picked up in passing – a bottle, a stick, a window
shutter. Assessing the action with a professional eye, Jarrett judged it largely leaderless. This was a display of the conquering instinct of man, that same spirit on which kings build the armies with which they pursue their interests. Armies, however, employ a vast machinery of training and discipline to bind men into some sort of order and direct their violence. The brawl on the bridge was chaotic.

  The mere sight of the clump of red coats drained the heart from the fight. Its seething centre began to diffuse. Captain Adams lined up his little party of soldiers to block the street down which they had come. As the tide of the press of bodies ebbed down the other street that ran parallel to the river, Jarrett urged Walcheren on to the stone pavement of the bridge. Beside him, Duffin shouldered his way against the flow of the crowd.

  ‘These lads aren’t in a mind to give real trouble,’ he observed comfortably, heaving a red-faced little man out of his path. The drunk staggered against the parapet of the bridge and reached towards the rider to drag him off his mount. The rider’s boot sent him reeling back with a smart kick to the chest.

  ‘I agree,’ Jarrett replied retrieving his stirrup. ‘Something’s amiss here.’

  He was not sure that Duffin heard him. The poacher was moving with a brisk rhythm, clearing a little semi-circle before him by dint of roaring and the occasional sharp jab of a large fist.

  ‘This is lively,’ he called back. ‘Haven’t seen as good a barney as this since that time Old Pointer thought to lose Lumpin’ Jack his licence by wrecking the docks.’

  Jarrett was hardly listening. Where was Raistrick? The timing of this outburst in the river quarter worried him.

  A distant figure caught his eye on the other side of the bridge – something about the shape and the way it moved. He was almost certain he recognised his erstwhile informant, the miner of the churchyard. He stood up in his stirrups, straining to get a better view. A man was thrown violently against him. Walcheren fretted against the reins, stamping his front feet. At the edge of his vision he saw Duffin square up to a quick lad with a compact body. The poacher easily broke the left-handed jab, but his opponent followed it with a swift hammer right that caught the older man on the side of his grizzled head. Duffin rocked and began to fall. Jarrett’s attention was rudely claimed by a tall man with lashless eyes who clawed up at him, striving to get a grip on his coat. He jabbed him hard in the forehead with an elbow and shoved him away.