Death at Rottingdean (12 page)

“Dr. Barriston!” Charles exclaimed. “Yes, I have corresponded with him on the topic, several times. He is using the X-ray to set fractures.”

“Pardon?” the French captain asked quizzically. “How is that so?”

Charles smiled. As a photographer, as well as an amateur scientist, it was a subject in which he had a great interest. “X-rays are a very powerful type of radiation,” he said. “Where light rays reflect off the skin, these pass through the skin and soft tissues and reveal an image of the skeleton. A surgeon might place photographic film under a broken bone—a forearm, say—and use an X-ray apparatus to determine the nature and location of the fracture. They could be used to equal advantage to explore for other dense material—a bullet lodged in the body, for instance.”

The count's monocle fell from his eye. “Are you telling me that a bullet can be viewed inside a body?”

“It can indeed,” Charles said. “If you like, I am sure that Dr. Barriston would be glad to give you a demonstration. He is quite keen on—” He was interrupted by the sound of a commotion in the hallway. A footman scurried up behind Sassoon and spoke urgently in his ear. Their host frowned, then turned to Kipling.

“There is a—ah, a young person in the hallway who claims to have a message for you, Mr. Kipling. He will not say what it is—insists on seeing you in person.”

Kipling looked alarmed. “I hope it is not a family emergency. I left Mrs. Kipling at home with our new son.” He looked around. “I wonder if His Highness will excuse—”

The Prince was standing nearby with a glass in one hand and a cigar in the other. “For heaven's sake, man,” he exclaimed loudly, “don't wait on ceremony.” He gestured toward the double doors. “By all means, go if you must.”

But at that moment, the doors burst open and a small boy hurtled through, a footman still grasping the sleeve of his knitted jersey. With some astonishment, Charles recognized him as the tousle-haired, freckle-faced Irish boy who had told them what he had seen on the beach.

“Patrick!” Kipling exclaimed anxiously. “Were you sent? Is something wrong at The Elms?”

“Not at The Elms, sir.” The boy twisted out of the footman's grasp. He looked around, seeing for the first time the crowd of staring, silent men. His face flamed. “I know it's cheeky. But it's awf'lly important, or I wouldn't have—”

“Well, if it's not Mrs. Kipling or the children,” Kipling snapped, “what the devil is it?”

Patrick stared down at his shoes. “It's ... it's another dead man, sir,” he said in a small voice. “The coast guard from Rottingdean. Captain Smith, sir. I found him in the windmill. He's been shot.”

The Prince strode forward and put a hand on the boy's shoulder. “Her Majesty's coast guard has been shot?” he demanded imperiously. “Who would have the audacity to do such a thing?”

The boy looked up at him, his eyes widening. “Sir?”

“His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales,” Kipling said, and added, not unkindly, “Answer the question.”

The boy swallowed hard, then lifted his chin. “I don't know, Your Royal Highness, sir,” he said. “I don't know who did it.”

“Your name, boy?” the Prince asked.

“Patrick,” the boy said.

“You say, Patrick, that this is another dead man? A
second,
you mean?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But surely not two dead coast guards?”

“I ...” The boy gulped. “I'm afraid so, sir.”

The Prince looked at Charles. “You're staying at Rottingdean, aren't you, Sheridan? What do you know of this?”

“Nothing of
this,
sir,” Charles replied uneasily. He had the sense that he knew what was coming. “But yesterday morning, the body of the Black Rock coast patrol, a young man named George Radford, was fished out of the Channel. Village gossip has it that he committed suicide. Patrick, however, witnessed the body being hauled from the beach into the sea under the cover of darkness, so there would seem to be some question about it.”

“Ah,” the Prince said. He was scowling. “I trust that the local police are handling the matter expeditiously.”

Kipling's chuckle was mirthless. “The local police, sir, are a local joke.”

“I didn't tell the constable,” the boy said earnestly to Kipling. “I didn't think he would ... that is ...” He let the sentence die away.

The Prince looked from the boy to Kipling. “Do I gather from this,” he asked, narrowing his eyes, “that the local constabulary are incapable of investigating these serious crimes?”

“I suggested to the constable that his lordship be involved, Your Highness,” Kipling said, pushing his lips in and out. He paused delicately. “The suggestion, unfortunately, was not well received.”

Charles gave an inward sigh. He was more and more certain of what was to come, and he did not like it. But there was nothing he could do. When royalty spoke, it was accustomed to being obeyed.

The Prince's scowl deepened and his voice grew more gruff. “Two of the Crown's coast guards murdered in two days, and the local police are refusing assistance? This will not do. It will not do at all!” He turned to Sassoon. “Arthur, you know the Chief Constable here at Brighton, do you not?”

“I do, Your Highness,” Sassoon said with alacrity. “Sir Robert Pinckney. An excellent fellow, quite forward in his methods.”

“Good, good. Send a message to him forthwith, letting him know what has happened. Tell him that I have taken a personal interest in the case and that I am authorizing Lord Sheridan to conduct an investigation on behalf of the Crown. Have him send his best men to assist.”

Charles felt he owed it to Kate to make an effort to resist, although he knew very well the outcome. “Sir, her ladyship and I—”

“Ah, Lady Sheridan is with you at Rottingdean?” the Prince returned. “Splendid! Let her know I asked after her health, will you? Now, is there anything else you might need for your investigation, other than the Chief Constable's assistance?”

Charles sighed. “If there is, sir, you can be sure I shall not hesitate to ask for it.”

“Good,” the Prince said warmly. “I am off in the morning for a week's shooting at Abergeldie Castle. I shall expect you to telegraph your report to me.” He reached into his pocket and turned to the boy. “Patrick, you have done well to bring this situation to my attention. This sovereign is for you.” And he took out a gold coin and pressed it into the boy's hand.

The boy blinked. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

With a satisfied smile, the Prince turned to Sassoon. “Well, now that the matter is settled, Arthur, I believe it is time for our game. What do you say to a small wager, eh?”

You may be certain that the Black Horse was a meeting place
for the village smugglers, who must often have come together
in secret in its small taproom and discussed their plans. It was
a dangerous game the villagers were playing, for not everyone
was in it. Enemies of Rottingdean acted as informers, and
watched when contraband was being hidden in cottages, stables,
the churchyard, tucked away in the machinery inside the
Mill or in the furze hushes in Saltdean Vale. These informers
were called “ten-shilling men,” which is what they were paid
for their services. They, too, played a dangerous game, for
like all spies they could expect no mercy when they were
caught.

—HENRY BLYTH
Smugglers' Village: The Story of Rottingdean

 

 

 

H
arry Tudwell had called the meeting in the small back room of the Black Horse for eight o'clock on Monday night, to discuss what should be done in the event—the likely event, it seemed now—of an official inquiry into the unfortunate death of the young coast guard. “Official,” in this instance, meant an investigation conducted by someone other than the tractable Fat Jack Woodhouse—the Queen's coroner, for instance, Dr. Paul Barriston, or the chief constable, Sir Robert Pinckney. Both were from Brighton, and both had reputations for persistently sniffing out information. And neither would be nearly so obliging as the complicitous Fat Jack, who was nervous as a compass needle about the possibility that outsiders might come poking their noses into Rottingdean business.

Harry knew all about Fat Jack's feelings on the matter, because the constable had been on his doorstep not thirty minutes after the coast guard's body was hauled onto the beach, inquiring apprehensively about what was best to be done.

“Wot's best?” Harry had answered, somewhat hollowly. He recovered himself and, in a stouter voice, replied: “Well, I'll tell ye, Jack. Wot's best is t' put it about that th' fellow threw hisself off th' cliff in a fit o' despair, an' th' corpse went out wi' th' tide.”

God knows, it could be true. Harry himself had felt many black moments after his wife abandoned him for a baker and a brick house in Lewes three years before, and the cliffs had seemed to offer a certain remedy. Every year, the coroner was called down twice or thrice to inquire into the deaths of men and women found huddled at the foot of the cliffs or washed up on the beach, with the bleak and invariable ruling of “Death by Suicide.” Several such were buried along the northern perimeter of the church grave-yard, up against the stone fence of Farmer Hartletop's muck-yard. One stone was marked with only a woman's name and the bleak word OBLIVION.

But Fat Jack, scratching his head and screwing up his fleshy mouth, was not reassured by Harry's suggestion. “ ‘E was stabbed, too, 'Arry, right through from front to back.” He paused and added mournfully: “Drownded and stabbed. Somebody did ‘im, 'Arry, wi' 'is own knife.”

Stabbing made it more difficult, but not impossible. “Well, then,” Harry said shortly, “put it about that ‘e tumbled onto 'is knife on th' way down.”

“Well, yes,” Fat Jack said slowly. He blinked his small eyes, piglike in his pink moony face, and his mustache worked back and forth. “I ‘spose that'll answer. But 'oo d'ye
really
think did 'im, 'Arry?”

Harry frowned, suspecting that Fat Jack suspected him. After all, if Radford had been sniffing too close, Harry was the one most likely to know it and to take prompt action against the intruder. But whether Harry did it or not, he would never have admitted it to Fat Jack, who could not be trusted with such a dangerous piece of information.

“One o' th' men, I s‘pose,” he said with a shrug, “fearin' that Radford had turned up somethin' on 'im.”

Fat Jack closed one eye thoughtfully. “Trunky, mebbee?”

“Could've been Trunky,” Harry agreed with alacrity. “Where's th' corpse?”

“Laid out i' th' guardroom at th' coast guard station on th' ‘Igh Street. Foxy Smith said t' take it there an' 'e'd look out for it.”

Of course. Captain Reynold Smith of the Rottingdean Coast Guard Station had not been granted his nickname without earning it. He looked out for everything. “ ‘Ave ye telegraphed Brighton yet?” he asked.

Fat Jack shook his head. “Foxy thought I should talk t' you first,” he muttered.

“Well, do it,” Harry snapped. He was irritated because Fat Jack should have been able to think of these things for himself, without being told. And if he could not—if he had to be primed and drilled with a ready answer to every conceivable question—how would he reply to Barriston when it came to the inquest? This latter question concerned Harry deeply, but he could not linger over it just now. There were more pressing matters to attend to, such as the plan that must be hammered out at tonight's meeting at the Black Horse.

As to the nature of this plan, Harry had a firm opinion, and since he was the acknowledged leader of this organization—his official position was that of the lander, who was assigned to organize the transportation and arrange for the security of the merchandise once it reached the beach—he was confident that he would have no difficulty persuading his fellow free-traders to subscribe to it. Clearly, they should lay off the work until the inquest was over and the investigation had come to an end. Like it or not, Wednesday night's shipment would have to be postponed.

“Temporarily suspended,” as he put it, in his argument to the group that night. “Until th' next dark o' th' moon. Then it will be safe to get on wi' our business.” He had turned to the barman with an ingratiating grin. “Perry, my fine man, go out t' th' bar an' fix us up wi' another pint all round, will ye? We'll drink t' our ‘ealth an' th' next shipment, as soon as 'tis safe.”

But Perry, the owner of the Black Horse and one of their number, was not to be so glibly patronized.

“Temporarily suspended!” he exclaimed. He took a bottle from a table and brandished it angrily. “This is th' very last bottle of brandy, an' not another drop i' th' cellar. I was countin' on two tuns from Wednesday night's shipment, ‘Any, an' I don't intend t' wait, coast guard or no coast guard.”

Mrs. Howard was equally contentious. She shook her gloved forefinger in Harry's face and shrilled: “And I am depending on the cambric and eyelet lace, Mr. Tudwell. How am I to finish Miss Strumpshaw's trousseau without it, I'd like you to tell me? The girl is to be married a fortnight hence, and I have not begun the petticoats. To wait until the next dark of the moon is impossible, and the expense of purchasing the materials in London would be ... why, it would simply be ruinous!”

Harry was attempting to formulate a reassuring response to Mrs. Howard when Curly Knapton, the proprietor of the village's only tobacco shop, loomed over him. Curly was the size of a bear and one of the best keg-men Harry had ever known, capable of carrying two tuns, each weighing about forty-five pounds, one on his chest, the other on his back, while climbing a cliffside ladder.