The Devil's Ribbon (26 page)
‘Encouraged her?’
Her voice came rapidly, as if she was telling a secret, borne too long. ‘In her celebration of nature, sir. Why, didn’t you know that madam loved to paint? Those flowers, they’re not flowers at all. My mistress sketched a little scene which is hanging in the drawing room. She has them in the foreground. There’s plenty more in the outhouse and we had a little laugh about the name when she finished them.’
The rustic outhouse. The flowers that look a little like dandelions. Of course,
thought Hatton.
The inspector was incredulous. ‘Your mistress painted these flowers?’
She bit her lip again. ‘Madam went on so many walks before the heat took hold. She’d come back covered in dust, cleavers stuck in her hair and only last month smeared in a rash of stingy nettles liked she’d gone tumbling in the meadows. She was a terrible sight and I asked her, madam, where have you been to be looking like that? ‘Kent,’ she said. ‘Florrie. I’ve only been to Kent.’ But she swore to me she was never alone, not for a minute. That she had a chaperone. That it was all perfectly proper, he was a visitor from the New World, but I wasn’t to tell anyone.’
‘A chaperone? From the New World?’
Her lip curled. ‘At first she told me it was young Master Damien, but
it wasn’t. It was someone else, I knew it so I pressed her on it, but she wouldn’t give me a name. She said it was none of my business.’
‘Just someone else, she said?’
She shrugged. ‘It can’t have been Master Damien. He promised me he didn’t. Swore to me he wouldn’t.’ And as she said so, she was clearly about to cry.
‘Come now,’ said the Inspector. ‘Your master’s gone and I’m sorry for it, but there’s another man’s life at stake, name of Gustave Pomeroy, if he’s still alive, that is. You need to tell us about the flowers, missy.’
She looked surprised at the question, as if the Inspector was a fool not to know. ‘In Ireland we call them the Devil’s Paintbrush because they grow like weeds.’
Hawkweed
, thought Hatton.
The flowers are hawkweed. Of course
. ‘And to cover my poor master’s face in them? It doesn’t make sense to me. Now if you would please, ask me no more questions and step out of my way, sir.’
And without a second glance at either of them, she laid bodily upon the dead man as if they were sweethearts, stroking his hair, kissing his face, his cheek, his lips as her sobs came low; a terrible, visceral gulping of ‘My poor, poor dear. My poor, poor angel. What the devil were they thinking of?’ Tearstained, smoothing back his hair, she said, ‘Kent was where she went. I even know the village. Just beyond Greenwich, so not so far from here. This American had a skiff by all accounts and she threatened me that if I told anyone where she went or what she did, she would tell the whole village about me and the young master, here. Then sack me to boot and I’d lose my reputation as a good girl and never work again. So I bit my tongue. Told me to tidy up the room she did, after her husband died. Well, it’s not right, is it?’
Hatton stood on the bend of a glorious river, bordered on one side by wavering hop fields scattered with hawkweed, and on the other side, across the water, the thickest of English woodland. But before that, an island – a hump of river sand covered in thickets of summer grasses, briars, cleavers, and the roots of ancient willows. Her image had clouded his mind, and for the last two weeks had clouded his judgement as well, so Hatton pushed her away. Whatever she’d done, he still loved her, if this sick awful feeling was love. He knew it was love of a kind, but was it drawing away? Horribly drawing away, like a tide on a beach. Love was slipping away from him, minute by minute.
In Highgate, before they’d called a carriage to leave, they’d looked high and low in the cemetery for a shadowy figure, but found nothing,
just a feeling they were finally on a trail, an invisible trail of something ethereal, a shape in the air, a trace of something which had led them here.
Death stalked her, Sorcha had said. And now it stalked Hatton. It was calling him across the river.
Damien McCarthy’s dying word began with
F. F
for Fenian? Or was it
Sh? Sh
for ship, but the other word Hatton pushed away, like a bad penny. Because it couldn’t be, could it? It couldn’t be Sorcha, but the way Roumande had looked at him had said one word: guilty.
But what was she guilty of, he asked himself, because if she was a killer, she couldn’t have murdered those men alone. It didn’t make sense. But nothing made sense any more, except to do what he always did when his back was against the wall – keep his nose to the grindstone and work. But as Hatton stood looking across the water, the shadow looming before him wasn’t from the sun dripping the last drops of amber into the ripples of the river, but doubt. Black doubt, and Hatton knew that this was a time for action, not self-pity.
‘Over here,’ said Hatton.
‘I’ll get the Inspector,’ said Roumande in reply, heading up the beach to grab Inspector Grey, who appeared to be examining flowers near a hedgerow and picking the petals, one by one like a silly girl might do –
he loves me, he loves me not
.
The inspector stopped picking the petals on seeing Roumande, stood up and said in a manly voice, ‘Do you think these petals might be evidence, monsieur?’
‘This way,’ said Roumande.
Together, the three men uncovered a little rowing boat, which had
been covered in branches, bracken, a sheet of tarpaulin. Hatton pushed the skiff into the topaz water.
Rain threatened and thunder stalked the sky, as the Inspector leant back in the skiff and said, ‘What on earth was she doing here? A respectable, married woman? Well,’ he corrected himself. ‘Hardly respectable, I fear …’
Yes, but why, thought Hatton? And who was this chaperone? There were American doctors who’d arrived only days ago to see Dr Buchanan. Could there have been earlier guests? And hadn’t Grey said, ‘
They’re raising money in America, now
’? But a rebellion orchestrated by a twenty-year-old girl? It was too incredible. She was educated, passionate, yes, but to be involved in underground politics she needed cunning, stealth, and above all money. So, was the husband in her way? Did he suspect something? And what was Hecker to her? Hatton recalled that the Inspector had said that the mill never stopped, that the man kept working all day and all night long, unless he had – ‘
a visit from the Queen or an exceptionally beautiful woman
.’ So was Pomeroy the same? Though she denied ever knowing him, hadn’t she made mention of visiting parishioners? She said she didn’t like O’Brian, but did the priest help her, ease the way? But if that was the case, why didn’t the boy make mention of her? And, more to the point, what the devil did she do to entice them? Hatton thought of their moments together – in the outhouse, the piano room, the garden – but her tenderness had felt so real.
Damn her.
Damn her to hell.
All these men were like flies to a honey trap,
including me
, thought Hatton,
fool that I am
.
Was this thinking mad? Was it insane? That Sorcha was some sort of political rebel? The cancer within the very heart of The Union? It just didn’t sit well, because when women murdered, it was someone close to them, something personal – a husband, a lover. Not politics.
As he rowed, Hatton’s mind raced around the possibilities, but not another word was said by anyone till the men reached the island to find another beach, the colour of platinum, and a dusty path leading into a density of thickets, littered with mussel shells, crushed nettles, flattened grasses, and …
‘Look up ahead, Professor.’
Half in and out of the water, on the other side of the island, hidden from view at first, by the overgrown bracken, the high trees – a shipwreck.
There were no masts, there was no one on the rigging, no smell of turpentine or shanty songs singing, but this ship had definitely been a clipper once. Not a brig or a frigate, but
a clipper
. And even though she was a washed-up thing, a marine fossil, a beached whale – somewhere, lingering, was just a hint of what she might have been. Like the image on the signet ring, still alluring and exciting. Half of her was gone, her skeleton shape made primordial with river slime – but in her prime, Hatton knew she would have been maybe eighty feet long and thirty feet wide, hurtling across breezy oceans, newly painted, brass fittings polished like diamonds, and down below, the hold stuffed to the gill with rum, sugar, wheat, turpentine, coal, spices, or …
Men and women?
Was this one of Mr Hecker’s ships? But that was impossible, wasn’t it? Because the mill owner’s fleet had sailed on a mercy mission from Donegal to America – hadn’t it?
Inspector Grey must have read his mind. He held his hand over his eyes to shield the sun. ‘I recognise the name on the side of the ship. Do you see it?
The Best of British
. There’s a romanticised painting in the office at the mill. Not the huge Millais painted in Ardara, but a smallish thing, used to disguise his safe. One of my officers noticed it later, and not very original, I must say, to hide your money that way. But if this was one of Hecker’s vessels, then how the devil did the ship end up here? In Kent? Wouldn’t it be in America or Canada?’
‘Not necessarily. The vessels came back to England, didn’t they? And as far as any name’s concerned, I’m afraid it’s you who’s imagining things, this time, Inspector. There’s no name. It’s a prison hulk, or what’s left of it, anyway. Or an old hospital ship, like the
Dreadnought
. There are plenty of wrecks, further along towards the coast and upriver in Greenwich.’
Grey shook his head, squinting. ‘I could have sworn …’
‘It doesn’t matter either way. Come on … hurry …’ said Roumande, using an old rope ladder to clamber up the side.
And he was right because the ship was empty now, a hollow cask. The echo of her cargo, long silenced. Hatton pulled himself up onto the deck, panting for breath in the terrible heat, and ahead of him, a hatch fastened with a rusty padlock. There were flies in the air – a black buzzing veil. Roumande began spluttering, spitting them out, waving them aside. Grey was bent over the side, being sick, then turned around, his kerchief pressed to his mouth as Hatton stood firm. But as he bent down, he swallowed hard, because in terms of stinks, this was a record. Fighting back his own stomach, he tried the hatch. ‘It’s locked.’
‘Get back, Adolphus,’ said Roumande, who was a size thirteen and
a half. Hatton did as he was told and his friend brought his boot down.
Bang
.
By which time Grey had recovered himself. ‘Something’s cooked in the weather. Wouldn’t you say so, Professor?’ Pushing past, he disappeared into the hold with, ‘I need light, here. Quickly …’
Against a flickering candle, Monsieur Pomeroy was sitting upright on a stool. Jutting out between the torn material, a razor sharp rib, a wiry elbow, and in his yawn, a tongue covered in— ‘What’s this? His last supper?’
Maggots crawled out of the dead man’s eyeballs, squirmed under his fingernails.
But Hatton simply beckoned for the lantern. ‘It’s grass, Inspector. Mixed with Indian corn, and here, do you see, this stain’s from a blackberry.’
‘What sort of diet is this?’
‘A famine diet. Grass, corn, and a berry, if you’re lucky. But if you look at the tongue and the cuts around his mouth …’ Hatton pulled the mouth further open, using the tip of a scalpel. ‘There’s a couple of teeth shattered. Someone’s been force-feeding him. Little by little, like torture but not enough to sustain him. He’s starved to death down here …’
The chef had been bound to his chair with a criss-cross of emerald ribbons, and beyond the putrefying corpse, Hatton could see lined up on a worktop a number of bowls and a jug filled to the brim with pencils, brushes, and quills. As the hold flickered into light, it looked like a church – a place of worship for a Dark Ages anchorite. And fastened to a beam with a nail, a picture of a girl, on the cusp of life, with blood-red hair plaited with the brightest of green ribbons. Behind her, not the hop fields of Kent, but mountains, gushing falls, and agate forests. And
nearer in the foreground, a place of graves, Celtic crosses, a little church, verdant meadows dotted with the wildest of orange flowers.
‘What have we here?’ said Inspector Grey, bending down and helping himself to a littering of pastel-coloured recipe cards. ‘
Ardara, Donegal, October 1847
. This particular recipe is for cooking Indian corn, and signed,’ the policeman cleared his throat and spoke as if he was addressing an audience, ‘On
Behalf of the British Government Emergency Feeding Plan by Monsieur Gustave Pomeroy
. So, how long’s he been dead, do you think?’
‘It’s difficult to tell in this place. His body’s begun to decay, sped up by this weather, which is why the stomach has popped. This gas is dangerous, noxious, so be careful, gentlemen. But I’ll need to do an autopsy back at the morgue to tell you anything more definitive.’
Roumande leant over the body, his hand over his mouth, but his voice strong and clear. ‘What about the mites, Adolphus?’
The mites, of course, thought Hatton. The maggots in the cadaver were fat, ready to burst themselves, added to which there were already flies in the air, meaning they’d started hatching only days ago. Maggots presented themselves in three squirming stages before they metamorphosed into these revolting fliers.
‘Roumande’s right,’ he said, flitting a fly away. ‘This is larvae from blowflies that live on the dead and take nine days to hatch. The flies wouldn’t have found the corpse immediately, locked down here, suggesting his time of death was probably about two weeks ago. So yes, the stink, the state of the body and the mites suggests to me he’s been dead two weeks, which would have timed Pomeroy’s death perfectly for the anniversary of …’
‘Drogheda.’ Grey’s voice was flat in the fetid air. ‘Suggesting our killers know a great deal about nutrition …’
No, thought Hatton, not nutrition – something else. Something much closer to home. Something anatomical – this killer knows the workings of the human body.
‘So why didn’t they hoist this poor man up on a mast?’ said the Inspector, his kerchief still pressed to his nose. ‘Or move the chef to Piccadilly? Put him somewhere, anywhere, if it was
a point
the gang were making? They left him here, in this lonely place—’
‘Maybe the gang were intent upon the bomb, as the boy said, and the murder of Monsieur Pomeroy was something else entirely …’
‘Not connected? What do you mean by that?’
‘Has it occurred to you,’ said Hatton, ‘that the bombers aren’t necessarily the Ribbonmen?’
‘Who, then?’ demanded Grey. ‘If not them, bloody well who, then?’
Roumande was over on the other side of the hold by now, rattling and opening drawers.
‘What does every ship have?’ he asked, his voice sounding disembodied in the gloom.
‘Masts,’ said Grey, through the flickering darkness.
‘A captain?’ answered Hatton still intent upon the body, digging for worms, scraping the skin with his scalpel, checking under Pomeroy’s fingernails.
‘A log? There must be one somewhere because every ship has a log, dammit,’ Roumande said, moving his hand around to find a couple more paintbrushes among ancient rat droppings and, ‘Could this be a log, Inspector?’
The book was black, covered in dust, torn leather, musty pages. With bated breath, Roumade opened it, to see a world forgotten. With each flick of the page – the currents of the winds, the movements of the stars, stores taken aboard and jettisoned, their type and quantity. ‘We’re in luck. It’s definitely a ship’s log,’ said Roumande. ‘But not from this clipper, but an old vessel called
The Liberty
, which sailed to a place called Isle aux Coudres off the coast of Canada, ten years ago, from Ardara, Donegal.’
Hatton was thinking of that comment in the garden –
a cousin in Canada, she’d said
– as Roumande read, ‘First Entry, December 12th, 1848.
The Liberty
. Destination, Isle aux Coudres, Canada. Ship’s Owner … Jesus …’ He stumbled, then quickly repeated, ‘Ship’s Owner: T. W. Hecker. Cargo: Turpentine. Passengers: Four hundred and twenty. State and Condition of the Crew and Company: Fit to Travel. It’s signed by the Portside Physician.’