She showed us into a room at the back of the house, and my first impression of Mr Collins reminded me strongly of a dead beetle lashed into the web of a spider. There was no telling the true size and shape of the room; the walls were covered, floor to ceiling, with piles of papers and rolls of parchment, and the floor was covered with boxes of more papers, until there was only just enough space for a desk and a few chairs, and the frail old man appeared to be on the very point of being swallowed up.
He shook our hands and permitted the housekeeper to move a heap or two, so that we could sit down; though his eyes were dim and his voice a whispered pipe, his understanding was perfectly good.
Conversation was difficult at first, for like many very elderly people, his deafness was selective, and he looked blank when Mrs Watts-Weston fired out questions about the house and its situation. At last, giving up, she told him of her connection to the Warrenders. The name brought a gleam to his eye, and a firmer note to his quavering voice.
‘To be sure! Your grandmother married into the Fortescues of Northumberland – the better branch of that family.’
She was gratified. ‘You have a most excellent memory, Mr Collins!’
Frankly curious to try what could be got out of the old man, I asked, ‘Were you acquainted with the Warrenders?’
‘I was well acquainted with the old baronet, Sir Henry Warrender; when I came here – dear me, more than fifty years ago! – he was a fine man. Young Sir Christopher was his grandson, and he was a fine scoundrel. Lady Tremlett was Henry’s sister and therefore Christopher’s great-aunt.’
‘I shouldn’t have started him off,’ Mrs Watts-Weston murmured to me. ‘How are we to stop him?’
Mr Collins went on, ‘Lady Tremlett made a great to-do when Sir Christopher ran away.’
‘Not because she was fond of him,’ said Mrs Watts-Weston. ‘The story was that she was pursuing him for money. I have sometimes wondered if there was one last piece of family treasure, and he made off with it.’
‘No treasure left there, ma’am,’ said Mr Collins. ‘Long gone!’
‘How disappointing!’ Mrs Watts-Weston was losing patience. ‘It’s just as well Sir Christopher was the last of that line.’
‘But he was not the last!’ cried Mr Collins, now positively animated. ‘No, ma’am, not strictly speaking. Sir Christopher inherited Binstock from his uncle, when the man died shortly after the old baronet, and left only an illegitimate son. But I found good evidence of the uncle’s marriage, which means that the son ought to have inherited after all. He would have had a good case for the courts, if he had not died young. He had a daughter – his true heir, had there been anything left to inherit.’
‘Most interesting!’ said Mrs Watts-Weston loudly. ‘You have a great many papers, Mr Collins; if they were removed, this room would make a very pleasant breakfast parlour. Is the drawing room of a similar size?’
The old gentleman was not to be diverted until he had finished his recital. ‘The daughter married a man of no particular lineage, by the name of Laurie.’
‘Laurie!’ I was all attention now. ‘Was this the father of Hannah?’
‘Why yes!’ said Mr Collins, with a happy smile. ‘You have guessed it, ma’am – is it not singular? The last of the Warrenders lies in my own churchyard! I did not know of this when I buried her, for she went by the name of Mrs Welland.’
‘Did you ever meet her?’
‘I did not; she never attended my church.’
‘Do you happen to recall who paid for her tombstone?’
‘It was Mr Daniel Arden. And it was quite proper, for he adopted her twin boys.’
This was such a surprise to me that it took a moment to digest; the mother of those beautiful children was none other than Hannah Laurie.
And this surely meant that their true father was Joshua Welland – but why had he never claimed his own sons?
‘It’s quite appropriate, when you think about it,’ said Mrs Watts-Weston. ‘There is poetic justice in the fact that those boys will inherit Binstock after all! Was Mr Arden aware of the connection?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Collins. ‘When he acquired the estate, he asked me many questions about the history of the Warrenders. He spent hours here, studying my documents. He told me that he was guided by the hand of God.’
Why hadn’t Mr Arden told me the truth about his beloved twins? I remembered Arthur observing that the man was always on his guard.
‘I’ve seen enough to be going on with,’ said Mrs W-W, no longer bothering to whisper. ‘Let’s go, before we have to hear the lineage of every family in the county!’
We took our leave of Mr Collins, and once we were outside again, Mrs Watts-Weston rather embarrassed me by walking along the length of the house, brazenly looking into every window, with not the slightest care for the two labourers staring at her from across the road. Finally, she climbed into the carriage, smiling with great satisfaction.
‘I am pleased with the house; it can easily be made fit for a new incumbent, once all that rubbish has been thrown away. I do wish I’d been able to see the attics, and to ask about the lease of the home farm. Never mind, I have enough to commence my campaign.’ She frowned and exclaimed, ‘Price!’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I was trying to recall the name of Lady Tremlett’s paid companion. It was Miss Price, and later Mrs Wainright, and according to my mother, the old lady led her a terrible life.’
She produced a silver pencil and a piece of paper and began to make notes about the house.
I fell to thinking of the latest piece of information, and vainly trying to fit it into the picture.
I was still as blind as Bartimeus, but the reader’s eye may already have seen the truth – namely, that the key to absolutely everything was Hannah Laurie.
Twenty-six
‘I thought I’d look in while I was passing,’ said Inspector Blackbeard. ‘Something rum turned up this morning, that might be of interest to you, ma’am.’
It was past ten in the evening and Blackbeard had materialized, like a dingy apparition, in the doorway of the small private dining room at the Mitre, where I was ‘treating’ my nephew, dear Gus, to supper (I cannot resist adding that he was a great deal cheaper to entertain than his greedy father; this handsome, earnest, young proto-clergyman took after Fanny’s side of the family; her brothers are as slender and as finely built as gazelles).
‘I’m glad you looked in, Inspector; please join us.’ My heart rose up with hope, for I knew Blackbeard well enough by now to catch the excitement in his laconic tone.
‘I don’t like to intrude, ma’am.’
Gus quickly said he had to return to his desk in college; I introduced him to the inspector.
‘How do, Mr Tyson,’ said Blackbeard, shaking his hand. ‘I know your father, sir. I daresay we’ll be seeing you in court one of these days.’
‘Not unless I commit a crime,’ said Gus (with a droll glance aside at me that suddenly made him astoundingly like Fred). ‘I’m hoping to enter the Church.’
After my nephew had taken his leave, Blackbeard said, ‘Fine young man. You must be proud of him.’
‘I’m as proud as a peacock! But you shouldn’t encourage me, or I’ll brag about him all night, and I would much rather hear what you have come to tell me; please sit down.’
Blackbeard was not a man to be hurried; no matter how momentous the news, he had to filter it through the unknowable layers of his brain before he could utter a word. He sat himself beside the fire and shook his head when I offered refreshment.
‘But I’d be obliged if you would permit my pipe, Mrs Rodd. It helps me think. And this latest turn is a thinker, if ever I saw one.’
‘Of course.’
‘Thankee.’ Out came the short, blackened clay pipe I had so often seen (the tobacco he smoked was of the roughest sort, yet I always found the smell of it less offensive than the indelible reek of Fred’s cigars). After a few minutes of frowni
ng at the fire, he said, ‘I was called out to Hardinsett this morning.’
‘Oh?’
‘The message came from the man I left there, to keep an eye on the place. That old cottage of Tom Goodly’s caught afire and burned to the ground. The farmer who owns it decided to tear it down to make more space for his pigs. They had to dig deep to take out the foundations. They dug up the cesspit, ma’am. And hid right down at the very bottom – what do you think was found?’
‘I can’t imagine.’
The inspector laid his pipe down on the hearth and took from his pocket an old piece of sacking. Slowly and carefully, he opened it to reveal –
‘Gold!’ I gasped out.
The coins were clean, and the lamplight gave them a rich gleam.
‘Twenty gold sovereigns,’ said Blackbeard. ‘Enough money to send a poor woman out of her wits! The farmer, by the name of Grimley, is an honest chap and turned it over to the constable, who gave it to me.’
‘I don’t understand it; such a sum would have set the man up for life! Why did he never touch it?’
‘My guess is that there was someone else in the picture,’ said Blackbeard. ‘Goodly didn’t touch the money on account of being too scared.’
‘Something made Goodly afraid for his soul. That is why he wanted to make his confession to Arthur Somers when he lay dying. And that is the reason Arthur was murdered!’
‘We have our motive – but who does it belong to? There’s more digging to be done, and I would be glad of your help, Mrs Rodd, for time is short and two heads are better than one.’
‘With all my heart, Inspector! Where should we go first?’
‘Abingdon,’ he said promptly. ‘To meet an old woman who ain’t as mad as she’s been painted.’
Inspector Blackbeard arrived at the Mitre next morning, just as every bell in that city of bells rang out eight o’clock. He was to escort me to Abingdon, and as we set out in the plain closed carriage, my spirits rose in spite of everything; the weather was fine and sunny, the sound of bells is always cheerful to me, and it was good to have Blackbeard on my side, for the moment, at least.
Abingdon is six miles from Oxford, in the beautiful countryside known as the Vale of the White Horse. Before we came to the town itself, we turned off the principal road and into a maze of narrow lanes and tall hedgerows.
The old woman’s daughter was a Mrs Squires; she lived in a lopsided row of labourers’ cottages, cheek-by-jowl with a large cattle-byre. The cottages were dilapidated, the thatched roof sagged and one of the cob walls bulged dangerously. It was a typical scene of rural poverty, only too familiar to me from my years as the wife of a country vicar. I knew enough to look beyond the dilapidation, which was the fault of the landlord, to the well-tended vegetable patches and lines of washing that were signs of hard-working tenants. As we picked our way along the muddy path before the row of little houses, we heard hens and smelt pigs. It was a relief to know that the daughter was in far less wretched circumstances than her mother had been.
Mrs Squires was in the patch of garden before her front door, hanging a piece of coarse linen on the washing line, to make the most of what might be the last good drying-day of the year.
The woman could not have been older than me, and was probably much younger, but she was wizened and stooping, and half her teeth were gone. When spoken to, however, she revealed a perfectly sound intelligence; her eyes were bright and watchful. Saying nothing of the gold, Mr Blackbeard asked if we could see her mother.
‘Yessir, if you want,’ said Mrs Squires. ‘She’s not bad today.’
‘How has she been, since you brought her here?’ I asked.
‘Sits quiet, mostly. She’s no trouble, ma’am.’
‘You are good to take care of her, Mrs Squires.’
‘I don’t mind it, now the old man’s gone.’ She was sour. ‘I wouldn’t have him near me. We don’t drink nothing but small ale in this house, and my mother’s all the better for it. She’s not mad. The drink sent her off her head.’
The door of the cottage was so low that we had to bend our heads to get inside. There we found ourselves in one room, humbly furnished yet well-kept, where a truly ancient woman sat before the kitchen fire, slowly and deliberately paring a heap of potatoes into a bowl on her lap.
‘She makes herself useful,’ said Mrs Squires, ‘if you don’t mind waiting all morning.’
Mr Blackbeard, I was interested to see, was absolutely at home and at ease in this setting; not for the first time, I wondered where he had spent his youth.
He drew two more rough wooden chairs up to the fireside, and – ignoring the old woman’s expression of bewilderment – sat down close to her, as if he had been her nephew.
‘I was at Hardinsett yesterday, Mrs Goodly. The old place is just the same – but I’m sorry to tell you that your cottage got pulled down.’
She blinked at him in silence for a moment, as if sieving the facts through her fractured brain. ‘They said I was mad.’
‘You’re not mad,’ said Blackbeard. ‘That’s right, isn’t it, Mother? It was the drink that did for you.’
‘Yessir,’ said Mrs Goodly. ‘The measure was the same as usual, but I got to drink it all, for once.’
‘She means on account of my father being gone,’ put in Mrs Squires. ‘When he was alive she had to sneak her sups of gin without him seeing. If he caught her at it, he beat her black and blue.’
Mrs Goodly nodded, and murmured, ‘She’s a good girl, is my Em.’
It was pleasant to see how the daughter’s face softened, though all she said was, ‘How’s the potatoes coming, then?’
‘Nearly done!’ Mrs Goodly resumed her slow work and I had a sense of someone coming back to their senses after long imprisonment. She was not insane, only a little dazed by the light of freedom (I was forming a lower and lower opinion of her unlamented husband) and the novel experience of sobriety.
‘I’d like you to tell me a story,’ said Blackbeard, in what was for him a coaxing voice. ‘It’s an old story; you’ve been telling it for more than thirty years.’
‘Not that dratted gold!’ groaned Mrs Squires.
He shot her a stern look and carried on, ‘That man of yours was given to thieving, wasn’t he?’
‘I dunno, sir.’
‘Come along, Mrs Goodly! Nothing you say can touch him now.’
‘He was a thief, all right,’ said Mrs Squires. ‘I left home for good and all when he tried to filch my first summer’s wages.’
‘Yes, yes, he was terrible light-fingered!’ her mother sighed. ‘Everybody knew it, till I was ready to die from shame. He kept bad company, too – every rogue for miles about!’
‘I want you to think very hard, Mother.’ Blackbeard’s voice was low and (for him) tender. ‘Let’s see how much you can recall about the supposed “robbery” all those years ago. Do you know who got robbed?’ He shot a warning glance at Mrs Squires, before she could interrupt again.
‘The first I knew was when he came home,’ said Mrs Goodly. ‘It was past midnight, which I know because I was lying awake, and heard the church clock. When Goodly got in, I pretended to be deep asleep upstairs. He wasn’t always fooled, but this time he was and let me alone. I heard him walking about and mumbling, so I crept to the top of the stairs to see what he was up to.’ With a hint of drama, she added, ‘And that’s when I saw the gold!’
(Mrs Squires pursed her lips, obviously longing to speak.)
‘Carry on, Mrs Goodly!’
‘It was all spread across the table and it had such a shine in the candlelight that I knew it was gold!’
‘You must’ve been happy to see it.’
‘No, sir,’ said Mrs Goodly. ‘I was scared. But I saw what I saw, and Goodly never managed to beat it out of me. I knew he had it – but not a penny could I ever get out of him, even when the children cried with hunger.’
‘Well, well,’ said Blackbeard. ‘And did you ever find out where it came from?’
<
br /> ‘No, sir. Never.’
‘He wasn’t working alone, was he?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Let’s have some names!’ He leant a little closer to her. ‘I’m sure you remember some of them “rogues” he hung out with!’
‘Oh yes, sir,’ said Mrs Goodly. ‘Will Tapp, John Gore, Dan Smith, Kit Warrender, Jack Barker, Dan Cummings—’
One name in that list leapt out at me. ‘Warrender – could that be Sir Christopher?’
‘Yes’m.’
‘Oh, yes indeed!’ Mrs Squires burst out. ‘That young fellow was a bad ’un, ma’am; the whole countryside knew it. He drank and gambled until Binstock fell into ruins.’
‘There was a story that he was murdered,’ said Mr Blackbeard (speaking mildly, but with eyes like gimlets). ‘What do you say to that?’
‘It’s nonsense, sir,’ said Mrs Squires. ‘Warrender ran off because of his debts. And because the old lady was after him.’
‘What old lady?’
‘I heard that he had an aunt, a Lady Tremlett,’ I put in.
‘That’s right, ma’am,’ said Mrs Squires. ‘After Warrender ran off, she searched high and low for him, the story being that he’d stole something from her, I don’t know what it was. But there was another story going about.’
‘Plymouth,’ I suggested.
She needed no more prompting. ‘Yes, ma’am – that he was living there in scandal and shame, with a local boy who disappeared at the same time.’
‘Do you recall his name?’
‘Dan Smith,’ piped up Mrs Goodly. ‘Young devil that he was.’
There were other questions I would have liked to ask, but Blackbeard appeared to be satisfied. He gave Mrs Squires half-a-crown (telling her to ‘buy some comforts for Mother’) and we took our leave.
He would not speak until we were in the carriage and well on the road back to Oxford.
And then he said, ‘Nice morning’s work.’
‘I’m glad you think so, Inspector,’ I said. ‘My head is still whirling! Did Goodly conspire with Warrender to rob Lady Tremlett? He must’ve known something about the man’s disappearance; should I go down to Plymouth?’
Laetitia Rodd and the Case of the Wandering Scholar Page 19