by Lynch, R J
The smile on Mary’s face was openly contemptuous. ‘I searched no wall. I was never in Reuben Cooper’s cottage.’
‘I do not believe you.’
She shrugged.
‘We know there was money in that place, whether it was in the wall or elsewhere. And you had it.’
‘Not I, sir.’
‘Tell us about the coat, Mary.’
‘Coat? What coat, man?’
‘Don’t man me, you impudent nowt,’ said Blakiston. ‘The coat you took to pawn in Newcastle.’
‘Oh. That coat.’
‘I warn you, woman...’
‘Mister Wale had a coat,’ said Mary lazily. ‘He wanted to raise money and he asked me to see what I could get by pawning it.’
‘Why would he ask you?’
She shrugged. ‘He was embarrassed to do it himself, mebbes. Him bein’ a curate, an’ all.’
‘Rubbish,’ spat Blakiston. ‘There is nothing in you but lies. The money was for you, to bring off the child you were expecting.’
‘Child? I have but the two, sir, and I had them long before the curate had a coat to pawn.’
‘How long do you imagine you can keep this up? We know you were with child. Wale has told us so.’
‘I believe Mister Wale must be demented, sir.’
Lack of progress by now had made Blakiston apoplectic. ‘Mistress Stewart in the pawn shop tells the same tale!’
Mary was unmoved. ‘It was awful dark in that shop, sir. And I wouldn’t call the old biddy the cleanest woman I ever met. Not much light coming through all the filth on them windows. Hard to see anything very clearly. You’d think someone who had glass windows would keep them clean, would you not, sir?’
‘What the devil do you think I care for a pawn broker’s windows? What about the crucifix? The crucifix Lady Isabella gave you when you prayed together to end your sinful ways? The crucifix that ended in Matthew Higson’s grave? I suppose you have an answer for that, too?’
‘Mary,’ said the Rector. ‘I would like you to wait outside this room for a moment. If you like, you may visit the kitchen and ask Rosina for a dish of tea.’
The smile Mary gave Blakiston was one of pure contempt. ‘Did you see that?’ he spluttered when she had left the room. ‘She thinks he has bested me. I’ll see her in hell, Thomas!’
‘James. I called a pause because we are getting nowhere. She is guilty or she is not...’
‘I know she is guilty.’
‘...but you will not crack that carapace with questions. Perhaps we should visit her hovel.’
At that point, they heard Lady Isabella’s voice in the hallway. ‘Mary, my dear! My, you’re looking well. But who is caring for the children? And what a lovely gown! How ever did you afford such a thing?’
The two men looked at each other. ‘Dear Christ!’ shouted Blakiston, leaping to his feet.
‘James!’ said the shocked Rector. But Blakiston was already out of the door and Claverley rushed to follow. The look Mary was directing at Lady Isabella was filled with anger and loathing.
‘The children are in the kitchen with Rosina,’ said Claverley. ‘But what did you say of this jezebel’s gown? Have you never seen it before?’
‘Do you never look?’ said Isabella. ‘’Can you not see? How many times have you seen poor Mary, and she always the poorest of women, and here she is dressed like the Queen of Sheba and you notice nothing. The gown is new. Anyone can see that. And such quality! I could never afford such a gown. This is a gown for a woman of position. Have you found a rich suitor, Mary? And the hat! I never saw you in a hat. It shows off your lovely hair to perfection.’
Claverley smiled. ‘Thank you, my dear. James and I will be out of doors for a while. We must needs search this harlot’s home.’
Shaken by the look she was receiving from Mary, Isabella said, ‘But what on earth do you expect to find there, husband?’
‘Clearly, that gown and hat you are so enamoured of were bought with stolen money. There may be more of it and, if there is, we shall find it.’
‘Men! How long have we been married? And still you know nothing of a woman’s ways.’
‘Please do not speak in riddles, Isabella.’
‘There is no need to snap at me. Have you ever been in Mary’s house? There is no safe or strong room there, I assure you. Not even a box she may lock. If Mary has money she wishes to keep secure, it will be sewn into her petticoats. But, Mary. This is not true, now is it? After all we have said to each other, you have not been stealing?’
But Mary was making a dash for the door and it was all Blakiston could do to restrain her—though not before her fingernails had raked agonisingly down his cheek, drawing blood. She screamed at Isabella. ‘You interfering, sanctimonious bitch!’
‘Well!’ said Isabella. ‘Well!’
‘Hold her, Blakiston,’ said the Rector, ‘and I will search her petticoats.’
‘You will do no such thing,’ said his wife. ‘You may assist Mister Blakiston in keeping her fast. If anyone is to search the girl it will be me.’
Mary kicked furiously but Isabella stood to one side and felt methodically around the petticoat. With a grunt of satisfaction, she took a paper knife from the Rector’s desk and began to unpick some threads. She extracted a bundle of bank notes and placed them on the desk. Mostly twenties, but there was a single one thousand pound note among them.
The Rector picked them up. ‘There is a great deal of money here.’
But Isabella had already begun on another part of the petticoat. ‘There is more.’
When both the sewn up pockets had been emptied, they stared at the pile of money.
‘Reuben Cooper had all this?’ said Claverley.
‘The proceeds of his sale of the Blackett girl back to her family,’ said Blakiston. ‘Notice that there are no ten pound bills. They only came in after the Seven Years War, and her kidnapping was earlier than that.’
‘Astonishing. But what is that?’
Blakiston picked up the paper Thomas was pointing at, while Isabella looked forlornly at the captive. ‘Mary. How could you?’
‘Oh, get out of my sight,’ said Mary. ‘I swear I cannot bear to look at you, you holy bloodsucker. If women like you paid more attention to their husbands and less to other people’s business we might all get along a little smoother.’
Claverley cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps it would be as well if you left, my dear.’
‘Well, I shall.’
‘So, Mary Stone,’ said Blakiston. ‘You went to Reuben Cooper’s house. To reason with him?’
Mary smiled at Claverley. ‘You feared I’d make trouble for you with your precious wife, didn’t you? Divven’t worry, man. I wouldn’t cause you hurt. You were a proper man.’
‘I do not need to hear this,’ said Blakiston, ‘and nor do I wish to. Did you go to Cooper to reason with him?’
‘There would never have been any purpose to that. The only thing Reuben Cooper cared for was himself. He said he would not expose us if I would lie with him. So I did. But I had taken a dagger with me and while he was grunting away like a pig on top of me I plunged it into his side. He hardly made a sound. It was as well I had taken all my clothes off or I should have been smothered in his blood.’
‘But why, Mary?’ asked Thomas. ‘You had two children already, and no-one knows the fathers. What would it have mattered if you had another? Why kill Cooper to stop him telling what would not have hurt you even if known?’
‘For the money, of course! To be never again in want. To have food for me and my bairns, always.’ She looked down at her gown. ‘To wear clothes like these.’
‘But those clothes are what has destroyed you, woman.’
‘Rector,’ said Blakiston gent
ly. ‘The time for moralising will come when the pair of them are in gaol waiting for the Assize. In any case, this paper you pointed out is a ticket for a woman and two children on the London stage. She is only dressed in her finery because she planned to leave Ryton. And on tomorrow’s coach, so she would needs be in Darlington tonight. Now I would hear the end of the tale, if you will permit it.’
‘Of course. I am sorry. Proceed, Mary.’
‘I pushed him off me. I thought he was dead. He kept the key to his chest on a cord around his waist. It usually hung down inside his breeches, but he had taken those off. I suppose he liked to have the two things he valued most in the world hanging side by side.’
‘And the money was in the chest?’
‘Of course. Only an idiot would think it might have been in the wall. We do not want for idiots in this parish.’
‘But the scratches?’
‘While I was searching the chest, I heard a noise behind me. The old goat was not dead after all. He was struggling to pull himself up against the wall. His fingernails were long and bony, like a chicken’s foot. That is where your damned scratches came from. I picked up a three-legged stool and brained him with it.
‘There was some water in a bucket. I got the blood off me as best I could, and dressed myself again. ‘Then I cut open his mattress. All that money and he had nothing but a straw mattress to lie on at night. I pulled out some of the straw, took a brand from the hearth and set fire to the mattress. Then I fled.’
‘Why did you kill Matthew Higson?’
‘May as well hang for a sheep as a lamb.’
‘But why did he have to die?’
‘Mister Wale thought he could be kept quiet. But I knew better. And he treated me like dirt. He was even holier than the curate.’ She looked at the Rector. ‘I like my reverend gentlemen to be men first and reverend only second. Why should someone like Martin Higson think he can walk around thinking he’s better than me? Why should I put up with it? If he’d been born a girl and sent to work for the Blacketts, he could have ended up the way I have. If he’d been pretty. I was pretty, once.’
‘But the babe, Mary,’ said Thomas. ‘How could you kill your own infant?’
For the first time, a look of contrition passed over Mary’s face. ‘Oh, sir. If you had ever had a bairn...you cannot know how it is...you feel wonderful and yet you are cast down...there is unbearable love and there is fury...he had your mouth, Rector, I swear it. But he would never have had your life. He had no chance at all, the poor little mite.’
‘You killed him out of pity?’ said Blakiston, for Thomas was clearly incapable of saying anything.
Her voice took on a keening quality. ‘I killed him scarce knowing what I did. Oh, the poor little soul. What kind of life was he ever going to have with me as a mother? What kind of life do the other two have? Men don’t marry women like me. They have me, and then they go away.’
‘I am sorry,’ said Blakiston.
She looked up. ‘And you wouldn’t even take me. Would you? You gave me hope, sir. If there was one decent man in the world, there might be another. One of my own class. And then that damn curate maundering on about how he was lost. He was lost! I never should have told him he was the bairn’s father.’
‘Why did you?’
‘Because he would believe it. And out of spite. You have what you want, gentlemen. Take me away and let them hang me. But for pity’s sake, look after my bairns.’
Chapter 49
It was two hours before both Mary Stone and Martin Wale had been taken into custody, and Blakiston felt obliged to wait until it was over. While he was waiting, he let Lady Isabella tend to the wound on his face.
‘You have done well, James,’ said the Rector. ‘You set out to find Reuben Cooper’s killer and you have done so. I admit I thought you never would.’
‘I made many mistakes,’ said Blakiston.
‘Mistakes?’
‘I should have talked much earlier to Catherine Robinson, but I had discounted what she might tell me before I heard it. I judged the issue without knowledge, Thomas. A foolish thing to do. And the matter of the coat...I should have set about finding what had happened to that coat as soon as you told me the strange story of its disappearance. I simply failed to understand what was important and what was not.’ He sat in thought for a while. ‘If it come to that, Mary Stone herself gave me the clearest indication that things were out of joint when she refused my offer of money. How could she afford to do that? And when she paraded herself in a duchess’s finery, I failed to see it. If your wife had not noticed...’
‘But there is no credit for her in that. That is what women do, James. While we are too consumed by worldly cares to notice the cut of a man’s waistcoat, women discern what other women wear. It is the world to them. That is why they will always be the weaker sex.’
‘Lady Isabella!’ cried Blakiston. ‘Forgive me, but you press too hard with that cloth. No, Thomas. You are kind, but I have not done well. Next time I shall heed the lessons I have learned. Next time I shall follow everything until I know it has no bearing on the case, instead of deciding in advance what matters and what does not.’
Claverley smiled. ‘You believe there will be a next time, then? You have got the taste for bringing the wrongdoer to justice? James? What says that glint in your eye?’
‘Dick Jackson,’ said Blakiston. ‘He was hiding something from me. I knew it when I spoke to him and I knew it even more strongly when I talked to Jeffrey Drabble, for he without question knows what it is that Jackson wishes to keep out of the light.’
‘You will pursue this?’
‘I shall certainly not forget it.’
‘You had best not wait too long,’ said Isabella. ‘For Jackson is an old man and will soon be dead. But pray do not listen to me, for I am sure I am a burden to men, with no thought in my head but how other women dress.’
‘I suppose,’ said Thomas, ‘that they will still hang Martin? Even though that woman has confessed to all three murders?’
‘There is no doubt he was complicit,’ said Blakiston. ‘You must needs find a new curate. I suggest you choose a more accommodating man next time.’
‘That will be for Lord Ravenshead to decide, not me. But I believe he will draw the same conclusion.’
‘And keep him away from the Hetheringtons. I must be off.’
‘And I to the church. I shall pray for the pair of them. What will happen to the money?’
‘Reuben Cooper’s children may claim it, like the rogues they are. But I shall return it to Robert Black who used to be Robert Blackett, for it was illicitly obtained from him, and if they wish to pursue the matter they may do so in court.’
‘Shall you claim Sir Edward’s reward?’
Blakiston set his mouth grimly. ‘And be in his debt? I shall not.’
On his way from the Rectory, Blakiston saw Dick Jackson turning his compost heap while Jeffrey Drabble talked to him over the low stone wall. Blakiston reined in his horse.
‘We have arrested the murderer of Reuben Cooper, Jackson,’ he said. ‘You need no longer feel that you have questions to answer. Not on that score, at any rate.’
‘Thank you, Master. May I ask who it was?’
‘It was Mary Stone. You will both need to find a new woman when you feel the need for release.’ Blakiston made a clicking sound with his mouth and his horse moved on towards Chopwell Garth. He had made up his mind. He loved Kate Greener, and his love outweighed any concerns he might have about friends and family. If any in his circle objected to his marriage to a farmer’s sister-in-law and a labourer’s daughter, he would cut them off. He had thought himself in love with Jane, but he had never known feelings like these. This was love, and he would not give it up.
When he had gone, Drabble said, ‘You
see? He knows nothing of the Dobson boy.’
‘Then what did he mean by “not on that score?”. Did you see the look in the man’s eyes? He has got the taste for sending men to the gibbet. He is like the fox with chickens,’ said Jackson with a shudder. ‘Once he tastes blood, he goes on, whether he is hungry or not. God help me, after thirty years can it not rest? And who told him about us and Mary Stone? He’ll make a crime of that, next.’
When Blakiston reached Chopwell Garth, only Lizzie and the baby were at home. He took off his hat and asked to see Kate.
‘But, Mister Blakiston, she is gone.’
‘Gone? What do you mean, gone?’
‘To be a maid for Mistress Wortley.’
‘But today is only Thursday. The coach is tomorrow.’
‘No, sir. When Tom went to ask, he found the Monday coach was held up by a broken wheel. It left on Tuesday afternoon and Kate was on it.’
Blakiston could not hide his pain. ‘Sir?’ said Lizzie. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No,’ said Blakiston. ‘I am not all right. Two days. My God, she has been gone two days. But a coach is slower than a good horse. If I ride hard, I shall catch them.’
‘But why would you want to, Master?’
Anger cut through Blakiston. ‘Because I have something I must say to her, Mistress Laws. Would you prevent me from telling her something that may affect her happiness as well as my own?’
‘Sir, I would not prevent Lord Ravenshead’s Overseer from doing anything. But, sir, did Nelly Hart not find you?’
‘Nelly Hart? Who the devil is Nelly Hart?’