Laetitia Rodd and the Case of the Wandering Scholar

by Kate Saunders

  ‘You’ve turned the whole place upside down, Mrs Rodd,’ was Mr Blackbeard’s comment, when I stopped to draw breath. ‘You’re a regular whirlwind!’

  ‘I know how things should be done, Inspector.’ Mrs Hurley had arrived by this time and established herself in a hard chair beside the bed. Blackbeard and I had retreated to the adjoining room.

  ‘And this nurse is all right, is she?’

  ‘I have employed her on several occasions, very successfully.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it, ma’am.’ He was thoughtful. ‘I’ll wait till this fellow speaks before I go digging up any graves – though I’m curious to know who got buried, if it wasn’t him. I suppose you’re certain he’s Joshua Welland?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who shot him, then?’

  ‘I have no idea!’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Blackbeard. ‘I’ll leave a constable here, in case whoever it is takes another crack at him.’

  ‘That’s comforting to know, though I cannot believe he’s in any danger here, in so public a place.’

  ‘Do you have anyone in the frame, ma’am?’

  ‘I know of only one person who might have a motive.’ Painful as it was to me, I had to say it. ‘Mr Carlos, who must surely surrender at least half his fortune if Joshua is alive.’

  ‘His nephew,’ said Blackbeard. ‘What do your instincts say about him, then?’

  ‘He’s a good young man, Inspector, and I simply cannot imagine him daring to shoot someone in a crowded London park! Didn’t anyone see anything, or hear anything?’

  ‘I sent my men out as quick as possible looking for witnesses, but there was too much noise and bustle,’ said Blackbeard, shaking his head. ‘Some street tumblers was letting off firecrackers, which has confused matters. Everybody heard any number of shots.’ A gilt clock on the chimney-piece softly chimed the midnight hour. ‘You should get home, ma’am, and I’m very much obliged to you for your assistance.’

  Thirty-eight

  I had tried, more than once, to persuade Mrs Bentley not to wait up for me when I was late home. She would never hear of going to bed, however, and I was fully expecting to find her sleeping upright beside the embers of the kitchen fire as usual. I was most surprised, therefore, when I got to Well Walk at nearly one o’clock, to see the window of my drawing room all aglow with lamplight.

  Mrs B, not remotely drowsy, pounced on me in the hall. ‘He turned up a couple of hours ago, ma’am, ever so polite but wouldn’t go away – says his name’s Jennings. I put him in here and made a pot of tea.’

  ‘Mr Jennings?’ I was so tired that my brain could hardly take it in. ‘Good heavens, what has got into everyone today? Thank you for keeping him here, my dear Mary. Now you must go to bed.’

  ‘Not likely! I’ll be listening outside like I always do.’ She opened the drawing-room door. ‘Here she is, Mr Jennings!’

  And there he stood, in the middle of my hearthrug. He looked a little thinner about the face but healthy, and not in the least like someone suffering with his ‘nerves’.

  ‘Mrs Rodd, I know this is the most fearful imposition—’

  ‘Mr Jennings!’ I cut short his torrent of apologies. ‘I’m very sorry you were kept waiting, and I’m glad to see you looking so well.’

  ‘I’m perfectly well now,’ said Mr Jennings. ‘I’m returning to college next week, but I couldn’t face it until I had spoken to you. My – my conscience troubles me.’

  Mrs Bentley poured me a cup of tea (the pot was still warm), and left us alone together.

  ‘There are certain things I did not tell you,’ said Mr Jennings. ‘Certain pieces of information …’

  It was ridiculously late and I decided to help him out. ‘This is about Joshua Welland, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the fact that he is not dead.’

  His rosy face flamed, as if someone had put a match to it. ‘You know?’

  ‘I have just left the bedside of a man I believe to be Joshua.’

  I told him all that had happened, watching him keenly; he was mainly relieved that I had already heard the tallest part of this tall tale.

  ‘Will he live now?’

  ‘The doctor says we may be hopeful,’ I said. ‘Do you have any idea who might have fired that bullet?’

  ‘All I know is that he was mortally afraid of someone – hence the assumed name.’ The young man was easier with me now, and let out a long sigh. ‘He’s got me into no end of hot water, that I do know. What on earth am I to say to the Church authorities – let alone the college? I shudder to think who – or what – I buried in that grave!’

  ‘Don’t torment yourself too much; I think your friend Joshua took advantage of your honesty. If there was some great secret thing he knew, I wish he had reported it to the police, and don’t quite understand why he did not.’

  ‘I told you, when I described him to you, that Joshua was once a normal sort of undergraduate, but when I look back he was always eccentric.’ He reached for his cup of tea.

  ‘Oh dear, that tea is cold,’ I said loudly, so that Mrs B would hear me. ‘I wish we had more hot water!’

  There was a scuffling outside the door, followed by the deliberate thump-thump-thump of Mrs Bentley’s feet going down the basement stairs.

  Mr Jennings did not seem to hear this, but looked thoughtfully into the fire. ‘I was sometimes worried that Joshua truly believed in witches and sorcery, and so forth. He made a bit of a joke of it – but he used to cast spells.’

  ‘Did any of them work?’

  ‘None that I saw,’ said Mr Jennings.

  ‘I take it that Joshua was the reason you fainted in Queen Street?’

  ‘I saw his face in the crowd on the pavement; he stopped and looked me in the eye – in proper clothes and his tangled locks shorn away – exactly like Joshua as I first knew him!’

  ‘It must have been a dreadful shock,’ I said. ‘When did you know for certain that he was still living, and not a ghost?’

  ‘He wrote to me at my mother’s house. I will show you the letter; it’s mostly an apology for nearly scaring his old friend to death. And another apology for misleading me.’

  ‘How did Joshua mislead you?’ I asked.

  ‘By not dying, for one thing. I saw him desperately sick with pneumonia and I judged him to be on the very brink of death. I didn’t think it mattered terribly that I was hustled away before I had witnessed his last breath. I took it on trust and wrote and signed a letter to certify the fact. And now he’s made an utter ass of me.’

  ‘Not at all, Mr Jennings. You acted in good faith, and should not blame yourself too much.’

  ‘He called himself “R. Herring” as a joke, but there was no joke about his reason for doing it. Did he say anything, after he was wounded?’

  ‘All he did, as far as I can gather, was to beg for sanctuary.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Jennings. ‘The thing is, Mrs Rodd – has anyone told his wife?’

  ‘His wife! I guessed that was the reason Joshua wanted a clergyman in a hurry! Yes, Mary, you may come in.’

  Mrs Bentley appeared a little too quickly with a jug of hot water.

  ‘How thoughtful – thank you.’ I set about replenishing the teapot, and managed to extract two passable cups of tea.

  ‘There was nothing unseemly in Joshua’s haste to be married,’ said Mr Jennings, pink and solemn, once we were alone again. ‘He wanted his wife to be in a position to claim his fortune. More than this, he wanted to solemnize their relationship before Heaven.’

  ‘She has not been informed of her husband’s injury,’ I said. ‘She must be informed at once; do you know where I can find her?’

  Mr Jennings reached into a breast pocket inside his frock-coat and pulled out a folded piece of paper, which he handed to me.

  It was a letter from Joshua; his handwriting was greatly improved by the use of a good steel pen and a bottle of Stephen’s black ink. I skimmed the few lines impatient
ly until I came upon his final words: Mr and Mrs Herring are currently domiciled at Moon Lodge, Terence Crescent, St John’s Wood.

  Naturally, I set out at once, pausing only to write a few explanatory lines to Inspector Blackbeard. Late as it was, this was not a matter that could be delayed for another moment; if Joshua’s wife knew nothing of what had happened to him, she must be beside herself with anxiety.

  Mr Jennings readily offered to escort me in the cab he had kept waiting outside. The outer reaches of London had a ghostly emptiness in the small hours of the morning; the clatter of the horse’s hooves was unnaturally loud as we hastened through those still streets. It was too dark to see anything we passed, only the occasional house with a light showing (I could not help wondering about the stories behind those lonely windows; at this bleak hour it could only be a death, or a birth).

  ‘The funny thing is that I’m not tired,’ said Mr Jennings. ‘I should be tired, and I’m actually wide awake.’

  ‘That is the excitement carrying you along, Mr Jennings; you are young and well able to bear the after-effects of a night like this. I am not young, and know full well that I’ll spend the next two days feeling that I’ve been run over by an omnibus. At this moment, however, I can think of nothing but Joshua’s wife – whom you have met, of course. What was your opinion of the woman?’

  ‘I had a low opinion of the entire business,’ said Mr Jennings. ‘To be frank with you, I thought he was cracked. I tried to explain to him that I didn’t know whether the marriage he wanted me to do was legal. Joshua said he only cared about the laws of heaven – he could always talk me round. And I must admit that I was a little fearful for my safety among the charcoal burners.’

  I recalled the snarling dog and his scowling master who had tried to drive me away from the camp. ‘Did anyone threaten you?’

  ‘No – that is, not in so many words. I felt it in the atmosphere.’

  ‘I met a young woman from the camp, who showed me the way when I was lost.’ I saw her in my mind’s eye, and felt sure that this woman was Joshua’s wife (based on little more than instinct and the fact that I had liked her). ‘She was handsome, I thought. Is Mrs Welland handsome?’

  ‘Rather,’ said Mr Jennings. ‘She has raven hair and very fine blue eyes.’

  ‘I knew it! There can’t be two of them.’

  ‘I was hustled away, almost the moment the ceremony was finished, and met the new-made Mrs Welland only briefly on that occasion. Her name is Philomena.’

  ‘Very pretty.’

  ‘We met properly last Friday; Joshua nearly knocked me for six by turning up at my mother’s house.’ He smiled. ‘All shaven and shorn, and with a wife upon his arm! My mother was very taken with both of them – and had not a clue that the origins of Mrs Welland were anything but perfectly genteel.’

  ‘The young woman I met could have passed as a lady quite easily. It’s not a difficult thing to achieve, with a good helping of native intelligence.’

  As may be imagined, I was famished with curiosity; partly because I was convinced that this woman knew her husband’s dangerous secret, and partly because I wanted to know the woman Joshua had chosen for his wife.

  Moon Lodge was a square white villa, set amidst gardens and amongst other white villas; St John’s Wood was already a desirable suburb in those days, though dear Mrs Bentley, who had been born there, remembered fields and hayricks. Two long windows – one on either side of the front door – were lit, showing that the household was awake.

  The front door opened as soon as our cab stopped, and a woman ran down the path to meet us, calling out, ‘Joshua, is that you?’

  She stepped into the light shed by the lamps upon the cab; as I had guessed, it was the same young woman I had encountered in the woods, amazingly transformed by a gown of rustling violet silk. Those shining eyes of hers filled with anguish as she realized we had not brought her husband.

  ‘Where is he? What’s happened to him?’

  I reached out to take her hand, and gave her the news about Joshua as concisely as possible. She flinched, but did not lose her self-possession. ‘I know you – you are Mrs Rodd. And I know Mr Jennings. I will come with you at once.’

  Thirty-nine

  ‘He left the house this morning, saying he would be back before nightfall. I knew something dreadful must’ve happened to him, or he would’ve sent word. I’ve been half sick with worrying.’

  Mrs Welland sat opposite me in the cab and I studied her as best I could in the dim light. She had wrapped herself in a beautiful mantle of blue velvet, lined with fur. Her bonnet, put on in careless haste, was of the latest fashion. Her voice was soft and very pleasant, with the faintest hint of a country ‘burr’.

  ‘Do you know who tried to kill your husband? I asked.

  ‘Would to God that I did!’

  ‘If he confided in you, Mrs Welland, I beg you to tell us now.’

  ‘He did not confide in me. He never has confided in me – for the sake of my safety, so he says. We argued over it again only last night. I accused him of making the whole thing up – oh God forgive me, it was nothing but the truth!’

  ‘Please try not to worry too much; the doctor who attended him was most hopeful.’ I reached across to take her hand again. It was so cold that I felt its chill through my glove. ‘The bullet was removed cleanly, without splinters of bone, and it was nowhere near his heart. And he is quite safe now, for Mr Blackbeard left a police guard.’

  ‘Joshua doesn’t trust the police,’ said Mrs Welland. ‘That was reasonable enough when he was poor and lived in a hedge – but now he has money enough to hire a whole army – and yet he won’t!’ Her fingers tightened around mine. ‘What is money, if we have to live under a false name, like criminals?’

  ‘I’m glad to see that your husband has claimed his fortune,’ I said approvingly.

  ‘Jacob left instructions about that,’ said Mrs Welland. ‘It was all in the letter that you gave to me, Mrs Rodd. Joshua was in such haste to get married because he wanted to be certain that I would get it all if he died.’

  ‘When did he begin to hint that he was in danger?’

  ‘Oh, that man has been fleeing from danger since the day I met him!’ She was exasperated, in the wifely manner that springs from deep affection. ‘He’s been hanging about us charcoal burners since I was a girl. In those days he was afeard of some gipsy-men who were after him. He had jumped over the broomstick with their sister, and then run off with his brother’s wife.’

  ‘Did they take up residence with you?’

  ‘Not exactly – the two of them were on the edge of things and nobody asked questions. Joshua was tolerated due to his learning, for there always had to be someone who could read and write. And folks pitied him when his girl died, for he was fairly out of his mind with sorrow – in no state to care for those twins.’

  ‘Who cared for them before Mr Arden adopted them?’

  ‘They were passed between the handful of nursing mothers in our little settlement, but it wasn’t enough and they were so tiny! If Mr Arden hadn’t stepped in, they would likely have died.’

  ‘How did Joshua feel about giving up his sons?’

  ‘At first, he was just thankful,’ said Mrs Welland. ‘Arden could pay for the best wet-nurses, and the boys were bonny and thriving for the whole world to see. Until recently, he was content to watch them from a distance. And then, a year or so ago, he started to talk about his wish to claim them for himself.’

  ‘What made him change his mind?’ I asked.

  ‘He is their father, Mrs Rodd; it was only natural.’

  ‘Of course.’ I should not have been surprised to learn that Joshua loved his children, when his entire history had been driven by his love for Hannah. ‘But why all this fear, this secrecy?’

  ‘As I told you, he will not confide in me – though we are married.’ A passing light caught the silver tracks of tears on her cheeks. ‘And I accused him of storytelling!’

  Ther
e were lighted streets around us now, though the lights were pin-pricks in the black immensity of London by night. The prosperous crescents and squares we passed through were utterly silent, yet I knew there was another, invisible city living alongside this one; a city of wickedness and danger, peopled by murderers and thieves.

  Blackbeard had left a policeman on guard in the foyer of Stoppard’s Hotel, and he opened the door to us after one soft knock; he had been playing cards with the night porter beside the fire.

  Mrs Welland stepped into the light and I saw her properly for the first time; she was dressed exquisitely in whispering silks and glinting jewels, and despite her dreadful anxiety she was a striking beauty (what a couple they would make, I could not help thinking: high society would love this woman; her charcoal-burning history would only add to her mystique).

  Another policeman stood on the landing outside Joshua’s door. Mrs Welland thrust the door open at once and ran across the room to her husband’s bedside.

  ‘My dearest – my darling!’ She sank to her knees and covered his limp hand with kisses.

  ‘He’s coming along nicely, ma’am.’ The nurse, Mrs Hurley, was in her early forties, with a friendly face and intelligent manner, not at all discomposed by the sudden appearance of a weeping wife at the bedside of her patient. ‘Weak, to be sure, but no hint of a fever; I saw to it that the surgeon washed his hands.’ (She was a stickler for hygiene, still imperfectly understood in those days.) ‘His breath is easy and he opened his eyes once – didn’t say anything, but he’s had a good deal of laudanum for the pain.’