Murder Is Come Again

by Joan Smith

  Coffen, that lover of clues, hunkered down and crawled in to pick up a square of white cloth. “That’s the gag all right,” he confirmed, when he came out. “One of the hankies Cousin Susan made for me last Christmas. She never could set a decent stitch. He must’ve tossed it over the railing as he went upstairs, trying to get out the door there.”

  “No, it was too far back, way under the stairs,” Corinne said. “A light thing like a handkerchief wouldn’t have landed there. He must have been under the stairs at some point. I expect he was over every inch of the place, trying to escape. It’s odd, though, that he’d think he could escape from under the kitchen stairs.”

  “Odder yet if he did it,” Luten said. He crouched down, crawled into the space, and lifted his lantern. Then he set it on the ground and began feeling the wall behind the potato bins with his fingers. The foundations of the house were stone, but here was a bit of age-darkened paneling. In its shadowy alcove, it was invisible from a foot away. With his heart beating faster, he ran his long fingers around until he felt the crack at the edge of the panel, and followed the crack. It was a perfect square, about a yard on all sides. He pushed against the panel. It gave a little but didn’t open. Then he pushed his fingers under the bottom edge and lifted. It began to move. It was hinged at the top, the hinges hidden by overhanging stones. He pulled harder and it rose to show a dark tunnel.

  A chorus of gasps echoed in the still cellar. “The priest’s hole!” Corinne cried.

  “I’m going in,” Luten said. He had to go in on his hands and knees, destroying his buckskins, but could stand hunched over once he was in. They watched in amazement as his hunched shoulders and buckskins faded into shadows.

  “Be careful, Luten!” Corinne called. She rushed forward and held her lantern up to the mouth of the tunnel. Luten had disappeared.

  “He’s gone!” she said, turning to Black.

  “There’s a turning in the tunnel,” Black explained. “Don’t call! A tunnel isn’t dug out to go nowhere. We don’t know where it might lead to. We don’t want to give him away.”

  It took all her self-discipline to just stand there and wait. She didn’t have to wait long, however. Within two minutes that seemed much longer Luten reappeared around the corner of the tunnel, carrying his lantern, and was back with them.

  “We now know how Cripps worked his magic escape,” he said. “I followed the tunnel to another door and opened it a crack. The smell of stables told me where I was. The tunnel leads to the stable at the Brithelmston.”

  “So that’s it,” Black cried. “He didn’t have to open a door to get out of the house.”

  “That’s it,” Luten confirmed. “He came out of the tavern this morning, you recall. He seems to know his way around the place.”

  “Yoo hoo!” Prance called from the top of the stairs. “Anyone down there?”

  “Come down, Reg,” Corinne called. “We’ve found how Cripps did it.”

  Prance came down and asked, “How he did what?”

  “Oh, you don’t know. He escaped. He just disappeared without leaving the house.”

  “Indeed! Do continue. I am all ears to hear how he performed that trick. One can envisage occasions when it might come in handy.”

  Coffen showed him the tunnel and explained the mystery, in his fashion. “An ingenious escape hatch,” Prance said, smiling. “Kudos to whomever found it. Who did, by the by?”

  “It was Corinne who found the clue,” Luten said. “I followed it up.”

  “So I see by the knees of your buckskins. I don’t envy Simon the job of cleaning them. What, exactly, was the clue?” Prance asked, and Coffen held up the gag.

  Prance had to hear all the details, but he didn’t see why he had to hear them in a filthy cellar and suggested they go abovestairs.

  “Before we go,” Coffen said, “any clues in the tunnel, Luten?”

  “No, not a thing.”

  “You folks go on up. I’ll just have a peek before I join you.”

  Black remained behind with Coffen, in case he ran into trouble. He was soon back out, however, to confirm the lack of clues and the debouchement of the tunnel into the stable at the tavern. “The one stable we didn’t go to this morning,” he said, shaking his head in vexation.

  “If he has friends there, Mr. Pattle, as we suspected, it was no safe place for you to be. I doubt if you’d have got out alive.”

  They went upstairs and joined the others who had migrated to the drawing room to discuss their findings in relative comfort. “I wonder now if that’s why Mary wanted the house so badly,” Prance suggested, and looked around to see if anyone could add to his idea.

  “Don’t be foolish,” Coffen scoffed. “What was to stop Mary from going in at the door if she wanted to visit the tavern, which she wouldn’t. There weren’t any girls there, were there, Black?”

  “No, just men. Even the likes of Mary wouldn’t go there. Seems to me it was young Cripps that was mighty determined to get Mr. Pattle out of the way, though I can’t see why, unless it has to do with smuggling.”

  “Interesting,” Prance said, “Mary’s brother Willie handles the brandy distribution hereabouts — and lives at the Brithelmston. Might she have been acting as her brother’s agent?”

  “It’s possible,” Luten said, “But who was obviously using the tunnel on a regular basis is Mad Jack. That’s how he magically disappeared from the Brithelmston the night you were there, Black. The tunnel must run not just to the stable, but to the inn cellars as well.”

  “Are you suggesting that Cripps is Mad Jack?” Prance asked.

  “Why not? We know he’s a scoundrel and lives well, yet has no job. He knows the secret of the tunnel.”

  “For one reason,” Prance said, “his mount also disappears when he goes into the tavern. He couldn’t very well hide his mount in the tunnel. Or is it bigger than I thought from your description?”

  “No, you couldn’t get a horse through it.”

  “There was no sign of horse shoe marks or droppings,” Coffen added.

  “I’m not suggesting he hid the horse in that manner,” Luten said.

  “The horse didn’t come into the tavern with him the time I was there,” Black said. “He had some other trick for hiding it.”

  “If Cripps is Mad Jack, we know now why he was so eager to keep Coffen away from the house,” Luten said. He turned to Black. “You’re the only one of us who actually saw Mad Jack. Could he be Cripps?”

  “I can’t see no reason why not. All I saw was a mask and a man wearing a black cape. It could very well have been him so far as size goes.”

  “And let us not forget Willie Scraggs,” Prance insisted. “No reason he couldn’t be Mad Jack, is there? For that matter we don’t know he isn’t the one who actually shot at Coffen.”

  They all sat a moment, thinking, then Black said, “One of them black nags with the white markings we spotted at a stable belonged to Willie Scraggs.”

  “Similar to the nag that was brought to Cripps this morning,” Prance said. “I wonder now if Cripps and Willie work together.”

  Corinne said, “You’re likely right that Mad Jack makes use of the tunnel, Luten, but what about the Czarina’s necklace? We thought that was why people want to get into the house, why Mary wanted to live here, to snoop around for it.”

  “How would she know it’s here?” Luten asked.

  “Her brother lives at the tavern. If he isn’t Mad Jack, then he at least knew that Jack sold his goods to Bolger. The whole town seems to know that.”

  “I wonder if old Bolger knew about the tunnel,” Coffen said. “It would explain why he got the selling of Mad Jack’s takings from his holdups.”

  “Very likely they worked hand in glove,” Luten said. “In any case we now know how to trap Mad Jack. Not a word of what we found out today. We don’t want him to get wind of it or he’d not use the place again.”

  “Catchpole said he only attacks about once a month,” Black said. “He just m
ade a haul. We’re only here for a couple of weeks. He won’t strike again while we’re here.”

  Luten smiled. “I wager he would if he heard a particularly valuable piece of jewelry was on its way out of town. Something like the Czarina’s necklace.” He looked around the group for their reaction.

  “I expect you’re right,” Black said with a smile. The others nodded their agreement.

  “We ought to get looking for it,” Coffen said.

  “By all means,” Luten agreed. “We must make a great public push to find it, and make sure Jack hears about it when we succeed. Not that it matters whether we succeed or not.”

  Coffen frowned. “Eh? If we don’t find it, how can we send it out of town?”

  “The rumor will be enough to get him astride his black mount,” Luten explained.

  Coffen considered this a while, then said, “Right, a sort of red herring.”

  “If Cripps is him,” Black said, “It’d be easy enough to blacken up the white mark on the forehead and foreleg of that mount he rides. Jack’s said to ride a pure black mount, you mind. He couldn’t use dye. He’d want something he could wash off in a hurry. Soot mixed up in water, I believe, would do the trick for a short time.”

  “This was a good morning’s work,” Corinne said, rising. “What we must do now is make a great display of looking for the Czarina’s necklace.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “I have enjoyed your hospitality so often since coming here that I would like to take you all to lunch at the hotel,” Prance said. Then he looked at Luten and Coffen, who showed signs of their morning’s activities and said, “You can wash up in my room. We’ll take a private dining room so no one will see those mud-stained buckskins, and we can make plans without being overheard.” Even Villier, he feared, could do nothing with those buckskins until the earth was completely dried.

  “What about Coffen?” Corinne asked.

  “He and Black are invited as well, ça va sans dire” Prance said, turning to smile the invitation at them.

  “No, I mean what if Cripps keeps shooting at him?” she persisted.

  “He’ll hardly come into the hotel with guns blazing,” Prance said, shaking his head at such female fears, though if he had been the potential victim he would have been hiding under the bed.

  “But after lunch, he’ll need a new disguise,” she said. “The footman’s disguise didn’t work. They know about it now.”

  “You’re right, milady,” Black said. “Cripps will be sore as a gumboil. We need a better disguise.”

  “I’m not afraid of him!” Coffen scoffed. “Nothing I’d like better than to get my hands on the scoundrel. I will, too, before this is over.”

  “We know you’re not afraid,” Corinne said. “But he doesn’t fight fair, Coffen. He’ll be shooting at you from hiding, like the coward he is. It would be foolhardy not to take precautions. We must use our wits to — to outwit him.”

  Upon consideration, Coffen felt she had a point. What he really wanted was to darken Cripps’s daylights and draw his cork, and he couldn’t do that if he was dead. And he couldn’t find out who murdered Mary either. “What sort of disguise do you have in mind?”

  “I have the black wig,” Prance said, “but one hardly feels that will do the trick.”

  “No, we need a much better disguise than that,” she said firmly. After a moment’s thought she continued, “What would surely fool him is if Coffen dressed up like a lady.”

  “No, that’s going too far!” Coffen said angrily. “I ain’t hiding behind my own skirts, and that’s the top and bottom of it.”

  “Would you rather wear a shroud?” Luten asked. “You know perfectly well he’ll make it his goal to kill you now. Two or three days, what difference does it make? No one will know but us.”

  “I don’t see what’s so disgraceful about wearing skirts,” Corinne said. “I wouldn’t object to wearing trousers to save my life. It would be fun.”

  “Trousers ain’t skirts,” Coffen said.

  “That’s exactly the point. No one would suspect you’re a man.”

  “And anyhow, who could I be?”

  “Anyone you want,” she said, hoping to jolly him along.

  “I wouldn’t mind being Lettie Lade,” he said, naming an infamous lady famous for her racy reputation and her way with hurtling her phaeton through town.

  “You can’t be someone that everyone knows,” Corinne explained, “or anyone who is likely to come down to Brighton at this time. And you must be someone who is on close terms with us.”

  “And someone who has a reason to be at your house on Nile Street, since we plan to spend time there,” Luten added. “A female relative, for instance. You haven’t all forgotten we plan to ‘find’ the Czarina’s necklace?”

  “I’d prefer if we had some excuse for me to be near him as well,” Black said. “Me and Mr. Pattle are used to working together.”

  “I was thinking Coffen would stay with Luten and myself on Marine Parade,” Corinne said. “A lady doesn’t usually stay at an hotel without a female companion, you know. You could be her cicisbeo, Black, escort her about town.”

  “It’d never work,” Coffen said. “I don’t talk like a girl.”

  Prance sat, trying to think of something clever. He loved the idea of rigging Coffen up like a lady and foresaw great fun in teasing him. He didn’t mean to be left out of the masquerade. “Black shall be her cicisbeo and I shall be her cavalier servente. We can do most of the talking for her. “

  “Him,” Coffen growled. “Me.”

  Prance conceded the point with a nod. “As the lady you’re posing as will not be exactly a beauty, we ought to make her rich, to account for our devotion.”

  Coffen, succumbing reluctantly to the idea, said, “How about Aunt Sophia? You know Sophia, Corrie. Lady Carter, old George Carter’s relict. Rich as Croesus, and ugly as sin. Folks say she looks a bit like me, actually.”

  “Perfect. She practically never travels, and if she did she would stay with me if she were in town, for besides being rich, she’s as tight as bark to a tree. That’s settled then,” she said quickly, before he could change his mind.

  “What shade of wig shall we require?” Prance asked, assuming the construction of the disguise would be left to him.

  “Gray,” Coffen and Corinne said together. “Big mounds of gray,” Corinne added. “And a lorgnette.”

  “What else?”

  “She always wears black bombazine, in honour of her late husband, whom she heartily despised,” Corinne continued. “And she has a voice like a foghorn, so you needn’t worry about talking like a lady, Coffen.”

  “I daresay I could put up with it for a few days,” Coffen said. “Pity I won’t be able to drive my curricle.”

  “No, but Sophia adores riding,” Corinne reminded him. “Luten has had our mounts sent down, so that is no problem.”

  “Yes, Coffen can use your mount,” Luten said to his wife, as he had no notion of giving up his own. When his wife cast a knowing eye on him, he added, “Or we can hire one.”

  “She sounds delightful,” said Prance, who collected originals the way some folks collect seashells. “We must see about a black bombazine gown.”

  Corinne said, “Mrs. Partridge will know someone who can make one up for us quickly.”

  The planning continued over lunch at the Royal Crescent, which they reached without incident. After lunch they went to Luten’s house to speak to Mrs. Partridge about the gown and a bonnet.

  Mrs. Partridge entered into the charade with enthusiasm. She was a strong admirer of the Berkeley Brigade, and especially fond of Mr. Pattle. “Who made up my black bombazine is Mrs. Cook, here in town. I’ll show you mine, and you see if that’s the sort of thing you want. We’ll need your measurements, Mr. Pattle.”

  She was back in a trice with her Sunday best gown. When she held it up to Pattle, it looked as if it would fit, other than being an inch or two short, for Mrs. Partridge was comfortab
ly upholstered. “Try it on,” she urged.

  He objected, but was talked into it and went abovestairs to put it on, with Prance’s assistance. “We must pad your bosom,” Prance said, staring at the loose folds above the waist.

  “I don’t have a bosom,” Coffen scowled.

  “Precisely. We shall borrow some face cloths from the linen cupboard.”

  “If you know Sophia, it’s towels you’d be borrowing.”

  “We shall compromise on pillow cases. Many a compromise has been made there, I fancy.” Coffen didn’t understand him, or Prance would have been called to account. He didn’t approve of broad talk.

  “I don’t see how you ladies keep from killing yourselves on the stairs in these things,” he scolded, when he came down, holding the skirt up to his knees. Having delivered him to the drawing room, Prance left to borrow what was needed from Boo.

  Luten stared at Coffen, pinched back a grin and said, “It will do admirably, Lady Carter. A pity it isn’t a shade longer and we wouldn’t have to wait for Mrs. Cook to make you up one like it.”

  “Why it has a good three inch hem,” said Mrs. Partridge, who had waited to see the transformation. “I could let it down for you. Mrs. Cook will be busy this time of year, though I daresay she’d give your lordship preference.”

  “We can’t take your gown, Mrs. Partridge,” Corinne said. But she was aware of the convenience of getting Coffen into skirts as soon as possible. “Let us buy it from you, and Mrs. Cook can make up a new one for you.”

  Mrs. Partridge objected, but was talked into it without too much difficulty. Truth to tell she was glad to be rid of that old black bombazine. She had had her eye on a new gown for the past two years. In a daring departure from black, she wanted a navy blue gown with jet beading down the bodice.

  She measured how much the hem would have to be let down, and as soon as Coffen returned it to her, she set to work on the job. Prance returned with the gold-rimmed lorgnette and gray wig. He had even purchased a bonnet decorated with an abundance of black feathers with a few claret-coloured ones for variety. Coffen groaned when he saw it. “If anyone I know sees me in this I’ll never hold up my head again,” he said.