Cheating the Hangman (11 page)

William’s list had clearly provided Mrs Hansard with food for thought. He had had the sense to indicate those who were household servants, separating them from those who had accompanied their visiting masters or mistresses, with a valiant stab at identifying who worked for whom – even if Lester and Bister might have more conventional spellings.

He had even noted the comings and goings as prompted by the dictatorial bells – Lady Tunstall had demanded more hot chocolate, Lord Brierley hotter shaving water. Each request had sent someone scurrying off. There was no mention of Lord Hartland’s man. Only one young woman, Sally, a skivvy, had slipped out for no apparent purpose – William assumed she’d visited the privy, and had spent a long time there. More likely, Maria opined, she had a sweetheart on the outdoor staff. But she sent for William nonetheless, talking to him in Hansard’s study rather than making him face a whole team of inquisitors.

She returned looking pensive. ‘Only Sally and Lord Brierley’s man left the servants’ hall after Tobias’s note was read to the gathering. So one would assume that they are the only ones we should talk to at this stage. Yet after all this I cannot but agree with Dr Toone that we are grasping at straws. Even if we locate Mr Snowdon, all we can do is ask him – I know not what.’ She spread her hands in despair. ‘Surely he can have had no part in the murder or crucifixion – no one capable of such violence could have been so meticulous in recording the effects.’

‘We have nothing but straws to grasp, my dear. Even if we were to send for the Bow Street Runners, they could do very little more.’

‘They could question with more authority, less delicacy than we do.’

‘In that case, perhaps we too should be more forceful. Tomorrow we speak to Brierley’s man and to Sally. At least you do, my dear – if you would be so kind? And with Tobias to remind them of the importance of telling the truth?’ He shot a look at me – I need not fear that the exalted Lord Hartland would venture so far backstairs.

Of course I did not fear that. But equally I did not wish to encounter my father’s valet in such unusual circumstances.

Mrs Hansard had the forethought to send a note to Mrs Heath before we set out, requesting the presence of the two servants and the use of her private sitting room.

Lord Brierley’s valet, known to his colleagues here simply by his master’s name, was appalled that he was being accused of any indiscretion – predictably, and
probably genuinely appalled. Of course he had heard about the contents of the note, as everyone had, but would such information be of any significance to a man of Lord Brierley’s status, especially as he was attempting to tie his cravat?

Sally was equally shocked, stuttering and stumbling at the very idea. Spying Mrs Heath’s Bible on a shelf, she seized it, swearing her innocence with tears streaming down her face. She had said not a word to anyone. Not her. To no one.

Mrs Hansard waved her less kindly than I had expected back to work, waiting till the door was firmly shut before turning to me to ask, ‘Well?’

To my surprise I found myself throwing open the door. No, no one was eavesdropping. Closing it again, I said, ‘I am sure she was telling the truth. But was she telling the whole truth?’

‘I am glad you share my reservations, Tobias. I too believed that part of her story which she chose to tell us. But she was concealing something else. I will make it my business to find out what. But that will involve women’s talk with Mrs Heath, and I will spare your blushes by leaving that till a time when you are not with me. Don’t worry – I’m sure that Edmund will need to call on his patient here later this very day and will bring me with him.’ She looked at me sideways as we stepped into the corridor: ‘And you, Tobias?’

‘I have work about the parish to do,’ I said, wilfully misunderstanding her.

Before she could reply, a figure stopped abruptly before me. ‘Master Tobias – can it really be you?’

‘Walker!’ It was fortunate the old man’s hands were empty, as I clasped them with an affection I had forgotten I’d always felt for my father’s valet. ‘How very good to see you! How are you? But I have forgotten my manners. Mrs Hansard, may I present Mr Walker, my father’s valet, whose good advice has saved me many a beating? Mr Walker, this is my dear friend Mrs Hansard, whose husband has had the honour of treating my father for his gout.’

Walker laughed grimly. ‘I fear your husband has had to endure some of His Lordship’s worst – I was about to call them tantrums, Master Tobias! We are never at our best when beset with the gout,’ he continued in his more usual deferential tones.

‘As if I could forget,’ I said. ‘How does he now, Walker? I have followed his progress through the good offices of Dr Hansard, but as for calling in myself—’

He shook his head sadly. ‘That was a sad business, Master Tobias, and we could all wish His Lordship’s words unsaid. I would not advise, for a few more days, that you present your card and ask to be admitted. He is still tetchy with pain, but soon, very soon, he will be tetchy with boredom and grateful to listen even to the Ancient Mariner. If you permit, I will say nothing of this conversation. But when the time is ripe, I will speak to your husband, ma’am, about the best way of bringing it off.’ He looked me up and down and tweaked the shoulders of my coat. ‘Time for another visit to Weston for a new one, if I might make so bold. For preference before you see His Lordship. You have lost weight, My Lord, have you not?’

‘I have indeed. But pray, Walker, call me Master Tobias – Mr Tobias, if you must.’

‘Forgive me: ’Tis now Dr Campion, is it not?’

‘It is for only my new friends, however, not my old ones, Walker. But you must not keep my father waiting, or he will vent his spleen on you.’

‘Good day to you then, Master Tobias. And I promise to tell Dr Hansard when I think the moment is right. It will do my heart good to see you back in each other’s favour.’

‘Thank you, Walker – and God bless you.’

I believe we both had tears in our eyes as we parted.

Mrs Hansard soon joked me out of my reverie. ‘So when will you be going to London to visit your tailor?’

It was only when she repeated the question that I realised she was not joking after all.

‘A trip to a tailor I must make, if you insist – but it will not be a London one, rather the best that Warwick or Coventry can provide. Yes, if the weather is fine I will ride over to Coventry on Monday. Meanwhile, if I may, when I have prepared tomorrow’s sermon, I will wait on you and Edmund this evening in the hope that you and Mrs Heath have between you plumbed the depths of Sally’s secret.’

Most of the discussion over dinner involved my conversation from my encounter with Walker and my proposed errand to the lovely medieval town of Coventry, my vanity occasioning a good deal of amused laughter: ‘Imagine Tobias turning into a tulip of fashion!’ Edmund declared affectionately

‘He will not be a nonpareil if his tailor is provincial,’ Toone said truthfully.

‘You wait – I shall put Brummell to the blush.’

‘But possibly for the wrong reasons.’ However, Toone, soon bored with the ribbing, volunteered to accompany me, claiming he needed to purchase reading matter even his host’s excellent library could not satisfy, and offering, to my amazement, to undertake any minor commissions for Maria.

At last, Burns having brought the tea tray into the drawing room and been kindly dismissed for the rest of the evening, I asked about Maria’s second visit to Orebury.

‘There is very little to tell. Sally is a good little worker, but her efforts are very uneven – perfection one day, the opposite the next. Mrs Heath has had cause to speak to her more than once, and even threatened not to hire her next quarter day. But each time she redeems herself. There is no rhyme or reason to it. And she does have this very bad habit of taking herself off for far longer than she ought. Sometimes this heralds the wonderful Sally, sometimes the annoying one. Sometimes she is consistent for days at a time; sometimes she changes by the hour.’

‘I have often observed how young girls of her age can be
aux anges
one minute, and in the depths the next; sometimes it seems to be related to their monthly cycle,’ Toone said. ‘If so there is little that one can do about it – unless you have any remedies, Hansard?’

‘Alas, there seems to be no cure for such attacks of the vapours. As for such an extreme case as Sally …’ He shook his head. ‘Is she from a village family?’

Toone’s laugh was almost offensive. ‘Ah, more of your family experiments. These are people, Hansard, not hyacinths.’

‘Mrs Heath will know,’ Maria said, riding over Toone’s second sentence. She looked pointedly at the clock. ‘Now, Tobias, I believe tomorrow’s service is eight o’clock Communion …’

After a calm and pensive Sabbath, we set out early on Monday morning. The day away from my parish, even in the acerbic company of Toone, by turns amusing and irritable, left me feeling like a schoolboy released for a half-holiday in the middle of a long hard term. I found I did not want to return early, even to Langley Park, and we drew the day out with a visit to every promising shop, buying this and that because we needed it and that and this because we didn’t. We might have been children at a travelling fair. I enjoyed myself so much I resolved to put in a stern day’s work on the morrow.

First, however, after a most pleasurable late dinner at Langley Park, we presented our friends with the trifles we had purchased for them. They exclaimed like children at Christmas. Just as I had found gifts for my household, Toone had made an especial effort, remembering the Langley Park servants. He presented an assortment of parcels to Burns when he brought in the tea tray. Burns was always far too much on his dignity to beam with joy, but the sight of new cricket balls brought a decided twinkle to his eye as he bowed himself out, far more swiftly than usual.

‘Ah – I had almost forgotten with all this largesse before us,’ Maria said, passing Toone his tea, ‘that Mrs Heath tells me that Sally comes from Oxford way. She is an orphan, as far as Mrs Heath knows, but she does have a sister in service
somewhere in this area. I hope she is less troublesome than Sally.’

‘Does Mrs Heath know where exactly?’

‘She started with a respectable farmer but left a couple of quarter days back – first for Lambert Place, but then for somewhere else that Mrs Heath has forgotten. She has promised to question Sally when an occasion presents itself.’

After our excursion, my life returned to its usual humdrum pattern. There was a great deal to do in Moreton St Jude’s, but little of it worth the telling, which, Mrs Trent’s cooking apart, was almost enough reason to spend my evenings, when invited, at Langley Park. I made a point, however, of taking luncheon on as many days as I could at the rectory. I was working, awaiting the inevitable summons to the dining room, when Susan showed Archdeacon Cornforth, who had presumably arrived in all his equestrian pomp, into my study. I had at my elbow Maria’s sketches of the late traveller. In my clumsy efforts to cover them I merely drew attention to them, of course.

‘I did not know that you had turned artist, Tobias,’ he said, so like Toone in his patronising delivery that I felt my hackles rise.

‘When I have I will tell you,’ I said, more pointedly than politely, as I tucked them swiftly into the desk drawer where I kept them, turning the key automatically. For nothing would I expose Mrs Hansard to his disapproving derision.

For some reason his eyes repeatedly strayed to the drawer as our conversation continued. His visit, he said,
was to tell me that neither curate had been happy with his reception at All Souls’, and wished more experienced priests to replace them.

To my shame I snorted. ‘My dear, Archdeacon, we all have to be blooded, do we not? I often think that that is why rectors who should know better send naïve young men, still wet behind the ears, on the toughest missions. Or perhaps I misjudge them and they simply prefer to lead idle and self-indulgent lives while others do their work. You must have met many of that sort,’ I concluded, with a half-smile, as I proffered sherry.

His answer was at best non-committal. ‘I would ask you to reconsider your refusal to serve there.’

‘My answer would be the same regretful negative. My own star is so low that I travel there only with the bravest of companions – in particular, my admirable housekeeper, who keeps the unruly villagers at bay simply because her family are from the place. Every time I go I fear a lynching: nay, pray do not laugh. There is a hostility towards me I have never known before, and God knows I only go there to do His will.’

‘How have you managed to offend a whole village?’

‘If I knew I could apologise—’

‘To a mob?’

‘A soft answer is supposed to turn away wrath, is it not? Indeed, Archdeacon, had the English a revolutionary turn of mind I would fear the construction of a guillotine.’

‘You jest.’

‘If I do it is the blackest of jests. No, Archdeacon, God has called me to serve, but not at the expense of my own parishioners – whose lives are hard enough, goodness
knows. The neighbouring gentry are generosity itself, but someone has to distribute their alms. I have no curate. Both my churchwardens died during the winter. Their replacements are decent, hardworking men, but need to refer constantly to me.’

‘It is a different excuse from last time. Then you were dashing about the countryside as would-be Bow Street Runners. I take that problem has been resolved.’

‘By no means. It is very tempting to believe that there is nothing more to be done, and leave all to divine justice. But others would argue that without the rule of law there can be no civilisation, and that miscreants must be detected, apprehended and punished – particularly for
such
a crime.’

He had the grace to flush. ‘Indeed. But are you truly no further forward in your enquiries?’

‘We still know the identity of neither the victim nor the villain. Perhaps when bellies are full again, and people disposed to trust those who regularly have meals on their tables, then perhaps someone will come forward with information. Until then …’