The Body on the Doorstep

by MacKenzie, AJ

  Then they were outside, and the other man’s reply could not be heard clearly. The rector realised that he had been holding his breath again. He let it out very slowly, but still he did not move until he heard the horses moving off. Then he stood for another ten minutes, until he was as certain as he could be that the coast was clear, before stepping out of the wardrobe and walking slowly out into the church. Even then, he half expected at every step to hear a voice calling on him to halt, or the sound of a pistol being cocked.

  Nothing happened. He reached the church door and looked around cautiously, but the horsemen were gone. There was no one but himself and the sheep.

  Then he did run, throwing himself down the hill and running as if the hounds of hell were after him, not stopping until he reached the ruined cottages. His horse remained where he had left it; the two men had not spotted it. Gasping a quick prayer of thanks he untethered the mare and scrambled into the saddle without any pretence of dignity. Then he turned the horse’s head and shook the reins and rode hard, back towards the safety of the Marsh.

  11

  Lord Clavertye’s Decision

  The rector returned home late in the evening, the sunset glow fading behind him and the moon high in the sky. He snapped at the housekeeper when she scolded him, ate a little cold food and managed only a single glass of claret before falling asleep at the table. Rousing a little later, he dragged himself up to bed and just managed to undress himself and pull on a clean nightshirt before falling asleep.

  As a result, he woke the next morning in an unfamiliar position. Having had next to nothing to drink, he found his mind was astonishingly clear. His body, on the other hand, was a single mass of dull, throbbing pain, reminding him that he was an overweight, middle-aged man who had ridden more than thirty miles the previous day. He ordered water for a bath, which helped a little, but dressing was a slow process as each movement of his back and legs sent shooting pains running up his body. Afterwards, sitting at the breakfast table, he could barely summon the energy to eat his ham and eggs.

  ‘You should go back to bed,’ said Mrs Kemp, clearing away. ‘It was folly for a man in your condition to exert himself so greatly. Anything could have happened to you. And don’t tell me I sound like a nagging wife.’

  ‘You don’t,’ said the rector. ‘You sound like a nagging mother.’ The atmosphere at the rectory had once again returned to normal.

  The post arrived a few minutes later. There were two letters, one bearing the Clavertye crest and the other with the seal of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury. The rector glared angrily at the second letter, and opened the first.

  WADSCOMBE HALL, TENTERDEN.

  18th May, 1796.

  My dear Hardcastle

  I am in receipt of your letter of today’s date and am taking the opportunity to reply by return of post. Your deductions concerning Miller seem perfectly sound. I shall institute inquiries at once. Allow me to commend you for what you have achieved so far, and I urge you to carry on.

  Yr very obedient servant

  CLAVERTYE

  ‘Pompous, patronising buffoon,’ muttered the rector. He was in a foul mood even before he opened the second letter.

  OFFICE OF THE DEAN, CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL, CANTERBURY.

  18th May, 1796.

  Reverend Hardcastle

  It has come to the understanding of His Grace the Archbishop that another distasteful incident has occurred in your parish. To be more specific, another corpse has been found. He is particularly appalled to hear that the incident took place on consecrated ground, that is, in your churchyard.

  Unfortunately, this affair has now become a matter of public knowledge. His Grace is confident that you did all in your power to prevent this from happening . . .

  The rector ground his teeth at this point.

  . . . but expresses his sorrow that you were unable to do so. However, His Grace takes this opportunity to remind you that it is his wish – his express wish – that, above all else, no scandal should attach itself to the Church. You are therefore to leave this affair in the hands of the proper authorities, and not concern yourself with the investigation in any manner whatever, taking only such steps as are necessary to protect the reputation and interests of the Church.

  His Grace makes it clear that this is an instruction, and not a request. As an obedient son of the Church, you will doubtless heed his wishes. Should you fail – yet again – to do so, then His Grace will – with great sorrow – find it necessary to institute proceedings against you. There are, as you know, a number of actions which can be taken to compel obedience, and I advise you again that your present position in the Church is not so secure as you believe it to be. I trust I have made myself quite clear.

  Yours in Christ

  CORNEWALL

  Hardcastle tore the letter across and threw the pieces on the fire, and went down into the village in search of Mrs Chaytor. He found her seated in her comfortable drawing room reading a book, and she rose and smiled when he was shown in.

  ‘I hope you are fully recovered?’ he asked.

  ‘Perfectly. And you are well? Oh, my dear man, you are limping.’

  ‘It is nothing,’ he said.

  ‘It does not look like nothing. Sit down, and put your foot up on a stool. What have you done? Is it gout?’

  ‘No, I went riding,’ said Hardcastle. ‘The older I grow, the less convinced I am that horses were ever meant to be ridden.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  Hardcastle told her. At the end of the narrative the widow sat with her chin in her hands, regarding him for a while. ‘Does this mean what I think it means?’ she asks.

  ‘I suspect so. I shall ask Lord Clavertye to try to find out for us. He won’t like it, but it is time he did some work on this case, for a change.’

  She smiled. ‘I have found out a little more about Blunt.’

  She told him her story in turn. Undaunted by the fatigues of the previous two days, while he was riding to the Isle of Ebony she had once again harnessed her gig and driven down to New Romney, there to call on Dr Mackay on the pretence that she was suffering from headaches. While he was measuring out her laudanum, she asked him, pretending idle womanly curiosity, about the events of the night of the 6th, and remarked artlessly that she was surprised he had not been called to attend the dead man. Dr Mackay had retorted, acidly, that so was he, but doubtless the Customs service had their own reasons for regarding Dr Morley’s skills as superior to his own. To be sure, it took a great deal of skill to examine a corpse and pronounce it dead. He begged Mrs Chaytor’s pardon for his intemperate language.

  ‘I then called for refreshment at the Ship,’ she said, ‘where I was taken into a nice little parlour room and served coffee by the landlord’s wife, Mrs Spicer. You know her? Of course you do, the Ship is a public house. Mrs Spicer was abroad early on the morning in question, and chanced to see Blunt talking to his men. She reported him as being worked up into a great passion; which she thought nothing of, for of course one of his own had just been killed. Then a messenger came down from the north bearing a letter, and Blunt read it through and at once went very quiet. The next thing, he called for his horse and rode hard down the Marsh road towards Appledore, leaving his men to clear up.’

  ‘So he was not present when Dr Morley arrived,’ reflected the rector. ‘That is odd. I gained the impression from his testimony at the inquest that he was.’

  ‘So did I, though thinking back, I do not recall that he ever said so explicitly. Perhaps we made an unwarranted assumption. But the most important thing is this. The Ship, I have learned, is even more of a hotbed of smuggling than our own beloved Star, and my new friend the landlady was quite happy to gossip about the activities of the smugglers. She knew, of course, that Blunt is complicit in smuggling and takes bribes from the gangs. One of the gangs that used to pay him off was the Twelve Apostles.’

  The rector sat upright, and then winced as his back twinged. ‘Ah, I tho
ught that would get your attention,’ smiled Amelia. ‘And on the subject of the Twelve Apostles, Mrs Spicer was full of information. She told me the Apostles first appeared on the scene about four years ago, not long before Britain and France went to war. They were a bit unusual, because they aren’t from around here, and they kept aloof from the other gangs; but they never caused any trouble, and the local men gradually accepted them. There was a theory that they were involved in one of the specialist trades, like gold smuggling, but no one knew for certain. But my dear Mrs Spicer was positive that Blunt had done well out of them. Then, last autumn, Blunt and the Apostles had a falling out; at least, that is how she described it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the rector slowly, and a few more pieces clicked together in his mind.

  ‘There are two odd things about this,’ Mrs Chaytor continued. ‘First, Blunt was terrified. He lived in fear for weeks afterwards, rarely showed his face in public, and went everywhere armed with at least two pistols. He had nothing to fear from the other smugglers, who knew he would cause them no trouble so long as they paid him. It was the Twelve Apostles he was frightened of.’

  ‘And he is frightened of them again now,’ said the rector, remembering Matthew’s threats to ‘settle’ Blunt and Peter’s promise that it would be done, and in his mind’s eye he saw again Mark’s battered face and broken neck. ‘I would say that he has every cause to be fearful. And the second thing?’

  ‘This is most odd. Around the same time, the Twelve Apostles disappeared. Completely. Until two weeks ago, they had never made another run.’

  *

  They thought this over. She looked up at him, her blue eyes very bright. ‘It was Blunt, wasn’t it?’ she said. ‘He killed Miller himself.’

  ‘I have believed so almost from the beginning. But we have no evidence to support this. And if Blunt killed Miller, someone else must have killed the young man at the rectory. Both deaths occurred almost simultaneously, remember.’

  She sighed. ‘What do we do next?’

  ‘We carry on. We continue to look for anything that will tie Blunt to Miller, and anything that will explain the behaviour of the Fanscombes. I fear we must accept, too, that Fanscombe is implicated in this affair somehow. It is even possible that his family is involved too.’

  She shivered a little. ‘How many people do you think are involved in this . . . whatever it is? Blunt, Fanscombe, the coroner. Where does it end, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, sharing her disquiet. The sense of threat he had felt at Ebony that had led him to flee the hill in such an undignified fashion had yet to go away. ‘My dear, if you want to walk away from this matter and let it lie, then tell me at once. I will understand entirely.’

  She raised her chin at this. ‘I will not walk away,’ she said. ‘I intend to carry on. If you had only seen that poor woman . . . I want to see Blunt hang,’ she said with sudden passion. ‘I will rejoice in that man’s death.’

  That will make two of you, he thought, remembering the similar passion in Matthew’s voice. ‘I begin to think that we have gone as far as we can,’ he said. ‘If we are to build a case against Blunt and his allies, whoever they are, then we shall need assistance. It is becoming clear that we are up against powers far greater than ourselves. I will speak to Lord Clavertye after the inquest.’

  ‘Do you think he will help? You said once that we would have to present him with the evidence, complete, wrapped and tied up with ribbon, before he would act.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said heavily. ‘I did say that. But things have changed markedly. I shall try to persuade His Lordship that he needs to take action now.’

  ‘If anyone can, you can,’ she said. ‘You have known him for a long time.’

  The rector was silent, remembering. ‘What happened to you?’ she asked softly.

  The silence continued, and she wondered if he would answer, but then he turned his head slowly and gazed out of the window, out at the roses glowing in the garden. ‘I was destined for great things,’ he said. ‘Or so I thought. I had everything. Presence, intellect, wit, the gift of oratory. Men admired me, or envied me, or both. Women . . .’ He paused again and said, ‘I was the toast of the Town – for a time. I was an ornament to every salon. Everyone with intellectual pretensions wanted to know me. And I gloried in it all. I was arrogant, shockingly so. I aroused envy, I made enemies, but who does not? Heaven help me, I thought that this was the mark of a successful man.’

  ‘You will know a great man by the quality of his foes,’ she said.

  He smiled a little at this. ‘So I thought. I was the chosen one, and my path to the summit of the Church was pre-ordained. The future was mine to grasp.’

  ‘What happened?’ she asked again.

  ‘That is the hell of it, my dear. I don’t really know . . . No, that is wrong. I know full well. My arrogance was my downfall. I went too far, in every respect, and I turned people against me. Suddenly, I found myself being passed over. Honours which I deserved were awarded to others. Positions which had been promised to me were quietly taken away.’ He sighed. ‘I offended the Olympian gods. They made my destiny, then they changed it. Then came the scandals; several of them.’

  ‘Women?’

  ‘They were involved indirectly, yes. I fought three duels. Won them all, too, but the fact of winning became another stain on my reputation. People no longer wanted to know me.’

  ‘Duels? A clergyman?’

  ‘Oh, yes. We’re just as wicked and sinful as ordinary people, you know. Have you never heard tell of Sir Henry Bate-Dudley, the Fighting Parson? He was a noted duellist in his younger days.’

  ‘I am very pleased to say that I have never heard of him.’

  ‘You disapprove of duelling. You are right to do so. It is a barbaric custom. I was young, and very foolish. I have learned some wisdom; at least, I hope I have.’

  ‘I believe you have,’ she said, and her voice softened again. ‘Have you never thought of . . . of trying to regain what you lost? You could still rise in the Church, with the right patrons, the right friends.’

  ‘No, my dear. Those days are done. Time and port have dulled my ambitions, and the glittering prizes of my youth no longer interest me. As for friends . . .’ He paused. ‘There are few in the Church of England, or elsewhere, that care to know me, these days. Truly, I am content where I am.’

  She reached out quickly, took his hand, squeezed it hard and let it go again. ‘And you?’ he said gently. ‘Are you content where you are?’

  ‘I do not think I shall ever be truly content on this earth.’ It was her turn to gaze out of the window now. ‘Like you, I had everything, and like you, I lost it. I was married for ten years to the most wonderful man ever born. I loved him from the moment I laid eyes on him. He was my paradise.’ She smiled a little, her eyes soft and very far away. ‘I loved him so much that I wanted to do everything he did, and, marvellous man, he let me. I was more than just a wife to him; I was also his dearest friend, and we shared all the things he loved, driving, and shooting . . . He was fond of puzzles, too, riddles and equations; anything that taxed his mind. He taught me how to think about problems and find answers.’ She turned her head. ‘Don’t be alarmed at this, but . . . He was a little like you.’

  The rector did not know how to respond to this. ‘Was he a soldier?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘No, he was in diplomatic service. We lived abroad for four years in Paris, two in Rome, the rest in London. He showed me the world, and we lived it in tandem, a perfect harmony of mind and body.’ She bit her lip suddenly and said, ‘Three weeks. He fell ill, out of nowhere. Three weeks of suffering, and then he was torn away from me.’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ he said softly.

  ‘At first, I wanted to die too. My grief was . . . spectacular. Then the grief faded, and the loneliness began.’

  ‘I am a clergyman,’ he said. ‘I should have words that could comfort you. But I am afraid that you ha
ve heard them all already.’

  A smile that was both sweet and sorrowful touched her eyes. ‘You do not need to comfort me. Indeed, I suspect we might both find it a trifle embarrassing were you to try. Just go on being what you are. That is comfort enough.’

  *

  Amelia Chaytor had opened a window onto her soul, and what he saw there saddened and depressed him. He snapped at Mrs Kemp when she served dinner. She snapped back. He retreated to his study, where he sat at his desk drinking steadily, thinking about Blunt and the justice of the peace and wondering, as Mrs Chaytor had wondered, who else might be involved. It did not take too much imagination – especially when one was three parts drunk – to see Blunt and Fanscombe at the centre of a conspiracy spanning half the Marsh.

  As he reached to open the evening’s second bottle, he glanced down and saw that one of the drawers of his desk was open. Not by much, only a quarter of an inch, but definitely open. Head spinning, the rector tried to remember whether he had left this drawer open this morning. He was positive he had not; he had not looked in that drawer in days.

  He opened it and rummaged around inside amid the detritus of old quill pens, bits of string and lumps of sealing wax. Nothing seemed out of place. He opened all the other drawers, and found nothing missing. But his pistol, which normally rested in the centre of the left middle drawer, had been moved, and a few grains of powder had spilled from the priming pan. And careless fingers had left a grimy stain on a sheet of clean paper.

  He stood up abruptly. His books had been disturbed; the dust had been dislodged from some of their covers. And one of the pictures, a rather static landscape by an inferior pupil of Gainsborough, was hanging slightly crooked from the picture rail.

  ‘Mrs Kemp!’ he shouted. ‘Mrs Kemp!’

  The housekeeper waited a few minutes in order to punish him for shouting, then shuffled into the room. ‘Heavens above, what is the matter now?’