Peril by Post

by Sheri Cobb South

  He led the way upstairs, just as he had on the day she had signed the book, and here she encountered her first obstacle: having delivered her to her destination, Jedidiah Tyson now refused to leave.

  “As you can see, each person who signs the book also writes down his direction. Oh, but you already know this,” he corrected himself hastily, “for you would have written down your own when you signed the book, would you not? Ah, yes, there it is!” he exclaimed, pointing with one bony finger to the line that read Mr. and Mrs. John Pickett, 4 Bow St., London.

  “Thank you, Mr. Tyson, you have been very helpful,” she said, gently dismissive. “Still, I don’t doubt you are very busy, and I would not want to keep you from your work—”

  “It’s no trouble at all serving so charming a lady as yourself,” he declared gallantly. “Now, as you can see, the Golden Feather entertains visitors from across the length and breadth of England, as well as Scotland and Ireland. As I recall, we even had a French couple staying here a few years ago during the Peace of Amiens, short-lived though it was—the peace, I mean, not my French guests’ stay—”

  A bell sounded somewhere below, and Julia silently blessed the stagecoach from Penrith.

  “Dear me, duty calls! I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me, Mrs. Pickett,” said Tyson, bowing himself from the room. “So sorry—your most obedient—”

  At last he was gone. Julia fumbled in her reticule for the letter, then spread it out and quickly scanned the signatures written in the book, comparing them to the handwriting on the letter. There were a couple of bold scrawls that appeared promising at first glance, but upon closer inspection, several of the individual letters were quite different—the capital “G”s Pickett had noted, as well as the capital “L”s and lowercase letters with tails, such as “g” and “y”. She did, in fact, come across the names of two or three acquaintances, but far from sending cards, as she had told Mr. Tyson, she resolved to avoid these people if at all possible, lest they publicly snub her husband and thus damage his credibility amongst the locals.

  By the time the innkeeper had shown the new arrivals to their chambers and returned to the room where the assemblies were held, Julia was ready for him. She thanked him again for allowing her to examine the subscription book, expressed her eagerness to attend the assembly that very night, and took her leave.

  WHILE JULIA INVADED the Golden Feather, Pickett betook himself to the parish church. He found the church open, which was encouraging, but occupied, which was not: At the front of the chancel, a man dressed in rusty black arranged silver candlesticks on the altar with painstaking precision.

  “Excuse me,” Pickett called as he strode up the aisle.

  The clergyman turned, and Pickett beheld a fellow no older than himself and quite possibly younger, with gingery hair and a scattering of freckles across his nose. Pickett found himself thinking of his brother-in-law, second husband of Julia’s sister, who would have taken holy orders had circumstances not dictated otherwise.

  “You’re the curate?” he asked.

  “Yes, indeed,” the young man said, extending his hand in confirmation. “Philip Bell, at your service.”

  “John Pickett.” He returned the curate’s handshake. “I was wondering if I might have a look at the parish registry.”

  “Oh, I don’t—that is, I suppose—” stammered the curate, clearly taken aback by this simple request. He gave a rather sheepish grin. “Truth to tell, I don’t exactly know. Mr. Richardson—the vicar, you know—has gone to Penrith for a few days, and I am left in charge in his absence. It’s my first time—I was only ordained a few weeks ago—and I don’t want to do anything he would not like.” He glanced back at the candles on the altar and made an infinitesimal adjustment to the one on the left.

  “I would not ask such a thing,” Pickett said, seeing some explanation was called for, “but while my wife and I are visiting the Lake District, I thought I would try and find my mother’s baptismal record, as she may have been born in Banfell or hereabouts.” In fact, Pickett had no idea who his mother was, much less where she had been born, but at the moment Banfell seemed as good a place as any other. “I would wait until the vicar’s return, but I have no idea how long I’ll be in the area.” This much, at least, was the truth.

  “Well, I suppose it can’t hurt,” conceded the curate.

  Abandoning his task, he led the way to the lectern and withdrew an enormous calf-bound volume from its shelf. “The record here goes back to 1765,” he said, setting it atop the lectern with an effort. “If you need the one earlier than that, I can fetch it for you.”

  If his unknown mother had been more than nineteen years old at the time of his birth, Pickett would have been obliged to accept this offer, for he had been born in 1784. But as he had no intention of examining records earlier than the last few months, he was able to assure the curate with perfect sincerity that this volume would be sufficient to tell him anything he might wish to know.

  In this, it soon transpired, he was overly optimistic. He saw no need to trace the entries back further than, say, six months; surely if Ned Hawkins had discovered any havey-cavey dealings before that time, he must have sent his anonymous summons to Bow Street much earlier. But although Pickett examined each entry all the way to the beginning of 1809—by which time he could have recognized the vicar’s spidery script at fifty paces—he found amongst the marriages (recorded not by the Reverend Mr. Richardson, but by the bride or bridegroom) and baptisms (recorded by the infant’s proud parents) no match for the threatening note that had accompanied the rock thrown through the window. At length, he was forced to concede defeat. After folding the note and tucking it back into his coat pocket, he closed the registry and returned it to its shelf within the lectern, then thanked the curate for his assistance while admitting, quite truthfully, that no, he had not found the information he sought.

  Alas, there were still more disappointments in store, for upon his return to the Hart and Hound he was met by Julia, who, after confessing that her efforts had been as fruitless as his own, imparted the further information that he was to have the pleasure of escorting her that very evening to an assembly at the Golden Feather.

  11

  In Which John Pickett Trips the Light Fantastic

  AT SOME MINUTES BEFORE eight o’clock that evening, Mr. and Mrs. John Pickett descended the stairs of the Hart and Hound, Pickett clad in the dark blue tailcoat and black pantaloons which comprised the only set of evening clothes he possessed, and Julia in all the splendor of pale blue Urling’s net over a satin slip dyed in the same shade and shot through with silver threads. Their appearance in all their finery was sufficient to draw the eyes of everyone in the public room—including Lizzie’s, which filled with tears as she looked up from wiping down the bar with a cloth and exclaimed, “Oh, how I wish I could go!”

  “Now, Lizzie,” chided her stepmother, albeit not without sympathy, “how would it look, you going off dancing and your father only buried yesterday? There’ll be other dances, just see if there won’t.”

  “Not for me.” She shook her head sadly. “Percival had bought me a ticket for this one! Who knows if he’ll ever buy me another, or even how long he’ll be in Banfell at all?”

  Mrs. Hawkins looked as if the poet’s departure could not come soon enough to suit her, but remained stoically silent on this subject, satisfying herself with drawing a fresh tankard from one of the kegs on the wall behind her and handing it to Lizzie, saying, “Take this to Mr. Graham over in the corner, there’s a good girl.”

  Lizzie’s demeanor as she carried out this errand was so uncharacteristically docile that Pickett felt compelled to offer some word of comfort. “I should think it will be rather a flat affair, coming so soon after your da’s funeral,” he said, then added with perfect truth, “I wouldn’t be going myself, if Mrs. Pickett didn’t have her heart set on it.”

  If he had truly thought the funeral the previous morning would have a dampening effect on the fe
stivities at the Golden Feather thirty-six hours later, Pickett was soon made aware of the enormity of his error. As he and Julia crossed the High Street, they were obliged to thread their way between a number of carriages cluttering the thoroughfare—obviously the local gentry would be well represented, in addition to those patrons on holiday who had taken up temporary residence at the Golden Feather. From the moment they stepped inside, Pickett could hear the babble of voices and the scraping of violins wafting down from the floor above, and could see the crush of people ascending (or attempting to ascend) the gracefully curved staircase. He and Julia took their places among these, and eventually gained the upper floor and the large room where they had signed the subscription book.

  To say it had been transformed would be an understatement. Every one of the chairs along the walls was occupied, and under Jedidiah Tyson’s direction, a man (hastily rousted from the kitchen, if the white apron swathing his person and the faint aroma of onions clinging to him were anything to judge by) was busily engaged in setting up more. At the far end of the room, half a dozen musicians tuned their instruments, while all about its center little clusters of people, from elegantly dressed gentlefolk to prosperous local merchants wearing their Sunday best, chatted in hushed tones. Ned Hawkins might not have approved of his rival’s assemblies, but it was clear that he was the main attraction at this one, as everyone seized the opportunity to ask the questions and put forth the speculations that courtesy had forbidden at the funeral the day before.

  As they moved beyond the doorway, a buzz of attention greeted them, and Pickett stood a bit taller, proud and at the same time humbled by the knowledge that he bore on his arm the most beautiful woman in the room. Gradually, however, he became aware that the object of all this attention was not his wife, at least not entirely; in fact, the hubbub seemed to be centered on some point behind her. He turned and saw a man standing in the doorway, a silver-haired man of late middle age who surveyed the company through his quizzing glass with an air of bored indifference. Clearly, Mr. Tyson’s hopes had been realized: The duke was in attendance.

  “Welcome, your grace, welcome!” cried Mr. Tyson, abandoning a less exalted guest in mid-sentence in order to give the new arrival his full attention. “So pleased your grace could honor our little entertainment with your presence. Will you do us the honor of opening the dancing? Lady Marchant is here, if you would care to partner her. You are acquainted with her ladyship, are you not? Good, good!”

  The duke bowed over the hand of Sir Henry Marchant’s wife, and as his grace led his partner into the center of the room, Julia watched with a smile, determined not to betray to her husband for a moment her awareness that not so very long ago it would have been she, as a viscountess and the highest-ranking lady in the room, who would have opened the dancing on the duke’s arm, rather than Lady Marchant, the wife of a mere baronet. Thankfully, she had not long to wait for a partner; even those amongst the gentry who were unacquainted with the late Lord Fieldhurst needed no knowledge of precedence to solicit the hand of a beautiful woman whose husband seemed disinclined to partner her.

  Pickett, for his part, contented himself with prowling about the perimeter of the room, listening to what snatches of conversation he could without appearing to eavesdrop. In truth, he was less interested in the idle chatter of the gentry than he was in the thoughts of those locals of the middling classes who had paid their half-guinea for the privilege of rubbing shoulders with their betters. He had seen the coroner enter the room with his wife, a long-nosed female in purple satin, as well as the physician acting as escort to a blushing damsel of about eighteen who was clearly his daughter. The stationer, Mr. Copley, was also in attendance—talking shop, no doubt, with the bookseller whose establishment shared a wall with his own. The death of Ned Hawkins constituted the topic of more than one discussion, and once or twice Pickett overheard low-voiced speculations as to whether the innkeeper might have been pushed off the cliff, and who might have had reason to do such a thing. Mr. Hetherington might have been the first to voice the possibility aloud, but he was obviously not the only one to entertain such a thought.

  As for who might have done the deed, opinions were mixed. Jedidiah Tyson’s name came up more than once, but was dismissed almost as frequently; one man dressed in the full-skirted frock coat of the previous century appeared to speak for many when he gave it as his opinion that whatever their professed hatred of each other, neither Hawkins nor Tyson would have wanted to put so irrevocable an end to a rivalry which secretly brought so much pleasure to both men.

  Lizzie was the object of considerable censure for her possible rôle in the death of her parent, to the point that Pickett thought it was probably best that she had been unable to attend after all. While some held that the dishonorable attentions of “that poet fellow” were behind the tragedy and others cited Ben Wilson’s blighted hopes, all agreed that Lizzie’s behavior was certainly no better than it should have been, and they would hate to see any daughter of their own conducting herself in such a way that she could only be deemed a shameless flirt.

  As for the “poet fellow” himself, he was in attendance and, having failed to overcome Lizzie’s scruples (or, rather, her stepmama’s) and prevail upon her to attend, was much inclined to sulk. He did partner the physician’s pretty daughter for the first set (making it clear by his demeanor what a singular honor he was bestowing upon her) and partnered Julia (with considerably more courtesy) for the second. It was during this one that Pickett’s attention was distracted from the revolting sight by a late arrival. Ben Wilson stood framed in the doorway, freshly washed and shaved and looking extremely uncomfortable in his best Sunday clothes, running a finger beneath his too-tight cravat as he surveyed the crowded assembly room. He frowned at the sight of Julia going down the dance with Percival Hartsong (Pickett entered into his sentiments entirely), but it was clearly not the poet whom he sought.

  Pickett, seeing an opportunity to do a service for one who might yet prove to be a valuable source of information, made his way through the crowd to join him. “If you’re looking for Miss Hawkins, she isn’t here,” he told the young farmer. “It wouldn’t be proper, with her father just buried, you know.” That these sentiments were voiced not by Lizzie, but by her stepmother, was a fact Pickett chose to keep to himself.

  “So Lizzie’s over across the way, then,” Wilson said thoughtfully, jerking his head in the direction of the Hart and Hound.

  Pickett nodded. “She was when my wife and I left there.”

  Wilson’s grim visage lightened. “Much obliged to you,” he said, and left the assembly without a backward glance.

  Pickett turned his attention back to the dancers, and found that Percival Hartsong had surrendered Julia to her next partner, the Duke of Ramsdale. She and his grace appeared to be chatting easily, and as they turned in time to the music, her eyes met Pickett’s across the room. She gave him a little smile and said something to the duke, whereupon his grace turned and nodded in his direction. Pickett could just imagine their conversation: “I had heard of your remarriage, but truth to tell, I could scarcely credit it . . .” “Yes, your grace, it is quite true —oh, look! There is my husband now . . .” Granted, she didn’t look embarrassed, much less ashamed of him, but then, she didn’t have to; he felt it keenly enough for both of them.

  In fact, Pickett was quite out in his speculations. When the duke had solicited her hand for the new set, it had occurred to Julia that here was one who, as an aristocrat with a seat in the House of Lords, enjoyed franking privileges. Determined to discover what she might of some scheme through which the duke might be making his frank available to others—for a price—she accepted his proffered arm and allowed him to lead her into the set. As his grace had been an acquaintance, if not an intimate, of the late Lord Fieldhurst, she was prepared for the usual comments regarding the death of her first husband and her remarriage, two months before her year of mourning was complete, to a man whose position in Society was so far
beneath hers as to be nonexistent.

  “I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you when I say that Fieldhurst and I had not been in perfect charity with one another for some time,” she replied in answer to the duke’s rather dubiously expressed wishes for her future happiness. “And while I would never have wished for his death—and certainly not in such a way!—I cannot but feel that to some extent he was the author of his own downfall.”

  “This is plain speaking!” exclaimed the duke, more than a little shocked to hear such sentiments on the lips of one who had always seemed to him a demure and pretty-behaved young lady.

  “Indeed it is, for I think too highly of your intelligence to fob you off with mere platitudes. As for my remarriage, while it is true that the doors of Almack’s are no doubt forever closed to me, I have very few regrets. In truth, it is something of a relief to be freed from many of the obligations that accompany a lofty position—the hosting of dinner parties to advance my husband’s career, for instance.”

  The movements of the dance brought them into view of Pickett, and thus the exchange of glances that had so cut up his peace.

  “If you were to host a dinner party to advance your current husband’s career,” observed the duke, frowning, “you would no doubt be obliged to throw open your home to pickpockets and cutthroats!”

  “Very true,” she said, smiling at Pickett as her eyes met his across the crowded room. “And he would very likely be much more at ease in such company than in that of the Russian royalty by whom he was recently honored.”

  “Yes, I seem to recall reading something about that in the Times,” conceded his grace, acknowledging Pickett with a nod.

  “In fact,” Julia continued, “the only things I truly miss about my first marriage are quite mundane ones, the sort of things one hardly notices until they are gone. The ability to send letters through the post free of charge, for instance. I was shocked to discover that it will cost my unfortunate parents fully a shilling to accept any letters I may choose to send them from Banfell!”