Into Thin Eire Page 5

  “I wouldn’t let you, even if it fit,” Pickett informed him. “Now, if you’ll let Thomas put my clothes away, I need to write a letter to my wife.”

  Carson grinned knowingly. “What, another one? Keeps you on a short leash, doesn’t she?”

  “The shortest,” Pickett agreed, with a secretive smile of his own. And so she did, although not quite in the way Harry meant. No, the tie that bound him to Julia was one of love, not obligation, and certainly not financial dependence, although that was of necessity one aspect of their unequal marriage.

  Thomas had lit the lamp on the writing table, so Pickett sat down, tore another page from his notebook, and began to compose his letter.

  My dearest love,

  This is to inform you that I reached Dunbury safely just after sunset. I have discovered which room belongs to my quarry, but as there was no answer to my knock, I must assume that he has gone out, and my questions to him must wait until tomorrow. In the meantime, the worst has happened: Harry Carson has discovered my clothes, and as I write these words, he is peacocking about the room in the blue coat which I will always associate with the day we were wed.

  Actually, this was not the worst that could happen—far from it, in fact—but Julia was happy in the mistaken belief that he had put the events of the Lake District behind him, and he had no desire to disabuse her of this comfortable, if erroneous, notion. He supposed he might, someday, but not until he was certain the business was unequivocally concluded. In the meantime, he would have the satisfaction of knowing, even across the miles that separated them, that he had made her laugh.

  It is fortunate for me that I am fully half a head taller than he, he continued, or I would very likely have nothing left to me but the shirt on my back. Thomas, unlike his master, is having the time of his life. Although I could wish he were not quite so inclined to hero-worship where Carson is concerned, Carson having whiled away the miles by recounting his heroic deeds on the Horse Patrol, fully half of which I suspect took place only in his imagination. I shall seek clarification on this point from Mr. Colquhoun upon my return, which cannot come soon enough. Until that day I am, always and forever,

  Yours,

  John

  Having finished this missive, Pickett folded it and directed it to Mrs. John Pickett at 22 Curzon Street in London, then dripped melting wax from the candle on it to seal it against prying eyes—Harry Carson’s mocking blue ones came to mind—before dismissing Thomas to his own lodgings above the stables.

  “So, what do we do next, chief?” asked Harry. He had surrendered Pickett’s coat to Thomas, and now stood regarding his superior in nothing but his shirtsleeves.

  “We make an early night of it, and start fresh in the morning,” Pickett said with a sigh.

  In fact, he fully intended to lie in bed listening for the return of the man in the next room. If he was lucky, Mr. Brockton would return before the hour grew too late, and Pickett could slip his clothes back on, go next door, and have a word with the fellow without the added distractions of Carson and Thomas. Alas, he had failed to reckon on the cumulative effects of two nights of very little slumber. His head had hardly hit the pillow before he was fast asleep. And although on this night Carson’s muttered endearments were reserved for a girl named Betty, Pickett never heard them.

  PICKETT AWOKE MUCH refreshed the following morning, and lingered in the room only long enough to wash, shave, and dress before betaking himself down the corridor to the room next door. Once again, he rapped sharply upon the door, and waited. No one opened the door to him, nor did he hear any sounds coming from within the room. Pickett stifled any qualms about rousing the man from sleep; if one went to the trouble of summoning a Runner—two, in fact—from London, one might jolly well get out of bed and talk to him. Steeling his resolve, he knocked again, harder this time, and put his ear to the wooden panel.

  The chamber within was silent; the term “silent as the grave” rose unbidden to Pickett’s mind. Was it possible that Mr. Brockton had died at some point during the night—perhaps by natural causes, perhaps not—while he lay sleeping only a few feet away? If that should prove to be the case, then he would knock in vain. It might be days before the death was discovered, and in the meantime the murderer—if murderer there were—would have plenty of time to escape the scene of the crime.

  Cautioning himself against leaping to conclusions, Pickett descended the stairs. A pretty young woman in an apron and mobcap now held the place occupied last night by the innkeeper; his daughter, Pickett supposed.

  “Excuse me,” he told the girl, “I should like a word with Mr. Brockton, the fellow in the room next to mine, but he doesn’t answer my knock. Do you happen to know if he’s gone out?”

  She looked up at him with wide eyes of cornflower blue, and tucked a blonde curl back into her cap. “Why, I expect he’s gone to divine services.”

  So firmly had the idea of Brockton’s murder taken hold of Pickett’s brain that her speculations brought to mind the image of funerals. “Divine—?”

  “It’s Sunday,” she reminded him. “I expect he’s at church.”

  “Oh—oh yes, of course. Thank you,” Pickett said, shaking his head as if to clear it. It was a curious consequence of travel that one tended to lose track of time, as if both clock and calendar ceased to function while one was enclosed in a carriage. On the other hand, the fact that it was Sunday might actually make it easier to run his quarry to earth; as shops were closed, entertainments were few, and travel was discouraged—if not impossible, since neither the stage nor the mail coaches ran on Sunday—there was little Mr. Brockton could do but take walks or cool his heels in his room. Pickett considered these possibilities as he climbed the stairs to the room and opened the door. Seeing Carson still abed, he crossed the room in three strides and flung back the bedclothes.

  “Get up, Harry,” he said, not without a certain satisfaction. “We’re going to church. If half the things you mutter in your sleep are true, you need it.”

  5

  In Which John Pickett and His Magistrate

  Seek Spiritual Guidance

  At his home in Mayfair, magistrate Patrick Colquhoun stood before the mirror tying his cravat. While in his native country, and as a very young man in the American colony of Virginia, Mr. Colquhoun had been as Presbyterian as any good lowland Scot; being a pragmatic man, however, he had attended the parish church of St. George’s Hanover Square since settling in London almost a quarter-century ago, and it was in preparation for services there that he now scowled fiercely at his reflection, and at the unsatisfactory strip of starched linen encircling his throat. He had never aspired to the dandy set, however, so instead of beginning again with a fresh neckcloth, he began to coax the folds into a more acceptable form. He had almost achieved this modest goal when he was interrupted by a knock at the front door of the town house.

  “Oh, the devil,” he grumbled, for it was the servants’ day off. The task of answering the door would fall to the master of the house.

  “Never mind, dear, I’ll get it,” called his wife, Janet, who had finished her own toilette and was awaiting him in the drawing room downstairs.

  She joined him in the bedroom a few minutes later with a folded square of paper in her hand and a thoughtful frown on her brow.

  “A courier just brought this,” she said, surrendering the missive to her husband. “I hope it isn’t bad news.”

  Mr. Colquhoun took the paper, broke the seal, and opened the fold. He scanned the brief message, and gave utterance to a few choice words wholly inappropriate for a man on his way to divine services.

  “I expect it must be important, for him to be delivering it on Sunday,” Janet Colquhoun hinted broadly.

  She might have saved her breath.

  “Is the courier still here?” he asked sharply.

  “Why, no! I felt sorry for the poor fellow, being obliged to work on the Sabbath, so I gave him a half a crown for his trouble and sent him on his way.”

>   The last part of this speech fell on deaf ears. Mr. Colquhoun, his cravat forgotten, hastily exited the room, then ran down the stairs, flung open the door, and stepped out onto the portico, looking left and right. The courier was long gone.

  “You weren’t able to catch him, I suppose,” Mrs. Colquhoun remarked sympathetically when her husband rejoined her in the bedroom.

  He shook his head in answer, but she had the distinct impression that his mind was already somewhere else. “No, but I daresay it’s just as well. There’s nothing the lad could do, even if he were here, and there’s no sense in summoning him all the way from—” He broke off, looking at his wife as if seeing her for the first time. “Are you ready, Janet? Let’s be off to church, then. I feel a sudden urge to pray.”

  HARRY CARSON, ON THE other hand, was considerably less enthusiastic as he and Pickett traversed the short distance from the inn to the fourteenth-century stone church that served the residents of Dunbury and its environs. Nor was he shy about letting his displeasure be known.

  “And what’s more,” he said, continuing his catalog of grievances as they passed through the lych-gate and into the churchyard, “I don’t see why I have to wear my work clothes.” He cast a contemptuous glance down at his person, clad in the blue coat and red waistcoat of the Bow Street Horse Patrol. “After all, this fellow—Brockton, did you say?—he asked for two Runners, and you fellows aren’t in uniform.”

  “No,” Pickett conceded, “but half the general public doesn’t seem to recognize that. If he’s looking for us, I want him to have no trouble in picking us out. Look at it this way,” he said, making an appeal to Carson’s vanity, which he knew to be robust, “If this Mr. Brockton is at church, as the innkeeper’s daughter seems to think he must be, he’ll very likely take one look at you and recognize you as one of the Runners he sent for.”

  “You think so?” Harry’s expression lightened somewhat before descending once more into gloom. “That is, he might think so, until he makes our acquaintance—at which point you will no doubt enlighten him as to which of us is the superior.”

  “Well, yes,” agreed Pickett, unrepentant. “After all, he asked for me by name.”

  “Exactly! Then why is it our job to seek him out? Seems to me the shoe ought to be on the other foot.”

  A shadow crossed Pickett’s face. “Remember, we don’t yet know why he wanted us. If he’s in any danger, if someone else gets to him first—” He broke off, shaking his head. This is not the Lake District, he reminded himself. What happened there has no bearing on whatever it is we’re supposed to be doing here.

  On that occasion, someone had indeed murdered his contact before Pickett could discover why he’d been sent for, forcing him to construct the case piecemeal. In the end, he had barely escaped with his life, but not before causing, however unintentionally, the death of an innocent woman. He still dreamed of it some nights, dreamed that he was once again holding the pistol, only this time he tried in vain to point it somewhere else, to aim it in any direction except toward the woman standing in the open doorway. The result was always the same. The gun went off, the woman fell, and when he knelt and turned the body over, it was Julia, his own wife, who lay there, bright red blood spreading across the bodice of her white gown. At that point he would awaken to find the sheets beneath him soaked through with perspiration.

  Harry Carson had never been accused of being especially perceptive—not even by his friends—but something in Pickett’s expression told its own tale, or perhaps he remembered hearing something at Bow Street. In any case, he nodded, said, “Whatever you say, chief,” and followed Pickett into the church without further protest.

  Even with Harry’s cooperation, however, Pickett’s plan left much to be desired. He’d assumed that, since Mr. Brockton was putting up at the inn, he must be a stranger to the area, or at least no longer resided there, and thought the church-going citizens of Dunbury might betray some curiosity toward a stranger in their midst. And this assumption was correct, so far as it went; unfortunately, the only curiosity displayed by the locals was aimed at two handsome young men in their midst, one a tall young man with curling brown hair and an air of reserve, the other a golden-haired Adonis clad in the blue coat and red waistcoat of London’s famed Bow Street men.

  After taking a seat in one of the pews, Pickett was disconcerted to scan the faces of the congregation only to discover that a large portion of them were looking back in his direction. Knowing his colleague’s reputation with the fair sex (and had he not already been aware of this, Carson’s nocturnal mutterings would have been more than sufficient to educate him on the subject), Pickett was not surprised that most of these curious glances came from females with more than a passing interest in Harry’s beaux yeux. He made a mental note to remind Carson of his duty, and suffered a check when his gaze met that of a beautiful titian-haired woman in her mid-thirties, a woman whose black gown and bonnet denoted the recent widow. So taken aback was he by the lady’s obvious interest that his eyebrows rose of their own accord. The lady clearly interpreted this gesture as a question—“Me?”—for in answer she gave an infinitesimal nod. Pickett, feeling the heat rise to his face, fixed his gaze upon the elderly vicar in the pulpit, and kept it there.

  At the end of the service, Pickett and Carson joined the throng moving toward the door. As the vicar was stationed there, shaking hands and exchanging greetings with the various members of his flock, their progress was of necessity slow. Pickett, uncomfortably aware of the curious gazes that followed them, accepted the vicar’s proffered handshake with a sense of profound relief.

  “Welcome, welcome!” the vicar said warmly. “So pleased you could join us today. Tell me, are you new to the area? I don’t recall having met you before. But then, my memory is not what it was, so one never knows . . .” He broke off with a shake of his head.

  “No, sir, we’ve never met,” Pickett said. “I’m John Pickett, and this is my colleague, Harry Carson. We just arrived yesterday from London.”

  “From London, is it?” He turned to offer his hand to Harry, and his myopic gaze sharpened at the sight of the well-known red waistcoat. “Would you be from Bow Street, by any chance?”

  It was Pickett who answered for both of them. “As a matter of fact, yes.” Carson’s uniform might have provided the opening, just as Pickett had hoped it might, but he was not about to let the fellow forget which one of them was in charge of the investigation. “We were summoned to Dunbury to meet with a man called Brockton. He’s supposedly staying at the same inn—we’re putting up at the Cock and Boar—but so far our luck has been out. The innkeeper’s daughter seemed to think he might have gone to church this morning, so we came in the hope of making contact with him.”

  The vicar stroked his receding chin thoughtfully. “Dear me, I don’t—Brockton, you say?”

  Pickett nodded. “Edward Gaines Brockton, to be exact.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve never met the man. And I fear Dunbury is not so large as to allow strangers to pass unnoticed—as you are no doubt aware, having been the objects of considerable curiosity yourselves.”

  As if on cue, the flame-haired widow came swanning up to take the vicar’s hand, although Pickett would have sworn that she hadn’t been standing behind them in the line. “Such an uplifting sermon! I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds!” She cast an appraising glance over her shoulder at Pickett. “But who are your friends, Vicar? I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

  Apparently the vicar’s mind was so affixed on higher things that the urges of the flesh were unknown to him, or else he was well enough acquainted with the widow that her forwardness did not shock him. Either way, he seemed to take the question at face value. “Ah, good morning, Mrs. Avery. This is Mr. Pickett and his colleague, Mr. Carson. Mr. Pickett, Mr. Carson, allow me to present Mrs. Avery, one of my most charming parishioners. Mrs. Avery, these men have come from London in search of a Mr. Brockton. I don’t suppose you know of such a man?”
<
br />   Pickett did not wonder that the vicar should ask her such a question; he suspected there were few men in the district whom the widow did not know.

  “Brockton, Brockton,” echoed the widow, her ivory brow puckered in a thoughtful frown. “The name is somewhat familiar, but I don’t—oh, wait!”

  “You’ve thought of something?” asked the vicar.

  “I believe so. But we must not keep you waiting, for I’m sure there must be dozens of people who wish to speak to you. I shall bid you good day, Vicar, and surrender my place to another.”

  And so saying, she slipped her black-gloved hand into Pickett’s arm and bore him off, scarcely leaving him time to make his own farewells to the vicar, much less thank him for his assistance. Carson, Pickett noticed, had apparently drawn his own conclusions regarding the widow’s interest in the case, for instead of accompanying them as they crossed the churchyard, he abandoned them in favor of his own pursuits, most of which appeared to be centered on a bucolic beauty wearing a gypsy hat tied with pink ribbons over her ebony curls. Pickett would have liked to remonstrate with him regarding his duty, but as his own duty consisted of discovering what the widow might know of the elusive Mr. Brockton, he was obliged to delay any such action until they had returned to the Cock and Boar. In the meantime, Pickett and the widow had almost reached the lych-gate, and she had not yet spoken a word on the subject.

  “We were speaking of Mr. Brockton,” he reminded her. “What can you tell me about him?”

  She glanced about the churchyard. “I don’t like to speak here. One never knows who might be listening.”