The Silent Boy (25 page)

Savill broke out into a cold sweat.

But the boy was too small to be Charles. The face belonged to someone else, long dead, long gone.

‘Charles?’ Fournier said, with an edge of excitement to his voice.

‘No,’ Savill said. ‘The other one.’

When Savill called at the Vicarage just before midday, the servant told him that Mr Horton was still in church with the christening party. The man asked if Savill wished him to enquire whether Miss Horton was at home.

In the literal sense of the question, there wasn’t much doubt on that score, for someone was fingering scales on the piano in the sitting room, and the sound had been perfectly audible as Savill was walking up the drive.

Even as the servant was speaking, the scales came to a stop. Miss Horton herself appeared in the doorway.

‘Good day, sir – I thought I recognized your voice. Are you come to see my father?’

He bowed. ‘Yes, madam.’

‘We expect him at any moment. Come and wait in the sitting room with me. There’s a fire in here.’

Savill followed her into the room. She closed the piano. He began to apologize for the intrusion but she interrupted him.

‘Is there any news of Charles, sir?’ she said, taking a seat.

‘No. I mean to ask your father to pursue enquiries throughout the neighbourhood. In his capacity as a justice, that is.’

‘A larger search party, perhaps? Sending to neighbouring villages?’

‘Indeed. The odds are that he has simply strayed too far, and cannot find his way home.’

‘Or even ask for directions,’ she said.

He nodded.

‘There is another possibility, I collect,’ she went on, colouring slightly. ‘Absurd, perhaps, but one hears these things. That Charles was kidnapped – by gypsies or tinkers, I mean. Or …’

‘Or what, ma’am?’

‘Or by someone else,’ she said in a rush.

‘By whom?’

She bit her lip, which made her look younger, like a girl caught out in a misdemeanour, not a woman of thirty. Rather a fetching girl at that, Savill thought. They both knew that the only other person who had an interest in Charles was the Count de Quillon. But this was not something that needed to be said.

‘Anyone,’ she said. ‘Who knows? Did you hear there was a stranger about the other day? Well, a stranger to me, at least.’

‘Where?’

‘On the path from the Garden of Neptune – by the stile that leads to the woods. I was in the garden with Charles, you see.’

‘When was this?’

‘Tuesday afternoon, I think. It was the day before we met at Mrs West’s. A man in a blue travelling coat. I couldn’t see his face clearly – but it was no one from Norbury. He was talking to the gardener’s boy – the one who complained to Papa when the Count thrashed him. He has red hair, and he’s old Mrs White’s grandson. His name’s George.’

‘Did you talk to the man?’

Miss Horton shook her head. ‘He slipped away. But I asked George, and he said he was a traveller who had lost his way and desired to know the nearest road to Bath. There’s a lane over the hills – he must have come from there.’

There were footsteps on the drive.

‘You saw him,’ Savill said quickly. ‘And so he saw Charles?’

‘Of course – he must have done. I don’t know if I believe George, by the way. He’s always been a liar. But I couldn’t ask him more because Charles ran off.’

The Vicar’s voice sounded in the hall. The door handle rattled.

‘Charles is scared of George, you know,’ said Miss Horton. ‘I don’t know quite why, but he is.’

Savill’s commission lay on the table in the Justice Room. Mr Horton flicked it with his forefinger.

‘I thought you were the father of that wretched boy. This puts quite a different complexion on it. What are you? A police spy?’

‘No, sir. But – as you see – I am authorized to act as the magistrate’s agent or deputy by Mr Ford under the terms of the Police Act. You are familiar with it, no doubt. It has particular reference to preserving the safety of the realm from sedition. The Government believes that the émigrés at Charnwood form a possible threat under the terms of the Act.’

‘I am the authority here, sir,’ Horton said.

‘Of course you are, sir,’ Savill said. ‘Which is why you should direct the investigation in all things.’

‘While you tell me what to do?’

‘All I ask is that you permit me to act as an observer, and that you delay informing the world of what has happened until we know what we are dealing with.’

Horton drew out a chair and sat down. He was still carrying his prayer book. He stared at it, frowning, as if wondering how he came to be holding it, and then laid it gently on the table beside the magistrate’s warrant.

‘Tell me, sir,’ he said wearily, ‘what is going on? Since you and the French party have come to Charnwood, the village has turned itself upside down. And what has this poor dumb boy to do with it?’

Mr Horton knew the value of theatre. He ordered his groom to ride to Charnwood, with orders to bring George White to the Vicarage immediately.

Wrenched from his natural habitat and transplanted to the awful surroundings of the Justice Room, the boy was already terrified. Mrs West might own most of Norbury but, since her husband’s death, Mr Horton united in his plump person the principal powers of both Church and State. The sanctions at his command ranged from earthly imprisonment to eternal damnation.

He hammered the flat of his hand on the table. ‘Empty your pockets, boy.’

The freckles on George’s face glowed, given unnatural prominence by the pallor of the surrounding skin. One by one he removed the items in his pocket. A half-eaten apple. A penknife with a wooden handle and a broken blade. A length of twine. A twist of tobacco. A short-stemmed clay pipe. When he had finished, he stood motionless, hands by his side, looking at the floor.

‘Ha!’ the Vicar said. ‘Shoes.’

The gardener’s boy looked up. Savill saw the muscles twitching below his eyes and around his mouth. He slipped off his shoes. Horton gestured, silently ordering him to shake them out.

One shoe disgorged a length of brass wire, with loops tied in both ends. The other a scrap of folded paper that fell with a clunk on the table.

‘A snare, eh? Poaching in the Park covers, no doubt. An offence against God and man.’

The boy stared at him. How old was the lad, Savill wondered? Ten or twelve? Charles’s age, give or take a year, but much heavier in build. His skull tapered from a broad chin to a small forehead, almost invisible beneath the ragged fringe of ginger hair.

‘Unfold the paper. On the table, where I can see you.’

George’s hands were shaking. The paper had been torn from a newspaper. It contained two shilling-pieces.

‘Where did you get that money?’

‘My granny gave it me, your honour, I swear it.’

‘Don’t add perjury to your crimes, you wretched youth.’ Horton leaned across the table. ‘Where?’

‘Gentleman gave it me, sir. He was lost. I told Miss Horton, sir, I told her.’

‘What was he like, this gentleman of yours?’

‘Face like a gypsy’s, sir, for all he was a gentleman. A big black hat. He rode over by the back way, from the common. He was looking for the way to Bath.’

‘What else?’

‘Nothing, sir. That was all. Then Miss Horton came, and he went.’

The Vicar sighed and shook his head. ‘You’ll have to do better than that, George.’ He pointed at the snare and money. ‘I’ll have to commit you. Perhaps it’ll be the Assizes for you, perhaps not. But you’ll lose your position in any case.’

George’s eyes darted from Mr Horton to Savill and then back again.

‘I wonder what Mrs White will have to say. She’s not getting any younger, is she? Mrs West might have to put her out of the lodge cottage if she’s by herself. I suppose she’ll have to go on the parish. You know what that means. The workhouse.’

‘Please, your honour.’ George shifted his weight from one leg to the other. ‘He wanted to know if I’d seen the French boy who can’t speak. I said yes, he was here at Charnwood. The man asked if he ever came into the woods.’ He hesitated. ‘And I said he did, but he wasn’t meant to leave the gardens so sometimes it was early, before breakfast.’

‘Was that the only time you saw him?’

‘No, your honour.’ The boy wiped his nose with his sleeve. ‘He was there yesterday too. Missed seeing the Frenchy by a whisker – he was in the woods early that day – I saw him coming through the gardens on the way to the house.’

‘Did you tell the man we were leaving for London today?’ Savill snapped. ‘Did you?’

George looked away. ‘Yes, sir.’ He was trembling now, waiting for a blow or a kick. ‘I’m sorry. I ask your pardon, sirs, I didn’t know.’

Savill glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘Listen to me. Where did Charles go in the woods?’

‘He has a little place, sir.’ The boy looked at Savill. ‘Keeps things there. Food and stuff.’

‘I know. There’s nothing there now.’

‘He must have taken them.’

‘Or you did,’ Savill said, and watched the terror return to George’s face.

Horton chipped away at the story, testing it, trying without success to extract more details. At last he gave up.

‘Wait in the kitchen yard.’

‘By your leave, sir,’ Savill said. ‘One more question. George, you say the man rode over. Did you see his horse?’

‘Yes, your honour. Not at first – but I followed him and I saw him riding up the lane. Piebald pony, sir. Too small for him.’

‘So he couldn’t have come far on it?’

‘No, sir. But he wouldn’t have, would he?’

‘Don’t be impudent, you scoundrel,’ Horton roared. ‘Or it will go even worse with you.’

Savill said, ‘What do you mean?’

‘It was Mr Fenner’s pony, sir. So he must have come from there.’

In the end they went together in single file, the Vicar on his grey gelding and Savill on the worn-out mare from Charnwood. They took the sunken road, hardly more than a path, that climbed up the valley and wound over the hills.

‘Can’t we go faster?’ Savill said.

Mr Horton turned in his saddle. ‘You can’t go fast here. Not unless you want a broken neck. The going’s easier when the lane levels out. Another half-mile and we’ll be there.’

At last they emerged on to a windswept heath with long views to a blue horizon to the south-west. They rode side by side now and urged the horses to a trot. Twenty minutes later they came to a made-up road in poor repair. They followed it to an inn. A sign swung from a post at the front but the paint was so decayed it was impossible to make out what was on it. The building was L-shaped, with stables and coach houses enclosing a rectangular yard at the rear. Behind it lay orchards and a paddock with a brown horse grazing at one end and a piebald pony at the other.

‘So he was telling the truth,’ Savill said.

The Vicar grunted. ‘Unusual, with George White. But it does happen.’

They rode under the archway. The yard was cobbled and strewn with the remains of the summer’s weeds. No one was in sight, but smoke trickled from two of the chimneys.

‘It’s not the place it was,’ Horton said. ‘Not since they cut the new road lower down.’

The doors of the large, empty coach house were standing open. An elderly ostler hurried out to take their horses.

‘Where’s Mr Fenner?’ Horton asked.

‘He don’t come downstairs much now, your honour. It’s Mrs Fenner you’ll want to see.’

A maid showed them to a private parlour at the front of the inn. The room was cold and the hearth was choked with ashes. The maid asked if the gentlemen would take something while they waited, but Horton refused.

They sat at a table in the bay window. Mrs Fenner kept them waiting for several minutes. When she appeared, her perfume came before her.

She paused for a moment in the doorway and surveyed her guests. She was a tall, stout woman, slow-moving in everything apart from her blue-green eyes, which roved rapidly to and fro. Her features were small and regular. When she was young, Savill thought, she had probably been accounted a beauty; but now, as she approached the further shores of middle age, the surrounding face had expanded, marooning her nose, eyes and mouth in a sea of doughy flesh.

‘Mr Horton, sir, what a pleasure. Your servant, sir.’ She advanced into the room and curtseyed, or rather lowered her entire body a couple of inches in a manner suggesting she had contrived briefly to shorten her legs by means of an invisible mechanism. ‘My husband will be distressed to miss you. But poor Fenner hardly stirs from his bed nowadays, sir.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. Now—’

‘It’s sorrow that’s brought him low, sir. Look at what this place has become since the turnpike company stole our trade.’

‘Madam, I am grieved by your situation, but I have not come to discuss that now.’

Anger sparked in her eyes but was instantly suppressed. ‘Of course not, sir. You’ll be wanting refreshment, no doubt. There’s a couple of chickens ready for the oven. And while you wait, perhaps something to keep out the cold?’

‘We are not here to dine, ma’am. I am come in my capacity as magistrate.’

Mrs Fenner drew herself up and seemed to swell with emotion. ‘You’ll find nothing wrong here, sir.’

‘There is no need to distress yourself.’ Horton’s words were conciliatory but his tone was not. ‘I merely wish to make some enquiries. But first, give me leave to introduce Mr Savill. A gentleman who has been staying in Norbury.’

She curtseyed again in her special way and ran her finger down her cheek, unconsciously mimicking the line of the scar on Savill’s face. ‘Your servant, sir.’

Savill bowed. There was more than one way to deal with an interrogation. So, turning to Horton, he said, ‘Perhaps, sir, I might trouble Mrs Fenner for a biscuit and a glass of sherry before you begin? I breakfasted early and I’m famished.’

‘Of course.’ The Vicar began to frown but changed his mind. ‘Yes, perhaps you’re in the right of it, sir. We would be wise to recruit ourselves before the ride back.’ He hesitated and then added, ‘Will a biscuit be sufficient, do you think?’