The Body on the Doorstep Page 4

  ‘Capital!’ said the rector of St Mary in the Marsh, standing a little way to Mrs Chaytor’s left. He clapped his hands. ‘When the French land on this undefended coast, they can take over this station and send a message to London announcing their arrival, without the rest of us having to trouble ourselves.’

  ‘Yes, Hardcastle,’ said the deputy lord-lieutenant with an indulgent smile. ‘We’ve all read your letters in The Morning Post and we know your feelings on the subject. But believe me, the government does take the French threat seriously. This semaphore system is the first step towards creating an entire system of coast defences. Given time, there will be forts, garrisons, artillery batteries. It will come.’

  Yes, thought Mrs Chaytor, given time. She looked at the rector, hoping that he would not be such an infernal fool as to pick a quarrel with his own patron, but the rector merely smiled at Lord Clavertye and bowed in response. Hmm, she thought, he appears to be sober this morning.

  ‘And how soon will the rest of the chain be built?’ the rector asked.

  ‘Soon, Hardcastle, very soon. I give you my word on it. I have paid for this station out of my own pocket, as you all know, but the government will pay for the rest of the system. It is merely a matter of finding the necessary funds.’

  That means in a year’s time, thought Mrs Chaytor, or two years, or never. Then Fanscombe, the justice of the peace, asked some technical question and the men were off again, discussing windlasses and springs and paddles with all the air of men who actually knew what they were talking about.

  As it was fairly clear that they did not, Mrs Chaytor slipped through the little crowd and walked out towards the crest of the low hill above Appledore. Here she stood for a while, gazing out over the Marsh. The late morning sun was brilliant and blue, the distant sea shining with a white row of surf where it met the dunes. She picked out, without effort, the squat tower of St Mary the Virgin in the far distance, just short of the sea. The distant bleating of sheep came to her ears. Really, she thought, the weather has been very fine.

  She was still a little astonished at how quickly she had come to feel at home on the Marsh. It was not always an easy place to live. In winter, storms blew salt spray inland as far as the village, playing havoc with her roses. In summer, mosquitoes whined over the lagoons and stagnant pools, and marsh fever hovered in the background. Evil in winter, grievous in summer, and never good, was how folk from up-country in Kent described the desolation of the Marsh. Yet, she had found a measure of peace here.

  She raised her eyes and looked across the Channel to the chalk cliffs of Cap Gris Nez, and thought that in this clear air France seemed even closer than usual. She remembered France in better days, the delights of Paris and the happiness she had once known, and sighed.

  ‘Gazing at the enemy, Mrs Chaytor?’ the rector’s deep voice said beside her.

  She turned and dipped a little curtsey as he bowed, and gestured towards the French coast. ‘Looking for signs of the invasion,’ she said in her light, slightly emotionless voice. ‘Nothing visible so far. Did you grow tired of the conversation?’

  ‘Every man present is an engineer, it seems, except for me.’ His square face was beginning to develop jowls. Drink will do that, she thought without sympathy.

  ‘I drove up here thinking that the opening of the station might prove diverting,’ she said. ‘But honestly, I have never seen an occasion so dull. I think I shall return to St Mary.’ She glanced at the rector. ‘Did you drive, or ride?’

  ‘Neither. It is a pleasant day, and I enjoy walking.’

  ‘You walked from St Mary? Why, it is the better part of ten miles.’

  ‘Not if you know your way through the Marsh. There are paths that shorten the distance.’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘Smugglers’ paths.’

  ‘It may be that smugglers have used them in the past,’ he said gravely. ‘If so, I have no knowledge of it.’

  She glanced at him. He really was sober. ‘If you wish to return to St Mary,’ she said, ‘I would be happy to take you in my gig. And I have something to say to you. Concerning last Friday.’

  The rector glanced around. ‘It would be a pleasure,’ he said, and hesitated. ‘I fear driving is not one of my skills that has improved with age.’

  ‘I drive rather well. Can you bear to be seen in public, driven by a woman?’

  ‘I am a clergyman. We are permitted a degree of licence unknown to other men.’

  She did indeed drive rather well. She handled the little gig and the smart young horse with neat precision, her gloved hands strong on the reins. They trotted down the ancient highway from Appledore to New Romney, he sitting beside her and watching her driving. She seemed lost in thought; they were past Snargate before she spoke again.

  ‘I found the scene of the fighting the other night,’ she said. ‘There was a disturbance in the sand at the back of the dunes, where they brought their cargo ashore. Not so much as I might have expected. I don’t think there can have been very many of them. The smugglers, I mean. I followed the tracks through the grass where they had dragged the cargo. About half a mile on, the tracks stopped suddenly and there were bootprints in the soft earth all over the meadow. The sheep had spoiled quite a lot of the traces, unfortunately. But I found it at the edge of a drainage ditch. The blood.’

  She fell silent again and the rector stirred, wondering what words of consolation he should offer her to ease her shock. But when she spoke again she sounded quite normal. ‘The bloodstain was quite large,’ she said, ‘although most of the blood had already soaked into the ground, of course. I do not believe that the man who bled there could have survived for long. I think that was where the Customs man was killed.’

  The rector forgot about consolation and stared straight down the dusty road, thinking hard. ‘Did you see any further tracks?’ he asked.

  ‘Some. One group of men made off south towards New Romney. I rather think those were the Customs men, don’t you?’

  ‘Any others?’

  ‘Nothing. The smugglers might have gone up the ditch, of course, in which case the water would have washed away their footprints.’

  The rector conceded that this was likely. The Preventive men sometimes used bloodhounds, and the smugglers used the sewers, as the drainage ditches were known in these parts, to throw the dogs off their scent. However, the main thing was this: the customs officer and the boy at the rectory had been killed at almost the same time, half a mile apart. But . . . did that mean that the deaths were connected in some way?

  ‘Damn,’ he said aloud. ‘Damn and blast.’

  ‘Language, Reverend,’ she said lightly.

  ‘My dear Mrs Chaytor, I do apologise. I am in the habit of talking out loud to myself and I fear that sometimes my language is . . . intemperate.’

  ‘Particularly when you are puzzling over something,’ she said. They trotted briskly through Brenzett, and once past the village she whipped up on the long straight to Old Romney. The gig flew down the road, so fast that the rector had to hold on to his hat.

  ‘What puzzles you now?’ she called over the noise of iron-shod hooves and iron-rimmed wheels.

  ‘Two men died that night, half a mile apart and within five minutes of each other.’

  ‘I see. You wonder if the two events might be related. Either your killer, or your victim, or both, might have had some connection with the smugglers.’

  ‘What other reason would either have for being out on the Marsh on the night of a new moon?’

  ‘I see your point,’ said his companion thoughtfully, shaking the reins and urging the horse to further speed. ‘It does not feel like coincidence, does it?’

  ‘Over the years, I have learned to distrust the very idea of coincidence,’ said the rector, clutching again at his hat. ‘My dear Mrs Chaytor, there is a dray in the road ahead. ’

  There was indeed a dray in the road ahead, loaded with timber and drawn by two plodding horses. Mrs Chaytor touched the reins
to guide the pony and, without slackening speed, pulled around the dray on the outside, one wheel running onto the grass verge, and then swerved back onto the road. The driver of the dray, startled out of his doze, yelled abuse after her. The rector stared at his companion, wondering where she had learned to drive. Thereafter he concentrated on holding his seat as they shot through Old Romney at a speed that left chickens squawking indignantly in the road behind them, and raced on towards the coast. Only on the outskirts of St Mary did she slacken speed, and she trotted the gig sedately up the high street towards the church.

  Not until they reached the gates of the rectory itself did he speak again. ‘Have you ever heard tell of a group of men called the Twelve Apostles?’ he asked. ‘Around here, I mean?’

  ‘Never, I am sure. Who are they?’

  ‘I don’t know. But some folk around here do. What is more, the name frightens them. If you do hear the name mentioned, will you please tell me?’

  ‘I shall do so.’

  He realised belatedly that he had involved her in this matter; he had never meant to do so.

  ‘Mrs Chaytor, it is good of you to tell me what you have learned, and I thank you for it. But . . . the men we are dealing with are dangerous. I beg you to take care, and not expose yourself to danger.’

  His only answer was a gentle smile. The gig pulled up outside the rectory and he stepped down a little clumsily, then looked up at her. ‘Thank you,’ he said simply, and then added on impulse, ‘Will you be at the inquest tomorrow?’

  ‘I have already been summoned to give evidence.’

  He bowed, hiding his surprise. It was not usual to call women to give evidence. She must have approached Fanscombe with what she knew; or, more likely, Clavertye. ‘Then I shall see you there.’

  ‘Indeed you shall. Good day to you, Reverend.’ She turned the gig smartly and drove through the rectory gates, turning again towards the village. Extraordinary woman, thought the rector. She seems absolutely nerveless. I wonder what sort of fellow her husband was.

  *

  Today was Tuesday, and already the events of last Friday night were beginning to recede, the memories fainter and less distinct, the colours and images in his mind less bright.

  Life had resumed its normal rhythms. On Sunday he had preached the usual sermon to the usual empty church; then, suddenly exhausted, he went home to drink a bottle of port and fall asleep. Yesterday morning he had paid a pastoral visit to the Cadman family, who lived on an isolated farm to the north-west of the village. Cadman’s father was increasingly unwell, and he had spoken to the old man and offered what comfort he could to the worried son and daughter-in-law.

  He had asked, too, if any of the household remembered anything about the events of Friday night. Everyone had been charmingly vague, deeply regretting their inability to remember anything useful.

  The coroner had given permission for interment to take place. Hardcastle returned to the village to conduct a brief burial service for the dead stranger, then stood by the grave watching the earth cover his coffin while the dying voice whispered in his ear. This spurred him back to the problem of the last four words. Yesterday afternoon he had sat in his study at the rectory and covered several sheets of paper with scrawls as he concocted various messages: all of them equally possible in theory, all of them equally unlikely in practice.

  Tomorrow, Wednesday, the coroner would arrive to conduct inquests into the two deaths. This afternoon Fanscombe, the justice of the peace, was coming to take his statement. Conscious of the time, he ate his luncheon swiftly and then sat sweating in the afternoon heat in his study, listening to his stomach rumble. Half a bottle of claret and a very small glass of port, he decided, were not enough to enable easy digestion.

  Preoccupied with his stomach, he did not hear the knock at the front door. He looked up suddenly to see Mrs Kemp standing before his desk. ‘Mr Blunt of the Customs to see you, Reverend.’

  Blunt? thought the rector. What the devil could he want? A remembered smell of tobacco from the church tower wafted guiltily through his mind, and he glanced at the wooden cabinet where he kept his cognac. ‘Show him in,’ he said slowly.

  Blunt strode into the room as Hardcastle rose to his feet, and stopped and gave a stiff half-bow.

  ‘To what do I owe the pleasure, Mr Blunt?’ the rector asked.

  The Customs man surveyed the room, his eyes resting for a moment on the brandy cabinet, and the rector knew a moment of unease. ‘About this business the other night,’ Blunt began.

  Hardcastle tried not to let his relief show. ‘Do you mean the man who was murdered here?’

  ‘Yes, since you put it that way.’ The rector wondered how one could put it any other way. ‘Did you see anything?’ asked Blunt.

  The rector stared at him. ‘You have the advantage of me,’ he said finally.

  ‘It’s a simple enough question,’ the other man said sharply. ‘Did you see what happened?’

  ‘No, I did not. I opened the door and found the body lying on my doorstep. The fatal shot had already been fired.’

  ‘And the man was dead when you found him?’

  Unease, of an entirely different sort, grew once more in the rector’s mind. ‘Mr Blunt, I’ll be obliged if you would tell me why you are asking these questions. I would have thought you fully occupied with the death of your own unfortunate officer.’ He looked at Blunt and said directly, ‘Are the two events connected?’

  He saw sweat on Blunt’s forehead, sudden beads of it glowing in the afternoon sun. ‘I don’t need you to tell me my duty, Hardcastle,’ he said, blustering. ‘I’ll ask again. What did you see and hear that night? Did you see anyone else around this house?’

  Unease began to turn to anger. ‘I don’t see how this is any of your business, Blunt.’

  ‘One of my men was killed out there!’

  ‘Correction: two men were killed. I will ask again. Are their deaths connected?’

  Silence. The rector made a dismissive gesture. ‘I’ll make my statement in due course to Mr Fanscombe. I am sure that he too will conduct a full investigation.’

  ‘Fanscombe,’ snorted Blunt. ‘That booby. Man couldn’t investigate his own arse. Look here, Hardcastle. I’ve asked you a question, and I demand an answer! What did you see?’

  ‘Blunt,’ said the rector, his frangible patience reaching its snapping point, ‘what I saw is none of your damned business! Now, kindly remove yourself from my rectory!’

  The front door slammed behind the Customs man, and the echo seemed to take a long time to die away. The housekeeper appeared in the doorway once more. ‘Whatever was that about?’

  ‘Mrs Kemp,’ said the rector heavily, feeling his stomach rumble again, ‘I really have no idea. But if Mr Blunt calls in future, I am not at home. Ever.’

  The housekeeper clicked her tongue, a sound which she managed to imbue with a singular level of contempt. ‘Here comes Mr Fanscombe,’ she said, seeing a little party of men riding up the road from the village. ‘I’ll let him in, shall I?’

  *

  Fanscombe was accompanied by Captain Shaw of the militia, a freckled young man in his middle twenties. He was, thought the rector, by far and away the worst turned-out captain in His Majesty’s service. His breeches were wrinkled, the buttons on his coat were dark with tarnish, and one cuff was distinctly longer than the other. His sword hilt looked none too clean either, and the scabbard had scuff marks where it had banged into other objects. His hair needed brushing.

  ‘I will not stay long, Reverend,’ said the captain, bowing. ‘I came down from Appledore to see if you and Mr Fanscombe wanted my men to continue their patrol. Have you had any trouble since Friday night?’

  ‘None at all, captain, thank you very much. All has been very quiet. I am sure your patrols are no longer needed, if Mr Fanscombe agrees?’

  Fanscombe nodded. ‘Then I’ll call my fellows in,’ said Shaw. ‘But if you feel in future that there is any danger, do be so good as to inform Mr
Fanscombe. I am sure he would call us out at once.

  ‘Oh, aye, certainly, certainly,’ said the justice of the peace, nodding again.

  ‘I shall certainly do so,’ said the rector. ‘And my thanks to you, Captain Shaw, and your men for watching over me. It was very good of you.’

  Shaw looked vaguely pleased. He glanced around the room, clearly keen to stay and see what happened next but unable to think of a reason for doing so. ‘Then I shall take my leave,’ he said, bowing in an angular manner. ‘Good afternoon, gentlemen.’

  Shaw departed. Fanscombe pulled up a seat before the desk, opening his writing case to set out paper and pen and ink and sand. He was acting as his own clerk; Hardcastle wondered why he had not thought to bring a secretary.

  ‘What did you think of this morning, Hardcastle?’ he asked. ‘That semaphore system is capital, ain’t it? That’ll put the wind up the Froggies, to be sure.’

  ‘Oh, indeed,’ said the rector, wishing he had a drink. ‘No troops will be available to prevent a landing, of course, but once the French are ashore, His Majesty’s government will then use the semaphore to send them a series of insulting messages. Half a day of this, and the French will be so offended that they will climb into their boats and row back to France, vowing never to return to this rude country.’

  Fanscombe gave a hearty chuckle, and the rector’s desire for alcohol intensified. His stomach was churning more than ever. Blunt had called Fanscombe a booby, and on this point at least the rector conceded that the Customs man was right. Fanscombe looked like what he was: a bluff country squire, a huntin,’ shootin’ and fishin’ man who wore his blue riding coat and leather breeches on all but the most formal occasions. His air of manly jocularity almost but not quite concealed the fact that he was savagely henpecked by his rather younger French wife. His hail-fellow-well-met attitude grated on the rector’s nerves like glass paper.

  ‘You say there’s no troops,’ he said, ‘but what about young Shaw and his militia?’

  ‘A few hundred farm boys and shopkeepers in red coats are hardly going to stop the French Army of the North.’