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Authors: Robin Paige

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BOOK: Death at Rottingdean
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His mouth relaxed into a smile and he put his arm around Kate's shoulders. “Let's go back to Seabrooke House, shall we? We can talk there—and now that Foxy's no longer around to tell the chickens what to do, perhaps we can unlock the hen-house.”
Kate frowned. “I don't think I understand that.”
“I'm not sure I do either, Kate—at least, not all of it. But guessing is better than closing our eyes, or watching the wall. Isn't it?”
24
I'll tell you a tale, an' you can fit it as how you please.
—RUDYARD KIPLING
Puck of Pook's Hill
 
 
In the course of a landing, a newcomer to the parish arrived and was horrified to find that goods were being illegally landed. “Smuggling! Oh, the shame of it! Is there no magistrate to hand, no justice of the peace? ... Is there no clergy-man, no minister?” The innocent man's enquiries were silenced when one of the locals pointed out the vicar holding a lantern.
—RICHARD PLATT
Smugglers' Britain
 
 
 
 
 
P
atrick squatted down in the corner of the empty loose-box in the stable for a long time before he began to move about. Harry Tudwell might step out of the stable office at any moment and collar him, and he wasn't at all sure that the man with the rattling pack and batwing waterproof hadn't caught sight of him stepping hastily away from the door and might turn back to search for him. And the loose-box—dark and smelling of horses and sweet summer hay—was as good a place as any to think things through from beginning to end and all in between, a project which took a great deal of time because Patrick had a great deal to think about.
He had to think about the errands he had done for Mr. Tudwell, about the nighttime enterprises of certain villagers and the routes they took to do their work, and about the lantern lights on Beacon Hill. He had to consider what and whom he had seen on the beach on the preceding Friday night; what he had heard Mrs. Higgs and her sister Mrs. Portney discussing in the kitchen the night before; and what he had overheard in the stable office between Mr. Tudwell and the chemist and—just now—between Mr. Tudwell and the odd-looking man with the smoked-glass eye preservers, who could be anything but was certainly
not
an antiquarian.
But Patrick's attempt at logical consideration was repeatedly interrupted by the frightful memory of Captain Smith sitting bolt upright and stark dead in the old mill, and the wrenching anguish of the family in the coast guard cottage at Black Rock. He hadn't much liked the captain, and he hadn't known Mr. Radford except by sight. But not to see the sky or smell the ocean or feel the shingle under your feet—that would be a terrible oblivion, and Patrick caught himself shivering whenever he thought of it.
By the time he managed to sort through everything, Patrick realized that he probably knew more about what had happened and what was going to happen than Mr. Tudwell himself—more than anyone else in the entire village, maybe. This realization might have made another boy feel puffed up and important, but it only made Patrick apprehensive. He was not a particularly moral child—as for most boys of his age, morality was a matter of what served most handily—but he knew that his dilemma was essentially a moral one. Mr. Tudwell had been a father to him when his own father had turned his back—wasn't it right that he should tell him what the villagers were planning so that he could take steps against the conspirators? But if Patrick told and Mr. Tudwell fixed things for now, the eventual catastrophe—for it
would
come, of that Patrick was certain—could hurt a great many people. And whatever loyalties Patrick owed the stablemaster, Mr. Tudwell had led the village into the valley of temptation, as the vicar would put it—shouldn't he pay for what he had done? Patrick was seized with another fit of shivering at the thought of a third death. There had to be a better way out.
The boy sat on his haunches for another ten minutes, pondering alternatives. Since he had come to Rottingdean, Mr. Tudwell had been the most important man he knew. That was no longer true, however. Patrick knew two other important men, and they might be able to help sort this thing out. He stood, looked cautiously out of the loose-box, and surveyed the passage in both directions, then slipped out and headed down the path. The story whose beginning he had seen that night on the beach now had a middle, and perhaps even an end. It was time to tell it to Mr. Kipling.
 
Kate was glad that today was Mrs. Portney's half-holiday, for that meant that she and Charles could talk without fear of being overheard. It was well after six o'clock, and the informal but generous supper laid out on a white cloth on the drawing-room table was more than welcome. Amelia had lighted the gas lamps, the fire was burning cheerfully, and Kate, having changed into her favorite yellow silk dress, was pouring tea. Charles came into the room wearing a smoking jacket, his brown hair freshly combed
He sat down beside the fire with a tired sigh. “And this was meant to be our holiday! I'm sorry, Kate. I didn't intend—”
“Sshh,” she said. “It's no matter. There will be time for our holiday.” She took him his cup of tea. “You've had a very long day. You must be exhausted.”
“I'm tired,” Charles admitted. “But I feel we are making progress.” He grinned ruefully. “Although I'm damned if I know what we're progressing
toward.
Just when I think I understand it, something else presents itself.” He shook his head. “Like those blasted overlays,” he muttered.
Kate put a cold tongue sandwich on a plate, added several small egg-and-anchovy sandwiches and a generous spoonful of potato salad and dressed cucumbers. “I hope you don't mind a cold supper,” she said, putting the plate on the small table beside his chair. “Mrs. Portney is out.”
Charles caught her hand and kissed it, then let it go. “I was well fed at luncheon. Barriston insisted that Pinckney and I share his partridge pie and apple pudding while we waited for the X-rays.”
A few silent moments passed while Charles ate and Kate prepared her own plate. When she had sat down on the other side of the fire, her plate in her lap, he said, “Would you like to hear what went on in Brighton—besides the partridge pie, that is?” He regarded her, his head on one side. “Although some of it is a bit grisly. Perhaps the story should wait until we've finished our suppers.”
“No, tell,” Kate commanded, and listened while he related the outcome of the two autopsies and his conversation with the gun shop owner. “It's lucky that Dr. Barriston was able to take the X-rays and retrieve the bullet,” she said, when he had finished.
“Lucky indeed. The bullet would have been found, most likely, but the job would have taken a great deal more time.” He frowned at the fire. “I don't know, though, that we learned anything from the bullet that we had not already surmised from the cartridge. We shall just have to wait and see what can be found out from Mr. Barker's inquiries in London. If it is true that there are very few guns of that type, we might have something.”
“What about your errands here in Rottingdean?”
Abstractedly, Charles picked up his napkin and blotted his lips. “Yes. Well, I stopped for a visit with the constable, who is up to his ears in all of this.” He gave her a half-smile. “His nickname, by the way, is Fat Jack.”
Kate looked up at him, startled. “The constable is involved in the smuggling?” Then, more thoughtfully, she remarked, “Well, I suppose he would have to be in on it, in one way or another. This is a small village. The constable would certainly have to know what was going on. And then of course he'd have to pretend not to, or he'd have to arrest people, or report them, or something.”
“Precisely. Fat Jack is a lazy man with a very simple philosophy: people who don't ask questions are never told any lies.”
Kate was thinking that Charles's reply was remarkably like Kipling's line, “Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie,” when the door opened and Amelia stepped in. “A Mr. Kipling is ‘ere t' call,” she said, “wi' a young boy—Patrick, I b'lieve.”
Kate turned, surprised, as Rud and the boy—dressed in the same coarse shirt and green corduroys he had worn that morning, and still without a jacket—came into the room.
“Forgive us for interrupting your supper,” Rud said. “We wouldn't have come at such an hour, but it seemed rather ... well, urgent.”
“It's no interruption,” Charles said. “We've finished, although there is plenty left for those who are hungry.”
Kate smiled at Patrick, who stood shyly behind Rud. “Would you like a glass of milk and a sandwich, Patrick?”
The boy pushed back an unruly lock of hair. “Thank you,” he said, and took the chair Kate pulled out for him at the table. She sent Amelia for milk and heaped a plate with food, which the boy began to devour hungrily.
“You've eaten, Rud?” she asked.
“Yes, thank you,” he replied. “We had a late, large tea, and Carrie is off to bed with a flannel brick at her feet and a magazine in her hand—containing one of Beryl Bardwell's stories, if I'm not mistaken. Her cold is troublesome, and the house is beastly damp. I dare say bed is the best place for her.” He eyed the decanter of port on the table. “I'd be grateful for a glass of something, though. If you've the time to listen, Patrick has a story to tell, and stories do go better with a glass.”
“Well, then,” Kate said, pouring a glass for Kipling. “When Patrick has finished eating, we can all listen.”
“Meanwhile, Rud,” Charles said to Kipling, “I have one or two things to tell you about today's inquiries. Shall we go into the garden for a smoke?”
When Patrick had finished and the men had come back, the three of them joined Kate at the fire. “A story?” she asked, looking expectantly at Patrick, sitting in a large chair that made him look like a very small boy. “Well, tell away, then, Patrick. We are all ears.”
Patrick told the story simply and straightforwardly, with very little nervousness. When he came to the end, he lowered his head and said to Charles, “I'm sorry, sir, really I am. I expect that if I'd told earlier, Captain Smith might not have gotten killed.”
“Because he would have been in jail for murdering George Radford, you mean?” Charles asked dryly.
“Something like that,” Patrick said. Kate heard the unhappiness in his voice and impulsively reached out to touch his hand. “The trouble was,” he added, “I wasn't sure it was really Captain Smith rowing the skiff that night—although the coast guards always wear black oilskins, while everybody else wears yellow. Almost everyone else,” he amended.
“That's right!” Kate exclaimed. “George Radford had black oilskins. I saw them hanging in the cottage today.”
“Who else has black oilskins, Patrick?” Charles asked.
The boy hung his head. “Mr. Tudwell,” he said, after a minute.
“Harry Tudwell,” Kipling said, “has been a good friend to Patrick. Given him work and taken him shooting and the like.”
“I see,” Charles said.
Patrick bit his lip. “I was sure that it was the coast guard skiff, too—but then, anybody could have borrowed it. It's kept on the beach, right there at the Gap. So I didn't tell, because I didn't ... well, I wasn't sure just who to tell, or whether telling was right. I didn't want to get anyone in trouble, and I was really only guessing.”
“Sometimes guesses are all there are to go on,” Charles remarked.
“The part I really don't understand, though,” Kipling said, pulling at his mustache with a frown, “is that man—the antiquarian, you called him?”
“Yes, but he isn‘t,” the boy said. “That's only what he
pretends
to be, sir. I've seen him out among the downs poking around and sighting with his compass and marking up his maps, but he's always miles away from the burial sites and the old settlements. And I've seen him talking to Captain Smith.” Patrick frowned. “I think I've seen him somewhere else, too, only he didn't—” His voice trailed off and he shook his head as if he were puzzled.
“It sounds as if he reports to the men who are financing this enterprise,” Kate said thoughtfully. “What was it he called them? Investors? They must make a huge profit when all the goods are sold.”
“They haul it all to London, I suppose,” Kipling remarked. “That's where they're likely to get the best price.”
“Some of the goods go to Brighton,” Patrick put in. “Mr. Tudwell sends me with messages which are supposed to be about horses but which are really about tobacco and brandy.” He smiled self-consciously. “It's like a game, you see. Everybody knows it's not horses, but everybody pretends not to know anything.”
“The Great Game,” Charles said reflectively.
“What doesn't go to Brighton or London is sold in the High Street,” Kate said, and told about her afternoon's shopping expedition and Mrs. Portney's offer to find brandy and truffles.
“My word.” Kipling beetled his thick brows in mock dismay. “The dressmaker, the tobacconist,
and
the grocer? Oh, Rottingdean, innocent Rottingdean, to what depths have you descended? I daresay we'll soon be hearing that the vicar is holding the lantern.”
“Actually,” Patrick said, “this vicar is new, and too proud to hold a lantern for anybody.” He looked puzzled at Kipling's chuckle and added, earnestly, “But the very oldest tunnel under the village goes to the vicarage, and the Reverend Hooker was a lookout man for the old Rottingdean gang.
He
probably held the lantern.”
BOOK: Death at Rottingdean
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