Riot Most Uncouth (25 page)

Might thank the pang that made it less.

We loathe what none are left to share:

Even bliss—'t were woe alone to bear;

The heart once left thus desolate

Must fly at last for ease—to hate.

—
Lord Byron,
The Giaour

“Do you suppose that, just before he died, Mr. Dingle's life passed before his eyes, and he realized, in that ultimate moment, what a terrible bore he was?” I asked Angus.

“Who can say what any of us will see, afore we pass beyond that threshold.”

“At least his departure was interesting.”

Angus chuckled. “That it was, though I don't know that he appreciated it.”

“Of course he wouldn't,” I said. “He lacked refined sensibilities.”

“Not all of us have the time or the resources to devote ourselves to being interesting or refined, you know,” Angus said. He pushed out his stout chest as he spoke.

“I apologize. I meant you no offense.”

“If I may ask, what passed through your mind, Lord Byron, as the stagecoach crashed? Did you regret your sins?”

“Only the ones I hadn't yet got around to committing,” I said, and I drank again and peered at Angus over the lip of the flask. “What brings a man to volunteer himself as a constable, and to spend his evenings patrolling country roads, hunting for bandits?”

Angus took the whisky back from me and swallowed some of it. “What are those creatures called that you collect books about?”

I supposed my archive of dark lore was no longer much of a secret. “Vampires,” I said.

“Yes, vampires. I hunt for bandits, and you hunt for vampires.”

I pictured Knifing hacking with an ax at the locked doors of my black bookcase. I couldn't quite visualize it; the investigator's tight-fitting suits left him with an insufficient range of motion to undertake such a task. I blinked, took the flask back, and had another drink. Then I pictured Angus breaking open the cabinet while Knifing watched. “You searched my rooms, I gather?”

“In fact, we did not,” Angus said. “Knifing said you were innocent, so he wasn't interested at all in the contents of your residence. Dingle didn't look around much either, though Knifing said he should have, if he believed you to be guilty.”

“How did you know about the vampire books, then?”

“Violet Tower kept a diary. She thought about you quite a bit, and I have to say, she was concerned by your fixations. Mr. Knifing and I know all about the vampires. And about your father.”

“Of course you do. Remind me never again to share a confidence with a woman.”

“I haven't caught any bandits,” he said. “Do you suppose you'll catch a vampire?”

He gave me his flask again, and I had another drink. “It's not the catching that matters,” I said. “Only the hunting.”

“But do you really believe in such creatures?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I try to. I like being the man who believes.”

He let a long silence pass between us, and then he sighed loudly. “I had a daughter—I mean, I still have a daughter, but I had another daughter, Iris. My oldest,” he said. “She was lovely to look at, and I don't just say that as her father. Everyone thought so.” When he spoke, his eyes did not meet mine, for his attention was focused someplace beyond me, off toward the horizon, or into the past.

I looked critically at his rough, leathery features; at his round and ample gut. His misshapen nose and lumpy cheeks reminded me of the bulges and protuberances one might find on a large, strange potato.

“You seem surprised my daughter was beautiful,” Angus said. “But I was quite handsome before I ruined my face with drink and my body with food and sloth. You'll not keep your own fine features for long if you continue to live the way you live.”

“The way I live, I don't expect to need them for long,” I said, and since I was still holding the flask, I drank from it again. He gestured toward me, and I handed it back to him.

“As I said, my daughter was very beautiful, and the men from the College started noticing her once she was around thirteen or fourteen. Of course, the rarefied university sort would never marry a girl with a father like me, no matter how pretty she was.”

I rubbed gingerly at my bruised wrists. “What is your trade, Angus, when you aren't hunting bandits or guarding murder scenes?”

“I'm a carpenter,” he said.

“So, you build houses and things?”

“No, I'm more of a craftsman. I make furniture. Chairs and bed-frames and tables. Plain ones, mostly, for ordinary folk. But I've got a bit of a talent for delicate carving. My hand is quite steady when I'm sober, and I've been known to make some fine pieces. The university commissioned some chairs from me a few years ago. In fact, I saw one of them in your parlor. How did it end up there?”

“Did you make my dining room table?” I asked, ignoring his question.

“I did. You came into my workshop yourself and bought it, when you first moved to Cambridge. You told me who you were and where to send it, and you said Mr. Hanson out of London would see to my payment, though the bill remained in arrears for quite some time.”

If he'd made my table, he'd certainly made the identical one at which the corpse of Jerome Tower had been seated. Angus had probably also carved the bedpost we'd found Violet's corpse hanging from. This was, at the very least, a strange coincidence. Knifing had hinted that the table was significant, and he'd joked that he might arrest the constable. Maybe he knew something I didn't.

Angus spent his nights patrolling the streets of Cambridge. He was obsessed, apparently, with his lovely daughter, of whom he spoke in the past tense. Maybe I was sitting in the dirt, drinking with a lunatic; a man driven to madness and violence by grief over some past loss. It did not seem far-fetched at all to me, after the bloody events of that evening, to think that Angus might have murdered Felicity.

He'd been the first to happen upon the corpses of Dingle and the carriage driver, and he'd figured out where to look for the coach. If he wasn't the one who'd shot them, it was a stroke of excellent luck that he'd chosen this night to patrol this highway; there were several roads heading out of Cambridge in different directions. The buffoonish constable had, just by happenstance, wandered down the right road, and discovered the corpses of two murder victims, who some mysterious marksman had cut down with two impossible shots.

I feared the whisky he'd given me was poison, but he'd drunk from the flask himself, so that seemed unlikely. It could be that he intended to strangle or smother or beat me to death, and then claim he'd found me dead in the wreckage when Knifing arrived. Under normal circumstances, I could have fought him off, for though he was heavier than I, he was quite unfit. But I was hurt, and I didn't know how much my wounds might impair me if I had to defend myself. I tried to rise, and found my limbs unsteady.

“Are you going somewhere?” Angus asked.

“I'm in quite a bit of pain,” I said, slumping back to the ground.

“Have this for it,” Angus said, and handed me the flask again. I hesitated for a moment, and then I drained the last of the warm backwash. It was thin and tasted metallic. I returned the empty vessel to its owner.

“Tell me about your daughter,” I said. It seemed best to keep him talking, since I was in no condition to fight or flee.

“Oh, Iris. Yes, quite pretty, she was. Caught a lot of lecherous glances from the undergraduates, and a few from the Fellows as well. I was worried for her. I protected her as best I could, but those men had seen a lot of the world, and that made them alluring to a young girl. There was one, though, a lad called Mr. Quincy Hawthorne, who was kind enough. He saw that Iris was from a family of decent people, and ceased his lewd advances. Acted real proper. Of course, like I said, the College men are all destined for better matches than town girls. Mr. Hawthorne was the younger child of Lord Teddington, which made him the next in line until his brother's wife birthed a son. So he was obliged to marry a proper lady. But he had a friend in London he thought might be a smart match for my daughter, a fellow named Chester Marigold. Marigold was common folk, but his father was a merchant of some sort, who'd been in business with Teddington, and the children had played together from a young age. Young Mr. Hawthorne wrote Chester a letter and drew a picture of Iris. A real likeness; quite a talented young man, that Mr. Hawthorne was. Anyway, Chester wrote back from London, and shortly thereafter, I exchanged correspondence with his father. The Marigolds seemed to be nice people, and Chester was awfully keen on the drawing, so we began to make arrangements. My wife, Maisey, was so pleased. The Marigolds weren't wellborn, you understand, but they'd made good. They moved in a better circle. The marriage would have been a step up for my daughter. A rosy future.”

“I've got an idea of where this is going,” I said.

“Yes, but just let me tell it,” said Angus.

“All right.”

“Maisey hired a carriage and set out for London. The driver was an older gent. He seemed amiable enough, but a bit infirm. He had one guard who rode along with him. Portly fellow, as I remember.”

“They never got there, did they?”

“I didn't know nothing had gone wrong until eight days later, when I received a message from Mr. Marigold inquiring as to why they'd not arrived. I organized a search party and scouted the highway. We didn't have nobody like Mr. Knifing helping us, but I was touched that Mr. Quincy Hawthorne and some of the other young men from the College volunteered. On the third day of looking, I made inquiries at a house twenty-odd miles out of town. The farmer there had spotted smoke rising from a disused tract of land. We looked around there, and found the wheel-tracks in the grass, leading off the road. The wreck of the carriage was hidden in the woods.”

He shook the flask, and then remembered it was empty.

“I should have known from the smell, but when I first saw them, I didn't even realize I was looking at bodies,” Angus whispered. “The driver. The guard. My wife. She had lain there unburied four or five days, and this was in the peak of summer. Her face was unrecognizable because the whole corpse was covered in an undulating carpet of black.”

“Black?” I asked.

“Flies,” he said. There was a quaver in his voice. “And maggots in the flesh. I recognized her only by her wedding ring. It was so unimpressive, I guess her killers didn't bother to chop off her finger to get at it.”

“My God.”

“Deeper in the woods, we found Iris. Because of the decomposition, we couldn't know for sure, but old Mr. Bartholomew, the undertaker, said there were ligatures and wounds that suggested they'd done things, that they'd—” Here, he broke down into sobs.

“I'm sorry, Angus,” I said. “I had no idea.”

“I'd have killed myself, I think, if it weren't for Crystal, my younger one. In a few more years, she'll be married, I suppose, and I'll have nothing left to live for.”

“Oh, don't say that,” I said. I leaned forward and patted him on the knee. “You'll still have whisky.”

“I hope it don't offend you to hear me say it, but you and I aren't so different,” Angus said.

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“I didn't fully realize it until Mr. Knifing found Mrs. Tower's diary, but I reckon I knew all along why you couldn't stay away from the murder scene. It's the same reason I volunteered to be constable. The same reason I patrol these lonesome highways with my musket. You're looking for revenge.”

“I'm looking for answers.”

“Call it what you will.”

I thought about that for a minute. Then I asked: “What's your surname, Angus the Constable?”

“Buford. I'm Angus Buford.”

I smiled. “Well, I'm pleased to know you, Angus Buford.”

“Likewise, I suppose, Lord Byron.”

 

Chapter 34

For
me,
degenerate modern wretch,

Though in the genial month of May,

My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,

And think I've done a feat to-day.

But since he cross'd the rapid tide,

According to the doubtful story,

To woo,—and—Lord knows what beside,

And swam for Love, as I for Glory

—
Lord Byron,
“Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos”

There's a great old legend about a boy from Abydos named Leander who fell in love with a priestess of Aphrodite named Hero. Hero dwelt in a tower in Sestos, and between Sestos and Abydos lay the Hellespont.

The Hellespont is one of the most treacherous straits ever documented by cartography or mythology, and Leander swam across it every night to rendezvous with his lover. Hero hung a lamp in the window of her tower, and its light guided him to her.

I remember my mother telling me about Leander and Hero as she tucked me beneath my tattered blanket in the rooms where we lived in Aberdeen, before I inherited Newstead. Mad Jack had already been gone a year, but my mother told me he was coming back, and I believed her. She told me love is a beacon, like Hero's lantern, and just as Poseidon's rage couldn't keep Leander from his beloved, my father's affection for us was mightier than any force in nature, and it would bring him inexorably home to us.

This is how boys are shaped into the men they are to be. When I was small, my mother told me bedtime stories, and when I grew older, I spent my sleepless nights drinking and lying to myself.

But here is the truth: On the third of May in 1810, I visited the place where Hero's tower stood, and I looked into the treacherous strait between the Aegean and the Propontis. It was mostly white-capped churn slamming against jagged rocks, and from my perspective, there was only one rational thing to do. I stripped my clothing off, and I walked into the water.