She shivered and looked back at Hardcastle. ‘I cannot bear it. I don’t care whether they were French or English, law officers or smugglers or spies; it does not matter. I cannot live with myself knowing that two men died in pain and terror and I did nothing to learn the truth. And, I fancy, that is why you intend to carry on as well.’
He made no answer, but opened the lychgate and ushered her through, then closed it behind them both. In the road outside the rectory gate, he turned to her and said, ‘Thank you. I need your help, that much is plain. I will do what I can to shield you from risk.’
‘Do not concern yourself,’ she said softly. ‘For the past three years, I have been dead among the living. For the first time since my husband died, I begin to feel alive.’
He bowed to her, and she saw the ghost of the courtliness and grace that he must once have possessed.
‘Good day, Reverend,’ she said gently, and she turned and walked away down the road towards the village, and her home.
7
The Twelve Apostles
It rained all day Thursday, and most of Friday too. On Friday morning the rector went out to visit two of his parishioners, the widow of a fisherman whose husband had drowned in a storm the previous winter, and a young sailor who had been discharged from the navy after losing a leg at the Glorious First of June. Both lived in considerable poverty, and the rector did what he could to give them spiritual comfort, leaving discreet purses of money behind when he departed.
He arrived home, soaking wet and needing a drink, to find a letter waiting for him.
WADSCOMBE HALL, TENTERDEN.
12th of May, 1796.
My dear Hardcastle
I have now returned from London, and will be in the country for next week or more. If you have any news for me, please send word to me here by fastest post. It is imperative that this matter be set to rest as soon as possible. Do whatever is necessary. I shall of course defray any expenses you incur.
Yr very obedient servant
CLAVERTYE
PS have you and Cornewall fallen out again? I have had a damned impertinent letter from him, complaining of your conduct. I simply haven’t time to deal with his nonsense. Try to keep him quiet, will you?
‘Do whatever is necessary,’ growled Hardcastle to himself. ‘Like what, pray tell?’ He damned His Lordship’s eyes, but was inwardly relieved that Clavertye had made no reference to the events of the inquest. He wondered what to do about Cornewall and whether to seek him out at the Star but then Mrs Kemp, just returned from the Friday market in the village. remarked that Mr Cornewall had departed for Canterbury. She then scolded the rector for not changing into dry clothes, and went away to prepare dinner. The rector decided the Dean of Canterbury could go hang, and went to change his clothes as ordered.
That evening, a week since the murders, he drank more than his regulation two bottles of port and fell asleep in his study chair. He dreamed that once again someone was knocking at the door. He rose in near panic, stumbled to the door, opened it and looked out, but there was no one. Then he heard the creaking of a tree in the wind, and realised that this was the noise he had heard in his sleep. Muttering, he blew out the lamp and went upstairs to his bed.
He woke early on Saturday morning with a headache and a raging thirst. The rain had stopped. He dressed and put on his hat and coat and went out to walk for three miles over the Marsh. He came back blowing but feeling better, and sat down to a breakfast of ham, eggs, boiled cod and coffee. Finishing this, he went into his study, where he took up pen and paper and began to work on tomorrow’s sermon, but he could not concentrate on this for long. Taking a fresh piece of paper, he drew a sketch map of the surrounding Marsh, west to east from Ivychurch to St Mary’s Bay and south to north from Old Romney to a point some way south of Dymchurch. He drew lines on the map indicating the likely courses followed by the various parties: the Frenchman, the rifleman, Blunt’s Customs officers and the smuggling crew, who for the time being he was still assuming to be the Twelve Apostles.
He pored over the map for several hours, giving himself another headache but coming no closer to the truth.
When the bell rang for luncheon he rose and went to the fire and burned the map before going into the dining room. He ate absently, consuming cold lamb cutlets without really tasting them and downing a pint of claret, and then returned to the study. Concentrating hard, he barely heard the knock at the front door, or Mrs Kemp going to answer it. He looked up only when the housekeeper entered the room and said, ‘Mrs Chaytor to see you, Reverend.’
‘Show her in. And bring us some tea, if you please.’
He rose when Mrs Chaytor entered the room. She was slim and quietly but beautifully dressed, and she smelled like spring. Conscious of the fact that he had been wearing the same suit for several days and that the desk was a mess of papers and books, he bowed. ‘I fear that I rarely receive ladies.’
‘Never mind. I like a room that is lived in.’
The door opened and Mrs Kemp arrived with tea and a plate of gingerbread. Mrs Chaytor bit into one of these, and smiled at the housekeeper. ‘These are delicious, Mrs Kemp. I have had gingerbread from Gunter’s, but I declare these are finer.’
‘You are very kind, ma’am.’ The housekeeper’s face did not change, but the rector thought he detected a slight softening beneath her vinegary exterior. She was proud of her skills in the kitchen, and if one praised her cooking she would forgive most transgressions. Eventually.
Mrs Kemp curtseyed and withdrew. ‘I came to tell you,’ said Mrs Chaytor, ‘that I wrote to the Customs post at Deal after we last spoke.’
His headache stabbed him, and he closed his eyes for a moment. Opening them again, he saw her looking at him with concern. ‘Are you all right, Reverend Hardcastle?’
‘I do apologise,’ he said. ‘I fear I am a little tired.’
‘I see.’ Her voice went quiet and again the faint drawl died away. ‘Claret-tired?’
He met her eye. ‘Yes.’
‘This is harming you, you know. You should stop.’
‘My dear,’ he said, his own voice gentle, ‘I really have no reason to stop.’
After a pause of several seconds she said in her normal light voice, ‘I wrote to Deal two days ago, seeking information about the late Mr Miller. This morning I received a reply from a Mr Steadman, Collector of the Customs there. He has been most cooperative.’
‘Has he? Heavens, how unlike a Customs man.’
‘It would seem that I have the gift of persuasion. Curtius Miller was thirty-one years old. He had been in the Customs service for two years; before that he had been in another government service, but Mr Steadman does not say which one. He was dedicated to his work and Mr Steadman regarded him as one of his most reliable agents. He had undertaken a number of posts on detached service. I assume this means some sort of field investigation?’
It meant, spying. ‘Yes. What else does Mr Steadman say?’
She raised her eyes to his. ‘That he had a wife named Annie and three children. He has kindly given me their address in Deal. I mean to go and visit them.’
After another pause he said, ‘I think that is a very good idea.’
‘I don’t know if I can offer any consolation; probably not. But I just might learn something about Mr Miller that will help us to understand why he died. And, to understand who he was.’
‘You still think he might be a wrong ’un?’
‘One cannot discount the possibility,’ she said in her light drawl. ‘But as I said, it doesn’t greatly matter. He was murdered.’
He thought it did matter to her, a great deal. He had already recognised that her sympathies were more strongly engaged where Miller was concerned, whereas he still thought primarily of the Frenchman. That was understandable; she had stood over the spot where Miller had died. ‘When will you go?’
‘I thought I would drive up on Monday.’
‘You will take care,’ he said.
‘Of course.’
*
The following day was Sunday, 15th May. He rose early, went for a walk, breakfasted on ham and eggs and kidneys with a tankard of beer, and then had a glass of port to lubricate his throat before matins. He had once known a clergyman who beat a raw egg into a glass of port and drank it before preaching, but the rector regarded this as a desecration of good port.
Feeling suddenly more cheerful, he walked out into a fresh damp morning as the bells began to toll and crossed the road to the church. In the nave he turned and nodded to the bell-ringers, pulling on their long ropes, and then went into the vestry and robed himself. He took a quick gulp from the flask of brandy that he kept in the vestry cupboard, and then strode out into the church. The bells had stopped ringing, and the church door closed with a quiet slam as the bell-ringers departed. Bellringers, in the rector’s experience, were the greatest atheists of all; he had yet to preach in any church where the bell-ringers stayed to hear the service.
‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,’ he intoned. The words came easily to his lips and rolled in his deep rich voice down the nave of the church. There was something infinitely comforting, he thought, about the services in the Book of Common Prayer, laid down by Cranmer more than two centuries ago and surviving all the vicissitudes of time. War might rage, violence might threaten, storms might break, but the church and its rituals went on; nothing could harm them, or change them. This was a rock of permanence to which he could cling, when all else around was threatening to drown him.
The congregation was the usual one: three elderly women (two spinsters, one widow), one old man from Brenzett (perpetually malodorous), one octogenarian verger (deaf), one churchwarden (asleep) and himself. At Christmas and at Easter, a few more might trickle in. Otherwise, as Mrs Chaytor had said, the church filled on only three occasions: baptisms, marriages and funerals. It was the same everywhere in the country, of course, there was nothing special about St Mary in the Marsh; all across the land, vicars complained to their bishops that their churches were empty. The rector did not mind; his parishioners (or most of them) paid their tithes, and after that it was up them. If they wanted pastoral care they could have it, through home visits or in the common room of the Star. If they wished to come to church on Sunday they could do so; he would be there always, regardless of whether they came, rapt in the glory of the service and its musical words.
At the end of the service he stood in the church porch to speak with his congregation as they withdrew. The old man from Brenzett shook his hand as always, and as always the rector smiled and thanked him for coming, trying not to look as if he was edging away from the smell. The two spinsters, Miss Roper and Miss Godfrey, came smiling to greet him; they wore flowers in their ancient bonnets, as they did every spring.
‘We do hope you are feeling much better, Reverend.’ Both had been at the inquest, blast them. He bowed. ‘I am entirely recovered, ladies, and I thank you for asking.’
‘It was a most fascinating event,’ said Miss Godfrey, who had attended every inquest ever held in the parish and always said the same thing after each one. ‘We were particularly taken by young Mr Turner’s testimony.’
‘Were you? And why was that?’
‘Well,’ said Miss Roper, ‘it is the strangest thing. But when he said that he had seen the young man who was so sadly taken outside your house, and described him, both Rosie and I realised that we had seen him too.’
‘Really?’ said the rector, keeping his voice calm. ‘That is fascinating.’
‘We had no idea that he was French,’ said Miss Godfrey.
‘What would a Frenchman be doing here?’ Miss Roper wondered. ‘Do you think it is the beginning of the invasion, Reverend?’
‘I think that unlikely, ma’am, but it is curious all the same. I am interested to know more about this man, if you can help me? I feel . . . well, responsible, you know.’
‘Come to tea,’ said Miss Godfrey, leaping at the chance of a good gossip, ‘and we will tell you all about it. Tuesday at five?’
He bowed. ‘I should be delighted.’ When they had gone he returned to the vestry and removed his robes and then walked back to the house, wondering how long the Frenchman had been walking around the parish in broad daylight, and how many other people had seen him and not yet remembered.
The rector lunched briefly on cold roast beef and claret, firmly pushing Mrs Chaytor’s words to the back of his mind, and then retired to his study with a bottle of port. For the first time in a long time, a very long time, he took down a leather-bound volume of Cicero from the bookshelf, blew off the dust, settled into the room’s single, rather shabby armchair and began to read, sipping his port from time to time. He remembered how reading used to bring him so much peace and pleasure, and resolved to do more of it. Settling back into the armchair after dinner, he even thought drowsily of the book he had once planned to write himself, a biography of his great hero, Cranmer. Then his eyelids drooped, and closed.
When next he stirred, it was after dark. The bottle was empty and the fire was burning low. The book lay on the floor beside the chair where it had fallen from his hand. He rose sleepily, covered the fire and went to shoot the bolts on the front door. He could hear Mrs Kemp moving about in the kitchen, called a vague goodnight to her, then stumbled upstairs. Here he cast off his clothes, strewing them around the dressing room, and dragged on his nightshirt. Putting out the candle, he climbed into bed and fell at once into a deep and very sound sleep.
The rector woke suddenly. The candle was lit and he could not understand that, for he distinctly remembered snuffing it before he went to bed. Then he saw the shadows, huge, wavering shadows, black and terrifying, climbing the walls to the ceiling; shadows, of the masked and hooded men who stood all around the bed, looking down at him. The light of the candle glinted dully off the steel they held in their hands.
*
He had faced death before; he knew its appearance. He knew also how to meet it.
He sat up in the bed, looking around at the men. There were six of them. ‘Who the devil are you?’ he demanded.
‘We ask the questions,’ said one of the men. He, like all the others, was dressed from head to toe in black including the mask that covered most of his face; only his mouth and his square chin were visible, his eyes lost in shadow. He was tall and thickset with the beginnings of a paunch. He held a pistol in his hand, covering the rector, its muzzle a black pit amid the golden glow of the candle. The rector stared at him, then looked around at the others. He could sense their determination and their ferocity of purpose, even though their masked faces were blank and inscrutable.
He thought, I should have listened to that ass Cornewall, and stayed out of this.
‘The Twelve Apostles,’ he said softly. ‘Where are the rest of you?’
‘Outside on watch,’ said the big man.
Sudden anger swept over the rector. ‘Where is my housekeeper?’ he demanded.
‘In the kitchen, tied to a chair. You can set her free when we have gone.’
‘By God! If you scoundrels have so much as hurt a hair on her head, I will see you swing, every damned last one of you!’
The other men stirred, menacingly, and their shadows shivered, more menacing still, but the big man smiled below his mask. ‘You are a plucky one, I’ll give you that. Just answer our questions, Reverend Hardcastle, and then we will go. Cooperate with us, and you’ll not be harmed.’
The rector folded his arms across his chest, still angry at the thought of what had happened to Mrs Kemp. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘We want to know what you know,’ said the big man, ‘and what you did not tell the inquest.’
‘I told the inquest everything.’
‘Beat it out of him,’ said a man standing at the foot of the bed. He was hooded and masked like the others, but a stray lock of hair, copper red in the candlelight, had escaped from his hood and fell across his forehead. ‘It
’s the only way.’
‘Not yet.’ The big man moved closer to the bed, and his shadow ran up the wall behind him and crawled across the ceiling, spreading black wings above the rector’s head. ‘Now listen, my fine gamecock. One of our informers was present at the inquest. She heard you, and saw you. You pretended to be drunk, or made yourself drunk, so that no one would take you seriously or ask you questions. That means you are hiding something. What is it? What were you so anxious not to tell the inquest?’
There was a pause, while the rector realised bitterly that his subterfuge had failed. The shadows hovered tensely on the wall, waiting to spring at him and tear at his flesh. ‘I have been kind to you so far,’ said the big man, his voice beginning to growl, ‘but my patience is limited.’
‘Beat it out of him!’ insisted the red-haired man again.
‘Very well,’ said the rector, looking at the masked face of the big man. ‘What I was anxious not to say out loud is that Blunt, the customs officer, is corrupt. He takes bribes from the smugglers. In return, he does not interfere with their runs.’
‘Everyone on the fucking coast knows that,’ said another man sharply. ‘You’ll have to do better than that, Reverend.’
‘Blunt also lied about the death of Curtius Miller. Was he one of yours?’
‘We know all about Miller. We’re not interested in him. The man who was killed here. What do you know about him?’
‘Not a damned thing!’ said the rector angrily. ‘I have no idea who he is or why he came to my door. Nothing!’
The Body on the Doorstep Page 9