A Corpse in Shining Armour (10 page)

‘I’m sorry, I used a lot of it.’

‘Don’t worry. Keep it.’

I checked that Mrs Martley was not at home and then took her upstairs to help pack. Naturally, Mr Lomax hadn’t given me any
helpful details like whether the water bailiff’s cottage had its own linen, so I took some of our second-best sheets, pillowslips
and towels and folded them into a trunk. By the time I’d added a tin of biscuits and a slab of portable soup, the spirit stove
and kettle, my clothes, a few books and the painting materials, it was some weight. With difficulty, we manoeuvred it down
the stairs together and put it near the gate to the yard, to be collected by a carter’s service as I’d arranged, and deposited
to await our arrival at the Bear. There’d be no room for such bulky luggage on the stage. Then I took Tabby to my favourite
secondhand clothes shop, where we fitted her out with another grey cotton dress nearer her own size, two white aprons, two
white caps, a nightdress, and a carpet bag to carry them all. None of the second-hand shoes would do, so some of Mr Lomax’s
money had to go on a pair of new black shoes from the cobbler’s shop. (I comforted myself that it all came from the Brinkburn
family’s coal mines in the end, so I should feel no guilt.) The shoes looked lumpish and clumsy to me, but after the boots
they seemed to her ridiculously light. She capered a few steps on the pavement.

‘I feel like my feet’s flying away from me.’

‘People are looking at us,’ I said.

I didn’t like to curb her exuberance, but in my business I often needed to blend into the background. A dancing lady’s maid
wouldn’t help.

By the time I’d got her back to Abel Yard it was late afternoon. I remembered that Celia was expecting me to call, so dashed
off a note to her saying that I’d be out of town for a few days. In case she wanted to write to me, letters could be addressed
care of the mail office in Maidenhead. I gave the note to Tabby to deliver. That left just enough time for the most important
part of my preparations. I went alone, crossing Park Lane, walking northwards through the park in golden sunlight, towards
Bayswater Road. There weren’t many people in the park because the fashionable had finished their afternoon promenades on horseback
or in carriages and gone home to change for dinner. That meant the end of the day’s work for their horses. By the time I reached
the livery stables where Amos Legge worked and Rancie lodged, the grooms and boys were in the middle of the evening’s routine,
cleaning tack, filling hay nets and water buckets. I asked for Mr Legge and was directed to the fodder room. He was measuring
out buckets of oats, barley, bran and split peas to each horse’s individual needs, giving them to the boys to distribute as
instructed. It was responsible work. Amos was one of the mainstays of the stable now, paid accordingly, as you could guess
from the fine quality of his boots and breeches. I stood outside the fodder room until the last of the boys had gone. Amos
put the lid down on the oat bin, secured it with a lead weight to keep out the rats, and turned to me, beaming.

‘Haven’t seen you for a few days, Miss Lane. You all right, then?’

He dusted down an old wooden chair and invited me to sit down.

‘Yes, thank you. I’ve been pretty busy.’

‘That business of the man in the crate? I heard you were there.’

Nothing escaped Amos. As long as society depended on horses, grooms would be at the hub of everything. They might be silent
in front of their customers, but they listened and gossiped over their pints in the evening. Thanks to Amos, I had access
to that network and often found out more there than in offices or drawing rooms.

‘What else did you hear?’ I said.

‘Not a lot. He was a bit of a bad ’un by most accounts–drink and so forth.’

‘Did you hear that from Miles Brinkburn?’

‘No. He didn’t talk about it and neither did I. Just what people are saying.’

‘You’ve met Miles Brinkburn since it happened, then?’

‘I was out at the Eyre Arms with him this morning, having another practice.’

‘How did he do?’

‘No better than middling. I had to hold back, otherwise I’d have had him out of the saddle again.’

‘Did he seem downcast or worried?’

‘I wouldn’t say so, no. His normal self, quite cheerful like.’

So Miles Brinkburn had good powers of recovery.

‘What kind of armour was he wearing?’

‘The same you saw him in, the suit he’d hired from Pratt’s. I took particular note of that.’

Because he knew I’d ask. It would have been callous of Miles Brinkburn to wear the ancestral armour after what had happened.

‘What about Stephen Brinkburn–was he there?’

‘No. I heard their friends have been trying to keep them apart, after what happened. I’ll be seeing Mr Stephen tomorrow. He
wants me to look out for a couple of new horses for him.’

By common consent, we got up and strolled across the yard to Rancie’s box. She was eating her feed, but looked up and blew
hrrrr through her nostrils when she saw me. Her black cat watched her, golden-eyed, from the hay manger.

‘I’m going out of town for a few days,’ I said to Amos.

‘So I hear. The
Emerald
to Bristol, seven o’clock tomorrow morning, getting down at Maidenhead. They’re trying out a new lead horse as far as Hounslow,
so I hope you have a smooth journey.’

‘Now how did you know all that?’

‘I’ve got a friend helps out here sometimes, sold a horse to the man who works at the Spread Eagle. He knows the lad who’s
a clerk in the office where they keep the passenger lists.’

No point in asking why the lad noticed my name. Amos’s network could probably tag each individual sparrow.

‘I don’t know how long I’ll be away,’ I said. ‘Do you think you could keep an eye on the Brinkburn brothers for me, and let
me know if anything else happens?’

‘Surely. I can send word down by my friends as far as Maidenhead. Can you pick messages up from the Bear? If not, there’s
probably a carter goes out to Brinkburn Hall.’

‘But I haven’t told you where…’

I stopped. He was laughing at me. It wasn’t often, these days, that he could surprise me by what he knew or guessed.

‘Well, that’s where the man in the crate came from, isn’t it?’ he said, pretending innocence.

‘I’m not supposed to be thinking about him. It’s the other matter.’

‘Well, I hope you get it fettled, then. It’s a bad business.’

Rancie had finished her feed now and come up to the half-door to join us. I stroked her head, tracing the comma-shaped blaze
with my fingers.

‘I wish I could take you with me,’ I said to her.

‘Don’t you worry, I’ll look after her,’ Amos said. ‘And I’ll make sure nobody rides her unless she’s got hands lighter than
the feathers in a lady’s hat.’

I gave her a last stroke, said goodbye to Amos and walked back home across the park. The carriage mender was just shutting
up his shop. He kindly agreed that Tabby could spend the night in an old landau awaiting repair in his store shed. I didn’t
want to spoil the good work by having her curl up in the shed by the midden, but I knew Mrs Martley wouldn’t tolerate her
in the house. I fetched an old blanket, introduced Tabby to her temporary lodgings and reminded her that we’d have to start
out at five o’clock in the morning to get to Gracechurch Street in the City in time to catch the stage. Upstairs, Mrs Martley
had prepared Irish stew for our supper.

‘You’re gallivanting off again, then?’

‘Yes, I’m gallivanting. Not very far and not for long, I hope. I’ll call at the mail office when I can, in case there’s any
news of Jenny.’

‘I hope you’ll bring our sheets back.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘And you look after yourself.’

Tabby and I walked to Piccadilly in the morning and took the local stage to the City. At this hour there were few people on
the streets apart from crossing sweepers, patrolling policemen and costermongers trundling their barrows out early to secure
the best pitches. Tabby clutched my arm when the horses broke into a fast trot along the Strand.

‘Are they running away with us?’

‘Of course not. Haven’t you ever ridden in a coach before?’

She bit her lip and shook her head. We got down at Gracechurch Street and walked to the Spread Eagle, with Tabby carrying
my carpet bag as well as her own. The huge coaching yard there was in its usual state of bustle, full of passengers anxious
in case they were put on the wrong coach, harassed clerks with boarding lists and ostlers yelling to people to get out of
the way as they backed horses into shafts. As well as our
Emerald
, bound for Bristol and points between, there were half a dozen coaches due out at about the same time: the
Courier
, heading for Birmingham, the
Sovereign
for Brighton, the
Magnet
for Cheltenham, the
Retaliator
for Gloucester, the
Star of Brunswick
for Portsmouth, the
Express
for Gosport. The air was full of horse smells and all the excitement of the start of journeys. I left Tabby on a bench by
the wall with our bags and strolled from coach to coach, admiring their bright paintwork and the glossy coats of the horses,
matching the shine of the coachmen’s boots. After a while the cry of ‘Passengers for the
Emerald
’ went up, and we took our places on board.

The Spread Eagle coachyard was one of several in the same area, all contributing their coaches to the morning rush, so the
congestion, whinnying and shouting when they all ground on to the narrow streets, manoeuvring for precedence, was beyond belief.
It was one of the reasons why coaches very seldom achieved the journey times advertised by their proprietors. But the new
lead mare must have been good at her business because, once clear of the confusion, we covered the twelve miles to the first
stage at Hounslow in an hour and a half. After Hounslow, the only other inside passengers were a middle-aged couple and a
man in black who looked like a lawyer or a doctor. Throughout the journey, Tabby sat by the window, eyes wide, carpet bag
clutched on her lap. She was so quiet that I thought she might be terrified by the experience. We arrived at Maidenhead Bridge
only ten minutes behind time, three hours and twenty minutes after leaving London. Our coach had to halt in the middle of
the bridge because of some obstruction at the other end. I looked down at the river bank, wondering if a roof visible among
the trees to our left might be Brinkburn Hall. Then Tabby let out a cry, the first sound she’d made since leaving London.

‘Look. What is it?’

We all looked where she was pointing. The thing we saw was as strange to me as it must have been to Tabby. On a level with
us, perhaps half a mile away, a great horizontal column of whiteness was heading across the river, like a cloud that had somehow
developed a sense of purpose and the speed of a bolting horse. A black line moved under the cloud, keeping pace with it. Below
the black line, a more solid line of red remained motionless, the whole thing standing out against the blue sky. In that first
surprised moment, I couldn’t have answered Tabby’s question. It was the middle-aged man who said: ‘It’s the
North Star
.’

I remembered then. The
North Star
was the Great Western’s locomotive. I’d even seen it close to, standing at the end of its track in Paddington, but I’d never
witnessed it in motion and certainly not in this phenomenon of flying, apparently in mid air. Once the first visual shock
had worn off, I thought of what Mr Lomax had said about the Great Western’s monstrously large bridge over the Thames. Only
from here it looked more wonderful than monstrous, a breathtaking leap of red brickwork over the wide river from bank to bank.

‘That must be one of their trial runs,’ the middle-aged man said. ‘They’re not opening the Maidenhead to Twyford section to
passengers until next month.’

So far, passengers could be drawn behind the
North Star
only from Paddington to the riverside opposite Maidenhead. I supposed Tabby and I could have travelled that way, but it simply
hadn’t occurred to me. The cloud of steam hung over the bridge for some time after the locomotive had gone, then gradually
melted away. The obstruction cleared itself and the
Emerald
trotted on over the old stone bridge that seemed so undramatic in comparison, up the main street to the yard of the Bear
Hotel. It was well accustomed to the needs of coach travellers and when I asked about transport to the cottage on the Brinkburn
estate, a curricle and driver were promised within an hour. I checked that my trunk had arrived and ordered lamb chops to
be served to us in a side room. After such an early start, we ate with a good appetite.

By noon, we were driving back across the bridge in the curricle, to the Buckinghamshire side, with Tabby perched on the groom’s
seat at the back. There was no locomotive to see this time, only young men on the river, racing each other in rowing boats.
For a few hundred yards we ran back along the main road to London, then turned right on a road between fields and neat hedges.
We must have been going more or less parallel to the river, though it was out of sight. We passed a fine wrought-iron gateway
on our right, and a drive curving to an imposing red-brick house.

‘Is that Brinkburn Hall?’ I said.

‘That’s right, ma’am.’

‘Do you often have to drive people there?’

‘Not very often, ma’am. They keep their own coachman.’

Just past the entrance to the drive, we came to a village with a church, a duck pond and a public house called the Farrier’s
Arms. The houses were mostly brick-built and thatched.

‘They had a funeral there this morning,’ the driver said cheerfully, pointing with his whip at the church and its surrounding
graveyard.

‘Oh yes?’

A funeral was hardly a rare event, after all.

‘The coffin came all the way down from London overnight,’ the driver went on. ‘They buried him straight away, six o’clock
in the morning.’

‘Who was he?’