Wilder Perkins: Hoare and the headless Captains

Spurrier cleared his throat. "Now then, sir. What, more precisely, would you wish to know?"

"Our intention is the same as yours, of course," Hoare whispered, "to lay the culprits by the heels and see them hanged. But if you don't mind… I'll have my colleague, Mr. Thoday, tell you what we know so far and what we would like to know. The spirits are willing, but, alas, as you pointed out so wittily just now, my voice is weak."

Spurrier turned to Thoday with something of a patronizing air.

"Enlighten me, then, my good man."

Unruffled, Thoday summarized the events he had described to Hoare and Rabbett in the Nine Stones Circle, without disclosing his method. When he was finished, Spurrier looked visibly less patronizing.

"I suppose you have evidence for what you have just told me?"

"Indeed," Thoday said.

"For instance, you claim that there were three murders."

"Four, sir. The two Captains whose bodies now rest in the Church of All Angels and two drivers."

"Four, then." Spurrier's voice was impatient. "How do you know about the third death, or the fourth, for that matter?"

"The Navy driver remains unaccounted for. He has simply been either abducted-which would serve the criminals no purpose-or killed, which they would have found far more convenient. The driver who replaced him was struck by a bullet, either aimed or accidentally, and died on his seat."

"Why are you so sure he is dead and not just wounded?"

"The blood he shed, Captain, was under high pressure. It spurted from him like water from a fire hose or, to use an analogy that will surely be more familiar to you, like so much horse piss. It was his heart's blood. Even a skilled surgeon-had one been present, which I beg leave to doubt-would have been hard put to it to stanch the flood in daylight, let alone moonlight. No, the second driver has already gone to his reward, as an unwelcome witness of the other killings."

"Tell us, if you please, what has been found of the other bodies, the missing head, and the chaise," Hoare said.

Again Captain Spurrier made much of looking through his papers.

"Er, I can tell you very little. One of the villagers in Grimstone says he heard a carriage and pair going north through the hamlet during the night at a gallop, but he saw nothing. Probably because he didn't want to see anything. In these parts, seeing too much can be dangerous. However, let me see. This is Saturday. The inquest is to be held on Tuesday. By then, I am confident that my men will have gathered all the evidence there is to be found. Meanwhile, no stone will be left unturned, I assure you. Of course, you are welcome to attend the inquest.

"In fact," Spurrier added, seemingly as an afterthought, "as coroner I may find it necessary to ordain your attendance, in light of your man-er-Thoday's findings. I still have my men out scouring the countryside, of course."

Hoare doubted that. Out of either natural indolence or concern for the wishes of some hidden master, Captain Spurrier would most certainly spend less of his time turning up stones on the trail of the men who had killed two Captains in the Royal Navy than he would turning up the skirts of the young woman of parts.

"Of course, Captain. I am, indeed, assured. Until Tuesday, then."

Captain Spurrier bowed to them from his doorstep and watched his two guests climb into their chaise, where they joined Rabbett.

"Weymouth, driver," Hoare whispered as he boarded.

"Will you be needing my services for a bit, Captain Hoare?" Rabbett asked before the driver could begin to obey. "You see, my mother and father dwell here in Dorchester, and it is more than a year since I have paid them my respects. I would be happy to walk to Weymouth from here. It would take me little more than two hours."

"Very good, Rabbett," Hoare said, "but put yourself to use while you are here. Lurk about whatever lurking spots you believe will bring you the most information… and bring me anything you can learn about what people are saying about this affair."

"I can do better than that for you, sir," said Rabbett. "My mother is gossip with half the womenfolk of Dorchester. I could have her tune her ears to the matter."

"Very good, Rabbett," Hoare said. "Until later, then." With a rap on the roof of the chaise, he signaled the driver to shove off.

This would be excellent. If Rabbett's ears were long, surely his mother's would be longer. So Hoare mused, then chided himself for succumbing, even if only in thought, to the selfsame idiot wit with which others had plagued him all his life.

"The Captain's papers, sir," Thoday murmured as the chaise rolled down the highway to Weymouth. "The ones he let fall from his desk and we helped him recover…"

"Yes?"

"Had I dared, I would have retained one of them, but Captain Spurrier's eyes were on them, and I have yet to pass muster with Blassingame."

"I do not understand you," Hoare said. "Who is Blassingame, and why should you pass muster with him?"

"Beg pardon, sir. Mark Blassingame is sailmaker and prestidigitator-magician-in Royal Duke. Among other things, he teaches filching."

"Good heavens," Hoare whispered. He remembered the man now; he was the one who had been performing magic tricks before a group of shipmates in a corner of Royal Duke's working space.

"But what about the paper you wanted to filch?"

"I have seen Taylor-you remember Taylor at least, our student of codes and ciphers? — studying papers with the same texture and bearing the same distinctive writing pattern as the one I saw here just now. I am quite sure that the text was laid out in five-letter groups. I am therefore of the opinion, sir, that Captain Spurrier failed to conceal a ciphered message from our eyes. Moreover, sir, what was Captain Spurrier doing with a cope in his office?"

"A cope, Thoday? A clergyman's robe? Isn't that what a cope is?"

"Yes, sir. It was a cope he used to cover the materials on his desk. And a peculiar-looking cope it was, too."

"In what way?" Hoare asked idly. He was half-asleep.

"The embroidered figures looked sacrilegious, sir, if I may sound so fanciful."

The Chaise's driver found the steep scarp leading down into Weymouth town a hard stretch to manage. At last, he had Hoare and Thoday disembark.

"I won't have you gentlemen's blood on my hands if she oversets," he said. At the foot of the scarp, however, he let them back aboard, so they were able to enter Weymouth in dignity instead of dust.

The depressing piles of neglected construction materials that Hoare had noted in the streets last summer had merely grown more grass. It was questionable if the King in Kew, sane again now but still bewildered, would soon return to his favorite watering place. But Hoare knew where he was now, so he could direct the driver to the Dish of Sprats. There Hoare dismissed him, telling him to return early Monday.

Joseph Parker, proprietor of the Dish, recognized Hoare and seemed pleased to see him again. Parker evidently viewed him and Titus Thoday as men of equal standing, for Thoday's appearance greatly belied his station.

Nonetheless, Hoare surprised his host by calling for two rooms instead of sharing one with his companion. Hoare was ready to travel with Thoday and dine at the same table with him but drew the line at sleeping with an enlisted man when he need not.

Before leaving the Dish of Sprats, Hoare suggested to Thoday that he see what the folk in the town hall might have to contribute about the Nine Stones Circle affair. Hoare himself planned to call on Mrs. Eleanor Graves, then board the cutter Walpole for a glass of Captain Israel Popham's burgundy and some information.

At his own assignment, Thoday demurred. "I think, sir, that we would be well advised to leave the world of clerks and countinghouses to Mr. Rabbett when he arrives. After all, that is the world of his calling, just as this district is more or less his geographic world. I have lines of my own that I might be better employed in following."