Shadow of the Past Read online

  ‘Be so good as to furnish me with the address that you have discovered, Mr Mullins. Then I can decide what action to take. And you, my good friend, may post back to London, happy in the knowledge of a job well done.’

  ‘You’re no longer wishful for me to question them? Well, if that don’t beat cockfighting!’ He fixed me again. ‘I suspicioned all along you just wanted to know their whereabouts – that all that stuff about a robbery was cock and bull.’

  I raised a chilly eyebrow. ‘Indeed I was robbed in the Larwoods’ very backyard – and your colleagues at Bow Street saw my injuries with their own eyes. But as a Christian, I must practise forgiveness.’ I allowed a sanctimonious note to warm my voice, not daring the while to meet Jem’s eye.

  ‘So what would you be wanting to know their whereabouts for? If I might make so bold?’

  My smile verged on the unctuous. ‘Just because I do not wish the miscreants to be pursued with the full force of the law, Mr Mullins, does not mean that I am happy for them to retain my watch. I shall write to them asking them to return it; if they do, than I shall consider the matter closed.’ Glancing out of the window, I observed, ‘Oh, dear, now the snowflakes come not as single spies but in battalions.’

  ‘Like sorrows, according to the Bard,’ Mullins reflected, his chin at a slightly challenging angle.

  I bowed my appreciation. This man was no less a scholar than Jem.

  He plainly thought of me as no more than his equal. ‘Seems to me it’s very strange that you should only have bethought yourself of a bit Christian forgiveness when I’ve done all the hard work for you. But then, I’m not man of the cloth, so I wouldn’t know about such things, would I?’

  ‘How I would have liked to employ Mullins further,’ I confessed to Jem as we waved the Runner on his way. ‘He knew that while I might have been telling the truth, I was far from telling the whole truth. I nearly made a mull of the whole thing, didn’t I?’ I added frankly.

  Jem kindly ignored the last question. ‘He’s a downy one, awake on every suit, no doubt about it, for all he feigns to be a buffle-headed clunch. It was a good idea,’ he conceded with a grin I had not seen for some time, ‘to bring him into Leamington and see him on to the coach. It would not have done for him to go sniffing round the village, making enquiries about our activities. He’ll be pleased to return in some luxury to his family for the festive season – but I doubt we’ve seen the last of him, Toby.’

  ‘I fear you are right. I just hope we reach Dawlish before he does.’

  ‘You’re not thinking of setting out before Christmas?’

  ‘Indeed no. And not in this snow, either.’

  ‘They say in the village it will not last above two days, and not lie then. Where they get this intelligence from I know not, but they always seem correct in their predictions. If they are, her ladyship’s Christmas party should be safe, thank the Lord.’

  ‘As to that, amen. But as soon as the festival is over – assuming the roads are passable – we must be on our way.’ I looked at the shop fronts, lit by flambeaux. ‘I think we have time, before we must return to the rectory, to make a few purchases for all the children, do not you? Their parents will have no money to spare, and what little they scrape together will be for useful and sensible items like boots.’

  He clapped me on the shoulder. ‘I see oranges over there. And tops and whips…’

  All too many landlords thought that by giving a single lavish Christmas party they made up for underpaying and badly housing their labourers for the rest of the year. A little largesse in the form of copious quantities of beef and ale was supposed to compensate for the inadequacies of the diurnal diet. Lady Chase, of course, personified bountiful generosity, but nonetheless accepted my suggestion that an extra celebration might not go amiss. I thought planning the event might take her mind off Hugo, still residing in Shropshire.

  Furnival had presented his usual gloomy face when apprised of her decision, but now the mummers were engaged and the carol singers particularly invited to sing at the Hall. The party itself was to be held on Christmas Eve, all those able adjourning afterwards, at Lady Chase’s suggestion, to Midnight Communion. To my enormous pleasure, Lady Dorothea even asked if she might augment the little band playing for the service by taking her place at the organ.

  Ashamed of my lingering folly, I was yet impelled to solicit her hand for one of the dances at the estate party, as she stood with the other ladies of the household receiving our guests. There rose from them all an overwhelming odour of mothballs and damp. The females’ gowns were so garish as to suggest that old garments had been recently dyed to lift the mood. In contrast, and such a contrast, Lady Dorothea wore a soft green overdress over a slip of a slightly paler hue, and carried an ivory fan. Her curls shone with brushing and good health.

  With my enquiry I might as well have pulled a blind down over her face. After a moment, however, she recovered her gaiety. ‘Surely you should be engaged in leading a rustic maiden through the dance. Polly Freeman now – she would be what I hear the lads call a fine armful. Or Lucy Croft – if you do not object to her squint, of course.’ She made play with her own fine eyes to ensure that I noted the difference.

  I could not forbear laughing. And yet even in the heady moment I wished she had not made a butt of the girls who had made such an effort, far greater than hers since they lacked both her beauty and her purse.

  ‘Indeed, I will dance with as many maidens as I can, provided their swains do not monopolise them – they are unaware that one should not dance more than two dances with the same partner. But I would be more than honoured if you would grant me the privilege of leading you into a set.’

  Perhaps Furnival, standing behind us, blamed me in part at least for the revelry on the floor and the bounty on the tables. I could not otherwise explain what for a second appeared to be a look of cold hatred in our direction. But it seemed he was merely suffering one of his arthritic twinges, for he hobbled across to me to shake my hand and wish me the compliments of the season.

  ‘I have not welcomed you back after your travels,’ he said. ‘I trust your relative is recovered.’

  ‘She ever enjoyed indifferent health,’ I said with a deprecatory smile.

  ‘And her ladyship’s old nurse?’

  ‘A doughty dame, who resented our anxiety as much as she welcomed our presence. Thank goodness her ladyship has you to rely on when she has these strange starts, Furnival.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I do my poor best.’

  Lady Dorothea and I joined with a will in the first of the country dances she had promised me. However, she suggested we sit out for the second, and she led the way into the blue saloon, where refreshments had been set aside for the family – a break with tradition of which I did not approve, preferring that on one day at least we should all be social equals.

  ‘When you look so fine in evening dress,’ she said with a flirtatious smile, ‘I wish you would tell me what persuaded you to become a clergyman. I asked you once, but you were notably evasive. Now, pray tell me. Was it simply because that is the lot of the youngest son?’ She took a glass of champagne from a convenient tray and toasted me with it, her eyes shining above the rim.

  I returned the gesture, but with a heavy heart. ‘Do you think the church is never chosen for its own sake?’ I could not but wonder why she had chosen this particular night to question me again. Had some rumour of my activities somehow reached her, in particular my free use of my family’s house?

  ‘Never is a heavy word. But yes, in the never of conversation, which means not very often, I do think it. For a man should distinguish himself. A man might distinguish himself in the army, better still the navy, but not in the church. A clergyman is nothing.’

  ‘Does nothing have the same gradations as never? I confess, Lady Dorothea, that I shall always be nothing as far as leading the ton or making a fortune on ’Change are concerned. But I cannot call what I am doing in the sphere in which I find myself nothing
. I am entrusted with my Master’s work: caring for my flock, both individually and collectively. I am responsible for inculcating good principles, distributing the necessities of life—’

  ‘As to that, a schoolmaster could do the first, and Lady Chase makes it her business to do the latter.’

  ‘But would either endeavour to teach not just good manners, but the difference between good and evil? Lady Chase offers earthly comfort, may God bless her for it, but I am privileged to offer the promise of heaven.’ In an attempt to reduce the tension between us, I added with a smile, ‘Which you shall hear tonight, when you play for our service.’

  ‘Oh, as to that—’ For a long moment I feared that she was about to break her promise. Perhaps she was. But the petulance faded. ‘Oh, as to that, I shall be too embarrassed by my mistakes to listen to any sermon. Who is operating the bellows for me?’

  ‘Simon Clark – a good reliable man. And musical, too, if his performance in the dance is anything to judge by. Did you not see him almost whirling Dr Hansard’s cook off her feet? Do you not think that they will make a match of it?’

  She looked at me quite blankly; it was clear she did not know of whom I was speaking.

  ‘Perhaps we should return?’ I offered her my arm, all too conscious that the unchaperoned conversation was entirely unsatisfactory to both sides.

  She took it with a smile, but drew me to an immediate halt. ‘If a church, a parish, you must have, why not a London one, where your light may shine? Surely your family has influence.’

  I chose to ignore the last sentence. How she had discovered what I preferred to keep hidden, I knew not. But it was a topic I was not prepared to engage in. ‘Were I a fine preacher, perhaps I might be tempted. But as to setting an example, getting to know one’s congregation, the city – any city – offers infertile ground. I would be lost in the crowds in London. Here I am known and – I like to think – observed. My manners, indeed, my conduct, must at all times be above reproach.’

  ‘Like Caesar’s wife,’ she agreed, without enthusiasm, or, I fear, comprehension. Or perhaps she understood all too well. ‘And what is to be the topic of your sermon, Parson Campion? Will it keep those rustics awake?’ She pointed to two old gaffers, nodding over their jugs of ale.

  The church was crammed, the warmth of the braziers Simon had set up being supplemented by the press of bodies. The ancient building was decorated with garlands Edmund assured me derived from an older, pagan tradition, but since the beauty brought smiles of joy to the faces of folk who had all too little to admire in their lives, I was sure the Almighty would look down with approval – just as He did on the occasional discords from the little band and the strained breathiness of the choir. What He thought of Lady Dorothea’s performance I cannot tell. Even to think of the lady caused me such a confusion of anger and yearning and desire, all fuelled by champagne, that I kept my mind resolutely on the purpose of our gathering. Even during my sermon, when I tried to look into the face of each in the congregation in turn, I averted my gaze from her.

  At least, God willing, I would be able to put a safe distance between us very shortly. The weather had set in fair, as the villagers had foretold, and Jem and I had resolved to set out in but two days. Perhaps it was the thought of our journey that made my references to the Slaughter of the Innocents and the Flight into Egypt all the more heartfelt.

  Even Furnival thanked me as he left the church, in particular congratulating me on my sermon. To him and too all the others alike, I wished a most joyful Christmas and prosperous New Year.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ‘So that is stage coach travel,’ I observed, easing my cramped and chilly limbs to the terra firma of the yard of the London Inn, a spacious modern building, clinging to a hillside only yards from the sea at Dawlish.

  As the villagers had predicted, the snow had gone as swiftly as it had come, and we had set off for Devon accordingly.

  We had spent more hours than I cared to recall aboard a vehicle apparently determined to stick in the snows of the uplands, or get bogged down where the thaw had set in. The forbidding hills of Dartmoor, which we could see in the distance as we crossed the smaller but hardly less awe-inspiring Haldon Moor, were still swathed in snow.

  ‘It is indeed,’ Jem said as he joined me joined me. The experience was new to him too, but was at the opposite extreme from mine. I had been used to making my journeys in the comfort of one of our family’s luxurious chaises; his had been to accompany them, sometimes with what all too frequently in my family became a veritable luggage train, or leading my horses.

  There had no question of his appearing as my groom on this trip. He was Mr James Yeomans again, my friend – though not this time feigning holy orders. Lady Chase’s Christmas present to him, a mark of gratitude, she insisted, for his tender care of Lord Chase, had been a fine suit of clothes, with appropriate shoes and boots. Dear Mrs Hansard had made him some shirts with her own hands.

  ‘Do you think we shall ever get rid of the smell of onion?’ I asked. We had sat for sixty miles beside a farmer’s daughter with the ear-ache and a baked onion pressed to her head.

  ‘I doubt it. I believe it has permeated my very skin!’

  ‘For a complete cleanse, we should try the sea-bathing,’ I agreed, to have my suggestion greeted by the derisory snort of laughter I had hoped for. Dawlish might be milder than Warwickshire, but the afternoon sky over the brilliant sea was that deep clear blue that in winter presages a sharp frost. ‘Pray, Jem, would you see if you can unearth our baggage? I will bespeak rooms for us.’

  The serving maid who greeted us pulled a doubtful face when I requested a private sitting room in addition to two bed chambers. I resorted, as sometimes to my shame I did when I wished to win an argument, to imitating my father. Such a sudden access of hauteur sent her scurrying for the landlord. In welcome contrast to the girl, Mr Veale was all that was courteous and obliging.

  Both the rooms his wife curtsied us into were clean and well appointed, and I had no doubt that the sheets had been properly aired. Ordering dinner, we set forth swiftly to take advantage of the fading light to see what there was of Dawlish, leaving the sea to our left as we headed inland.

  ‘The whole place is a veritable builder’s yard,’ he said in disgust, surveying the work in progress all around us.

  There were many fine new residences wherever one looked, with many more half built.

  ‘Indeed – but with these marshes lying between the village and the sea one could not imagine it to be a healthy place.’

  Even as we stared down from a convenient bridge at the stream bisecting the town, a gentleman we took to be a resident accosted us pleasantly, inviting us to see how much work had been done to repair the damage done by what he referred to as the floods.

  ‘To be sure,’ said he, in the slow warm accent of a Devonian, ‘it was hoped that by confining Dawlish Water – or as the villagers call it, the Brook, as if there were only one in the kingdom – to a single stream we would make a pleasant park. But we had terrible floods two years back, and all the good work was undone. But now we are trying again, with weirs – do you see that one there? – to stem the flow.’

  ‘You are doubly at risk, I take it,’ said Jem, ‘from the waters coming down from the moor, and the sea making incursions inland?’

  ‘Exactly so. And there are other streams too – those propelling our watermills. But if we are to develop the town to its fullest – and we have wonderful sea bathing here for gentlemen such as yourselves, with bathing huts along the eastward shore – we must improve the air.’

  ‘And while you have marshes, you have miasmas?’ I observed.

  ‘And many rheumatic complaints. There is quite a little pilgrimage from here to Bath every winter. ’Tis much easier now the stage comes here – why, only two years ago, the nearest the stage stopped was Chudleigh. The rest of the journey had to be made by horse.’

  I snorted. ‘If the invalids’ journeys are anything like ours,
they will need to recuperate on their return – from bruises and bangs.’

  ‘Dr Penhallow holds such agitation of the vital organs to be extremely healthy,’ our interlocutor assured us, perhaps offended.

  It was now so dark as to give an excuse to move away. As we doffed our hats, he produced a pasteboard card. ‘Samuel Twiss, Builder, at your service,’ he declared, swiftly recovering his composure in the interest of potential profit.

  We said all that was proper, returning to the inn to be greeted by a roaring fire and a welcome bowl of hot punch.

  The following day being the Sabbath, there was nothing we could do to pursue our enquiries. We took the path beside the brook, on which the bright sun made dazzling patterns, to St Gregory’s, a church in a quite alarming state of dilapidation. There was a very small congregation for matins: I hoped and prayed that there was a better attendance back at Moreton St Jude, where one of Toone’s friends, a man with a fine reputation as a preacher, was standing in for me. The harassed-looking parson was a man in his later thirties. Identifying me by my bands as a brother clergyman, he greeted me warmly, but with such an apologetic air, I truly felt for him.

  ‘There must – shall – be a subscription started to repair, even replace this poor House of God,’ he assured me.

  ‘Indeed, you must have many new residents who will be delighted to assist you,’ I observed.

  He spread his hands in a speaking gesture. It was true, I had to admit, that not many of the occupants of the fine houses had wanted to commit their presence to the old church, as if it were beneath them, let alone their money to a new one. ‘All too many of the properties are merely to be rented out for the summer,’ he continued, ‘to people leaving London when it becomes too hot and unhealthy there. I understand that a great number of naval officers are also likely to grace us with their presence, here and in Teignmouth, over the great hill, there, or across the river in Exmouth. Some will be true gentlemen, of course, but others will merely be fighting men laden with prize money.’