Death in the West Wind (14 page)

During the night the
Constantia
had been brought in to the quay side and as John approached he saw that Joe and the two Runners were already there ahead of him and negotiating with the quay master to have a boarding ladder set up. Mr. Northmore, who clearly did not want to make things easy for them, was taking his time about agreeing. The dawn light burnished the clerk’s fiery head as he discussed the matter and John could see by the way his body moved that he was starting to run out of patience. Leaving them to get on with it, confident that Joe would win, the Apothecary walked down the quay, staring at the ship that had been brought alongside by the simple means of pulling in her mooring rope and making it fast. Then he saw in the dimness that the
Constantia’s
own ladder was in place, hooked over the rail and hanging over the side, merely waiting for someone to secure it to the quay.

“The ladder’s already down,” he called to the arguing couple.

“Well, there’s an end to the deliberations,” said Joe snappishly, “if you, Sir, could provide a man to hold it while we go aboard.”

The quay master, who clearly liked to look magnanimous on occasion, said, “We’ll fasten it in place, Mr. Jago. We cannot have Mr. Fielding in London thinking that we Devonians stand in the way of law and order.”

“Quite,” Joe answered pointedly.

A few moments later it was done. A burly dock labourer had pulled the lower end of the ladder towards him with a hook and secured it to a pair of stout rings with rope.

“After you, Sir,” said Joe Jago and gave an affectionate little bow as John climbed aboard.

It was uncanny, setting foot on that death ship once more. The dawning cast shadows and pools of darkness over the deck, making shapes which the Apothecary found most disturbing.

“This is not a good light for searching,” he said to Joe who was clambering up right behind

“We’ll wait a quarter of an hour or so. Meanwhile, can you show me where you found the body.”

They went to the prow where the figurehead stared out sightlessly over the river. “Here. The girl was draped over it, her hair hanging down just like the mermaid’s. It was a terrifying sight.”

“It must have been, Sir. Now lads,” Joe called to the two Flying Runners, “come over here if you would.”

The Apothecary had never met the Brave Fellows, though he recognised both of them as the men who had come to Vaux Hall Gardens when a murder had been committed in the Dark Walk several years earlier. On that occasion he had briefly been suspected of the crime and had felt extremely nervous, a state made no easier by the couple of Runners, who by their very professionalism had instantly revealed themselves as being something very special. Now he was to meet them, looking much the same as they had then, hardly a day older.

The Runner whom he had remembered as lively and loud stepped forward and bowed to John.

“Runner Dick Ham,” said Joe Jago. The Apothecary bowed back. “We met at Vaux Hall many years ago but you wouldn’t remember me.”

“On the contrary, Sir,” answered Dick in a big, booming voice. “I make it a rule never to forget a face. We escorted you to Bow Street if memory serves.”

John gulped. “Indeed you did.”

The small, black-haired Runner bowed in his turn. “Nicholas Raven, Sir. We meet again in happier circumstances.”

How very well his name became him, the Apothecary thought, as he returned the greeting. The man had a hard avine stare which was enough to unnerve the innocent, let alone the guilty. Remembering how frightened of Raven he had once been, John wondered if he was going to like him. Joe was speaking. “The murdered girl was draped over the figurehead. That’s where Mr. Rawlings found her. She had been badly beaten, indeed whipped, and it is the Apothecary’s opinion that the injuries she sustained brought about her death.”

“Why was she put on the figurehead?” Raven asked.

John replied. “Clearly we will never know. But in my view it was some kind of joke, the spreading of the hair over that of the mermaid was, I suppose, meant to be an artistic touch.”

“So we are dealing with a perverted mind.”

It was a statement not a question and John nodded. “Either that, or we are meant to think so.”

Runner Ham spoke up. “Was the girl beaten by one person, or were several involved? Or don’t you know?”

“Obviously I can’t be certain but the blows seemed to me to come from different directions. I would say that at least two people had a hand in her death. Maybe more.”

“Rum do,” said Joe, summing up all their feelings.

It had grown lighter as they spoke and now the sun broke over the eastern horizon, casting a hellish light over the ship that had witnessed so many odd occurences.

“The search can begin,” stated the clerk. “Runners, if you will hunt the deck, Mr. Rawlings and I will take the hold and the cabins.”

They descended a ladder leading from a hatch, going down into a ghostly world of small passageways and dark wood. John stood a moment, sniffing the air.

“What is it, Sir?”

“I don’t know. Can you detect an odd odour?”

Joe stood silently, inhaling. “I can smell something very faintly, but there’s another stink drowning it out.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a reek of bad eggs. A gun has been fired down here and recently at that.”

“What?” John bellowed in disbelief. “What more can happen on this hell hole of a ship?”

“No time for talk, get searching,” Joe ordered urgently.

They raced down the passageway, throwing open the doors of cramped and uncomfortable cabins, seeing yet again in startling detail the fact that this ship had been abandoned at a moment’s notice, that clothes and personal items were scattered just as if the owner had merely walked out of the room. Finally they came to the captain’s cabin, the larger door indicating that here were quarters of a more generous size. Joe thrust it open, then stood in the entrance, frozen in disbelief. Just behind him, the Apothecary peered over his shoulder through the swirling clouds of blue smoke.

Richard van Guylder was in the cabin, sitting at the captain’s table, his back to the door so that he was unable to see the newcomers. But then, of course, Richard would never be able to see anybody ever again. Clutched in his lifeless fingers was a flintlock pistol and scattered over the walls, the ceiling, in fact everywhere that the horrified gaze of the two men came to rest, were Richard’s brains and at least half of his head, to say nothing of the blood that had spurted with them. On that ship of ill omen, Juliana’s brother had met an end equally as terrible as hers.realising that something was horribly wrong. “I take it there’s another body down there,” said Raven.

“It’s the dead girl’s brother and it appears that he’s blown his brains out.”

“Remorse?” asked Dick Ham.

“What do you mean?”

“That if he had killed his sister for some reason, the guilt became too much for him.”

“But what reason could there possibly be?” asked Joe.

“I’m afraid there might indeed be one,” John answered with a sigh. “A reason called Gerald Fitz, a blade of Exeter with whom both the van Guylder children were in love.”
 

Joe groaned. “I hate these convoluted love affairs, they never bode any good.”

Raven said, quite reasonably, “We might know more when we’ve read what he had to say.”

“Indeed we might,” answered Joe, and all four of them descended below deck to examine the scene more closely.

Whatever his reservations about Nicholas Raven, John could not help but admire the man. With admirable calm the Runner approached the body, which had fallen back in the chair, its head, or what was left of it, lolling, and removed the note from beneath the fingers of the outstretched left hand. Then he had carefully dabbed it with his handkerchief to remove the blood, still sticky and wet, and handed it to Joe Jago.

“I cannot bear the burden of guilt any longer,” the clerk read aloud. “Juliana, forgive me.”

“Is that all it says?” asked John.

“Yes. It’s simply signed Richard.”

“Well, that’s it then,” said Dick Ham. “You’ve found your murderer.”

Almost as a reflex action, before he had had time to think, John answered, “No, that can’t be right.”

“Why not, Sir?”

“Because the girl was raped before she was killed and if we are to believe what we are told then Richard would most certainly not be interested, leave alone the fact that he was quite a decent creature and I’m sure would not countenance incest.”

“Then are we looking for an accomplice?” asked Joe.

John shook his head. “I have a feeling, though why I simply can’t put into words, that it is all far, far more complex than that.”

“I think,” answered the clerk, “that all four of us should go ashore for a brandy. Then, Mr. Rawlings, I will have to ask you to examine the body before it is removed.”

“And the search of the ship?” asked Raven.

“That must continue. In fact it is even more vital in view of this latest development. For how and when did Richard get aboard. That must be ascertained before we can continue any further.”

A ghastly thought struck John. “Who is going to tell the poor benighted father?”

“I shall do so in my official capacity,” answered Mr. Fielding’s clerk without flinching.

“Believe me, Sir, he will take it better from an officer of the law than he will from someone that he considers to be a friend.”

*
 
*
 
*

The morning wore on like a nightmare. The horrible task of examining what was left of Richard van Guylder was one of the most sickening that the Apothecary had ever undertaken. He literally had to step through pools of blood to get at the tragic youth and if it had not been for the very large amounts of brandy that he had consumed, he truly believed he could not have gone through with it. Eventually, though, it was done. Richard had died of a gunshot wound to the head and there was no reason to believe that it had been anything other than self-administered. The fingers gripping the flintlock had not been forced in any way that the Apothecary could see, nor did the position of the corpse at the table look as if it had been arranged.

Yet the suicide note bothered John. Providing that it was in Richard’s handwriting, it would certainly seem to point to him as the murderer. Yet, from his very brief acquaintanceship with the poor spotty boy, he simply would not have believed him capable of such a thing. Did the plea for forgiveness and the expression of guilt refer to something else? Was it possible, the Apothecary conjectured, that Richard had been told of his sister’s death and been unhinged by the news? Or was it even more sinister than that? The necessity of seeing Gerald Fitz had now assumed enormous proportions. In fact, John decided, it must be done this day without fail.

The removal of another body from the ghost ship, as the inhabitants of the quay had nicknamed the
Constantia,
had caused a near riot. A call for some tarpaulin and a plank had raised the alarm, and by the time the two Brave Fellows had struggled down the ladder with their secret burden, securely wrapped and lashed to the spar but for all that clearly resembling the shape of a human being, there was a crowd on the quay. Well to the fore, in fact pushing the throng back, was the masterful Mr. Northmore. He stopped Joe in his tracks.

“What’s that you have there?”

The clerk put on a very severe face. “It is a body, Sir. There has been another fatality aboard. One of my Fellows will inform the constable just as soon as we have arranged carriage to the mortuary.”

The quay master barred his path. “This is my quay, Sir, and all that goes on here is my responsibility. I insist on being told the identity of the deceased.”

John watched Joe think on his feet. If the truth leaked out now it might well have awful consequences as the gossip spread like wildfire and reached the wretched Jan van Guylder before he had been officially informed that he had lost both his children.

“I do not know the person concerned,” the clerk answered truthfully. “He is a stranger to me. All I can tell you is that it is a male.”

“Show me his face. I’ll soon identify him for you.”

“That would be breaking the law,” said Joe with authority. “Until the constable and the coroner have been informed I am not at liberty to let you anywhere near. Good day to you.”

So saying, he and the two Runners swept off in the direction of the mortuary, leaving John to return to Emilia.

*
 
*
 
*

Two hours later the four men were back together again, seated in The Unicorn, a private room in The Salutation, discussing not only what the search had yielded up but also how and when Richard had crept aboard.

“He couldn’t have been there all along, could he?” asked John.

“You mean that when he went missing he was hiding on the ship?”

“Precisely.”

Joe considered. “I suppose it’s possible. Men would have gone aboard at Sidmouth to fix tow ropes but most likely none of them went down to the cabins. I’ll wager you’re right there, Sir. That’s where the little devil hid out, God rest his sad soul.”