River's Edge

by James P. Blaylock

  Clover leapt to her feet, tottering backwards as Townover brought the cane hissing downward. Henley reached up and caught it with his hand, yanking it free and flinging it back over his shoulder. Townover nearly fell, but he caught himself on the desk. He was shaking now, a full-bodied shaking, as if overcome with an irresistible palsy.

  Clover stared at him in surprise and then began to laugh, puffing out her chest like a pigeon and said, “You like what you see, don’t you, you wicked old man.”

  Henley, having arranged his undergarments, sat silently in the chair. His eyes were active, however, as if he were coming to a conclusion.

  “This is infamous,” Townover said to him in a hoarse whisper. And then, “Get out, you leering whore!” he shouted, turning on Clover again “Get out, I say.” And he stamped his foot, although the gesture was frail and impotent.

  “Stay!” Henley commanded, and Clover stood her ground, favoring Townover with theatrically lascivious glances.

  “What of the fat man?” Henley asked.

  “If you mean Gilbert Frobisher,” Townover said in what was meant as a thundering voice, “he has made a handsome investment in the mill, and I’ve granted him a position of some importance. You’ll answer to him from this moment on, if, indeed, you answer to anyone at all.”

  “I choose to answer to myself and myself alone, sir.”

  Clover moved behind Henley, putting the desk between herself and Townover. The old man’s palsy had subsided, but his chest was heaving with the exertion of his anger, and his face was scarlet, completely suffused with blood, his breath wheezing out of his throat. Winking at him, Clover picked up the wine bottle and drank from it, setting it down again onto the corner of the desk and then belching loudly.

  Townover gasped out a hoarse breath, seemed to choke on it, and reeled sideways, losing his balance and falling to one knee. He reached into his coat, shakily removing his flask of nitroglycerine elixir and fumbling with the cap. The task of opening it was apparently beyond his powers.

  “Let me help you, father,” Henley said, in a voice of mock concern, and he stood up and went to his father’s side, taking the bottle from his hand, loosening the stopper and purposely dumping the liquid up and down the leg of his father’s trousers. “Good heavens,” he said. “How clumsy of me.”

  Townover, a look of horror on his face, bent forward and began to suck the elixir from his pant-leg. He clutched his chest, and a croaking noise stuttered from his throat.

  “Fetch the bottle of chemical in the bottom drawer Clover, and the folded cloth along with it,” Henry said briskly. “It’ll settle him.” He knelt on the floor in his stocking feet, supporting his father’s back.

  Clover handed him the heavy bottle and the folded cloth, watching as he thumbed out the glass stopper and poured out a stream of chemical, the sweet reek of chloroform rising around them, smelling something like wine and rot. Henley pressed the sopping rag to his father’s face, encircling the old man’s chest with his free arm, and bore down on his back embracing him tightly. His father flapped his arms feebly and made sounds in his chest, as if trying to speak. Very slowly, however, the struggling stopped. Henley remained kneeling, his head bowed, the rag still pressed to his father’s face.

  It was borne in upon Clover that the old man was dead, and that her own fate hung in the balance. She found that she could scarcely breathe. She’d be hung. She wouldn’t live long enough to be hanged… She slid her hand into the open drawer and drew out the wallet of money that had been hidden by the cloth and bottle. She tucked it into her bodice, looking at Henley’s bowed form and hoping to God that he was too far removed to wonder what she was about. She glanced at the door, bile rising into her throat. If she ran, he would surely catch her.

  Henley pitched the saturated cloth aside now, finally, turning his head upward as if to breathe in clean air, and then he put the glass stopper back into the bottle, leaving it on the floor. He looked again at the ceiling for a long, silent moment, nodded as if with satisfaction, and turned to speak. “My father’s heart seems to have given out, alas. Find Mr. Davis, who should be up and about in his quarters by now. Tell him to send for the doctor. And on the way, throw this bottle and rag into the privy. Pour out the contents and drop the bottle in after it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Clover said, and, careful of the wallet, she quickly donned her slippers and picked up the bottle, taking the rag by a dry corner. She hurried out through the door, and once out of sight she took the stairs downward two at a time, hiking up her dress and heading through the side door to the row of privies along the brook, with their stinking pits and buckets of slaked lime. Immediately she saw Davis himself—the back of him, stepping into a privy—and she pulled back into the mill doorway until the privy door was shut.

  She stepped out again, moving quickly but quietly. She eased open the door to the first privy in line, dropped the rag into the swill at the bottom, and poured out the chemical. She followed it with the bottle before darting out again and back into the mill, where she watched once again from behind the edge of the door, waiting for Davis to come out.

  “Mr. Davis!” she shouted when he did so. “Thank God!”

  “What’s amiss, girl?” he asked, hitching up his trousers.

  “It’s old Mr. Townover,” she gasped out. “Upstairs. His heart has burst. I’m to run for the doctor. Mr. Henley asked me to summon you.” With that she dashed away along the brook, fully expecting to be run down and captured. But when she looked back Davis was nowhere to be seen—he had gone in, thank Christ. The ruse might lend only a few moments, however, before he understood that she had fled, and would come for her.

  Her mind turned as she ran on. She remembered what Henley had said to her—that the bottled chemical in his drawer quietened the girls when they were frightened. Had Daisy been a frightened girl? Were there others? She thought of Letty Benton, who had lived with her and Daisy at the Chequers and had ‘gone into London’ and hadn’t returned.

  Abruptly she turned off the path and into the woods, heading in the general direction of the Snodland Bridge, where she might cross if only she could hurry. She thought of her trunk with the pitiful coins she had stolen from her aunt tucked beneath the fabric in the bottom. The lot of it was nothing but rubbish for a girl with a purse of money tucked into her bodice. She began to run again, but straight toward the river now through the trees. Never in her life had she had this much to lose. There was no time for the bridge. She soon broke from the woods below where Eccles Brook emptied into the Medway, and there, two hundred yards down the bank, the ferry stood empty at the dock.

  Across the way in Snodland the Paper Dolls were milling in the street, and there was the sound of shouting and cheering. It was the strike, and she laughed out loud, almost wishing she could join them, for she hated Henley and Davis and even old man Townover despite his being dead—good hate wasted, it seemed to her. She hurried out onto the dock and stepped aboard the ferry.

  “Mr. Townover must have a doctor immediately,” she said to the pilot. He took in the look on her face, cast off the lines, and headed out across the river.

  Chapter 25

  She Might Be in Hell

  HENLEY HAD PULLED his collective parts together and was sitting placidly at his desk, waiting for Davis to arrive. He contemplated the events of the morning, which had not fallen out quite as he had expected. But the deed was done, and done conveniently. The bottle and the rag were down the privy, so to say. (Clover would have done as he had asked, failing at her own peril.) There would surely be no autopsy, given the state of the old man’s heart. Henley would tear up the agreement with Gilbert Frobisher. Windhover and the mill would belong to him. It had turned out to be a profitable morning all the way around. Davis was the only porcupine left in the path.

  And now Davis appeared at the top of the stairs, threw the door open, and strode in. He saw Townover’s dead body on the floor. He sniffed at the reek of chloroform on the air. He squinted at Henley
. But Henley cared nothing for Davis’s opinion of things. One didn’t ask for permission to murder one’s own father. The center drawer of the desk was slid partway open, and Charles Townover’s Lancaster pistol lay inside—a .577 calibre howdah pistol he had brought back from India many years ago. The bullet was meant to stop lions, and certainly it would put an end to Davis.

  “Where is Clover?” Henley asked.

  “She told me you’d sent her for the doctor. But she might be in hell, for all I care. So you’ve murdered him? You took it upon yourself to murder him?”

  “He had an apoplectic fit and dropped dead—the best of all possible outcomes.”

  “If they cut him open, they’ll find the chloroform in him. His innards will be blue. You know that. Where’s the bottle?”

  “Why would they cut open a man whose heart is known to be worthless? The bottle is gone, along with the cloth; that’s enough. The reek will fade. There will be no evidence, and I, of course, will be desolated by my poor father’s death. So, one thing at a time, did you ask Jenks about Pink’s money?”

  “Aye, he denied taking it, which was a bare-faced lie, so I shot him and dumped his body into the marsh. But that’s nothing. You’ve put my head in the gallows, and your own, too, murdering the old man. Do you think that Clover won’t rat?”

  “Clover, do you say? She’s neck deep in all of this, and she has a criminal past. She’d scarcely go to the police. You needn’t fear Clover.”

  “I don’t fear any woman,” he said evenly, “nor any man.”

  Henley reached into the drawer and withdrew the pistol, which he pointed at Davis’s midsection—not six feet away. “Then allow me to acquaint you with a truly fearful object. I don’t quite trust you at the moment. You’re lying to me, of course. Jenks had the money with him, as was true of Pink. And now you’ve got it. I’m a generous man, however. Keep it and walk away. Now.”

  Davis stared at him. “You paid Bates as much to throttle Bill Henry, or near to as much. It was me who set it up, and me who took the blows when we bearded Henry in the alley, as well as the rest of it: the evidence at the farm, the dead baby. It was me who made this work, not you. Bates still has his position, but I’m told to get the hell out. And I’ll do it. I’ll go. But I’ll take the money in the drawer along with me. It’s nothing to you now. You’re rich. The money was laid by in case we had to bolt, or so you said, but it’s me who’ll bolt, not for the likes of you. We both gain if you do the right thing by me.”

  Henley watched for a moment, shrugged, and still pointing the pistol at Davis, used his left hand to slide the side drawer open. It took only a few seconds to discern that it was empty: the wallet was gone. He laughed out loud. “Miss Clover Cantwell has made fools of the both of us. She’s taken the money and run. You can look if you like. Look into all the drawers.”

  “God damn!” Davis said, his face a mask of anger now.

  “Wait,” Henley said. He sat for a long moment as if thinking things through. “I sent her across the river to fetch the doctor, like you said. You can follow her track easily, and there’ll be people on this side of the river or the other who have seen her. Here’s what I say: bring her head to me, and I’ll pay you another thousand pounds—money I have laid by, as you put it. Both of us will be free of her. Whatever Clover is carrying on her person is yours. Her person itself is yours, for that matter.” He lowered the pistol now, and slid his hand back into the drawer as if to put it away.

  Davis hesitated for a moment, mastering his temper. “I’ll be back,” he said, “with or without the girl.” As he turned to go, Henley drew the pistol out of the drawer again and shot him between the shoulder blades.

  Chapter 26

  Clover’s Confession

  ST. IVES WALKED alone along the High Street, which was comparatively quiet. The Paper Dolls, finding themselves suddenly on holiday, were dispersing. Brooke and Hasbro had set out after the villain Bates, and Bill Kraken sat with Mother Laswell, Alice, Larkin, and Willum, waiting for St. Ives to have finished talking to Constable Fisk, the two of them putting the idiotic witch accusations to rest. There was still a villain to uncover, but surely that would come.

  A girl approached him along the pavement now, hurrying along and looking down at the ground. It took him a moment to recognize her. She glanced up and apparently recognized him, also, for she ducked away down the alley behind the Malden Arms. Clover—that was her name. St. Ives followed her into the alley. He had gone into this same alley only a couple of days back, and knew there was no outlet from the small yard that boxed it in. As he rounded the near corner, she was standing like a frightened child with nowhere to run except into the rear door of the Malden Arms. He cut her off when she bolted for it, however, and grabbed her wrist, stopping her flight.

  “Clover Cantwell, I believe,” he said, recalling her full name, if in fact it was her name at all. “It’s time for the truth, girl. I’m giving you the opportunity to save yourself.”

  “Let me go, sir. I won’t run.”

  He did as he was asked, and she turned toward him, her face full of tears and regret—alligator tears, perhaps, but it was unfair to assume such a thing. “Come,” he said. “It’s time for the truth. We know about Henley Townover. You’d be a fool to lie for him.” He was sensible of his own lie, Henley Townover’s involvement being a strong suspicion and nothing else. For good measure he said, “The constable took him into custody this morning.”

  “No, sir, he did not,” she said “I left him not half an hour past, and I’ll tell you that he murdered his own father with chemical. The bottle’s down the privy. He had his way with me sir, he threatened…”

  She began to weep aloud now, and St. Ives recalled her arrival at Hereafter Farms, presenting the lot of them with the broadsheet, carrying the sham off like a born devil. Still, Henley Townover no doubt held sway over her.

  “He threatened to murder my Aunt Gower in Maidstone. Worse than that, sir, but I can’t say what I mean. It’s too shameful. You don’t know him, sir, nor did his own poor father. Mr. Townover’s heart quit with the sorrow of it, although Henley helped it along. And now I’ll hang for it—for wanting to help my poor Aunt Gower, who never hurt nobody in her life, and looks to me to care for her.”

  It seemed to St. Ives that the girl might well be telling the truth—some variety of truth anyway. Certainly her testimony would damn Henley Townover. “Will you make a full confession?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. If you write it out plain, I’ll sign it. But you must put in that it was Henley that forced my hand. He had poor Daisy murdered, do you see, and I was to be next.”

  “We’ll put it all in,” St. Ives said, “Never you fear. Come along.”

  They walked together into the Malden Arms, where the publican was stirring a great black pot of beans on the stove-top. He was evidently surprised to see the two of them coming in from the back, but he fell into line when he recognized St. Ives and saw that Clover was weeping. He was happy enough to fetch St. Ives a pen, ink, and paper and stood by while Clover told her story: how Henley had chosen her from the lot of Paper Dolls, and had offered her money for Aunt Gower, and told her just what would happen to her and to her aunt if they didn’t play along, and the grand life they would have if they did. Clover had hated it from the first moment, but dared not refuse his demands. She told them how she had overheard him tell Davis to have Mr. Pink murdered and how Davis himself took what they called “the evidence” to Hereafter Farm, the two of them laughing when they dreamed up the scheme. It was true that she did as she was told—what choice had she?—but it was also true that this morning she had fled when she had seen her chance. She had watched helplessly while Henley had poured out his father’s medicine, and after the murder she had put the chloroform down the privy—the first in the line—just as she was told, the evidence there in the muck, and then had run away with nothing but the clothes on her back. She dared not go back to the Chequers for her possessions, because Davis would
be waiting, and would take her to her death as he had taken Daisy Dumpel.

  “And that’s complete, then?” St. Ives asked at last.

  “Yes, sir. There’s no doubt more that they did, but they didn’t tell me of it, as you can imagine. They used that bottle of chemical on the girls, I think. They must have. And they would have used it on me this very day.”

  She signed the document, a page and a half closely written. The publican signed as a witness. Clover began to weep again. “When I was in London,” she said to St. Ives, “I was taken up for theft. I’ve a black mark against me, and it’s justified. I don’t like to say it, but it’s true. I came to Maidstone to live with my Aunt Gower, and was hired at the mill, where I hoped to make my step and advance, as they say. It’s all gone to smash now. All of it. Aunt Gower is barmy, and can’t speak on my behalf. It’ll be Colney Hatch for her and the jail for me. A confession is nothing to a judge. You know that, sir.”

  “There is some truth in what you say, Clover.”

  “More than some. I’ll be bold, sir. I’ll take my oath that all I want in life is another job such as the one that Henley Townover gave me and then took away again. It’s nothing but a ruin now.”

  “I’m not convinced that anything is ruined. My good friend has bought shares in the mill, do you see, and there’s no need to suppose that it’s closing its doors. I’ll vouch for you before the judge.”

  “Will you sir?” She lunged toward him now and, momentarily confused, gripped his arm and looked into his face. She turned away blushing and said, “I’m ashamed to ask it, sir, but I have three shillings to my name, and surely there’ll be no work at the mill for a time. Can you give me the loan of two pound for my Aunt Gower and me to see us through? You’re a good man, sir, and the only friend we have.”