The Combermere Legacy Read online

  “Talk?” I hissed, jabbing my forefinger in his direction. “Certainly we need to talk. You can begin by telling me what you have done with my daughter, you murdering whoreson bastard.”

  My unexpected aggression seemed to confuse Bressy, for instead of shooting me between the eyes, which I would have had every right to expect, he lowered the pistol and gave me an inquisitive look.

  “Your daughter?” he said. “Has your brain become addled? I know not of what you speak. We need to discuss the matter of a certain set of engravings, but of your daughter I know nothing. I was not even aware you had a daughter.”

  “I am talking about Amy, the granddaughter of my housekeeper,” I persisted. “She is a daughter to me. I am not stupid, Bressy. Confess it. You came to Nantwich, murdered Henry Hassall, assaulted Gilbert Kinshaw, and then kidnapped Amy whilst she was playing in Ridley Field.”

  Bressy stared at me and shook his head in bewilderment. “Sweet Jesus,” he said. “Are you mad? I did none of those things. I confess I gave Hassall’s head a good rinsing in his ship, but I was not responsible for his murder. I also admit I ransacked your house trying to find your wife’s engraving, but I have been nowhere near Gilbert Kinshaw. What the devil has he got to do with any of this? And as for your daughter, I never saw nor heard from her.”

  “And you expect me to believe this?”

  Bressy shrugged. “Believe what you want,” he said, “but I suggest we wait here a few moments, and I will give you good reason why you should not discount what I say.”

  I had no idea to what Bressy was alluding, but it did not take long to find out, for almost as soon as I had finished speaking, I heard the sound of a woman’s footsteps approaching along the corridor outside the room. They stopped momentarily by the door, which was then flung open, and in stepped Alice, looking hot and flustered.

  “I am sorry, Bressy,” she said. “It was not so easy to escape the dinner table without attracting overdue attention. And your friend Wilbraham can certainly talk,” she added, addressing me. “He is trying his level best to keep everyone’s attention from the fact that you had obviously left the room for more than just the privy.”

  “He is no particular friend of mine,” I said, “simply a travelling companion with a shared interest, one which I appear to share with both of you. Firstly, Geffery Crewe is murdered in a manner which is made to look like an accident, then I find Bressy skulking in his bedchamber, and finally you follow me from the dinner table. Tell me, Alice, what on earth is going on?”

  “All will become clear, I assure you,” replied Alice, “but first there is the matter of Geffery Crewe’s engraving. Has it been found?”

  Bressy shook his head. “Gone,” he said. “See for yourself. We were not quick enough. Whoever killed Crewe got here before me and found what he wanted. Probably escaped that same way I got in, through the window.”

  My head was beginning to spin. If Bressy was not responsible for Crewe’s murder, then who was? I glanced at the wooden frame of the window and saw that it had been forced. Alice, meanwhile, stepped over to the wooden chest on the floor and searched quickly through the pile of garments with irritation.

  “Daniel,” she said, eventually. “Our absence from the dinner table will be noticed, so I will be brief. There are reasons why Bressy and I are interested in Abbot Massey’s engravings.”

  “This I know,” I replied. “You wish to find the treasure he secreted away and transport it to Shrewsbury, where it can be used to help finance the King’s war effort.”

  Alice stared at me with raised eyebrows, whilst Bressy sat down on the corner of the bed and began to chuckle.

  “So you know of our design,” he said. “I suppose I should not be surprised. You are an intelligencer after all.”

  Alice, however, was not smiling. “If he knows what we are about, it can only be because you have been too loose with your tongue,” she snapped. “A little less whoring and drinking on your part would have served our purpose well.” Alice aimed a withering glare at Bressy, who responded by glowering sullenly and looking out of the window.

  “What is it you want of me?” I demanded. “We do not have all night.”

  “That is true,” said Alice. “You will have deduced, no doubt, that we are not the only people searching for Massey’s treasure. We do not know the identity of the other party, but what is clear is that he, she, or they are prepared to kill to achieve their aims. Henry Hassall and Geffery Crewe have already lost their lives, and others may be in danger. We believe that if we pool our resources with Mr Wilbraham and yourself, we will have a much better chance of beating our adversary to the hoard.”

  I looked at Alice in astonishment. “And why the devil would I do that?” I asked.

  “I would have thought that was self-evident. Because it is the only way to find out what has happened to Mrs Padgett’s granddaughter.”

  Bressy looked up in surprise. “You knew about this?” he demanded.

  “Of course,” said Alice. “You forget, I still have relatives in Nantwich. Amy’s disappearance is common knowledge. I confess,” she added, turning to me, “I do not hold your housekeeper in any great regard, and I fear the feeling is mutual, but I would never wish to see the suffering of a child. Help us recover this treasure for the King, Daniel, and we will help you find Amy.”

  I looked at Alice with resignation and noted the look of triumph etched on her face. She knew that she had me and that I had no alternative but to co-operate with her.

  “What do you propose?” I asked. “We do not have time to discuss this here.”

  Alice concurred with a nod. “Of that there is no doubt. Return to Nantwich tomorrow, and Bressy will make contact with you in due course.”

  “Are you going to tell me where and when?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” cut in Bressy. “Do you take me for a complete fool? If I show up in Nantwich at a pre-arranged time and place, I will be arrested by Colonel Booth and strung up in a trice. I will come when the time is right, and when I do, Cheswis, you will know of that, I assure you.”

  “Then it is decided,” said Alice. “Bressy, you would be advised to be on your way before it occurs to someone to come looking here.” With that she strode over towards the window and held it open for Bressy, who manoeuvred himself expertly through the gap and onto the gravel pathway, barely making a sound as he did so. With a brief smile of acknowledgement to Alice, he then sprinted over towards the walled garden and clambered athletically over the brick wall, where he would have been invisible to anyone other than observers from the top storey of the servant block.

  “You know, it is a strange thing,” said Alice, touching me lightly on the arm, “but I always knew we would meet again. It is as though God has decreed that our fates are inextricably entwined, you and I.”

  I recoiled slightly at the unexpected touch – just slightly, but it was enough for Alice to notice. She brushed her ringlets from her face, and as she did so, I thought I noticed an element of sadness in her eyes.

  “Come, Daniel,” she said, removing her hand. “It is time to return. I will go first. You would do well to leave it a few minutes before following, but I fear you will need a suitable excuse to explain your prolonged absence. I suggest you blame it on the herring pie.”

  With that she stepped noiselessly through the door and was gone.

  * * *

  I took Alice’s advice and returned to the library holding my stomach and feigning illness. I was in no mood for further socialising, so despite Wilbraham’s inquisitive looks, I excused myself on the pretext of needing some fresh air and took a stroll down to the lakeside with a view to gathering my thoughts on the latest developments.

  It was a calm, clear night, and the surface of the lake seemed like a mirror, disturbed only by a pair of ducks paddling their way towards a clump of reeds beyond the boathouse. Meanwhile, a fox slunk silently round the side of the washhouse and disappeared amongst the trees beyond. The workmen lining
the water tank, I noticed, had long since stopped work, and silence reigned supreme. I sat down on the edge of the jetty next to the washhouse and began to contemplate the fomenting cauldron of intrigue in which I now found myself.

  My most immediate concern was the fact that I was still no closer to finding out what had happened to Amy. I was acutely aware of the fact that the longer she remained missing, the less chance I had of finding her alive. Her disappearance, it seemed, was linked in some way to Elizabeth’s engraving, the search for Massey’s gold, and the murders of Hassall and Crewe. But how? As time went on, things were becoming less and less clear. Where I thought I had answers, there now seemed to be only questions.

  The fact that Bressy was actively searching for the abbot’s treasure was already known, and, although it had come as a shock, I suppose I should not have been surprised that Alice was involved too. But I had assumed that Bressy was the murderer and that it was he who had kidnapped Amy.

  Bressy and Alice had insisted that an independent third party was responsible. Were they to be believed or was the murderer associated with them in some way? I hesitated to trust them, but could see no reason why they would try to solicit my help if they were not telling the truth; they could simply have extorted my help from me if they had Amy. Indeed, Bressy had possessed the ideal opportunity to shoot me dead in Crewe’s bedchamber. The fact that he had not done so suggested that he had good reason to let me live.

  Then there was the question of what Alice was doing at Combermere with Sir Fulke Hunckes and Lord Herbert and whether her official attendance as a guest of Thomas Cotton had anything to do with Bressy’s activities. Herbert’s presence amongst this group was somewhat puzzling, for the ageing lord had made it clear that he had no wish to nail his colours to the mast of either King or Parliament.

  Thomas Cotton and Hunckes certainly had the air of people who might be involved in a pact with Alice and Bressy, but it was hard to see how they would have become embroiled in the murder of Crewe. Both were in the presence of Alice and Herbert at the time of Crewe’s death, and consequently, if Alice and Bressy were telling the truth about not being involved in the murders, that would remove Cotton and all his house guests from suspicion. And as for George Cotton, he was with me at the time of the killing.

  That left Gorste, who had been in the bakehouse at the time, and the two grooms, Beckett and Martland, who, as Gorste had pointed out, were the only people other than Crewe himself who could have deliberately lamed Demeter. Could I have been wrong about the two young grooms? Was one of them responsible after all for the killing of Crewe? And finally, what was behind the ill-feeling between himself and Eldrid Cripps?

  I couldn’t help feeling I was missing one vital piece of information, and perhaps this had been overlooked among the witness statements relating to the murder of Roger Crockett seventy years ago. I made a mental note to make another visit to Ezekiel Green once Wilbraham and I returned to Nantwich.

  In the meantime, I also had to face the difficulty of what to tell Croxton. He had engaged me to find Bressy and prevent him from finding the treasure, arresting him if possible. Quite apart from the fact that I had been working with a known royalist sympathiser in Roger Wilbraham, I would now be forced to collude directly with Bressy himself. What was worse, I could do nothing about finding out who was responsible for the murders until Bressy himself deigned to show up in Nantwich.

  I held my head in my hands and groaned. As things stood, I would be lucky to avoid being strung up as a traitor myself.

  But everything revolved around Amy. How could I ever look Mrs Padgett in the eye again if I did not do the utmost to find out what had happened to her granddaughter? And what about Elizabeth and Ralph? Were they still at risk?

  I considered that possibility for a moment and realised that this depended entirely on the location of the various engravings. I tried to take stock of the situation. Wilbraham and I were in possession of two of them, a third was unaccounted for, and the remaining three, those belonging to Elizabeth and the two murdered men, were in the hands of the killer. Suddenly, a light flickered in my brain. Why, I wondered, was Amy still being held prisoner if the murderer had taken Elizabeth’s engraving from Kinshaw? Indeed, why had Amy been taken at all, for her disappearance had taken place after the attack on Kinshaw?

  I then jumped to my feet as realisation dawned on me. I had to get back to Nantwich. Elizabeth and Ralph were still in mortal danger, Kinshaw too, if I didn’t get to the fat merchant first. The lying swine had not given up the engraving at all. He still had it!

  Chapter 15

  Nantwich – Thursday, August 1st, 1644

  Today was a very special day for Adolphus Palyn, the occasion on which he was to be fitted for a new suit of clothes, a suit fit to see his daughter married in.

  Adolphus had not thought it possible. For what seemed like months, his daughter Bridgett had been consumed by a fog of despair following the tragic death of her best friend, Margery Davenport, killed during Lord Byron’s bombardment of Townsend House in January, and so, when the young soldier David Rutter had arrived on the scene, he had seemed like a rescuing angel, a saviour in uniform.

  Palyn had not been fooled. Like many of his type, Rutter had a wandering eye for a pretty maid, but he seemed to make his daughter happy, and he was a good catch too – a farmer’s son from Bunbury – a second son, admittedly, but the lad’s eldest brother had been killed fighting for Sir William Brereton at Middlewich, and so David now stood to inherit his father’s farm. A farmer’s wife, after all, was far preferable to being the spinster daughter of a jobbing briner.

  Today, therefore, was a cause for celebration. Adolphus had made an appointment to attend Gilbert Kinshaw at his newly established workshop behind Kinshaw’s house in Hospital Street. Kinshaw had told him his master tailor would arrive at nine, but Adolphus was impatient. It would not matter, surely, if he was there half an hour early. He could always wait if the tailor had not yet arrived.

  And so, a little after eight, Adolphus had kissed his wife goodbye and strolled off in good spirits from his modest worker’s cottage at the far end of Little Wood Street. It was a fine morning, so he had taken the long way round – along the side of the brine-filled Great Cistern and through Strawberry Hill onto Welsh Row. From there he had crossed the bridge and passed through the Beast Market onto Beam Street, where he had stopped and bought a loaf of bread from a baker’s shop.

  From there he turned right up Pepper Street and into the square, where he had bid ‘Good Morrow’ to Clowes the bellman, who was calling anyone who would listen to the funeral of some poor soul who had died the previous day.

  Adolphus would normally have stopped to pass the time of day with Clowes, for he found the bellman to be a genial sort. Today, however, he walked on, past the grammar school, round the church, and into Tinkers Croft. From there he passed the row of white tents, still occupied by those soldiers who could not find a billet in somebody’s house, through a small alleyway between two tenements, and into Hospital Street.

  Adolphus smiled in anticipation as he approached Kinshaw’s workshop, for a light flickered invitingly in one of the windows. Despite the fact that it was summertime and the sun shone outside, the master tailor would always need a plentiful supply of candles to illuminate his workshop, in order to protect his eyesight. He noted from the lack of smell that Kinshaw had been using the best beeswax candles – no cheap tallow alternatives for him. The portly merchant must have been doing well since buying the business from that poor widow, Elizabeth Brett.

  Adolphus noticed that the wooden door to the workshop was slightly ajar, so he pushed at it and called out Kinshaw’s name. As he did so, a cat slunk out from under a table and shot between his legs as though in a desperate bid for freedom. At the same time, a chair placed behind the door tipped over and clattered to the floor.

  Strange, he thought, why would Kinshaw deliberately place a chair behind a door?

  He stepped inside and b
ecame aware of a low groaning sound to his right. Taking a couple of further steps towards the source of the noise, his eyes focused on the workshop table, and what he saw made his blood freeze.

  Lying flat on his back on the table, his shirt shredded, exposing his ample abdomen, was the huge bulk of Gilbert Kinshaw.

  The merchant was almost unrecognisable. His face was a mass of welts and bruises, and his torso a patchwork of red lines, dripping blood. Adolphus noted with horror that the lines were thin knife cuts. Kinshaw, he realised, had been tortured. The merchant was clearly very weak, but he summoned up enough strength to spit out a kerchief that had been rammed into his mouth and whisper two words.

  “Get help.”

  It was then that Adolphus saw him, standing in the shadows in the far corner of the workshop. A tall, athletically built figure, dressed in dark clothing, but with piercing eyes of the deepest blue. The man, clutching a knife, fixed Adolphus with an intense stare and took one step towards him, but the briner was not waiting any longer. Nearly tripping over the upturned chair, he ran out of the workshop and out into Hospital Street.

  ‘Get out into the crowds where you can be seen,’ he thought, ‘and shout for help.’ Once in the street, however, all he could think of was putting as much distance between himself and the vision of horror he had just borne witness to. He looked over his shoulder with trepidation, but realised with relief that the man was not following him. Nevertheless, he quickened his pace and walked back towards the square. He would hasten his way back home, tell his wife what he had seen, and then go in search of Arthur Sawyer. The constable would know what to do.

  As he walked back down the High Street towards the bridge, Adolphus started to breathe a little easier. He began to consider what he had borne witness to, and he realised that he had seen Kinshaw’s attacker before. Was he not the lodger who had recently moved into the disused cottage halfway up Little Wood Street? Inherited the place, so he’d heard. The man was seldom there, so it seemed, but Adolphus had seen the man’s striking figure in the street more often of late.