The Sudbury School Murders (7 page)

Why he was so adamant on keeping her
confined, I could not understand. Grenville was usually the most
rational of gentlemen, but where Marianne was concerned, he had
certainly lost his head.

I turned his letter over and wrote on the
back, "Let her go. It can only do you harm if you find her. Your
motives are the best, I know, but you cannot bind her if she does
not want to be bound."

I knew Grenville would not want to read those
words or heed them, but I wrote them for what it was worth.

As I sealed the letter, I remembered
something that I'd pushed to the back of my mind. A few days ago,
during my morning ride, I had taken the horse as far as Hungerford.
At the end of the High Street, I had seen a woman who'd looked
remarkably like Marianne duck back inside a house. At the time, I'd
thought nothing of it, believing Marianne safely in London with
Grenville.

Hungerford would certainly be a place to hide
from Grenville. But why should she hide herself here in the
country, so close to the Sudbury School, where she knew I'd gone? I
had assumed, and apparently Grenville did too, that she'd gone to
visit a man. I was in all likelihood mistaken about the woman I
saw, though it could not hurt to discover whether I was in
error.

My next letter was from Lady Breckenridge. I
opened it carefully, as though it might sting me, and well it
might. Lady Breckenridge's letters to me so far had been filled
with barbed witticisms about various members of the
haut
ton.
The letters amused me--I shared many of her opinions--but
they did leave me to wonder what barbed witticisms she made about
me in my absence.

This letter urged me to cease praising the
beauty of the Berkshire countryside and write of something more
interesting. "Really, Lacey, you are a man of intellect, and what's
better, common sense, and yet, you address me as though I were an
inane debutante who would want to hurry down and do a watercolor of
the place. Amuse me with anecdotes of the silly things country
people and merchant schoolboys get up to, for heaven's sake."

As usual, with Lady Breckenridge, I did not
know whether to laugh or grow irritated. Donata Breckenridge was
thirty, black-haired, blue-eyed and sharp-tongued. I had disliked
her when I first met her--over a billiards game in Kent--but she
had rendered me assistance during the affair of the Glass House not
a month ago. I'd come to see that she could be kindhearted beneath
her acid observations. I had also kissed her, and the memory of
that was not disagreeable.

I laid her letter aside, reflecting that she
might find news of the murder a little less inane than my
descriptions of country meadows.

I had left the next letter for last. Louisa
Brandon had not yet written me since I'd arrived in Sudbury, though
I had written her twice, and I'd feared she would not correspond
with me at all. But now she had--three thick sheets full of her
slanted writing.

I broke the seal, sat back in my chair, and
prepared to savor every word.

I was still savoring the letter later, when I
rode my usual horse to Sudbury for the inquest that afternoon.
Louisa had said nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that one
acquaintance might not say to another. She'd described a tedious
supper she'd attended with her husband with veterans from the
Peninsular War, "during which the colonels congratulated one
another on the depth of the dung they had stood in and the
viciousness of the flies that had bit them while they waited for
the French to shoot at them."

I smiled. I could imagine Louisa politely
containing her boredom, while the retired officers relived the
hardships of the Peninsula as though it had been the finest of
holidays. The more venomously they'd complained at the time, the
louder the laughter and the longer the reminiscences would be. Poor
Louisa.

She'd said little more than that. Only that
she'd shopped and gossiped with Lady Aline and visited a girl
called Black Nancy, who was doing fine as a maid in an inn near
Islington.

She apologized for going on about trivial
matters that would bore a gentleman, but I imbibed every word as
though they were the finest brandy. This is what I wanted with
Louisa, the small things, the friendly discussion, the sharing of
lives. What she termed trivial, I called pleasure beyond price.

The inquest for Middleton was held at the
magistrate's house in Sudbury, a fairly large brick dwelling half a
mile on the other side of the village. Behind it a slope of damp
green ran down to brush that lined the canal.

We sat in a large hall in the middle of the
house, almost a square room with benches all around. The coroner
sat on a landing a few steps up from the rest of us, the magistrate
next to him. The magistrate reminded me of Squire Allworthy in
Henry Fielding's humorous novel
Tom Jones;
he was rotund,
with a pink and benevolent face.

I learned quickly that the magistrate's flesh
did not house a warmhearted being but a man slightly harassed that
he had a murder on his hands.

The coroner, who was thin and cadaverous, the
opposite of the magistrate, called the proceedings to order.
Rutledge, looking annoyed that he'd been pulled from the important
business of running the school, identified the body as Oliver
Middleton, who had come to work in his stables six months
before.

The coroner had examined the corpse, he said,
as had the local doctor. The coroner announced that Middleton had
met his death from a knife across his windpipe, and then he had
been pushed into the lock, where he had lain underwater for some
time, four hours at the very least. The coroner could not be
certain how long Middleton had actually been dead, but certainly no
more than eight hours before he'd been found.

Since Sebastian had told me he'd been
speaking to him at ten o'clock, and Middleton had been found at six
o'clock in the morning, this information did not seem particularly
helpful.

According to the stable hands, Middleton had
left the stable yard about ten o'clock Sunday evening and said that
he was off to Sudbury and the tavern. The landlord of the tavern
stood up and told the coroner what he'd told me, that Middleton had
never arrived.

"Very well." The coroner looked vacantly
about the room. "Where is the man who found the body?"

The lockkeeper shuffled forward and said in
his taciturn way that he had gone out to open the lock for an early
barge about six o'clock. He'd seen the dead body, recognized
Middleton, sent word up to the school and sent for the constable.
They'd tried to fish the body out, then decided to send the barge
through and drag Middleton out with it, as I had witnessed.

The coroner called Sebastian next.

Every person in the room craned to watch
Sebastian walk forward. He looked pale, but otherwise well. In
fact, he seemed relieved to be here in this open hall, out of his
prison, no matter what happened to him.

Belinda Rutledge had not attended the
inquest. I assumed her father had forbidden her to come, something
I would have done in his place. A coroner's inquest was no place
for a young girl, and she might have betrayed herself in agitation
over Sebastian.

"Your name is Sebastian?" the coroner began.
The magistrate next to him leaned forward, like a bull lowering its
head, and watched.

"Sebastian D'Arby," Sebastian answered, his
voice subdued.

The coroner gave him a sharp glance, as
though not believing he had a surname at all. "You were employed by
the Sudbury School to assist in the stables?"

"Yes."

The coroner looked annoyed that he'd not
appended a
sir
to the
yes
. "No doubt the residents of
the Sudbury School were pleased to know that a Romany was looking
after their horses," he said.

A titter ran through the room. Many people
considered the Roma criminals simply for existing, and most
believed they were horse thieves. Sebastian did not smile. "I am
good with the horses."

"Yes, yes, of course you are. Tell me, did
you get along with Mr. Middleton and the other stable hands?"

"Well enough."

The coroner moved a sheet of paper. "And yet,
one of the stable lads reported to the constable that he had heard
you and Middleton arguing, quite loudly, just before Middleton left
the stables that night."

Sebastian stared. I stared as well. Sebastian
had mentioned no quarrel with Middleton, and I had not heard that
any of the stable hands had witnessed such a quarrel. I wondered
where the coroner had obtained this information.

I waited, suddenly uncomfortable. If
Sebastian had lied to me, I could not help him.

"He makes a mistake," Sebastian said
weakly.

The coroner looked displeased. "Mr. Middleton
left the stables at about ten o'clock," the coroner went on. "Said
he was heading for the public house in Sudbury. At a little past
ten, you yourself left the stables, according to the other lads.
Where did you go?"

Sebastian wet his lips. His black hair
glistened in the chunk of sunlight that slanted through a tall
window. "I went for a walk. Along the canal."

"Along the canal. In which direction?"

"South. Toward Great Bedwyn."

"And you returned, according to your
statement, at two o'clock?"

"Yes."

"A long walk, Mr. . . . er . . . D'Arby,
wouldn't you say?"

"I visited my family."

"Yes, so you said. Interesting that the
constable has not been able to find a trace of your family, on the
canal or off it."

Sebastian's eyes flickered. "They move all
the time. They could be in Bath by now."

"Be assured, we are still looking. Now, did
anyone see you on this walk? Did you speak to anyone who would
remember you walking about between the hours of ten and two?"

Sebastian glanced once at me. I kept my
expression neutral. "I saw no one."

The coroner looked pleased. "And so you
walked back to the stables and went to bed."

"Yes. And rose in the morning as usual."

"Whereupon you learned of the death--yes, you
told the constable." He shuffled papers again. "When you walked
along the canal, did you go anywhere near Lower Sudbury Lock?"

Sebastian looked startled. "Of course. I had
to walk past it to reach the stables."

"And you saw nothing amiss?"

"No."

"Very well, Mr. D'Arby, you may sit
down."

The room rustled as listeners stirred and
whispered to their neighbors. The coroner took his time about
calling the next witness, giving everyone, including the jury,
plenty of time to speculate.

The next witness proved to be the stable
hands called Thomas Adams, who claimed he'd heard an argument
between Sebastian and Middleton. "Tell us, in your own time, Mr.
Adams, what you heard when the gypsy and Mr. Middleton argued," the
coroner said smoothly.

The stable hand was about fifty years old
with iron-gray hair. He looked uncomfortable standing up in front
of the coroner and magistrate as well as the rest of the men
crowded into the hall. "I was just going up the stairs to me bed,
in the loft," he said, carefully pronouncing each word. "I heard
Middleton down in the stable yard, shouting. He said, 'I don't care
what you do, I'm quit of you.' Then the other fellow said, 'Where
are you going?' Middleton, he says, 'Down pub. Where I can drink
with real men.'" Thomas cleared his throat, looked nervously at the
magistrate. "Then the Romany man, he says, 'No, you're going to
hell.'"

The coroner perked up. "And what did Mr.
Middleton say to that?"

Thomas looked apologetic. "Mr. Middleton
said, in so many words, that Sebastian should fornicate himself. A
might more vulgar than that, you understand, sir."

The coroner nodded. "And then?"

"Middleton stormed across the yard and out of
the gate to the lane. A few minutes later, I see Sebastian also let
himself out the gate. I figured they would shout at each other all
the way to Sudbury, and I went to bed."

The coroner nodded and dismissed him. As the
man shuffled back to his bench, Sebastian sprang to his feet. "He
is lying. I never said these things to Mr. Middleton. I never
shouted at him."

"Mr. D'Arby, you have had time to tell your
story. Sit down."

Sebastian remained standing, quivering.
Several of the jury looked alarmed. I caught his eye, made a
sit
down, for God's sake
motion with my hand. Sebastian saw me,
lowered himself reluctantly to the bench once again.

The coroner turned to the jury. "Now,
gentleman," he began.

He was finished. No more witnesses. The
coroner, I could see, had made up his mind. I rose to my feet. "May
I speak?"

The coroner looked at me, surprised and
slightly irritated. "Yes, Mr. . . . " he peered at me
shortsightedly, then realized he did not know me.

"Captain," I said. "Captain Lacey."

"Yes, Captain Lacey?"

"I would like to point out that I knew this
man, Middleton, in London. He used to work for a gentleman called
James Denis."

I do not know what I expected. Gasps,
perhaps. The magistrate and the coroner simply looked at me.

Rutledge, on the other hand, reacted. He
flushed until his face grew mottled, his brows thunderous.

"And how long ago was this?" the magistrate
asked.

"Before he came here. Last summer, at the
least."

"Last summer? Eight months ago? I beg your
pardon, Captain, but I hardly understand how can it be connected
with what happened here."

"This Mr. Denis is a dangerous man," I said.
"I am suggesting that a connection in London, possibly one through
Denis, caused Middleton's death. Perhaps some person followed him
down here from London and killed him."

The coroner considered this. He took his
time. "And why do you suppose that this person, whoever he is,
waited eight months?"