The Scent of Death (20 page)

‘Snow?’ Mrs Wintour dropped her spoon on the plate. ‘I do hope not, sir. I cannot abide the cold.’

‘No, no, no,’ Mr Wintour said, flapping his napkin with each negative as if to shake away the very possibility of it. ‘It was a mere figure of speech, my dear. You must not disturb yourself in the slightest.’

‘No need for long faces, eh?’ The Captain motioned to Josiah to refill his glass. ‘At least we ourselves shan’t fall sick with it.’

Mr Wintour turned back to me. ‘Have you had the smallpox yourself, sir?’

‘I was inoculated against it as a child, sir.’

‘I am glad to hear it.’

‘We have our own methods of inoculation here, sir,’ the Captain put in, waving his knife at me. ‘Rough and ready by London standards, no doubt, but perfectly serviceable. We take infected matter from someone who already has the disease; we push it under the fingernails: so –’ he mimed the action with the knife, and a spot of gravy fell from the blade to the cloth ‘– and remove ourselves to an isolated place. And we suffer a mild dose of the disease with little discomfort. Some friends and I made up a party for it when I was a young man, and we spent a most agreeable week or so amusing ourselves on one of our farms.’

‘I shall make sure that everyone in the household has been inoculated,’ Mrs Arabella said, staring out of the window at the strip of garden and the belvedere at the end.

Captain Wintour helped himself to a dish of pickled cabbage. ‘Yes. Damned inconvenient if it runs through the servants.’

‘Sir,’ said the Judge. ‘There are ladies present.’

‘Eh? Oh – I beg your pardon, Mother.’

‘What is it, Johnny my love?’ she said. ‘Do you need more cabbage, dear?’

Mrs Arabella was a woman of decision. Having made up her mind to do something, she did not postpone it and did not permit half-measures. The inoculation of the household was arranged on the following day and put into practice on the day after.

The domestics who had been with the family for some time had either had the disease or been inoculated already. But there remained the youthful footman, Abraham, a maid who helped Miriam above stairs, the kitchen maid and the scullery boy, as well as others I had never met. Some of these were not sure whether they had had smallpox or not, for there was sometimes an element of doubt in the milder cases. Mrs Arabella made up her mind that it would be better not to take chances in the matter. They would all be inoculated.

In peacetime, the usual practice was to isolate the patients in some rural retreat. But a Hessian general had been given the Wintours’ country house for his summer residence; farms, cottages and even barns were at a premium, such was the overcrowding in the British-held territory near the city.

Mrs Arabella decided that it would be both simpler and cheaper to set aside our own slave quarters as a hospital isolated from the house, and to keep the patients there. She talked to other residents in the street and found that some of them were in the same situation as ourselves. In a few hours she had more than doubled the numbers in our hospital and halved the cost for the Wintours.

With so many of the servants unable to fulfil their duties in their usual way, the house was a cheerless place for a week or two, with dust gathering in corners and inadequate meals served at odd times. Captain Wintour grumbled about the inconvenience. Mrs Arabella apologized to me and offered to remit some of the cost of my board and lodging. I said that would not be necessary and she did not press me further.

Mrs Arabella insisted on nursing the sufferers herself and provided them with a diet suitable for invalids. Both the Judge and her husband suggested that she send Miriam instead to avoid exposure to the noxious humours of the sickroom. She refused. My admiration for her increased considerably. Her desire to care for the household’s slaves might be no more than domestic prudence. But this devotion to duty was something else, which I could only attribute to selfless benevolence.

Once, late at night, I chanced to look down from my bedroom window and I saw Mrs Arabella’s cloaked figure moving swiftly across the yard. She had not covered her head with a hood and, for a moment as a door opened to receive her, I glimpsed her face in the muddy yellow light cast by the rushlights within.

I thought I heard a child crying. But my window was sealed tight and perhaps I heard only the wind in the chimney.

The address Mrs Frobisher had given me was in King George Street, convenient for the Fresh Water Pond and the pump at the bottom of Orange Street, but too close for comfort to the stench of the tan-yards.

The Reverend Dr Slype lived in a tall, thin house. At first I thought I had been given the wrong address for my knock of the door was answered by a Hessian private wearing a long apron over his regimentals. When I asked for Dr Slype, however, he directed me upstairs.

‘Up and up, sir,’ he said in low, thickly accented voice. ‘Higher and higher. To the top, eh?’

I passed a smart young German officer on the first-floor landing who saluted me civilly as he went by but said nothing. I climbed flight after flight of stairs that became progressively narrower until I came at last to a heavy leather curtain blocking my way. On the step at its foot was a handbell.

I rang the bell and almost immediately a negro maid pulled aside the curtain. When I asked for Dr Slype and gave her Mrs Frobisher’s letter of introduction, she showed me into a tiny parlour with a sloping ceiling.

The day was sunny and, even at this time of the year, it had grown warm under the roof. The room was furnished comfortably enough, though it was unpleasantly crowded because the pieces had been made for larger rooms.

In a moment I heard a heavy step outside, and a tall, very fat gentleman eased himself sideways through the doorway. He was attired decently in black though his waistcoat was unbuttoned and his neckcloth hung loose. He wore an ancient tie-wig, somewhat askew and tied with a frayed black ribbon.

‘Mr Savill, sir.’ He bowed slowly. ‘I am honoured to make your acquaintance.’

I bowed in my turn. ‘Your servant, sir.’

‘You have found us in our eyrie, sir.’ His voice was soft and rumbling, like the purr of a great contented cat. ‘I congratulate you.’

‘The soldier who answered the door told me where to come.’

‘You were fortunate.’ He spoke slowly, sucking air between groups of words. ‘You chanced on one of the more civil of the cuckoos we have in our nest.’

‘You have lodgers, I collect?’

‘Four officers and their servants. They come and go. Some of them are rowdier than others. One can never tell. At least the Hessians we have at present are gentlemen, though sometimes you would not think it.’ He wiped his forehead with a large handkerchief. ‘It is very close today, do you not find?’

‘Indeed, sir. I hope my visit does not fatigue you.’

‘Not in the least. You may consider yourself a welcome diversion. I do not enjoy climbing stairs so I value it when society comes to me.’ He eased his neckcloth further away from his neck. ‘Shall we sit outside? It is infinitely cooler.’

For a moment I thought my host had taken leave of his senses. He reversed slowly through the doorway. I followed him on to the landing. The maid hurried forward and opened another door immediately opposite. It led directly out to a large balcony bordered by a low iron rail. Beyond it was the great sweep of the sunlit sky above and the glittering waters of the bay below.

‘Good God,’ I said. Here, high above the stench and hubbub of the streets, I understood why New York was sometimes accounted a beautiful city.

‘Indeed, sir.’ Dr Slype smiled at me. ‘If faith and reason were not enough, then this prospect alone would incline me to believe in the existence of a benevolent deity.’

In an alcove sheltered from the wind were two chairs of wicker and a daybed arranged around a table laden with books. We settled ourselves in the chairs. Without being bidden, the maid brought a tray with two glasses, a bottle of hock and a flask of selzer water.

‘My Hessians sometimes bring me selzer water,’ Dr Slype told me, leaning forward to mix the drinks. ‘They know I have a taste for it. You will join me, I hope? I generally take a glass or two at this time of the morning. It cools the brain most wonderfully.’

My host sipped his hock and selzer and set down the glass. ‘And now, sir. Mrs Frobisher tells me you are a very charming gentleman.’ He held up his face to the sun. ‘And that you are a high government official sent from London.’

‘I come from London and I have a position at the American Department. But it is not a particularly lofty one, I’m afraid.’

‘I am sure you are modest.’

‘I deal with Loyalist claims for compensation, sir. I do not mean that I assess them in any way: I act merely as a conduit for them and ensure they take the best form and go to the most suitable place.’

‘The bonfire?’ he said, not unkindly.

‘I hope not. God knows, there are deserving cases among them.’

‘Yes. It is a terrible business, this war. You would think that rational beings should be able to manage their disagreements in a way that would not damage all parties concerned. There is really only one explanation: that man is not a rational being at all.’

‘I find you are a philosopher, sir,’ I said.

‘You flatter me, sir. I am a fat old fool.’ He took up the wine. ‘Come, let me refill your glass and you shall tell me how I may be of service. Mrs Frobisher tells me you have been enquiring about Roger Pickett.’

‘Did you know him well?’

‘Forgive me, sir, but why do you need to know? And are you acting for yourself or for the Government?’

‘There is a claim for compensation in train. I have been instructed to assemble any details that may be material to the case.’

Dr Slype raised his eyebrows. ‘So you must know he was found murdered last year?’

‘Yes.’

The chair creaked beneath him as he sat back and considered me. ‘Poor fellow. I did not hear about it until after he was dead and buried – my wife and I were on Long Island with her sister at the time, and I did not see the newspapers. They hanged the man who did it. A runaway, was it not?’

‘A runaway was hanged for it, certainly,’ I said. ‘But that is another matter. I—’

He pounced. ‘Ah! I apprehend you have some doubt that the right man was executed.’

I hesitated only a moment. ‘Yes, sir. Though I do not know for sure, and there is much else that is mysterious about the business.’

‘But why do you wish to enquire into it now, so long afterwards?’

‘It is possible that agents of Congress may have had a hand in the matter.’

‘This business grows murkier by the moment, sir.’ Dr Slype chuckled quietly, and his whole body vibrated in sympathy. ‘But I really do not understand how I can assist you.’

‘We have very little information about Roger Pickett and his family, sir. I hoped you might be able to help us.’

‘I would not say I knew him well. I doubt if I exchanged more than two or three words with him, and that must have been five or six years ago. I knew his father slightly better – Jonathan Pickett – he had an estate near Charlotte. But the family was Presbyterian so we did not see them in church or meet them much in society. I’m afraid Mr Pickett’s son was a sad disappointment to him. I do know that.’

‘In what way?’

‘The father was a sober, God-fearing man. Young Roger sowed his wild oats and they quarrelled. They say the father died of an apoplexy when he discovered the extent of his son’s debts, but I cannot vouch for the truth of that.’ Dr Slype picked up his wine and stared placidly out to sea. ‘And so the son inherited,’ he went on. ‘He sold the estate as soon as his father was in his grave. I heard that he went down to Charleston and spent his inheritance as quickly as he could.’

‘Mrs Frobisher thought he had enlisted in the Continental Army,’ I said.

‘Yes, I know. The father would have approved of that, at least. As I said, the family was Presbyterian and Mr Jonathan Pickett was stuffed to the gills with Whig principles.’

‘And the son?’

‘I’m not sure he had any principles.’ Dr Slype smiled at me. ‘I know it is uncharitable of me, but I fear that Mr Roger followed where expediency led. Which in his case was New York. As a matter of fact, I saw him walking down Broadway but—’

‘I thought you said you hadn’t spoken—’

He held up a plump white hand and stopped me in mid-sentence. ‘I beg your pardon, sir – I did not mean to mislead you. I saw him in Broadway in the spring of seventy-six, when General Washington held the city for Congress. But we did not speak. Mr Roger was wearing regimentals of some sort. I believe he was a sergeant.’

‘Did he see you?’

Dr Slype shook his head. ‘It would not have been desirable. I did not like to be recognized in those days – not that I am retiring by nature, you understand. But I am a Fellow of King’s College and I found that my principles were not altogether fashionable when the Continentals occupied the city.’

I remembered the Judge’s brother, whose memorial was in Trinity churchyard. ‘Then you must have known the late Dr Wintour? I believe he was a Fellow of King’s.’

A shadow passed over Dr Slype’s face. ‘The poor gentleman. He was more Tory than His Majesty himself and quite unable to dissemble it. And he paid the price for that. You will understand my desire to be discreet.’

‘As it happens, I lodge at his brother’s house.’

‘The Judge? I have met him once or twice in company with Dr Wintour but I never had the honour of being on intimate terms with the family.’

‘Do you happen to know if they were acquainted with the Picketts?’

Dr Slype looked surprised. ‘Not as far as I know. Why?’

‘No particular reason, sir.’

‘I believe the Wintours were not in the city when the rebels seized it. Apart from Dr Wintour, that is. So they cannot have met Roger Pickett then.’

I drained my glass and began to think of leaving. Dr Slype gestured to the bottle. I shook my head with a smile and stood up.

‘I suppose there was a connection of sorts,’ he said suddenly. ‘Between the Picketts and Wintours, that is. But a very indirect one.’