Bruce Alexander - Smuggler's Moon

From my brief acquaintance with the man, I deemed him one of good disposition and a ready tongue. Yet the grave nature of his errand had saddened and silenced him so that in spite of my best efforts, I was able to get little from him. Nonetheless, the little I did get surprised me much. As I now recall, we were well out of town when I made what must have been my third or fourth attempt to draw him out. He had up to then left my questions hanging unanswered in the air, or at best responded with a gesture-a shrug or a shake of his shaggy head.

He had the horses moving along at a good pace so that it seemed we must be near the end of our journey. I expected the unmarked driveway into the great house to appear after the next turn of this winding road-or surely the next one after that. It was then, holding on to the seat grip for dear life, that I asked him (for the second time, I believe) who it was had been found dead.

Again he shrugged, but this time he added: ”One of the new men Sir Simon took on. Don’t know his name.”

“It’s certain he was murdered? Couldn’t have been an accident?”

“What kind of an accident leaves you with your throat cut?”

“Well … yes,” said I, in something less than a shout. ”I suppose it was murder then.”

“Course it was!” said he peevishly, punctuating his declaration with a rather fierce glance.

“Who found the body?” I was certain I hadn’t asked that before.

He said something then, but it was quite lost in the rattle of the wheels and the pounding of the horses’ hooves.

“What was that?”

He put his face to my ear and shouted: ”It was me-but the girl-I an’t sure of her name-she was also there.”

“You mean Clarissa?”

“Aye, that’s her. We was out-” He broke off and nodded ahead, reaching out at the same time to ease back on the brake. Then, taking the reins in both hands, he hauled them in. As we slowed sharply, I recognized the turn into the driveway just ahead. He made the turn with room to spare.

Clarissa! I reflected. Now, that was an astonishment. Had I but accepted Will Fowler’s invitation to tour the house and grounds, I would almost certainly have been present at the discovery of the body. Indeed, I might even have been the one to find it, rather than she.

“You’ll hear all about it, I’m sure,” said he to me.

“I’m sure I will.”

Then, of a sudden, we came round a bend, with a meadow on our right, a fenced wood upon our left, and a male figure did leap from the wood into the road and begin waving his arms at us rather frantically. Fowler pulled back hard upon the reins, slowing the horses, and almost simultaneously gave another hard tug to the brake. Though it looked for a moment as if we might run the poor fellow down, we did manage to come to a halt just in time to save him (though I, reader, was nearly catapulted forward onto the neck of one of the lead horses).

“You all right?” asked Fowler.

I assured him I was. ”But … but what is the meaning of this? Who is this man?”

“I know not,” said he with a shake of his head.

Then did two more men emerge from the brushy wood; one of them I recognized as Sir Simon Grenville; the other was quite as unknown to me as the man in the driveway.

“Those two men with Sir Simon,” Fowler muttered to me, ”they’re part of that new crew, like the man who was killed.”

“Will,” Sir Simon called out, ”Will Fowler. Had you forgotten completely where you found the body? You, of all people!” Then did he let go a low, chuckling laugh, as if to assure his man that he meant what he had said merely as a mild reproof.

Yet Fowler was clearly confused: ”I … well, I suppose I did, sir. Do forgive me.”

“Nothing to forgive,” said his master magnanimously. Then did he call out: ”Sir John, Mr. Sarton, if that wild stop did not kill or cripple you, come along and I’ll show you what you were summoned to see.” He seemed oddly jovial.

At that, I scrambled down to the ground to assist them. I opened the door to the coach and presented my hand first to Mr. Sarton, who hopped down with no difficulty, and Sir John, who exited a bit laboriously.

“Are you all right, sir?” I asked him.

“I believe so. No broken bones, in any case. Here, give me your hand and a stiff arm to lean on. I won’t risk jumping.”

Thus he made it down, step by step, panting slightly from the effort. Holding my arm, he limped along in a rather tentative manner. I wondered if he were perhaps in pain.

“This way, gentlemen,” said Sir Simon, beckoning us into the wood.

“Is there no path?” asked Mr. Sarton.

“I fear not. And the undergrowth is rather thick just here.”

“Perhaps it would be better, Jeremy,” said Sir John, ”if you preceded me.”

And so we arranged ourselves in single file-Sir Simon leading the way, followed by the magistrate of Deal, then myself, and Sir John last of all. As I passed them, I gave a good, thorough examination to the two that Fowler had described as belonging to ”the new crew.” They were a hard sort. I had seen their kind in London, in and around Covent Garden-on Bedford Street specifically. And when I saw them there, I usually had the good sense to give them a wide berth. But having thought of Bedford Street, my mind went swiftly to Mr. Perkins, who had mentioned it earlier that afternoon. With such as those two around, staring after us, I found myself wishing that he were here. I always felt safer with Mr. Perkins close by.

Sir Simon seemed to know just where he was going. We followed as he tramped on through the dense brush for a good twenty yards or more.

The trees hereabouts were grown so close that the leaves above masked the greater part of the afternoon sunlight. The light did thus come through only in patches. We moved from sunlit patches to patches of darkness, and then back into sunlight. It seemed oddly fitting that the corpus, when at last we came upon him, lay completely in the dark.

The body was that of a young man, one in his middle twenties at most. And though still young, he was thick through the chest and legs in a way which suggested he had done a good deal of physical labor in his short life-a farm lad perhaps, a plowboy. He had a beard of a few days’ growth which was nevertheless thin and patchy. Dressed quite ordinarily he was, except that he wore no hat; perhaps it had fallen from his head and was beneath him. He was on his back, arms thrown out to each side. The ugly wound that had killed him was exposed to view. It followed the line of his chin some inches, perhaps just two, below it. Though bloody still, the red had dried black upon his throat, indicating, to me at least, that he had been dead a good many hours. I saw no sign of a weapon of any sort.

I described the corpus in words quite like these to Sir John. He listened closely, nodding his understanding as I talked on in a mere whisper. While we were thus engaged, Albert Sarton was bending close to examine the body, though not closely enough to suit him: Before he was done, he was down upon his hands and knees, spectacles upon his nose, looking at the wound, at the hands and fingers of the deceased, and even at his shoes. Finally, and most peculiarly, he looked carefully at the ground all round the victim.

Looking on, Sir Simon seemed at first amused and somewhat puzzled by the magistrate’s strange behavior, then finally, openly annoyed. Why he should be annoyed, however, I could not fathom.

At last, Mr. Sarton rose from his hands and knees to his full height (which was not great) and announced: ”He was not killed here.” This was said with great certainty. ”No doubt he was moved to hide him.”

”How can you be so sure?” Sir Simon demanded.

“Easily enough,” said the magistrate of Deal. ”There is no sign of a path in the surrounding area, and so he would have to have come to this spot in the same way we did-that is, from the roadway. But look at the soles of your shoes, and you will see that they are clotted with humus-moist, dark dirt with bits of decomposing organic matter therein.” He held up some to show Sir Simon. ”This bit here is specially moist, almost like mud.”