The Sudbury School Murders (9 page)

"To confuse you," she said.

I professed myself confused. "Grenville is
worried about you. He is on the verge of hiring a Runner to look
for you. He will likely choose Pomeroy, my former sergeant. Your
fate is sealed if that is the case."

She stopped walking, her eyes sparkling with
anger. "I will return to London and to him when my business is
finished. Why can he not let me be?"

I tried to mollify her. "I do agree that he
should not try to keep you confined. But I must wonder, Marianne.
He has been kind to you. In return, you treat him callously. He is
a very powerful man, and he could make your life miserable if he
chose."

"He treats
you
kindly," she said. "And
some days you can barely bring yourself to be polite to him."

I had to acknowledge that. "He does like to
control people and events, I admit. But at least he is
benevolent."

"Is it benevolence?" she almost spat. "To
have me dragged back to London by Bow Street? What happens if he
decides to bring suit against me--accuse me of stealing from him
or--or perhaps he'll force me to pay for the house and the clothes
and the meals he's given me."

"I very much doubt that," I began, then broke
off. I'd seen Grenville angry only a few times. He was a man who
held himself in check, hiding his emotions behind a cool facade.
His sangfroid made him enviable, and even feared, among the
haut
ton
--a gentleman could lose the respect of others forever at
one quirk of Grenville's eyebrow. I held such power in disdain, but
I could not deny that he had it.

"You see." Marianne looked triumphant. "You
cannot be certain what he will do. You must help me."

"Tell me what you are doing here."

"Damnation, Lacey."

My exasperation rose. "My help has been
begged in the past several days by people who refuse to tell me the
truth. If I am to assist, I must have complete candor. That is my
price."

She glared at me. "And I could simply leave
you here to take root in this meadow."

"Marianne, Grenville will hire a Runner,
though I advised him not to. I imagine he has done so already."

Marianne bit her lip. I had never seen her
look so anguished, not even when I'd spoken to her in Grenville's
house a few weeks ago, where he had more or less confined her and
assigned a maid and a footman to dog her footsteps. She'd been
angry then, but now, she looked frightened. "I am not certain I can
trust you."

I hid a sigh. "You will have to trust me. Who
are you in Berkshire to meet? A man?"

"No. I've told you."

I shook my head. "You quite baffle me,
Marianne. Any money Grenville has given you has disappeared with
nothing to show for it. If you do not give it to a man, what
becomes of it?"

She held up her hand. "Stop. Cease
questioning me. I am not certain what to do. I must think."

She was trembling. I tried to conjure
sympathy for her, and I really did wish to help her. Marianne
struggled through life even more than I did. Grenville had offered
to become her protector, to give her every luxury, but she fought
him. Marianne loved her freedom, even if it brought her penury.

We walked for a while in silence. The path
led behind the hedges and trees that screened us from the canal. I
wished we could come upon a bridge over which to cross back to the
towpath, which would be much easier to traverse. The track on this
side was little used and often plunged right into undergrowth.

Marianne was lost in thought, and so was I,
so neither of us at first heard the curious drone that came from
behind a clump of brush. When I did hear it, I stopped,
puzzled.

Marianne gave me an impatient look. I stepped
away from her, walked a little off the track, and parted the
grasses. I froze.

"Whatever is the matter, Lacey?" Marianne
asked. I heard her behind me, then she peered past me, and
gasped.

A horde of flies and other insects buzzed
about a knife that was half-buried in the grass. It was long and
serrated, the kind a butcher might use to cut up a carcass. The
blade and the mud and grasses around it were caked with brown
stains. The flies swarmed around it all.

I looked up. The canal was not five feet
away, but thick scrub and trees screened it from view. We were
perhaps half a mile from Sudbury in one direction, and half a mile
from Lower Sudbury Lock. "Middleton was killed here," I
breathed.

Marianne's hand went to her mouth. She looked
green. "How awful."

I reached down and lifted the knife. I had no
doubt that Middleton's lifeblood stained it. The killer had lured
him here. Or--thinking of Middleton's past--perhaps Middleton had
been the one who lured his killer to this spot, then the tables had
turned.

Ramsay had told me that Sutcliff had run
after Middleton in order to meet him on the road to the village.
But this spot was in the opposite direction, south of the lock.
What had made Middleton come this way?

The brush was much broken here. I stepped
over the bloodstained grass and slipped and slid down to the bank
of the canal.

A barge was drifting past the far bank, on
its way to Lower Sudbury Lock. The man at the tiller stared at me
curiously as I came plunging out of the brush, but lifted his hand
in a courteous greeting.

I waved back, but my heart was beating
excitedly. No wonder we'd found no signs of the body having been
dragged through grass or mud near the Lower Sudbury Lock.

"He was taken to the lock in a boat," I
announced to Marianne.

Marianne looked puzzled. "You mean a bargeman
obligingly gave a murderer and his corpse a ride to the lock? Or do
you think he was murdered by a bargeman himself?"

I climbed back to her. "Not a barge. A
rowboat. There are ample places to tie a rowboat at the bank. The
man murdered Middleton, tipped the body onto his boat, rowed up the
canal, and heaved him into the lock. Then he could row back down to
Great Bedwyn, hide the boat, and go about his business, or even
portage around the locks so the keepers would not see him. He could
be far, far away by now."

Marianne gave me her hand to help me to the
top of the bank. "Surely someone would have noticed."

"Not in the middle of the night. It would be
dark as pitch along here. Most barges tie up for the night near
towns, not out here. This stretch would have been empty, and were
it foggy, I doubt that anyone would even see a boat go past. No, he
had perfect cover."

Marianne's face was still white. "It is
gruesome."

"I know." I wrapped the knife in my
handkerchief. "I must take this to the magistrate in Sudbury."

"Which you could do if I hadn't frightened
away your horse," she said, looking chagrined.

"If I'd been on horseback, I'd never have
found this spot."

I borrowed Marianne's handkerchief, tied it
to the closest tree to mark the place, and then we resumed our slow
progress up the trail.

"Why would he not take the knife away with
him?" she asked as we made our way along. "If he took such trouble
to remove the corpse, why not the knife?"

I considered. "Perhaps he was too agitated.
Or perhaps he dropped it in the dark and could not find it. But do
you see, Marianne, no matter what he did with the knife, that the
rowboat is significant?"

"The rowboat you think he used," Marianne
corrected me. "Why should it be significant? "

"Because it means that the meeting was
planned. They either rowed here together, or they met here. It is
unlikely anyone would chance upon each other in this bleak spot in
the middle of the night. The boat was brought so that the murderer
could get away without leaving a trail."

"I suppose," Marianne said doubtfully.

"Middleton did not meet a man on the road,
quarrel with him, and fight to a deadly end. This knife is
large--it's a butcher's knife, not a paper knife or a cutting knife
that a man might just happen to have in his pocket. Someone fetched
it specially. Just as they fetched the rowboat specially. So you
see," I finished, "the murder was thought out, not done on the spur
of the moment. That means that the idea that it was a continuation
of Sebastian's quarrel with Middleton in the stable yard will not
wash."

Marianne raised her brows. "You sound
certain."

"I am certain. Someone knew Middleton, wanted
him dead. Someone he was not afraid to meet in the dark on the side
of the canal."

"He was a fool then," Marianne observed.

"He was not afraid. But perhaps, working for
James Denis, he'd become confident that he could face any man who
challenged him."

Marianne shook her head. "The Romany man
could have done it, Lacey. Easy for him to steal a boat and a knife
and arrange the meeting."

I disagreed. "Sebastian is big and strong and
young. Even Middleton might think twice about confronting him alone
in an isolated spot. Besides, they worked in the stables
together--why would Middleton agree to meet somewhere else in the
middle of the night? No, it was someone who did not want to be seen
at the stables, and someone Middleton considered weak." My heart
chilled as I spoke the words. "Such as one of the students."

"Or a tutor," Marianne said. "I've seen some
of them. They look a bit spindly and colorless."

"Or a tutor," I glumly agreed.

"But would a lad or a spindly tutor have been
strong enough to kill him?"

"Possibly, if they took him by surprise. The
boat points to a person not as strong as Middleton. That person
already knew he could not carry the corpse away, and so provided
the boat."

"You are on flights of fancy, Lacey,"
Marianne said skeptically. "Why not simply slide the body into the
canal and have done?"

"To point attention away from the spot,
perhaps to incriminate someone else. The lockkeeper, for instance,
is a large and strong man. The body is found in the lock--there is
the strong lockkeeper living next to it. Probably the constable was
supposed to suspect him. But Rutledge muddied things by insisting
that Sebastian had committed the crime."

Marianne did not answer, merely kept her head
bent, her gaze on the trail. When we at last turned onto the narrow
track that passed the lockkeeper's house and led to the stables and
the school, Marianne stopped.

I looked at her. "You will come no
farther?"

"No, thank you."

She looked so downcast, so worried, that I
wanted to pat her shoulder, but I knew she would not accept such a
thing. "Grenville will be here soon," I said. "You must decide
whether you will let him see you, and what you will tell him. If
you wish to speak to me of it, or wish me to help you, send word to
me.

"It is not a simple matter, Lacey."

"I see that."

She gave me a belligerent look. "I know you
will tell him. You are loyal to him. Why should you be loyal to
me?"

"Marianne," I said impatiently. I was much
more interested at the moment in getting the knife to the
magistrate than in her feud with Grenville. "I am beginning to
believe that you and Grenville are a pair of fools. I give you my
word I will say nothing to him until you give me leave. But I wish
you would confide in him. It would, at the very least, make things
more comfortable for me."

Her glance turned ironic. "And certainly I
wish nothing more than to make you comfortable." She sighed. "I
will send for you--perhaps."

She began to walk away.

"Where do you lodge?" I called after her.

She turned to face me, walking backward a few
steps.

"Shan't tell you."

She swung around again, skirts swirling, and
tramped on toward the canal.

*** *** ***

I found my horse, the sensible beast, in the
stable yard. Thomas, the stable hand, was just pulling off the
saddle.

"A moment," I said. "I must ride on to
Sudbury."

Thomas blinked once, twice, then fastened the
saddle back in place without a word. I was in a hurry, but I took
the time to ask Thomas about the quarrel he claimed he'd overheard
between Middleton and Sebastian.

"It were him," he insisted, when I suggested
he'd been mistaken.

"Where were you standing?"

Thomas pointed. At the end of the yard, a
door led to a tiny hall and a stone staircase that led to the rooms
over the stables. A small window broke the wall above the door. I
peered at the dusty pane which overlooked the yard below.

"They stood by the gate," Thomas said,
motioning across the yard. "Shouting. Could hear them clear as
day."

"It was dark. You could not have
seen
them clear as day."

Thomas looked impatient. "Mr. Middleton was
tall, wann't he? So is Sebastian. The tallest men in the stables.
No mistake."

He was certain. I knew a suggestion that it
had been another tall man, not Sebastian, would not be welcomed. I
let it go and had him boost me onto the horse.

I rode to Sudbury and the magistrate's house.
He and the constable were as excited as I to see the knife and hear
what I'd told them about the spot near the canal. We went together
back to the place I'd marked, the constable on foot, the magistrate
driving himself in a one-horse cart.

The two men speculated over the crushed,
bloodstained grass, and I showed them exactly where I'd found the
knife. I told them my theory that the murderer had taken the body
up the canal in a small boat. They were less inclined to believe
that, but agreed that they could see no evidence that the body had
gotten into the lock any other way.

They also agreed with me that the knife was
made for butchering or cutting up meat for cooking. The constable
was given the task of wandering through Sudbury and the nearby
villages inquiring who had lost a knife.

I could do little more than point them to the
spot and tell them what I thought. They were much interested in the
area, less so in my opinions.