The Scent of Death

by Andrew Taylor

  I thought I heard a child crying. But my window was sealed tight and perhaps I heard only the wind in the chimney.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The address Mrs Frobisher had given me was in King George Street, convenient for the Fresh Water Pond and the pump at the bottom of Orange Street, but too close for comfort to the stench of the tan-yards.

  The Reverend Dr Slype lived in a tall, thin house. At first I thought I had been given the wrong address for my knock of the door was answered by a Hessian private wearing a long apron over his regimentals. When I asked for Dr Slype, however, he directed me upstairs.

  ‘Up and up, sir,’ he said in low, thickly accented voice. ‘Higher and higher. To the top, eh?’

  I passed a smart young German officer on the first-floor landing who saluted me civilly as he went by but said nothing. I climbed flight after flight of stairs that became progressively narrower until I came at last to a heavy leather curtain blocking my way. On the step at its foot was a handbell.

  I rang the bell and almost immediately a negro maid pulled aside the curtain. When I asked for Dr Slype and gave her Mrs Frobisher’s letter of introduction, she showed me into a tiny parlour with a sloping ceiling.

  The day was sunny and, even at this time of the year, it had grown warm under the roof. The room was furnished comfortably enough, though it was unpleasantly crowded because the pieces had been made for larger rooms.

  In a moment I heard a heavy step outside, and a tall, very fat gentleman eased himself sideways through the doorway. He was attired decently in black though his waistcoat was unbuttoned and his neckcloth hung loose. He wore an ancient tie-wig, somewhat askew and tied with a frayed black ribbon.

  ‘Mr Savill, sir.’ He bowed slowly. ‘I am honoured to make your acquaintance.’

  I bowed in my turn. ‘Your servant, sir.’

  ‘You have found us in our eyrie, sir.’ His voice was soft and rumbling, like the purr of a great contented cat. ‘I congratulate you.’

  ‘The soldier who answered the door told me where to come.’

  ‘You were fortunate.’ He spoke slowly, sucking air between groups of words. ‘You chanced on one of the more civil of the cuckoos we have in our nest.’

  ‘You have lodgers, I collect?’

  ‘Four officers and their servants. They come and go. Some of them are rowdier than others. One can never tell. At least the Hessians we have at present are gentlemen, though sometimes you would not think it.’ He wiped his forehead with a large handkerchief. ‘It is very close today, do you not find?’

  ‘Indeed, sir. I hope my visit does not fatigue you.’

  ‘Not in the least. You may consider yourself a welcome diversion. I do not enjoy climbing stairs so I value it when society comes to me.’ He eased his neckcloth further away from his neck. ‘Shall we sit outside? It is infinitely cooler.’

  For a moment I thought my host had taken leave of his senses. He reversed slowly through the doorway. I followed him on to the landing. The maid hurried forward and opened another door immediately opposite. It led directly out to a large balcony bordered by a low iron rail. Beyond it was the great sweep of the sunlit sky above and the glittering waters of the bay below.

  ‘Good God,’ I said. Here, high above the stench and hubbub of the streets, I understood why New York was sometimes accounted a beautiful city.

  ‘Indeed, sir.’ Dr Slype smiled at me. ‘If faith and reason were not enough, then this prospect alone would incline me to believe in the existence of a benevolent deity.’

  In an alcove sheltered from the wind were two chairs of wicker and a daybed arranged around a table laden with books. We settled ourselves in the chairs. Without being bidden, the maid brought a tray with two glasses, a bottle of hock and a flask of selzer water.

  ‘My Hessians sometimes bring me selzer water,’ Dr Slype told me, leaning forward to mix the drinks. ‘They know I have a taste for it. You will join me, I hope? I generally take a glass or two at this time of the morning. It cools the brain most wonderfully.’

  My host sipped his hock and selzer and set down the glass. ‘And now, sir. Mrs Frobisher tells me you are a very charming gentleman.’ He held up his face to the sun. ‘And that you are a high government official sent from London.’

  ‘I come from London and I have a position at the American Department. But it is not a particularly lofty one, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I am sure you are modest.’

  ‘I deal with Loyalist claims for compensation, sir. I do not mean that I assess them in any way: I act merely as a conduit for them and ensure they take the best form and go to the most suitable place.’

  ‘The bonfire?’ he said, not unkindly.

  ‘I hope not. God knows, there are deserving cases among them.’

  ‘Yes. It is a terrible business, this war. You would think that rational beings should be able to manage their disagreements in a way that would not damage all parties concerned. There is really only one explanation: that man is not a rational being at all.’

  ‘I find you are a philosopher, sir,’ I said.

  ‘You flatter me, sir. I am a fat old fool.’ He took up the wine. ‘Come, let me refill your glass and you shall tell me how I may be of service. Mrs Frobisher tells me you have been enquiring about Roger Pickett.’

  ‘Did you know him well?’

  ‘Forgive me, sir, but why do you need to know? And are you acting for yourself or for the Government?’

  ‘There is a claim for compensation in train. I have been instructed to assemble any details that may be material to the case.’

  Dr Slype raised his eyebrows. ‘So you must know he was found murdered last year?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The chair creaked beneath him as he sat back and considered me. ‘Poor fellow. I did not hear about it until after he was dead and buried – my wife and I were on Long Island with her sister at the time, and I did not see the newspapers. They hanged the man who did it. A runaway, was it not?’

  ‘A runaway was hanged for it, certainly,’ I said. ‘But that is another matter. I—’

  He pounced. ‘Ah! I apprehend you have some doubt that the right man was executed.’

  I hesitated only a moment. ‘Yes, sir. Though I do not know for sure, and there is much else that is mysterious about the business.’

  ‘But why do you wish to enquire into it now, so long afterwards?’

  ‘It is possible that agents of Congress may have had a hand in the matter.’

  ‘This business grows murkier by the moment, sir.’ Dr Slype chuckled quietly, and his whole body vibrated in sympathy. ‘But I really do not understand how I can assist you.’

  ‘We have very little information about Roger Pickett and his family, sir. I hoped you might be able to help us.’

  ‘I would not say I knew him well. I doubt if I exchanged more than two or three words with him, and that must have been five or six years ago. I knew his father slightly better – Jonathan Pickett – he had an estate near Charlotte. But the family was Presbyterian so we did not see them in church or meet them much in society. I’m afraid Mr Pickett’s son was a sad disappointment to him. I do know that.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘The father was a sober, God-fearing man. Young Roger sowed his wild oats and they quarrelled. They say the father died of an apoplexy when he discovered the extent of his son’s debts, but I cannot vouch for the truth of that.’ Dr Slype picked up his wine and stared placidly out to sea. ‘And so the son inherited,’ he went on. ‘He sold the estate as soon as his father was in his grave. I heard that he went down to Charleston and spent his inheritance as quickly as he could.’

  ‘Mrs Frobisher thought he had enlisted in the Continental Army,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I know. The father would have approved of that, at least. As I said, the family was Presbyterian and Mr Jonathan Pickett was stuffed to the gills with Whig principles.’

  ‘And the son?’

  ‘I’m not sure he ha
d any principles.’ Dr Slype smiled at me. ‘I know it is uncharitable of me, but I fear that Mr Roger followed where expediency led. Which in his case was New York. As a matter of fact, I saw him walking down Broadway but—’

  ‘I thought you said you hadn’t spoken—’

  He held up a plump white hand and stopped me in mid-sentence. ‘I beg your pardon, sir – I did not mean to mislead you. I saw him in Broadway in the spring of seventy-six, when General Washington held the city for Congress. But we did not speak. Mr Roger was wearing regimentals of some sort. I believe he was a sergeant.’

  ‘Did he see you?’

  Dr Slype shook his head. ‘It would not have been desirable. I did not like to be recognized in those days – not that I am retiring by nature, you understand. But I am a Fellow of King’s College and I found that my principles were not altogether fashionable when the Continentals occupied the city.’

  I remembered the Judge’s brother, whose memorial was in Trinity churchyard. ‘Then you must have known the late Dr Wintour? I believe he was a Fellow of King’s.’

  A shadow passed over Dr Slype’s face. ‘The poor gentleman. He was more Tory than His Majesty himself and quite unable to dissemble it. And he paid the price for that. You will understand my desire to be discreet.’

  ‘As it happens, I lodge at his brother’s house.’

  ‘The Judge? I have met him once or twice in company with Dr Wintour but I never had the honour of being on intimate terms with the family.’

  ‘Do you happen to know if they were acquainted with the Picketts?’

  Dr Slype looked surprised. ‘Not as far as I know. Why?’

  ‘No particular reason, sir.’

  ‘I believe the Wintours were not in the city when the rebels seized it. Apart from Dr Wintour, that is. So they cannot have met Roger Pickett then.’

  I drained my glass and began to think of leaving. Dr Slype gestured to the bottle. I shook my head with a smile and stood up.

  ‘I suppose there was a connection of sorts,’ he said suddenly. ‘Between the Picketts and Wintours, that is. But a very indirect one.’

  The sun was in my eyes. Dr Slype was reduced to a dark shadow overflowing from his chair.

  ‘If I remember right,’ he said, ‘Dr Wintour’s nephew married a lady named Miss Froude.’

  ‘Yes, sir – indeed he did.’

  ‘I’m almost sure – I cannot be quite certain, mind – that it must have been the young lady’s father who bought the Pickett estate in North Carolina. Mr Henry Froude. That was his name.’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  When I returned to Warren Street after my visit to Dr Slype, I could not help overhearing Captain Wintour’s raised voice in the parlour as I passed through the hall.

  ‘Dinner was cold again,’ he was saying. ‘I swear that’s the third time they’ve served up that ham. It’s rotting on the bone. Are you trying to kill us all? And I could not even find a clean shirt this morning.’

  Mrs Arabella said something I did not catch.

  ‘It won’t do, madam, I tell you – you spend too much time looking after those mewling negros and not enough on your duties, do you hear?’

  I passed on. On the evening of the same day, after supper, in a tone that did not brook argument the Captain desired Mrs Arabella to read to us. When she asked what he would like her to read, he looked about the room and his eyes fell on a volume of The Rambler that lay on a side table.

  ‘There – that will do very well.’

  She began to read aloud an essay on the evils of idleness. Within a moment or two her parents-in-law were asleep. I was turning over the pages of the Royal Gazette, for I had nothing to take me out of the house that evening. Captain Wintour twitched and fidgeted in his chair.

  ‘Let us take a turn in the garden,’ he said suddenly, interrupting his wife’s reading in mid-sentence.

  ‘What, now, sir?’

  ‘Yes, now. It is so close in here I cannot breathe. Put on your cloak, madam, you will not come to any harm.’

  Mrs Arabella turned to me. ‘Will you join us, sir?’

  The Captain scowled.

  ‘I think not,’ I said.

  They were gone above twenty minutes. I sat yawning over the paper, while Mr and Mrs Wintour snored and snuffled in their armchairs on either side of the small fire. At one point I heard a noise – a distant cry or yelp, instantly extinguished. I read on.

  I decided to go up to my room and write to Augusta and to Lizzie. As I went out of the drawing room, the garden door burst open. Mrs Arabella came into the house, kicking off her pattens. Her left hand obscured her face on the side nearer me. She must have seen me standing in the doorway but she did not falter or greet me in any way.

  Then her husband appeared behind her, his arm raised. For a moment the three of us stood there as still as waxworks in an exhibition.

  There are no third parties in a marriage. What a man and his wife say to each other is no concern of anyone else. What a man does to his wife is their business alone.

  I knew all this. I knew what Captain Wintour must have done as surely as if I had seen it happen. And I knew that any court in America or England would say that, strictly speaking, he had the law on his side.

  Despite that, I stepped forward. Mrs Arabella ran past me. Wintour lunged towards me. He was a big man, no taller than me but rather heavier; he was in that dangerous stage of drunkenness when caution is thrown to the wind but the body retains at least some of its ability to execute the mind’s concerns.

  ‘No, sir,’ I said.

  I smelled his hot, liquorish breath. His face was contorted with passion. I heard the gentle snores of the Judge and the sound of Mrs Arabella’s feet pattering up the stairs.

  ‘You dare, sir?’ He raised his fist.

  I did not move or speak.

  ‘Damnation, I—’

  ‘Johnny, dear?’ his mother called. ‘Is that you?’

  Wintour wheeled about and marched down the hall into the garden.

  I went back into the drawing room. ‘No, ma’am – it is I. Captain Wintour is taking a turn in the garden. I’m come to bid you goodnight.’

  The old lady nodded, frowning slightly as if trying to reconcile my face with her son’s. ‘And my daughter?’

  ‘I believe I heard Mrs Arabella going upstairs.’

  The Judge’s snoring changed in tempo. Mrs Wintour and I glanced at him. His head had rolled against the wing of his armchair. His wig was now askew and his mouth was open. He looked old and foolish.

  ‘Mr Savill?’ Mrs Wintour was staring at me again. ‘Take care.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, madam?’

  ‘Very great care. I am an old woman, sir, and you will permit me to speak frankly.’

  I realized with surprise that she was perfectly lucid, which was unusual at this time of day and, increasingly, at any time.

  ‘It would be easy for a gentleman in your position to allow an attachment to develop – almost without his knowing. An attachment which was quite impossible and which could only bring pain to all concerned.’

  ‘I’m afraid I do not catch your—’

  ‘It would distress my husband inexpressibly,’ she went on, ‘– it would distress us all, I believe – if you were obliged to leave us before your visit to New York was finished. We consider you quite one of the family now.’

  I bowed. ‘You are very kind.’

  ‘But it is growing late.’ She smiled graciously at me. ‘I must not keep you from your bed any longer.’

  Bowing again, I left the drawing room, closing the door behind me.

  I stood in the hall, attempting to digest what had just happened. The garden door was still ajar. It was dark outside. There was a half-moon veiled in clouds that streamed across a night sky the colour of slate. Captain Wintour was nowhere to be seen.

  I heard the faintest sound above me. I looked up. The light was dim – an oil lamp burned on the landing and a single candle on the hall table below.


  A person was leaning over the rail and looking down at me. I glimpsed, if that is not too definite a word, a shadow with flashes of white for eyes and teeth.

  Slippered feet scampered across the landing. A door closed.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  During the next ten days or so it was perhaps as well that I spent few of my waking hours in Warren Street. Mrs Wintour did not refer to our conversation again. She retreated across the borders of old age to a place where she seemed only partly aware of what was going on around her. A day or two later, she fell victim to a putrid sore throat and was confined to bed, which I confess came as a relief to me.

  I could not ignore the fact that Mrs Wintour had, without saying as much, warned me of the danger of nursing adulterous desires for Mrs Arabella. If these desires, which I barely acknowledged even to myself, had been evident to Mrs Wintour, who else might have noticed the tell-tale signs?

  The mood in the city at this time was buoyant, for our forces had had considerable success in Georgia, so much so that the province had been declared in the King’s Peace and civil government re-established. But the mood at the Wintours’ house was quite the reverse.

  Our domestic economy was still at sixes and sevens because of the inoculations. On top of everything else, the necessity of nursing Mrs Wintour placed another strain on the straitened household.

  I hardly saw Mrs Arabella. I encountered her in the stairs on the day after she had run in from the garden. The flesh around her left eye was a deep purple in colour, so dark it was almost black like the skin of a plum.

  Later that day, at supper, in answer to Judge Wintour’s questions, she explained that she had collided with an open door when she went to her closet in the night. She spoke of it in a mechanical, uninterested way, as if the accident had happened to someone else, someone she did not care for very much. The Judge was concerned for her health – he believed the misfortune could be attributed to her overtaxing herself with her patients. He seemed to suspect nothing of the truth.