The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 1 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  Pelham lay pale and exhausted on his pillows. He looked almost as if he expected a blow of some kind and had my hands been free, I no doubt would have obliged him.

  As it was, my efforts, painful though they had been, had made some effect. The bonds that secured my hands to the chair had loosened, tearing the skin sorely. Now, after a few painful twists of my wrists I had one hand free. I worked upon the other hand, keeping an eye always on Pelham, and very shortly the chair dropped to the floor with a thud.

  All this time Pelham lay with his eyes closed, as white as wax. I picked up his drink and took a deep draught of it. The pale liquid ran smoothly enough down my throat, though it hardly slaked the itching dust in my mouth. Then, a small fire was lit in my bowels.

  Pelham opened one eye and regarded me speculatively. I looked across the room and found what I most needed at that moment. A brace of duelling pistols lay in their inlaid case upon a tallboy. I lifted a pistol from its nest and, weighing it carefully, walked over to the recumbent body of the coachman, lying like a small mountain of clothes where he had fallen. A pool of blood had formed about a deep cut on his head. He lay as stiff as death in a curiously twisted position, one hand still curving protectively about his parts. I hoped that by now his culls had swollen to an inconvenient size. For a moment I thought I had killed the man. Then he snored suddenly.

  I walked back to the bed. Pelham eyed the pistol quizzically.

  “Well Sir?” he asked.

  “I thank you for your invitation, Sir Harry, but I find that I cannot stay after all.”

  “A pity,” he said wryly. “And how do you plan to leave?”

  “Oh, I have a safe-conduct,” I answered, and waved the pistol at him encouragingly.

  He laughed his pleasant laugh.

  “Fortune favours the reckless,” he said. “If you have luck on your side you have no need of brains.”

  On the night table by his side lay a pair of scissors.

  I reached up and cut off the silk of the bell-rope, leaving a portion well out of Pelham’s reach.

  He looked up at me, lazily amused.

  “Are you still in the market for the code-book?” he drawled.

  “Are the receipts for sale after all?” I asked, binding the silk sash around his arms.

  I moved towards the door.

  “There are no receipts that I know of,” Pelham said quietly. “But if they do exist I’m prepared to pay hard for them. How much do you hope to earn from serving Lady Wroth?”

  I told him.

  “I will pay you a dozen times more.”

  I paused on my way to the door. Something in his tone stopped me – a new and unaccountable note of honesty.

  He saw my hesitation and said more urgently: “And you may be assured that any such receipts will never be used against his lordship.”

  I turned towards him. The syrup-coloured eyes were amazingly alert. He looked almost sincere.

  “You seem very certain of it,” I said.

  He smiled a weary smile that barely moved the muscles of his mouth.

  “As you said, I’ve exhausted the possibilities. I’m now convinced that they don’t exist.”

  I looked at him more closely. His expression seemed stripped of all pretences. He gazed at me with an appearance of infinite weariness.

  Was what he said true? How could it be? Had three men and one woman died for something that had never existed? A lethal chimera? It seemed impossible.

  “You don’t believe me?” he asked.

  I shrugged. A doubt still lingered.

  “If I were to believe you now,” I said, “what a fool I shall look when I have delivered the code-book and you go back to blackguarding the Wroth family.”

  He gestured impatiently.

  “I’ve already told you they won’t be troubled,” he said.

  “My business is to protect my patroness,” I answered.

  “And mine is to protect my children,” he replied to that. “My children,” he emphasized tartly and, looking at me with the most intense expression in his eyes, he added slowly and clearly:

  “Your protection of Lady Wroth and my protection of my own children amounts to the same thing.”

  I gazed back at him in blank astonishment.

  “As a father, I suffer from a belated sense of duty,” he said meditatively. “But I have a sense of duty, nevertheless. My wish to protect Lady Wroth’s grandchildren is as great as her own. The only difference in our situation is that they are not her grandchildren – and they are my flesh and blood.”

  I continued to gape at him, deprived of speech.

  “You may know that Kitty Wroth is reputed to live with me. Well, it’s true enough – she does. In some style at my estate in Shropshire. She is the mistress of my house. But not my mistress.” He smiled wryly as my jaw continued to hang in frank disbelief. “Kitty is my natural daughter. I had her by Lavinia Wroth, as I did young Charlie.”

  I blinked.

  “Kitty was told of this by her mother before she died last year. Being a creature of honour and some spirit, she found she couldn’t endure to live on as a Wroth. She said she was my responsibility and that I would have to answer for my actions. She came to me with nothing but her mother’s jewellery and the clothes she stood up in,” he added with some pride. “She wouldn’t even condescend to bring her adored mare.”

  “But Lady Wroth?” I stammered stupidly.

  “She refuses to acknowledge the truth. Always has, and will till she dies. Call it what you wish, an old woman’s pride comes closest to it, I suppose. A demned curious sort of pride that refuses to believe that the son she bore was as sterile as a harem-eunuch. Perhaps it’s not so hard to understand, though. She prided herself on bringing fresh, healthy blood into the Wroth stock. I don’t know what miracle she performed on her husband, but she managed to sire two sons. And old Thomas Wroth was as incapable of breeding as the last Spanish Hapsburg. Stukeley has been ‘Fumbler’s Hall’ these two generations past . . .”

  I thought of the lost, silly face of Lord Wroth’s grandfather and conceded that Pelham might have a point at that.

  “I can’t imagine what humiliations the old woman endured in trying to breed from old Thomas, but she managed to foal twice. It explains why she refuses to believe that her own sons weren’t breeders, though. She won’t let her eyes tell her the truth. You’ve only to see my Kitty to know the truth of it. She has the Pelham eyes.”

  His own brown, turgid eyes stared resolutely into mine.

  “And his lordship?” I asked. Pelham frowned.

  “He favours his mother. In every way but his nature.”

  “And does Lord Wroth know of his true parentage?”

  A strange, brooding, crafty look came into Pelham’s face.

  “Who knows what his lordship knows?” he said.

  Who indeed, I wondered. What man in his right senses would forfeit the Wroth fortune and a title of great quality to acknowledge himself the bastard son of a worthless rake like Pelham?

  I looked up to find Sir Harry watching me with a theorizing look in his eye. He lowered his gaze.

  “What kind of father would I be to ask my son to give up a great position in life?” he asked with a wry smile. A look of almost benign amusement crept into his face. “But you can see, Nash, that I have no great wish to harm him.”

  “None at all, Sir Harry . . . If what you say is true,” I answered.

  A flicker of annoyance showed in his eyes.

  “If you need further confirmation, Nash, my daughter can supply it.”

  “But you said she was in Shropshire,” I said.

  “God’s ballock, man! Shropshire is not the end of the world. She can be reached.”

  There was a brief and nasty silence. I tried to sort out a number of conflicting questions. Pelham looked at me keenly. I wondered what ideas were running through his head. He said softly:

  “You must be assured that I have done all I can to trace the receipts.
You must take my word for it that they don’t exist. And I will pay you well for the code-book.”

  A sudden vision entered my mind. I had a picture of two young men dressed in absurd female finery, dancing upon a mint-green lawn, sword clashing upon sword. At the corner of the wall stood a silent observer. A young man with a cool profile, looking on in contempt.

  “Tell me, Sir Harry,” I asked. “Does young Mr. Oliver know about your part in his cousin’s conception?”

  He was momentarily startled.

  “What?”

  “Does he also know the true story, Sir?”

  “It is possible that he knows about my daughter, yes.”

  “And Lord Wroth? Is he aware of his true parentage?”

  He looked reluctant. “I suppose so, yes.”

  “And tell me, Sir Harry,” I asked carefully. “Is Mr. Oliver also a love-child?”

  “Why, Sir,” Pelham replied levelly, “from what I hear, Mr. Oliver is the result of a triumvirate. At least three gentlemen share the honour of his begetting.”

  There was a long pause while we out-stared each other. I was trying to discover whether he had lied to me and he was trying to ascertain whether I had believed him. It was a deadlock.

  In the corner the felled coachman groaned and stirred. Pelham looked towards him expectantly, but the hope faded from his eyes when he saw that the man could be of no service to him yet awhile.

  It was time for me to go. I moved to the door.

  “Where are you going?” Pelham called after me.

  “Why, Sir Harry, to corroborate your extraordinary story, to be sure,” I answered.

  I walked through the door and pulled it fast behind me, locking it and pocketing the key. There was nobody on the landing or in the hall. With the pistol cocked I walked quickly down the stairs and out into the street.

  XXI

  Riding out to Stukeley, I fitted the pieces of the puzzle together as well as I was able. By the time I had reached the great gates to the avenue, I had made some sense of it all despite conflicting evidence. That is, if I were to give credence to Pelham’s version of the truth. If I could believe him, the story would run this way:

  Sir Harry had fathered both Lord Wroth and his sister Kitty. Young Charles had inherited not the Wroth family inbreeding, but the Pelham wildness. As a natural result of his follies, he had fallen into the manipulative hands of Murrell, who had accidentally discovered the secret of his birth. Knowing that the Dowager Lady Wroth had ambitious plans for her grandson’s future, he had decided to capitalize on his discovery. But, being the devious rogue that he was, he had first sounded out his prospective victim. Hence the bogus approach, hinting at unspeakable secrets. The receipts, obnoxious as they were, were not in themselves to be feared. A young man’s extravagances, however bad they may seem, would be overlooked by any ambitious family wishing to marry into the landed aristocracy. But if there was a possible doubt of the heir’s legitimate right to the title and property, that would be another matter. It would be a secret worth paying out good money to keep undisclosed. If there was a smattering of truth in such a rumour, Lady Wroth would pay to cover the artificial scandal in order to protect her family from the larger threat of the real one.

  But Lady Wroth was an obstinate woman and no fool. She had seen the receipts as a test and realized that if she played Murrell’s game, she would be playing it to the death. So she had hired me, not to retrieve the receipts but to supply her with enough information to silence Murrell by a counterthreat to his liberty.

  Murrell’s brutish end had changed the situation only in that a single threat had sprouted a hydra-head. If he had been killed in order to silence him, his murderers had overlooked one important fact – Murrell had accomplices. Others were willing enough to carry on his work.

  Yet I could only think that Murrell had been silenced. And who had undertaken the task? The list of possible assassins was an impressive one, to judge by the names that featured in the code-book. But out of all his numerous gulls and catspaws, I must concentrate my attention on those most closely connected to my end of this business.

  Which led me to another point. If Murrell had not died simply to stop his tongue, then he must have been eliminated for other reasons. If this was so, then there was only one possible suspect – Pelham. I could not see either the red-topped youth nor black Betty with her grey-faced gallant engineering his death in order to inherit his business. Such an enterprise required style and Pelham was the only man for the game. The apprentice had definitely died at his instigation, if not by his own hand. And the poor black woman also?

  It seemed possible. They both stood between Pelham and the realization of his plans, if they knew of the whereabouts of the receipts. For Pelham must hold the receipts in order to gain the code-book. And by his own admission, Pelham had exhausted the possibilities of retrieving the papers.

  But d’Urfey? How had d’Urfey died?

  I could not fit d’Urfey’s death into the general scheme. If he had died because he, too, was an accomplice, whose accomplice had he been? I thought it very likely that the young Adonis had played some vital part in the affair, for he seemed the type of man to profit by being well-placed. I thought it likely that he had revealed Wroth’s true parentage to Murrell, I thought it more than probable that he had gone to the old charlatan with the proposition to blackguard the dowager in the first instance. And had Pelham, whilst ridding himself of a superfluous partner, also rid himself of the originator?

  But that required that Pelham knew of Murrell’s discovery and was a party to the plot. Yet I was fairly convinced that, until I had enlightened him, he had had no knowledge of Murrell’s involvement with young Wroth. There could be no doubting the concern in his eyes when I had informed him of it.

  Unless, of course, he was an actor of genius and his tale had been a fantastication from beginning to end.

  I jogged along, trying to slot together the pieces of such information as I had. It seemed to me that I had two separate strands which, taken singly, made some vague kind of pattern, but which, when I tried to weave them together, refused to create a satisfactory whole.

  My first theory was that Murrell had been removed by Pelham, the intention being to rid himself of an encumbrance. When I had confounded Sir Harry by appropriating the all-important code-book, he had put the miserable assistants to death in his efforts to find the missing papers. This was my favourite theory, for the last two murders, I felt sure, could be linked directly to Pelham.

  But this also left d’Urfey’s death unaccounted for; likewise the fact that the attempt on Pelham’s own life had some similarity to d’Urfey’s.

  My second theory was that Lord Wroth and d’Urfey had engineered Murrell’s death between them, if they had not actually taken part in the bloody brawl. It seemed the uncomplicated way that a lad like his lordship would deal with a threat to his “honour”. The black savage had murdered d’Urfey in revenge, after her own fashion. Then, still being uncertain of the true identity of her master’s executioner, she had made a similar attempt on Pelham’s life. If she had planned further retribution on Lord Wroth, she had been baulked of her satisfaction by her own violent end.

  All this, as I say, made some kind of pattern in my mind, but there were too many inexplicable knots in the weave, too many rough ends. The single strands would not thread together.

  That is, if I took Pelham at his word.

  If I ignored his tale, of course, the pattern was quite different and made more appeal. Pelham himself was the black, villainous thread throughout. Everything that had happened could be laid to his hand. He had murdered Murrell, the apprentice, the Negress, and possibly d’Urfey. The attack on his own life had been carried out by the black woman and he had tried to confound me by implicating Oliver Wroth.

  Which made me think of Oliver Wroth. What, if anything, had he to do with the business? His sole concern, he had suggested, was the protection of his grandmother.

  Why had he t
ried to make me abandon the search for his cousin Kitty? If Pelham’s story was true and Lord Wroth was not the legitimate heir, Oliver had more right to the succession. And if Oliver knew this extraordinary story, he would be a rare man indeed not to seek to profit by it. And yet he had tried to dissuade me from finding Miss Kitty, and she was the one who might settle the title on his shoulders.

  If only I could disentangle the facts from the fiction in Pelham’s story! If only I could ask for the Wroth version of his extraordinary tale.

  But how could I approach Lady Wroth on such an indelicate mission? She had hired me to return the receipts, not to uncover a potential cesspit. Was it not enough that I had to go to her saying that no such receipts existed, without insulting her family into the bargain?

  I had not worked out the answer to this by the time I was admitted to the house.

  XXII

  In the event, my anxiety proved unnecessary, for I was not allowed to see her ladyship. Instead, I was left to brood downstairs for above half an hour. When the door opened, it was Mr. Oliver who came into the room.

  He inclined his head by a bare fraction. The unamiable stiffness had returned to his bearing. He advanced towards a table and taking a purse from his pocket he counted out a number of coins.

  “This was the price agreed upon for your services, Captain Nash. If you will give me an account of your expenses, we shall conclude this business.”

  “We shall, Sir?” I said, taken with some surprise.

  “My grandmother is indisposed. This affair has caused her considerable hardship. She asks me to thank you on her behalf and to settle your account.”

  “But, Sir,” I protested. “My business is not yet at an end.”

  The curious light-coloured eyes were, of a sudden, as dull as stones.

  “I assure you that it is, Captain. We have no further need of you.”

  “I have not yet – ”

  “This business is finished!” he said violently. “The receipts were delivered here last night.”

  “Delivered?” I was stunned. I had come to report the possibility that no such papers existed.

  “How?” I asked.