Til Death Do Us Part (32 page)

‘Oh he's gone, Doctor. He says he's got to go to Feckenham and inform another gentleman about what's happening.' She bustled away.

When he heard the name Creswell, Tom's instant involuntary reaction had been to picture the wedding group of Phoebe Creswell, and with mention of Feckenham, he immediately guessed who was also being informed about George Creswell's condition.

‘It has to be Winward.'

‘I must go to Beoley without delay, Tom,' Laylor sighed regretfully. ‘But we'll leave the board as it is and finish the game at the first opportunity.'

On impulse Tom asked, ‘Can I come with you to Beoley, Hugh?'

‘Whatever for?' Laylor queried in surprise.

Tom forced a smile and answered casually. ‘Call it a fit of nostalgia for my days spent in medical training.'

‘You're more than welcome to come, my friend. I shall be very glad of your company,' Hugh Laylor smiled back.

‘Master Creswell's in sore straits, Doctor. I'm not sure what you can do for him, but I sent Joey Stokes to fetch you because there's nothing more I can do,' Pammy Mallot announced calmly as she opened the door to Hugh Laylor and Tom.

‘Hullo, Tom Potts, what brings you here? I'd have thought you'd have been tucked up in a nice warm bed wi' your pretty missus on a cold day like this.'

‘Master Potts is here at my invitation, Mrs Mallot,' Hugh Laylor told her, and added sarcastically, ‘You appear to be bearing up under this grievous burden with great fortitude.'

‘It aren't no grievous burden to me, Doctor,' she stated bluntly. ‘I don't like the nasty old bugger, and him likely being near to death don't alter that.'

‘Is Miss Phoebe here?' Laylor asked.

‘No, and truth to tell I don't know exactly where her is. Her got wed last Friday and I was told they'd gone to Worcester for a bit of a holiday. I'll take you up to him.'

In the bedroom a coal fire flamed on the hearth, and the over-heated air was laden with the mingled smells of faeces, urine, vomit and unwashed flesh. On the four-poster bed the body of George Creswell was writhing and cramping, each seizure partnered by guttural groans of agony.

Tom and Laylor went to the bedside, and Laylor pulled the coverlets back to completely uncover the stricken man. His skeletal body and excreta-smeared skin was a sheen of sweat, and Tom laid his hand on the sick man's brows and chest, before remarking quietly, ‘This is curious, Hugh. He's sweating freely, but his body temperature feels to be much below normal.'

Laylor was staring at the faeces and vomit strewn across the sheets. ‘We'll need to collect samples of this for closer examination, Tom. Do you have a couple of crock bowls or suchlike, and a pair of large spoons we can make use of, Mrs Mallot?'

‘I'll go and sort out some, Doctor. And you can chuck 'um away when you've done with 'um, because we won't be wanting 'um back.' She disappeared through the door.

Tom grinned wryly. ‘I can't blame her for not wanting any further use from them, Hugh. I wouldn't relish that prospect myself.'

Creswell's body suddenly cramped violently, rolling him on to his side, doubling his knees to his chest, bringing his head ducking on to his knees, curving and straining his body like an overstretched archer's bow.

Then abruptly, a long drawn-out gusting of breath escaped from his mouth, and his straining body gently subsided into a collapsed heap of inert flesh and bone.

‘He's gone,' Hugh Laylor murmured. ‘And it's God's mercy on him.'

Tom was already probing Creswell's neck at the carotid artery, and with his other hand feeling for a pulse at the wrist. Next he arranged Creswell's body on its back and closely examined the eyeballs, then bent and pressed his ear between the protruding rib bones. He followed this by another check of the carotid and wrist arteries, before he told his friend, ‘I don't believe there's any point in trying to resuscitate him. There's complete respiratory and cardiac arrest. As you say, it's God's mercy on him.'

While Tom spoke a pair of leather gloves lying on the small bedside table was intruding into his peripheral vision, and now he picked them up, remarking casually, ‘I wonder what use the poor fellow was making of these during his illness?'

‘They'm not his.' Pammy Mallot was standing in the doorway carrying two crock bowls. ‘They'm the Reverend Winward's. He wears 'um when he gives Master Creswell his massages.'

‘Well he'll not be needing them for that use again, Mrs Mallot,' Hugh Laylor intervened. ‘Regretfully, Master Creswell is dead.'

The woman shrugged her meaty shoulders. ‘I'll not act the hypocrite and say it grieves me. My hope is that God will take him to task now for being the cruel, harsh father he's been to poor Phoebe. Will you still be wanting these bowl and spoons?'

‘We shall,' Laylor snapped curtly.

‘I'll leave 'um with you then; and when you'm done here I'll strip the bedding and lay him out decent.'

As Pammy Mallot came and put the bowls and spoons on the bed table Tom asked, ‘For what reason was Reverend Winward massaging Master Creswell?'

‘To ease his back pains. The Reverend was real good to him. He brought special Elixir to soothe his stomach, and a special salve for the back pains. The Reverend used to spend hours ministering to the nasty old bugger. He's a living saint, so he is!'

She left the room as the memory of a man's death Tom had witnessed many years previously was coming back to him, and he wondered aloud, ‘A special salve? What was it?'

He lifted the gloves to his nostrils and sniffed several times, then looked about him and saw the salve pot on the dresser beneath the window. He went and picked it up, opened its lid and used the tip of his right forefinger to scoop out a tiny smear of the salve, which he dabbed upon his lower lip. There were instant powerful reactions of tingling followed by numbness.

He moved quickly back to the bedside and turned the dead man face downwards, then closely scrutinized the wrinkled skin of the lower and upper back. He used the tip of his left forefinger to rub a small patch of abraded skin and once more dabbed the tip against his lip.

‘Let's set to work,' Hugh Laylor invited. ‘I'll collect the shit and you collect the vomit, then we'll go back to my dispensary and analyse them post-haste. From the way she's behaving it won't surprise me at all if Mrs Mallot has been feeding old Creswell here with arsenic, or some other noxious substance.'

Tom set to work using the spoon to scrape the still-damp clots of fresh vomit from the bed sheets. While he worked his memory ranged back across the years to a treatise he had once read about ancient Chinese war practices and he mused, ‘I wonder if the Reverend Winward has read that same treatise?'

At this same hour in the private parlour of the Old Black Boy Inn, Walter Courtney was being informed that a man named Joey Stokes had come with an urgent message for Reverend Winward.

‘Oh, I'm feeling so very tired, Master Blake. I really must rest for a while.' Courtney sighed wearily. ‘So will you please tell the man that I'm not here at present, but he can entrust the message to you to pass on to me when I return.'

‘O' course I will, Reverend.' The landlord bustled away to return quickly with the news that ‘George Creswell is very near to death, and could the Reverend please come to Beoley as soon as possible.'

‘Thank you very much, Master Blake. Now could you bring me a bottle of your very fine Madeira, and a pipe of your equally fine tobacco?'

A little later, sipping a glass of heady Madeira wine, drawing in mouthfuls of the fragrant Turkish tobacco, Walter Courtney savoured what he now deemed to be a certainty: the successful outcome of his plans.

In Worcester City, Sylvan Kent and his new bride were strolling arm in arm in the precinct of the Cathedral, and Kent's thoughts were also dwelling on the fact of George Creswell's wealth and properties.

‘Now we're wed I own Phoebe's body and soul. So the moment Creswell's dead, I'll be as rich as Croesus. The first thing I'll be doing is telling that cunt Archie Ainsley to fuck off and beg for his supper elsewhere. If Walter doesn't like it, he can fuck off as well! Because I'll be holding the purse strings then, and I'll be the Master.'

‘Is something troubling you, my dearest?' Phoebe asked anxiously. ‘You're frowning so!'

He instantly smiled and stroked her cheek. ‘I was merely frowning with regret for all the long years I've spent without you, my darling girl; and for the rest of my life I do not intend to spend a single day or night without you beside me.'

He bent to kiss her lips, and whispered urgently, ‘Let's make haste back to the hotel. I'm on fire to make love to you again.'

She blushed and trembled like a shy young girl, but clasped his arm tightly, then eagerly changed direction and quickened her pace.

I
n Hugh Laylor's dispensary the final tests on the vomit and excreta had been done, and Laylor's handsome features displayed disappointment.

‘No traces of arsenic whatsoever, Tom. It seems that my suspicions of Pammy Mallot are unjustified. I'll enter death by natural causes on the certificate, so there's no need for any inquest.'

Earlier that evening, Tom had gone to the lock-up and had quickly scrutinized an entry in one of the notebooks he had kept from his years of medical training. Now he pondered briefly before replying simply, ‘Let's hope so.'

The clock began to strike, and Tom grimaced. ‘Is that the hour already? I'd best go home. Tomorrow I shall be going back to Beoley.'

‘Why?' Laylor asked.

‘I want to obtain some of the salve the Reverend was using. It might soothe my own aches and pains. I'll bid you good night, my friend.'

‘M
y dear Pammy, I can only offer you my humblest apologies for not coming sooner. I was engaged on Church business and didn't return to the inn and receive your message until this morning.'

Pammy Mallot appeared to be in high spirits as she took Courtney's hand and drew him into the house.

‘Don't moither yourself about it, Geraint. The old bugger died before you could have reached here anyway; and Doctor Laylor and the Constable was both here when he did croak it. All I had to do was strip the bedding and lay him out when they'd gone.'

‘The Constable, you say. What did he want?'

‘I reckon he just come to be nosey.' She chuckled. ‘Because it aren't every day there's the chance of seeing such a nasty old bugger being sent to Hell, is it? Now, have you had any breakfast?'

‘No, I set out the very moment I received your message.'

‘Well then, you go and sit by the fire in the drawing room, and I'll cook you something nice and tasty.'

‘No, my dear, don't begin preparing any food for me yet. It is my duty to go up to Master Creswell and to pray for the salvation of his soul.'

She sniffed disparagingly. ‘It'll need a deal of praying for his soul to find salvation. He don't deserve none.'

‘You must not say such,' he told her sternly. ‘Our Lord is infinite mercy, and even the worst sinners can find salvation. I shall join you when I've completed my prayers.'

She looked suitably chastened as he left her.

Closing the bedroom door firmly behind him, Courtney sonorously recited the Lord's Prayer as he rifled through the drawers and chests in the room. He found a large ring of multiple keys and tried them in the lock of the strongbox built into the wall adjoining the bed on which lay the shrouded body of George Creswell. Two of the keys fitted the lock, and he took one of these off the ring and slipped it into his pocket.

He pulled out the pile of documents the strongbox contained and carefully went through them, his eyes glistening with relish as he enumerated the various bank statements, and deeds of properties and land.

‘By God! This is far better than I dared hope for! It's my fuckin' dream come true! I can live out my days in luxury with this lot.'

He scanned the Last Will and Testament, and hissed with satisfaction. Apart from a couple of trifling bequests, all the money, properties and land would devolve to Phoebe. Which, now she was married, meant that in law, she, and all she possessed, now belonged to her husband.

‘And when she and Sylvan are disposed of, I shall add the Last Will and Testament of Christophe de Langlois to this lot, and the job will be done.'

The vision of Archibald Ainsley's face came into Courtney's mind, and his teeth bared in a snarling grin.

‘Yes, Archibald, they'll be joining you in the next life. But I don't think it'll be the Devil welcoming poor Phoebe. She'll more likely go to Heaven.'

He replaced the documents and ring of keys, picked up his gloves and the salve pot and went back downstairs.

‘I'm going to burn these gloves, my dear – they're too impregnated to wear socially – and I'll throw this pot away. It's not worth keeping what's left of the salve. Then after I've eaten I shall go to Worcester and find Phoebe and Christophe. It's best I break the news to her myself, rather than send someone else with such sad tidings.'

‘No, don't you dare throw that nice little pot away,' Pammy Mallot remonstrated. ‘If you don't want it I'll wash it out and find a use for it.'

It was late morning when Tom rang the doorbell, much to Pammy Mallot's surprise.

‘What are you doing here again, Tom Potts?'

‘I wanted to ask you where I might find the Reverend Winward, Mrs Mallot. I need to talk with him.'