The American Boy (42 page)

We picked our way slowly down the defile and reached the path along the bank of the lake. Here we made better speed. Every few paces one of us would call the boys' names, Harmwell's great booming bass mingling with my baritone. At last we attained the crest of the ridge that sloped down towards the ruins and Grange Cottage beyond. The smothering weight of the darkness lay heavily on the sleeping land. To our left was the dense shadow of East Cover.

“Stay,” Harmwell said. “Did you hear? Call again.”

A moment later, I heard it too – a high, faint response to our shouts, coming from somewhere below. Careless of danger, we stumbled and slithered down the snowy slope. As I plunged into the dark, I remembered the bright, cold afternoon of St Stephen's Day when Sophie and I had run together towards the boys.

A single voice called repeatedly: “Here, sir! Here!”

We found the boys huddled in the lee of the tallest part of the ruins. They had found shelter in a recess made by a blocked doorway. Snow had drifted over their lower legs. Charlie was slumped at the back of the niche, and Edgar held him in his arms.

“Oh, sir,” said the little American through chattering teeth, “I am so glad – Charlie was so distressed – and then he fell asleep – and I thought I should fetch help, but I did not like to leave him and I did not know which way to go.”

“You did quite right. Mr Harmwell, I suggest we wrap them like a pair of parcels, and carry them home.”

Charlie stirred as we moved him and began to whimper. We covered him with the spare cloak. I took off my coat and draped it round Edgar. We gave both the boys a drop of brandy and then swallowed rather more ourselves. Then, groaning with the effort, I lifted Edgar on to my back; Harmwell lifted Charlie; and we began the slow, infinitely laborious climb up the slope.

I knew that our troubles were not over. Our best course was to aim for the mansion-house, for who knew what we might find at Grange Cottage? But it would not be easy to carry the boys for the better part of a mile, especially in this weather. As we were encumbered with our burdens, we could not use the lanterns to their best advantage. I was worried about the boys, too, in particular Charlie, who seemed barely conscious of what was happening, and the thought of frostbite was never very far from my mind.

As we reached the brow of the ridge, however, I heard the sound of hallooing voices by the lake, and saw in the distance the swaying lights of a dozen lanterns and torches. I turned back to Harmwell, to share my relief, and discovered him facing the way we had come with a hand cupped over his ear.

“Listen, Mr Shield. Listen.”

A moment later, I heard it too. Somewhere below us, perhaps on the lane by Grange Cottage, came the sound of hooves, muffled by the snow and moving very slowly.

“Come,” I said. “The boys are growing colder.”

Without further words, we staggered on towards our rescuers. Charlie lay inert and silent on Harmwell's shoulder as we plodded towards the lights dancing in the darkness.

“The monk ran away from us, sir,” Edgar whispered. “We did not see him but we heard him.”

“What?” said Harmwell. “What was that?”

“Hush now,” I replied, thinking of those hoof-beats. “We must save our breath.”

After what seemed like hours, our rescuers reached us, and willing hands received our burdens. We had men enough to spare – Sophie and Mrs Kerridge had woken Miss Carswall, and together they had roused the household and the stables. At the lake we divided into two parties. One took the boys back to the mansion. Harmwell and I led the remaining five men up the defile to the ice-house. The sight of Mrs Johnson in trousers seemed to shock some of them more than the fact of her death. We brought her up from the pit of the chamber – it was no easy task, and it needed all of us to do it. We laid her on a leaf of the ice-house's inner doors, covered her face with her cloak for decency's sake and bore her away on her makeshift bier.

When we reached the mansion, which was ablaze with lights, the footmen were carrying the boys up to bed, with Miss Carswall, Sophie and Mrs Kerridge fluttering about them on the stairs. But Sophie ran back to the hall for a moment, and pressed Harmwell's hand and then mine.

“Tell them to bring you whatever you wish, Mr Harmwell, Mr Shield – you must be chilled to the bone. I shall go to the boys.”

“Let them grow warm gently,” I said, for my father had been used to dealing with frostbite in the Fen winters. “Wrap them in blankets. Sudden heat is harmful.”

Carswall appeared, stamping into the hall in his dressing gown, ready to rant and roar. But Mrs Johnson under her black cloak brought him up short. Sophie left us and ran upstairs without another word.

“Uncover her,” he said to Pratt, who had just returned from carrying Edgar upstairs.

Carswall studied Mrs Johnson for a moment, as she lay there on her back, her skin grey and waxen, her big body ungainly in that unseemly attire, the hat tied under her jaw, as though she had laid herself out for death and did not want to be found with her mouth open. He looked up, saw me standing there at the foot of the stairs and at once looked past me to Harmwell.

“Was she dressed like that when you found her?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“What the devil possessed her?”

Harmwell shrugged.

Carswall told Pratt to cover her face again. “Take her up to the Blue Room, and lay her on the bed. Find Kerridge to go with you and do it decently. Then lock the door and bring me the key.” He turned on his heel and went into the library, calling over his shoulder for someone to make up the fire.

A maid approached me, and said that soup, wine, sandwiches and a good fire were waiting for us in the little sitting room. We ate and drank in silence, facing each other across the fire. Miss Carswall came in as we were finishing.

“No, do not get up. I came to tell you that Charlie and Edgar do very well and are now sleeping the sleep of the unjust. Are you yourselves recovered from the ordeal? Have they brought you all you wish for?” She was kindness itself, yet it was not long before her curiosity peeped through. “Poor Mrs Johnson! I'm sure none of us will sleep a wink for thinking of the horror of it. Tell me, was there no clue as to why she was there, and how she happened to fall?”

We assured her there was none.

“Sir George must be told as soon as possible – quite apart from the tie of blood, he is the nearest magistrate. Mr Carswall has ordered a groom to ride over to Clearland at first light.”

She wished us goodnight, and Harmwell withdrew at the same time, leaving me to my wine and my reflections, which were not happy. The clock on the mantel was striking three in the morning when I stood up to leave. In the hall, I picked up my candle from the table. Pratt was waiting there, and he coughed as I approached.

“Mr Carswall's compliments, sir, and it will not be convenient for you to leave tomorrow after all.”

That night I hardly slept, and when I did my sleep was uneasy, crowded with memories and fears which mingled with one another and masqueraded as dreams. In one of them all was dark, and I heard again the clang of the mantrap closing its jaws; but this time the sound was immediately followed by two others, first a high scream, rising rapidly in pitch and volume, and then the sound of hooves on the lane by Grange Cottage.

What lawful business would take a man and horse abroad on a night like this?

Early in the morning, the sound of the groom's horse on the drive brought me back to consciousness in a rush, yet seemed also an echo of the hoof-beats in my dream. In a flash, the events of the previous night lost their fantastic forms and paraded through my mind as black and sober as a funeral procession.

I spent that day in limbo. I had no duties. But I could not leave. Mrs Frant sent word that she would stay with the boys, and that Charlie, though recovering rapidly from his ordeal, would spend at least the morning in bed.

There was little to keep me within-doors. The silent presence in the Blue Room cast its shadow over the house. But the morning was fine and the temperature had risen a few degrees. After breakfast, I decided that as I had nothing better to do I might as well indulge my curiosity. I took the path to the lake, retracing the route we had taken the previous evening. A knot of men was standing by the door to the kitchen gardens. As I drew nearer, I recognised two under-gardeners and one of the gamekeepers.

My approach stirred them into activity. Each of them bent and seized a leg of the dead mastiff. The door to the garden was open. Immediately inside stood a sledge. Muttering curses, they hoisted the unfortunate animal on to it.

“Have you found his fellow?” I asked.

The gamekeeper turned and civilly touched his hat, which told me that news of my disgrace had not yet reached him. “Yes, sir. In the shell grotto. As dead as his brother here.”

“And for the same reason?”

“Poison,” he said flatly.

“Are you sure?”

“He had a mutton bone in there with a few grains of powder still on it. Rat poison, I'd say.”

I beckoned him aside. “Mr Harmwell and I were out last night.”

“I know, sir.” He watched the other men hauling the sledge along the path, their heavy boots slipping and sliding on the layers of snow.

“We found the dog. There was something else. As we were passing the lake, we heard a noise in the distance. Mr Harmwell thought it was a mantrap snapping shut.”

The man rubbed his unshaven chin. “He were right. One of the big ones in East Cover was sprung last night.”

“The wood beyond the lake?”

“Aye.” He spat. “That thieving bugger had the luck of the devil. The teeth caught his coat, look, tore off a piece. A few inches to the left and we'd have had his leg.”

“A poacher? And a poacher could have been responsible for poisoning the dogs?”

He looked beyond me at the little procession moving down the central path of the garden, the men's panting breath loud in the surrounding silence and the sledge's runners slithering on the icy ground. “Who else would it be, sir?”

“Where precisely was the mantrap set?” I asked.

He looked askance. “I told you, sir – East Cover. We got several in there, Master had them put down in the autumn, but this one was near a place we call Five Ways, where five paths meet. We move them around, though. It's no good leaving them in the same place, is it? You'd never catch anyone that way, even those chuckle-headed numskulls from Flaxern Magna.”

I left him and walked on. East Cover, the larger of the two enclosures near the lake, lay on the right of the broad path leading to Flaxern Parva and the church. On the other side of the wood was the undulating open parkland that sloped down to the monastic ruins, with Grange Cottage on the far side. If Mrs Johnson had wanted to go by the shortest way from Grange Cottage to the mouth of the defile which led to the ice-house, then passing through the middle of East Cover might have been the best way for her to do it, assuming that she was not troubled by the thought of mantraps and armed gamekeepers. I would have liked to examine the paths in the wood and the mantrap itself, but I did not feel sufficiently intrepid to do so without a gamekeeper to guide me; and I dared not make my interest too obvious, in case Mr Carswall heard of it.

Yet there was something not quite right with this: we had been approaching the lake when we heard the clang of the mantrap closing its jaws. If the trap had been sprung by Mrs Johnson, I did not think she would have had time to come through the cover, work round the northern bank of the lake, negotiate the defile and fall to her death in the chamber of the ice-house. Had she done so, we must have heard her movements, particularly as she went up the awkward broken terrain of the defile. Moreover, we should have found traces in the snow of such a recent passage. And her body would still have been warm to the touch.

The conclusion followed inescapably: someone else had sprung the trap. I remembered the sound of hooves I had heard last night, after we had found the boys, the sound that had worked its way into my dreams. Who would be out on horseback at such a late time? The night had been moonless, the ground treacherous with snow and ice.

I approached the ice-house warily, alert to the possibility that Mr Carswall might have placed a guard on it. But there was no one in sight, and the doors stood wide open. Fumbling in the pocket of my greatcoat for the stump of my bedroom candle, I entered the passage. At once I heard the sound of stealthy movement in the chamber beyond. I tiptoed forward and looked down. The light of a lantern flickered on the domed ceiling. Harmwell stood in the pit below, lantern in hand. He must have heard something because he was looking directly at me, the whites of his eyes very bright.

“Why, Mr Shield. What brings you here?”

“A very good day to you, Mr Harmwell. I might ask you the same question.”

He waved his arm. “As you are aware, I have made a study of the construction of ice-houses. I am particularly interested in the commercial applications. Crystal-clear block ice, that is what the modern world requires –” he pointed down at the slush on the floor “– not this poor, polluted substitute dragged here from any frozen ditch, however dirty. No society can call itself truly civilised that allows ice of such degraded quality on its table.”

While he was talking, I swung myself on to the ladder and climbed down to the floor of the ice chamber. “You are a persuasive advocate, sir. But I confess I still do not understand why you are here.”

Harmwell backed away from me and leaned against the wall, affecting a nonchalance I did not think he felt. “The explanation is perfectly simple: it lies there.” He pointed at the great circular drain in the middle of the chamber. The cartwheel which served as the drain's grid was still propped up against the chamber wall and the opening to the sump was a great black disc.