Laetitia Rodd and the Case of the Wandering Scholar

by Kate Saunders

  All the windows of Minerva Cottage had the shutters or curtains drawn; there was a piece of black crêpe tied to the door-knocker.

  ‘Hallo,’ said Blackbeard. ‘Someone’s gone and died!’

  ‘It must be Miss Critchley – but this is most unexpected!’ I absolutely ran to the front door of the neat little red-brick villa.

  Blackbeard followed at a more deliberate pace and grunted out a couple of directions to the policemen.

  A red-eyed young maidservant opened the door to us; I began to explain that I was a friend of Miss Yates and her face crumpled into tears. She did not need to say anything more, but led us, weeping, to a room at the back of the house.

  The picture is printed upon my memory and I see it now – a small, ladylike drawing room, with the curtains left open to fill it with light. Some items of furniture had been pushed aside to accommodate an open coffin set upon wooden trestles. I wept to see poor Minna Yates, frozen into her last sleep, with white roses placed around her head and another in her folded hands.

  Charles Yates knelt on the floor beside his sister, sobbing fit to make the heart bleed for him. He did not look up at me. His right hand was clumsily bandaged.

  ‘You are Mrs Rodd.’ The other person in the room was Miss Critchley, a stooping yet vigorous old woman, dressed head to foot in swathes of black crêpe, with a cumbersome necklace of Whitby jet and matching earrings (I hasten to add that this was no vanity on her part, but simply the mourning fashion of an earlier generation). Though she dabbed at her eyes, she was more collected than her nephew, and stood to shake my hand. ‘I knew you would come calling, for I read your letter.’

  ‘Yes – she wrote to me – poor girl!’ I did my best to be calm and collected, but the shock had hit me like a bullet and I could not help breaking down in tears. ‘I beg your pardon – but please, if you can bear it – please tell me—’

  Miss Critchley, after a sharp glance at her sobbing nephew (she took no notice at all of Blackbeard), grabbed my sleeve and tugged me across the room to the window.

  ‘It happened all of a sudden, yesterday evening; I left her resting in the easy chair, and when I came in – it was getting dark, Mrs Rodd, the lamps were not lit, the fire had gone out – at first I thought she was asleep, for she looked so peaceful!’

  ‘Had she been feeling unwell?’

  ‘No – the dear girl was merry as anything, singing as she went about her work – the doctor said it was her heart and she felt no pain.’

  ‘Peaceful?’ In the midst of my sorrow, I was profoundly glad that she had not suffered.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Rodd.’ Miss Critchley wiped her eyes. ‘She passed into heaven between one breath and the next!’

  ‘And even as she lay here, he claimed that she’d been happy – because of him!’ Mr Yates cried out passionately. ‘I would not let him think he had taken her away from me!’

  ‘What did you do to your hand, then, sir?’ asked Mr Blackbeard.

  The distraught young man broke into a fresh outburst of weeping; Miss Critchley wiped her eyes and gestured to the inspector to join us at the window.

  ‘I sent for Charley at once, poor dear boy!’ she murmured. ‘Unfortunately, when he arrived he found—’

  ‘That damned man was here!’ snapped Mr Yates. ‘He has no place near Minna – so I told him to get out!’

  ‘My dear boy!’ The old lady’s eyes filled with tears and her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I shouldn’t have let Mr Arden in to see her – but he was so stricken with sorrow that I couldn’t turn him away. I had seen for myself that she loved him.’

  ‘Miss Yates was of too candid a nature to conceal her feelings,’ I whispered back. ‘I saw it too.’

  ‘I’m sorry to intrude, I’m sure,’ said Blackbeard, not whispering in the slightest. ‘And, believe me, I would not in the normal way of things. But I’m very anxious to find Daniel Arden, and must ask you, Mr Yates, when the man left this house, and where he was going.’

  I thought his tone too harsh, but it had a bracing effect upon the poor young man. His sobs stopped, he stood up proudly to face Blackbeard.

  ‘I arrived here at eight o’clock this morning. Arden was here, and he left perhaps ten minutes later. The fact is, I – I chased him out.’ He seemed amazed to hear these words coming out of his own meek mouth. ‘And I struck him.’

  ‘Is that what hurt your hand, sir?’ asked Blackbeard.

  ‘No – that was when Arden slammed the carriage door in my face and my hand was in the way. I don’t think it’s broken. I’m afraid I don’t know where he was going.’ Mr Yates pulled his handkerchief from his pocket with his good hand and forlornly blew his nose. ‘I’m awfully sorry, Aunt Emma; it was unforgivable of me to lose my temper.’

  ‘Never mind, my dear,’ said Miss Critchley. ‘You were not to blame.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Blackbeard, flicking a glance at me, which meant that we were about to depart.

  I respectfully took my leave of Miss Critchley and Charles Yates, and said a short prayer to myself over Minna’s coffin; I remember that her still face was half-smiling and at its loveliest, all radiant with the light of another world.

  And it occurred to me then that the Almighty had been merciful, for he had taken Minna when she was still happy, before she had to hear the truth about the man she loved.

  Forty-two

  ‘I’m stumped, that’s what,’ said Blackbeard, once we were walking briskly away down the lane. ‘He might be anywhere by now. He might have left the country.’

  ‘I’m sure he intends to leave the country eventually,’ I said. ‘I do not think, however, that he would do so without at least seeing the twins.’

  ‘So you reckon he’s on his way to Binstock?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will he take ’em along, do you think?’

  ‘He would have to be desperate to take the boys with him, for they would make him too conspicuous.’ I blew my nose resolutely, putting my own ‘sorrowing’ aside. ‘But I’m sure he’ll risk a good deal to see them one more time.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Blackbeard. ‘I daresay you’re right; I might put another couple of men on, to watch out for him.’

  ‘But not in uniform – or you will scare him off.’

  ‘Arden ain’t a man to scare easy,’ said Blackbeard. ‘He’s as black a villain as I’ve ever had to deal with.’

  I was still struggling to accept the emerging truth about Mr Arden’s character and it must have showed, for Blackbeard halted on the path and turned to face me, very stern.

  ‘You’re not to go a-chasing him by yourself, Mrs Rodd – just in case you had any such foolish notion.’

  I could not reply at once, for of course I had already started to entertain this notion. ‘He is not a savage, Inspector.’

  ‘You’ve only met him in drawing rooms, ma’am. He’s dangerous, and he’ll be more so, now that he has nothing left to lose – like a cornered rat.’

  ‘But he is such a rational being! All his actions are driven by his warped idea of reason. And he has no reason to harm me.’

  ‘That’s as maybe, ma’am,’ said Blackbeard. ‘But you’ll oblige me if you keep away from him.’

  ‘Very well, Inspector.’

  He touched his hat gravely and resumed walking back to the boat, barely speaking another word until we disembarked in the middle of town. I did not take it personally; the brow of thunder and obsidian silence meant simply that deep thought was taking place inside the Blackbeard brain.

  I returned to Well Walk in the police carriage, giddy with hunger, fatigue and disillusion.

  ‘Dearie me, you look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards!’ was Mrs Bentley’s exclamation when she saw my wind-tossed appearance. ‘This came for you, ma’am; I didn’t catch sight of who left it.’

  It was a single, folded page and I recognized the handwriting at once.

  Dear Mrs Rodd, please see to it that Jack and Ferdy are well cared for. Wha
tever money I can keep hold of is administered by Mr Angus Grant of Mason Court, Gray’s Inn Rd. I know that I can trust you to be kind. Daniel Arden.

  The following morning brought a prettily worded note from Mrs Welland, to the effect that her husband was better and wished to speak to me. I don’t think I have ever anticipated a meeting so keenly.

  I found his sickroom at Stoppard’s quite transformed since the last time I had seen it; Mrs Welland knelt upon the carpet playing with two King Charles spaniels, and jumped up to greet me, wreathed in smiles.

  My wandering scholar was awake, propped against a bank of pillows. ‘Mrs Rodd, this is momentous.’ He held out his good arm to shake hands, still weak and pale yet greatly restored. ‘You have been tangled up in my affairs for ages. Now we are face to face at last.’

  ‘He wants to apologize, for leading you such a dance,’ said Mrs Welland, smiling. ‘Don’t you, my dear?’

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ I said. ‘You had good reason to avoid me; I’m mortified now to think of how much I tattled to Mr Arden. I told him about the papers you had left with Silas Jennings – and he then ransacked the poor man’s rooms!’

  ‘You trusted him,’ said Joshua. ‘So did I, at first. He let me rove undisturbed about his land. He encouraged me to borrow his books and even hinted that he would assist me if I wanted to go back to my college.’

  ‘He was bringing up your sons,’ I said, ‘and knew he was in your debt.’

  ‘I was never tempted to accept his help,’ said Joshua. ‘I no longer wanted to belong to that world. And after Hannah died, I got it into my head that Heaven was punishing me. I was quite out of my mind.’

  ‘That you were, my darling,’ murmured his wife, leaning over to stroke his cheek with a tenderness that made her face very pretty and sweet. ‘Fairly howling at the moon!’

  ‘Your brother told me about Hannah,’ I said. ‘The girl you both loved.’

  ‘We were promised to each other,’ said Joshua. ‘Jacob knew it, but chose to take no notice and marry the unfortunate girl himself.’

  ‘But you did not leave your college in order to join her in the woods,’ I said, ‘for you were living there already.’

  ‘With the gipsies!’ Mrs Welland said, with a soft laugh.

  ‘It’s not an edifying tale.’ Joshua reddened a little. ‘You know that I was poor and in debt. I had a sore heart and an empty stomach, and a certain girl from the gipsy camp took pity on me.’

  ‘Took a fancy to you, more like,’ said his wife merrily.

  ‘She was older than I,’ said Joshua.

  ‘And bigger!’

  ‘Stop it!’ he said, laughing. ‘Let me get it out, and then you may tease me as much as you like. At first, Mrs Rodd, I divided my time between the camp and the college.’

  ‘That was when you told Mr Jennings you were seeing sermons in stones.’

  ‘Yes – just like dear old Jennings to remember that!’ said Joshua. ‘I left college for good when Hannah ran away from my brother. We had kept in contact behind his back, and he never once suspected. And we hid ourselves away because we knew that Jacob was after us – truly, it seemed that everybody was after us! The men from the gipsy camp only left off hounding me when their sister took up with some other unlucky fellow. I see now that I might have been a little “touched”, but there were good reasons behind my mania for secrecy.’

  ‘When did you fall foul of Arden?’

  ‘A year or so before my brother sent you searching for me, Mrs Rodd,’ said Joshua, ‘Arden caught me hacking my way into the old limekiln in Freshley Woods. I had a notion that there might be space inside it for one of my shelters.’

  ‘He had them all over,’ said his wife fondly, ‘and in places you wouldn’t credit!’

  ‘Unluckily for Arden, however,’ Joshua went on, ‘I came across a withered corpse in a blue coat. I scrambled out of the ghastly chamber. There’s a dead body, I told him; we must tell the police. To which Arden replied: we will not tell the police. But why? I asked. And he said it again: we will not tell the police. He took a step towards me and my every instinct shrieked danger – I suddenly saw how easy it would be for him to kill me, and hide my corpse beside the other. I yelled out: you did this! You’re a murderer! He lashed out at me, but I was too quick for him; I knew those woods even better than he did and ran off like a squirrel. The rest you know; I did not dare to tell a soul what I had seen; I took it into my head that the man had the whole world in his pocket, and hid myself away.’ Joshua added, ‘It wasn’t because of my brother; I had long forgiven him.’

  ‘I’m very glad that you and Jacob were reconciled at last,’ I said. ‘You helped him to a peaceful death.’

  ‘I wanted to stay with him, God knows, but the boy was with him – his son.’

  ‘You will be pleased with your nephew, if you have not yet met him; Mr Carlos is a fine young man.’

  Joshua was very tired now and Mrs Hurley intervened, to say firmly that he must rest. Mrs Welland left the room with me, to escort me to the street.

  ‘I must thank you, Mrs Rodd, for never in my life have I seen him so happy.’

  ‘My dear Mrs Welland, I only wish I could take the credit for it! I have bungled and stumbled my way through this business, until I’m quite ashamed of myself.’

  ‘You have done more than you think,’ she said softly. ‘Who knows what might have happened, if you had not defended your friends? Two blameless people could’ve been hanged, and we would still be living in fear of our lives.’

  ‘I missed a thousand things that were right under my nose! I’m only grateful that I did not make it worse.’

  We were halfway down a staircase when Mrs Welland suddenly stopped and turned to face me. ‘But Arden must be found – have they got him yet?’

  ‘Not so far as I know; we must trust Mr Blackbeard to track him down.’

  ‘I won’t feel safe till then,’ said Mrs Welland earnestly. ‘Until that man is hanged!’

  Forty-three

  The message that came for me, early in the afternoon on the following day, was not news from Blackbeard, as I had hoped, but a joyous scrawl from Fred.

  My dearest old L, come to Highgate forthwith. F.

  Rachel’s arms were about me the moment I stepped into the hall of my brother’s house. ‘Thanks be to heaven – we are free!’

  And so it was, for no less a being than the Home Secretary had quietly released Rachel and Mr Barton that very morning. They were both dazed and pale and keeping a shy distance between them. Rachel had removed the awful widow’s cap; I was concerned to see how thin she was in her plain black gown.

  Mr Barton shook my hand. ‘I cannot thank you enough, Mrs Rodd; I dread to think – if you had not believed us from the first—’

  My brother, in stark contrast to these solemn, black-clad figures, was jubilant in a crimson waistcoat and in the process of opening a bottle of champagne at his desk. ‘Letty, my dear! Isn’t this wonderful?’

  ‘Amen to that,’ I said. ‘But Fred, such extravagance—’

  ‘Pish!’ said Fred happily. ‘Fanny’s taken the little ones to her mother’s, so we’re free to enjoy ourselves. And it’s all going on the bill. What about you, Flint?’

  ‘I don’t like the stuff,’ said Mr Flint. ‘Thank you.’ He was back at his post before the fire, with one foot planted upon the tiles in the grate, scowling and showing no sign of the appropriate rejoicing.

  ‘Mr Flint.’ My dear Tishy sat at the tea-table in her mother’s place, rather perilously close to the young man. ‘Will you have some tea?’

  ‘Oh—’ He blinked for a few seconds, as if drawing her into focus, and I was glad to see that he softened. ‘Thank you, Miss Laetitia.’

  ‘You are too close to the fire; I’m afraid you will be hurt again.’

  ‘Bless me, yes,’ said Fred. ‘A hot coal jumped out the other day, and burned a great hole in his sock!’

  Mr Flint looked down at his foot for a moment, as i
f surprised to see such a thing at the end of his leg, and then withdrew it, with a fleeting smile at my coltish sixteen-year-old niece. I wondered what ailed the man, as I so often did with Mr Flint, and suspected that the presence of Rachel and Barton made him uneasy; he could not bring himself to pardon the ‘sinners’ quite yet.

  ‘Would no one like champagne, or am I doomed to drink the whole bottle myself?’ My brother, who had never been troubled by the strictest of moral scruples, refused to be deflated. ‘Oho, just wait until this all comes out!’

  ‘Is there any more news of Arden?’ I asked.

  ‘Not yet, but my obliging friend at Scotland Yard tells me Blackbeard has posted his men at all the docks and ports and principal roads, and I bet you a pound he gets his man before this day is over—’ There was a knock at the door. ‘Come!’

  ‘Beg your pardon, Mr Tyson.’ It was Mrs Gibson, my brother’s indefatigable and irreplaceable housekeeper; she held a dirty scrap of paper between two fingers. ‘A boy brought this to the back door for Mrs Rodd.’

  She gave it to me and my pulse leapt, for I knew the hand.

  I am ready. Come to the same place on HH. Bring Flint.

  ‘I don’t know why he has asked for me,’ said Mr Flint. ‘I respectfully suggest, however, that at such a solemn moment, poised to give himself up, this man might want someone he knows to have a high sense of Christian morality. And without wishing to speak badly of your brother—’

  ‘Oh, feel free to speak as badly of him as you like! I know he can be disgracefully light-minded sometimes.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘You must take my word he doesn’t mean it, Mr Flint; he never can resist teasing those who do not like being teased.’ (If I hadn’t grown up being teased by Fred, I would now be an even greater old fusspot.) ‘This is the path, and if he’s there we will soon see him.’

  The weather was cold, grey and autumnal; though it was relatively early, we did not have much time before sunset. The few people about on Hampstead Heath were all in a hurry, heads bent against the damp gusts that stirred the bare branches and scattered the dead leaves.