SV - 03 - Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments (10 page)

'Sergeant,' said Swift gently, 'an officer, when hired, serves his master. Like all servants, he may have a half day off from time to time, or even a Sunday. But he mustn't expect to be paid for working in one house when he lives in another, any more than if he was a butler or valet.'

'Then I ain't to live with Mrs Verity!' said Verity aghast.

'A man doesn't join the force for who he can live with!' said Swift reproachfully. 'But now you know why such good care is taken to avoid the hiring-room. You mayn't be your own master in the division, but you're never less your own master than when on hire.'

'I might a-took the Queen's shilling again and done no worse,' Verity said with a growing sense of grievance.

'So you might,' said Swift, 'and then again you might have took it and been shot like a blackcock in some foreign war. You be thankful for a snug billet, my lad, and that you aren't sleeping tonight under the bridges or the Adelphi arches, like twenty thousand other poor wretches. When a gentleman hires you and pays your board, you've got a lot to think yourself lucky for!'

4

'Course,' said Stringfellow reasonably, 'you can't 'elp feeling for the poor young gentleman. You can't 'elp being sorry that his brother met a bloody end and that self-destruction and all its attendant 'orrors was hinted at.'

Playbills outside the Britannia at Hoxton or the Coburg, advertising the latest melodrama, were Stringfellow's favourite reading and their style was apt to influence his own in speaking of the great issues of life and death.

'It's me I feel sorry for,' said Verity bitterly, 'put to an investigation what the coroner's jury and the constabulary have already finished, 'ow the mischief can it be anything but an accident? The bullet came from the poor young fellow's own gun, which was in his own hand and which hadn't been tampered with. And there was no one in thirty yards of him. He must a-shot 'isself, accident or not.'

' 'e was never victim to the fell demon of self-destruction!' said Stringfellow incredulously. Verity shook his head.

'Not unless there was more to it than appears. Why, he'd got the title and the estates. True, he 'adn't yet got a wife but there was every prospect. He was a well man, 'ealthy and 'olesome I don't see self-destruction in it.'

They stood in the Upper Berkeley Street mews which led to the rear of the Jervis town house. Two kitchen-boys were struggling with a polished wooden box whose lid bore the initials 'W.C.V.' It had accompanied the twelve-year-old Verity from the miner's cottage at Redruth to the grandeur of Lady Linacre's house in the Royal Crescent at Bath, where he was first page and then footman. His father had painted the initials on the lid, with their scrolling and flourishes. His mother had papered the inside with a rose-patterned paper so finely textured that it felt like damask. The varnish was a little cracked and the gloss somewhat dimmed but the sight of the box brought back so many poignant images to his memory that it seemed entirely fitting that it should contain all his worldly possessions. The two boys struggled through the doorway with it and began the ascent of the narrow wooden stairs at the back of the great house, leading to the servants' attics. In one of these little garrets, Verity was to live during the period of his hire by Richard Jervis.

Stringfellow and his son-in-law stood forlornly in the yard, Stringfellow's vehicle, a lumbering square coach in bilious yellow with green wheels and axletree, waiting just behind them. On the door was a faded coat of arms which resembled a dissected bat. Lightning, the old cab-horse, stood with drooping head, his scanty mane and tail twitching as he winced and rattled the harness. An apple-cheeked old woman in cap and apron appeared at the kitchen steps and gestured at the two men.

'Coach!' she shouted.

Stringfellow moved towards her with the rolling gait which his wooden leg gave him.

'I ain't for 'ire just this minute ma'am,' he said apologetically.

'Do have done, then!' said the old woman laughing. 'Course you ain't for hire. Do'ee just put some straw under the animal's feet and take a drop of the right sort.'

Stringfellow's face brightened and he beckoned Verity.

'I'm Mrs Butcher,' said the old woman, 'housekeeper here since the time of old Lord Samuel Jervis, him that was father to Lord Henry and Lord William and Mr Richard.'

They followed her into a pleasant little parlour with a brick floor and a doorway which gave on to the kitchen, showing its stoves and hot closets, its scrubbed pine tables and rows of copper pans. Mrs Butcher opened a corner cupboard and produced a dark bottle and three glasses. She went to a small oak sideboard and returned with an earthenware jug of water and some sugar lumps in a blue and white china bowl. Stringfellow placed seats for the three of them and they sat down round the table.

'A drop of the right sort don't come amiss after a journey,' said Mrs Butcher, winking at Stringfellow.

'I shouldn't say no,' Stringfellow conceded, 'but Mr Verity ain't got much use for it.'

'Just a little drop,' said Mrs Butcher firmly as she prepared the potion, 'a little drop o' gin with cold water and a lump of sugar to take away the sharpness of it.'

They raised their glasses.

'Your 'ealth, Mrs Butcher,' said Stringfellow, taking a long pull at the gin and water, then emitting a contented sigh.

Mrs Butcher turned to Verity.

'And you'm the detective officer that's to bring Lord Henry's murderer to light?'

Verity was thunderstruck that what he had taken to be a confidential assignment was known to the servants of the house.

"oo says there was murder done?' he asked suspiciously. Mrs Butcher pulled a face.

'Someone must a-said it, Mr Verity, or you wouldn't be sitting 'ere now, would you?'

'You seen what was in the papers, Mrs Butcher. The bullet that killed Lord Henry had the marks of his own gun on it. It was fired from his own gun, which was in his hand, and no one in thirty yards of him when it happened.'

He supped at his gin and wiped his moustache on the back of his hand. Mrs Butcher pulled another little face, as though she did not greatly care either way.

'It ain't everything that gets into the papers,' she said.

'Meaning?' asked Verity.

'Meaning,' said Mrs Butcher, 'that I ain't going to repeat gossip and be got in trouble for it. You find what you can find, and if it looks to point towards a certain party, you come and tell me. Then I can say if it matches what I know.'

They drank in silence for a minute or two.

'Mrs Butcher,' said Stringfellow presently,' 'oo might it be as is master of this house?'

'Of old,' said Mrs Butcher, 'it was Lord Samuel Jervis', the house here and the country place at Bole Warren, down
Lewes way. Lord Samuel died and it went to the eldest son, Lord Henry, who was very taken with being a clergyman at Oxford, but never did. Very bookish 'e was. With his head and his money, 'e might a-bin a bishop if he'd gone through with it. Instead, he goes for a sojer in the Rhoosian war and then comes home to this 'ouse and the country estate. Never married, though who can say he mightn't in a while more? When he died, everything passed to the present Lord William. Being a naval gentleman, he's as often at Portsmouth or Plymouth as he is here. And though I ain't particular to talk about it, even when Lord William is in London he ain't in the house much. There's dances in the season and shooting parties at Bole Warren, but for the greater part of it, poor young Mr Richard might be master here if he chose.'

'So all the inheritance don't mean much to Lord William?' said Verity hopefully.

'The rate he's racketing along,' said Mrs Butcher, 'it'll mean something when he has to raise every penny on it to keep him out of a debtor's prison.'

She spoke with a finality indicating that she had already said as much as she proposed to on the subject of the Jervis family. Verity and Stringfellow took their leave of her and retired to the cobbled yard again. Lightning raised his head slightly and regarded them with equine disinterest. Stringfellow braced his good leg on the coachwork and hauled himself up on to the box where an old greatcoat was spread for comfort.

'Seems to me,' he said philosophically, 'that the entire house thinks there was murder done.'

'Servants' gossip,' said Verity indignantly, 'that's all it is. Why, Mr Stringfellow, I thought you'd a-known better than to truck with that sort o' thing when you know the evidence is all the other way. It's evidence that puts gossip in its place!'

Stringfellow looked down at the smug pink moon of his son-in-law's face with its neatly waxed moustaches.

'I ain't averse to a bit o' gossip,' he said firmly. 'It helps to make the day go round smooth. And if you think it ain't evidence, Mr Verity, then you got a bit to learn about evidence!'

The room in which Richard Jervis received Verity on the following morning resembled a counting-house rather than any domestic apartment. It was the place where the master of the house might have called his steward or his butler to account. Jervis, appearing slim to the point of frailty in his mourning suit, sat in a black leather chair. His slightly crouched posture suggested distortion as well as paralysis of his body from the waist down. In their first meeting alone he seemed to Verity to exhibit an invalid's tetchiness in his resentment of sympathy and a manic determination to show himself master of events. The blue eyes searched Verity's face carefully.

'Mr Verity, I am a careful man. I pay attention to detail and though I have more than enough money for my needs, I spend it scrupulously.'

'To be sure, sir.'

'I say this because there are those who will tell you that I am about to waste your time and my money on a foolish investigation. What I want from you is no less than a full inquiry into my brother's death.'

'With respect, sir, I can examine the evidence at the scene of the tragedy. Only being some weeks since it 'appened, there won't be so much to be found as there was when it was first examined. I can examine the rifle, sir, though it's been done by men whose business is rifles. And I can talk to the gentlemen who saw the tragedy, sir, one of whom is yourself. But I don't suppose there's any questions that haven't been asked already, 'owever, I gotta say, sir, that when all's said and done, I can't make a murder out of an accident, nor I mustn't neither.'

Richard Jervis' pale blue eyes narrowed, the sharpness of his pale face accentuated by the trim triangle of his fair beard.

'Pray God you bring my brother's murderer to justice, sergeant, or there shall go back such a report to your inspectors as shall live with you and them the rest of your days!'

'Evidence is evidence, sir, and accidents is accidents,' said Verity softly, rocking a little on his heels.

'What do you know of accidents, Mr Verity?'

'Don't follow, sir. With respect, sir.'

'Do you not? Then I must lead you. You will no doubt have heard that I sit here, a man with half a body, because of what they call a hunting accident.'

'I 'ave understood so, sir, and very sorry I am it should be so.'

Jervis slapped his hand on the table.

'No, sergeant, you have not understood. I see the hunters in my mind as clearly as I see you now. I see them close upon me, the devil masks of hate. Even in my dead limbs I feel the blows. Can you imagine, Mr Verity, what it is to feel blow after blow and to know that each one is doing such damage to your body that can never be mended?'

Verity was aghast, his face creased with incredulity.