Hoare and the Portsmouth Atrocities

by Wilder Perkins

  A week ago, Hoare mused, he would have regarded this letter as priceless evidence of Kingsley’s motive for murdering someone—Maud, if not Captain Hay. But now, with Kingsley lying murdered himself, it was of historical interest only. Hoare could see no reason for handing it to Captain Hay’s widow. Her past sins were no business of his.

  The letter that had caused Mr. Watt’s crise de conscience lay among the others, with its enclosure pinned to it. As Mr. Watt had remembered, it read: “I found this in his uniform pocket that night. I know the sort of thing it is, and I do not believe he should be in possession of such a thing. But perhaps you gave it to him in connection with Vantage.”

  Mr. Watt had not recited the rest of the letter to Hoare and Gladden. On reading it, Hoare placed a note at the head of his mental memorandum file: Question Mrs. Hay.

  The enclosure was written in minute block letters on the thinnest of tissue. It had apparently been tightly rolled for sending, instead of being folded. There was no trace of a seal. It was addressed to “Ahab” and signed “Jehu.” Its text comprised several score five-letter words of gibberish.

  It was obvious to Hoare, as it had been to Watt, that this was an enciphered message. Knowing nothing of codes and ciphers, he had to set it aside.

  Hoare leafed quickly through the other letters in the file Kingsley had stolen from Vantage’s cabin. They were, as Watt had implied, irrelevant and trivial. Most were from tradesmen, although two solicited places for their sons as midshipmen in Vantage and one was a plea for funds from an imprisoned debtor signing himself “your devoted cousin, Jeremiah Hay.” He turned now to Kingsley’s other papers.

  Here were three heated, tousled missives in Mrs. Hay’s careless script. Why had Kingsley been such a fool as to keep them? Had he, too, had blackmail in mind?

  Kingsley’s most interesting documents were four messages. Their appearance was identical to the enclosure that had caught Mr. Watt’s eye.

  The fourth letter was also in a semiliterate hand:

  Estem’d Sir:

  if you dont wan er usbin [husband] an the LAW to no about them things you bin doin wat no ENGLISH Genelman shd be doin youl bring 20 pouns to the ol plaic [place] sadiday at for bels. COM ALON!!!! I stil got frens an you dont no mor

  yr umbl obt servt

  J. Jaggery

  In this letter, at least, the threat of blackmail was specific. But since Kingsley was no longer alive to be blackmailed, Hoare felt he could as well set it aside—except that the name Jaggery tickled his memory in connection with something unsavory.

  He remembered now. Some years ago, a gunner of that name had suffered two broken legs and a mangled left hand in a sea accident. Since a full set of working limbs was as essential to a gunner as a carrying voice was to a deck officer, the lame gunner, like Hoare, had been put ashore. There, interest of some mysterious lower-deck kind had found him a place at the Ordnance Board.

  Janus Jaggery had first come to Hoare’s attention as one of a ring of petty diverters who generally had odd pieces of nautical gear at hand for the right price. Although Hoare’s inquiry had lifted several light-fingered men out of their secure nests ashore and sent them to sea or to Botany Bay, Jaggery had managed to keep his place. Perhaps Hoare would call on him, after all, at the Bunch of Grapes, once he had finished his survey of Kingsley’s papers and made his report to Sir George.

  This time, as soon as the Admiral’s rabbit caught sight of Hoare he hastened to announce Hoare to his master. The rabbit informed him that Captain Kent had made his selections and disappeared aboard his new command.

  Within Sir George’s sanctum, Patterson the secretary still hovered at the back of his Admiral.

  “I shall be brief, sir,” Hoare whispered. “Two letters represent two separate attempts at extortion. The first is the maid Maud’s weak approach to Captain Hay, while the other is a more sinister approach to Kingsley by one Janus Jaggery.

  “Since both targets are dead, the abortive bits of blackmail have become moot, and I would recommend they be disregarded were it not that the man Jaggery is known to me as a questionable character at best. I would like to make sure of his continued good behavior.

  “I also want to interview Mrs. Hay. One of her letters to the late captain gives me reason to suspect that he was not unaware of her liaison with Kingsley.”

  “Go on.”

  “The papers in cipher are beyond my competence to handle, sir. However, if you wish to investigate them further, as I think advisable…” Hoare paused and cleared his throat painfully.

  Sir George gestured to his secretary. “Wine, Patterson. The man’s dry.”

  “… as I think advisable,” Hoare repeated when he had wet his whistle, “and yet do not want to refer the documents to their Lordships’ people in London, I know of two persons in the area, either one of whom might be of assistance.”

  Hoare had stressed the word might with all the power he could put behind his pitiful whisper, thereby losing all the ground he had made with the wine’s help. He had to gesture for more. He must, he thought, find some way of carrying a mild anodyne about so that he could better endure extended talk. Perhaps Mrs. Graves’s physician spouse would help. Perhaps he would see her redoubtable little person again.

  “Whom d’ye have in mind?” the Admiral demanded. “I don’t care to have ciphered messages swanning about my command, out of control. And the thing would be lost to mankind within seconds of arriving in Whitehall.”

  “One, sir, is Watt, captain’s clerk in Vantage. The other is Mrs. Simon Graves, wife of a physician in Weymouth. Both are talented in matters of handwriting.”

  “I can hardly issue orders to a doctor’s wife in Portsmouth,” the Admiral said. “Perhaps you yourself can find a way of consulting the good woman. Take whatever steps you deem necessary—within reason, of course. As to Watt, I shall second him to you out of Vantage, if you’d like, until you’ve used him up or until she sails, whichever is sooner.”

  “I would find that most helpful, sir.” Kent, Vantage’s new captain, would damn Hoare blue if he knew him responsible for stealing his clerk just as his frigate was making ready for sea. Well, Hoare thought, damn him blue, right back.

  “See to it, Patterson,” Sir George said. “Have the man Watt report himself to Hoare at his lodgings, prepared to remain there at the Navy’s expense until Hoare’s through with him or until Vantage’s anchor is aweigh. When will you have that cipher sorted out, then, Hoare?”

  “I can’t say yet, sir,” Hoare whispered, and regretted his words instantly.

  “‘Can’t say,’ sir? What kind of an answer is that to give your superior officer, sir? I’ve had mids kiss the gunner’s daughter for less. Someone should have beaten that sort of insolence out of you, sir, before you were handed your commission.

  “You’ve been on the beach too long, sir. You’ve got fat and lazy, sir, fat and lazy. You’ve waxed fat and kicked against the pricks. It’s past time you were sent to sea.”

  Hoare’s heart leaped. If he could only take Sir George at his word …

  “I would be overjoyed, sir,” he ventured.

  Mr. Patterson gasped. For ten heartbeats that seemed to Hoare like as many minutes, Sir George Hardcastle glowered at Hoare from under his heavy brow. The paneled room was silent.

  At last, the Admiral’s expression became almost sympathetic. Evidently, Sir George shared Hoare’s longing to be at sea again.

  “I take your meaning, Mr. Hoare,” he said. “Perhaps I shall be your Eurystheus and you my Heracles.” He paused again as if to assure himself that Hoare understood the allusion.

  Hoare did. The gods had sentenced Heracles to undertake certain labors given him by King Eurystheus of Mycenae as penance for killing his own children by the king’s daughter, Megara.

  “And Patterson here can be my Talthybius,” the Admiral added.

  The secretary looked sour. Talthybius had been Eurystheus’s herald, by whom the king had sent his orders to Heracle
s. The hero had dubbed him “the Dung Man.”

  “If you seek your own Argo, Mr. Hoare, make sure your good works are such as to magnify you before Their Lordships. Return Watt to Vantage when you have used him, if he has not already rejoined her under sailing orders. That will be all, sir.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Hoare whispered. He made his bow and removed himself.

  * * *

  MR. WATT REPORTED to Hoare’s quarters in the Swallowed Anchor as instructed.

  “Captain Kent was not in the least pleased to learn that I was to be taken away from Vantage at such a crucial time, sir,” the man said. “I do not think it wise to repeat his very words. Even he, however, must obey Sir George’s explicit instructions.”

  “I understand, Mr. Watt. Let us do our best to return you to his care as soon as possible,” Hoare whispered. “Now, sir, as I recall from our discussion aboard Vantage, you are a student of handwriting. Is that really so?”

  “I have come to believe, sir,” Watt said, “that a person’s handwriting reveals not only his gender—or hers, of course—and position in life, but also his character and personality. In fact, I occasionally entertain my friends by describing a person’s nature, based on inspecting samples of his handwriting.”

  “Interesting,” Hoare commented. He handed the clerk the folder. “Tell me what you think of these, then.”

  “This, as you must know already, sir,” Watt said, “is the folder that went adrift from Captain Hay’s desk. Certain official correspondence was missing and still is—”

  “Sir George has sent it back aboard Vantage,” Hoare said, “where I am sure you will find it when you return. Go on.”

  “The remaining correspondence is as I remember it. A letter from the late captain’s lady, several from tradesmen, one written—as I think I remember telling you—by a lower-class woman. She is literate but has had little practice in the calligraphic art. It might be the prelude to a demand for money.”

  “I agree. Thank you. Now, these,” Hoare said, handing Watt the other documents found on Kingsley.

  “Oh, dear me,” Watt replied upon casting his eyes over Mrs. Hay’s steaming letters to her husband’s lieutenant. “Oh,” he said again as he read. “Oh, my. Oh, dear.” He set the letters on Hoare’s desk, his lips pressed firmly together and his sallow face pink. “The letters of a lewd woman and a hot one, indeed, sir. One can only be happy that Captain Hay never saw them.” He picked up the letter from J. Jaggery. “This is a piece of outright blackmail, of course,” he said. “Again, the writer—a man, this time, probably a seaman, sir, or at least a man of the sea—is barely literate. He places a low value indeed on his silence, does he not? And in mentioning the law, does he perhaps advert to some untoward action on the late lieutenant’s part, other than the plowing of his master’s field?” He looked at Hoare inquiringly.

  “One could indeed draw that inference,” Hoare whispered.

  When he took up the thin pieces of tissue, Watt’s eyes brightened. He drew a glass from his bosom and bent over the papers, his pointed nose almost scraping along their surfaces as he studied them.

  “Hmm. Not the Caesar cipher,” he muttered to himself. “No vowels at all. Probably substituted numerals. Wonder why? A substitution cipher, indeed. Must count frequencies.…”

  He reached out blindly for a piece of blank paper, found a silver pencil in his coat, and began taking notes to his own dictation. For now, he had moved to another world. Hoare did not want to bring him back from it. He scribbled a message that told Watt that he was to sleep at the Swallowed Anchor that night and tiptoed out of the room.

  On his way to Jaggery’s lair, he decided to make a detour, view the body of Peregrine Kingsley, late second lieutenant in Vantage, and question the newly widowed Katerina Hay.

  Hoare was pleased to find that the corpse had yet to be released to the man’s relatives—whoever they were. The attendant made no trouble but promptly pointed Kingsley out from among Portsmouth’s other recent naval casualties.

  “Ball went into the head, like you can see, sir,” the man said. “Stopped there, though. Surgeon took ’er out.”

  Gladden had been mistaken in this detail, then. This was evident to Hoare from the coarse trephining work that had completed the destruction of the late licentious lieutenant’s beauty.

  “Where’s the bullet?” Hoare asked.

  In answer, the attendant rummaged about in a drawer underneath the cadaver. “’Ere,” he said at last, handing it to Hoare.

  “I’ll want this,” Hoare whispered.

  The bullet, he saw, bore small slightly canted ridges. It was a rifle bullet, then. If so, it could have been fired from a considerable distance. Furthermore, the killing had been done at night. Thus, he thought, the murderer had to have been no mean marksman.

  “You’ll ’ave to give me a paper, then,” the attendant said.

  Hoare sighed but wrote two notes, one to himself, identifying the bullet as being what it was, and one to the attendant. Each signed one note. Pocketing his grisly prize, Hoare tipped the man sixpence and went his way.

  Captain Hay’s relict had not yet moved from the apartment she had shared with her late husband on the second story of the Three Suns Inn. Hoare had seldom patronized the Three Suns; it catered to flag officers and post captains at the top of the list. Even Captain Hay must have been lucky in his prize money, if he could support an extensive stay there.

  That the three gilded spheres of the Medici crest that overhung the inn’s portal also served to identify pawnbroking establishments apparently troubled the proprietors of the Three Suns not at all. Their establishment was too exalted for any confusion. Hoare would not have been at all surprised to find Sir Thomas Frobisher in residence. It was his sort of place.

  The doorkeeper of the Three Suns made it clear that his masters discouraged the presence of officers below the rank of commander except on Admiralty business.

  “You will either admit me forthwith and have me announced to Mrs. Hay,” Hoare said at last, “or suffer the loss of your protection, be pressed, and go to sea again. You have five seconds in which to make your choice.”

  He had several impressive-looking, meaningless documents stuffed in his uniform pocket for occasions like this. He drew one of them out and pulled out a silver-cased pencil.

  “One. Two…”

  The porter fled. “Mrs. Hay will receive you,” he said humbly when he reappeared. “This way, please.”

  Though he had never been introduced, Hoare had seen Mrs. Adam Hay—Katerina Hay—on stage several times. She was a skilled performer, of near-professional quality. Her acting was a trifle florid for Hoare’s taste, but she was a favorite among the serving officers. Since she greeted him standing in the middle of the inn’s second-best drawing room, Hoare made her his second-best leg.

  Katerina Hay was big, blonde and Dutch. As she stood there in tasteful mourning, her opulent lines reminded Hoare of Oranienboom, the two-decker from which he had once fled incontinently. He had been first in Staghound, 36, then, and it was just before the day his voice had been taken from him. She looked just as dangerous.

  “Please accept my condolences, ma’am, on your tragic loss,” he whispered.

  “You need not whisp—oh! Of course. You’re Admiral Hardcastle’s ‘Whispering Ferret!’” Mrs. Hay lost all trace of her formidable mien. As it did on the stage, her accent lent piquancy to her voice. “Sit down, sir, I pray!” With massive grace, she seated herself at one end of a chaise longue and gestured for him to take his place beside her. “Thank you for your good wishes, Mr. Hoare. But let us come to the point, for you must be a busy man with this inquiry of yours.” She smiled at him knowingly. “Oh, yes. After your success with Amazon, it would be obvious—no?—for dear Sir George to direct you onto the murder of my husband.”

  Taken full aback, Hoare could only laugh.

  Katerina Hay laughed back. “Did anyone ever tell you, sir? Your laugh sounds like a will-o’-the-wisp in
one of our Zeeland bogs. So. What do you wish to ask me?”

  “I believe—forgive me—that your husband was aware of your relationship with the late Lieutenant Peregrine Kingsley.”

  Katerina Hay laughed again—somewhat scornfully, Hoare thought. “Of course he was ‘aware,’ sir. Indeed, he more or less approved of it.”

  Then, if the husband of Kingsley’s mistress already knew of the affair, what had been Kingsley’s motive in killing him?

  “Do not look shocked, Mr. Hoare,” Katerina Hay went on. “My husband and I remained fond of each other. But Adam had long since become incapable, and I … I am a full-blooded woman.”

  Had she moved an inch or two along the chaise?

  “Then that explains the reference in this letter to ‘he’ or ‘his.’ You knew your husband would know whom you referred to.”

  “Exactly, Mr. Hoare. My husband may have condoned my placing horns upon him, so long as no open scandal ensued. But he, and I, would have drawn the line at my consorting with a traitor.”

  “Then it might follow,” Hoare said, “that Kingsley killed your husband, not because he feared discovery as your … er…”

  “Cicisbeo, Mr. Hoare. Lover.”

  “Yes … but because of the cipher he allowed you to find.”

  “Exactly. I was foolish myself, perhaps, and must take some of the guilt for poor Adam’s death, for I told Peregrine Kingsley what I had done with the message, and gave him his congé on the spot. I was right to do so, nie?”

  With this question in her native tongue, Mrs. Hay definitely edged closer.

  * * *

  THE BUNCH OF Grapes, where Hoare knew he would either find Jaggery himself or learn of his whereabouts, was a known haunt of men who lived on the wrong side of the law. Yet it was not the filthy, dark lair a stranger would therefore expect. It did not reek of bad gin, used beer, or stale tobacco. It was full of neither drunks nor drabs, and none of the occupants were bedraggled. The small smugglers, illegal tradesmen, master crooked craftsmen, and other well-behaved criminals of Jaggery’s sort had better taste than to frequent a den and enough money to support that taste.