The Fabric of Murder (Mysteries of Georgian Norfolk Book 2) (17 page)

‘So … yes, I have it … I send my men to slip Hinman away from the other watchers and bring him to me, so that I may find out what he is up to. They do not seize him physically, so long as he is willing to come of his own accord. Beeston is not unduly anxious, merely curious.’

‘Then Hinman on a sudden stops being co-operative and gets away from ‘is escort. They aren’t expecting that and ‘e’s off before they can grab at ‘im. Maybe darts into some alley, or manages to find a spot to hide and let ‘em pass.’

‘Now Beeston is both anxious and angry to boot. If Hinman was telling him the truth when he lent the money, he would have no reason to run off. He could not know that Beeston had discovered his other scheme with Underhill. The fact that he ran …’

‘Must mean that Beeston ‘as been gulled!’ Brock cried. ‘That’s it! Got to be! Beeston’s always ready to cheat others, but to be cheated ‘isself …! That above all would rouse him to fury. Oh, I wish I could’ve seen ‘im when ‘is men reported Hinman ‘ad slipped from them. He would’ve foamed at the mouth like the mad dog ‘e is! Nor, I reckon, would he’ve been as forgiving of their mistake as you have been of mine.’

‘You made no mistake, Brock. How many more times do I have to tell you? But you are right about such a loathsome toad as Beeston. I imagine he indeed took out his anger on those men, before proclaiming that Hinman must be found and brought to him alive. Even now, I imagine, he is taking pleasure in considering the fate he has in mind for Hinman when he is taken.’

‘Then Hinman should pray to God that ‘e either escapes or dies in the attempt. His fate at Beeston’s hands doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘Then we will not do so, Brock. Now, as I predicted, you have helped me solve the matter of Beeston and Hinman. At least, so far as it may be solved until we know whether Hinman has got away. That is enough for today. Let us enjoy this fine wine and talk of lighter matters. Then you must go home and take your rest. Tomorrow I will put all this from my mind, as you must from yours. To think too much about a problem is often far worse than not to think about it at all. The first brings no more than going over and over the same ground. The second may allow your mind to cleanse itself and see all difficulties afresh.’

W
hen Foxe was
in need of distraction, as he was the following morning, his thoughts turned at once to the Catt sisters. Whose turn was it for a visit? He decided it was Kitty’s. After his normal breakfast, visit to the coffee house and walk around the Market Place, he therefore strode towards the theatre and Kitty’s house nearby. The day matched his mood. There was a thin, cold rain and the muddy streets smelled of urine and horse dung.

Why did it matter that Bonneviot had been murdered? No one missed him. Others had dealt with the threat to the city’s trade. Hinman’s plan had failed. Why not leave all there?

Foxe found Kitty was risen and about, but she told him she had no time to spend with him that day. There was a evening’s performance, in which she was playing the female lead. That required an afternoon of rehearsal, then a swift dinner, before returning to the theatre to dress and prepare.

Seeing his disappointment, Kitty took pity on him to the limited extent of exchanging several warm kisses. Then she told him to go to find if Gracie would see him, though she reminded him as he left that she kept most careful score of his visits to each of them.

‘Come to me tomorrow, Ash,’ she said. ‘I will be free a good part of the day and you can make all up to me. I also have news of young George Bonneviot, which I think will interest you. Now, away to Gracie. If you do not make haste, she may already be planning to spend time leaving her card at various houses. Not all the fine ladies of this city are too blind to my sister’s many virtues to see only the way she makes her living. Besides, more than a few learned the tricks that won them a wealthy husband from our Aunt Constance, when she was running the same establishment. They owe a debt that they are happy to repay.’

Gracie was not thus employed, but was to take tea later that afternoon with Mrs. Kendrew, a lady of great beauty and equal wealth. Lizzy Kendrew had once been amongst Gracie’s girls. Then a rich and elderly customer had become besotted with her and whisked her off to a life of luxury. Being the most perfect gentleman, Mr. Kendrew had died within the year – from exhaustion, some said. Now his widow was rich and free to indulge a discreet taste for handsome young men whenever she wished.

Poor Foxe. His spirits sank very low, so that Gracie too took pity on him. She said she could allow him one hour, no more, and he was not to render her clothing as disordered, or absent, as he usually did. Being miserable, Foxe did not find this requirement too hard to accept. What he most wanted was comfort and Gracie, expert in the needs of men of all kinds, proved quick to give it.

Thus they cuddled together like an old married couple. Foxe rested his cheek on Gracie’s soft bosom while she stroked his neck and crooned to him as a mother to her child. Foxe meanwhile, feeling most wonderfully soothed, poured out his tale of the Bonneviot affair.

‘I am lost, Gracie. This whole affair has me completely befuddled. Now, I fear, we will never take Hinman. Even the faint hope that he might confess and explain everything is gone. All we know for certain is that Bonneviot is dead as a result of some conspiracy involving a man – Hinman – who is neither who nor what he said he was. It is most vexing. I begin to believe I should confess my failure and give up.’

‘But the murderer should surely be brought to justice.’

‘Perhaps. Yet all I have learned of Bonneviot tells me the world is well rid of the man.’

‘It is not like you, Ash, to be so down-hearted. I am sure you will find out all in time.’

‘At present, I cannot even find that wretch, Hinman.’

‘I declare that man is like a phantom, Ash. It is almost as if he had never existed.’

The effect this innocent remark had on Foxe caused Gracie both surprise and alarm. He lay quite still against her for a moment. Then his entire body stiffened and he jumped and cried out. It was much as she had seen a man react when a severe electrical current was passed through his body in the course of a scientific demonstration.

‘Gracie! Gracie! What a marvellous woman you are! That’s the answer, but I was too dull to grasp it until you laid it out for me. I must go and think it all through. But first, I must thank you.’

Then, despite her calls for restraint and reminders of what she had told him but a few minutes ago, Foxe grasped her in his arms and kissed her many times. Only his recollection that she had less time free for him than he deemed necessary prevented him from going further. As it was, he left her breathless, even if her clothing was still more or less in order.

Afterwards, Foxe could recall nothing of his walk back home. Nor his entry into the house. Nor Alfred’s response to finding his master beaming like an idiot and demanding chocolate on the instant. Foxe’s mind was so occupied by new thoughts and possibilities that nothing else could find a place.

What if Hinman never existed, he asked himself? What if he was indeed a phantom: a projection of an idea, conjured up to confuse those who looked on? He was most definitely not who he claimed to be – a man come from Halifax. Nor a wealthy entrepreneur engaged in worsted trading at home and overseas. Yet such a character was essential to the plot to gain entry to the offices of the leading master weavers of Norwich. Could he have been no more than an invention? A kind of puppet to conceal the man who had been manipulating this creation?

To what purpose? To conceal the true identity of the mastermind behind this whole affair. That went without saying. But was there no more to it than that? Why did this ‘Hinman’ spend so much time in the coffee houses and eating places of the city establishing the façade he had chosen? It must have possessed a greater importance in the business than just a means of concealment.

Thus Foxe reasoned with himself, going around and around the same ideas until his head ached and his shoulders were knotted and sore. He was on the cusp of discovering the whole nature of the affair, yet he could not make the final breakthrough. Certain essential pieces of information were still missing.

In the end, he stood up, stretched and called for Alfred to find young Charlie and send him with a message to Brock. Brock should wait on him the next morning upon his return from taking coffee. In the meantime, Foxe determined to enjoy his dinner and spend the evening at his club, indulging in a few games of cards and talking amiably to whoever he found there. Maybe, as before, turning his mind away from the problem would allow him the breakthrough he needed.

Mr. Foxe’s evening at his club had proved pleasant, but failed to produce any fresh ideas in his mind. That was often how it went in matters of importance. For some time, nothing was clear and he made no progress. Then revelations came in torrents, leaving him scrambling to keep up. Yesterday, he believed that moment of the breaking open of this box of secrets had arrived. Today, he saw it had not.

Still, it was a fine morning and the air smelled fresher than it had been. Norwich was famous for the number and splendour of gardens within the city walls – a legacy of the Huguenot Strangers of a century back. Those poor refugees had also brought with them their other passion: the keeping of caged birds for their song. The Huguenot blood was now so intermingled with native ancestry that only certain family names, like Bonneviot, revealed its presence. Yet these other gifts had proved more permanent. On a morning such as this, you could imagine you caught the scent of flowers over the ranker smells of the street. And many a window contained a cage and fine canary-bird or two, filling the air with sweet singing.

Foxe sat at his normal table in The Swan and leaned back with a copy of one of the newspapers provided there. The news, alas, proved somewhat dull. Today it was little more that a bland recitation of political speeches and reports of the prospects for the year’s harvest. Bored, Foxe turned to his other favourite pastime in that place, listening in to others’ conversations.

To his left, three men were discussing the price of yarn in Ireland. Then they moved on to whether it might be possible to have more brought by sea directly to Yarmouth. To do so would avoid the costly process of landing the hanks at Bristol or Liverpool, then bringing them by road across the whole width of the realm. Foxe turned his attention elsewhere. That matter seemed of little interest to any but the many weavers about the place.

The two to his right were also talking business, but the nature of their topic proved both more interesting and more fruitful.

‘I cannot understand him,’ said the one. ‘Does he need some new amount of capital? Does he need expertise lacking through any other means? I thought his brewery was prospering.’

‘He told me he was finding the business too much of a burden to carry on alone,’ the other replied. ‘He has no son to succeed him. He may well hope by taking a partner to provide the means of realising the whole value of the business in time. He fears he may soon be no longer able to take an active part.’

‘That I can well understand,’ the first said. ‘He must be not far short of his sixtieth year and has not been in good health of late. But could not he not find one in this city to join with him and perhaps take his place in a few years?’

‘That I cannot say.’

‘But this fellow he has now taken as a partner is a stranger to these parts. What does he know of him? You cannot ever have as secure a knowledge of someone from another place as you can of a local person. The wrong partner can break a business as easily as the right one can make it. I would have thought he should be more careful …’

Foxe stopped listening altogether at that point. His mind was, yet again, a maelstrom of thoughts and suppositions. He was amazed at his own credulity. Surely any sensible man would have been suspicious from the start of the idea that Bonneviot would take Hinman into business with him. Hinman was an unknown from another town, even if you believed his story of himself to be true. Bonneviot was quarrelsome and difficult, but no one had ever rated him a fool. Yet here he was, seemingly in a most difficult position following his falling-out with the Londoners, yet ready to engage with a person only lately arrived in Norwich. It made no sense! Any such deal would prove either the salvation or the undoing of Bonneviot’s business. He may have been desperate, but even that could not account for such a piece of blatant stupidity. Who trusts all to an unknown?

There was another matter too. Bonneviot’s executors, it seemed, had no firm knowledge of the nature or extent of the deal between Bonneviot and the supposed Mr. Hinman. No one did. The deal, all believed, had existed. What it was in detail, beyond having to do with selling the unsold stocks in Bonneviot’s warehouse, remained shrouded in mystery. Was there no paperwork in Bonneviot’s possession? Had he consulted no lawyer? Drawn up no contract between them? If such had existed, would not Hinman have produced it in support of his forged bill of sale?

Another thing. Bonneviot had arranged with Master Burford to sell his cloth on his behalf. Then they had all assumed that meant he planned to back out of his deal with Hinman. Yet the loan he had negotiated in London suggested otherwise. Wasn’t it to finance him until the cloth could be sold, without any need for involvement with Hinman at all?

How on earth could all of this make sense? Surely Bonneviot must have believed Hinman had the funds needed to meet his share of the costs of the new operation? They knew now that was untrue, but Hinman would not have told Bonneviot that. If there was to be a deal, why back out while all still appeared well? Had he and the alderman been wrong in jumping to the conclusion that Bonneviot had somehow discovered Hinman planned to cheat him. But how? From whom? Before Bonneviot’s murder, who would have doubted Hinman’s claim to be able to sell cloth in large amounts? Would Bonneviot have reached a different conclusion?

No, the only way these matters could be turned into logic was to assume that Hinman and Bonneviot had probably not even met and that there had never been a deal planned between them. Bonneviot had always planned to ask Mr. Burford, and Mr. Burford alone, to help him out of his difficulty. This whole story of Hinman approaching Bonneviot and negotiating the supposed partnership was an invention – an elaborate smokescreen. It had been most cleverly built out of thin air, rumour and supposition. Once launched, the story was then spread about the coffee houses by a man who dressed, spoke and behaved in the best way to give credence to the invention.

Hinman had cozened them all, Foxe as much as the rest. Almost nothing of what they thought they knew was truth. They must sweep it aside and begin again.

Foxe put down his newspaper and was about to rise to leave his table, when another thought struck him.

Hold! Hold, he told himself. You are being led astray again. McSwiggan has confessed that it was Hinman who paid him to kill Bonneviot. But why? If there never was any deal between them, what reason could there be for Hinman wishing Bonneviot dead? The plan to use a forgery was, Foxe still believed, invented in haste to deal with the aftermath of Bonneviot’s death. How would that square with Hinman being the man who arranged the murder? Would McSwiggan have killed Bonneviot on his own account? Would he then try to pass the blame to Hinman, when he realised he was the focus of an investigation? Surely that was to credit McSwiggan with more wit than he possessed. He had no reason to kill Bonneviot. It was through their need to secure the conviction of Hinman that they offered him inducement to turn King’s Evidence. All MacSwiggan had to do to escape the gallows was to deny any involvement. Without his confession, vague stories of his drunken boasts were the best they could have produced as evidence. That would never have secured a conviction.

It was no use, Foxe could make no sense of it. The past two days had brought him a good many revelations and fresh ideas. Now all these had produced was still more confusion. He was beginning to doubt he knew anything for certain.

Thus returned to a state of gloom, Foxe left the coffee house and went home to talk with Brock. It took him a while to convince Brock too that they must doubt all the supposed facts that they had been relying upon. Now, when it was done, they stared at one another in dejection.