“Ha!” He let forth a single ironic cackle. ”In this case, Jeremy, we may rest assured that his visitor wished it so.”
That confused me a bit. ”But why should he wish to be seen?”
“Never mind that. Look now at his wound. Turn him over, if need be.”
The exit wound was so large that one might claim, without too much exaggeration, that Mr. Sarton had had the back of his head blown off. What more could the entry wound tell us? Nevertheless, I turned the body over-and got quite a surprise. I must have exclaimed involuntarily at what I had seen.
“What is it?” demanded Sir John.
“Well,” said I, ”the ball entered approximately where one would expect, right between, and just above, the eyes. But…”
“Yes? Go on.”
“I’ve never seen a wound so sooted with gunpowder. His whole face has been blackened.”
“There! You see?”
“No, quite frankly, sir, I don’t.”
“Well, it should be evident. I can give you the last minute or so of Albert Sarton’s life from what you’ve told me. He was sitting at the desk in the room, working by candlelight. I daresay that if you were to look at the desk you would find a book open, or some sentence left unfinished, to prove that he had been interrupted. What then? He hears a tapping upon the window behind him. Would he then have opened the drapes to see who it was at the window? Not likely, from what we have earlier seen of him and his elaborate identification of all callers who come to the door. No, something was said by his visitor through the window glass-something that gave him reassurance that it would be all right to open the drapes. When he did, he was reassured further by the sight of his visitor that it would be safe to open his door to him, which was evidently what had been requested. He then went to the door and opened it without the usual request for identification. There was no need of it. After all, he knew who was out there, didn’t he? As soon as the door came open, the pistol was put close to his head, the trigger was pulled, and along with the ball which passed through his brain, an inordinate amount of black powder was discharged upon his face. Thus is it proven that Mr. Sarton not only knew his visitor, he also trusted him sufficiently to throw his door open to him without further ado. And this restricts the number of possible suspects considerably.”
Put thus, it did seem evident, truly enough. There was yet a detail or two that troubled me. I decided to challenge Sir John on at least one of them.
“Sir,” said I, ”would not the opening of the drapes have provided the visitor with all the opportunity he would need? Could he not have shot through the glass?”
Taking a moment to consider the point, he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ”Yes, why didn’t he?” said he. ”It could be simply that Mr. Sarton did not present as sure a target this side the window. For after all, his first impulse upon catching sight of a pistol would be to let fall the drapes and duck back away from the window.”
“I can see that,” said I. ”The visitor felt he had to have a sure shot, for recognition during an unsuccessful attempt at murder would have been simply disastrous.”
“Yes, well … but what about this? Let us suppose that there was not one visitor but two. The first we have discussed, one who would instill such confidence in Mr. Sarton that he would throw open the door without hesitation, and the second to do the shooting. Why a second? Perhaps because he is used to such ugly work-a practiced killer. And perhaps because the visitor, the man whom Mr. Sarton recognized, was himself too fastidious to commit such an act.”
When Sir John had completed his study of the corpus and its surroundings, I informed him of the disastrous events that had taken place at the inn. I feared my news might crush him altogether, yet he took it quite stoically, as if so much had already gone so terribly wrong, that further calamities were of no real consequence and almost to be expected. Ultimately, the story of the unexpected failure of our operation against the smugglers, and the loss of the cargo, as well as the constable’s death, did naught but provide more fuel for his anger.
I concluded my report by confessing that I had more or less volunteered Clarissa for duty as nurse to Constable Trotter. He took it well and seemed to approve this new role for her.
“Just so long as it does not involve her for too great a time. Another must be found to help. Clarissa will be needed to act as companion to Mrs. Sarton, for the two get on well. She can help the poor woman through this crisis.”
“She will stay here, then?” I asked.
“We shall all stay here. This will be our new headquarters, if Mrs. Sarton will have us. I shall be particularly glad to have Clarissa out of that environment. Imagine locking a girl of her age in her room! On whose orders, I should like to know! And to what purpose?”
“What then with our baggage, Sir John?”
“Collect it all,” said he. ”Perhaps it might be best if you were to find that coachman, Mick … Mick Crawly is his name, I believe. He’ll take you up there. You can collect the baggage. Crawly will load it on the coach, then take you and Clarissa back to town.”
“Very good, sir, I’ll attend to that immediately.”
“No, I rather think that first we had better move Mr. Sarton’s body as best we can. Then you must call at the surgeon’s and ask him to come by. I have questions about the wound in Mr. Sarton’s head and the condition of the body that only he can answer. And lastly, you must visit the mortician and ask him to come at the end of the day to collect Mr. Sarton’s body and prepare it for burial.” Having said all that, he sighed, as if unwilling to continue. But, having sighed, he filled his lungs again, straightened his shoulders and suggested that we move the corpus. ”I may be blind,” said he, ”but if you take the lead, I should be able to follow.”
“No, you’ll do no such thing.” It was the unexpected voice of Molly Sarton, loudly preceding her as she came down the hall from the kitchen, her arms filled with rags and a pillow. She was much changed from the weeping widow I had seen kneeling over her husband. Clearly, she had got herself under control and was now determined to play her part in these sad, postmortem events. ”He was my husband, after all,” said she, ”and the least I can do for him is see that he’s given a proper burial. So you take him under the arms, Jeremy, and I’ll take his feet, and we’ll bring him into the big room here, and lay him onto the sofa.”
She nudged Sir John aside and tossed the pillow and rags down upon the middle of her husband’s body.
“Take a cloth or two and wrap it round his head,” said she, ”for if you don’t, you’ll have blood and brains all over that fine green coat of yours. I’d do it for you, but … but I can’t. In truth, I just can’t.”
I did as she directed, wrapping his head tight in the rags, using a third and then a fourth, until there were no spots of blood leaking through the layers of cloth. I could not but notice that all the time that I was thus occupied, she kept her gaze averted.
When the task was done, she asked if I were ready. I nodded, and she lifted his feet by the heels. I heaved him up by the armpits and wondered at how heavy he seemed for such a small man. Then did I recall the phrase ”dead weight,” and understood its origin and true meaning. We had not far to carry him, and indeed could not have carried him much farther. As I passed Sir John, he put his hand lightly upon my shoulder and in this way followed close behind me into the room, which they had ever used as a courtroom. Mrs. Sarton placed his feet upon the sofa, and I followed, situating his body in such a way that it rested easily upon the length of the piece.
“You had best tuck the pillow beneath his head,” said she to me, ”for the wound will likely leak further.”
Again I did as she told me, without question or comment. Sir John, who like me had said nothing since her sudden appearance, at last cleared his throat and made to speak.
“Your resolution is admirable, madame,” said he, ”but would it not be better if you were to take a rest? You have had a terrible shock. You ought not strain yourself overmuch i
n such a situation.”
“I thank you for your advice, Sir John, and though I know it be well meant, I’ll not take it.”
She looked down at her husband’s body there upon the sofa. With his head wrapped as it was, his face was barely visible, and what could be seen of it was so blackened by the pistol shot that the features were hardly discernible.
“Dear God, I did love that man,” she continued, ”but there is naught I can do to return him to life, and so I must get on with my own. I’ll bury him well, and in my heart I’ll mourn him.” At this point I remember well that she sighed and shook her head before concluding: ”But I can’t bring him back.”
“True enough,” said Sir John, ”but do you not suppose that-”
“In this alone I’ll have the last word. ‘Tis I will summon the surgeon and notify the mortician. These be matters which have to do with putting Berty safe underground. Let Jeremy go now and collect your baggage and return with Clarissa, as well. I’ll be happy to have you all here-and Clarissa not least.”
In this way it came about that I rode in the place beside Mick Crawly on my way out to Great Mongeham and the manor house of Sir Simon Grenville. I liked the man and his ready manner well enough, but his curiosity threatened to become an impediment to good relations between us. It seemed that he had learned something of the hectic and deadly events of the night before, and he wished to learn more. I guessed that the innkeeper was the source of his information. That meant that in little more than an hour, news of our victory-turned-defeat had spread across half the town. This in itself was not surprising when one considered the extent to which Deal depended upon smuggling as its leading local industry. No doubt it would take no more than another hour for the whole of the sad story to be spread cross the rest of the town. Yet if he were to learn more, it would not be from me.
We bounced along at a good rate of speed out the Dover Road and then up the hill. The horses were fresh and well fed and full of life, so that Mick Crawly had all he could do to hold them down to a trot. Nevertheless, that did not stop him from hinting broadly, giving a wink or two, and putting forward a few indirect queries. He would shoot me a glance, smile, then come forth with a question so innocently framed that one could in no wise object to it.
As an instance, he asked, ”Heard you fellas had a bit of trouble last night. Anyone hurt?”
Then I, thinking to give him as little information as possible without actually lying, said: ”There were casualties on both sides.”
“Ah, no doubt there were,” said he. He could not fault me for my ready response, and that did, in a sense, end discussion.
Yet there were two or three more attempts by him to draw information from me-or so it seemed to me. The most obvious was surely his rather direct inquiry: ”You people going to stay around here much longer?” (This, by the bye, was delivered with a wink.)
My reply: ”A bit longer, I should think.”
That ended it between us, for by the time it was asked, and my answer given, we were trailing up the driveway to the manor house, just passing the point where Will Fowler had been forced to pull his team to a swift stop, when a man bolted from the trees to our left, waving his arms and frightening the horses.
But then we were past it, pulling up to the entrance to the great house, looking to the door from which Mr. Fowler himself emerged to welcome us. I instructed Mr. Crawly to wait where we were. There would be baggage to bring down to him, and a passenger to take back to town-as well as myself, of course. He nodded his understanding, and I climbed down from my perch, happy to receive Mr. Fowler’s friendly greeting. Though there was no speech of welcome, as he had given when first we arrived, he did seem truly glad to see me. His smile did fade, however, when I asked after Clarissa.
“How is she?” I asked. ”I’m moving her into town. We’ll be located a bit more conveniently there for our further inquiries.”
“Ah yes, of course,” said Mr. Fowler, ”and perhaps it’s just as well. Clarissa, poor girl, has had a bad night of it, I fear.”
“Oh? What sort of bad night?”
“Truth to tell, it was all bad dreams. She believes she saw the ghost-our ghost, you know-and then it seems she took off on a sleepwalking adventure.”
“Truly so?” I asked. ”That doesn’t sound like her at all.”
I found Clarissa ready to pack. She had no wish to remain another night in the manor house, but would say nothing of what she had endured until we were underway.
When I told her of all that had happened-the battle on the beach, the deadlier battle at the inn, and the murder of Mr. Sarton-she was quite overcome by the drama of it all. Most of all, she declared, her heart quite ached for Molly Sarton.
“I’ll be happy to do what I can for Constable Trotter,” said she, ”and I’m ever so flattered that you thought I should be the one to minister to him, but my proper place is with dear Molly. She needs me, I know.”
Then did Mr. Fowler appear at Clarissa’s door and volunteer to bring her portmanteau down to the hackney coach. As he hauled it away, we two crossed the hall and hurriedly packed Sir John’s portmanteau and my valise. It seemed but a minute or two before he had returned and taken them down as well. We followed him and watched Mick Crawly securing the baggage at the top of the coach. Mr. Fowler nodded his approval as the coachman completed the job.
“All ready?” I called up to Crawly.
“Whenever you are,” said he.
“Then let us be off.” We hopped inside, waved goodbye to Will Fowler, and were thumped back in our seats as the team sprang forward at Mick Crawly’s urging. Then did Clarissa turn to me with a frown and a shake of her head. What could they mean?
“I feel sorry for him,” said she, as if that would explain all.
“Feel sorry for whom?” said I.
“For Mr. Fowler. I don’t believe that he’s like the rest of them.”
“What rest of them? What do you mean?”
“Why, the rest of the servants,” said she rather airily. ”It could not have escaped even your notice that things are not near as they should be hereabouts.”
“Of course not. A man was murdered just a few nights ago.”
”Well, that’s … that’s certainly a sure sign that something’s wrong. But apart from that-perhaps I should say, along with that-there are so many things that are not as they should be-well, you take last night, for example.”
“All right, indeed, what about last night?”
Yet she evaded me still: ”What did Mr. Fowler say about it?”
“He said that you’d had bad dreams, that you’d seen the house ghost, and gone sleepwalking.”
“He must have been told to say that.”
“Not true?”
“Oh, a little of it, I suppose. For instance, I did say that the entire experience was like a bad dream. I didn’t say I’d had a bad dream.”
“And the ghost?”
“That? Well, that was the silliest of all. He wouldn’t have fooled anyone.”
“Perhaps you’d better start at the beginning.”
“All right, I’ll try.”
(And try she did. She had, in fact, improved her storytelling so much since last time that I have simply quoted her entire as best I can from memory. There were few, if any, deviations from the narrative line, and no digressions to tempt her away from the course of the tale she had set out to tell. A few of her comments seemed then, and seem yet today, to be quite pertinent, and therefore I shall quote them entire.)
“I was wakened at a time which seemed to me well past midnight. A great hurly-burly had disturbed me, the sound of men and horses and barking dogs. I jumped from my bed to see what it was had caused such a commotion. I looked out just in time to see a troop of men of no small number ride off at a gallop in the direction of Deal. At their head was Sir Simon Grenville, of whom I had seen very little in the past few days.
“What then? Well, I was awake, wasn’t I? So I put a wrapper round me and found me
my slippers. Then, very quietly, did I unlock the door to the hall and step out of my room. In a big house, such as that one, it’s seldom that you have the feeling that it is empty. But this was one of those times. There were no sounds from belowstairs; the dogs barked no more; even the big clock near the door ticked muffled time.
“And so I saw this as an opportunity to go exploring. It seemed to me that I had not been completely on my own- which is to say, unsupervised-since the day after our arrival, when I had discovered a dead man. Did I wish to find another? No, but I had an overwhelming desire to see what was in that chalk mine. Yet first, I told myself, there were corners of this huge house I had not yet explored, rooms whose doors I had not opened.
“In this way I did begin, driven by curiosity, which is in so many of us a great incentive to action. I opened doors up and down the upstairs hall. Most of these led into closets of one kind or another and were altogether disappointing. There were additional guest bedrooms which were, of course, empty; and at the far end of the hall, beyond the great stairway, were the bedrooms of Sir Simon and his dame. They stood across the hall each from the other and must indeed have been very large. As it happened, however, I never managed to find out. The reason for this remained vague in my mind; in any case how it came to be was uncertain.”
(If this seems confusing to you, reader, so does it also still to me.)
“I remember that I was crossing the great open space at the top of the stairway,” said she, ”when of a sudden my attention was drawn down the wide stairs to the ground floor-by a noise of some sort, probably. Since it was the absence of noise in the house that had drawn me out of my room, a noise of the wrong sort might well send me scurrying back into it. I had no wish to be caught out. And so I stood quite still and waited, listening and staring down into the dark. I must have stood so for well over a minute, more likely two or three-for a very long time, anyway-until I was at last satisfied that I might go on. During that long wait, I had decided that I should just take a peek inside the two rooms and then be out the front door and up the hill to the chalk mine. That was what I wished to investigate; there was some purpose in that; what I had been up to until then was nosiness, pure and simple. Yet when I turned back to proceed toward the far end of the hall, I saw something I’m still a bit uncertain as to what it was- though I’ve a good idea.
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