Philip Gooden - The Salisbury Manuscript

He fell silent for a moment and, to cover whatever he’d been about to say, sank his face in his pint-pot. Then he went on, ‘Tell the truth, I’ve come back to these parts for a bit of peace and quiet. Last place I was in I had to get out of a bit smartish for reasons we needn’t go into. So now I’ll just find myself a cosy billet in town and won’t trouble you at all. Though it would be nice to meet sometimes, wouldn’t it, brother? Talk about the old times.’

‘I’ve got to be going to the railway station now, Adam,’ said Seth, pushing himself out of the corner and waiting for Adam to shift himself. ‘Got to be getting the train back to Downton.’

‘I’ll keep you company,’ said Adam.

And so he did, jigging and skipping and jawing while they made their way through the outskirts of the town and Seth wondered how he could shake him off. Fortunately, he left Seth before they reached the station. Adam asked his brother if he could recommend a good bed-house in the town or — as he said they called it in the United States — a cat-house. Seth pretended not to know what his brother was talking about.

If Seth had hoped not to see Adam again he was to be disappointed. However, his brother did not cause any overt trouble — at least, not to his knowledge — and he assumed that he must have found his cosy billet. Seth didn’t ask him where and Adam didn’t volunteer any information.

They encountered each other from time to time in The Nethers and Seth’s animosity towards Adam started to fade. He had no wife or children or friends apart from Mrs Mitchell (who was a paid friend), he preferred the company of the horses in his master’s stable if he was honest. Nevertheless he had a brother.

Adam let slip little hints of how he’d passed the intervening years, not honestly it seemed. He’d done his share of thieving and he hinted at darker business. Occasionally at their meetings Adam would pass over an item as a kind of peace offering. It would be a thing of such small value, like a toasting fork, that if Adam had stolen it Seth wondered why he went to the trouble. Nevertheless he accepted it because, in part, he was slightly afraid of Adam and this seemed the best way of keeping him quiet.

And so when he learned that his master Percy Slater wanted to find out what was in the personal luggage of a certain young lawyer from London, Seth indicated to his brother that there could be a little job for him. Now he regretted that closer involvement with Adam. For it seemed to have led to this moment now when the two of them were crouching by moonlight in Hogg’s Corner.

Back in Northwood House, Percy Slater was not asleep although it was well after midnight. He was not even in his bedroom. Instead he had been slumbering in his smoking room, over the dying fire, the guttering candles and a couple of near-empty bottles. Slumbering until some sound awoke him. His hearing was good, whatever else about him had decayed. It was a sound from outside. He hoisted himself to his feet and moved unsteadily towards the window. There was a little moonlight. By it, he could just see, pressing his gaze to the pane and screwing up his eyes, the silhouette of a figure standing on the untended ground beyond the terrace and by the ha-ha. For an instant the figure was poised there and then it dropped out of sight. Percy rubbed a hand over his eyes. When he looked again a second shape was wavering against the darkness before it too fell from view. Slater stared out into the night for several more bleary minutes, not quite sure of what he’d seen or whether, indeed, he’d seen anything at all.

Then his attention was caught by a spark of light, a tiny flicker that appeared from amid a circle of trees in the park. Percy began paying attention now. He knew the location of the light. It was coming from the little knoll known as Hogg’s Corner. The flicker went out for an instant and Percy realized that it was someone passing in front of it.

Without troubling to light a candle, Percy crossed the smoking room and unlocked the glass cabinet which contained a pair of shotguns. He took one from its resting place and hefted it in his hand. He opened a drawer and, again working by touch, drew a handful of cartridges from a box and slipped them into his trouser pocket. Then he left the smoking room and went down the flagged passage to the kitchen quarters. He found his way with the merest brush of his free hand against the wall.

In the lobby he took a coat from a peg and let himself out of the side door of the house. The night air blew away the fustiness in his drink-fuddled head. He paused for an instant then loaded the shotgun, knowing that if he delayed until he was closer to his quarry the sound of the action would carry across a still night. ‘Quarry.’ The word amused him but it also stirred something within.

Slater crossed the yard and made a circuit round the side of the house. Like his man Fawkes, he was very familiar with the house and grounds. It was where he’d grown up and although he’d never had his brother Felix’s taste for rummaging about the estate, he could still have found his way about blindfold — or after dark.

Percy Slater stood on the weed-encrusted terrace and stared into the night. The light on top of the hillock known as Hogg’s Corner glowed with a fire-fly’s persistence. Percy considered for a moment summoning Fawkes from his snug in the stables to deal with these trespassers. But he was fairly sure that one of the shapes he’d seen dropping over the ha-ha was Fawkes himself. Something about the angle of the body, its outline, caused Percy to think that one of the night wanderers was indeed his own man.

Percy trusted Fawkes. Or, perhaps more accurately, he had never had any reason to distrust him. Fawkes had worked for his father, as had Nan, and on George’s death he had inherited the old retainers along with the estate. Fawkes was of a similar age to himself but whereas Percy had grown slow and was running to fat, the coachman had kept a youthful slightness even as his face had become more aged and disagreeable.

If it was Fawkes out there in the cold and dark, on top of Hogg’s Corner, then the question was, who was his companion? At once Percy remembered that odd and unsettling fellow who Fawkes had claimed could get into that lawyer’s room in The Side of Beef, the fellow who’d popped up out of nowhere at the dog-fight the other night. Not only had Percy taken against him personally, the fellow hadn’t even discovered anything in Ansell’s room. But if it was Fawkes together with Adam creeping about the edges of Northwood, what were they doing there?

There was only one way to find out. Percy Slater felt some old instinct uncoil inside him, the instinct to follow a trail, to track down its source, to. . kill.

Moving lightly on his feet, for all his bulk, and wide awake now, Percy Slater reached the boundary between the garden and parkland. He placed the shotgun carefully on the upper ground and slipped, almost tumbled, on to the rougher grass beneath. When he’d recovered his breath and smoothed his clothes down, he retrieved the gun and set off.

The light in the centre of Hogg’s Corner vanished as he drew nearer, since the lie of the land got in the way. But there could be no doubt that there was someone up there. Scraping and scrabbling sounds alternated with subdued grunts or curses. Percy Slater gripped the shotgun in both hands and moved closer still, his breath coming shorter with the exertion and anticipation. He heard a hissing, and the sounds of scraping ceased. Something about the hissing enraged him. If it was his man Fawkes up there, he’d soon sort him out. Him and his companion. Let them know what was coming to them.

‘Fawkes!’ he said. He was almost shouting. Why shouldn’t he shout? This was his house, his land.