Richard and Judy Bookclub - 3 Bestsellers in 1: The American Boy, The Savage Garden, The Righteous Men
let us wait no longer.”
We jumped down from the whiskey and followed the constable over the caked mud into the shed. My eyes adjusted slowly to the gloom. A small stove burned in the corner and filled the air with heavy, acrid fumes. A man huddled beside it, a clay pipe smouldering in his mouth. In the shadows at the back of the shed was the shape of a door laid upon trestles. On the door lay the long, dark mound of a body. I sniffed: in the smoke were other smells: the tang of spirits and the dark effluvium of the charnel house.
Grout indicated the man by the stove. “This fellow’s name is Orton, Jacob Orton.”
“Late of the Seventy-Third, sir,” said Orton in a mendicant’s whine. “And I have a testimonial from my company commander to prove it.” He raised the hand holding the pipe in a parody of a military salute and a shower of sparks flew like meteors through the air. “They called me Honest Jake in the regiment,” he said. “That’s my name, sir, that’s my nature.”
“Are there no more lights in here?” Grout demanded.
“It is a terrible dull day, to be sure,” Orton said, sucking on his pipe.
Grout darted towards him and seized his lapels. “Are you sure you heard nothing in the night? Think carefully. A lie will cost you dear.”
“As God is my witness, sir, I was sleeping as sound as a babe in his mother’s arms.” Orton snuffled. “I could not help it, your worship.”
“You’re not paid to sleep: you’re paid to watch.”
“Drunk as a pig,” said the constable. “That’s what he means, sir.”
“I don’t deny I took a drop of something to keep out the cold.”
“Drank so much the Last Judgement could have come without him noticing anything out of the way,” the constable translated. He nodded towards the silent shape that lay on the trestles. “You’ve only got to look at him to see he didn’t go quietly. Ain’t that right, Mr Grout?”
The clerk ignored the question. He turned aside and tugged at the sacking over one of the windows, which were small and set high to dissuade thieves. The sacking fell away, revealing an unglazed square. Pale winter daylight spread reluctantly through the little cabin. Orton whinnied softly, as though the light hurt him.
“Stow it,” said the constable.
“He moved,” Orton whispered. “I take my oath on it. I saw his hand move. Just then, as God’s my witness.”
“Your wits are wandering,” Grout said. “Bring the lantern. Why is there not more light? Perhaps we should have left the poor man where he lay.”
“There’s foxes, and a terrible deal of rats,” Orton said.
Grout motioned me to approach the makeshift table. The body was entirely covered with a grey blanket, with the exception of the left hand.
“Dear God!” I ejaculated.
“You must brace yourself, Mr Shield. The face is worse.”
His voice seemed to come from a great distance. I stared at the wreck of the hand. I bent closer and the constable shone the light full on it. It had been reduced to a bloody pulp of flesh, skin and shockingly white splinters of bone. I fought an impulse to vomit.
“The top joints of the forefinger appear to be missing,” I said in a thin, precise voice. “I know Mr Frant had sustained a similar injury.”
Grout let out his breath in a sigh. “Are you ready for the rest?”
I nodded. I did not trust myself to speak.
The constable set down the lantern on the corner of the door, raised himself on tiptoe, took the top two corners of the blanket and slowly pulled it back. The figure lay supine and as still as an effigy. The constable lifted the lantern and held it up to the head.
I shuddered and took a step back. Grout gripped my elbow. My mind darkened. For an instant I thought the darkness was outside me, that the flame in the lantern had died and that the day had slipped with tropical suddenness into night. I was aware of a powerful odour of faeces and sweat, of stale tobacco and gin.
“He should think himself lucky,” Orton wheezed at my shoulder. “I mean, look at him, most of him’s hardly touched. Lucky bugger, eh? You should see what roundshot fair and square in the belly can do to a man. Now that’s what I call damage. I remember at Waterloo –”
“Hold your tongue, damn you,” I said, obscurely angry that this man seemed not to have spent the battle cowering in the shadow of a dead horse.
“You block the light, Orton,” Grout said, unexpectedly mild. “Move aside.”
I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the sights and sounds and smells that struggled to fill the darkness around me. This was not a battle: this was merely a corpse.
“Are you able to come to an opinion?” Grout inquired. “I realise that the face is – is much battered.”
I opened my eyes. The man on the trestle table was hatless. There were still patches of frost on both clothes and hair. It had been a cold night to spend in the open. He wore a dark, many-caped greatcoat – not a coachman’s but a gentleman’s luxurious imitation. Underneath I glimpsed a dark blue coat, pale brown breeches and heavy riding boots. The hair was greying at the temples, cut short.
As to the face, it was everyone’s and no one’s. Only one eye was visible – God alone knew what had happened to the other – and it seemed to me that its colour was a pale blue-grey.
“He – he is much changed, of course,” I said, and the words were as weak and inadequate as the light from the lantern. “But everything I see is consonant with what I know of Mr Frant – the colour of the hair, that is to say, the colour of the eyes – that is, of the eye – and the build and the height as far as I can estimate them.”
“The clothes?”
“I cannot help you there.”
“There is also a ring.” Grout walked round the head of the table, keeping as far away from it as he could. “It is still on the other hand, so the motive for this dreadful deed appears not to have been robbery. Pray come round to this side.”
I obeyed like one in a trance. I was unable to look away from what lay on the table. The greatcoat was smeared with mud. A dark patch spread like a sinister bib across the chest. I thought I discerned splinters of exposed bone in the red ruin of the face.
The single eye seemed to follow me.
“Now take cavalry,” Orton suggested from his dark corner near the stove. “When they’re bunched together, and charging, so the horses can’t choose where they put their hooves. If there’s a man lying on the ground, wounded, say, there’s not a lot anyone can do. Cuts a man up cruelly, I can tell you. You wouldn’t believe.”
“Stow your mag,” said the constable wearily.
“Least he’s got a peeper left on him,” Orton went on. “The crows used to go for the eyes, did you know that?”
The constable cuffed him into silence. Grout held the lantern low so I could examine the right hand of the corpse. Like the left, it had been reduced to a bloody pulp. On the forefinger was the great gold signet ring.
“I must have air,” I said. I pushed past Grout and the constable and blundered through the doorway. The clerk followed me outside. I stared over the desolate prospect of frosty mud and raw brick. Three pigeons rose in alarm from the bare branches of an oak tree that survived from a time when the land had not been given over to wild schemes and lost fortunes.
Grout pushed a flask into my hand. I took a mouthful of brandy, and spluttered as the heat ran down to my belly. He walked up and down, clapping his gloved hands together against the cold.
“Well, sir?” he said. “What is your verdict?”