Blood On the Stone

by Jake Lynch

  Moreton delved into the basket Cate had set down on the counter and pulled out one of her cakes, weighing it critically on his upturned palm and regarding it through narrowed eyes. She wondered if his hands were clean, but did not care to look too closely to check.

  ‘Very well then missy – we better have four of them,’ he said at last, disentangling eight copper ha’pennies among a mass of paper scraps dredged from his coat pocket. Her purse would be heavy, but her baskets were now much lighter – just a few cakes left for the inns and taverns down Fish Street. On previous rounds, she’d reached The Unicorn and Jacob’s Well, opposite Christ Church, but – such was the demand that day – her wares would surely be exhausted before she got that far along.

  Chapter 40

  The Lost Wallet

  Unsworth’s body had been taken under guard, placed on the trestle table and safely locked inside the parlour behind Luke’s office at the Guildhall. The constables had secured the side door of the inn, and one stood at the front entrance, stave at the ready against any attempt to enter, as the Chief Officer and his deputy briefed four others among the overturned furniture in the bar area.

  ‘We now believe Harbord was killed by members of his own political group who…’ He was chary of revealing any more details than they needed to know of his briefing by the Lord Chancellor’s intelligencer – ‘…who may have thought he’d double-crossed them in some way.’

  ‘That’s what Unsworth said, aye,’ Robshaw nodded in affirmation.

  ‘That’s right, we got him to tell us just before he died what in particular angered Harbord when a man came to call on him on Monday. “You betrayed us” were the words, apparently: that fits with other information we’ve received, that he may have been playing both ends of politics against the middle.’

  ‘So, who we looking for then?’ Tim Blount asked.

  ‘Well, we clearly need to find that man, but two others now as well – the men we believe killed Unsworth.’

  ‘One’s a weedy-looking feller what thinks he’s Lord Muck,’ Robshaw pronounced contemptuously. What this description lacked in detail, Luke felt, it made up for in its evocative quality.

  ‘That’s Elkanah Settle. Slight build, clean-shaven, prominent nose and noticeable overbite. He writes their pamphlets – quick-witted, and dangerous in a cunning sort of way, but I doubt it was him who actually stuck the blade in.’

  ‘That’d be the blackamoor. Big blighter, reckons himself quite the dand,’ the deputy added. Luke nodded.

  ‘Younger man of African descent. Well built, plum-coloured coat and pale breeches, with a distinctive hat, a capotaine, sides of the crown bulge out slightly. No beard or moustache, but thick black sideburns.’

  ‘Green ribbons?’ Blount asked.

  ‘Good thought, Tim, but they’ve probably taken them off by now.’

  As the men fanned out in search of Unsworth’s killers, Luke and Robshaw turned their attention to the inn itself. They climbed the winding staircase to the bedrooms: the landlord’s own, predictably slovenly, and cluttered with the debris of rudimentary bachelor’s personal hygiene and dressing arrangements; and another, by contrast, conspicuously bare, with its bed neatly made and floor clean swept.

  ‘Must’ve been where Harbord was lodging,’ Luke said. ‘Well, if there was anything here to shed light on his death, we missed it. Mind you, his letters from Barillon were supposed to be at his home in Norfolk.’

  Back downstairs, as Luke righted the chair that had crashed through the window, together with others upended by its impact, the deputy let out an indeterminate grunt of surprise from the back of the bar.

  ‘What’s that there? Under where them two was sitting?’ Luke followed the direction of his finger and picked out a slender dark shape in the shadows beneath the bench from where Settle and his henchman had glared at them earlier, as they’d frogmarched Unsworth for interrogation. Robshaw knelt on a stool at the end of the table and bent down to retrieve the mystery object. They turned to each other with excitement as he placed it on the table top: a slim document wallet in black leather of fine quality. If, as seemed likely, this belonged to Settle, it was a find indeed. Luke gave a low whistle.

  ‘Must’ve dropped it when they got up to run outside,’ Robshaw murmured, turning it over in his hands. ‘That feller said they was in a hurry, like.’

  *

  With The Unicorn and Jacob’s Well secured, the pair sat at the desk in the office at the back of the Guildhall and looked down at their discovery. Dusk had now fallen outside, so Robshaw lit candles as Luke gingerly opened the silver clasp and pulled the wallet open. Inside, sure enough, the innermost compartment of the portfolio’s left lobe contained four engraved visiting cards: one, somewhat dog-eared, from Sir Thomas Armstrong, an MP and former army officer; and three in pristine condition announcing Elkanah Settle Esq., Playwright, Poet & Pamphleteer.

  ‘Well, that confirms it – this is Settle’s all right,’ Luke said. ‘Must have got up so quickly to leave, the minute our backs were turned, this dropped out of his pocket and he never realised.’

  They turned their attention to the wad of papers in the main body of the folder. The top two sheets were full of close-wrought doodles, as if the writer’s pen had to keep busy with something to allow him to concentrate – while listening, perhaps? Luke felt a sudden thrill that experience had taught him was a sure sign of proximity to some kind of connection in a case, or even a breakthrough. Turning eagerly to the next page, it was clear immediately that the wallet’s contents could be of considerable importance. At its head was the inscription: ‘Meeting of Green Ribbon Club, 18th inst. – Minutes.’

  ‘The eighteenth – that was Tuesday! This is a record of what they’ve been up to in there.’

  ‘Unsworth reckoned it might be treason,’ Robshaw reminded him. Better still was the information Settle had recorded thereunder: a list of those present, whose names included Armstrong, as well as Edward Norton, who’d apparently taken over from Harbord as the Club’s chief spokesman, and several others with the letters, ‘M.P.’ appended. James Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury, was also mentioned. Luke could imagine his new friend ‘Tom’ might take a close interest in this list – though its relevance to their own investigation was not immediately clear.

  Disappointingly, however, the following pages shed no further light, covered, as they were, in a series of lines and curves with a superficial resemblance to letters of the alphabet, but no more than that.

  ‘You’d know what that says then, sir – ’tis surely Latin or some such?’ Robshaw asked.

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. Looks more like Greek, but it’s not that either. I don’t recognise these letters at all.’ Luke quickly riffled through the rest of the sheets, confirming that the folder merely contained more of the same. Every now and then he could make out, in the left-hand margin, a pair of letters that were surely initials: ‘T.A.’, presumably for Thomas Armstrong, featured occasionally, as did ‘E.N.’

  ‘That’ll be Edward Norton,’ Luke murmured.

  Only on one page towards the back were there some different markings, which he and Robshaw now turned to study. On one line was an ink drawing that might have depicted – Luke thought – a raindrop exploding on contact with the ground. After staring hard at it holding his breath for a full half-minute, Robshaw finally pronounced with certainty:

  ‘Nah. ’Tis a crown.’

  ‘Of course – you’re quite right, Robshaw, it’s a crown. Obvious once it’s pointed out.’

  ‘So what do them letters mean then?’ Immediately below the shape they had now identified as a crown, the initials O.R. appeared, and what looked like a downward arrow – or it could be one of the squiggles that filled most of the other pages. Next to that again was another set of initials, J.S., and an upward-pointing arrow.

  ‘My God!’ Luke clapped his hand to his forehead, quite forgetting about his graze, whose throbbing in response was lost in his excitement. ‘That’s what Unsworth w
as on about! “O.R.” is “Old Rowley”.’

  ‘The King’s nickname?’

  ‘Indeed. And “J.S.” must be James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth! They’re plotting to down King Charles – that’s the arrow – and replace him on the throne with Monmouth – the upward arrow!’ The other images on the page faded into the background as Luke realised they had stumbled on a plot against the monarchy.

  ‘That there Tom’d be interested in this, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘He would, Robshaw. He certainly would.’

  ‘We should give this to him then.’

  Luke’s mind was racing.

  ‘Not so fast, my friend. This is hot stuff, what’s in this wallet. Settle would know that of course, and he’ll have missed it by now. At some point he’ll try to get it back from The Unicorn and Jacob’s Well.’

  ‘We should double the guard on that there door,’ Robshaw said.

  Luke pinched his lower lip between forefinger and thumb.

  ‘We-ell… Yes, let’s do that – for now. Then later we should put this back, and withdraw the guard – and I’ll have to ask the Provost not to send any more of his proctors.’

  ‘I don’t follow you, Master Sandys.’

  ‘Thing is, how can we prove it’s his? It’s got his visiting cards in it, but anyone could have put them in there. We’ll have to catch him red-handed.’

  ‘Ah,’ Robshaw said.

  ‘So – we keep the inn under guard, for as long as we could realistically still be looking for evidence in the murder inquiry. That way we avoid arousing Settle’s suspicions. Then we put the wallet back where we found it, and wait somewhere out of sight to keep watch on the building. He’ll surely try to retrieve it – and when he’s got it, we’ll move in and arrest the knave, for both murder and treason!’ he finished triumphantly.

  ‘Ah,’ the deputy replied, ‘now I follow!’

  Chapter 41

  Missing

  As the pair savoured the triumph now in prospect, there came a thunderous knock at the office door. Robshaw opened it to reveal the substantial figure of Jim Napper, licensee of The Mitre Inn.

  ‘Luke – thank God,’ he exclaimed in a tone of urgent anxiety. ‘It’s Cate – she’s disappeared!’

  Luke sat bolt upright. ‘What d’you mean, disappeared?’

  ‘She’s never come back off her round.’

  ‘Calm down, Jim. What round?’

  They ushered the man inside and got him to sit.

  ‘She’s been going out, some mornings but mostly afternoons, on a round for to sell her bread and cakes at the other taverns. She’s usually back an hour or more before now – round about when it gets dark.’

  ‘Could she be with someone? A friend?’

  Jim shook his head.

  ‘Mary’s been to ask Lizzie Carter, at the Blue Lion, but she said Cate left there ages ago.’

  ‘What inns does she go to?’ Robshaw asked.

  ‘Why, she calls up and down Cornmarket, then she goes down Fish Street. Far as that new one, The Unicorn.’

  Luke leaned forward, now beginning to share Napper’s alarm.

  ‘She’s been selling cakes at The Unicorn and Jacob’s Well?’

  ‘Aye – reckons as how ’tis one of her best customers.’

  The constables went with Jim Napper first to the Falcon Inn, the next up Fish Street from The Unicorn and Jacob’s Well, which should have been Cate’s penultimate call. Neither there nor at the next establishment up the hill – The New Inn – had she been seen that afternoon; however, The Falcon’s pot-man, and Taylor, The New Inn’s landlord, both agreed to help with the search.

  As the taverners struck out to pick up more volunteers along the way, Luke and Robshaw called at The Mermaid, where the landlord Moreton’s disobliging gruffness melted to the extent of reporting that yes, he had indeed seen Cate: she’d arrived there about half an hour before dusk. No, she hadn’t seemed agitated, or in any way different from her normal appearance or demeanour.

  ‘Bought four of her cakes, and sent her on her way,’ the innkeeper concluded his report of the encounter.

  The pair paused on the pavement outside and took stock, as Luke struggled to contain his inner turmoil. Every instinct screamed at him to tear down the walls of Oxford brick by brick. Good job Robshaw was calmer: the only way to find her, surely, was by methodically thinking through the possibilities till a process of elimination pointed them in the right direction.

  ‘So, something must’ve happened to her between here and the next one, then,’ the deputy said.

  They slowly retraced their steps, looking either side as they went; but there was nothing out of the ordinary, and nowhere else, apparently, where Cate could have gone. Running down the side of the New Inn was a narrow yard, leading perhaps seventy or eighty feet back from the road, but it seemed to serve merely as a temporary dumping ground for rubbish from the taverns and traders roundabout, and – if the smell were not off-putting enough – the cobbles stopped short of the ivy-clad wall at the far end, leaving a patch of earth and a dank thicket in which holly and hawthorn competed for the meagre light with nettles and bramble.

  Calls at The Bear and The Wheatsheaf, where neither staff nor any of the thinning ranks of customers recalled having seen a young woman of Cate’s description, seemed to rule out any chance that she had taken an unscheduled detour down Blue Boar Street. As the Nappers had closed The Mitre for the evening, Luke told a pale-faced Mary that he and Robshaw would be round the corner at The Golden Cross, where they could get a late supper. He spoke to Cate’s mother in tones calculated to reassure himself as much as her.

  ‘We’ll find her, Mary. ’Tis only a matter of time, I’m sure. You’ll send word, if anything turns up?’

  ‘Aye, Luke, of course. Master Ingram’s gone up the other way toward The Broad, to ask in the taverns round there. We’re all praying for her.’

  Chapter 42

  A Chance Meeting

  It was a rare occasion when the drooping moustache and doleful expression belonging to the landlord at The Golden Cross, Henry Hadfield, seemed entirely appropriate to the circumstances. The constables shook their heads in answer to his enquiry and raised eyebrows as to news of the search, and gladly accepted his offer of hospitality.

  ‘’Tis the least we can do,’ he intoned.

  Their meal had not yet arrived, and they had just placed their tankards back down simultaneously after each taking a sup of ale, when a familiar deep voice rang out from the other end of the counter:

  ‘Evening, sirs!’ It was Robert Pawling. ‘You let that trooper go then, Luke?’ he asked.

  The brass neck of the man! Luke turned and glared at the ex-mayor. It was not an evening when he felt like being trifled with.

  ‘Yes. The evidence we were relying on to hold him turned out to have been planted,’ he replied.

  ‘By you,’ Robshaw interjected.

  ‘You put those fibres on Harbord’s body, to try to incriminate Gregory in the murder.’

  Pawling grinned infuriatingly.

  ‘Now, maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t,’ he began. ‘But a man who can draw his flintlock on a herd of cattle and a young girl is capable of anything. How d’you know he didn’t kill Harbord?’

  ‘For the very good reason that he was somewhere else when the murder was committed.’

  ‘Ah, well, you always was one for the details, Luke.’ He sniffed, and took a sup of ale. ‘And what about my compensation then, for those milchers? Shall I take it up with your brother?’

  Luke sighed inwardly: nothing, it seemed, could so much as dent the former mayor’s iron-clad self-confidence.

  ‘If you’re in town early enough, you’ll catch him tomorrow. The Blues have a drill in the morning; you can have a word with him while they’re saddling up. Probably Colonel de Vere as well.’

  ‘They’ll be mustering at the New House, then, as usual?’

  Pawling’s turn of phrase seemed to snag something, deep in Luke’s
subconscious, that now began swiftly surfacing.

  ‘What did you say?’ he asked with sudden urgency, spilling some of the ale as he put down his mug. Pawling misinterpreted it as a flash of temper.

  ‘Now Luke, I can tell you’re upset…’

  ‘No, I mean what did you say? Those words you used, just then?’

  ‘The New House?’

  ‘That’s it. What did you mean?’

  ‘Why, ’tis the name the students use for Christ Church, ain’t it? You should know, if anyone.’

  ‘We always just called it “The House” – no “New”.’

  ‘Ah well, ’twas most likely before your time, then. It was called the New House, ’cause it took the place of the Old House.’

  Luke and Robshaw exchanged glances. The Old House! The appointed meeting-place in the letter they’d found in Harbord’s inside pocket – maybe it was not a reference to the Houses of Parliament after all.

  ‘And what was the Old House?’

  ‘The old abbey, at Osney. ’Twas dissolved, see, when the cathedral and college got built.’ Into the pause that followed, Robshaw released an audible breath.

  From their responses, Pawling evidently knew he was on to something, and – to give him credit – seemed keen to help. Probably the result of a guilty conscience, Luke thought darkly: even he must possess one, somewhere beneath the self-righteous carapace he presented to the world at large.

  ‘You’ve seen that somewhere recently, then?’ he said. ‘Part of the investigation?’ For all his bluster, he was a perceptive old so-and-so.

  ‘It was on a note we found in Harbord’s jacket. Referred to a meeting at the Old House. “Friday at dusk”, wasn’t it, Robshaw?’

  ‘Aye, that it was.’

  ‘Well, where is it then, this note?’ the ex-mayor demanded. ‘Let me take a look, maybe I can help to make sense of it?’ Luke calculated for a moment. Annoying as he was, Pawling possessed sharp wits. Despite himself, he concluded there was nothing to lose.