Wilder Perkins: Hoare and the headless Captains

"I must remember to keep out of slinging range of Eleanor Graves, then, must I not?"

Mrs. Prettyman put a slim, strong hand on Hoare's arm.

"But surely, Captain Hoare, you can do better for yourself than a globular widow. Why, she…"

Upon seeing Hoare's expression, Selene Prettyman stopped in midsentence.

"That was inexcusable of me, Captain Hoare," she said.

"Yes, madam, it was. I thank you for your intervention with Mr. Spurrier, and I wish you a good evening."

With that, Hoare left Selene Prettyman standing. He summoned the landing party, and departed for Dorchester with the captives. Mrs. Selene Prettyman could find her own damned way.

On the way to Dorchester, Hoare instructed Leese to let all the participants in the ceremony escape, except Spurrier and the hard henchmen who had brought Rabbett and Thoday to the altar in the Nine Stones Circle. In the first place, Hoare reasoned, the folk who had been present at the pagan rite could at the most be no more than Spurrier's deluded devotees-harmless, eccentric perhaps, and now very frightened. In the second place, Royal Duke, while a brig herself, had no accommodations for prisoners-no brig, so to speak, he told himself half-hysterically. He put the horrid jest in that mental commonplace book of his, against possible future need.

So he merely had Rabbett take down their particulars before releasing them in the town. As Hoare had expected, the clerk already knew most of them. One, for example, was the wife of the town grocer, another a ne'er-do-well ditcher.

"Remind me, Rabbett," Hoare said, "to give their names to the vicar at the Church of All Angels. They committed their sins in his parish, I think. He can do as he will with them."

"Yes, sir," Rabbett said. "If you wish, I'll give 'em to Vicar myself as soon as possible."

"I think not, Rabbett. Tomorrow, you must be aboard Royal Duke. I need you there."

He heard the clerk's gasp. Was it with pleasure or fear?

"If I may, then, sir, I would like to bid my old mam and da farewell. And pick up my other shoes. For 'tis a long walk to Weymouth."

"Do you ride, Rabbett?"

Rabbett could not, nor, as Hoare found when he inquired, did the otherwise omnicompetent Thoday. So Hoare silenced his conscience and ordered Rabbett to roust out a chaise for himself, Hoare, Thoday, and their prisoner and a wagon to carry Leese, the landing party, and the other prisoners. Spurrier he would keep to himself and interrogate him in the chaise as they rolled south to Weymouth.

While weary, Thoday could still summon up advice for his Commander.

"We might, sir, visit Mr. Spurrier's place of business while en route to Weymouth," he said. "A more leisurely inspection than I had time to conduct during my clandestine intrusion could produce interesting results."

Spurrier must have overheard, for he started. "You will find nothing of interest, Hoare, I assure you," he said.

"Pipe down, you," Leese said.

Hoare followed Thoday's advice. Joined eventually by the weary Rabbett, they searched Spurrier's quarters by candlelight, from stem to gudgeon, not neglecting his bedroom. Thoday set out to test every panel and every floorboard for secret hiding places.

He found one at last and crawled into it, carrying a dark lantern. On emerging, he shook his head.

"Nothing except this old missal," he said disgustedly, holding out the dusty book. "The place is merely an old priest's hole."

It was past dawn when they were through with the turning out of Spurrier's quarters. Thoday sighed.

"I think we have it all here, sir," he said, displaying a small heap of papers. "I fear there is nothing of interest beyond what I found on my last visit, but we can put our discoveries before the-your crew and see what they make of them."

"A very good performance, Thoday," Hoare said.

"Elementary," Thoday replied.

"Did you check the dovecote, Thoday?" Rabbett asked.

"What dovecote? Where?"

"In back of the house, of course. I thought you knew about it."

Thoday vanished downstairs; the other two followed him. Shortly he returned, feathers sticking to his shoulders, holding a pigeon awkwardly away from his face to avoid the bird's bill. The bird looked disconcerted, as well it might. A tiny silvery cartridge was attached to one of its ruby red legs.

"Here, Rabbett. Hold the bird while I take off the message tube," Thoday said.

"I'll take care of it, Thoday," Rabbett said. "When it comes to pigeons, you obviously don't know what you're doing. We Rabbetts have lived among pigeons all our days."

Holding the pigeon gently, Rabbett slipped off the cartridge and handed it to Hoare.

"Here, sir," Rabbett said. "I'll just go and give the creature its reward."

The message was en clair.

" 'Levi,' " Hoare read, " 'Stop. Stop. Stop. Saul.' "

Saul?

"You were very clever, Spurrier," Hoare whispered to the bound man facing him as they jolted toward Weymouth in the chaise. Thoday sat beside Spurrier, Rabbett beside Hoare.

"You juggled two balls at once, very neatly-killing officers of the Royal Navy on the one hand, and disguising the work with Black Masses to beguile-"

"Not Black Masses, man," Spurrier said with a grin of contempt. "What you chanced upon was to be no more than a rite of initiation. If I had been celebrating a genuine mass, as I should have done, it seems, His Royal Highness would not have been so disappointed. And neither you nor your helots would have survived your spying. There I was fatally foolish."

"That is as may be," Thoday said in a flat voice. "What intrigued me is that you built further on the edifice of superstition you first designed. But you made another mistake. I became aware of it just as I saw you about to sacrifice my little friend here. There you and your bullies went, crushing under your feet the fruits and flowers that the neighborhood's innocent nature worshipers had brought to the harvest festival with which you opened that obscene rite of yours."

"That was a dreadful waste, of course," Spurrier replied with a cynical smile. "But what was mistaken about it?"

"It made it obvious that on the first occasion, when you chose the Nine Stones Circle as the place to put the two Captains to death, you had no idea of involving the paganism, or Satanism, or whatever you choose to call the creed that you follow. That notion came to you only when you returned to your quarters after your double murder. It was then that you took garlands of flowers and produce back to the Nine Stones Circle and scattered them about, as if they were left by a cult."

"I don't follow you, Mr. Thoday," Rabbett said. "The whole thing was bad, but what was the mistake?"

"He forgot to tread them down the first time. That was when I all but knew he had revisited the Stones Circle after killing the two late Captains."

Spurrier's lips thinned. Then he shrugged and looked carelessly out the window of the chaise.

"You wrote a two-act play, Spurrier," Hoare said. "One in which you cast the Duke of Cumberland as the protagonist… and, I suppose, those poor deluded folk in your congregation as the chorus. In Act I, you tried to show off to the Duke with your silly pagan ritual. Perhaps… you knew beforehand that it wouldn't be enough to take him in."

For a fleeting instant, Hoare thought of suggesting that, for some peculiar reason of his own, Spurrier had planned from the beginning to drive him off. That would have made no sense at all.

"In any case," he went on instead, "it was only after he marched off that you commenced Act II, which was to be the climax of the play-the murder of my two… Naval investigators.

"What gave you the idea of using that means of covering up your part in the killings?" Hoare went on. "It cannot have been the Duke of Cumberland. Unpleasant… he may be, but he was obviously a mere observer of your performance and not an informed participant."