by Mira Stables
Chapter Fourteen
Giles snipped the last length of sticking plaster and dropped the roll on to the table which already held a motley collection of bowls, swabs, probes and forceps. The man on the bed scowled up at him without gratitude.
“He’ll do now,” announced the self-appointed surgeon. “Luck of the devil’s own—naught but torn flesh, as’ll heal easy enough. Born to be hanged, that’s you,” he apostrophised the patient, “and the sooner the better.”
“Yes, well, we’ll see about that, all in good time.” Charles sounded rather amused by his henchman’s venom. “Now if we just secure that arm to his body”—and he proceeded to wind the injured groom into a helpless cocoon with broad strips of torn sheet, which was probably good for the immobilisation of the wounded limb but certainly put a premium on any attempt at escape, after which he picked up a cup from the table where Giles had dropped the sticking plaster.
“Just lift him up so that he can drink,” he said, “and then you can be getting back. I’ll manage well enough now, and I don’t want—the place—” he hurriedly substituted, “left unguarded.”
Obediently, though without any significant gentleness, Giles hauled his patient into a semi-recumbent position and thrust a couple of spare pillows behind him.
“I want naught of your drinks,” the man snarled at him, and spat a foul oath.
“Nor I wouldn’t be wasting good brandy on scum the likes of you,” retorted Giles, “but orders is orders, and if the Captain says drink, you drinks, see?” And taking the cup from Charles’s hand, he forced the rim between the man’s clenched teeth and tilted it so that the liquid ran down his gullet. The unwilling recipient choked, gulped and then swallowed, with diminishing reluctance as he realised that he was indeed drinking brandy and water.
The cup drained, he was permitted to lie back against the pillow, and Charles had the satisfaction of seeing his sickly pallor yield to a more normal colour. Having assured himself that the bonds securing the prisoner to the bed frame were still intact, and taken the further precaution of removing the lamp from its position by the bed and placing it well out of reach on the mantel shelf, he followed Giles out of the room, assuring the prisoner that he would shortly return to talk with him, and would not keep him waiting long.
He was as good as his word. He and Giles had already agreed that the big groom should show no concern over the absence of his master, or of Ransome, who was after all only a chance-come gypsy. Sir Charles would no doubt turn up in his own good time, and Ransome was little loss.
“Keep your eyes and ears open, but don’t try to follow them. And take good care of Miss Nell.”
Giles grinned and shook his head. “Seems like as if the boot’s on the other foot,” he suggested slyly. “She do seem to have taken good care of thee, Master Charles. ’Twarn’t your bullet I dug out of that rapscallion. Eh! She’s a mettlesome lass, and a real credit to the regiment.” And off he went, chuckling to himself at the way in which he had scored off his master, and apparently as fresh as though he had not already ridden or driven some forty miles, helped to smuggle an unconscious man from the Fleece to Trevannions, and topped off with a gory surgical operation.
Charles returned to the old nursery, which had been considered the most suitable place for the bestowal of the captive, since its windows were barred and it was situated at a distance from the inhabited portions of the house.
Ransome’s features were set in a mask of determined obstinacy. He was clearly committing himself to a course of dumb resistance. If he simply refused to utter he could neither betray his masters nor further incriminate himself.
Charles drew up a chair to the side of the bed, poured himself a glass of brandy from the decanter which still stood on the cluttered table, and eyed his subject thoughtfully. There was something hearteningly familiar about the set of Ransome’s mouth. Not for nothing had Charles served his term as an efficient and well liked company officer. A man in that mood would undergo the tortures of the damned rather than utter one word that might reveal his secrets. Possibly the brandy had been a mistake. But Giles’s surgery, while not deliberately brutal, had been rather rough and ready, and the poor devil had endured without so much as a grunt.
Such a man was unlikely to break. But in Charles’s experience he might well, if unfairly accused of something not directly connected with his secret, defend himself with the utmost volubility. Sometimes in this relaxed mood he could be led to reveal what was required. The essential thing was to get him talking. With a pretty fair notion of the fellow’s one soft spot, he was prompt to attack.
“How dare you meddle with my horse?” he said in a voice of cold fury, and saw at once that he had scored a hit. The man’s eyes flickered in surprise and the set lips parted slightly.
“Thanks to you,” Charles ranted on, “I’ve had to call in the farrier to destroy an animal that’s worth a dozen of your worthless carcase. What witches brew did you give him?”
“I didn’t—you can’t—there’s no call to have him destroyed,” the man stammered, his face alive with genuine concern. “I’d not harm any horse—least of all a grand fellow like the Marquis. You leave him be. He’ll take no hurt from aught I gave him.”
“And I suppose I’d have taken no hurt from what you tried to give me?” retorted Charles.
Ransome showed signs of relapsing into the sullens once more.
“I suppose you never stopped to think that if you succeeded in finishing me, the Marquis would have been blamed, and would certainly have been destroyed as vicious?”
“They wouldn’t never? A valuable animal like that? Why if I’d known that I never would have taken the job on. But it seemed an easy way of—” He broke off, realising that he was being led into indiscretion, and scowled angrily at Charles.
“Yes. Why did you take it on? What was your grudge against me, that you were so anxious to put a period to my existence?” enquired Charles lazily, as one only mildly interested.
“You’re a military man, and I hates ’em all. And with good cause, Mister Captain,” growled Ransome. “He was a Captain, too. Now if I could only get a chance at him, I’d not use a bit of a stick. Just to get my two ’ands round ’is throat and squeeze and squeeze, gentle like, so’s it took a nice long time, and ’im knowing it was me, and paying at last for all ’e done to us.”
He was talking freely enough now, if rather incoherently, his face flushed and his eyes glittering oddly. Charles realised that he was becoming feverish, but this was no time to develop scruples over listening to his ramblings. If, by so doing, he could get the information that he sought, he would not cavil at the means. He poured a little brandy into the cup and filled it up with cold water. “Thirsty?” he asked. And at Ransome’s nod held the cup to his lips. “Don’t think me grudging of the brandy now,” he said carelessly. “Your wound’s nothing so desperate, but I’ve seen enough of such to know that too much wine only inflames them.”
He set the cup down. “Tell me about the captain you wanted to choke the life out of,” he invited.
“Aye. Him—and his father, and his dear kind lady mother,” jerked the man viciously. “And my own precious master that was mild and sweet as mare’s milk because they was gentry born and he was new-come-up, with his, ‘Why, yes indeed, Sir Gerald,’ and, ‘I’m sure you’re in the right of it, Lady Maria,’”—he mimicked the genteel accents with biting precision—“and the whole lot of them as cold and hard-hearted as Judas Iscariot himself.”
Some sharpening of his blurred and fevered gaze caught the momentary surprise in Charles’s expression, and read it aright. “Thought I was an ignorant heathen gypsy as ’ad never ’eard of such, didn’t you?” he jeered, and sank back wearily on to the pillows. For a little while he lay with closed eyes, the harsh lines of his face slowly relaxing, and when he again took up his tale he spoke more quietly. “And so I would have been if it hadn’t been for my Meg. She was like a gentle angel was Meg. She loved me true, poor and r
ough as I was, and she tried to teach me about what was right, just as her mother had taught her. Put her into service with Sir Gerald and Lady Maria, her mother had, just before she died of the lung rot. Thought her daughter’d be safe for ever in good service. Safe!” The voice was savagely bitter. “Well—I reckon she thought ’twas best, poor soul, Meg’s father being dead, and her uncle—well you know what he is. She’d no one else to turn to, and her dying.”
Delirious, thought Charles, for what part could he have in this rambling tale, and how should he know anything about this mysterious uncle?
Ransome’s eyes were half closed now, but the hoarse voice took up its burden once more. “We were promised, Meg and me. I was only under groom, but I’d always a knack with the horses. We made it up as we’d be wed as soon as I got to be groom, for there was snug quarters over the stables that we could have, and we was happy, planning and saving. And then young Master Gerald comes home. Captain Gerald I should say. And with naught better to amuse himself, he sets to seducing my Meg, though we two silly greenheads never guessed what he was at. It was her job, seeing as she was upstairs maid, to see to his room and his linen, and he was for ever a’ringing for her and wanting this and that. Real pleasant he seemed, and often slipped her a shilling, which we was both pleased about, seeing it helped on our savings.”
He fell silent again. Charles watched him quietly, touched by pity even for his would-be murderer, for truth and tragedy grated through every bitter syllable, and it was only too easy to guess what was coming.
“Drunk, he was, the night it happened,” the tired voice broke across his reflections, “though she didn’t guess it at first when he sent for her. And when she knew what he would be at, she fought him as best she could. But she darsn’t cry out, for well she knew who’d be blamed. So he forced her. She came crying to me in the wood next night—a pretty place it was, where we used to meet times, with the bluebells and the wild bracken, and told me ’twas all over between us, for she was no maid any more and not fitting for me to marry. Wild, she talked, about throwing herself in the river and ending her shame. By and by I got her quieted down a bit, and she promised she’d not do anything ’thout telling me, and when I left her she seemed more sensible like.”
“Going back through the wood I was planning on going to the master and asking if he’d let us have a little place, so’s we could be married and I could look after her. That was when I comes across this rabbit. ’Twas caught in one of they spring traps. Any other time I’d have knocked it on the head and left it, for what would I want with a rabbit, getting my victuals regular enough? But that night—well—there was a look in its eyes that made me think of Meg, and when I touched it, its fur was soft like her hair. I forced the trap open with a bit of a branch and lifted it out, and it was while I was stood with it in my hands, looking at its crushed leg and thinking I’d best put it out of its misery after all, that they took me.”
He lay quietly for a while and the drooping eyelids closed. Charles thought he was drowsing off—a pity—for so far the rambling talk had revealed nothing of value and had only served to arouse his sympathy for the fellow. But in a moment or two the head on the pillow stirred restlessly, the heavy eyes opened again, and a smile of purest satisfaction curved the tired mouth.
“I can’t never be truly sorry for it—though I know ’twas because of that everything went wrong. ’Twasn’t so much the keeper you see—a decent enough lad as’d never have split on me for one rabbit, even if I ’ad took it—but just as I was a’going to tell ’im and show ’im the trap, who should come strolling up but our young master Captain Gerald. And when I saw ’is smooth smirking face—I let ’im ’ave it. The thought of ’im and my Meg—”
Even at the memory his left hand—the good one—bunched itself into a powerful fist, and Charles could see the ripple of the muscles in the forearm and the lift in the shoulder. It had been a mighty, a soul satisfying blow, which had deprived the dis-Honourable Gerald of two front teeth and spread his aristocratic nose over his dissipated countenance in such fashion that it was never quite the same again.
But it had been a solitary satisfaction and a costly one. The keeper—up to that point a friendly neutral—had felt bound to come to the aid of his employer’s son, and not being handy with his fists had used the butt of his gun. Young Ransome had come to himself in the lock-up. Characteristically he had taken refuge in stubborn silence, determined not to involve Meg in his troubles, and had steadfastly refused to give any explanation which might have mitigated his crime. So it was not surprising that he had been sentenced to transportation, having been found guilty of the heinous crime of poaching, seriously aggravated, of course, by his dastardly attack on an innocent young man. Fortunate to escape hanging, he was severely informed.
He had served several years of his sentence under appalling, brutalising conditions, before an opportunity of escape occured and he was able to make his way back to England. Since he had neither friends nor money it seemed probable that this had been achieved by a combination of cunning and violence, but he volunteered no details. His search for Meg had done nothing to dissipate the bitter rancour with which he was consumed. His enquiries—necessarily furtive, since his very presence in the country must be concealed—had discovered the fact that she had been summarily dismissed from her post upon the realisation that she was pregnant, and that he himself was generally held to be responsible for her condition.
It had taken him another six months to trace her, and then only through a chance meeting with a lad who had given her a lift in his cart when she was turned away from the manor. He had felt sorry for the poor lass, and had set her several miles on her way. She was going, she told him, to seek her uncle, the only relative she had. Ransome had known vaguely of the uncle’s existence but since Meg had always spoken of him with fear and dislike had never dreamed that she would seek refuge with him. It had been fairly simple after that to trace her to the village of Wintringham. “The brat,” he said, “was dead—born dead.” And his Meg still drudged for her brute of an uncle because he had taken her in when her need was desperate.
Charles gasped, and stared at him. Not till that moment had he identified the meek, much harassed Miss Smithson with the pathetic little heroine of Ransome’s story. The silence lengthened. His story done, Ransome seemed to be yielding to exhaustion, his eyes closed, a pallid shade about his mouth.
“I still don’t see why you tried to murder me,” Charles objected. “Hadn’t you troubles enough? You say yourself that you’re lying low. This afternoon’s little caper was just the thing to draw attention on yourself. As my groom you would certainly have been required to give evidence. Why didn’t you just take your Meg and make off with her?”
The heavy lids were raised, and the dark eyes regarded him steadily with a touch of weary scorn. “Aye. You would think like that. You well-breeched swells that’s never had to worry where the ready’s coming from. A chap on his own can manage somehow. There’s ways and means of getting about for one who ain’t too particular. But my Meg’s a decent woman. I’ll not have her mixed up with such company. So how was I to get her out of the country—and where could we go—without money? I was offered a fair price for the job—and I took it, see? I don’t say I liked it. You wasn’t a bad sort of a cove, and you’d a good eye for a horse, and murder’s a dirty business. But it was a chance to bring the pair of us off—and I took it.”
“And I suppose Sir Nicholas threatened to inform against you if you didn’t,” said Charles gently. “Tell me, what’s my price? I’m eager to know what value he sets on me.”
The dark eyes widened, and the man struggled to raise himself on his sound elbow, glaring at Charles with a recurrence of his old hostility. “Who said ’twas Sir Nicholas?” he demanded fiercely. “I never did, no, nor I wouldn’t tell you who paid me, whatever you done.”
Charles pressed him back on the pillow. “Lie still, or you’ll start that arm bleeding again. And content yourself.
You gave nothing away. There was no need. I’ve known what your purpose was ever since Rudd first brought you to my notice.”
“And still took me on? You’re a mighty cool hand, Governor, ain’t you?”
Charles laughed. “I’ll admit to certain qualms,” he acknowledged. “But I judged you were not addicted to throat slitting, and shooting seemed unlikely if my death was to be disguised as accident, as seemed most probable. After all another mysterious murder in the same locality might call for more ingenuity of explanation than even Sir Nicholas could well supply.”
It was obvious that this was news to the prisoner. “Another murder?” he asked.
“Why yes. A young man was found with his throat cut, a month or two back—a young man who had been staying at the Fleece. Did not your amiable fellow conspirators advise you of this? Or tell you that, the victim being heir to an earldom, the matter was by no means forgotten?”
“They never told me about no young man being murdered,” Ransome muttered sullenly. “Meg did warn me not to have anything to do with their schemes. Up to no good, she said, the pair of them. So I didn’t tell her about the job I was to do. They said you was a spy, nosing out all you could about the trade in these parts. Now me, I’ve good cause to be grateful to the Gentlemen, and I don’t like spies. So what with one thing and another—” He shrugged, winced, and fell silent again.
Charles, too, was deep in thought. He seemed to have made little progress unless it could be counted as progress to have Ransome’s confirmation that Sir Nicholas and Rudd were in league together, and that, after all, had been pretty evident from the start. He decided to leave further decision till morning, or rather till he had slept on it, a glance at the clock assuring him that morning had already come. Better snatch some sleep while he could. He got up, yawning, and picked up the lamp.