The silence, and Hoare's stare, stretched on, and on, and on. In due course, Captain Spurrier sobered and rose to his feet, his chair toppling behind him. The young woman of parts forgot to giggle and stooped to right the chair. She hastily brought another for the visitor.
"My muteness is an unfortunate matter, sir," Hoare said in a placatory whisper as he seated himself, "even more for me than it is for you, I assure you… My whisper has less to do with secrecy, however, than it does with an injury. I am sure you understand…
"Now to return to the matter of the missing head and the chaise… I refer, of course, to the deaths of Captains Francis and Benjamin Getchell. Naturally, the Admiralty is much concerned. What can you, as…?"
"Deputy Sheriff of Dorset for the Dorchester region- under Sir Thomas Frobisher, of course. And you'd be…"
"Your servant, sir. The name's Hoare. Bartholomew Hoare, at your service. In all respects," he added warningly. "What, I ask you once again, can you tell me about the deaths of the two Captains Getchell?"
Captain Spurrier was not prepared to be stared out of countenance again.
"I must consult my journals, sir. Will you be pleased to step over to my quarters?"
He led his unwelcome guests across the High Street to what might have once been the house of a prosperous merchant, with a black front door. Grasping an oddly phallic handle, Captain Spurrier opened the door and gestured to the others to precede him.
Hoare nearly coughed as he stepped into the shadowy hallway; beside him he heard Thoday sniff. A few times, particularly in the parish church of Sainte-Foi in Quebec where he had wedded his dear dead Antoinette, Hoare had been present at High Mass. Now he smelled the same cloying, pungent odor of cold incense. Why, he wondered, would Walter Spurrier, bold Captain in the Something Horse, burn incense in his quarters?
If the room to which Spurrier led Hoare was his place of business, it was a peculiarly furnished one, dark-paneled and lit by stained-glass windows as if it were some sort of chapel. Next to a great Bible on a stand, a wide, cluttered desk stood in the stained-glass window. Moving quickly, Spurrier strode to the desk, displacing a chair as he passed it so that it hindered Hoare and Thoday's path. When Spurrier threw a large piece of embroidered fabric over the desk, the breeze of its falling blew several papers to the heavily carpeted floor.
Hoare bent to retrieve them, nearly bumping heads with Thoday and his host.
"Thankee, gentlemen," Spurrier said when they handed him the papers.
"Now, let me see," Spurrier said. He seated himself at the far side of the desk and lifted one corner of the cloth. It looked to Hoare like some kind of garment. "Yes. Yes. Here we are."
He drew out several rumpled sheets of paper and pretended to inspect them.
"Says nothing here about any Getchell," he said. "You've probably been led astray."
"They were brothers, Mr. Spurrier. Getchell was their name. And I have not been led astray."
Uninvited, Hoare took a seat at the desk opposite the Captain and gestured to Thoday to follow suit.
Spurrier cleared his throat. "Now then, sir. What, more precisely, would you wish to know?"
"Our intention is the same as yours, of course," Hoare whispered, "to lay the culprits by the heels and see them hanged. But if you don't mind… I'll have my colleague, Mr. Thoday, tell you what we know so far and what we would like to know. The spirits are willing, but, alas, as you pointed out so wittily just now, my voice is weak."
Spurrier turned to Thoday with something of a patronizing air.
"Enlighten me, then, my good man."
Unruffled, Thoday summarized the events he had described to Hoare and Rabbett in the Nine Stones Circle, without disclosing his method. When he was finished, Spurrier looked visibly less patronizing.
"I suppose you have evidence for what you have just told me?"
"Indeed," Thoday said.
"For instance, you claim that there were three murders."
"Four, sir. The two Captains whose bodies now rest in the Church of All Angels and two drivers."
"Four, then." Spurrier's voice was impatient. "How do you know about the third death, or the fourth, for that matter?"
"The Navy driver remains unaccounted for. He has simply been either abducted-which would serve the criminals no purpose-or killed, which they would have found far more convenient. The driver who replaced him was struck by a bullet, either aimed or accidentally, and died on his seat."
"Why are you so sure he is dead and not just wounded?"
"The blood he shed, Captain, was under high pressure. It spurted from him like water from a fire hose or, to use an analogy that will surely be more familiar to you, like so much horse piss. It was his heart's blood. Even a skilled surgeon-had one been present, which I beg leave to doubt-would have been hard put to it to stanch the flood in daylight, let alone moonlight. No, the second driver has already gone to his reward, as an unwelcome witness of the other killings."
"Tell us, if you please, what has been found of the other bodies, the missing head, and the chaise," Hoare said.
Again Captain Spurrier made much of looking through his papers.
"Er, I can tell you very little. One of the villagers in Grimstone says he heard a carriage and pair going north through the hamlet during the night at a gallop, but he saw nothing. Probably because he didn't want to see anything. In these parts, seeing too much can be dangerous. However, let me see. This is Saturday. The inquest is to be held on Tuesday. By then, I am confident that my men will have gathered all the evidence there is to be found. Meanwhile, no stone will be left unturned, I assure you. Of course, you are welcome to attend the inquest.
"In fact," Spurrier added, seemingly as an afterthought, "as coroner I may find it necessary to ordain your attendance, in light of your man-er-Thoday's findings. I still have my men out scouring the countryside, of course."
Hoare doubted that. Out of either natural indolence or concern for the wishes of some hidden master, Captain Spurrier would most certainly spend less of his time turning up stones on the trail of the men who had killed two Captains in the Royal Navy than he would turning up the skirts of the young woman of parts.
"Of course, Captain. I am, indeed, assured. Until Tuesday, then."
Captain Spurrier bowed to them from his doorstep and watched his two guests climb into their chaise, where they joined Rabbett.
"Weymouth, driver," Hoare whispered as he boarded.
"Will you be needing my services for a bit, Captain Hoare?" Rabbett asked before the driver could begin to obey. "You see, my mother and father dwell here in Dorchester, and it is more than a year since I have paid them my respects. I would be happy to walk to Weymouth from here. It would take me little more than two hours."
"Very good, Rabbett," Hoare said, "but put yourself to use while you are here. Lurk about whatever lurking spots you believe will bring you the most information… and bring me anything you can learn about what people are saying about this affair."
"I can do better than that for you, sir," said Rabbett. "My mother is gossip with half the womenfolk of Dorchester. I could have her tune her ears to the matter."
"Very good, Rabbett," Hoare said. "Until later, then." With a rap on the roof of the chaise, he signaled the driver to shove off.
This would be excellent. If Rabbett's ears were long, surely his mother's would be longer. So Hoare mused, then chided himself for succumbing, even if only in thought, to the selfsame idiot wit with which others had plagued him all his life.
"The Captain's papers, sir," Thoday murmured as the chaise rolled down the highway to Weymouth. "The ones he let fall from his desk and we helped him recover…"
"Yes?"
"Had I dared, I would have retained one of them, but Captain Spurrier's eyes were on them, and I have yet to pass muster with Blassingame."
"I do not understand you," Hoare said. "Who is Blassingame, and why should you pass muster with him?"
"Beg pardon, sir. Mark
Blassingame is sailmaker and prestidigitator-magician-in Royal Duke. Among other things, he teaches filching."
"Good heavens," Hoare whispered. He remembered the man now; he was the one who had been performing magic tricks before a group of shipmates in a corner of Royal Duke's working space.
"But what about the paper you wanted to filch?"
"I have seen Taylor-you remember Taylor at least, our student of codes and ciphers? — studying papers with the same texture and bearing the same distinctive writing pattern as the one I saw here just now. I am quite sure that the text was laid out in five-letter groups. I am therefore of the opinion, sir, that Captain Spurrier failed to conceal a ciphered message from our eyes. Moreover, sir, what was Captain Spurrier doing with a cope in his office?"
"A cope, Thoday? A clergyman's robe? Isn't that what a cope is?"
"Yes, sir. It was a cope he used to cover the materials on his desk. And a peculiar-looking cope it was, too."
"In what way?" Hoare asked idly. He was half-asleep.
"The embroidered figures looked sacrilegious, sir, if I may sound so fanciful."
Chapter IV
The Chaise's driver found the steep scarp leading down into Weymouth town a hard stretch to manage. At last, he had Hoare and Thoday disembark.
"I won't have you gentlemen's blood on my hands if she oversets," he said. At the foot of the scarp, however, he let them back aboard, so they were able to enter Weymouth in dignity instead of dust.
The depressing piles of neglected construction materials that Hoare had noted in the streets last summer had merely grown more grass. It was questionable if the King in Kew, sane again now but still bewildered, would soon return to his favorite watering place. But Hoare knew where he was now, so he could direct the driver to the Dish of Sprats. There Hoare dismissed him, telling him to return early Monday.
Joseph Parker, proprietor of the Dish, recognized Hoare and seemed pleased to see him again. Parker evidently viewed him and Titus Thoday as men of equal standing, for Thoday's appearance greatly belied his station.
Nonetheless, Hoare surprised his host by calling for two rooms instead of sharing one with his companion. Hoare was ready to travel with Thoday and dine at the same table with him but drew the line at sleeping with an enlisted man when he need not.
Before leaving the Dish of Sprats, Hoare suggested to Thoday that he see what the folk in the town hall might have to contribute about the Nine Stones Circle affair. Hoare himself planned to call on Mrs. Eleanor Graves, then board the cutter Walpole for a glass of Captain Israel Popham's burgundy and some information.
At his own assignment, Thoday demurred. "I think, sir, that we would be well advised to leave the world of clerks and countinghouses to Mr. Rabbett when he arrives. After all, that is the world of his calling, just as this district is more or less his geographic world. I have lines of my own that I might be better employed in following."
Thoday did not choose to be more specific, but Hoare must agree with his observation about Rabbett, so he changed his order to Thoday accordingly. Moreover, Hoare knew that word of his return to Weymouth would reach Sir Thomas Frobisher's ears within minutes, if it had not already done so. The Knight-Baronet would have instructed every one of the town's functionaries to cast every possible impediment in Hoare's way. So he withdrew to prepare himself, by sluicing his head and combing his coarse hair, for his next piece of business: paying a call upon the woman who held his heart.
Eleanor Graves still wore the dull black of mourning for her murdered husband, Simon. It did not suit her sallow complexion, but then, Hoare admitted to himself, he had yet to see her becomingly clad. She received him in the drawing room of the house she had shared with her late husband, sitting on her customary round, resilient tuffet. As usual, she looked rather round and resilient herself Once again, Hoare was amazed at how dearly he had come to love her.
She was accompanied by a family of three ill-assorted cats. A strange rumble filled the room, as if the tumbrels of the Terror were passing in the cobbled street outside. The kitten, a glossy, tidy little black beast, was attacking the tuft at the end of its mother's tail. It resembled its mother not at all; the latter was large, awkward, and flustered and bore random growths of whitish fluff on her body and limbs. An enormous gray animal crouched beside Mrs. Graves, watching his family and giving off a benign thunderous purr. This, then, was the source of the tumbrel sound.
Hoare reached down a hand as he passed the gray beast. It stretched up its head to meet the hand; the tumbrels seemed to draw nigh as they bore pinioned royalty to a ghostly guillotine.
Mrs. Graves pointed at the kitten after allowing her hand to be kissed. "Order," she said. "Out of Chaos." She pointed at the mother. "By Jove," she said, indicating the monster.
"Jupiter tonans, as I can hear," Hoare whispered.
"What happened to the rest of the litter?" he inquired.
"I cannot say," she said. "The dam, Chaos, would have no faintest idea. You might inquire of Order.
"But I must ask you how you do, Mr. Hoare, or, I should have said, Captain Hoare," she added. "And what brings you to Weymouth?"
"I do well enough, thank you," he said. "Once again, it is a crime that brings me."
"Leaving your little yacht behind?"
"I came by land this time and left Alecto behind."
"Now you have named the poor inoffensive thing after a Fury," she said. "Why, pray?"
"She has towed behind Royal Duke since I took command of the brig, dogging her trail as if she were one of the three dire sisters pursuing Orestes."
"An unkindness to both vessels, it would seem to me. My felicitations on your advancement, just the same. My friend Miss Austen apprised me of it, though you did not condescend to do so. But there… How does little Jenny do?" she asked.
"The landlord's Susan is caring for her well enough, teaching her her manners and watching her diet," Hoare said, "but I am not in the child's good books just now… for I must now sleep aboard my command, as is required of all Masters and Commanders in the Service, and may no longer lodge at the Swallowed Anchor. So I am rarely there to see her to her bed and give her her nightly blessing. She is not amused.
"Also, I have placed her in a dame school, for it seems she has never been taught her letters. She objected very strongly, until I promised her a kitten if she learned to write… her alphabet. So just now, I imagine, she is sitting at the inn kitchen table, her little tongue stuck out, struggling bravely. I am told that she has now reached K; it may be so."
"K stands for 'kitten,' I suppose. Hmmm," Mrs. Graves said. "I have sealed Order's fate, then."
"Which one of the Fates deals with kittens?" Hoare asked.
Eleanor Graves put her head on one side thoughtfully. "All three of them, I should say. But surely not Atropos in this matter, Mr. Hoare-"
"Bartholomew, please… Eleanor."
"Very well. Bartholomew, then. For Atropos decides the time of one's death. And I cannot be Clotho, who spins the thread. Clotho must be Chaos, the creature's dam. I must then, must I not, be Lachesis, who measures the kitten's life? Well, I shall assume the role. Order is yours, then, to take to Miss Jenny when you believe your fosterling is ready."
"I hope Order and her new mistress will come back to you soon afterward," Hoare said.
"Not yet, Bartholomew, not yet," she murmured.
"Er, no. I agree. First, Jenny must earn her kitten," Hoare whispered.
"That is not precisely what I meant, Bartholomew."
Eleanor Graves offered Hoare tea, which was brought by an old acquaintance, Eleanor's abigail, Agnes. The widow seemed pleased rather than otherwise to know he would be remaining in the area for some days but did not probe into the nature of the crime he had mentioned. She did not invite him to dine.
Perhaps, Hoare thought, as he proceeded on his next errand, he had made some progress in his campaign for Eleanor Graves's hand. She had not objected to his using her Christian name and had willingly
adopted the use of his own. She had quietly accepted his offer to accompany her to church tomorrow, it being a Sunday. She could hardly know he was no churchgoer.
Captain Israel Popham of the revenue cutter Walpole, a lieutenant in the Customs Service-his "Captaincy," like Hoare's own, being the mere courtesy due his command- received him like the old friend he was. After toasting Hoare's new swab in his own fine contraband Bordeaux, he sat back to hear what his guest might have to say. At Hoare's mention of the Nine Stones Circle, he whistled softly and thoughtfully.
"That's a very interesting spot, sir, on several counts. You've been there, I take it?"
Hoare nodded.
"Then you know it has an unearthly air about it, as though the spirits of the old… but I wax poetic. It's an odd place, to be sure, and the folk thereabouts steer clear of it, especially of nights. Especially of a moonlight night. Ghosts walk there, they believe.
"Now, I know for certain that there are those of the Upright Men who make use of that superstition as a cover for their work. My predecessor in Walpole told me of catching a gang of 'em sorting out a cargo in the Circle itself.
"I'll tell you who would have more to tell you about the place. He's an acquaintance of yours, in fact."
Popham paused for a sip and watched his guest, evidently waiting for his curiosity to get the better of him.
"Very well, Mr. Popham, who?" Hoare whispered at last.
"Dunaway, that's who. Abel Dunaway," Popham said. "You may remember fishing him and a friend out of the Channels t'other day."
"I'll be damned," Hoare whispered.
"Yes. The old rascal and I are ancient adversaries. He wins some, I win some, and nobody's hurt-so far, at least. He's probably won more than I know of. As long as Sir Thomas Fat-Arse is the law hereabouts, Dunaway's safe enough in the courts. Just the same, a bad little bird chirped in my ear not so long ago, and my men took up a nice parcel of his brandy. Have a drop?"
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