Andrew Taylor - The Scent of Death

‘I – I understand your husband, madam, is expected home?’ I said. ‘Do you know when he will come?’

She stared at me with heavy-lidded eyes. ‘He has been missing since Saratoga. I thought you must know.’

‘Why yes – Mr Rampton said as much. But from what Mrs Wintour said, I inferred—’

‘Mrs Wintour desires his return so strongly that she believes he must come. I am not so sanguine, and nor is the Judge. But we do not contradict her.’

‘No, indeed.’

‘You would be doing us all a kindness if you would humour her in this as well.’

‘Of course.’

The Battle of Saratoga had been ten months ago. If there had been no news of Captain Wintour since then, the odds must be against his having survived.

‘You have heard nothing at all of him?’ I said after a moment.

‘No. We fear the worst. We hear so many reports of atrocities.’

Anger had brought colour to her face, and she looked almost beautiful. There was a fire about her when her passions were roused. I murmured a platitude about the horrors of war, particularly civil war.

‘Why does Lord George not advise the King to bring an end to this folly?’ she burst out.

‘Madam, I wish I knew, and then I should tell you. But Lord George does not open his mind to me.’

‘Of course not.’ Mrs Arabella’s eyelids closed, as though she wished to blot out the sight of me. ‘You are only a clerk.’

The following day, Wednesday, Mr Townley arrived in Warren Street as I was in the act of leaving the house.

‘Mr Savill, sir,’ he cried from across the street. ‘This is well met. Have you heard the news?’

‘No, sir. What news?’

‘I thought the Major might have sent a man over to you. No matter – I am here instead. It appears that someone laid information late last night, and a man has been taken up for poor Mr Pickett’s murder.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘Oh, they have plenty of evidence – they have not charged the fellow yet, but I do not think there can be much doubt about it. We must not linger – he is to be interrogated at ten o’clock, and it wants but twenty minutes of that now. They are holding him at Van Cortlandt’s Sugar House at the corner of Trinity churchyard. And we are to meet your shipboard acquaintance there – what is his name? Note? Slope? Poke?’

‘Noak, sir.’ I had written to him yesterday afternoon and told him he might call on Mr Townley. ‘It is good of you to spare the time to see him.’

‘I have seen him already – he seems capable enough. And there’s something to be said for a man who knows a little of the wider world. I have decided to give him a trial for a day or two.’

‘That’s most obliging, sir – I hope he answers.’

‘We shall soon begin to discover whether he does or not. He can keep a record this morning.’

As we walked along, Townley asked if I was perfectly satisfied with my lodging; if not he would look about for somewhere else that might suit me.

I told him not to trouble himself for I liked it very well and added, ‘By the way, I had some conversation with the Wintour ladies yesterday evening.’

‘They are in good health, I hope? How did they strike you?’

‘I had not realized that Mrs Arabella’s husband is missing rather than dead.’

‘It is most unfortunate,’ Townley said. ‘No one has seen Captain Wintour since Saratoga, though there was a report of his being wounded. It leaves them all in a species of limbo – Mrs Arabella in particular. They do not know whether to mourn a son and husband or to pray for his happy return.’

‘Mrs Wintour seems in no doubt that it should be the latter.’

‘Alas, sir – as you may already have observed, Mrs Wintour’s sufferings have taken their toll on the poor lady’s rational faculties.’ Townley pointed with his stick. ‘We are nearly there – see? That is Van Cortlandt’s.’

The main sugar house was situated on a corner where two streets met. It was a big, brick-faced structure five storeys high and as ugly as a barn. An annex stood to one side. The establishment overlooked a yard enclosed by a wall. The building’s barred windows were deeply recessed and well above the height of a man. They accentuated rather than relieved the monolithic blankness of the façade.

‘This place is for prisoners of war,’ he murmured in my ear. ‘Marryot’s man shouldn’t be here at all, but the Provost is full.’

We stood aside to allow a file of soldiers to march down the road to the high wooden gates, which were guarded by two sentries. One leaf of the gates opened at the sentry’s double-knock and the file passed through to a yard. We followed them in.

Once inside, the sergeant of the guard told us to wait in the hall. Townley chafed at the delay.

‘At least it is cool and pleasant in here,’ I said.

‘The walls are immensely thick, sir. And there are few windows, as you see. The place was built to store sugar in good condition and safe from thieves. But it keeps people in as well as it keeps people out.’

A door at the back of the hall opened and Mr Noak came through.

Townley stared at him. ‘What? You? Here already?’

Noak bobbed his head to us, more like a bird pecking at a worm than a mark of respect. ‘Yes, sir. I made myself known to Major Marryot and showed him your letter. If you would care to step this way.’

As soon as we left the hall, the atmosphere changed. Sights and smells assaulted the senses. But I was first aware of the noise: a chaotic concerto of voices, groans, cries, and restless movements, all of them bouncing off the high, barrel-vaulted ceiling and setting off rolling echoes.

On the other side of the door to the hall was a table at which three soldiers were playing cards, apparently oblivious of what was going on around them. They glanced up incuriously and nodded us through.

Noak led us down a long, stone-flagged corridor lined with doors on either side. Along the centre of the passage was a drainage gulley apparently used as a sewer. Both Townley and I covered our noses with handkerchiefs.

A barred opening was set high in each door, and each opening framed a man’s face; his hands clung to the bars; and behind him was a multitude of other faces, packed together in one heaving, shouting, stinking mass of humanity.

‘For the love of Christ, your honours,’ a man called to us, ‘for the love of Christ, I can’t stop the bleeding.’

We walked faster and faster to a door at the far end. A guard let us into a lobby at the foot of a flight of stairs.

‘Dear God,’ I said. ‘It’s a perfect Bedlam in there. Worse than Bedlam – a foretaste of hell itself.’

‘They have only themselves to thank, sir,’ Townley said. ‘If they take up arms against their lawful government, they must expect to pay the price. The problem is that we have so many rebels to cope with. We are obliged to pack them in the best we can, wherever we find room.’

We mounted the stairs first to an anteroom guarded by a sentry and then to an inner apartment. A narrow window looked out across a neatly tended churchyard at the blackened ruins of Trinity Church.

Marryot was sitting at a long oak table, his lame leg resting on a footstool. He was leafing through a pile of papers. ‘Good morning, sirs,’ he said, looking up. ‘Pray sit down, now you are come at last. I was about to start without you.’ He nodded to Noak. ‘Tell the man outside to pass the word for the prisoner.’

We took chairs on either side of the Major. When he returned, Noak sat at the end nearer the window, with pen, ink and paper set out before him.

‘How fortunate that an informer came forward, sir,’ Townley said.