The Alarming Career of Sir Richard Blackstone

by Lisa Doan

  Behind the stable, Henry dismounted and pushed the strongbox under some bushes. He walked Cantankerous around to the doors and handed the reins to Bertram, then ran back to collect the box and hurried into the manor. As he jogged down the main hall toward the laboratory, he met Fitzwilliam coming in the front door with a stranger.

  Henry stopped in his tracks.

  “Nothing to fear, Henry,” Fitzwilliam said. “This is Mr. Candlewick, Sir Richard’s solicitor.”

  The solicitor was a small man with receding black hair and wire-rimmed spectacles. He wore a dark and somber coat and an even more somber expression. “The letter writer, I presume?” he asked in a soft voice.

  “Yes, sir,” Henry answered.

  Mr. Candlewick stared at the box in Henry’s hands. Henry said, “This is just something that Mr. Fitzwilliam needed.”

  “Unfortunately,” Mr. Candlewick said, “I have already been apprised of where that box came from.”

  Henry did not think the solicitor looked very approving, but there was nothing to be done about it. “It’s locked,” he said to Fitzwilliam.

  Fitzwilliam herded them into the laboratory. He grabbed the box from Henry’s arms. He laid it on the desk, unsheathed his dagger and started working on the lock. “Good going, Henry,” he said. “Though I would have happily changed places with you. Burglary has to be more pleasant than conversing with that conniving creature.”

  “Mr. Fitzwilliam,” Mr. Candlewick said, “I must again protest this unseemly, well frankly this illegal, method of investigation.”

  Henry had thought that was what the solicitor would say about breaking into Snidefellow’s cottage. Still, now that he’d done it he couldn’t say he was sorry about it.

  “Quite right of you to think it,” Fitzwilliam said to the solicitor, “you being a law man and all that. As I am not a law man, I’m not at all troubled by it.”

  Fitzwilliam broke the lock. Despite Mr. Candlewick’s reluctance to be involved in the theft, he came closer to peer inside the strongbox.

  The box was tightly packed with layers of parchment. “You’ve got it, Henry,” Fitzwilliam said. “If there is any evidence to be found against that scoundrel, it’s bound to be in here.”

  Henry was relieved. The box had been so light he had almost feared it was empty.

  Fitzwilliam turned to the solicitor. “I suggest you take the carriage to see Sir Richard. While you are interviewing him, Henry and I will sort through these papers. We will acquaint you with anything relevant we discover when you return. There will be no need to acquaint you with how we came by the information, thus absolving you of any involvement with our investigative techniques.”

  Fitzwilliam removed the parchments and divided them into two piles. Henry sat down and thumbed through his stack. Most were official council correspondence about a change to this rule or that rule. There was a commendation for Mr. Snidefellow’s excellent service. The next parchment was brief, but Henry would recognize the handwriting anywhere. He scanned to the bottom.

  Bartholomew Hewitt.

  His father.

  The letter read: You may very well advise patience, but we are starving in this Godforsaken city. We’ll sell the boy to a sweep as you suggested, but that won’t take us very far. If we don’t hear that you’re to marry soon, then caution to the wind—we’re coming to claim what’s ours.

  Henry’s hands shook as he fumbled through the rest, searching for more correspondence from his father. He found one other, dated just the month before.

  The brat has got away. When I saw him last, he was getting into a carriage. I was able to discover that he had applied as an assistant to a Sir Richard Blackstone, of your very neighborhood. The man lives right next door to you know who. The game is up. We must act now.

  Henry buried the letters in the pile. How did his parents know Snidefellow? Why did they know him? What did they want to claim? What game was up? Sir Richard only had one neighbor—the duchess. Why would his father refer to the duchess as “you know who”?

  Fitzwilliam threw his last letter down. “Nothing here,” he said. “Just a bunch of drivel from the district council and a couple of letters from Snidefellow’s father, claiming he doesn’t send enough money, which I’m sure is true.”

  “Nothing interesting here either,” Henry said softly.

  Mrs. Splunket bustled into the room. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said to Henry. “A note was delivered. A note from the duchess herself.”

  Mrs. Splunket proudly held out the folded paper. Henry took it and broke the seal. Fitzwilliam looked over Henry’s shoulder as he read it.

  Henry—I have sent multiple requests to Mr. Snidefellow directing him to attend me. He has not come here, nor has he answered my messages. Something is very wrong.

  Henry laid down the letter. The duchess was right, something was very wrong. If Snidefellow would not even respond to an invitation from the duchess, there was something else going on. Something he did not understand.

  Henry and Fitzwilliam spent the next hours speculating on why Snidefellow would ignore a summons from the duchess. Henry privately wondered if it had something to do with his father’s arrival. Their musings were briefly interrupted by lunch, which was a joint of mutton carelessly thrown on a plate. Mrs. Splunket explained that she was too distraught to accomplish anything more.

  The solicitor returned in the late afternoon. The man was pale and haggard. He sank into a chair and said, “The trial begins tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “The trial starts tomorrow!” Henry said.

  “Can they do that?” Fitzwilliam asked. “You’ve had no time to prepare a case.”

  “A magistrate may order an expeditious trial, if it is deemed necessary,” Mr. Candlewick said, “but this is most unusual as I see no cause for inordinate speed. I attempted to reason with the fellow, to remind him of professional courtesy and all that, but he wouldn’t hear of it. I pointed out that technically, I could not try the case, as I’m a solicitor, not a barrister. He waved off that requirement too. Most extraordinary.”

  “Will they transfer Sir Richard to Winchester?” Henry asked.

  “No,” Candlewick answered. “The case will be heard here. For matters that in any way involve the church, it is permitted to hold the trial locally. The magistrate says that as the accusations against Sir Richard include a claim that he does the devil’s work, that does involve the church and so he exercises his right to keep it here, rather than transfer. A circuit prosecutor will arrive this evening. I am wondering what the circuit prosecutor will make of all this; it is very strange, indeed.”

  They spent the night in the dining room. Mr. Candlewick scribbled notes while Henry, Mrs. Splunket, and Fitzwilliam told him everything they knew. Except for how the whole mess had begun. When the solicitor asked if there had been any unusual happenings around the manor, Henry caught Mrs. Splunket’s eye and shook his head no. He did not think a London lawyer would cope very well with a story about a giant tarantula and powder from a magical Amazonian tree.

  After all had been said, they sat in silence while Fitzwilliam and the solicitor sipped their port.

  Henry got up to go find Matilda. He thought it strange that she had not been at his feet during dinner as she generally liked to wait there, hoping for something to drop.

  He entered the kitchen to see if she were sleeping on her bed. Bertram sat on the floor with a pile of shredded beef next to him. He held up a piece and Matilda stood wagging her tail. Bertram held it just above her nose and said, “Sit.”

  As Matilda’s eyes gazed higher at the looming meat, her back end naturally went down.

  “There you go, girl,” Bertram said. “You’ve done it.” He noticed Henry and said, “I’m just teachin’ her some tricks. She’s a clever dog.”

  Henry thought the same himself. Matilda had recently figured out how to open Henry’s bedchamber door by getting up on her hind legs and knocking at the knob with her paw. He
sat down and said, “She is clever, I think. Now that she’s gained weight, it’s like she’s gotten smarter.”

  “That’s what care and attention will do for an animal,” Bertram said. “I knew the moment I set eyes on her that she was primed for a miraculous recovery.”

  “Bertram,” Henry said, “if I ever had to go away, you would see to it that Matilda would be all right, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’d guard this dog with my life, I would. Why? You plannin’ on going somewhere?”

  “Oh, no,” Henry said. “I just thought as a responsible dog owner I should make arrangements. You never know what could happen.”

  “I suppose you never do know,” Bertram said. “It’d be a shame though, as I was just gettin’ used to you being around. I might have even gone around tellin’ people that my idea that you were the son of a common pirate turned out to be mistaken.”

  “And also that I was raised in the depraved alleys of London,” Henry added.

  “Aye, that too.”

  “Thank you, Bertram,” Henry said. “I really appreciate that you cleared those stories up.”

  “Don’t be thanking me now,” Bertram said gruffly. “Everybody knows you can’t be a responsible dog owner and a pirate. Just common sense, is what it is.”

  Bertram hauled himself to his feet and reluctantly said good night to Matilda. He even said good night to Henry. Matilda followed Henry back to the dining room.

  The puppy retrieved a beef bone she had hidden away in the corner of the room and sat herself down at Henry’s feet. She ferociously shook the bone, dropped it and stared at it, covered it with her paw and then took it up again, her tail thumping on the carpet. Silence hung over the room like a pall, and Matilda was the only resident of the household who appeared to be enjoying the evening. Henry would be heartbroken to have to leave her behind; she was the best friend he’d ever had. No matter what he did or said, Matilda always heartily approved. He consoled himself with the knowledge that she would be well cared for at the manor. Bertram and Mrs. Splunket would see to that. Between the coachman and the housekeeper, his dog would be the most pampered in all of England.

  Matilda had been small and nervous when Henry had first adopted her, but with care she had grown. From the looks of her fat, round belly, she would grow more still. All she had needed was kindness to make her transformation. Bertram was right, she had made a miraculous recovery.

  Henry sat up suddenly with a startling idea: Fitzwilliam had made a miraculous recovery, too. Mr. Terrible got crickets. It was so obvious. He knew how the lupuna powder worked.

  “Well,” Mr. Candlewick said, stretching his legs and rising to his feet, “it’s almost midnight. The proceedings begin at nine sharp. The only helpful thing we can do now is get a decent night’s sleep.”

  Henry was hustled to his room by Mrs. Splunket as she said softly, “I never knowed a boy to be up so late. We’ll be lucky if you don’t catch a fever from it.”

  He tried to tell her about the lupuna powder, but she shushed him and said he sounded delirious already.

  Henry was bursting to tell Fitzwilliam about his theory, but the trial was just hours away. It would have to wait.

  He lay awake for an hour, rolling his theory around and looking at it from all sides. His idea wasn’t foolproof, he decided. But at least it had some logic to it. He felt sure he must be right.

  The next morning, they climbed the steps of the church. The solicitor said, “The only defense I can muster in so short a time is to keep hammering at the utter lunacy of the accusations and paint Snidefellow as a disappointed and vengeful suitor.”

  Henry, Fitzwilliam, and Mr. Candlewick made their way to the front of the church. As Henry had expected, it was packed with onlookers. Whole families crowded the pews and the overflow stood at the back of the church. The trial would be a public spectacle. It was the biggest event in Barton Commons since the kidnapping of the duchess’s son.

  Sir Richard weakly smiled at their approach. The duchess sat on the other side of Sir Richard, having placed herself in a position that would resolve any questions about where her loyalty lay.

  The magistrate was up on the altar, flanked by his constables. Mr. Snidefellow sat in the front pew on the opposite side of the church. The duchess glared at him until his cheeks colored.

  The magistrate banged his gavel and said, “Bailiff, read the charges.”

  The old bailiff held a parchment in front of him. “Sir Richard Blackstone is hereby charged with the practice of witchcraft, which has unleashed a padfoot and caused the death of Red Callahan. Further, he is charged with the kidnapping of William St. John, son of the Duke and Duchess of St. John.”

  Henry glanced around the church to see what effect the charges had. Most of the audience had an eager look, as if they were about to see a play. Mr. Small, the curate, looked horrified.

  The magistrate said, “Mr. Egbert Joswell will argue the charges for the Crown.”

  Henry peered over at the wigged prosecutor. Mr. Joswell’s red face sat atop a short and round body; he reminded Henry of a fall apple.

  Mr. Candlewick rose and said, “May I have the courtesy of having a word with Mr. Joswell before we begin?”

  “No,” the magistrate said. “Mr. Joswell, you may proceed.”

  Henry watched Snidefellow hand the prosecutor a sheaf of parchments.

  Mr. Joswell shuffled up to the dais. “Your Honor,” he said in a gravelly voice, peering down at the papers, “This case is about putting the pieces together. All the pieces taken together will show that Sir Richard Blackstone did knowingly make mischief in the village of Barton Commons.

  “First,” the prosecutor said, “Sir Richard arrives unexpectedly in the neighborhood. Unlike other gentlemen, he is never seen in church. He keeps to himself and rarely receives callers.”

  Henry leaned forward and whispered into Candlewick’s ear, “He always receives the duchess, but tries never to receive Snidefellow.”

  Candlewick nodded.

  “He transformed a perfectly innocent drawing room into a secretive laboratory,” the prosecutor continued. “He refuses social invitations, including the duchess’s own dusk-to-dawn croquet party which everyone knows is the crowning event of the season. Further, on the night of the croquet party, an unearthly creature is seen by a footman. Sir Richard and his London urchin were observed riding around in the dark, waving torches at it. And then, a good man goes missing.”

  Henry whispered, “Sir Richard hates croquet and Red Callahan is a drunkard.”

  “Red Callahan has been pronounced dead by Your Honor,” Mr. Joswell continued, “on account of everybody knows he could not stay away from The Buck and Boar for days at a time. His liver would not hold up.”

  Mr. Candlewick jumped to his feet. “Objection, Your Honor. A man cannot be pronounced dead merely because he has not been seen at a pub.”

  “I’ve had it from a respected physician that I certainly can come to that conclusion. Objection overruled,” the magistrate said.

  Henry twisted his hands together. It wasn’t only the prosecutor who was taking direction from Snidefellow; the magistrate was too.

  “The man is dead,” the prosecutor said, “just days after a padfoot is seen. Blackstone claims to search for Callahan and, instead, he conveniently returns with a footprint from the duchess’s own missing son.”

  Henry wanted to whisper some kind of information to Candlewick, but he didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t very well tell the solicitor that they found the footprint while they searched the cave to find out if Red Callahan had been liquefied by the tarantula.

  “How does Sir Richard find a footprint in the cave, when that cave has already been gone over with a fine-toothed comb? The answer is, he didn’t. He sought the duchess’s hand in marriage to protect him from the accusations against him and, to seal the deal, he presents her with the footprint he had in his possession all along.”

  Mr. Joswell turned with a flourish to the
villagers. “The kidnappers would have wanted ample evidence that they had the boy. That footprint remained in Blackstone’s possession all these years because he, Sir Richard Blackstone, is the kidnapper!”

  The audience gasped. Henry didn’t think the story held up very well, but the villagers seemed to follow Mr. Joswell’s logic completely.

  The duchess’s face had gone from pink to white. Sir Richard sat stone-faced.

  “So you see,” Mr. Joswell said, “each piece taken together brings us to the truth, that Blackstone is the devil’s agent. This calls for one punishment: death by hanging. The prosecution rests.”

  The magistrate said, “Mr. Candlewick. Proceed with your defense.”

  Henry bit his lip. The solicitor would have to make a strong case on Sir Richard’s behalf.

  Mr. Candlewick rose. “Your Honor, as Mr. Joswell has so helpfully pointed out, each piece of evidence on its own signifies nothing. Let us go through them one by one. Sir Richard unexpectedly arrives. Yes, he was given a knighthood by our queen and gifted the manor. Where else would he arrive? Sir Richard does not attend church. Perhaps, but it does not mean that Sir Richard is not a Godly man. Sir Richard does not receive callers. As you can see,” he said, pointing to Fitzwilliam, “he at this very moment has a houseguest. He has received the duchess on numerous occasions. He makes every effort not to receive Mr. Snidefellow because he doesn’t like the man. I suspect Sir Richard is not alone in his dislike of the councilman, who has shown himself to be an oily, arrogant, and nosy individual.”

  The room erupted in laughter.

  “As to Sir Richard having transformed a sitting room into a laboratory,” Mr. Candlewick continued, “what gentleman does not engage in scientific pursuits?”

  Henry heard a man behind him mutter, “That’s true enough. These gentry types got to fill up the days somehow.”