The Duke's Agent (11 page)

‘She fell from here,' he stated with conviction. He laid the tiny scrap of cloth in his huge palm. ‘A match for her petticoat – you saw the tear in it.'

Jarrett nodded. Duffin ambled back from a tour of the bushes and undergrowth that circled the rock.

‘A mess of footmarks on the path,' he declared, ‘but then that's to be expected. Folk often pass this way.'

‘Any more of that boot below?' demanded the magistrate.

‘None to swear to.' Duffin's manner before the lawyer was courteous enough but evidently independent. ‘They're all muddled and mixed,' he explained.

‘The bloody print below – it is of a man's boot or shoe, you'd say?'

‘Aye,' Duffin confirmed. ‘A man's, nailed maybe and
same-sided.' Under cover of bending to call his dog, who had stayed close to Jarrett, Ezekiel gave the agent a significant look. Jarrett glanced towards Raistrick to see if the magistrate had observed them.

The lawyer was looking out diagonally across the gorge towards the balcony and windows of the folly on the opposite bank. The heads of the parish constable and his perspiring assistants appeared among the straggling trees that marked the line of the cliff as they prepared to wrestle the body up on to level ground. Justice Raistrick stood, his powerful figure centre stage on the white rock, waiting for them to arrive. Thaddaeus, the stout constable, reached the clearing. He wiped his pink forehead and straightened his hat as the men lined up behind him carrying Sal's corpse. His little procession organised to his satisfaction, the constable looked expectantly towards the magistrate. Raistrick swung back from his contemplation of the space below. As he turned to his audience Jarrett thought he caught a glint of triumph in the acute eyes.

‘Is it not surprising, Mr Jarrett,' he declaimed, ‘that this wench should come to lie at your door?'

It was as if a favourite canvas had been ripped. His peaceful retreat was blotted and marred by a surfeit of figures. Jarrett recognised few of the faces. They were those idlers who materialise from any community drawn to the entertainment of unexpected events. The invasion galled him, his mood tainting what he saw. The youths who leant precariously over the parapet seemed to gesture lewdly to the place down by the river where Sal had recently lain. A farmer with a porcine head stood stock in the middle of the bridge staring at him in insolent curiosity. The magistrate led a way through the crowd, never breaking his stride. As he approached the folly he turned.

‘A cart must be fetched to carry the body. Mr Jarrett, will you give permission for it to be laid within?'

The whole crowd awaited his answer. He could not refuse. His sense of decency would not allow her to be stretched brazen on the grass before all those prying eyes. He went ahead to open the door. The onlookers rose up and pressed in around the little house. As the men passed him and prepared to lay Sal's trussed body on the table, Jarrett called to the innkeeper who stood by, ‘Mr Bedlington, would you be so good as to keep these people from the door?' He had the satisfaction of seeing the crowd fall back a little at his tone of authority.

Mr Raistrick re-emerged from the tiny house. He took up a stance, one arm outstretched at a graceful angle from his solid torso in an antique pose. ‘Ah yes, Mr Jarrett, this is
your door is, it not? You live here?' he asked in a carrying voice.

‘This is where I rest at present,' Jarrett agreed.

The magistrate nodded slowly, his Roman nose in profile to his eager audience. Ostentatiously he contemplated the folly and the river below.

‘And you came from here this very morning?' Scarcely waiting for Jarrett's brief nod of assent he continued his public musing. ‘Is it not strange, sir, that you did not report this tragedy yourself?'

‘I did not know of it, sir,' Jarrett answered, his face expressive of puzzled good humour. It seemed he was caught up in a play for which he had not been rehearsed. He suspected he had been given the part of a villain, or at the very least a fool. He was determined to signal to the audience by his demeanour that he had been miscast. Jarrett was aware that he had potential supporters among the female members of the crowd. Women eyed him up and down, and he caught a whispered comment of ‘a bonny lad', followed by a ripple of giggles.

The magistrate gazed at the agent in mock concern. He was a reasonable man, his manner said, a civilised man who only wished to be convinced.

‘But your windows overlook this gorge,' he persisted. ‘That rock is in plain sight from the window of your cottage. Am I to believe you saw nothing? Heard nothing?'

‘As you may see, sir, if you would care to look,' countered Jarrett courteously, ‘the river bed cannot be seen from my windows – the gorge is too deep. And as for hearing anything – why, Justice Raistrick, this river was swollen by the rains last night. Nothing could be heard above its roar.'

Amusement flickered in the back of Jarrett's eyes at their cautious public sparring. He had to admire the way the magistrate wrapped himself up so skilfully in a metaphorical toga of Roman judiciousness. The lawyer nodded sagely.

‘It was a wild night last night,' he conceded. He paused, the set of his magnificent head both dignified and just in relation to the upper parts of his body. ‘And you never looked down from the bridge as you left this morning?'

‘I had no occasion to,' Jarrett replied. He was determined the audience should know this comedy for what it was. ‘I made an early start. My horse is stabled on this side of the house, away from the river.' He gestured, illustrating the geography of the place. ‘My road took me away from the bridge. I had no reason to look down to the water.'

‘So you have no answer as to how Sally Grundy came to lie beneath your windows?'

‘Indeed I have no notion. I did not know the girl.'

The magistrate nodded, his expression courteous and bland. The tense figure of a dark-haired man separated itself from the crowd.

‘So say you!' he exclaimed.

The magistrate swung his gaze to the newcomer.

‘And what do you say, Mr – ?'

‘Broom. Nat Broom.' The wiry man jabbed a finger at Jarrett. ‘He was seen with her, Sal, in the churchyard this very Sunday. Prudence Miller for one can swear to it.'

Jarrett looked down at the man in disbelief. Why should he say such a thing? In his surprise he dropped his part. ‘This is absurd. I have laid eyes on the girl, that is true. I passed her on the path amid a clutch of her kind going in to church last Sunday, but that is all.'

‘Sal said she had a new gentleman friend!' Nat slid a knowing smile to the magistrate. Around them the onlookers vibrated with the excitement of this revelation.

Off at the back of the throng a man spoke eagerly to his neighbour. ‘He has yellow hair! That murderer they're seeking from Stainmoor, he had yellow hair. Murders don't come in twos by accident.'

‘That one were done by a tall man, 'tis said,' contributed
a buxom woman. She folded her hands under her apron and nodded meaningfully – although her meaning was not clear.

Duffin gave the man a look of withering disdain. ‘Who,' he asked, pointing a solid finger in Jarrett's direction, ‘would give him out to be a tall fellow? A dwarf?'

The man was not to be overborne. ‘Witness were a boy at that!' he responded resiliently. He was about to repeat his notion to a wider audience when all at once he found himself short of breath. Casually cloaking the motion with his broad back the poacher turned to silence his neighbour with a smart punch in the guts. He held the gasping man up in a companionable way, his interest publicly fixed on the drama in the doorway.

‘Mr Raistrick, sir,' Jarrett was protesting to the magistrate, half-laughing, ‘you cannot in all honesty imagine that, had I any connection with the girl, I should be such a fool as to leave her corpse so near my own door? Credit me with a little more intelligence, I beg you! Had I known she were there, I would surely have reported the fact.'

‘An innocent man would,' taunted Nat.

The crowd murmured in agreement. The space around the doorway seemed to shrink. Jarrett flicked an impatient glance about him, irritated by the absurdity of the scene. Something in Raistrick's face arrested his attention. Behind his public demeanour the lawyer was calculating, waiting.

‘If he knew she were there!' Jarrett exclaimed. ‘A guilty man would surely have flung the corpse into last night's flood, and let the river sweep away all evidence.'

The magistrate stood aloof, looking between the two. ‘It seems it is one man's word against another's.'

Jarrett felt himself bridle. ‘I can only give my word as a gentleman,' he responded coldly. ‘I did not know the victim and her death is a mystery to me.'

Behind him Nat Broom slid unobserved through the doorway. Darting to the chest by the window he picked up
a sheet of paper that lay on it. Before Jarrett could protest he thrust it towards the magistrate, his face triumphant.

‘You didn't know Sal, you say? Then how does he explain this, your honour?'

The magistrate looked down at the paper. It was a sketch. A sketch of a girl with an abundance of dark hair.

Jarrett could almost feel the hook's bite as he was reeled in. The bold eyes of the magistrate fixed their heat on him.

‘You challenged Samuel Gibbs to prove he was who he claimed; can you do the same, Mr Jarrett?'

Jarrett barely caught himself before he ran a tell-tale hand through his hair. He had not anticipated an assault from that direction. The dreadful pause stretched out as the full folly of behaving as he had done in coming to Woolbridge alone and unattended dawned. The problem of proving his identity had never occurred to him; but then his opponent's audacity was breathtaking. The majority of the faces around him were hostile. The parish constable's nervous eyes were fixed on the magistrate with the awe of a primitive votary who all at once sees his stone god walk. Jasper Bedlington looked plain frightened and Duffin seemed to have disappeared.

Raistrick was enjoying himself. The lawyer made a pantomime of leaning his broad body to look past Jarrett into the bare room.

‘Can this be the style of a gentleman?' The golden voice dripped poison into the ears of the eager crowd.

‘I have been a soldier most of my life, sir,' answered Jarrett. ‘Simple billets are to my taste.'

With a mental shrug he gave himself up to his fate. It would be intriguing to see how far the fellow would dare to go. It would seem that the Justice was gambling deep. Jarrett reviewed what he knew, trying to divine what kind of threat he posed to the lawyer that he was prepared to throw so recklessly against the Duke's man.

‘Just a simple soldier, eh?' purred Raistrick. He cast an
insolent look up and down Jarrett's slim figure, willing all eyes to note the agent's creased shirt and rumpled coat. ‘And how are we simple country folk to know that this stranger among us is who he claims?'

Jarrett relaxed his face into a half-smile as if this were all in play.

‘I have my credentials – does the Justice wish to see them?' He sketched a bow. ‘Sir Thomas will vouch for me.'

‘Sir Thomas never laid eyes on you before Sunday last.'

‘The Duke sent letters of introduction.'

‘Pieces of paper can be forged or stolen.'

During this interchange Raistrick had closed the space between them. Now he used his powerful frame to dominate the slighter man. His sour musk of sweat and dirt pervaded the air.

The situation seemed likely to turn physical. Jarrett speculated on the danger he was in. Could the man be playing for mob justice? Surely he could not believe that he could get away with that? Yet – two violent deaths in a week. Might not a distressed people mistakenly turn on a stranger? A stranger who came to disturb the Duke's neglected tenants; tenants many of whom would be glad to remain neglected. He was beginning to convince himself that Raistrick's strategy might be better calculated than he would have hoped.

The big man leaning over him was willing him to offer violence, to defend himself from this insult. Jarrett contemplated his chances were he to accept the challenge. A handful of rough-looking men had moved into the front rank of the crowd. ‘What has the soldier and gentleman to say for himself?' drawled the magistrate.

Jarrett deliberately took a large white handkerchief from his pocket with an elegant flourish and held it to his nose. ‘I beg pardon, sir,' he said, stepping back a pace. ‘I have a delicate nose – a deuced nuisance but a family trait. Forgive me.'

The Justice snatched his arm with an oath. Jarrett's blueslate eyes held the hot gaze unflinchingly. One edge of the lawyer's sculpted mouth curled and he released his hold as if acknowledging the parry.

‘What reason have any of us to trust your word?' he asked. ‘You who come among us without servants, without a single person who knows your face?' Raistrick resumed his magisterial manner. ‘Constable! Detain this man until some person can be found to vouch for his identity.' He slid the agent a sly look. ‘Unless, of course, you have someone who can testify to your whereabouts this last night? No?' He glanced at the sketch of the black-haired girl in his hand. ‘It seems we must search this billet of yours, Mr Jarrett. You will understand, as one of His Majesty's Justices, I must be rigorous in my investigations.'

‘I am the Duke's representative and a gentleman,' stated Jarrett. ‘If you insist on violating my person and my property in this way I cannot prevent you, but I will not give my consent.' He moved to bar the door.

The magistrate gave a small regretful sigh. ‘Constable, take this man into custody.'

The parish constable hung back. The expression on his honest face was almost ludicrous. He called to mind a hardworking sheep dog suddenly ordered to rip the throats of his flock. He looked back and forth between the agent and the magistrate, clutching his long staff to his chest with both hands. Behind him the crowd growled.

‘Constable!' The magistrate was impatient.

Constable Thaddaeus took an uncertain step towards the agent. ‘If you please, sir, if you'd be so kind…' He trailed off, throwing a desperate glance at Jasper Bedlington. The innkeeper stood red-faced and open-mouthed at the turn of events.

‘Justice Raistrick, your honour…' Jasper Bedlington began.

The magistrate ignored him. ‘You, you and you,' he barked, pointing out Nat Broom and two others, ‘assist me in searching this place. And you,' he cast his order contemptuously at the constable, ‘see he doesn't wander off.'

Jarrett allowed himself to be shouldered aside. It would not help His Grace's interests in the district if his agent were to receive a public drubbing or worse while a magistrate looked on. A portion of the crowd swept into the folly behind Nat Broom. The magistrate made no attempt to stop them. Jarrett stood just inside the door watching two women as they openly rifled his knapsack and fell to disputing the contents.

Nat Broom hurried up to the magistrate carrying an armful of damp clothes and a pair of long thigh boots, heavy with mud. ‘These stood by the fire, Mr Justice; see, the mud's still wet.'

The lawyer picked a coat from the top of the pile.

‘Been down by the river in the rain, Mr Jarrett?' He leant back his head to survey his prey. ‘I am afraid that you must be searched, Mr Jarrett.' The lawyer flicked a finger and Nat Broom and another bully sprang forward to pin the agent's arms. With an effort Jarrett managed to stay upright. Rough hands felt his coat, found an inner pocket and drew out a leather-bound notebook wrapped around with a thin strap.

‘Your notebook, Mr Jarrett?'

‘I suppose it is hardly worth mentioning that that is my private property?' enquired the prisoner.