“You told her?”
“She guessed. It turns out she’s been in the same condition herself several times, although she could never carry an infant to full term—something about internal injuries sustained in her youth, poor woman—and she recognized the signs.”
Pickett, seeing her expression grow serious, feared she would now begin to dwell on the possibility of miscarriage, and quickly turned the subject back to more immediate concerns. “But I think you were about to tell me that you had already sent your letter to Claudia, and for far less than a shilling. Am I right?”
Julia brightened at once. “Yes, you are, for the stable lad—he was minding the public room while Mrs. Hawkins and Lizzie were at the funeral—said it would only cost a penny. Can you imagine? Only a penny, to send a letter all the way from Cumberland to Somersetshire! He said it would reach her more quickly, too. I confess, I thought some enterprising aristocrat or Member of Parliament was selling his frank—although how that might hasten a letter to its destination I could not imagine. When I danced with the Duke of Ramsdale at the assembly, I said something about how I missed being able to send letters through the post at no charge, hoping that he would offer to frank any letters I might care to send for a penny each, but he didn’t mention any such scheme, more’s the pity.”
“None of these letters bear a frank.” Pickett glanced down at the little pile of letters, not one of which bore the signature that would allow it to be delivered free of charge. “Besides, I should think a penny a letter would hardly be enough for an aristocrat or M. P. to bother with. At that price, this can’t be much more than a shilling’s worth. No, I think what we have here is a nice little mail-smuggling operation. It wouldn’t be the first time a secret mail service operated outside the auspices of the Royal Mail.”
He picked up two of the letters at random, broke their seals, and scanned the crossed lines. There was nothing of any particular interest in either of them, although one bore a date at the top which indicated that it had been written two days earlier.
“Is that why Ned Hawkins sent for you, then?” Julia seated herself on a nearby rock, by this time quite resigned to the sight of her husband shamelessly reading other people’s mail. “But you said smuggling wouldn’t fall under Bow Street’s purview.”
“It wouldn’t—at least, smuggling from across the Channel wouldn’t. Smuggling within the country, I couldn’t say. I’ve never been summoned to investigate such a case, but then, as half my time as a principal officer has been spent practically on retainer to a certain widow of my acquaintance—”
“Oh, ungallant!” Julia exclaimed. “And I flattered myself you’d wanted some excuse to see me again!”
He gave her a speaking look that promised to address this charge at a more appropriate time and in surroundings better suited to the purpose. “But I can’t recall having heard any of the other Runners discussing any instances of internal smuggling, either. If I’m not sure who would investigate such a thing, I shouldn’t think Ned would know, either. Still, there is the fact that he had only that one letter on his person when he died. If he wanted to prove the existence of a mail-smuggling scheme, a single letter would hardly make for compelling evidence. No, there must have been something about that letter in particular.” He sighed. “I only wish I knew what it was.”
“It seemed perfectly ordinary—dull, even,” Julia agreed.
Pickett glanced down with disfavor at the specimens in his hand. “These don’t appear to be any better.”
“So what will you do next?”
“I think,” Pickett said, stuffing the letters back into the bag and cinching the neck shut, “that will depend on who comes to retrieve this.”
14
In Which John Pickett Encounters a Smuggler
PICKETT AROSE AT DAWN the next morning and stretched his arms in a futile attempt to relieve his aching muscles. It had been a very long time since he had done anything as physically demanding as yesterday’s rowing expedition, and the prospect of repeating the experience—only this time without the pleasant distraction of Julia’s company—was one that filled him with dread. Stifling a groan, he reached for his clothes.
“John?”
Apparently he hadn’t stifled it quite as much as he’d thought. “Did I wake you? I’m sorry. I’m just a bit sore.” And that, he added mentally, was an understatement if ever he’d heard one.
“Poor love,” Julia said sympathetically. “Must you take the boat out again? Surely there must be some way to reach the cave by land.”
“There must be,” he agreed, “but I don’t know what it is, and I don’t want to arouse suspicions by asking questions.”
“Are you quite certain you don’t want me to come with you? I’ll admit, I wouldn’t be much help rowing the boat, but I might help you pass the time more pleasantly.”
“You would definitely do that.” He paused with shirt in hand to bend and kiss her. “But I don’t know what I might be walking into, or how this person—or persons—will react when they realize they’ve been found out.”
“In other words”—she pushed back her tousled hair, the better to regard him with a baleful eye—“you won’t allow me to walk blindly into danger, but you have no qualms about doing so yourself.”
“Oh, I’ve qualms aplenty,” Pickett assured her. “But I have a duty, and I must do it, no matter the risk to myself.”
“At least own that I was right in trying to persuade you to bring a pistol!”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t be taking it with me today in any case. Shooting off guns in a cave isn’t the safest practice, you know. Too great a chance of missing in the dark, and the bullet bouncing off the walls.”
Seeing he would not be swayed, she slid out of the bed, then picked up his brown serge coat and held it open for him to slide his arms into the sleeves. “May I not go with you as far as the pier? I could bring my sketchbook and draw while I wait for you to return.”
“Your arm is supposed to be injured, remember?”
“Oh, but it’s much better today, just as I predicted.” She pushed up the sleeve of her night rail and held up one slender arm for his inspection.
Tempting as it was to press the inside of her white wrist to his lips, he refused to be distracted. “Julia, you’ve been shot at once already. I’m not going to leave you sitting alone on the quay, an easy mark for whoever tried and failed the first time. I’m going to have to ask you to stay here—not in this room, perhaps, but inside the inn—until I return.”
“When, pray, might that be?”
He shrugged. “Whenever someone comes to fetch that bag of mail.”
“And if no one does?”
“Then I do the same thing again tomorrow, and the day after that. Not that I think it will take that long,” he added quickly, silencing her protest before she could utter it. “I can’t imagine anyone leaving letters in a cave so near the water for very long, not if they want them to be legible by the time they’re delivered. One of the letters was dated two days ago—well, three days, now—so I should think someone will be coming for them very soon.”
“And in the meantime, what excuse am I to give as to why we are spending long periods of time apart during what is supposed to be our honeymoon?”
“Fishing,” he said promptly. “The man who hired out the boat also had fishing gear available. I’ll hire a rod and buy some bait.”
“I didn’t know you knew anything about fishing,” said Julia, momentarily diverted.
“I don’t. But Mr. Colquhoun does, and from him I know that it’s not unusual for anglers to spend all day at the sport. Once I’ve rowed out of sight of the village, I’ll drop a line just long enough to get it convincingly wet, dump my bait overboard—the fish should like that, don’t you think?—and then continue on to the cave. You can stay here and complain to Mrs. Hawkins and Lizzie—preferably in the public room, with plenty of witnesses present—about how neglectful your husband is.”
&n
bsp; She sighed. “I can see you’ve thought of an answer for any argument I can put forward.”
“I have tried,” he admitted, picking up his hat.
“I shall ask Mrs. Hawkins for some liniment, and when you return I’ll rub it into your shoulders,” she promised.
“I’ll take you up on that.”
“John, you will be careful?” She clung to his lapel and lifted her face to be kissed.
He obliged her willingly. “I’ll do my best.”
And then he was gone, closing the door behind him and descending the stairs as quietly as possible to avoid waking the house. Julia stood at the window watching for him to emerge onto the path that led down to the water, conscious of a wholly illogical relief that the route to the lake would take him in the opposite direction from the spot where she had seen Ned Hawkins go over the cliff. There he was now, a tall, lean figure whose long, easy strides had become increasingly familiar—and infinitely dear—over the last three months. She pressed her hand to the window pane as if she might reach right through the glass and touch him. And perhaps she did, for he turned back for one last look, and raised one hand in farewell before the path curved away out of sight.
“Come back safely to me,” she whispered, then turned away from the window and climbed back into bed.
THE SUN HAD RISEN BY the time he reached the pier, and the same man who had hired them the boat the day before was back at his post. Pickett paid a shilling and sixpence for the hire of the boat and another sixpence for the use of fishing tackle and bait, and set out across the lake. His arms and shoulders protested these fresh demands placed upon them, and he thought longingly of the promised liniment, to say nothing of the hands that would rub it in. As he rowed, however, his aching muscles loosened somewhat, apparently resigned to their fate, and at length he reached the cave. He shipped the oars and leapt ashore, then dragged the boat out of the water with some effort and left it concealed in a thicket of trees that grew at the water’s edge, where it would be (he hoped) out of sight of whoever might come for the letters.
He was relieved to find the bag just as he had left it; although he had told himself that yesterday’s rain would prevent its being recovered at once, he had not been entirely certain of this, and was gratified—and to no small degree relieved—to discover that he’d been correct in this assumption.
Having assured himself of this fact, he put it back as it had been when he had first discovered it, or as nearly as he could remember. Then he moved farther into the depths of the cave and sat down with his back against the wall, awaiting events. It was likely to be a long, dull morning. He wished for a moment that he had brought a book or something else to occupy his mind, but remembered he had no lantern and would not have dared to light it even if he had. Nor could he have moved closer to the mouth of the cave where the light was better, for fear of betraying his presence.
No, he would do better to use this time reviewing what he knew of the case so far—which he was afraid wasn’t much. He’d been less concerned with finding Ned Hawkins’s killer than with trying to keep Julia safe: first trying to identify the man who had shot at her, then trying to determine who had thrown a rock through their window—a rock that might well have been intended to strike her. Mr. Colquhoun would argue that he was going about the thing backwards, but that was easy for him to say; Mr. Colquhoun, after all, had never been married to Julia, Lady Fieldhurst.
Save for a futile search for a handwriting to match the letter in Ned’s pocket, and a once-promising lead in the rival innkeeper which had ultimately come to nothing, most of his own efforts thus far had focused on those rivals in love, Percival Hartsong (alias Edward Gape) and Ben Wilson, primarily because each had reason for hoping to gain Ned Hawkins’s favor—and each had a motive, albeit a weak one, for shoving Ned off the cliff after his prospective father-in-law dashed his hopes. Additionally, both had been in the public room when he and Julia had arrived, thus hearing him give a London address that would identify him as being connected with the Bow Street Public Office, and both had later accompanied him in “discovering” the body (was it possible that he had not been the only one of the trio who had already known what they would find?), and had subsequently testified at the inquest. But none of these things in themselves constituted grounds for suspicion, and even taken together they amounted to no more than the most circumstantial of evidence.
Furthermore, some of the actions of which they were suspected seemed frankly unlike them. The poet seemed too proud of his own delicate sensibilities to sully his hands with murder—although who could tell what the fellow really was beneath that bundle of affectations?—and Ben Wilson, whom Julia suspected of having thrown the rock through their window after mistaking it for Percival Hartsong’s, had been openly contemptuous of the very suggestion. And indeed, to Pickett’s mind the young sheep farmer seemed more likely to communicate his sentiments more directly, and with his fists. Nor had they been the only ones in the public room who might have overheard Pickett give the direction of the Bow Street Public Office. Mr. Hetherington had been there with his Bible, as had several other men, any one of whom might have—
The crunch of footsteps on the shingle outside the cave interrupted Pickett’s rather fruitless train of thought, and he instinctively pressed his back more firmly against the wall of the cave, holding his breath lest it betray his presence.
A man entered the cave, and although Pickett could see only his outline, silhouetted as he was against the sunlight beyond the mouth of the cave, Pickett recognized him at once, at least in part because of the large book he carried under his arm. The new arrival seated himself on the rock where Julia had sat only the day before, picked up the bag of letters, and tugged its drawstring loose. Then he opened his book, removed something from it, and added this to the bag. Having completed this task, he cinched the bag shut and slung it over his shoulder as he stood up and turned toward the mouth of the cave, apparently prepared to take his leave.
Pickett judged it time to make his presence known. “Mr. Hetherington, I’m afraid I must ask you where you are going with that bag.”
The older man gave a start at being addressed when he had believed himself to be alone, but made a quick recovery upon identifying the speaker’s voice.
“Why, Mr. Pickett! What brings you here?”
“I might ask you the same question.”
“Aye, you might, but then, my presence here is not so surprising as yours; after all, I don’t have a pretty young bride left alone to wonder at my absence.”
Pickett made no response, and the older man heaved a sigh. “Ah well, I wondered how long it would be before you tumbled to our little scheme. Patrick Colquhoun speaks very highly of you, you know—seems to think of you as a second son.”
If he had hoped to disarm Pickett with flattery after having failed to distract him, he succeeded admirably. “I wouldn’t say—” Pickett stammered. “I would not presume to—”
“Nonsense! Colquhoun doesn’t suffer fools gladly, so it stands to reason you must have something in your brain-box, else he’d never have taken such an interest in you.”
“Mr. Hetherington,” Pickett said impatiently, “you must know that what you’re doing here is illegal.”
“And what, exactly, do you think you’ve discovered here?”
“A smuggling ring whose purpose is to send letters independently of the Royal Mail.”
Hetherington inclined his head, like a tutor congratulating an especially promising pupil on a correct answer. “Very good. Although to call it a ‘ring’ would be to put too fine a point upon it. It’s not so well-organized as all that—just an agreement that anyone going into Penrith will carry any letters bound for London.”
“And once they reach Penrith?”
He shrugged. “I assume someone headed south will take the letters with them. Quite simple, really.”
“And quite illegal, as I’m sure you must be aware.”
“Oh, yes, I’m aware. Bu
t so much in the law is merely a matter of degree, don’t you think? Have you never sent a message by private courier—to save time, perhaps, or to be certain it reached its destination? I can see in your face that you have. What, pray, is the difference between that and this?”
Put that way, Pickett was hard pressed to offer an answer. “The scale of such an operation, perhaps—”
“Precisely! Only a matter of scale, and Banfell is not so large as to cost the Royal Mail that much in lost revenue. Nothing like Manchester, where it’s said that four out of every five letters never sees the inside of a receiving office.”
“Speaking of scale,” Pickett said, unconvinced, “have you any idea what the penalty would be, if this scheme were discovered?”
Hetherington nodded. “Five pounds for each occurrence.”
Which meant that the contents of the bag represented what to Pickett would be very nearly a year’s wages. “Why would you take such a risk?”
“Truth to tell, Mr. Pickett, I consider it something of a public service. Do you know what it costs to send a letter from Banfell to London through the Royal Mail?”
Here, at least, Pickett was on firm ground. “A shilling.”
“Precisely! Little enough for you or me, perhaps,” the older man conceded, leading Pickett to wonder once again exactly what Mr. Colquhoun had said about him, “but a considerable burden for people like Mrs. Hawkins or Ben Wilson, and well-nigh impossible for the truly poor.”
Pickett knew from bitter experience that abiding by the law was much easier when one had food in one’s belly and money in one’s pocket. Mr. Hetherington must have taken his silence for concession, for he continued to expound upon this theme.
Peril by Post Page 19