The Ghosts of Greenwood (12 page)

To Hubert’s disappointment, for that gentleman was deriving great amusement from the spectacle of Bow Street’s Chief Magistrate being reduced to lovestruck schoolboy status by his Machiavellian aunt, Dickon and Ned entered the room. “What’s this I hear?” Ned demanded. “Connor Halliday is
dead
?”

“I must say,” murmured Hubert, who saw his way clear to doing a rare good deed, “that your reaction to this news is much calmer than Livvy’s was. She took one look at Sir John — who had a fair amount of blood on his clothing as result of kneeling by the body — and fainted dead away. No, don’t distress yourselves! Livvy is now ensconced in her bedchamber. On last glimpse, Austen was attempting to amuse her with a game of backgammon, while Jael was explaining how to catch a fish with one’s bare hands. One first tickles its throat, I gather, and then lifts it out of the water by its gills.”

Lord Dorset’s expression had grown increasingly thunderous during this explanation. “I do not care,” he snarled, “to discuss Livvy with you.”

Clearly, Dickon had interpreted his wife’s reaction as grief for Connor, instead of concern for himself. “Good intentions,” lamented Hubert. “Coz, you are too quick off the mark.”

“Am I, by God!?” the Earl exclaimed.

“You are,” Dulcie informed him. “I have always deprecated your tendency to leap before you look.”

“You found the blacksmith?” interjected Sir John, before further insults could be exchanged.

“I did.” Dickon awarded Hubert one last dark glare. “Rather, I found his apprentice sitting on a distant wall, straining to see the pack. It took no little time to make him understand my question, and then I had to endure a lecture about the difference between a donkey’s shoe and that of a thoroughbred. In short — which the conversation wasn’t! — the lad thinks that no shoeless horse was taken there this day, or recently, but can’t be sure.”

“A shoeless horse,” mused Dulcie. “I recall hearing of a local beast that invariably pulled off a fore shoe before he’d gone over a half-dozen leaps. Nothing was wrong with the horse’s hoof; he did it by catching the hind shoes with the fore. No amount of ingenuity could cure him of the habit.”

“Interesting,” Hubert said. “Don’t you think so, Sir John?”

The Chief Magistrate contemplated the tedious necessity of tracking down a horse that habitually cast off a shoe. “I don’t think anything. I’m simply trying to fix in my mind the various events of the day.”

Lady Bligh returned to her gilt sofa, Casanova draped over her shoulder like some furry boa, perfectly complimenting her peach gown and ginger hair. Lord Dorset paced the length of the Gallery and then turned back. Hubert propped his elegantly shod right foot on his impeccably clad left knee and contemplated Bluebeard, who had flopped over on his back with feet extended straight up in the air.

Sir John glanced at Ned. “You met up with Dorset at what point?”

“In the stable.” Ned’s face was pale. “I had gone out riding. We arrived there at the same time. Has Lady Halliday been informed of her stepson’s accident? She will be distressed.”

The Baroness tilted her head away from Casanova, who was purring loudly in her ear. “Even those who disliked Connor must be distressed by the news of his death. The locals will rally to Lady Halliday, now that he can no longer keep them away. I wonder, where is the missing temple key?”

“How do you know the key is missing?” Sir John asked.

She cast him an exasperated glance. “For heaven’s sake, everyone knows it’s missing! Except, apparently, Bow Street. Which leads me to further speculation about the disposition of the Halliday estate. The missing brother is likely to inherit, I imagine. Who may or may not have been recently glimpsed in the neighborhood.”

“Ah,” said Hubert. “The mysterious twin. Who may or may not remain with us in this vale of tears.”

“Surely someone would have noticed had both brothers been skulking about Greenwood,” Sir John objected. “Moreover, they were bound to have crossed paths.”

The Baroness arched an eyebrow. “You subscribe to the theory of a mysterious assailant? Maybe even, a vengeful shade? And no, Bluebeard, we do not care to hear about ghosties again.”

Could a parrot look disgruntled? Sir John half-expected the bird to protest.

Definitely, he’d been spending too much time with Lady Bligh. However, he was not yet sufficiently muddled to divulge his own suspicions. “I subscribe to no particular theory, yet. It grows increasingly urgent that we discover whether Cade Halliday is alive or dead. ”

“ ‘We?’ ” repeated Dulcie. “I do not suppose that you refer to myself.”

Sir John refused to meet her gaze. “I have sent for Crump.”

Mr. Crump, peace officer on the staff of the Chief Magistrate of Bow Street, did not care for the country. Yet here he was, prepared to ruralize
.
One did not defy Sir John, not if one wished to remain in a position to earn the reward money that made one considerably plumper in the pocket than otherwise. Therefore, Crump packed his necessities — pipe, Occurrence Book, the pistol that customarily resided in his waistband — and set out, muttering beneath his breath all the while.

Not for Crump, despite reward money past and yet to come, was the rich man’s means of travel by post. Due to the urgency of the notice and the slimness of his purse, Crump had no choice but to embark in a mail-coach, its exterior covered with baskets containing game and turkey, oyster-barrels and the like. There were no other passengers, parcels and game being more profitable and less difficult to transport. Inside the coach’s cramped interior was room for a single person to sit down. Crump had barely squeezed his portly self into the cramped space when the coach jolted forward in a manner that made him wish even more fervently that he might have stayed at home.

With the greatest skill and by the narrowest margin, the coachman maneuvered his vehicle out of the inn-yard and into the narrow street, in the process inflicting a minimum of damage on horses, coach, and the postilion’s long copper horn. Crump soon grew very familiar with that instrument, which when properly blown could rouse a horse-keeper from slumber, if not the dead from their graves. Four feet long, the horn terminated in a bell shape. It had a narrow bore and a German-silver mouthpiece, and two sharp, agonizingly unmelodious, tones.

Six horses drew the vehicle. As it set out, so did the coach proceed. All went on well enough, if uncomfortably, until a restive leader swerved to escape a randy rooster that strayed out into the road. The coach toppled over, baskets and parcels and all. Crump emerged unscathed, but the coach suffered a broken axle, and the guard a broken arm. Crump continued his journey in a carrier’s cart.

Dusk had fallen by the time he arrived at last in Greenwood. For the duration of his visit, which he prayed would be brief, Crump secured a small chamber upstairs at the Four Nuns. The sparsely furnished room was reached by a staircase carved into the thickness of an outside wall.

After stowing his belongings, smoothing the scant fringe of hair that adorned his balding pate, and in general tidying his person — Crump liked to make a good appearance and generally, despite a garish taste in waistcoats, achieved a dapper air — he went in search of the public rooms. As Crump understood the situation, a man had been found shot to death. Sir John believed this occurrence had been not accident but murder, which it was left to Crump to prove.

That was all well and good, but who, in this instance, was to stand his shot? Bow Street Runners were available to anyone rich enough to buy their services. Since Sir John had made no mention of a private inquiry, Crump assumed no one had offered to pay the customary charges, in this instance, a country case, the rate of a quinea a day plus fourteen shillings for expenses.

In the event of murder, or any other atrocious offense against the public, an investigation was pursued without application to anyone for repayment. It was this circumstance that fretted Crump.

Meanwhile, time was wasting. He removed his pipe from his mouth, fixed an expression of genial good will on his features, and strolled into the taproom. “The room is to your liking?” asked the innkeeper, as he poured a glass of stout.

“Aye, guv’nor.” Crump settled down to a spot of interrogation. “Have a lot of travelers passing through here, do you?”

“A fair amount, Mr. Crump.” Abel Bagshot nodded gravely. “A fair amount, indeed. This is a busy little village, when all’s said.”

The taproom certainly was busy. Crump lit his pipe. In response to Mr. Bagshot’s none-too-subtle queries, he conveyed the impression that he was a traveling merchant who preferred to devote himself to beer and skittles rather than the pursuit of his trade. Before his host could inquire into the particulars of that trade, Crump turned the conversation to the season, and the festivities that would soon be underway.

That topic carried them no small distance, covering festivities in the village and revels at the manse. “There’ll be no celebrating for the poor ladies at the Hall,” Mr. Bagshot finally pronounced. “At sixes and sevens they’re said to be, and anxiously awaiting the arrival of the solicitor. No one knows how the estate is to be divided, and her ladyship is in a fret. What a shocking business. Master Connor was game to the backbone, when all is said and done.”

“Wait. Let’s step back a pace.” Crump performed certain esoteric rituals over his pipe, which had gone out. “I don’t mind admitting my curiosity’s been pricked. Who is this ‘Master Connor’? And what’s become of him?” He listened with keen interest as Abel regaled him with the popular version of Connor Halliday’s death, which concurred with Sir John’s account, though it contained several fanciful embellishments, the most startling a zestfully-related theory that the ghost of the victim’s brother had risen from his grave to commit the evil deed.

“Ghost?” queried Crump.

“ ‘Tis commonly believed that Connor Halliday murdered his own brother some years back,” the innkeeper explained.

“Ah.” Crump gestured for his host to join him in another glass of stout. “A man like yourself knows what he knows, eh, Mr. Bagshot?”

“I know that ghosts don’t move traps and carry dueling pistols,” said Abel. “And why did it take Master Connor’s horse so long to go back to its stable, I’d like to know, because the beast didn’t show up until late afternoon. But there! You won’t want your ear bent with our little mysteries.”

On the contrary, Crump wanted that very thing. He looked around the room once more, at the long low ceiling, the granite fireplace and flagged floor, the local citizenry engaged in a game of quoits. His eye lingered on the Patent Warm-Air Stove. It was an oddly expensive item to find in a country inn.

“ ‘Twas a gift from her ladyship,” explained Abel, after suitable compliments had been received. “Not her ladyship at the Hall, but the other one.” He launched into a garbled explanation of the local gentry, starting with ‘her ladyship at the Hall’, who was but recently widowed and behaving indiscreetly with a guest at the Castle who was generally, despite his current misconduct, held to be an officer and a gentleman. That ladyship, he further informed Crump, had been step-mama to the recently deceased Connor Halliday, with whom she had been on bad terms.

“Hold fast!” Crump interrupted his host’s flow of words. “Mayhap, since there was bad feeling between them, she was involved in the man’s death. It makes better sense, guv’nor, than your tale of a ghost.”

Once recovered from his shock, Abel burst into such merry laughter that the locals abandoned their game to inquire as to its inspiration. Between chuckles, Abel explained. Her ladyship at the Hall was, he said, a henwit who was incapable of hurting a flea. Furthermore, added one grizzled fellow, it was much more likely Connor Halliday would have murdered
her,
had not fate intervened. “Because everyone knew he wanted her to leave the Hall and was mad as hornets when she dug in her heels and stayed.”

“She may be a henwit,” put in another fellow, “but her ladyship has bottom.” His companions agreed. The game of quoits resumed, while Abel explained in greater detail the strained situation that existed between Lady Halliday and her husband’s family.

“Even stranger are the goings-on of her ladyship at the Castle, to say nothing of his lordship.” Abel’s eye lingered on his new stove. “But to speak of them isn’t my place.” He moved on to a discussion of the culinary treats offered by his kitchen, which included such delights as chitterlings, stubble-geese and collard head. Nor was the quality of the inn’s cellars to be despised. Didn’t the local gentry often stop by his humble establishment to sample a bottle of his fine bishop or his stout? Just two days past one of the guests at the Castle had knocked him up at an unseasonable hour, being less interested in the pursuit of the fox than in the purchase of some fine old ale.

Crump’s ears perked up. “You don’t follow the hounds, Mr. Bagshot?”

“To do so would be incompatible with the sober conduct desirable in a tradesman,” his host replied primly and somewhat ironically, in light of the inroads he’d made on his own cellar. “There’s those as don’t agree. Half the village trails after the hounds, including a great many who’d be more gainfully occupied elsewhere. Poor Master Connor! It appears someone
was
occupied elsewhere.”

“You’ve no notion of who that someone may have been?”

“I didn’t say so, Mr. Crump.” Abel set down his empty mug. “I didn’t say so at all. A man in my position may draw certain conclusions. It seems to me that a person wanting to know more about who shot Connor Halliday should look among the tinkers. The sneaky thieving devils are in the habit of camping on Halliday ground, and Connor swore to run them off. Lady Halliday is softer-hearted. I’ll wager she has his man-traps taken up before many more days pass.”

This was all most interesting; it might even prove useful; and it was no doubt highly colored by prejudice. Whereas Crump might agree in general with the innkeeper about tinkers, in this instance they made obvious scapegoats. “You said Lady Halliday had an admirer among the guests at Greenwood Castle.” Among those guests was no less than Crump’s own Chief Magistrate.