The Duke's Agent (16 page)

‘Do know what Sal was to do the rest of the week?'

Mrs Grundy answered slowly, as if remembering with care or half in a dream. ‘She was to have two days at a big house near Gainford – Lady Yarbrook's, I believe it was. My Sal said she was to be back Wednesday night …' Mrs Grundy broke off, her breath wheezing in her chest. Her habitual lack of colour had sunk to a dishwater grey and her blue eyes looked lost. The pressed pack of human souls watching her vibrated in sympathy with her emotion.

Mrs Bedlington hurried to the cook's side. She appealed to the parson. ‘Reverend Prattman, sir, 'tis plain Mrs Grundy's not well. Cannot others be asked questions in her place?'

‘Indeed, Mrs Bedlington, I am sure there is no need to trouble Mrs Grundy further,' agreed the parson, observing the woman's odd colour with concern. ‘Might she be taken to your inn? Have you some cordial, perhaps?'

Two helpers joined Mrs Bedlington to assist Mrs Grundy from the room. As they raised the bulky figure her eyes turned to the left of the door. She flung out an arm towards a tall, handsome young man who stood near the back of the chamber. He returned her stare transfixed.

‘Him. He was the one she were fretting over.' The old woman spoke her accusation distinctly. Silent tears were running down the grey cheeks. ‘He was the one who did her wrong – Will Roberts.'

‘Now, now, Hannah, don't you be getting yourself in a
state,' clucked Mrs Bedlington, concerned at the woman's ragged breathing. ‘You're not right. You know your chest is bad.'

Mrs Grundy collapsed against her. The onlookers, electrified by this drama, muttered to one other as the bulky figure was carried from the chamber.

Mr Raistrick's face registered annoyance. The sallow-skinned clerk leant to whisper into his master's ear. ‘Very well,' the lawyer responded impatiently. ‘Call this Prudence Miller.'

Prudence Miller approached the bench swinging her skirts with a confident step. She arranged herself so that she might answer the lawyer three-quarters in profile, over one provocative shoulder. Mr Raistrick weighed Miss Miller up in a long speculative glance, trailing warm eyes over her buxom flesh. When he addressed her an elusive animal quality flickered under his formal manner. It had no distinct expression, but it was almost as if musk perfumed the air between them. The lawyer leant a little towards his witness as he asked his questions. Miss Miller blossomed under this treatment. In no time at all the girl was relating how there had been a rumour for more than a week that Sal had a gentleman friend. Maggie herself would say that Sal had been in the habit of slipping off to see him. Sal's work round about gave her plenty of opportunity to roam.

It was plain for anyone with eyes to see that there had been a rivalry between Miss Miller and the dead girl. The very way she spoke Sal's name was coloured with it. Prudence soon came to the encounter in the churchyard before the Sunday service. She had been there with friends, she told the lawyer (implying that she, Prudence, had many more friends than Sal). Sal herself had told them she had a gentleman friend.

‘And then he walked by.' Prudence bobbed her head towards the seated agent.

‘And Sal looked straight at him, and they exchanged this look.' Miss Miller tossed her head at Mr Raistrick, as if to say both she and the lawyer appreciated what kind of look she meant ‘I knew then it was him – he was her gentleman friend.' Her triumphant conclusion drew a gratifying gasp from the crowd.

Quietly Jarrett turned to address the bench. ‘Justice Prattman, sir, may I be permitted to ask this witness a question?'

‘No!' Raistrick cut in abruptly. Recognising belatedly that he had given his fellow Justice offence, he checked himself. ‘Justice Prattman,' he said, leaning over to speak in the parson's ear, ‘as men experienced in the law you and I well know that only a magistrate may question witnesses.'

Emboldened by the security of speaking from among his fellow vestrymen, Captain Adams stood up. ‘Mr Raistrick,' he demanded, ‘are you accusing the Duke's agent of involvement in this death?'

Raistrick weighed the untimely question. The dice fell on the side of discretion.

‘I – ' He restarted more diplomatically,
‘We
are here to investigate Sally Grundy's death,' he began. His subsequent dramatic pause, however, was overlong and allowed the Captain to riposte.

‘We are here to seek justice, Mr Raistrick, are we not?' The Captain appealed to the vestrymen. ‘Why should Mr Jarrett not ask a question if he has the mind? I am sure that both the honourable Justices and the gentlemen of the vestry have sense enough to form their own opinion of what is said,' he concluded, with more cunning than might have been expected from a bluff soldier.

The vestry appeared to find this argument reasonable; several of the worthy burghers nodding in agreement. The Captain stared at the parson, fixedly ignoring the lawyer. Mr Prattman hung on to his gaze.

‘Mr Jarrett, sir, you may ask your question,' he said in a rush. Raistrick began to speak but thought better of it. With a slightly petulant gesture he conceded defeat.

Jarrett fixed his eyes on Prudence Miller's face and spoke courteously. ‘Miss Miller, did you hear Sally Grundy say anything that claimed I was her “gentleman friend”?'

‘Didn't have to,' the girl answered pertly. ‘I saw what I saw.'

‘What were the words Miss Grundy spoke to you?'

‘I canna remember every word – Sal said about how she had a fine gentleman friend, one as fine as you. And she looked straight at you and smiled, knowing like. And you tipped your hat!' Prudence gave a brisk nod to the audience as she scored her point.

Jarrett smiled at her in a charming way. ‘And did I return the smile?'

‘You did! Just like that!' Prudence exclaimed, eagerly.

‘Precisely,' agreed Jarrett. He turned to address the chamber. ‘When a pretty wench smiles at me I confess I am liable to smile back – and even to tip my hat,' he confided. Several in the crowd smiled with him. ‘But that, gentlemen, is all. I did not know the girl – she merely chose to smile at me.'

‘That's not all,' cried Prudence, seeing she was losing ground. ‘Betsy – she that's scullery maid at Longacres – she heard Mrs Grundy scold Sal for messing with gentlemen. She'll tell you! Who would it be if it weren't you?'

‘Then why not ask her,' cried someone.

A slight, half-starved looking girl of thirteen or so, with straggling hair, was pitched forward out of the crowd. Betsy crept into the arena of attention crabwise, her pinched features half-terrified, half-excited.

‘Come forward, Betsy,' said the Reverend Prattman, assuming his most fatherly, clerical air. ‘Be a good girl and speak the truth and no harm shall come to you.'

‘Speak up, Betsy,' prompted Prudence. ‘Tell them what Harry told you – of that time at the toll gate.'

After some coaxing it transpired that Betsy was sweet on Harry, Miss Lonsdale's groom. Her Harry, it seemed, had told her of an incident the previous Monday evening, after Sal had finished her work at Longacres.

‘Harry said that Miss Henrietta met him,' Betsy pointed to Jarrett, ‘at the toll gate and Sal, she walked by and Miss Henrietta was proper put out because of the way the gentleman looked after Sal as she went by.'

This information was received with a few titters from the back of the crowd. The Reverend Prattman was not amused. He scolded Betsy for gossiping about her betters with other servants. ‘Everyone knows Miss Lonsdale's reputation is above reproach,' he told her severely. ‘You should not repeat such idle gossip.'

This direction was not to Raistrick's liking. ‘Perhaps so,' he said, ‘but Betsy may know something else to the purpose.' He bent his charm on the girl. ‘Betsy, can you describe this gentleman friend of Sal's?'

‘No,' came the disappointing reply. But then Betsy suddenly blurted out: ‘But he is a fair-haired man like him,' again Betsy pointed to Jarrett, ‘for Ned the Carter told Harry that he saw Sal with her gentleman friend in Gainford just this Tuesday. He got a good look at him, too.'

‘And is this carter here?' demanded Raistrick, searching the chamber with hawkish eyes.

‘Ned Turner, do you mean?' Jasper Bedlington asked Betsy. ‘Well, he never saw Mr Jarrett in Gainford last Tuesday,' he scoffed. ‘Ned's out Staindrop way today, your honour,' the innkeeper added, ‘but he's due to call at my inn five o'clock or thereabouts.'

Light reflected from a patch of limpid sky warmed his cheek and a sweet breath of air blew in through the open casement above him. The magistrates had suspended the investigation to await the arrival of the mysterious carter and Jarrett found himself once more at the Queen's Head. He uncurled himself from the short window seat of Jasper Bedlington's parlour. He was alone. Spectators had crowded into the Queen's Head from the council chamber to while away the wait with drink. His shadow, Nat Broom, had sat in a corner eyeing him resentfully for a full ten minutes before giving in to his thirst and sidling off with a defiant, ‘Never think of moving, for I'll be watching the passage, be sure of that.'

He was glad to be free of the company; it was tedious to be constantly stared at. He was restless. Justice Raistrick clearly had high hopes of this new witness. Where the devil was Tiplady? For a moment all Jarrett's pent-up frustration vented itself towards his absent valet. It was Tiplady's fault that he had arrived in such an unorthodox fashion. If he had only appeared in Woolbridge with a gentleman's servant he might have been treated as a gentleman now. Mr Tiplady was a Character, a family retainer of the old school. He had been part of the Duke's household since Jarrett was eleven. As boys, he and Charles had shared his services as manservant; then as they grew older Tiplady had made Master Raif his sole charge. When, at the age of twenty, Raif had enlisted, they had parted company.

Enlisted. Such a prosaic word for that desperate action he had taken ten years ago. His thoughts drifted back to that time. He had joined the 68th because that regiment was on the point of sailing for the West Indies, a tour of duty that had meant death for most of them. And not a glorious end but a shivering, retching, convulsing death by fever. Tiplady was part of his first life; the one that had seemed to cease that year he turned twenty and met the private shame that banished him. But then, in truth, no part of a man's life concludes but with death. Raif Jarrett survived the West Indies and returned with the remains of the 68th to barracks in England. In that couple of years Tiplady had resumed his role again whenever Jarrett visited the Duke, as if Ravensworth were still his home. Tiplady was not the kind of servant one took into the field, so he left him behind when he had transferred to the 16th and shipped out for Cadiz. He had engaged a native servant for his service in Spain and Portugal, a cheerful, careless cove who shared his discomforts with little complaint. Joaquin had elected to wait for him in Lisbon rather than travel to England, so during the last few months' convalescence Tiplady had slipped into his old role. Jarrett found the resumption of their relationship uneasy. Tiplady refused to recognise that things had changed; that Jarrett was no longer the Master Raif of the old days.

The abrupt sound of a chair being thrown back on a stone floor came from the next room. Jarrett turned his head to the noise. He was weary of this present farce. What galled him most was the attempt to strip him of his character. In the army a man's rank was assumed on sight, detailed in silver lace and the shape of a coat. Here he found himself shorn of all props – servant, accoutrements, character. He felt the assault at his very core. He could acknowledge the skill of the strategy but in truth the move had shaken him. The audacity of that man! For a Justice of His Majesty's Peace to
cast public doubt on the authority of written credentials. A gentleman's word should be accepted by a gentleman – how else could affairs be managed? Then, of course, Raistrick was no gentleman. And so far the strategy was proving effective, with Sir Thomas out of town and the parson a weak fool. He should have known better than to imagine he could descend alone on such far-flung estates and expect to restore the Duke's ancient rights without a fight. True, the extent of the neglect had not been anticipated, but he might have approached the task with more caution. Jarrett shifted his weight irritably. The bruising from last Monday's attack had not yet disappeared and the old wound in his side was troubling him.

With his usual impeccable sense of timing, Tiplady had chosen their arrival in York the week before to stage one of his ‘stomachs', as he called them. Jarrett gazed out at the sky. It was absurd but he could not recall the cause of their recent quarrel. Some inn servant who had shown Tiplady insufficient respect? He had forgotten. In any event, Tiplady had hinted, as he periodically did, that, driven to ill-heath by his present situation, he was considering better offers of employment. And Jarrett had been in such a foul mood he had told the man to take his leave and go plague another poor fool with his croaking.

Alone under guard in the Queen's Head Jarrett acknowledged his fault. Tiplady had been suffering from a head cold and they had both been tired from days of travelling. Jarrett contemplated his slim hands. He missed the old raven. At least Tiplady knew who he was. The banner of blue sky beyond the window taunted him. This was a day to be out on the moors – a good gallop would shake off these frets. He sighed. Walcheren would be missing him. He wondered whether he might get permission to visit the stables. He was about to venture out in search of his hosts when Mrs Bedlington clumped down the stairs at the end of the passage
to fetch up face to face with her husband as he came from the tap.

‘I've had her rest a while in my room, poor soul. She's not well,' Mrs Bedlington shook her mob-capped head at Mrs Grundy's plight. Her husband's face mirrored her own. In that moment they were clearly a pair, as if married life together had given them a common imprint.

‘There's a boy just come from Mr Gilbert, Polly. He's finished with his examination and wishes to know where he is to send the corpse, for Mrs Munday says she'll not have it in her house.'

‘Well, isn't that just like the man!' exclaimed his wife. ‘Fine Mr Gilbert cannot be bothering himself to wait but must be rid of the trouble directly, for all he's known a hundred corpses. Have him send the poor girl here, Jasper. We can lay her decently in the parlour.' Dismissing her spouse with a fond squeeze on the arm, Mrs Bedlington peered into the fug of tobacco smoke that marked out the area of the tap. ‘They're getting a mite lively,' she commented. ‘Ah, well, so long as they've means to pay. It's an ill wind, as they say.' She turned her broad face to smile at her guest in the parlour. ‘Is there anything you might be wanting, Mr Jarrett?'

Her habitual deference in his present circumstances struck Jarrett as at once soothing and so ludicrous he laughed out loud. ‘Forgive me, Mrs B. My absurd situation,' he explained apologetically, recognising a tinge of hurt in the kindly face before him.

As he spoke the rowdiness flowing from the tap hushed. Mrs Bedlington swung round to the odd silence behind her. Mrs Grundy stood, a grey phantom at the bottom of the stairs. The innkeeper's wife hurried up to the woman, enveloping her cold, still fingers in warm hands.

‘Now, Mrs Grundy, you should be resting. This is no place for you. The tap's all crowded and filled with smoke.'

The grey woman's eyes looked at her, as if from a great
distance. To Jarrett, watching unnoticed, Mrs Grundy did not appear to utter a single word. Mrs Bedlington held a one-sided discussion which ended in her leading Sal's aunt off towards the kitchen in search of a cup of tea.

The hubbub of conversation in the next room was rising in volume. Every now and then more emphatic voices were distinguishable above the din. Jasper Bedlington returned from his errand. His face was creased with two plump worry lines between the eyebrows. He fixed round eyes on his guest.

‘That Nat Broom's been stirring again, Mr Jarrett.' He meant the statement to be an exclamation but a touch of doubt crept through. ‘And all because you came without a man with you. I told him it was nothing but nonsense. Your valet is to follow any day now – I told him.' The innkeeper's expression appealed for confirmation.

‘I am expecting my man Tiplady to follow from York,' replied Jarrett, forcing a smile. ‘Indeed, I was in hopes he might arrive today – as you know, I am exhausting my supply of clean linen.'

Relief was clear on the innkeeper's face. ‘That's what I told him!' he exclaimed. ‘That Nat Broom, he must always be making trouble. Mind you, sir, he's not the only one. I heard Josiah Boyes say you were not yourself – not the Duke's agent at all but a counterfeit.' Mr Bedlington snorted his contempt. ‘And who crammed him with that tale? He never thought that up himself. Josiah Boyes has no more fancy in his head than a goose at Christmastide. He'll have learnt his tune from another, I'll be bound.'

More evidence of his enemy's strategy, no doubt, reflected Jarrett as the innkeeper cocked his head to listen to the drinkers in the next room. Surely even Mr Raistrick's audacity could not carry off such a plot. This was England in the nineteenth century, not some melodrama of bandit kings at the Haymarket theatre. And yet, if this tale could be properly worked up he would be well suited to a conviction
for murder. The sounds of the crowd next door took on an increasingly ugly note. As if on cue, the nervous features of Constable Thaddaeus appeared in the doorway. Studiously avoiding Jarrett's eyes, he took the innkeeper aside.

‘I'm wondering, Jasper, if we'd not best get the gentleman away to the toll booth. He'll be more snug there, for the lads are getting very warm.' He pricked up his ears at the sound of another chair being thrown back. ‘Very warm. If the gentleman would follow me up the stairs, quiet like, we could maybe get down the gallery steps into the yard.'

Before this plan could be put into action there was a distraction. A lad appeared at the street door of the Queen's Head. His half-excited, half-solemn air caught the attention and a stillness washed over the sea of voices. The lad walked straight-backed through the tap, his cap held before him. Behind him followed two men carrying a hurdle. The outlines of the body they bore were reduced by the coarse cloth covering it to an indistinct mound the length of a woman: two little peaks for feet at one end and a smooth, rounded lump at the other, where the material stretched taut over the once lively face. The chill thought of death slithered about the room as Sal's remains passed through.

Mrs Bedlington appeared to break the spell. ‘You were to bring her through the yard door, Matthew!' she scolded, nearly oversetting the young lad with a smart clip over the ear. ‘Have you no decency! Bring her through to the parlour, this way!'

Huffing with indignation Mrs Bedlington led the little procession through the passage. She came to stand beside Jarrett, keeping a sharp eye on the two men, as they laid the body carefully on two tables pushed together.

‘Good thing poor Hannah Grundy were not here to see that! She's in the kitchen. Took it in mind to bake me a batch of scones, poor dear.' She lifted the shroud a moment and glanced beneath. ‘Well, at least the doctor left her tidy,'
she commented to no one in particular. Her plump hands twitched the drape of the cloth here and there, smoothing it. ‘It'll do her good to have something to occupy her.' Mrs Bedlington's manner towards the corpse struck Jarrett as remarkably commonplace. She moved as if she were arranging a bed rather than a shroud. In her presence death became almost homely. The innkeeper's wife surveyed her handiwork dispassionately.

‘Go fetch some candles from Molly in the kitchen, Jasper my love,' she ordered, then slipping a coin to the two bearers she swept them out. ‘You tell them in the tap to stay where they are. She's to have as much peace and decency as I can give her!' She spoke with unexpected fierceness, then turned her back abruptly and began putting up the shutters to darken the room.

‘Mrs Grundy says Miss Henrietta has given her permission to fetch Sal to Longacres for the laying out,' Mrs Bedlington confided in a discreet whisper as the room dimmed, casting her rounded features in shadow. ‘Miss Lonsdale's gone visiting this morning but she's promised to be by for her this afternoon.' In profile Mrs Bedlington looked sceptical. ‘I'll not have a word said against Miss Henrietta for she's a good sort of gentlewoman, but I can't see a lady like her knowing what to do with a corpse.'

Conjuring up Miss Henrietta's composed features, Jarrett reflected that Miss Lonsdale looked likely to prove calmly competent to almost any task.

‘I am certain the matter will be easily arranged, Mistress Polly,' he commented as he helped her manoeuvre a particularly awkward shutter into place.

‘Why, that is good of you, Mr Jarrett, sir!' Mrs Bedlington responded with unwarranted energy. ‘I should have known that you would come to Miss Henrietta's aid, being such a gentleman.' She emphasised her conviction with a congratulatory pat on his coat-sleeve. ‘The Longacres household has
been short of a proper man since Mr Lonsdale died near two years past now.'

Her confident misinterpretation of his mild commonplace caught him unawares. Jarrett himself hardly imagined that Miss Lonsdale would welcome his assistance. In any event, it began to appear doubtful he would be at liberty to make the offer. He was wondering whether to make an effort to correct this little misunderstanding in case it might grow into some larger embarrassment when his hostess's eyes fixed on something over his shoulder.

‘Oh, drat!' she protested mildly.

Mrs Grundy had appeared in the room. Mrs Bedlington eyed her uneasily. The cook's stout figure seemed adrift in a half-conscious world. The sound of her breathing was acute against the ambient silence of the parlour. Listening to the painful wheezing of the old woman's breath through her tired lungs, Jarrett could almost feel a sympathetic pain in his own. Mrs Grundy lowered herself into the chair he drew up for her by the head of the body. She acknowledged no other presence in the room. Carefully, her hands with their purple swollen knuckles reached out. With methodical neatness she folded back the grey shroud to uncover the beautiful face. She smoothed the symmetrical fold she had made and gently patted it.