Death at Gallows Green

by Robin Paige

  Charles gripped his shoulder. “It is the fault of those who did it,” he said fiercely. “If Tod had anything to do with this, he will pay, Ned. We will find him and make him pay!”

  That was cold comfort, Edward knew, when he could pull himself above the black whirlpool that spun in his gut. But it was all he had to offer Agnes.

  38

  I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.

  —Job 30:29

  Kate and Bea were weary and somber when they climbed into the carriage and started back to Bishop’s Keep late that evening. The Oliver cottage had filled with women after the awful news arrived from the river. They brought food and the softly murmured comfort of those who keep daily company with birth and death, joy and bereavement. Edward had returned for a little while, drawn and stoop-shouldered and with nothing at all to say, but he and Sir Charles had left when summoned by a message from Constable Bradley at Manningtree. As they went, Vicar Talbot, a close friend of Kate’s, arrived to sit by the fire and read aloud from Psalms and the Book of Job and the Prayer Book: ancient, measured words that seemed to bring dignity to death and enfold them all within a sense of larger purpose.

  But it was an illusory seeming, Kate thought bitterly, a magician’s trick to ease a mother’s pain, to explain the inexplicable. Whatever words the vicar might summon, no purpose could be served by a child’s death—especially if, as she suspected, that child had been killed by those who feared that she might name them as her father’s murderers.

  But Agnes did not know what Kate knew, or guessed. Agnes grieved a daughter who was accidentally drowned while searching for her duck. The vicar’s presence appeared to bring the mother some small comfort, and her sobbing lessened as the old man read on, until at last she fell asleep in her chair, worn out by grief upon grief.

  There was nothing more to be done. Agnes was surrounded by women who cared, who had lived through their own terrible losses, as she would. The river was being dragged by men who had dragged it before, on other sad occasions. And because the site of the drowning had occurred in the short stretch between the lock at Flatford and the lowest lock near the mouth of the estuary, they held out hope of finding the body.

  “They allus turn up,” Mrs. Wilkins told Kate, as she and Bea went out to the carriage. “Th’ Sawyer lad fell int’ th’ millpond three year a-gone. ’Ee ‘twas two days under th’ water, but ‘ee turned up.” She became confidential. “They float, y’know, even if they be tangled in weed. The belly arter a while bloats, and they won’t be kep’ down.”

  Kate said a hasty good-bye, fearing that the grisly details of drowning would be too much for Bea on the heels of such a dreadful, wearying day. But Bea was only sad, and thoughtful.

  “It’s queer, you know,” she remarked, as Pocket climbed up to his seat and chirruped to the horses, “about the owl.”

  Kate arranged her skirts and settled into the seat. “The owl?”

  “Betsy’s owl,” Bea said. “Mr. Browne. He lives in the shed. There’s a ring that clips around his leg, fixed to a chain on his perch. I went to release him, not wanting him to go hungry if Agnes did not think to feed him. But he was gone.”

  “I shouldn’t think that’s unusual,” Kate said. “Perhaps Betsy let him loose yesterday.”

  “Perhaps,” Bea said thoughtfully. “But Betsy’s gauntlet was missing as well.”

  “Her gauntlet?”

  “A leather glove made by her father. She wore it on her arm so that the owl could perch there, like a medieval falcon, when she took him hunting. She was quite proud of it.”

  Kate frowned. “And it’s gone?”

  Bea nodded. “I wonder,” she said. She fell uncomfortably. silent. “Perhaps it was—” She looked at Kate, doubtful. There was a worried crease between her eyes. “You don’t suppose—”

  “I can’t suppose anything,” Kate said crossly, “until you finish one of your sentences and I know what we’re talking about.”

  Bea looked out the window into the grey twilight of the late afternoon. “We told Agnes last night that we intended to go ratting. ‘Miss Ardleigh and I are going ratting,’ I said. That’s the reason we gave for wanting to take the dog.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose that’s what we said,” Kate replied, “but it was only a manner of speaking. I really fail to see . . .” She paused, thought. “Do you think Betsy might have overheard the conversation?”

  “If she did,” Bea said, “she could have decided to go herself, and take her owl.”

  “But it was dark,” Kate objected, “and drizzly.”

  “Dark and drizzly didn’t deter us, did it? And I doubt that it would have deterred Betsy, either. She is . . . was a daring child, more boy than girl, don’t you think?” Bea sighed. “And fortunate to be encouraged in her daring by her father, when so many girls are sentenced to the mother’s tender mercies. Afternoons in the parlour are hideously boring. One quite envies Betsy, actually.”

  Kate heard in Bea’s words her unframed wish for greater freedom. Then she frowned. “I wonder,” she said, “if Betsy would indeed have followed us.”

  “I think it quite possible,” Bea said. “Should we not go—”

  Kate did not require Bea to finish that sentence. She leaned forward and signaled Pocket with a tap. When he ducked down and slid open the window, she said, “We’ll go home by way of the old stone church, Pocket, and up the lane toward Highfields barn.”

  So that was how Kate and Bea happened to come once more to the barn, this time in full daylight, and to find Betsy’s leather gauntlet discarded beside a stone wall. And one child’s boot, and a gunnybag with two dead rats and a long-tailed mole, and signs in the muddy earth of a fierce scuffle.

  It was small comfort to know what had happened, but there could no longer be any doubt. Betsy had not gone into the river by accident.

  39

  All tragedies are finished by a death.

  —LORD BYRON

  When they arrived at Bishop’s Keep, Kate immediately sat down and wrote a note to Sir Charles and another to Edward. She posted Pocket in one direction and Ben, the newly-hired gardener, in the other. Both returned three quarters of an hour later with the news that neither man was at home, and that the notes had been left. This word came just as Kate and Bea were sitting down to a late supper served by Mudd and a subdued Amelia. Both of them were acquainted with Agnes Oliver.

  “Pocket didn’t say when Sir Charles might return?” Kate asked.

  “No, mum,” Mudd replied, serving Bea’s soup. He placed the tureen on the table so that they could serve themselves if they wished, and stepped back. “But Ben learned that the constable is still away with Sir Charles. They have gone to Colchester, to the police headquarters.”

  “I see,” Kate murmured, and at the thought of Sir Charles turned slightly pink. He had touched her arm when he spoke to her in Agnes’s kitchen. And he had spoken with a deeply intimate tone, as if in his mind this anguish had somehow drawn the two of them closer.

  She looked up to find Bea’s eyes on her, and felt herself blushing even pinker. “I suppose that they have gone to instigate a search for Tod and Brock,” she said briskly. “Thank you, Mudd. We will ring when you are wanted.”

  “Well, we’ve done all we could,” Bea said, when the servants had left the room. “If Constable Laken and Sir Charles are searching for Tod and Brock, I wish them good fortune!” Her voice became low and fierce. “If I were a man, I’d like to be the first to lay hands on them! I’d have them dead!”

  As the evening wore on, however, Charles began to suspect that fortune was not to smile on Edward and him that night. While they were still at Agnes’s, after the news of Betsy’s drowning had arrived, a message had come from P.C. Bradley. Edward was to meet him in Inspector Wainwright’s office at Colchester, to receive certain intelligences regarding the whereabouts of Tod and Brock.

  They arrived at nearly five to find the inspector there but the P.C. delayed. While they waited,
they dispatched Sergeant Battle to the pub for several two-penny pigeon pies, a half-dozen boiled eggs, cake, and bottles of East India ale. Edward could scarcely eat for impatience, but Charles fell to his meal with a good appetite, not sure when he would have another. lt was nearly six when P.C. Bradley arrived, breathless and damp. He explained that Chief Constable Pell, when notified by wire that Napthen was in custody and had named Tod as the leader of the grain-theft ring, had wired back that a police informer believed Tod to be in Wivenhoe, a port village at the mouth of the Colne, a few miles to the east and south of Colchester. Bradley and Edward were directed to go to The Flag, a pub on the wharf there, and apprehend Tod when he appeared, expeditiously.

  “Expeditiously?” Edward growled. “Does Pell take us for asses?”

  “Perhaps Sergeant Battle can be spared for duty,” P.C. Bradley said. He cast a hungry look at the half-pie that remained on Edward’s plate, the crust crumbling, juices oozing. “You’ve been eating, I see,” he added unnecessarily.

  “Battle?” Wainwright snorted, contemptuous. He stood up. “Battle is not your man. I’ll go myself.”

  “Right, then,” Bradley said, as Charles too got up. “We’re off.” But he remained staring at the food.

  “For God’s sake, man,” Edward said, already at the door. “Wrap the damned pie and eat it on the way. Let’s be gone, or we’ll miss the bloody devil!”

  It was still drizzling and very dark as they made their way to Wivenhoe, Charles and Edward in a fly, P.C. Bradley and Inspector Wainwright in a gig. The road was mire and the wind chill, and Charles sincerely hoped that their journey might not be in vain.

  The Flag, whose sign-board bore the storm-beaten semblance of the Union Jack, was located on the wharf at Wivenhoe, not twenty paces from the moorings of the dozen or so wooden-hulled ships that were crowded into the narrow harbour. The pub consisted of three cramped rooms, one behind the other. The ceilings were barely higher than Charles’s head and the roaring fireplaces rivaled the blazes of perdition. The rooms were crowded with all the crews of all the ships in the harbour (or so it seemed), every man suffering from a quenchless thirst.

  After the chill freshness of the damp night, the place was stifling and rank with the odour of men, cigars, and stout. The din of voices in the first two rooms was loud. From the third room (which appeared to be a separate establishment, with a doorway connecting it to the pub) came the noisy thumping of boots on a board floor, to the accompaniment of a seaman’s ditty, brayed out by a concertina and fiddle. A half-dozen Jacks turned and churned around the floor, clutched by and clutching robust women, young and old. As Charles peered over the heads of seated imbibers, the dancers lined up for heel and toe, heel and toe, and in a minute were back to the churning and turning again. The concertina gave one last wheeze, the fiddle one final wail, and the shout of rum! boys, rum! was heard.

  The landlord was a man of sly face and a girth unusual even for a publican, with a ring of coarse black hair encircling a bald head. He resembled nothing so much as a stout, happy friar, Charles thought. When P.C. Bradley identified himself and desired information, the landlord wiped his hands on his white apron and professed himself eager to be of service.

  “Any service, sirs,” he added, with a crafty grin, his look taking in all four of them. “I’d ruther be on th’ gud side o’ th’ law than th’ bad.” He gestured with his head to a painted and feather-decked lady, pretty, but not as pretty as she once had been, smoking a brown cigarette and being courted by two drunken sailors. “Jenny’s fond o’ a kiss an’ fonder o’ a crown,” he confided. “Her sisters live ‘round th’ corner an up th’ stair. Jes’ tell ’em George sent ye, an’ they’ll treat ye right.”

  P.C. Bradley, heaven help him, blushed to the tips of his ears, and Charles wondered whether he should alter his estimation of the young man who had seemed so worldly and self-assured.

  “That isn’t the kind of information we’re looking for,” the P.C. said rather stiffly.

  “Ooh, ah, ye’re ‘ere fer that business, are ye?” The publican delivered himself of a heavy sigh, together with his hope of a tip for special services rendered. “Why they’d send four o’ ye fer such a mite of a job, an’ late too? ’Ee warn’t a fighter, as it turned out, an’ Smokey over there already give ’im th’ boot. ‘Ee jes’ wanted a row, was all. ’Ee didn’t mind ’oo it wur with, er wot it wur fer. But Smokey moved ’im on.”

  Edward pushed forward, clearly impatient. “We weren’t sent here to keep the peace,” he said. “We’re looking for a man named Russell Tod.”

  “Tod, eh? Russell Tod?” The publican screwed up his face, considering. After a moment’s reflection, he shook his head. “Tod, Tod. Niver ‘eard of ’im.”

  “But we were told he would be here,” Bradley said angrily. “We’ve come all the way from—”

  “Decker!” The publican beckoned with a beefy hand to a wizened, wily-looking man enveloped in a brass-buttoned greatcoat several sizes too large for him. “Decker! These gennulmen o’ th’ law want ter know ‘bout somebody named Tod.” To Bradley he said, “If Tod’s t’ be known, Ol’ Decker’ll know ‘im. ’Ee knows ever‘body, ’ee do.”

  The wizened man dragged himself to the bar. “Wery dry,” he whispered in a voice like the Sahara.

  Edward snapped his fingers. “Give the man a pint,” he ordered.

  The pint was delivered, and Old Decker refreshed himself, but when he was questioned as to the whereabouts of Tod, it fell out that he, like the publican, had niver ‘eard of ’im, and he shuffled off to cradle his pint by the fire, where he could bask in the warmth of Jenny’s perfumed laughter.

  “But I don’t understand,” Bradley said desperately. “We had certain intelligence that Tod would be here.”

  “Ooh, intelligence, is it?” the publican remarked. “Well. then, sirs, p’r’aps it’s only a matter o’ time a-fore yer man shows ’is face. Whyn’t yer ‘ave a pint an’ wait?” He peered at them. “Wot’s ‘ee wanted fr, that brings out four o’ ye?”

  “Theft,” Bradley said.

  “Murder,” Edward growled. “The killing of a constable and the drowning of a child.”

  The publican’s eyes opened. “Ooh, aye,” he muttered. “Well, then, best ye look sharp. ’Ee sounds a very untoward gen‘leman, ’ee do.”

  They took their pints to a table in the corner from whence they could oversee the comings and goings of pugnacious sailors and pliant Jennies, but the untoward Mr. Tod failed to materialize, nor did any of the men whom they questioned acknowledge ever having heard of him. Two hours later, despairing of doing what they had come for, Edward pushed back his chair and stood up.

  “You and Wainwright can stay if you like,” he told Bradley, “but Charles and I are going back to Gallows Green. We’ll do as well watching Tod’s house as sitting here. Maybe better.”

  The P.C. scrutinized his third pint. “Well,” he said thickly, “p’r’aps that’s best. Inspector Wainwright an’ I can stay here an’ see what we see.”

  Wainwright, as cheerful as Charles had ever seen him, agreed. “We might walk down the wharf,” he remarked, “and inquire of another pub.”

  “You do that,” Charles said, “and if you come upon Tod, apprehend the man.” He grinned dryly. “Expeditiously.”

  “Of course,” Bradley said with great seriousness. “And you do the same.”

  “Ah,” Wainwright said, “expeditiously.” And raised his glass in signal for another.

  But even though Charles and Edward drove hard back to Gallows Green, it was close to midnight when they arrived. If Tod had been at the cottage at all that evening, he was not there now. The place was dark, and only the querulous hooting of an owl broke the silence, and on a wall across the green, the shrill cacophony of courting cats.

  Without speaking, they set up a concealed watch where they could observe the door of the cottage and waited there in the damp night chill until a pale dawn silvered the morning mist. But they waited in va
in, for their quarry failed to return home that night. And of all the reasons that Charles imagined as he waited, the only one he did not consider was that Russell Tod, he of the sharp chin and coppery whiskers, was dead.

  40

  She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.

  —RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN

  The Rivals

  “Wi’ respects, mum—”

  “With respect, Amelia,” Kate broke in crossly, “I shall wear what I please. Now tell Pocket we shall want the gig. Immediately.” As the maid left the room, Kate shook her head. Of course, Amelia hadn’t actually said anything about the costume she had chosen, and she likely wouldn’t have dared. But her agonized look had spoken volumes.

  Bea gave her a slight smile. “If you don’t mind my saying so, your dress does invite comment.”

  Kate looked down at herself. She was wearing a version of the garment that Mrs. Bloomer of Seneca Falls, New York, had devised almost fifty years before as part of her program of rational dress, designed to free women from the confines of their costumes. The trousers were fashioned like knickerbockers, buckling neatly at the calf. The jacket was snug but comfortable, with reasonable sleeves. Both were cut of sturdy green tweed.

  “The Society cyclists are wearing this in Hyde Park,” she said, a bit defensively. She had seen a drawing of the costume in The Queen, with a caption that reported that titled debutantes had taken to riding between the Achilles statue and the powder magazine in Hyde Park every morning in bloomers. On a bicycle, a full skirt was an invitation to a tumble.