Death at Rottingdean (25 page)

‘Oh, Mus' Reynolds, Mus' Reynolds!' said Hobden, under his breath. ‘If I knowed all was inside your head, I'd know something wuth knowin'. Mus' Dan an' Miss Una, come along o' me while I lock up my liddle hen-house.'

—RUDYARD KIPLING
Puck of Pook's Hill

 

 

 

 

 

K
ate walked swiftly down the High Street toward the Gap, glancing into every green byway and peering into every windowed shop—the chemist‘s, the tobacconist's, the grocery, the alehouse, the post office. Lawrence had reported that Charles had one or two important errands and would be home by teatime. But teatime had come and gone, and Kate felt her information could not wait on his return. She had put on her jacket, pinned on her hat, and walked out into the bright clear afternoon, looking for him.

The village street was busy, but once again it seemed to Kate that there was something sinister about its activity. A hatless gypsy woman with long black hair, carrying a woven basket of rabbits, turned surreptitiously and slipped into a lane. A ruddy-cheeked man with a scythe over his shoulder stepped into the gutter so she could pass, averting his eyes from hers and muttering something she could not catch. A cluster of men on the corner turned their backs as she walked by, as if they did not want her to see their faces.

Kate felt a shiver of apprehension. With its perfection of whitewashed slate-roofed houses, its quaintly cobbled street, its green gardens and golden downs and wide views of the sparkling, sun-ruffled sea, Rottingdean was just as lovely as it had seemed the day she and Charles arrived. But now, under the picture-book loveliness, Kate felt something dark and somber, brooding. “Its soul is rotten right through,” the young widow had cried. And Kate shivered once again as she realized that Rud, who had not even heard the woman's story, suspected it: “Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,” he had written. “Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by.” How many men, women, and children in this village had turned away from the truth, closing their eyes and ears to a venture that turned honest men into something else altogether?

“Kate!”

Kate started. In front of her, turning the corner from Newhaven Road, was Charles. In her haste, she had all but collided with him.

“Charles!” she said, clutching at his arm. “I've been looking for you. There is something you need to know—several things, in fact, and they're all important. Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”

A few minutes later, Charles having procured a glass of sherry for each of them, they were seated at a table in the large taproom of the White Horse Inn, with its curious carvings and half-paneled walls. From the evidence of the painted wooden signs that hung above the wainscoting, the inn must once have been an important coaching station. One sign, with a date of 1808, announced a new coach called the Royal Charlotte, which would make the forty-mile journey between Brighton and Hastings in ten hours. Another trumpeted the opening of the Falmer Road in 1822, the “new coach road” that linked Rottingdean to the county town of Lewes. Kate wondered, fleetingly, how much smuggled contraband, how many clandestine communications, had been carried by those coaches.

Charles listened thoughtfully to her story, frowning at the widow Radford's bitter accusation of Captain Smith, smiling a little when Kate told about her conversation with Mrs. Portney, and shaking his head over the tale of the Chantilly and Valenciennes lace that she had ordered from the dressmaker.

“And here,” Kate said, drawing a tobacco tin out of her handbag, “is a little present I purchased for
you,
my dear. I hope you enjoy it, for it is very good. Or so the tobacconist assured me.” She smiled, remembering Kipling's verse. “Brandy for the parson, tobacco for the clerk.”

Charles took the tin, opened and sniffed it. “So it is,” he said admiringly, turning a pinch between his fingers. “A very fine Turkish tobacco, which I should rather have expected to find in one of the best shops in London. Thank you very much, Kate. Your resourcefulness never fails to amaze me.” He began filling his pipe. “But what's this about a parson and a clerk?”

“It's a poem Rud sent me this afternoon,” she said. “It's called ‘A Smuggler's Song.' ” She drew it out of her handbag and read the first verse.

 

 

“Mmm,” Charles said, striking a match and touching it to his tamped tobacco. He drew appreciatively. “Yes, fine.”

“Of course it's fine!” she exclaimed. “But listen to
this
verse, Charles—it's even finer. Rud has it exactly right.

 

 

“You see?” she said excitedly. “Everyone in the village is either involved or knows what's going on, but they've closed their eyes and kept their mouths shut because they're benefiting from it.”

“Ah,” Charles said, as a wreath of smoke curled over his head.

“Don't
ah
me, Charles Sheridan!” Kate leaned closer, frowning. “And don't tell me I'm imagining things, either. I'm certain that George Radford was killed because he threatened to reveal what was going on. In fact, he may even have been killed by Captain Smith, who was the leader of the smugglers!” She put her finger on Charles's chest, tapping for emphasis. “This is not a poet's fancy or one of Beryl Bardwell's inventions. This is the
truth.”

“You're very likely right, Kate,” Charles said. He clasped her hand and closed his eyes meditatively. “By Jove, this is a very fine tobacco.”

She pulled her hand back, surprised. “I'm ... right?”

He opened his eyes again. “The evidence you have assembled fits the story that has emerged so far from my own investigations.” He raised his glass of sherry and sipped it. “This is very fine sherry, as well,” he said, leaning back. “Don't you think so?”

“Charles!” Kate exclaimed impatiently. “Tell me about your investigations. What have you learned?”

“I will tell you later, my dear,” Charles said, and smiled. “But we have a small matter to attend to first—a social call, as it were, although our host will not be at home. Drink up.” He lifted his glass to hers.

Charles's “small matter” turned out to be a search of the cottage just off the High Street in which Captain Smith had lived. Kate was nervous as they stood before the closed door as if they were about to call on the occupant of the building. She felt only slightly reassured by the fact that Charles had a key, obtained when the late captain's personal effects were surrendered to him. She knew that the man whose house this was could not come upon them, but that did not keep her from feeling that he was watching behind the rosebush, or on the other side of the door. She felt rather better once they were safely inside the empty cottage and the door shut and latched against any challenge.

“Well,” Charles remarked, looking around, “I shouldn't think a search would take long. There isn't much here to search through.”

The cottage was a single large room with a wooden floor, heavy beams supporting a low ceiling, and a fireplace of laid-up stone. A narrow bed stood against one wall, a trunk at its foot. A wooden sink-and-cupboard arrangement ran under a casement window on a second wall, and a table and chair stood against a third. A stuffed chair sat before the cold fireplace, which contained a small black kitchen range that had not been cleaned recently. One corner of the room was curtained off as a closet, and in another stood a wooden cupboard of books. The room was spare and tidy, the only decorations a wall-hung gold-framed photograph of a dark-haired woman in the hoop skirts of thirty years before, signed “To Reynold, from his Loving Mother.” Beside it, in a matching frame, hung a photograph of a smiling man in a coast guard's uniform—the man Kate had seen, dead, in the old mill. His eyes, bright and curious, seemed to follow her as she moved, as if he were about to ask what they wanted from him.

There was a paraffin lamp on the table, but the sun through the window brightened the room. Charles made for the desk, instructing Kate to look through the trunk and the closet, and the next few minutes passed in silence, the only sound the twitter of a robin outside the window. Kate, still feeling the dead man's eyes on her, took the photograph from the wall and laid it face down on the bed, then began with the closet. She found nothing remarkable there: a thick blue overcoat, a woolen uniform jacket with gold buttons and braid, a tweed shooting jacket, a pair of tweed trousers, boots. She went through all of the pockets, discovering nothing but a wrapped peppermint candy and a telegram, still folded in its yellow envelope, which she glanced at and put on the table for Charles to read. She opened the trunk and lifted out neat stacks of clothing—woolen trousers, a uniform jacket, folded shirts, cotton stockings—finding nothing of any interest. Quickly, she searched the bed, lifting the thin mattress and peering beneath it. Then she straightened and went to the wooden sink. A mug filled with assorted knives, forks, and spoons caught her eye, for one of the knives was quite unusual. It looked like a small sword, actually, with a hilt ...

She looked at it closely and gasped. “Charles, I think there's
blood
on this knife! And here are initials—GR!”

It was indeed blood, and after a moment's study, Charles spoke grimly. “Well done, Kate. I think you've found the weapon that killed Radford—his own knife.” He shook his head. “I'm not sure I should have thought to look for it among the kitchen utensils.”

“Then you knew it was here?” Kate cast a glance at the wicked knife and shuddered, thinking of the family it had ripped apart.

“I thought it might be—if Smith killed him, and I believe he did. If we question the boy closely, we may find that he recognized the captain, taking the body out to sea.” He held up the telegram. “You found this in a pocket?”

“Yes. Is it important?”

Charles handed it to her. “What do you think?”

“MEET AT HIGH POINT 4 PM SIGNED WILLY,” she read slowly, and shook her head. “I don't know, Charles.” She handed back the telegram. “The only Willy I can think of is the Kaiser, but I hardly imagine a coast guard captain would be receiving telegrams from heads of state. What else have you found?”

“These were in a ledger in the cupboard,” Charles replied, indicating several items he had laid out on the table. “When I have time to study the ledger, it may also prove useful.”

Kate bent over a sketch, crudely drawn free-hand in pencil on a torn and wrinkled scrap of brown paper. “It's a map of Rottingdean. Look, Charles, at these little squares—they are houses! There's the pond on the Green, and that little square is The Elms, and that one is North End House. This heavy line has to be the High Street, and this dotted line ...” Her mouth went dry.

Charles finished the sentence for her. “This dotted line must represent the tunnel.

She stared at him. “Chanes, we've solved the mystery. This is
proof
that Captain Smith was involved with the smugglers!”

“Not necessarily,” Charles said cautiously. “He might have been investigating their activities.”

“But that doesn't account for George Radford's knife!”

“Someone might have put it here, with the intention of incriminating Foxy Smith.”

Kate frowned. “You can't really think—”

“No. I believe Smith killed Radford to keep the smuggling operation from being discovered. But we can't rule out other possibilities, Kate. After all, we can't get into Smith's head and find out what he knew, and we don't have any evidence that Radford was killed to keep him quiet. And there are still several puzzles. For instance, look at these.” He pointed to two sheets of onionskin paper covered with penciled compass bearings, lines, and arcs.

“What are they?”

“Map overlays. They're used in the Army, where one can't forever be annotating one's map with the latest tactical information. These appear to match an inch-scale Ordnance Survey map.”

“Which map? A map of what area?”

Charles shook his head. “I can't tell. The registration marks aren't designated by coordinates.”

“They won't be of much use, then.” Kate, thinking that the sketch of the tunnel was far more interesting than sheets of onionskin that might or might not tell them anything, went back to the drawing. She put her finger on one of the squares. “You know, I believe this is Seabrooke House, Charles. And look—the tunnel is right
there,
just behind the house!”

Charles was still studying the overlays. “I might be able to guess the area, if I could find the appropriate Ordnance Survey sheet.” He paused. “What's puzzling me, though, isn't the
what
but the why. I'd use a map overlay to plan something dynamic—an invasion, perhaps, not a simple smuggling operation.” He frowned. “And then there is that gun ... Yes, the gun,” he muttered, more to himself than to her.

Kate looked up. “The gun? You've found the gun that killed Captain Smith?”

Charles began gathering up the overlays and sketch and putting them into the ledger. “Not yet. But we will, Kate, we will—it's just a matter of time.” He wrapped the knife in a clean cotton cloth and gathered everything up, then looked at her, grim-faced. “And while we may not be able to get inside Foxy Smith's head and learn all that he knew, what we've found in this room tells us something very much worth knowing.”