Death on the Romney Marsh

by Deryn Lake

  ‘Quite so,’ said Dr Hensey. ‘We must all act as our sense of decency dictates.’

  John looked at the doctor properly as the dark shadows finally retreated. ‘I didn’t realise you were in the church today, Sir.’

  ‘I did not have an invitation, of course, but being in the area I was determined to see the ceremony. However, my patient in Hastings was more querulous than ever and I arrived somewhat late. I stole into the back to watch and found myself sitting almost behind Mr Delahunty.’

  ‘What happened exactly?’

  ‘He simply stood up, drew a gun, and shot the unfortunate Miss Tireman dead.’

  The Apothecary went very white. ‘So he killed her? I wasn’t sure.’

  Florence Hensey looked oddly matter-of-fact. ‘She died within seconds. He hit her clean through the heart.’

  ‘Just as she stabbed the Scarecrow. A dark revenge indeed.’

  Joe broke the mood. ‘Most of the wedding guests have gone to Grey Friars where Captain Pegram is acting as host. Just before she departed, Mrs Rose told me to look after you. Can I fetch you anything, Mr Rawlings?’

  ‘Brandy for shock,’ suggested the doctor. ‘I think I might join you. It has been a most terrible day for us all.’

  ‘It certainly has,’ said Joe with feeling.

  John collected himself. ‘But what of Henrietta? Is she safe? Where did she go?’

  The two older men exchanged a glance. ‘She is comforting the Marquis,’ said Joe quietly, and not so much from the words themselves but in the way that they were said to him, John knew that all between him and the beautiful girl with whom he had so nearly fallen in love, was lost.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  One week after the dramatic shooting of a lovely bride standing at the altar, ready to take her vows with the Marquis of Rye, seven people, two of whom had known her and two more who had spent an evening in her company, sat down to dine in the exquisite first-floor salon of Sir Gabriel Kent. Present were the host himself, his son, the Comte and Comtesse de Vignolles, Elizabeth and John Fielding and Joe Jago. Yet this was not an occasion for frivolity and hearty laughter, in fact the conversation was subdued throughout the meal itself. And when it was over, the Blind Beak, who sat at the head of the table while Sir Gabriel occupied the foot, cleared his throat and said, ‘I believe the time has come when we must ask you to tell us the whole story, Mr Rawlings.’

  The Apothecary nodded. ‘As you wish, Sir, though I may ask for Joe’s help in the muddle.’

  ‘By all means,’ said the clerk, his light eyes somewhat sad, knowing how wretched his young friend had been when he had said his final farewell to Miss Tireman.

  ‘Well, as you all know by now,’ John began, ‘I was summoned to the Romney Marsh by a mysterious woman who begged me to help her. Much intrigued, I arrived in Winchelsea only to discover that the lady was the former Mrs Jasper Harcross, now living under the assumed name of Rose. She declared that someone was making attempts on her life and that the poison was being administered by means of gifts of food and wine left on her doorstep. It is apparently quite the custom for the more prosperous to donate anonymous presents for the needy of the parish.’

  ‘A charming idea,’ said Serafina, while Elizabeth Fielding chorused, ‘How kind.’

  ‘Indeed, yes. Though it presented me with many worries at the time. However, to go back a little, on the journey to Winchelsea, which was diverted through the marshlands because of storms, we passed a remote and tiny church, close to which, quite incongruously, stood a scarecrow. A most realistic one, for it gave me a great sense of fear when first I saw it. Eventually I went to investigate why a scarecrow should be standing in a place with no crops. Then I discovered the skeleton, now at rest in a churchyard in London. Inside his coat was stitched a coded message which, when deciphered, revealed that the dead man was a French spymaster who had come to England to awaken two sleeping spies, the Frog and the Moth.’

  Mr Fielding came in. ‘It was then that I asked Joe Jago to go to Winchelsea in an official capacity and assist Mr Rawlings in his hunt for the two French agents. For it seemed certain, particularly when we discovered through the Secret Office that no English spy was involved, that one or other of them was also a killer. Joe.’

  The clerk took up the tale. ‘Posing as an agent of that Office I obtained statements from one and all, realising as I did so that Mr Rawlings’s task was well nigh impossible. Many of the residents lied, some embroidered the truth, others seemed to know nothing. However, many interesting facts did emerge. First and foremost, that the Scarecrow, as we had nicknamed the dead man, seemed fixated with contacting the Marquis of Rye and also with meeting the beau monde of Winchelsea. I concluded from this that the Marquis might well be personally implicated and, possibly, a lady of quality as well. Second, Mr Rawlings discovered that two ladies of the town, one young, the other not so fresh, had indulged in flirtations with our lecherous spying friend. Third, while visiting Captain Pegram I saw, partly concealed in a half open drawer, a sketch of Miss Rosalind Tireman in the nude.’

  ‘And what conclusion did you draw from that?’ asked Sir Gabriel, his deep sapphire ring flashing splendidly as he moved his hand.

  ‘Either that she and he were somehow involved together, or simply that he lusted after her,’ Joe answered.

  John spoke up. ‘That fact made me suspect the Captain at once. His behaviour was extremely strange to say the least of it. However, we progress too rapidly. Other equally odd facts were emerging. Some of which seemed quite inexplicable.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘A contact who frequents the Romney Marsh …’

  Mr Fielding rumbled his tuneful laugh. ‘Come now, Mr Rawlings, don’t mince words. It was Dick Jarvis the smuggler, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Sir. I’m afraid it was. The man declares he is a patriot and I suppose, according to his lights, he is. Anyway, he provided the very interesting piece of information that in the dead of night the skeleton was visited by a woman who removed Captain Pegram’s visiting card from the corpse’s pocket.’

  There was a silence, then ‘Why?’ asked Serafina.

  ‘To obliterate evidence of a link between the Captain and the dead man, which might inadvertently reveal her identity, I presume.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘If the Captain should be suspected of being a spy, the authorities would have been at liberty to search amongst his papers for ciphers and so on. I can only presume that Rosalind feared that her naked portrait, the one that she was so anxious he should destroy, would be found if that happened.’

  ‘So was she the woman?’ asked John’s father.

  ‘I thought at first it was Henrietta Tireman,’ the Apothecary answered slowly.

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Because she was strong and had told me she could ride well. And, further, I found her hat on the church path after I had overheard Captain Pegram conversing with an unknown woman. But probably most of all because she had been in love – and still is – with the Marquis of Rye, whom I suspected of being involved.’

  ‘Did you think she was the Moth?’ asked Louis.

  ‘No, I thought that was Lord Rye himself.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of his misspent youth. I wondered whether he had become a spy in order to pay his debts and that now, for fear of blackmail, he was too deeply enmeshed to escape. There was another thing, too. The Scarecrow’s obsession with meeting him. Now, of course, we know it was to get to Rosalind but at the time it seemed to me it was the Marquis that the spy was after. Mistakenly, the Scarecrow visited Captain Pegram, thinking, or so I believe, that such a grand house must belong to nobility. And indeed Nathaniel admitted, more openly than anyone else, that the Frenchman had called on him. It was on that occasion that the Scarecrow must have been given, or at the very least acquired, Captain Pegram’s visiting card. Anyway, there was one other odd thing that happened round about that time. I overheard a couple arguing in the churchyard
, quite bitterly and cruelly. The woman wore a strong scent but other than that I could not identify her. The man, who seemed in despair, was equally anonymous. Then there emerged the fact that the Scarecrow had bought a bottle of Evening in Araby, a perfume blended by Apothecary Gironde, for an unknown woman. Was it all the same female, I began to wonder.’

  ‘Go back a little,’ requested Sir Gabriel. ‘Did you believe Miss Tireman to be the woman in the churchyard? Miss Henrietta, that is?’

  ‘Not at the time. But later, when I overheard the other altercation, the one I mentioned to you. I did.’

  ‘For what reason?’ asked Joe Jago.

  ‘As I told you, I found Miss Henrietta’s hat lying on the path near where the argument had taken place and, on another occasion, I smelled Evening in Araby on her.’

  ‘I see,’ said the clerk, and John felt absolutely certain that he did!

  ‘Then came a conversation with Serafina, during which we discussed the various people involved. She was convinced that the anonymous couple who had fallen out so bitterly were the Frog and the Moth, but in that she was wrong. Yet in a way what the Comtesse said led me further along the path. You see, I believe that Captain Pegram knew that the Moth had been contacted by the Scarecrow. I believe that, desperate for help, she went to her former lover and he, still besotted, assured her that he would kill the Frenchman if necessary. However, she relieved him of that task by doing so herself, probably in a moment of fury.’

  ‘But how did you manage to identify the Frog?’ asked Louis, leaning forward intently.

  ‘In relation to discovering the identity of the Moth, that was really quite simple. One night, when I was watching one of the spies signalling to a French ship – I wasn’t sure which spy it was at that stage – I heard a sound that half frightened me out of my wits. It was a strange scrabbling, clawing noise, as if some awful monster were roaming the seashore. Then, when a French frigate ran aground on a sandbank, completely misled by an incorrect signal, I heard the sound again.’

  ‘And what was it?’ asked Elizabeth Fielding, intrigued.

  ‘A dog.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said a dog.’ John laughed. ‘Sir Ambrose and Lady Ffloote owned – still do, I suppose – a wretched old hound which they will insist on calling The Pup. The poor thing seemed in a constant state of exhaustion, and now I know why. The Frog took the wretched creature with him when he went on his signalling missions, probably said that he was off to give it exercise. Anyway, the sound I heard was its claws scrabbling on the shale. That train of thought together with the sheer stupidity that the Frog demonstrated at every turn, convinced me that the spy could be nobody but Sir Ambrose.’

  There was general laughter and a smattering of applause. John inclined his head, then looked directly at Louis de Vignolles.

  ‘There is one thing about that night which still remains unexplained. A dark man with a strong accent informed the Riding Officers at Rye that the French had landed at Pett Level. At the time I thought it had to be Lucius but now, of course, I realise it couldn’t have been.’

  Louis gazed at him, his expression blank. ‘How strange. It must have been somebody patrolling the shoreline. But who would do such a thing in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Who indeed?’ answered John, and raised a cynical eyebrow.

  ‘Enough of that,’ put in Serafina, hiding a secret smile. ‘Tell us how you discovered the identity of the Moth.’

  ‘As I said, I spent a while believing it to be the Marquis. However, the more I mulled the various ideas over the more a picture of a vain and greedy person kept coming into my mind, a person who would stop at nothing in order to reach the pinnacle of society and have money to burn. Now the people of the town may be odd but there was only one who answered that description in my mind, the fabulously beautiful Rosalind. When he was drunk, Captain Pegram almost told me the story of his love affair with her when she was very young – and he very rich! Once, probably twice, I had heard him in bitter argument with an unidentified female. And on the second occasion she actually ordered him to destroy ‘the picture’. That made me feel certain that the field was narrowed to either one of the three Tireman women or a new and jealous mistress, for who else would care so much about a compromising portrait?

  ‘The dropped hat gave me food for thought. But what easier than for a sister to appropriate another sister’s headgear? Then there was the perfume, Evening in Araby, which Apothecary Gironde sold to the Scarecrow for an unknown lady. Rosalind owned such a brand but Henrietta smelled of it. Isn’t it a fact that sisters frequently borrow one another’s cosmetics?’

  Mr Fielding spoke again. ‘So you had no physical clues, only the character portrait of someone cruel enough to kill in order not to obey an early commitment to spy for France and thereby risk losing their wealth and social position?’

  ‘There was just one piece of evidence, Sir,’ answered John. ‘Acting on your advice, I introduced Dick Jarvis into society, masquerading as Louis’s cousin and dressed as a gentleman of quality. He came to my farewell assembly and there he identified Rosalind as the woman who had removed the card from the Scarecrow’s pocket.

  All that night I wondered whether she was protecting Captain Pegram or acting for herself by not wanting the Captain’s name to be associated with the victim in any way. But in the end only she, wretched and jealous girl that she was, seemed to meet all the qualities, if one can use that word, the murderer displayed. Then I realised that I had described her as a butterfly to Serafina and that the French for moth is Papillon de Nuit. But still I wasn’t totally sure, not until the moment when the second French spymaster, Lucius Delahunty, alias Lucien de la Tour, a rogue who managed to deceive me utterly, killed her, just as she had murdered his own cousin.’

  ‘But who,’ asked Elizabeth Fielding, ‘was poisoning Mrs Harcross?’

  John smiled ruefully. ‘No one. She was doing it to herself. The poor woman, along with several others I might add, was taking something called the Elixir of Youth, prepared by Mrs Gironde without the supervision of her husband. Not knowing any better, the silly soul was picking and compounding the wrong simples, with the result that she was slowly poisoning the entire middle-aged female population of Winchelsea.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I told her to stop it at once – and she did!’

  ‘What a sad and extraordinary tale,’ said Sir Gabriel slowly.

  ‘Very sad,’ echoed John, and just for a moment he looked utterly downcast.

  Joe Jago cleared his throat noisily. ‘Tell everyone about the post script, Mr Rawlings.’

  The Apothecary smiled again. ‘A small and disreputable smuggler called Little Harry arrived at Petronilla’s Platt just before I left. He gave me a bag of money and a letter—’

  ‘What did it say?’ interrupted Elizabeth.

  ‘I’ll read it to you.’ John produced a paper covered with exuberant handwriting from his inside pocket. “‘Greetings to my old companion, John Rawlings. I beg you, my friend, for the sake of the hours that we have spent jovially together to provide a headstone for my cousin with the enclosed guineas. Let it read, ‘Gerard de la Tour, 1727–1757, who died in the service of his country.’” It was dated three days after Rosalind’s fatal shooting and the address was merely given as “En route à Paris”.’

  ‘So Lucius definitely escaped?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the headstone?’

  ‘The order is already in train,’ said Sir Gabriel. ‘I have taken the liberty of adding a fleur-de-lys to it, unpatriotic though some might think it.’

  ‘Two more things,’ said Serafina, looking very puzzled. ‘The first is, why did Rosalind do it? How did a country parson’s daughter come to be spying for France?’

  ‘Her grandmother was French and I presume, though I don’t know for certain, that she spoke the language fluently, as did Henrietta. After all, that is how the Tireman family became involved with the nobility. Hen
rietta went to teach the Marquis’s sister French, then, very foolishly, introduced Rosalind to the household when the governess left. I say foolishly because by this time he had asked Henrietta to marry him, only for the Marquis to abandon her in favour of her more beautiful sister.’

  ‘Poor thing,’ said Elizabeth Fielding sympathetically.

  John looked very pinched indeed. ‘All’s well that ends well,’ he answered bitterly. ‘I am told that Lord Rye has now seen the error of his ways and that Henrietta is restored in his affections.’

  ‘John,’ said Sir Gabriel, his voice gentle. ‘I am still not quite clear. Did Rosalind agree to spy in return for money?’

  ‘I believe so, yes. Simply for the sake of her own vanity and perhaps, too, to ensure she landed a wealthy husband. I always thought how well dressed and fashionable the Tireman family was. In fact at one time I thought the rector might be spying in order to cope with the cost of clothing them. However, it seems the girls supported themselves. Henrietta obviously earned extra by teaching, but her sister had other, darker ways.’

  Serafina nodded. ‘So who is the French spy who has infiltrated London society and whom Lou – I mean the Secret Office – is so desperately seeking? Which one of your suspects is he, John?’

  The Apothecary gave a shrug worthy of a Frenchman. ‘That I have not been able to discover, my dear. We will simply have to wait and see,’ he said.

  Historical Note

  John Rawlings, Apothecary, was born circa 1731, though his actual parentage is somewhat shrouded in mystery. He was made Free of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries on 13 March, 1755. On that occasion he gave his address as 2, Nassau Street, Soho, thereby linking himself irrefutably with H.D. Rawlings Ltd., Soda Water Manufacturers, who were based at the same address over a hundred years later.

  It might surprise some readers to know that at the time of the Seven Years War the secret service in this country was extremely well organised. It was roughly divided into two sections, the Secret Office and the Secret Department. The Secret Office came directly under the control of the Secretary of State, who funded it. It was the duty of this office to run the secret service, whose function it was to obtain information for the government. It employed spies in Britain to detect plots, and abroad to discover the designs of foreign powers. The Secret Department was part of the Post Office and was founded as early as 1718, though it is possible that the Department had existed before then in a slightly different form. During the Seven Years War the Secretary of State, the Earl of Holdernesse, would instruct Anthony Todd, head of the Post Office, to open any mail that he considered might be suspect. Anything written in code or cipher was then immediately taken to Dr Edward Willes who, unbelievably, combined the roles of Bishop of Bath and Wells and Secret Decipherer to the King. Ciphers, of course, are as old as time and are still used today. Interestingly, the Secret Department was not disbanded until the middle of the nineteenth century. The Secret Office, however, though now called the Secret Service, still flourishes.