The Reluctant Assassin

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  Sybil reached the door first and Tessie almost fell into the hall. She was holding her daughter in her arms and had flung a cloak over her head, which she had pulled round little Liz to protect her from the wet, but Tessie’s skirt and shoes were drenched. ‘Mistress Stannard! Mr Watts! Oh, I’m sorry, bursting in like this but we need help at the stud. It’s awful!’

  ‘What’s awful? Tell us quickly!’ I said. We were all on our feet, alarmed, wondering what on earth was happening now.

  ‘It’s that horrible stallion!’ Tessie was in tears. ‘It’s frightened of thunder and it broke out of its stable. Again! It must have broken its tethering rope; I saw the frayed end. It was outside, charging about and whinnying and then it crashed right inside our cottage! The wind blew the door open! It’s there inside, rearing and snorting and lashing out. Joseph tried to calm it but it knocked him down … no, he wasn’t hurt but he’s taken refuge upstairs; it’s too much for him on his own …’

  ‘Where are the other grooms?’ demanded Brockley. He had already in a muttered aside sent Philip for boots and cloaks. ‘Where’s Miller? He should be able to cope if anyone can! Isn’t he back from Guildford?’

  ‘The under-grooms are frightened to go near and no, Laurence Miller hasn’t come back!’

  ‘You need not go, ma’am,’ said Dale reassuringly. ‘Leave this to the men.’

  ‘It’s my stud and my stallion,’ I said. ‘And my missing groom! Oh, dear God. Must everything happen at once? First Harry, now this! Cloak, Dale! And my boots. Someone fetch me a hat. I’m going. Brockley, Philip, Arthur, Simon, Eddie, you all come with me. Thick cloaks, all of you. Someone bring some lanterns. We’d best go on foot. The horses are tired and I wouldn’t want to have them out in this anyhow. Tessie, stay here with Liz. Sybil, Dale, look after them. Get them dry; make hot possets for them.’

  Out in the storm, it was frightening. The rain pounded down on us and the zigzags of lightning, striking earthwards from the sky, were like lances aimed at us by angry gods. On foot it seemed to take for ever to get to Tessie’s cottage and we were all thankful for our heavy cloaks. In fact, by the time we got there, out of breath because we had hurried so, the worst was over. The rain had settled to a more ordinary downpour and the thunder and lightning were fading away towards the east. The cottage seemed to loom up suddenly, a blacker hulk against the stormy sky. Full darkness had fallen.

  ‘What were the grooms about, letting it happen?’ I panted. ‘That animal needs a chain in weather like this, not a rope.’

  We were almost at the door. The cottage was a simple place, with a front door opening straight into its main room, its parlour, from which a staircase led upstairs, where there were three small adjoining bedchambers. Downstairs, there was a kitchen and storeroom at the back and that was all. The parlour was well furnished, though. Its floor was deep in fresh rushes, and there was a sturdy table with benches on either side, a wooden settle and a brick hearth. It was a place where Joseph’s mother, and now Tessie, could welcome women friends for a glass of ale and a gossip. It was a home for a family.

  It was not, however, the right place for a horse. But the front door stood open and there inside, wildly out of place, was Bay Hawkswood. In the light of Brockley’s lantern, we could see that he was terrified. His coat was soaked in sweat and his eyes were white-ringed, their pupils glinting red in the lantern light. His ears were flattened back. At the sight of us he half-reared, pawing the air with his angry hooves. He knocked his head on the ceiling and snorted with rage, presenting us with a view of flared, red-lined nostrils.

  We could see that he wore a headcollar, and that from it dangled a short length of frayed rope. He had been strong enough to break it when the thunder sent him wild. He had kicked one of the benches across the room, and shoved the table aside. He looked demonic.

  Two of the under-grooms were hovering at hand and came towards us.

  ‘We’re sorry …’

  ‘We fetched him in when the weather turned bad, and hitched him up in a stall; fresh hay, fresh straw, water bucket, he should have been all right but the thunder started and he broke out!’

  ‘We tried to catch him, but he turned on Jem Higgs, knocked him flying …’

  ‘Would of trampled him only we dragged him clear just in time …’

  ‘Poor Jem got such a crack on the hip – he’s lying on a pile of straw in the stable now …’

  ‘Caught me on the backside, kicking out … he’s crazy! We did try, but we daren’t get close …’

  ‘Where’s Joseph?’ Brockley demanded, not in a shout that might frighten the horse but with an intonation that carried. A head immediately popped out of an upper window. ‘I’m here, Master Brockley. But I dursen’t go down; I’m that scared of him; he lashes out and tries to bite and his hooves are like hammers and his teeth are like knives!’

  I had never before heard Joseph sound so loquacious. Brockley said soothingly: ‘All right, stay there. I’ll see what I can do.’ He glanced round at the rest of us. ‘Stay back, all of you.’ He handed his lantern to Simon. ‘You take charge of that. Light my way from behind me. Don’t brandish the lantern about; just give me a steady light so that I can see where I’m stepping. The thunder’s almost gone; that should help. Now …’

  Brockley had once been a professional groom and now, it was a joy to watch him. He moved slowly forward, step by step, talking softly and calmly.

  ‘There we are. No thunder now, old boy. Nothing to be afraid of any more. Come on, lad, you don’t really want to be stabled in a cottage parlour, do you? Surely not. No nice manger full of oats in there. No hay, no bran mash. You don’t want rushes, now, do you? Come along, now, come along old fellow. No one wants to hurt you. The nasty thunder’s going away, nearly gone now. There’s a nice warm stable waiting for you. Deep straw, fresh water … come along …’

  The words, of course, could mean nothing to the horse, but the tone did. Brockley knew exactly how to use the deeper undertones of his voice so that they could soothe the terror that had so maddened the stallion. Bay Hawkswood was responding, though slowly. He was still tense, like a bowstring, and twice Brockley stopped his cautious advance because the horse had bared his teeth. When that happened, Brockley stood motionless but went on talking.

  Slowly, slowly, the stallion began to relax. His ears came forward to listen to Brockley’s calming tones. Without turning his head, Brockley said: ‘Someone bring some oats,’ and one of the stud grooms said: ‘I’ve got some here, in Jem Higgs’ hat.’

  ‘One of you has some sense, I see,’ said Brockley, still in those deep, comforting tones. ‘Bring it here.’ The groom handed the hat to him and he gently extended it, as a peace offering. The flared nostrils were taking an interest now in the smell of oats. The muzzle dropped, warily at first and then greedily, plunging into the offering of food.

  ‘There, that’s better,’ Brockley said. ‘All that panic and rage makes a fellow hungry, isn’t that so, now? That’s it, eat it all up …’

  A few moments later, the hat was empty and Brockley passed it back to the groom just behind him. One hand was on the dangling rope; the other was stroking Bay Hawkswood’s neck. Gently, quietly, Brockley led him out of the door. ‘I’ll take him back to his stable, out of the wet,’ he said. ‘I’ll rub him down. We’d better try to put the cottage right and get ourselves dry, too. But after that …’ his voice hardened ‘… I’ll want to know just where Laurence Miller has got to.’

  We put the stallion first. But when Bay Hawkswood had been dried and fed and settled in his stall and Jem Higgs had been got on his feet and proved to be badly bruised and severely shaken but nothing worse, we went back to the cottage. Between us, we righted the furniture and tidied away a pile of droppings that the frightened horse had left on the floor. The kitchen fire, which had been alight when the storm broke, was nearly out but Joseph brought it back to life and lit one in the parlour too. Fortunately – because Bay Hawkswood in his panic might have kicked it, h
urt himself and set the cottage on fire – the parlour fire had not been lit because Tessie was in the kitchen and had Liz with her.

  Joseph, now very much our host, mulled ale for us all and called us to hang our wet cloaks round the kitchen hearth to steam. We all gathered round the parlour hearth fireplace, thankful to be warm and dry and begin to ask questions.

  It then became clear that Miller’s whereabouts were, quite simply, unknown.

  ‘He went to Guildford early this morning,’ the groom who had brought the oats told us. ‘There’s new harness needed, madam, he told you, surely …’

  ‘Yes, he did. There are more youngsters to train this year than last,’ I agreed. ‘We’ll probably need a couple of extra training carts, too.’

  ‘Well, he went into Guildford to order the harness. He should have been back in the afternoon but he didn’t come. We don’t know where he is.’

  I looked at Brockley and he looked back at me. ‘Well, well,’ he said.

  ‘When he does reappear,’ I said, ‘if he reappears, and I am beginning to wonder, I want to see him. At once.’

  But nothing could be done just then. We went on talking in a desultory way and I found comfort in the fireside warmth, but when our cloaks were reasonably dry and the rain, thank goodness, had ceased and we were on our way home, the horrors descended on me again.

  Where was Harry? Where was he? Had we somehow missed him, despite our careful searching? Was he lying injured somewhere in the woods? Helpless, in pain, terrified and alone, in weather like this?

  SIX

  The Trap

  ‘Laurence Miller is back, madam,’ Brockley said, coming into the hall where I was finishing a hurried and early breakfast. ‘I have been to the stud to see. He arrived late last night. He said he had been to Woking to see his mother and was unable to start back when he wanted to because of the storm. I suppose it makes sense.’

  ‘But you don’t trust him? Brockley, do you really suppose he had something to do with … with Harry disappearing?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go so far as that. But we don’t know all that much about him, do we? The Earl of Leicester guaranteed his abilities as a stud groom but said nothing about his private life. He arrives here; shortly after that, Harry disappears, and Miller also disappears for a while. I understand that it was early morning when he left for Guildford to order harness. He had all day, near enough, to go to Woking and come back, and duties to do here. Let’s say, I’m wondering about him.’

  ‘We must keep watching him,’ I said. ‘And this morning, we begin the search again.’

  It proved fruitless, and I think I knew that in advance, but I could do no other. Anything was better than staying in the house, wondering, longing, hoping, while Harry’s bed, his place at the dinner table, his schoolroom all remained empty. I took Philip, Arthur and Joseph with me this time, though not Brockley, who said he would go to Guildford to verify as far as possible what Miller had told him.

  I and my three companions set out without delay and between us we quartered the woods again, and once more searched all the land within the Hawkswood boundaries and that immediately surrounding them. The woods were only on one side; on the others, there was open heath. The image of Harry was in my mind all the while, so vivid that I could not believe that he was really lost. His disappearance was like a bad dream.

  In the afternoon, I rode out again, alone this time, because even in these circumstances the stables had to be mucked out and the horses groomed, and Philip had volunteered to search the grounds again, on foot. ‘I may be able to peer into places where a horse can’t go. The thickets round the lake are quite dense.’

  On returning, I found an anxious deputation awaiting me in the hall. Brockley was not yet back, but Philip was. He, Dale and Sybil were in a state of fuss and Gladys was grumbling.

  ‘We didn’t know you’d gone off alone until you had, ma’am,’ said Dale reproachfully.

  ‘You should have told us. We’ve been worried. We couldn’t find you and never knew you’d gone out until we asked the grooms,’ said Sybil, also reproachfully.

  ‘Not good sense, no indeed,’ said Gladys, in the tone one would use to a foolish child.

  ‘You shouldn’t go out alone, Mistress Stannard,’ Philip said, clearly much concerned. ‘Not after whatever has happened to Harry. It’s too mysterious. I’m sure my father would advise against it. Mistress Stannard, if you want to go out searching – or for any reason at all – tomorrow, well, if my father is busy as I know he often is, please let me escort you.’

  ‘I suppose you could,’ I said. ‘It’s true that your father has many things to do, apart from investigating Mr Miller!’

  ‘I haven’t yet learned what my father’s actual work is, Mistress Stannard,’ Philip said. ‘It puzzles me a little. Adam Wilder is the steward and my father is your manservant, but what does that mean, precisely?’

  I managed a small laugh. ‘Brockley’s role has never been officially defined but I can answer the question. Wilder looks after the work inside the house. He oversees the maids; he talks to John Hawthorn and sees that supplies are purchased for the storeroom; he notices if any repairs are needed; he goes over the accounts with me. Brockley used to be a groom, as you must know. He keeps an eye on the stable yard and quite often lends a hand there, and he does many of the outside errands. Wilder and Hawthorn sometimes go out to buy food supplies and so on, but they are often busy with other things, so Brockley does most of that, and anything else that means riding out. He takes messages, places orders. And he is often about the grounds, just watching over things. He is invaluable. And it’s true that he is kept busy.’

  ‘Well, I have no pupil to teach just now,’ said Philip ruefully. ‘Unlike my father, I have no occupation. If you agree, I will be your bodyguard when you go out.’

  ‘There’s little point in it, now,’ said Sybil. She had the air of one who was not saying all that she was thinking. Dale looked at her and then away. And Gladys put it into words.

  ‘Anyone that’s been lying out there injured in the forest since yesterday morning, all through that storm and rain, ain’t like to be living man now, or living boy either. No good pretending, look you.’

  ‘Gladys!’ Dale shrieked it, horrified.

  I said: ‘I know Gladys is right, but still I must search. I will go out again tomorrow, and you can come with me, Philip. And the next day and the next. Until we find him, or news of him comes.’

  Sybil shook her head. ‘We can’t search for ever, dear Ursula. There is little we can do now, except pray.’

  Brockley reappeared before supper and found me sitting unhappily in the small parlour, trying to soothe my mind with a book of verse.

  ‘Madam, I have been to Guildford. It seems that Miller really did place an order for some new harness and spent some time discussing details, but he set off early and had finished the business before noon. Woking is only about five miles from Guildford, and only seven miles from here. He was riding Blaze and Blaze is a good horse. He could have got to Woking, stayed to eat dinner with his mother – stayed quite long enough for a visit from a dutiful son – and been back here, easily, before the storm began. I really do have doubts about him.’

  ‘Have you spoken to him?’

  ‘Yes, madam. When I got back to the stud, I questioned him and he simply said that he had visited his mother and stayed some time there to help her arrange some new furniture she has bought. I pressed him – pressed him hard, considering the mystery about Master Harry – but he became irritated and said that even a servant has a right to his own personal affairs, and then – after I had grabbed him by the front of his jacket and rammed him backwards against the wall of the stable – he said that while he was in Guildford he had also visited a woman, a friend of his. But he wouldn’t say her name or give me her direction. I didn’t believe him. I could get no more out of him. But it looks suspicious. There has been no news while I was out? No one has tried to get in touch with you?’

/>   ‘To ask for a ransom? No, Brockley, nothing and no one.’

  ‘My son says he has advised you against riding out alone, madam. I gather that he has offered to escort you if I happen to be busy. Well, tomorrow I want to go to Woking. John Hawthorn needs salt and sugar and spices and I understand that Margery is sorry but all the upset made her clumsy and she dropped a pile of earthenware bowls yesterday and broke three. I can get all those things there and while I’m about it I shall try to find Miller’s mother, and find out if he really did visit her when he says he did. I’ll also have my ears and eyes wide open, because if Harry has been kidnapped, he must have been taken to a house somewhere. If there have been strangers in the district, I might hear of it.’

  ‘He may have warned his mother to say he was there even if he wasn’t,’ I said glumly.

  ‘If we are to find out anything, we must try something. I suggest that you accept Philip’s offer.’

  ‘I shall send some of the grooms out as well,’ I said. ‘Philip and I can go in one direction; they can go in another. We seem to be going over the same ground, again and again but somewhere, somehow, there must be a trace. There must be!’

  Over supper, something else occurred to me.

  ‘We must alert the sheriff, Sir Edward Heron,’ I said. ‘We’ve all been thinking so much about accidents, but we’d have found him by now if it had been that. We’ve talked about the possibility that Harry’s been kidnapped but we haven’t done anything about it! Please go to Sir Edward as well, Brockley. Do that first and then go on to Woking.’

  ‘Aye, I will,’ said Brockley grimly. ‘What will you do, madam?’