Gamekeeper's Gallows Page 3

  ‘Well, you know what I mean, Sammy.’

  ‘Aye, we know what you mean. Better not let Thos hear you talk about it, that’s all.’

  And this silenced the little man with shattering effect. Presumably he could picture all too vividly how Thos might react. A moment or two later they were interrupted by a maid-servant who brought in Brunt’s supper: a big girl, bursting with healthy young womanhood, yet somehow, it seemed, nervous to be serving him. She had large hands that fumbled with the chutney jar, liquid eyes that seemed reluctant to meet his own. As if to keep her spirits up as she moved about his table, she was humming unbecomingly to herself: some simple tune that he had heard somewhere before, but to which he could not give a name.

  A plate of cold beef and half a loaf of home-baked bread, a trencher-board of crumbling Cheshire cheese to follow. She was relieved to have unloaded her tray, anxious to back away from him. But he was not going to allow her to escape as easily as that.

  ‘And what’s your name?’

  ‘Mildred, sir.’

  She had a turn of speech that was restfully melodic, a contrast to the stone-wall vowels of the men in the room.

  ‘You’re not from these parts?’

  ‘From Bristol, sir.’

  Yes, that was it, the West Country: the sort of tavern-wench who might have waited on Amyas Leigh – or on Captain Flint’s crew. So people came into the High Peak from the outside world, did they?

  ‘You’re a long way from home, Mildred.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  She was waiting now, obedient – but intensely anxious to be dismissed.

  ‘And you’re sure your name’s Mildred? It isn’t, for example, Amy?’

  Absurd, on the face of it, but effective nevertheless. Brunt saw the blood flush her cheeks, was aware of the increase in her pulse-rate, saw that her fingers were tight on the edge of the tray. And the tension was equally palpable throughout the room. Men stopped talking amongst themselves. All eyes were turned inward towards Brunt. He looked unconcernedly round their faces as he silently munched his food. Suspicion, empty mirth, quick anger, vindictiveness, shrewd wisdom, herd stupidity: all were there in ravelled intermixture and above all else, the ability to stand together and hold their tongues for some point of ancient and inarticulate principle.

  Brunt ate his meal at drawn-out leisure, then went up to the counter, set down his tankard under the landlord’s nose, feeling in his waistcoat pocket for the five-piastre piece. The sight of that might loosen their tongues – or lock their jaws for evermore.

  Nadin stooped to the bung and Brunt waited. Then the landlord stood up and set the tankard down, foam overflowing. He took the coin between his thumb and forefinger and held it up to examine it. Brunt could not easily analyse the nature of his reaction. It was not fear; it was not anger; it was not indignation. His eyes were steady, his thin lips tight. He was looking at Brunt with a sort of resentful accusation – resignation, perhaps to the fact that the curtain was up on some final act, though God knows what had gone before.

  But the moment was not allowed to develop. There was a diversion, a rattle of hooves in the yard, and a voice that Brunt already knew, one accustomed to making itself heard above the maelstrom of steam, smoke and heaving cylinders.

  ‘Get up there, blast thy axle-box!’

  ‘That’s his horse,’ somebody said unnecessarily. ‘Old Nought-Four-Nought.’ Then Beresford came into the room followed by the fireman with the enormous head. The awkward front door offered them no difficulty, opening on its hinges easily enough for them. Brunt’s suit-case was still just within it, and Beresford kicked it casually with the side of his foot as he passed it. There was nothing vicious in the gesture – one might almost call it affectionate, as if a symbolic grievance was now paid off. But Beresford came straight up to Brunt and took the coin from his fingers, spun it once in the air, caught it in his capricious palm and handed it back, craggy knuckles uppermost.

  ‘Don’t bring it out in here again.’

  This instruction was underlined by a single spasmodic motion up and down of the eloquent brows. Beresford then turned his back on Brunt and lowered his first pint in a draught. The fireman, Jack Plant, was only a fraction of a second behind his mentor.

  ‘Well, Thos, and what’s thy rappit been up to today?’

  Beresford turned to face his questioner, embarked on an anecdote that he had clearly been preparing all day.

  ‘Well, I reckon we must have had somebody up to no good in the Fold last night – a prowler. Anyway, I heard the hutch door open – he’s learnt to open it for himself, you know. There was a bit of a scuffle, and I thought I heard footsteps making off. I don’t know what really happened, but the old rappit had blood on its whiskers when I took him his breakfast this morning.’

  There was some laughter, but it fell short of hilarity. An awkward silence followed. Beresford slewed round to look insolently for the effect of the story on Brunt. Then he came slowly across the room, put his hand in the vast poacher’s pocket inside his jacket.

  ‘I think you’ll have an interest in this, mister.’

  It was Amy Harrington’s red-backed novel, still wrapped in the white linen in which Brunt had first seen it. He put it down on the table without looking at it, but made no attempt to deny that he had seen it before.

  ‘Found?’ he asked.

  ‘She must have left it on a bench in the waiting-room at Cromford Wharf, the day she left – oh, months ago. I’ve been waiting to hand it to someone with authority – with real authority, I mean.’

  Brunt had not announced any authority, but Beresford was an intelligent observer.

  ‘She was on your train, Mr Beresford?’

  ‘I was on shunting duties, higher up the line, that morning.’

  ‘But somebody must have seen her go.’

  ‘Nobody saw her go. I found her book, that’s all. Perhaps because I was meant to.’

  ‘There are questions I need to ask.’

  ‘I know nothing, mister. None of us knows anything. If you want to know more than nothing, you’ll have to ask Kingsey.’

  He went back to where he had left his pot. Some man in the company delivered them from embarrassment.

  ‘Have you seen the Parish Magazine, Thos?’

  ‘It was laid out open on the table for me when I got home.’

  ‘All those who are not in full communion—’ There was some attempt at ecclesiastical mimicry, but not very successful, because the speaker’s native vowels were too strong to be suppressed, ‘are henceforward to be debarred from holding Rectory allotments.’

  ‘He can’t take land off a man that still bears a crop that he’s planted. That’s common law.’

  ‘How long have you dug that patch, Thos?’

  ‘Twenty-five years. The Rector let me keep it when he first came here. Happen he thought he might get me to church that way. Mind you, I was always disqualified from winning any Festival Prize.’

  ‘So what will you do when you’ve dug your taters, Thos? Get something else planted overnight?’

  ‘I’ll think of something.’

  He filled the bowl of a clay pipe with finely shredded shag.

  ‘Happen the Rector will have to go the same way as Kingsey,’ he said at last.

  ‘But that’s not going to settle much, is it?’ said a little man called Sammy Nall who, Brunt had already noticed, seemed less under Beresford’s thumb than the others.

  ‘Happen not. But it’ll be good for a laugh.’

  Then conversation was muted as a comparative stranger came in through the front door – someone they all knew, but clearly a class apart from them: a middle-aged man still striving after youth – black trousers, slim fitting; clean shaven about the chin, but with a line of waxed tip moustache; sideboards sharply clipped to the bottom of his lobes; shinily pomaded hair. Unselfcritical vanity; Brunt guessed that he was one of Kingsey’s entourage. Footman probably; perhaps one of the few from the Hall who had much co
ntact with the world outside. Not many from below stairs would often come in here.

  But a few minutes later another from the same quarters came in. The butler, this one, obviously – braided black trousers showing below his greatcoat; a pompous man with white mutton-chop whiskers; accustomed to command, but knowing better than to try to be imperious in here, though he clearly expected – and got – a certain showing of respect. He had busy eyes, but Brunt thought that he was probably not very sharp-witted. He was carrying, incongruously with his rig, a canvas bag from which Nadin drew a quart-size flagon. And the butler drank a single pint whilst this was being filled at the tap of the barrel. Then he put on his hat, picked up his bag, wished the company a portentous goodnight and left. It stood out forcibly that he and the footman had not acknowledged each other’s presence.

  Brunt knew that some of his colleagues would not have dragged themselves away from that tap-room whilst there was a midnight toper still talking. But Brunt was a patient man. It suited him to let people’s attitudes develop at their own pace, and he knew they were more likely to do so behind his back. He had often heard his grandmother say that you did not open an oven door whilst a Yorkshire pudding was still rising. Moreover, he was physically tired, and asked early for his candle.

  For a while he lay in the darkness and tried to think of a line of questioning for Captain Kingsey tomorrow. And what kind of captain? Brunt knew not the first thing about him. A sea captain? A captain of Dragoons? Hussars? Infantry of the line? And why, if the man had any substance behind him at all, should he isolate himself in a hole like Piper’s Fold?

  Brunt became aware that someone was moving about in the passage outside his bedroom: a step first this way and then that; the creak of a floor-board here by the door, then there further along the wall. He strained his ears. There were other sounds in the night that interfered agonisingly with hearing: a dog, distressed, in someone’s yard; a chimney cowl, squealing on the turn. But then in a pause he heard someone humming; and now he remembered the name of the tune. The Banks of Sacramento: a ditty that would not have sounded out of place on the West Country waterfront.

  Brunt lit his candle and girdled on his dressing-gown. Treading quietly, he thrust open his bedroom door suddenly. There was a candle on the landing, standing on the floor, and the girl was standing in front of the open doors of a colossus of a linen cupboard.

  ‘Trying to get ahead of myself and save myself work for tomorrow.’

  This time she did allow her emotional brown eyes to rest on him. Her basket was standing some way away from her, and he guessed that she was only making a pretence of sorting out the stacks of sheets and pillow-cases. His first thought was that she might have come up here to offer herself for a price, which might or might not accord with her nervousness of him while she was serving him at table. Or perhaps she was under orders to come up and offer herself, with or without a price. He made a slight movement towards her that he intended her to interpret as lustful, and she took a step away from him in a manner that he did not think was merely coquettish. Nor did he think that it showed her to be a practised hand.

  So it was for some other purpose that she was idling about on the landing: because she wanted to talk to him – or wanted him to talk to her? She was frightened of him, yet she was here, in the hope of seeing him. Bemused by the very thing she dreaded, the ancient case of the rabbit and the snake?

  ‘Why are you afraid of me?’ he asked her gently.

  ‘I’m not afraid – sir.’

  ‘No? How old are you, Mildred?’

  ‘Nineteen, sir.’

  She was holding his eyes steadily.

  ‘And someone has told you that they think I am a policeman? So you are afraid that I will have you carried back to Bristol?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be afraid of going back to Bristol, sir.’

  ‘No? Where did you work, then, when you first left Bristol?’

  ‘In Gloucester, sir.’

  She was still looking at him unflickering, but struggling not to drop her eyes.

  ‘So how do you come to be working at The Crooked Rake?’

  ‘I was at the Hall, sir, at Captain Kingsey’s.’

  ‘And you ran away from there? As you ran away from Gloucester?’

  She was silent.

  ‘How long ago, Mildred? When did you come to this inn?’

  ‘About a year ago, sir.’

  She was attractive. Brunt could not know for certain how firm or easy her morals might be, but he felt sure that the roots of her present fear were not in sex.

  ‘So it was when you left – because you left – that Amy Harrington came?’

  The very mention of the name struck ice into her. For seconds he allowed the flickering candle-light, the angular shadows of the open cupboard doors, to play on her imagination. He shifted one foot a sudden inch and she jumped. He lifted his stubby fingers slowly to his uncouth chin. She thought he was going to reach out for her with his hand, and she cringed.

  ‘So why did you run away from Captain Kingsey?’

  ‘Sir – leave me alone!’

  ‘I haven’t touched you, Mildred. I’m not going to touch you. I am talking to you because you have come up here to tell me something.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘About Amy Harrington.’

  ‘No, sir. Sir, Amy Harrington’s gone away … of her own accord …’

  ‘Is that what someone has told you to tell me?’

  He stood staring at her, making capital out of his repulsive looks. He had broken more than one case on men’s stupefaction by his ugliness.

  ‘Did anyone see her go? That’s what I need to know.’

  Downstairs someone opened a door, but took only a step or two, as if straining ears to know what was being said above. The girl suddenly twisted on her heel in front of him, abandoned her candle but seized the handle of her empty basket and fled with it down the corridor. He heard her stumbling on the lower stairs and struggling with the door into the kitchen quarters. Brunt carefully closed the door of the linen cupboard.

  Of course, a good deal of what the Chief Constable had said remained nonsense. But Brunt knew now that he had not been sent up to Piper’s Fold for nothing.

  Chapter Four

  Brunt lay back on the bed, the candle still fluttering, and gazed up at the wandering geography of the ceiling. The girl Mildred had put some new possibilities about Amy Harrington into his mind.

  If Eleanor Copley had done nothing else for Amy Harrington, she had produced for her the first room, the first bed even, in which she had ever slept alone. Brunt had a vivid picture of what life must have been like for a child in the Harrington home: the fire-and-sword discipline of the dissenting churches, translated into a razor-strop across the buttocks for trivial infringements. The domestic rages; the nightly stinking ritual when her father pissed the fire out; the animal sexual bouts that rocked the slum; the devolution of her mother – the sudden inexplicable withdrawal, perhaps to the accompaniment of an unexplained back-hander across the mouth, of the caresses that had stopped when she ceased to be a babe in arms. Yet they had continued the struggle of those weekly letters, the vital importance of the simnel cake. Ritual. Superstition.

  And had Amy Harrington been a dreamer? About what? About some reward for constancy of the sort that happened in the closing chapter of a Sunday School prize? Often that amounted to nothing more lascivious than a sadly happy death between unaccustomed clean, cool sheets. Or, somewhere or other, had Amy Harrington caught a glimpse of what she took to be life? In the big house to which she had gone at Rowsley, perhaps? Brunt had seen extraordinary developments when some of these kids moved to the edge of another world.

  So why had she come to Piper’s Fold from Rowsley? Why had the other girl come here from Gloucester? Was there a common pattern? Two girls – one of them, at least, who had in abundance what most men wanted. She had escaped – if you could call The Crooked Rake an escape. And the other?

  Mil
dred served him his breakfast in the morning, lethargic but polite, her eyes averted, making no reference at all to their meeting on the landing. Behind Brunt’s back the door of the kitchen was ajar, someone moving about behind it in desultory fashion, keeping within hearing distance. Not until he had finished his second cup of tea, and the girl was impatient to clear the table, did Brunt speak to her.

  ‘I need to know your full name. Also the address of your parents, and of the place at which you worked in Gloucester.’

  ‘Mildred Jarman, sir.’

  It was a whisper, meekly compliant, but with an air of resignation, as if she were surrendering all that she still had to live for.

  ‘It’ll make things easier for us both, if you’ll tell me what I’m sure to find out in Gloucester.’

  ‘You can take me back to Gloucester if you like,’ she said, with unconvincing defiance, the west coast burr more marked than ever.

  ‘Mildred, last night you were on the landing because you wanted to tell me something.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me this very minute.’ He looked significantly towards the kitchen door. ‘But any time you feel you’d like to. I frightened you last night, and that was stupid of me. I’m here to find out what happened to Amy Harrington – and to make sure it happens to no one else.’

  ‘There is nothing I can tell you, sir.’

  And within the kitchen someone took a single step on the stone flagged floor, a reminder to her. Brunt got up, pushed the door open and came upon Nadin, the landlord, standing with a pan inanely in one hand, neither coming nor going.

  ‘You’d be better occupied, Nadin, in helping me to get things squared up.’

  ‘All I know is, I want no trouble.’

  ‘It seems to me you’re not going to have much choice about that.’

  Brunt let himself into the village street, surprisingly warm and fresh after the sour beer and inert tobacco fumes of the inn. He fingered the five-piastre piece, strangely a comfort to him. He called first on the old woman who, through deafness or otherwise, had failed to return his greeting when he had first walked into the village. He was not quite certain why he chose her for a visit, except that she had struck him with an air of detached, impoverished dignity which appealed to him. She would almost certainly have no connections with The Crooked Rake set and had looked as if she might be sufficiently lonely to be aloof from village opinion.