The pickwick murders, p.15
The Pickwick Murders, page 15
Bob’s eyes crinkled at that. “Aye, I could tell you stories.”
“Tell them, please,” Charles urged, adjusting his cap. “Let us have a tale to pass the hours.”
Bob Sawyer’s Tale
Some years ago, there lived a man, very badly, in a garret in London. He was young and old at the same time, and spent his days with his head in his hand, longing for proof of the fine inheritance his mother said would once be his, due to the great-grandson of a border lord she’d been married to long ago, the man she claimed was his real father, though he’d died before the young-old man had ever been born.
This man did not have much in the way of portable property, his mother having married down with each of her four husbands, until it was a wonder he didn’t grow up with a gutter as his bed. He took such education as he could, as a charity boy in a school or two, and learned maps and roads and such, without coming across much training in the way of common sense.
Finally, one night, he resolved to take some action, having, for the third night, nothing more to eat than a crust of moldy bread. He ventured out to a low tavern, where some friends of his habitually spent their evenings, hoping he could find someone he didn’t already owe coins to. One former companion took pity on his ragged appearance and bought him a gin and water, then invited him to sit at his table.
“Well now, Robert,” said the old friend, “didn’t you have an ancient obsession with Clyde Castle when we were boys?”
“My great-grandfather held the castle,” Robert admitted, “but I was descended from a second son of a second son, so it’s nothing to do with me.”
His friend rattled a newspaper at him. “It appears they cannot find an heir for the old pile. And a title is going into abeyance.”
Robert felt numb with shock, and probably not from the gin, though it was very bad. “What if I’m the heir?”
His friend laughed, pointing at Robert’s ancient, tattered, worn-to-gray surtout. “Who would take you for an earl? Do you have the papers to prove it?”
“If my mother did, she burned them to stay warm,” Robert admitted. “Cursed woman.”
The friend laughed at his pretensions, and after he declined to stand another round of the nearly intolerable gin, Robert slunk home. The night had a finer air than he recalled, however, than when he had entered the tavern, and he found an apple dropped on the pavement by an unlucky seller. The full moon had glinted off it just so. After he polished that off, core and all, he found a carrot just inside the door of his building. He chewed it up, leaves and all, as he ascended to his garret.
All night, he paced back and forth in his room, despite several bangs of shoes against the ceiling, helpfully tossed by the inhabitant of the fourth floor, to mark each hour of the night. He clutched his front hair and back hair in turn, wracking his brain for any old friend of his childhood who might stand as witness as to his redoubtable identity.
Could he find the church where he was baptized? Though he had no idea where it might have been.
“What a wretch I am!” he moaned. “Can no one help me?”
“Excuse me, sir,” said a very ancient, crabbed voice.
Robert turned to the curtainless window at his back, its cracks stuffed with rags, and saw a small, wide man, in green trousers and pointed boots. His nose echoed the boots in protuberance and his hat, which smelled faintly, was a brownish red that did not set off the collection of warts on his face to any good degree. “Who are you and how did you come here?”
“I am Redcap, bound to serve Clyde Castle.”
Robert frowned. “Who bound you, sir?”
“Some eon ago, too far back to remember, your ancestors used to bless their foundation stones with the blood of their enemies. I might have been human once,” the strange creature admitted.
“My ancestors?” Robert retorted, with a creak in his voice and hope blossoming in his heart. “You know who I am?”
“Oh yes, you are Robert, son of Robert, son of Robert, son of Roibeart, son of Ruaridh, lairds of Clyde.”
Robert stepped forward and grabbed the little ancient creature by the lapels. “How do I prove it?”
Redcap growled, and in an instant, he was an arm’s length away.
“Why, bless me,” Robert said, astonished. “I think you are a goblin, and not a ghost at all.”
The creature grinned, exposing pointed teeth. “They made us so, back then, but I was once a man. Small and dark I was, and still am.” He pulled up a tiny, grimy sleeve and exposed a band of curious blue markings painted into his flesh.
Robert felt the stir of ancient kinship in his veins. “What do you want with me, Redcap?”
“The castle will fall if a true son of the blood is not in residence,” the goblin said.
“What do I have to do?” Robert asked. “Do you have a family Bible with my name? Do you know the church where I was baptized?”
“We follow the old ways, Your Worship,” said the loathsome thing, holding out its tails and giving him a little bow. “You need only to wish to return to the castle and you shall.”
“I haven’t the money to venture north.” Robert tipped off his hat and let it fall, so he could better tear at his hair.
“Take my hand,” the goblin commanded.
Robert let his hands drop to his sides and swallowed hard. He closed his eyes and held out his hand. Scaly cold skin touched his, then he was whirling through space, wind in his mouth and eyes and ears, spinning through his body, tossing and turning and fluttering one part of his body into another, until hard earth met his flying form and abruptly ended the operation.
Blinking, he opened his eyes and found himself seated on a patch of grass on the ground. When he swiveled his head, he saw a tall crenellated curtain wall, very old and mossy, behind him, and a tower in front of him, well constructed of stone but narrow and with only arrow slits for windows, in the style of some six hundred years before.
“Is this Clyde Castle?” he croaked, the experience having had the better of his voice.
But he was alone. No sign of the loathsome goblin.
“Dear creature,” he muttered to himself. “Dearest Redcap, my own savior.”
He climbed to his feet and set his hands to his hips, feeling like a warden of the borders, a real king’s man. “Greetings!” he roared in his loudest voice, waiting for some followers, or at least the staff manning the place, to report to him.
No response but the wind. He began to suspect the castle was at the top of a hill. Wiping tears out of his eyes, he circled inside the wall, then found a staircase and climbed it.
Instantly, the sense of smallness underneath God’s creation overwhelmed him as massive rain-filled clouds moved overhead. He stood on top of a stone wall, on top of a hill, overlooking a valley. It might have been England, or Scotland, or the land of Fairy.
Turning, he stared at the tower. A vague memory of poring over a book of castles at the British Museum, in those days when he could afford a reader’s card, came to mind. He didn’t remember this wall being a part of Clyde Castle. What he recalled did include a tower, but it was on one end, with a manor house in two parts attached to it.
That must be where the inhabitants were, not on this far end with the old tower. Feeling a desperate need for human contact, he ran clockwise on the castle wall. But when he’d circumnavigated halfway, he found the end of the tower and no attached manor house.
“Hellooo, the castle,” he cried, the wind stealing his voice before it could reach past the wall.
No response came to his ears.
“Redcap?” he screamed at the clouds. But the goblin didn’t come.
A surge of terror filled him. Was there no one in this forsaken place? His knees twitched and he was on the move again, racing around the wall. He found the stairs again and descended pell-mell, until he tripped and tumbled to the bottom.
He hit his head on the final, hard old wood step and lost consciousness.
Sometime later, he blinked back into awareness. Moaning, he lifted a hand to his head. It came back bloody. He heard a strange noise, a sort of cackle, then the sound of bodies coming round.
Joy surged through him. The servants had returned! They would have the papers and he would finally be the lord of the castle in truth.
A brand lifted over him, and through the flames Redcap grinned at him with those pointed teeth. “Welcome home, my lord.”
Behind Redcap, Robert saw a multitude of goblins. They stretched out in two lines and circled him, dancing a macabre dance. One had a pipe and he began to play it. Robert put his hand to his head again. Instead of the stickiness of a drying wound, he pulled back his shaking hand to find it covered in fresh blood.
“Have you murdered me, Redcap?” he asked, feeling the weariness of his long, poverty-filled days, his failure to live as a gentleman.
“Did I chase you down those steps?” cackled the villain. “Did I cause your boot heel to catch on the stairs?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Robert said, feeling his body go cold. “At least I’m home.”
Chapter 13
Kate hadn’t seen any sign of William Aga at the newspaper office, but after she and her father ate the cold plate of meat Mrs. Hogarth had saved for them and helped bundle the children across the frigid apple orchard to Lugoson House, they found William and his wife, Julie, in the drawing room, seated near one of the two fireplaces with Lady Lugoson and Sir Silas Laurie.
The cozy adult gathering, with everyone in proper evening attire, looked about as far away from a wandering large family group with young children as could be imagined. Helen was sobbing, exhausted. Her twin had a runny nose. Georgina was inexplicably doing a little dance around her mother, who was trying to soothe Helen with a lullaby.
William saw Kate and gestured her over to an empty place next to him on the sofa. Her father looked annoyed and she knew he expected her to lessen her mother’s burden.
Mary whispered in her ear, “Charles is your focus.” She took Helen from her mother as the housekeeper arrived to remove the noisy Hogarths into guest chambers for another night.
After a minute, the crowd had vanished. Kate stepped onto the carpet that defined the cozy nook and curtsied to the baron and baroness, as well matched as carved bookends of Greek deities on their sofa.
“You look very well, considering the stress you must be under,” Lady Lugoson observed.
“My mother and I drove out to Hampstead today to see Miss Joanna Baillie,” Kate explained. “I wore my new dress.”
Lady Lugoson frowned at that. Likely, she recognized some of the fabric as made over from her late daughter’s vast collection of dresses. But one made do as part of a large family. New garments cost a king’s ransom.
“How did Hampstead go?” William asked as Panch brought a chair into the seating area for Kate.
“Badly,” Kate admitted. “Oh, the ladies were lovely. Lucy Aikin was there as well, and Agnes Baillie was most attentive, but we had chosen the wrong address for the clue and the dirty man was not there.”
“Charles is in danger?” Julie inquired, her hand resting on her abdomen, displaying her consciousness of her pregnancy even though it wasn’t yet visible.
“He could be,” Kate admitted with a catch in her throat. “We had another idea, that perhaps I was supposed to go to the site of Miss Baillie’s London publisher. My father sent a boy there, I think Ralph? But he didn’t see the dirty man.”
“He wouldn’t though,” William opined. “The dirty man would stay out of sight unless he saw you.”
“It was too dark and foggy for my father to allow me to go.”
“I know your father takes issue with just about everyone, including Charles,” Julie said, “but really, to risk his life like this? It’s appalling. Why don’t we return to London and attempt to find this man?”
William smiled at his wife, while Kate thought about how Julie called her fiancé Charles so familiarly, displaying, as she so often did, her rough past rather than her genteel present.
“I don’t think the dirty man could see Kate in this foul weather and the fog is likely worse in town,” William said. “However, I do have another idea about tonight.”
“What is it?” Kate twisted her hands in her lap.
“Tracy Yupman,” William started, but then a footman entered with a tea tray and placed it at Kate’s elbow.
She had to stop William and ask if she should pour, then offered refreshments. Sir Silas did want a cup, and, chilled through, she quickly filled a cup for herself as well. Finally, she blushed and said, “Do go on, Mr. Aga.”
“I called on a few parliamentary chambers and had a word with my various contacts. I found someone who used to work for a former M.P. in Eatanswill. This aged factotum revealed to me that Mr. Yupman is Sir Augustus’s nephew. He remembered the story of excesses at Sir Augustus’s wedding, and the drunken fight he had with his sister’s husband.”
“That must have been a very long time ago.”
“Yes. The man I spoke to must be past his three score and ten.”
“This family connection is very telling,” Sir Silas said, his perpetually disappointed face looking more disconsolate than ever, while still remaining very handsome indeed. His darkness contrasted with Lady Lugoson’s angelic lightness would make very interesting children.
“He must be the murderer, don’t you think?” Julie asked her husband.
“He told a good story at the inquest,” Sir Silas muttered.
“Can you have him arrested?” Lady Lugoson asked.
“What I need are witnesses to break his alibi,” Sir Silas explained. “He insisted he spent the earlier part of the evening at a dinner. I called on a Mr. Jingle and a Mr. Trotter who also claimed to be at the same dinner and verified the alibi.”
“I don’t think I’d trust anyone named Jingle,” Julie said. “Sounds like something out of a play.”
Sir Silas nodded. “I’ll have a word with the magistrate’s clerk. He can assign constables to learn more about this dinner.”
“Find out who was supposed to have cooked it,” Kate suggested. “Was food really prepared for three? What did the serving staff see?”
“I don’t know if servants could break the word of a gentleman,” Sir Silas said.
“If they contradict the gentleman, you might not be able to arrest Mr. Yupman, but perhaps Charles could be freed?” Kate suggested hopefully.
“I didn’t have him arrested,” Sir Silas said irritably. “He is in the hands of the police.”
“Still, sir, you are on the right path,” William soothed. “What I suggest, Miss Hogarth, is that we drop in on Breese Gadfly. He is still at Selwood Terrace.”
“Why?” Lady Lugoson asked.
“He can give us more information about the songwriter in the Lightning Club. Charles met Mr. Gadfly that night, on the way to his fateful meeting at the museum. Mr. Gadfly might be able to offer insight into other people who could break the alibis.”
“It is true that I had no membership roster for this club,” Sir Silas mused. “We know little about the dynamics of the situation.”
“Exactly. Or the museum,” William added. “But I think it is clear to us all that Mr. Yupman would be the instrument of his uncle’s wrath against Charles. Whether or not he did the killing. Mr. Gadfly’s contacts might lead us to information about who does the club’s dirty work, for instance.”
“What about Charles’s other enemies?” Kate asked. “I expect you are correct, Mr. Aga. The familiar relationship you have discovered is very telling. But Charles has been a part of solving murders a few times. I am sure there are other people who hate him and would like him brought low.”
“Ooh, revenge,” Julie said in a low voice. “I like that.”
Sir Silas’s eyelids fluttered closed. “Ladies, this is not a stage play. A man was stabbed to death. The most likely answer is usually the true solution.”
* * *
Kate’s parents didn’t object to the walk to Selwood Terrace. They were familiar with the property from the summer before when Charles stayed there. Kate and Mary had often ventured over together.
Her father’s mouth had opened over his pipe when Julie rose as well, but he couldn’t object to a wife accompanying her husband, whatever he thought of her.
The cold night air didn’t sting Kate’s skin quite as badly after being thoroughly warmed for a few minutes. Even her shoes seemed to have dried after resting on the hearth.
Plus, she had Julie on one side and William on the other.
“Quite like old times, isn’t it?” Julie said happily.
Kate didn’t remember ever being here with the Agas, at least, not without Charles, but she assented readily enough. “This path is well trod, during happier days.”
“Though Miss Haverstock would not have agreed with you.”
“No,” Kate agreed with a shiver as they passed the Hebrew burying ground, though the lady was not buried there. “Poor lady. Do your current chambers suit for the long term, do you think? Or will you move again?”
“We managed well enough with a baby there,” William said. “It was a blessing to have Mrs. Herring nearby.”
“And now we have Lucy Fair,” Julie added. “I don’t think we’ll move this year, at least. Someday it would be nice to have a little house of our own.”
“Oh yes.” Kate sighed. “A houseful of furnishings to carefully arrange, and servants to help with the heavy work. Room for proper dinner parties.”
Julie grinned at her. “It’s all about food with you and Charles.”
“I think you feed him more than I do,” Kate returned.
“I did last month,” Julie agreed.
Then they were standing on the walk leading up to dear old Selwood Terrace. On the left were the rooms Charles had inhabited, with Miss Haverstock above. Across the hall, Breese Gadfly still held the best rooms, and the chambers above had briefly housed the Agas.
