Hoare made a mental note. He had long since decided he must question both Mr. Morrow and Sir Thomas. His inquiry of Mr. Morrow, at least, would now have added substance.
“Would your witchcraft with the pen extend to a description of the message?” he asked.
“I have no witchcraft, Mr. Hoare,” Mrs. Graves said sadly. “No broomstick could bear me; I am too stout.”
Once again, a forthright remark of the widow’s left Hoare at a stand.
“Let me try to show you, however,” she said. “If you will be so kind as to bring me a chair … No, no, Mr. Hoare, not my husband’s wheeled chair. Choose another, if you please.”
The summer sun caught her hair as she settled herself down at the writing table. Hoare noted a few more white strands in it than he had seen when they first met on Portland Bill. She drew a fresh sheet to her and began to write.
“I cannot recover the words,” she said. “In fact, I doubt they were words in the usual sense, for they were singularly uniform.”
Looking over her shoulder, Hoare saw the “words” take shape. He had seen the selfsame formations not so long ago, on the tissue-paper messages Mr. Watt had studied so fruitlessly.
“The only word I could decipher was this last one,” Mrs. Graves said as she wrote.
“Jehu!” Hoare’s exclamation was a strangled grunt of triumph.
“Did you sneeze, sir?”
Hoare laughed. A woman of his acquaintance had described his laugh as the sound of a dropped eyelash. “No, ma’am. I said, ‘Jehu,’ as you were writing it down.”
“Yes,” she said. “The wild driver, you know. Second Kings, chapter 9, verse 20, I believe.”
“I did not tell you, Mrs. Graves, but a series of documents with the same signature has come into my possession under suspicious circumstances. Tell me, are you also gifted at ciphering and deciphering secret codes?”
She shook her head. “No, sir.” She paused. “Of course!” she cried. “The document was a ciphered message, and Simon had begun to translate it into readable form!”
“I do believe…,” Hoare began, but Mrs. Graves overrode his whisper. She handed Hoare her re-creation, and he pocketed it.
“Why, pray, would Mr. Morrow have abstracted it? And why would Simon have had it in his possession in the first place?”
Hoare shrugged. “We cannot even guess now, ma’am. Let us see how matters unfold.”
“There is more, Mr. Hoare. Let us remove into my drawing room, where it is more comfortable and the memories are less painful.”
When Mrs. Graves had resumed her tuffet, she continued.
“I have decided that since you are not only a naval officer but also evidently deal with confidential matters from time to time, I shall do England no harm by informing you of an activity in which my husband engaged himself on behalf of our country. He was sworn to secrecy. So, therefore, was I.”
Hoare sat forward.
“An agent of the English intelligence service approached Simon several months ago. He had learned that Simon, besides being a physician of some standing, was also skilled in the contrivance of novel mechanisms of a scientific kind—not only clocks and watches with unusual properties but also orreries, for instance, and the like.
“He asked my husband if he could devise a sturdy, accurate mechanism that would sound a small signal bell at a preset time, as far ahead as a year from the time it was set. It would be used, the man said, as a check upon a vessel’s longitude as determined by conventional means. I admit I do not understand how that was to be done, but then I am no navigator. Undoubtedly it will be obvious to you, Mr. Hoare.”
“It is not, ma’am, but that is of no consequence. I was never a close student of the arts. As any midshipman must, I learned to fix my ship’s position with clock, quadrant, and line of bearing, but no more. And even that experience is nearly ten years out-of-date.”
“In any case, Simon built a first trial model, then a second improved design. I believe he constructed five or six of them all told.”
“Do you know who the English agent was?” Hoare asked.
“No, Simon kept that information to himself, and I never spied on him.”
“Of course not.” Hoare’s heart sank. “Thank you for telling me. I shall treat the information in the confidence it deserves.”
At his request, Mrs. Graves now assembled the other witnesses at hand—the small staff of household servants—and withdrew to the drawing room so he could question them without her possibly disturbing presence. He quickly found that the maid, Agnes, and Mrs. Betts, the cook, had nothing to contribute save tearful words of woe.
Tom, the Graveses’ manservant, had more interesting things to tell him.
“I thought I heard a shot like in the night, sir, but I was that tired, I rolls over and goes back to sleep till the mistress woke us by callin’ up back stairs.
“Well, then I gets me breeches and shoes on, sir, and goes downstairs to Master’s rooms. There Mistress is a-settin’ on the floor in the middle of the room, a-holdin’ of Master’s head.
“‘Go quick, Tom,’ she says, ‘an’ knock up Mr. Morrow an’ Sir Thomas.’ So I goes to Sir Thomas, who was abed, and then I goes uphill to Mr. Morrow, and then I comes home.”
“Had Mr. Morrow also been in bed?”
“’E were in shirt and breeches, sir, so I dunno.”
“Thank you, Tom. You did quite right,” Hoare whispered.
He followed Tom out of the doctor’s workplace and made his way into the drawing room.
“I think I have finished my business here, ma’am,” he said. “It only remains for me to call briefly upon Mr. Morrow and Sir Thomas, and to question the examiner … Dr. Olney, is it not?”
“Mr. Olney, sir,” she said. “He is a surgeon, you will remember, and not a physician. As to the two gentlemen, may I speak a word of caution?”
“Please.”
“Mr. Morrow is a very deep man, and proud. He built the competence left him into a fortune. He was not the first to discover the distaste our English gentry have for money earned in trade, as he earned his, instead of inheriting his wealth. He is therefore proud of having made his way into acceptance in our modest country society, and he is likely to resist anything that puts his hard-bought standing at risk.
“I have known Sir Thomas longer than I have Mr. Morrow. He is as proud of his ancestry as Mr. Morrow is of his accomplishments. He believes, I think, his blood to be a brighter blue than that of some of the nation’s governors at Windsor and Whitehall, and is convinced that he is being refused the higher rank which he therefore deserves. He will brook no interferences in his reign over Weymouth and its environs. But there. You will laugh at my presumption.”
“It is no presumption, ma’am. It sounds very much like keen perception.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hoare,” she said. “Be frank with me, then. You are prepared to help me in my pursuit of my husband’s killer?”
“As far as my service duties permit, ma’am. The matter of the ciphers leads me to believe that there is, in fact, some connection between your late husband and the work of some less savory characters in Portsmouth.”
At once, Hoare regretted these words, for Mrs. Graves’s eyes grew cold. “Surely not, sir. Not only was he a cripple; despite his education in France, he was the most honest of Englishmen. Will you not explain yourself?”
“I had not known Dr. Graves was educated in France.”
Mrs. Graves’s voice was now far less cordial. She showed no dimples at all. “At Lyon, Toulouse, and the Sorbonne. He studied with both Dupuytren and Laënnec, as you already know. That is general knowledge.
“But I fear I keep you here under a misapprehension. I had hoped to enlist your help in tracking down my husband’s killer, not in blackening his name as a loyal British subject. You know your way out, I believe. I bid you a good day, sir.”
Hoare would not leave matters like this. He would not slink away. “I understand your concern, ma
’am,” he whispered. “I cannot believe him to have been a conscious party to any un-English action. But the cipher which you saw on his worktable, bearing the signature ‘Jehu,’ clearly ties him in some way to the late Lieutenant Kingsley, and Kingsley was less than an honorable man.”
He cleared his throat painfully.
“In fact, it now appears that Kingsley, whom I knew as a debauchee and nothing more, may have been far more than that. He may have been involved in a plot of some nature. Possibly someone made use of him, and also of Dr. Graves’ talents under some pretext. It is my duty to find out if that is, indeed, the case. If it is, I will see the culprit or culprits brought to justice.”
By now, Mrs. Graves was also on her feet. This was no partridge; it was a kestrel that looked so fiercely up into Hoare’s eyes.
“If you succeed in this mission of yours without sullying Simon’s good name, well and good, sir. I shall be your debtor. But if you drag that name in the mud, you will have his widow to deal with. I shall be your enemy. Do not let me detain you. Good morning.”
Her voice broke. She collapsed onto her tuffet and buried her face in her hands.
“You have no right,” she sobbed. “No right. Kindly go away, Mr. Hoare, and leave me to my lonely grief.”
“Go away now, zur,” echoed Tom the manservant from the door. He watched with a stony face as Hoare sadly let himself out.
Chapter XI
SHAMEFACED, HOARE trudged a long mile north out of town, past Gloster Row and Royal Crescent. He paid his penny at the turnpike and plodded on up the steep slope to Mr. Morrow’s comfortable house on the hill crest. At the doorway a saddled horse stood waiting, hip-shot, in the spring sun. He wished the beast had been in his charge, for the walk, nearly an hour long and all uphill, had left him sweating heavily, though not out of breath. He named himself to the manservant and was admitted. Mr. Morrow appeared after a short delay, booted and spurred. To him, Hoare stated his errand.
“Frankly, sir,” Morrow said, “I am at a stand as to your purpose here in Weymouth in the first place, let alone your curiosity about my affairs. Forgive my bluntness, but have you nothing better to do with your time than bother peaceable men who would prefer to be about their own business?”
“I am not troubling you out of idle curiosity, Mr. Morrow,” Hoare replied in the mildest whisper he could summon, “but on a matter of serious concern to the Navy.”
He sat expectant.
Morrow waited in vain for him to amplify what he had said. At last he said, “Well, then, Mr. Hoare, I see no harm in telling you I had asked Dr. Graves to determine whether the listening device with which he entertained us when first we met could be put to use in my quarry. It has long been known that stone with flaws or faults gives off a different sound when struck than clear, workable marble. It was my notion that with the doctor’s device my men could make better selection of workplaces.”
“Then you are familiar with Dr. Graves’ own workplace, sir?” Hoare asked.
“Moderately, sir.”
“Mrs. Graves tells me she saw some documents on her husband’s worktable when she first came into the room … documents which she says were not present when she returned there the next morning.”
“Aha. So that is where the land lies, eh?” Mr. Morrow said in a bleak voice. “The widow accuses me of abstracting one of the good doctor’s discoveries for purposes of my own. At least, I trust that to be the explanation, sir, and that the accusation does not originate with you. For I hope I may be sure, sir, that, as an officer and a gentleman, you do not insinuate…” He paused significantly.
“I doubt neither your word nor your honesty, Mr. Morrow.” At present, you prickly bastard, Hoare added to himself.
Morrow looked at him severely, as if to stare him down. “This interview is continuing longer than I had expected, sir,” he said. “If you will excuse me for a few seconds, I have an urgent message I must send to the quarry. Please to make yourself comfortable.”
Morrow was as good as his word, for he returned within minutes. “As a matter of fact,” Morrow went on more blandly, as if he had not interrupted himself, “I fear blame for Mrs. Graves’ delusion may, indeed, lie in part at my door. For when I saw the distress under which she was laboring, I took the liberty of drawing a scruple of laudanum from the doctor’s apothecary shelf and administering it to her. It produced some noticeable confusion in her mind.
“I was alarmed to learn later that the maid Agnes foolishly did the same thing, so doubling the dose and rendering the poor woman unconscious for some hours. Fortunately, the effect was transient, and she is none the worse for it—except for her confused conviction that I stole some of her husband’s secrets. It may interest you to know Sir Thomas Frobisher is of my mind.”
With this, Mr. Morrow rose to his feet with a meaningful look. Hoare must needs follow suit.
“And now, sir,” the American said, “I must ask you to excuse me. As I said, there is a matter of considerable urgency at the quarry, to which I should be attending at this very moment.
“Let us not forget our engagement to match our yachts, Mr. Hoare,” he added at the door. “Marie Claire and her crew stand ready, at your convenience. See? There she lies.”
Mr. Morrow’s voice was filled with pride. And justifiably so, Hoare thought. Schooner-rigged and half again the length of Unimaginable, Marie Claire gleamed as she lay at a mooring close inshore, easily visible from Morrow’s hilltop house.
“Next time, sir,” Hoare said. “I’ll need a hand or two aboard if my craft is to do herself justice.”
* * *
HOARE MUST NOW retrace his steps back into the town that lay displayed before him, its harbor twinkling in the sunlight. Sir Thomas Frobisher’s dwelling would not have been out of place among the mansions of London’s Mount Street. It must be staffed accordingly, for the big front door was opened by a bewigged footman in livery and pimples. Hoare named himself to the man, handed him his hat, and let himself be ushered into a large room to the left of the hallway, decorated in the latest French style. It was more than a trifle dusty.
Hoare had ample time to examine the mixed lot of ancestral portraits set on the walls to entertain the waiting visitor. The male Frobishers were almost uniformly froglike, the females weedy.
“Pat Sprat could eat no fat; her man could eat no lean…,” he hummed to himself, paraphrasing Dr. Graves’s ditty about his wife and Hoare himself.
Hoare had reached a Frobisher in half-armor—at the Battle of Naseby? If so, on which side?—when Sir Thomas himself entered.
If anything, Hoare soon discovered, his host would be even less enlightening than Mr. Morrow had been. Could Morrow have sent a man with word of his likely advent?
Sir Thomas did not offer refreshment or even invite him to be seated. Instead, he stood in the doorway, managing despite his lower stature to look down his nose at him coldly. Hoare could think of nothing to do but to fall back on an equal formality.
“I am here, Sir Thomas, to inquire into the recent death of Dr. Simon Graves.”
“Eh? Speak up, man. I can’t hear you.”
Hoare repeated himself as loudly as he could.
“Why?”
Hoare could feel his face reddening. “The Admiralty has reason to believe, sir—”
“What? Speak up, I told you.”
“You hear me well enough, sir, I believe. The Admiralty—”
“Has nothing to do with me. Nor I with the Admiralty.”
“Admiralty business, sir,” Hoare persisted. “On His Majesty’s service. I require your written authorization to question the coroner who sat on Dr. Graves’ death.”
“Is that all, fellow?” asked Sir Thomas in a voice that oozed contempt. “Then wait here. If you should need to call at my house again, the tradesmen’s entrance is at the back.” He turned as if to leave the room.
Hoare rarely flew into a rage. When he did so, he turned white. Now, he barely restrained himself from seizing
the baronet by the shoulder, in his own house. It would have been disastrous.
Instead, Hoare put his fingers to his mouth and blew a piercing blast into Sir Thomas’s ear. It must have nearly deafened him, for he turned back to Hoare in a rage of his own. On his catching sight of the death that lay behind Hoare’s face as it loomed over him, the rage turned into something approaching fear.
“The written authorization, Sir Thomas, if you please. Now.”
Frog-shaped the baronet might be, but he was no less valiant in defending his position. “I found you an offensive jackanapes, fellow, when first you pressed yourself upon my acquaintance by seducing Eleanor Graves into effecting an introduction to me. My opinion remains unchanged. The tradesmen’s entrance next time, remember, or I’ll have my men take a horsewhip to you.”
With this, Sir Thomas left the room, making a peculiar grinding noise. Hoare had read of people gnashing their teeth, but he had never before heard one actually do it. In the midst of his own fury, he was delighted at the sound.
Hoare now had another opportunity—long, long—to catch his breath, recover his temper, and further his acquaintance with the baronet’s ancestors. He had now gotten as far as a flat-chested maiden of twenty, done in the style of Mr. Gainsborough, when a footman entered. He was not the same footman who had ushered Hoare into the ancestral gallery, for his pimples were pink instead of purple and were located elsewhere on his face.
“’Ere,” he said, and thrust a sealed paper at Hoare, then turned to leave the room. “This way,” he added over his shoulder.
Hoare followed him, opening the envelope as he went. This at least would serve.
The footman’s livery was threadbare and much too big, Hoare noticed with secret glee. At the door, the man pointed to the left, toward the town hall.
“That way,” he said, and gave Hoare a little shove. Hoare’s blow to the footman’s belly carried his pent-up wrath with it and knocked him back through the open doorway.
Hoare marched down the street, seething. He had been twice a fool, he told himself. Despite Mrs. Graves’s warning, he had totally failed to foresee how Sir Thomas would react to the invasion of his manor. The baronet must have had advance warning of his coming and his purpose and had already worked up an impromptu strategy for putting Hoare in his place. In that, at least, the man had failed.
Hoare and the Portsmouth Atrocities Page 14