Hoare and the Portsmouth Atrocities (14 page)

“Ball went into the head, like you can see, sir,” the man said. “Stopped there, though. Surgeon took 'er out.”

Gladden had been mistaken in this detail, then. This was evident to Hoare from the coarse trephining work that had completed the destruction of the late licentious lieutenant's beauty.

“Where's the bullet?” Hoare asked.

In answer, the attendant rummaged about in a drawer underneath the cadaver. “'Ere,” he said at last, handing it to Hoare.

“I'll want this,” Hoare whispered.

The bullet, he saw, bore small slightly canted ridges. It was a rifle bullet, then. If so, it could have been fired from a considerable distance. Furthermore, the killing had been done at night. Thus, he thought, the murderer had to have been no mean marksman.

“You'll 'ave to give me a paper, then,” the attendant said.

Hoare sighed but wrote two notes, one to himself, identifying the bullet as being what it was, and one to the attendant. Each signed one note. Pocketing his grisly prize, Hoare tipped the man sixpence and went his way.

Captain Hay's relict had not yet moved from the apartment she had shared with her late husband on the second story of the Three Suns Inn. Hoare had seldom patronized the Three Suns; it catered to flag officers and post captains at the top of the list. Even Captain Hay must have been lucky in his prize money, if he could support an extensive stay there.

That the three gilded spheres of the Medici crest that overhung the inn's portal also served to identify pawnbroking establishments apparently troubled the proprietors of the Three Suns not at all. Their establishment was too exalted for any confusion. Hoare would not have been at all surprised to find Sir Thomas Frobisher in residence. It was his sort of place.

The doorkeeper of the Three Suns made it clear that his masters discouraged the presence of officers below the rank of commander except on Admiralty business.

“You will either admit me forthwith and have me announced to Mrs. Hay,” Hoare said at last, “or suffer the loss of your protection, be pressed, and go to sea again. You have five seconds in which to make your choice.”

He had several impressive-looking, meaningless documents stuffed in his uniform pocket for occasions like this. He drew one of them out and pulled out a silver-cased pencil.

“One. Two…”

The porter fled. “Mrs. Hay will receive you,” he said humbly when he reappeared. “This way, please.”

Though he had never been introduced, Hoare had seen Mrs. Adam Hay—Katerina Hay—on stage several times. She was a skilled performer, of near-professional quality. Her acting was a trifle florid for Hoare's taste, but she was a favorite among the serving officers. Since she greeted him standing in the middle of the inn's second-best drawing room, Hoare made her his second-best leg.

Katerina Hay was big, blonde and Dutch. As she stood there in tasteful mourning, her opulent lines reminded Hoare of
Oranienboom,
the two-decker from which he had once fled incontinently. He had been first in
Staghound,
36, then, and it was just before the day his voice had been taken from him. She looked just as dangerous.

“Please accept my condolences, ma'am, on your tragic loss,” he whispered.

“You need not whisp—
oh!
Of course. You're Admiral Hardcastle's ‘Whispering Ferret!'” Mrs. Hay lost all trace of her formidable mien. As it did on the stage, her accent lent piquancy to her voice. “Sit down, sir, I pray!” With massive grace, she seated herself at one end of a chaise longue and gestured for him to take his place beside her. “Thank you for your good wishes, Mr. Hoare. But let us come to the point, for you must be a busy man with this inquiry of yours.” She smiled at him knowingly. “Oh, yes. After your success with
Amazon,
it would be obvious—no?—for dear Sir George to direct you onto the murder of my husband.”

Taken full aback, Hoare could only laugh.

Katerina Hay laughed back. “Did anyone ever tell you, sir? Your laugh sounds like a will-o'-the-wisp in one of our Zeeland bogs. So. What do you wish to ask me?”

“I believe—forgive me—that your husband was aware of your relationship with the late Lieutenant Peregrine Kingsley.”

Katerina Hay laughed again—somewhat scornfully, Hoare thought. “Of course he was ‘aware,' sir. Indeed, he more or less approved of it.”

Then, if the husband of Kingsley's mistress already knew of the affair, what had been Kingsley's motive in killing him?

“Do not look shocked, Mr. Hoare,” Katerina Hay went on. “My husband and I remained fond of each other. But Adam had long since become incapable, and I … I am a full-blooded woman.”

Had she moved an inch or two along the chaise?

“Then that explains the reference in this letter to ‘he' or ‘his.' You knew your husband would know whom you referred to.”

“Exactly, Mr. Hoare. My husband may have condoned my placing horns upon him, so long as no open scandal ensued. But he, and I, would have drawn the line at my consorting with a traitor.”

“Then it might follow,” Hoare said, “that Kingsley killed your husband, not because he feared discovery as your … er…”

“
Cicisbeo,
Mr. Hoare. Lover.”

“Yes … but because of the cipher he allowed you to find.”

“Exactly. I was foolish myself, perhaps, and must take some of the guilt for poor Adam's death, for I told Peregrine Kingsley what I had done with the message, and gave him his
congé
on the spot. I was right to do so,
nie?
”

With this question in her native tongue, Mrs. Hay definitely edged closer.

*   *   *

T
HE
B
UNCH OF
Grapes, where Hoare knew he would either find Jaggery himself or learn of his whereabouts, was a known haunt of men who lived on the wrong side of the law. Yet it was not the filthy, dark lair a stranger would therefore expect. It did not reek of bad gin, used beer, or stale tobacco. It was full of neither drunks nor drabs, and none of the occupants were bedraggled. The small smugglers, illegal tradesmen, master crooked craftsmen, and other well-behaved criminals of Jaggery's sort had better taste than to frequent a den and enough money to support that taste.

So the Bunch of Grapes was a tidy if slightly battered place, well lit and smelling faintly of good ale. The only occupants Hoare could see were several groups of what looked like respectable workingmen and a small party of young sprigs.

The occupants all looked up when they saw an officer enter, then returned to talking—one quartet, quite openly, about last week's raid of the revenue men on a well-traveled smuggler's route. They seemed to think a rival gang had ratted on them.

“They better not start anything with us,” one said. “We'll sort 'em out like we did last time.”

“Wasn't us as done it,” said a tidy man at another table. “Must have been Ackerley's boys stung 'em out.”

“They didn't do no such thing,” said Jaggery, whom Hoare now sighted in a corner, accompanied by a very small, wan girl child with enormous black eyes that seemed to look him through and through. “I 'appen to know.”

The child caught the man's attention with a yank on his sleeve. Upon sight of Hoare, his eyes went wide.

“An' how the 'ell would
you
know, Mr. Jaggery? It's not your line o' trade,” the tidy man commented.

“Softly, softly, friends,” said a middle-aged man behind the bar. “There's gentry present.” Though he wore a scar across his nose, he also wore a clean green cloth wrapped about his waist and a polite expression on his ruddy face. Jaggery sat back with a resigned look and glanced at his young companion.

“We haven't seen
you
here for a bit, Mr. Hoare, sir,” the scar-nosed man said. “Have you been at sea, then?”

“Not really, Mr. Greenleaf,” Hoare whispered. “Just working for His Majesty and taking a bit of a journey now and then, in
Serene.
”

“So. She's
Serene
these days, sir?”

“Not now. I turned her into
Alert
as soon as we got into harbor today.”

Several of the other guests laughed knowingly, but Jaggery's little companion looked perplexed and dared to speak up. “What's a lert, Da? A neel, like, or a sole?” she asked, to more laughter. She blushed and hung her smooth ash-blonde head.

“I'll buy you a pint,” Hoare said to Jaggery, “if you'll introduce me to your friend and give me some news.”

Jaggery hesitated, looking for a way out of this, then resigned himself to the broadside to come and looked heavenward.

“For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful,” he said. “Two pints, then, Mr. Greenleaf.”

“And a glass of Madeira for…?” Hoare added.

“Me dorter Jenny,” Jaggery said.

“Just a minute, then.”

Greenleaf disappeared through a door behind the bar and returned with a black cobwebbed bottle. He took a corkscrew and bent to open it, holding it between his knees in the old-fashioned way. The cork came out with a soft pop, and the heady tropical fragrance of a superb Madeira replaced the homely scent of ale in the atmosphere of the Bunch of Grapes.

“I'll change my mind,” Hoare whispered. “I'll take Madeira, myself. That stuff smells like nectar.”

“She orter, Mr. 'Oare,” Greenleaf said as he poured the dark wine into two clean, coarse glasses. “She's been layin' there in the dark, in me back room, for nigh onto ten years, with 'er friends an' relations.” He poured Jaggery's pint. “There you are, Mr. 'Oare,” he said.

Hoare paid him and brought his purchases to the table where the old gunner and his daughter, Jenny, were waiting.

Ordinarily, Hoare would have described Janus Jaggery as an oily faced man as well as a two-faced one. Every time Hoare saw the man he was peering out from under his mop of greasy hair and whining through his gray-brown beard about the pain of his deformed left hand, his warped legs, and the buffets fate was forever dealing him. Here with his daughter, though, he certainly wore the better of his two faces. He now looked sly, but benign. Jenny Jaggery would be five or six years of age, Hoare guessed. In a threadbare frock that would have covered her twice, she was a wisp. But someone other than her father must have the care of her, for she and her frock were clean, though drab.

“'Ere's to yer good health, Mr. 'Oare.” Jaggery took a deep draft of his ale and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

Hoare's first sip of the Madeira told him that, like a fortunate butterfly, he was sipping nectar.

“Is the man really named ‘Ore,' Pa?” Jenny asked.

“Mind yer manners, lass,” her father said. He tensed visibly where he sat, but seeing that Hoare was not about to knock him down or call his daughter out, eased back again and gulped down a draft. “An' to what do we owe the pleasure of yer presence here with us, Your Honor?” he asked warily.

“The late Peregrine Kingsley. You sent him this.” Hoare held out the misspelled letter, keeping it firmly in hand and watching for Jaggery's reaction.

Jaggery read it as Hoare held it before him, moving his lips as he read. Did he seem relieved?

“Aye, Yer Honor. I can't deny it, seein' as it's got me own name on it in me own 'and.”

“Tell me what's behind it.”

“Saw nothin' wrong with pickin' up a bit o' blunt from the fancy Mr. Kingsley. The cove's captain wouldn't 'a' been 'alf tore up to find 'is wife had been makin' free with 'is lieutenant, would 'e, now?”

“He already knew, Jaggery.”

The gunner's jaw dropped.

“And,” Hoare said, “you could have gotten yourself spending the rest of your life in Botany Bay for extortion. What would have happened to your wife and young Jenny then?”

“Ain't got no wife. Slicer Kate sliced Meg's gizzard two years ago, and she took sick of it and died. Got 'anged for it, too, Kate did, in Winchester, at 'Ampshire assizes. My Jenny's a norphing, she is.

“Besides,” Jaggery went on, “the captain went and died on me, 'e did, the thoughtless bastard. And there ain't no one will bother me now, now that other bastard Kingsley's been put out of the way. So there, Mister Hoare.”

No connoisseur, Jenny had tossed off her Madeira in one gulp. Now she giggled, gave a small belch, let her eyelids drop, and fell asleep leaning against her father's shoulder.

“There. Now see what ye've done,” Jaggery said reproachfully. He looked down at the child and laid his maimed hand on her glossy head.

“And what else was Kingsley about, Jaggery, that he should be afraid of the law as well as his lady's husband? And you referred to ‘friends' that he had lost and you had kept. What were you and he engaged in together?”

Jaggery shook his head and looked at Hoare out of wide, innocent-looking eyes. “Mr. Kingsley 'ad a way about 'im, Yer Honor. Much against me will, 'e persuaded me to take on some bits of nautical merchandise, like. Bits of ship chandlery. Scuttles, patent blocks, things like that, that might have gone adrift. Jom York's a good friend of mine. Ye know Mr. York, Yer Honor?”

Since York had found Kingsley's Marine uniform for Hoare, he could hardly deny it, nor, indeed, did he wish to. He nodded. “And Kingsley was no longer ‘friends' with Jom York?”

“Never said that, Yer Honor, did I now? Mr. York's an upright man, he is.…”

By calling him an “upright man,” Jaggery meant, Hoare knew, that York claimed membership in the notorious Thieves' Guild, sworn to mutual confidence and trust. Hoare also knew that even though the outside world might be sure of its existence and its secret power, the Thieves' Guild was a fraud, a figment, and a fairy tale. But if Jaggery thought that he, Hoare, believed in it, let him.