Death of a Radical (11 page)

The stars were fading as he finished. He sluiced off the sweat at the stable-yard pump, the freezing water numbing his skin. Rubbing himself dry with a towel he kept for the purpose, he pulled on a clean shirt. In a few minutes the servants would be waking. Walcheren stamped restlessly in his stall.

They took the western road up into the hills. Dawn had not yet broken. The sounds they made in their progress—hooves striking the hard ground, the creak of leather, the huff of Walcheren's breath—were intimate within the wider stillness. As the track climbed the hoar frost deepened and the moor opened out on either side. This was land pared down to its primitive bones. The
predawn light reflected off the white crystals sharpening each shadow. It was as if he and his horse were lone intruders in an ancient enchanted land, a land that might flick them off into oblivion with a shiver of its crust.

The Carlisle road ran straight into the blank luminescent sky. He caught movement in the blurred band of grays and purple at the horizon. A shape broke away: a tiny cart growing in size. Before long he could hear the small sounds of its approach. Jarrett's sharp eyes picked out a single horse and an open cart driven by a mound of cloth surmounted by a hat. A man's voice carried crystal clear across the expanse.

“Step up, Larkin. Go-awn!”

The cart was drawn by a well-fleshed gray mare that picked its way fastidiously over the icy track. As Walcheren trotted up the mound of clothes spoke.

“Mr. Jarrett!”

The driver tipped back his hat and drew down his scarf to reveal a man of thirty or so. Jarrett recognized the even features of the landlord of the Bucket and Broom, an inn he patronized further up the road.

“Bless us!” the man exclaimed, “I'm that glad to see you!”

“Mr. Teward! What brings you out so early?” Jarrett responded to this unexpectedly fervent greeting.

“Bad luck, Mr. Jarrett, that's what. One of me guests, he's only gone and passed in the night. Found him in his bed barely an hour since, tucked up and cold as stone.
Meg tells me—fetch the magistrate!” He expelled the sigh of a burdened man. “Need to do these things right.”

“Was this an old man? Did he seem in poor health?”

Mr. Teward shook his head—so far as the bulk of his coats allowed.

“Couple of years older than you or me but not what I'd call an
old
man. Mr. George, him that's traveling with him, or was, he tells us Mr. Pritchard had a troublesome gut. But I had no suspicion.”

“Strangers, are they?”

Mr. Teward nodded, distracted.

“Traveled up from Brough a day back. What luck!” He paused, shuffling the reins between his hands as if gathering up his thoughts. “Mr. Jarrett, you'd not be so kind as to call in?” he asked in a rush. “I don't like to ask, but just while I'm fetching the magistrate? Ruth, Meg's sister that lives with us, she's off on a visit and our man Simon, he's been called out; his gran's had a turn and he'll not be back a while. So Meg's got naught but a silly maid and the bairn in the house. I left the maid all to pieces,” he elaborated gloomily. “Say the truth, I'm not easy leaving the three of them with a stranger and a corpse.”

“Of course!” Jarrett assured him. He hoped he didn't sound too enthusiastic. He had already made up his mind to stop by. His curiosity was piqued. “I shall do so directly. I can have a look at the man and talk to his companion …” he suggested, hoping the innkeeper would not think him officious.

Mr. Teward was more than happy to cede another man authority. His face blossomed with relief.

“I am beholden to you, Mr. Jarrett.” Adjusting his scarves and hat Mr. Teward disappeared once more behind his swathes of cloth. “I'll be back as soon as I can.” He slapped his reins on the gray mare's broad haunches and the cart rolled on toward Woolbridge.

The room was cold. The fire in the small grate had burned down to embers. The furnishings were simple—a window on one wall, a large press against another. A leather travel bag stood parallel to a chair with a man's clothes folded over it and, beneath, a pathetic pair of rubbed shoes with rounded silver buckles. The board floor was dominated by a country-made four-poster bed with heavy curtains drawn around it.

“He's in there,” she said, her eyes fixed on the bed.

Mrs. Teward lingered by the open door. She was a little blond woman with delicate blue veins visible under her translucent skin. Her small features were pinched with anxiety.

“We left him as we found him. I was bringing the shaving water and I could get no answer. I fetched Dan and he took a look and …” She shivered. “He's just lying there with his hands on his chest as if ready laid out. Who sleeps like that?” She swallowed nervously and began again. “It's my sister Ruth's room by rights but the gentlemen they wanted separate accommodations and we were expecting another party.” She trailed off. “I'm right glad
to see you, Mr. Jarrett,” she murmured in an unconscious echo of her husband.

She turned up her face and he smiled down at her, his mouth twisted in a wry expression of sympathy.

“Very difficult for you.”

She returned a wan smile. In different circumstances she was a pretty woman. She shifted her weight.

“Mr. George's downstairs having his breakfast. I'd better …” She hesitated. “The maid's not to be relied upon. Not this morning.”

“Of course,” he responded.

He shut the door behind her and approached the bed. His hand poised to draw back the curtain, he was visited by the absurd idea that Mr. Pritchard lay in wait on the other side preparing to leap out at him in the manner of a jack-in-the-box. He pulled the heavy fabric back.

Mr. Pritchard lay on his back, the bedclothes pulled smooth across his body. The waxy mask betrayed no signs of struggle. As Mrs. Teward had remarked, the man looked as if he had been laid out—straight on his back, hands folded across his chest. Jarrett attempted to lift a finger; the hand and arm moved, locked rigid with it. With a silent apology to the soul here departed, Jarrett heaved up the body. The upper torso was stiff but the legs still had some give in them. He displaced the nightshirt sufficiently to glimpse the skin on the back. There were dark purple stains where blood had sunk. The pattern was as might be expected if Mr. Pritchard had died peacefully in that position.

He stared down at the bed. There were two pillows. Only one lay under the man's head. There was nothing unusual in that. Why should a man not prefer to sleep with one pillow rather than two? The second pillow had been neatly placed along the footboard precisely at the mid-point of the bed. Mr. Pritchard had been a tall man. The pillow touched his feet. Any movement in his sleep would have displaced it.

“That's not where I would have put it,” Jarrett remarked to himself.

He pictured Mrs. Teward straightening the pillow. So much for leaving Mr. Pritchard as they found him.

The Bucket and Broom was an old house. It had been built to withstand the harsh winds and weather that swept across the tops. Its walls were a good two feet thick. The leaded window attracted his attention. It had a deep sill and that sill was wet. He lifted the latch. The window swung open easily with barely a sound. There was water pooled in the grooved metal of the frame. He looked down. The ground was not too far below. He leaned out as far as was prudent, scanning the rough stone of the outer wall. There were windows to either side, the one to the left shuttered, the one to the right unshuttered. The sun coming up behind the house threw a shadow over the foot of the wall below. He closed the window. He examined the boards beneath, running his palm across the surface.

“It is winter,” he reminded himself. “There's damp in the air but still …”

He walked to the door, pausing to straighten the covers he had disrupted. Mr. Pritchard's frozen features seemed faintly derisive.

“Of course, I could be imagining things,” Jarrett remarked, “but I wonder.”

Down below the hall was quiet and the doors were all shut. He heard voices down the passage. A dog yapped and a child laughed. He slipped out of a side door.

The rising sun bathed the moor in buffs and pinks. The inn was of regular, square construction with stables and outbuildings to one side. He took a path around the opposite side of the house toward the moor view he had seen from the room above. He walked slowly, his eyes to the ground. The earth was stony and dry. The frost was beginning to melt close to the house but in the dusting of white he could pick out a man's footprints and the paw-prints of maybe three dogs—two fanning out and one faithfully trotting at its master's heels. He identified the three upper windows—the one on the end shuttered, Mr. Pritchard's window in the middle and its neighbor to the left with the shutters folded back. Beneath the first unshuttered window he thought he discerned a stray print from another footstep. It was turned in to face the wall, as if a man had stood beneath the window—but with the hoar frost dissolving he could not be sure. Beneath Mr. Pritchard's window some animal had dug. At the edge of the soft pile of earth he found a distinct round hole some four inches deep, as if a straight, stout stick had been poked in hard at an angle
and then pulled out. He crouched down to take a closer look.

A ground-floor window opened above his head. A chubby hand and a brown velvet sleeve were followed by the round-cheeked face of a man with full red lips and gravy on his chin. Jarrett straightened up, quickly putting his hand in his pocket.

“Dropped it taking out my handkerchief,” he said with an easy smile. “Careless of me but no harm done. Mr. George, I presume?” he inquired. “Frederick Jarrett. Agent to the Duke of Penrith. I met Mr. Teward on the road and he asked me to call by. I was hoping to have a word.”

Mr. George wiped his chin with a large linen napkin. He rocked formally from the waist, his expression both conciliatory and solemn.

“Is that so? A sad, sad affair. I am breakfasting in the parlor; do come join me.”

“Such a sad business,” Mr. George repeated, waving Jarrett to the table. “Poor Pritchard. Have you breakfasted?”

The tragedy, it seemed, had not affected Mr. George's appetite. A solitary slice of beef lay in a smudge of gravy on a blue and white platter, a napkin-lined basket was empty but for crumbs, and egg shells littered the cloth around his plate. Mr. George picked up the coffee pot and gazed at it uncertainly.

“This coffee, I regret, is cold,” he said. “Shall I ring for the landlady?” Without waiting for a response he picked up the little brass bell by his plate and rang it vigorously.
For good measure he opened the door and called out. “Mrs. Teward!”

A voice responded from down the passage.

“Coffee for Mr. Jarrett, if you'd be so kind.” Mr. George closed the door. “Such an obliging woman,” he remarked jovially. He returned to his seat. Pushing back his plate, he brushed away a scatter of crumbs with the back of one plump hand.

“Mr. Jarrett, you say? Agent to the Duke of Penrith? And Mr. Teward sent you?” Mr. George's forehead creased in a puzzled frown. “You are a magistrate perhaps?” he suggested.

“No. But I am responsible for the duke's properties in these parts,” Jarrett replied, content to imply that Mr. Teward might be a tenant of his Grace.

Mr. George's lips formed a question but at that moment the maid, a clumsy girl with reddened eyes, came into the room. She struggled with a tray that was almost overbalanced by a large milk jug decorated with hunting scenes in pastel pinks and blues. As she approached the table, it tilted. Mr. George rescued the jug neatly. With a startled look the maid abandoned her burden and fled.

“Ah! These country inns!” Mr. George remarked cheerfully. He poured coffee into a fresh cup. “Milk?” he asked, and poured before his guest could protest. Jarrett normally took his coffee black.

“You arrived with your colleague from Brough yesterday, I understand.” Jarrett accepted the proffered cup.

“The afternoon before. This is—was to be,” Mr. George corrected himself, “our second day.”

There was a folder on the table embossed with a gilded badge. A sheaf of papers peeped out. The uppermost leaf was a neatly executed list with figures attached.

“You are come to Woolbridge for the fairs, sir?” Jarrett asked. Mr. George stilled.

“Filling an army contract perhaps? Wool cloth?” Jarrett suggested.

Mr. George gazed at him, his head cocked to one side, his eyes as blank as a bird's. Jarrett nodded toward the folder.

“I recognize a procurement docket,” he explained. “16th Lancers—Portugal—until last year.”

“Ah! One of Wellington's men!” cried Mr. George, suddenly good humored again. “Lieutenant?”

“Captain.”

“Beg pardon.” Mr. George acknowledged his mistake. “We prefer not to advertise our presence too widely. These are profitable contracts.” He bunched up his round cheeks in an apologetic grimace. “Don't want to give opportunities for underhand dealing. All fair and above board, you know.”

“A large order?”

Mr. George wrinkled his neat nose.

“Considerable,” he admitted. His eyes narrowed speculatively. “Does his Grace have interests in mills hereabouts?” Jarrett gave him a cold look. “Forgive me,” Mr. George said hastily. “An unintentional impertinence! His Grace's affairs are a private matter, dear me.”

“This tragedy—will it interrupt your business?”

“No, no, no!” Mr. George responded with a dismissive little shake. “It is my custom to travel alone …” He spread out his plump hands, palms up, and trailed off into a shrug that somehow conveyed the idea that he was a man who would do his duty whatever the circumstances.

“Was Mr. Pritchard a close friend?”

“A colleague.” Mr. George put aside his coffee, his expression oddly prim. “We have worked in the same department for some years. This was our first tour together.” He checked himself. “Pritchard had an excellent reputation.”