The Bishop's Pawn (11 page)

“This place stinks,” he said.

“It’s a tannery,” Cobb said. “Is Epp in
there? He showed up at St. James about seven o’clock an’ opened the
doors, but ain’t been seen since.”

“He’s at home,” Wilkie said, “if ya c’n call
this dump a home.”

“Has he seen you?” Cobb said, alarmed that
Epp, if he were the killer, might have other knives or weapons to
hand.

“He ain’t seen nobody fer some while,” Wilkie
said. “I peeked through that busted window there an’ seen him
slumped over a table. I been checkin’ every five minutes or so, but
he ain’t moved a hair.”

“Well done,” Cobb said, surprised that Wilkie
had taken any initiative of his own. “Let’s you an’ me give the
fella a little surprise.”

Cobb pushed the flimsy door open with two
fingers and stepped boldly into the musty interior. The single room
appeared to serve Epp as kitchen, bedroom and, if the smells were
accurate, as his water-closet. The only light, mercifully, sifted
through the tiny north window. Epp was indeed slumped – comatose –
over a table cluttered with broken crockery and partly consumed
food. The verger of St. James, whom Cobb knew well by sight, looked
even smaller and more pathetic than he did on the street. But he
was nonetheless a muscular chap, all sinew and bone, with very
large hands that looked as if they had been appropriated elsewhere
and attached to his wrists as an afterthought.

“Is he dead?” Wilkie said.

Epp answered with a rasping, indrawn breath –
part gasp, part snore.

“He’s drunk,” Cobb said, kicking at an empty
whiskey jug on the floor nearby. “Pissed to the gills.”

“Is that shit all over his hands?”

Cobb lifted Epp’s right hand into the dim
light. “That’s dried blood,” he said, “or I’ll eat Dora’s Sunday
hat.”

Wilkie took a step back, as if he were too
close to some deadly contamination. Cobb, however, took hold of
Epp’s greasy hair, pulled his head upright, then reached down to an
armpit and hauled him up far enough to expose his throat and most
of his torso. His wrinkled gray shirt was spattered with blood.

“I think we’ve found our assassin,” Cobb
said.

“Jesus,” Wilkie said, “the bugger didn’t even
have enough sense to take off these disgustin’ clothes.”

“Let’s you an’ me take him down to the Court
House, eh? Give the Sarge and the magistrate an Easter present.”
Cobb was unable to suppress the elation he felt. Any criticism of
him for disobeying orders or any suggestion that he had
deliberately undercut his associate, Marc, would dissolve quickly
when the perpetrator was delivered with his guilt stamped upon him
as clear as the brand on Cain’s brow.

“We can’t carry him all that way,” Wilkie
said.

“Right. So I’ll stay here while you go down
to the butcher’s an’ borrow his pony-cart. We’ll dump Epp in it,
like the piece of garbage he is.”

“All right,” Wilkie said, happy to be out of
this place with orders to follow.

“I’m gonna wait fer you outside,” Cobb said.
“This hovel stinks, an’ Mr. Epp ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

Just before trotting off, Wilkie said to
Cobb: “You figure he took what the Archdeacon said to heart?”

***

While they waited for Gussie French to return from
his mission at the stationer’s shop, Marc and the others sipped at
their tea and nibbled muffins provided by the magistrate’s
servant-cum-clerk. Points previously made concerning the
investigation were re-made, with little fresh light being thrown
upon it. All were grateful when they heard Gussie’s step outside
the door.

“Well, sir, what did you learn?” Sturges said
to Gussie.

Looking aggrieved, as he did whenever he was
asked to perform any task other than the copy-work of which he was
inordinately proud, Gussie shuffled all the way into the room with
the murder-note in his hand. He squinted about at the luminaries
gathered in the chamber, like a belligerent Uriah Heap, and said to
Sturges, “Burke says that anythin’ with an eagle holdin’ an ‘M’ is
called – ”

He paused, glanced down at the word he had
scribbled on the palm of his left hand, and finished his sentence:
“– is called Melton Bond, a paper made in New York City. He says he
don’t carry it an’ he don’t know of anybody in town who uses
it.”

“Thanks, Gussie,” Sturges said. “You’ve done
well.”

Gussie nodded as if to say ‘I always do,’ and
scuttled back to his copy-table in the police quarters below.

“I believe he has,” Marc said. “If that
scurrilous word was written on a kind of rag paper rarely found in
these parts, then we have at least something to look for when we’ve
got our list of possible suspects narrowed down.”

“I’d have been happier if Burke had given us
the names of some locals who actually bought the stuff,” Thorpe
said.

“Finding a murderer is never that easy,”
Sturges said.

“I’ve just thought of something,” Robert
said. “It didn’t seem relevant until Gussie mentioned New
York.”

All eyes turned to Baldwin, but it was Thorpe
who said skeptically, “The paper could have been the
victim’s
?”

“Not that,” Robert said. “But there are two
gentlemen in town who might have
brought
such notepaper with
them.”

“Who?” Sturges said.

“Well, as I mentioned earlier, the Law
Society was planning to hear Dick’s request for permanent admission
to the Bar this coming week. My father, who is a Bencher, told me
that several members had been trying to get information about why
Dick was run out of New York two years ago – with a view to
discrediting him. People like Everett Stoneham were putting
enormous pressure on the Society. But apparently no-one in New York
would commit to anything in writing, so an invitation was extended
to anyone who would come down here and testify in person.”

“And two of them did?” Withers said.

“Yes. Father told me last night that he had
received word from The American Hotel that two barristers from New
York had checked in on Saturday evening. According to what the
manager there told my father, they were very close-mouthed about
why they were here, but father and I assumed that they were going
to give evidence, for or against Dick.”

“Are you implying that they might have come
for some darker purpose?” Thorpe said, ever shocked at any
suggestion of impropriety among the privileged classes.

“I don’t think so,” Robert said. “But they
were
here all day yesterday. They could have had a
visitor.”

“Who might have come into possession of that
notepaper and seen an opportunity to implicate the New Yorkers in a
crime he himself was planning to commit,” Marc added.

“Whoa back a minute!” Sturges said. “We’re
flyin’ kites without a tail here. Whaddya say we just put these
fellas on our list of people to talk to.”

“You’re right, of course,” Marc said, annoyed
at having let his desperation show. “What we
can
get from
these gentlemen, in the least, is some explanation – at long last –
of what really happened to Dick back in New York.”

“Yes,” Robert agreed quickly. “And it’s
possible that what did happen there has something to do with Dick’s
murder here.”

Sturges, who was keen to get the
investigation pointed towards the practical, said to Marc, “Why
don’t you start with these chaps, then.”

With that suggestion, the meeting was about
to break up when Gussie French stumbled through the doorway,
saucer-eyed and unable to blurt out his news.

“What is it, Gussie?” Sturges said. “Spit it
out, man!”

“Cobb an’ Wilkie just come back – luggin’ a
fellow in Gandy Griffith’s butcher-cart!”

“What on earth are you babblin’ on
about?”

“They say they’ve caught the villain that did
the Yankee in!”

***

The police quarters consisted of two rooms on the
ground floor of the Court House, at the rear and close to the
tunnel that connected it with the Jail next door. The smaller room,
a cubicle really, was Wilfrid Sturges’ office, containing a table,
two chairs and a filing cupboard. The larger one, no bigger than
the modest-sized parlour of a peasant’s cottage, served as
reception area, clerk’s office and interview room. It boasted
Gussie’s table and three ladder-backed chairs. Into it now were
jammed the five gentlemen from the magistrate’s chambers, Gussie
French, Ewan Wilkie, Horatio Cobb, and the captured suspect. Wilkie
and Cobb had carried Reuben Epp from the butcher’s cart into the
reception room and arranged him so that he was sitting at Gussie’s
“desk” with his head in his arms folded on the table’s surface.

“What the hell’s wrong with him?” Magistrate
Thorpe said, sensing he ought now to be in charge. “He looks damn
near dead!”

Cobb prodded Epp in the ribs with his
truncheon. Epp emitted a soft moan, but did not otherwise respond.
“He’s drunk a quart of whiskey, sir – after what he done, I
figure.”

“If he’s
said
nothing, Cobb, then how
do you know he’s guilty?” Thorpe snapped, who felt that a signed
confession was the only sure evidence to bring into a
courtroom.

Cobb put a hand on each of Epp’s shoulders
and pulled him upright. The head lolled and settled on the chest.
The eyes, oddly, were wide open, but glazed and unseeing. What
could now be observed clearly was the blood-soaked shirt and
brownish stains on the hands.

“That proof enough?” Cobb said into the
stunned silence of the room.

“How did you find him?” Marc said, trying not
to look too surprised, and certainly pleased that Dick’s killer had
been so quickly and tidily apprehended.

“Dusty Carter spotted Mr. Epp runnin’ away
from the alley just about seven-thirty. I sent Wilkie to check out
Epp’s shack. I myself went up to St. James to see if he was at work
– ”

“You didn’t disturb anybody up there, I
trust,” Thorpe said.

“I talked with that uppity
ever-rants
at the vicarage,” Cobb said.

“Not the Archdeacon!” Thorpe was aghast.

“The other one,
Hunger-for-it.
” Cobb
winked at Marc.

“Why didn’t you just go into the church and
look for Epp?” Sturges said, looking worried once again.

“He’d been to work – earlier than usual,”
Cobb said, taking in all the rapt faces around him. “An’ then he
disappeared, in plenty of time to meet up with Mr. Dougherty an’
stab him.”

“So you went on out to Epp’s place?” Marc
prompted.

“Where Wilkie was standin’ guard. We went in,
found this wretch stinkin’ of whiskey an’ covered with blood. So we
borrowed Gandy’s butcher-cart an’ hauled him in here.”

“Excellent work, both of you,” Sturges said.
He would speak to Cobb and Wilkie later about going off on their
own. “You’ve saved us all a peck of trouble.”

“And if the blackguard is feeling
this
much remorse,” Thorpe said, alluding to the whiskey-binge, “we
should get a quick confession out of him.”

“You don’t suppose he’s fakin’ bein’ asleep,
do you?” Sturges said.

Thorpe’s eyes lit up. “Let’s interrogate him
right now and get it over with. I’ve got to go to Port Hope in a
few minutes and won’t be back till six. French, go out to the pump
and fetch a pail of cold water. We’ve all wasted enough time on
this matter.”

Gussie flinched, glared at his chief, found
no comfort there, and headed out into the yard.

“Don’t you think a confession can wait?”
Robert said.

“Seems to me we don’t really need one,”
Sturges said.

“That’s why you’re not a magistrate,” Thorpe
said. Sturges wanted to say that that had more to do with accent
than abilities, but didn’t.

Gussie came back in, lugging a pail of icy
water.

“Pull his head back,” Thorpe barked at
Cobb.

“But I’ll get my table wet!” Gussie cried,
horrified at what was coming. (He had been quick to remove all his
papers and ink-jars to safety when Epp had first been brought
in.)

“Damn your table, man!” Thorpe thundered.
“Now, Cobb, do as I asked.”

Cobb took a handful of Epp’s greasy hair and
pulled his head up. The eyes were even glassier, the lips slack,
drool oozing down to the chin. Squeezing his own eyes shut, Gussie
pitched a pail-full of water at the hapless prisoner – drenching
him, Cobb and most of Wilkie. Epp blinked once. The lips trembled,
and gave out a gurgle of sound – syllables perhaps but not yet
words.

“Aha!” Thorpe said. “He
can
speak.” He
leaned across the table to stare down his victim just in time to
receive the full force of Reuben Epp’s projectile vomit.

***

Marc, Robert, Cobb and Sturges were back in the
magistrate’s chamber. The accused was now safely ensconced in a
cell of the adjoining jail, conscious but still babbling nonsense,
like a holy roller. James Thorpe had been cleaned up and was on his
way to Port Hope. A distraught Gussie French had been sent home to
recuperate from shock, with orders to return by six o’clock, when
the prisoner would be properly interrogated by the magistrate and
his confession written out in legal form.

“What did you want to see us about – out of
the magistrate’s hearing?” Robert asked Marc when they had seated
themselves.

“Several things,” Marc said. “First of all,
even if Epp recovers his wits long enough to be usefully
interrogated, there is no guarantee that he will automatically
confess.”

“But how else could he explain all that blood
on him?” Cobb said, more miffed at Marc’s quibbling than concerned.
They had their man. And Cobb had cornered him.

“It is conceivable that he may claim he
merely came across Dick’s body lying in the alley, tried to turn
him over to help him or see if he were alive, and thus got the
blood all over him.”

“But what would he be doing in that alley at
seven-thirty?” Robert said, playing prosecuting attorney, for which
he got a grateful nod from Cobb.