There was a hush outside as all turned to the approaching couple, who seemed to take such attention as their rightful due. Her maid walked dutifully behind her. Both Lord Foppington and Miss Cherrington were in full dress, despite the early hour, he in beribboned breeches and elegant frock coat, she a delightful shepherdess with ornate polonaise drapery, white stockings peeping below the calf-length skirt, and her hair piled high on her head. They looked as though they indeed graced a stage.
“Mr. Thomas, Miss Cherrington is impatient to read my latest poem,” Lord Foppington drawled, seemingly unaware of the twittering disapproval around him.
“I would,” lisped Miss Cherrington. She looked a sweet child for all her affectation, although more a dainty automaton than a young lady with a mind of her own.
“Pray do not,” Mr. Thomas said anxiously.
“Why?” she asked indignantly, turning the fateful page to read it. I made no attempt to dissuade her. If this was a true threat against her life, she should know about it.
“Oh!” A gasp, then Miss Cherrington grew very white and swooned into Mr. Thomas’s arms. Mrs. Thomas hastened to bring salts, which, firmly removing the young lady from her husband’s arms, she applied to the victim’s nostrils with no immediate effect.
“This is your doing, my Lord,” Mr. Thomas said angrily.
Lord Foppington smiled. “She swoons for my love.”
I stepped forward. “She fears, my lord. You must assure her it is a jest.”
“Fears? A jest? Who are you, sir?” Lord Foppington eyed me querulously.
“Parson Pennywick of Cuckoo Leas. Miss Cherrington fears you wish to kill her.”
“Kill her?” Lord Foppington looked blank.
“Your poem threatens it, sir.”
He cast a look at the verse and looked up, frowning. “This is not my poem. I wrote of love, I wrote of her beauty — not this.”
Miss Cherrington quickly opened her eyes. “It is your hand, my Lord,” she snapped, and swooned again.
His lordship looked alarmed. “Fairest nymph, let me recite my poem for today. Hark—
Mr. Thomas had heard enough. “Do you deny you wrote this?” He pointed to the disputed verse.
“Certainly I do.”
Miss Cherrington, now fully awake, burst into tears. “You are a villain, my Lord.”
Lord Foppington dropped instantly upon one knee. “Fair lady, it is not my hand,” he pleaded. “Depend upon it, this is Percy’s doing.”
“Lord Foppington’s rival for her hand,” Dorothea whispered to me in excitement. “Mr. Percy Trott, younger son of the Earl of Laninton.”
“Of what am I guilty, pray?” The languid voice belonged to a full-bodied gentleman dressed a la mode, who was surveying the assembled company through an eyeglass without enthusiasm — until he spied Miss Cherrington.
A dozen voices enlightened him.
“You insult me, you mushroom,” Mr. Trott accused his lordship indignantly, then turning to Miss Cherrington: “Madam, pay no attention to this clunch, this clown.” And back to Lord Foppington: “At dawn tomorrow, my Lord, we shall meet. My seconds shall call upon you.”
Miss Cherrington’s recovery was now remarkable, and she beamed at the prospect of a duel. “I shall forgive you both,” she announced. “Whether alive or dead,” she added generously.
The three left their stage together, apparently all restored to good humour. Playacting? Perhaps. But plays only succeed if based on true emotions — and what those might be here, I could not guess. The crowd began to disperse, no doubt reminded that it was long past the hour when they should be seen in dishabille.
As for myself, Dorothea reminded me that I had apparently clamoured to take the waters, and docilely I agreed. Overhearing this exchange, Mr. Thomas immediately said he would accompany us to the spring, although Mrs. Thomas’s displeasure at having to remain in the store was obvious. The spring was at the end of the Upper Walk and it was the custom for visitors to the Wells to pay a subscription on leaving to one or other of the dippers for service during the course of their stay. This hardly applied to poor parsons, but it pleased Dorothea when I produced a halfpenny.
Most of the dippers were of mature years, with a practised eye for the richest visitors, but Miss Annie Bright was a merry-eyed girl. Annie, so Dorothea explained to me, was the niece of her father’s housekeeper, Mrs. Atkins, and so I acquired her services in filling the metal cup for me.
The pretty little hand closed around my halfpenny and its new owner gave me a merry smile — at which Mr. Thomas too decided to take the waters. Annie spun me a tale of the wondrous properties of the spring and insisted I drank not one but three cups. An even number of cups would bring ill fortune, she told me gravely, but an odd number would give speed to my legs, make my liver rejoice and my spirits rise. I felt neither of the first two effects, only the flat metallic taste of a chalybeate spring, but as for the third, my spirits did indeed rise, as she smiled at me.
But then I saw Lord Foppington chatting amiably to both Miss Cherrington and Mr. Trott, the threat of the poem forgotten. Except by Caleb Pennywick.
That evening I was late to my bed, having been persuaded by Dorothea that I wanted nothing more than to attend Mrs. Sarah Baker’s theatre on Mount Sion to see a performance of Mr. Sheridan’s The Rivals. A most amusing piece. Early the next morning I was awoken by Dorcas. She is my housekeeper, and at home my dearest companion by day and often by night. It is she not I who keeps the difference between us, for she maintains she has no wish to play the part of parson’s wife. She chose to come with me on my visit to Jacob, but remains in the housekeeper’s rooms, as she is eager, she claims, to learn new receipts for our pantry at Cuckoo Leas. Every morning, therefore, she visits the market on the Walks, and today had been no exception.
“Caleb, wake up, lovey.” She was gently shaking me.
I sat bolt upright in my bed. “Are there no more wheatear pies?” I cried, having dined and dreamed happily of them.
“There’s been a murder done.”
“Miss Cherrington?” I was fully awake now.
“No, Caleb. Young Annie Bright, one of the water dippers.”
The lass who had so eagerly received my halfpenny yesterday. My heart bled for the loss of innocence and joy in this world.
“Found by the sweeper at the spring this morning,” Dorcas continued. “A paper knife was stuck in her. In a rare taking is Mrs. Atkins. I told her you’d find out who did it.”
My Dorcas looked at me with such trust and confidence that I quailed. As I sat in my nightshirt in a parsonage not my own, it seemed a most unlikely prospect that I could track down this murderer. “We are strangers here, Dorcas,” I pleaded. “In Cuckoo Leas I know my flock.”
“You can do it, Caleb,” she assured me. “You brought your brain with you, didn’t you? It’s not left behind in that old cocked hat of yours?”
I was forced to smile. That beloved hat was now so old it was forbidden to travel with me.
“Has a runner been requested?” If the local magistrate deemed this case beyond the powers of the Wells’ parish constable, he had the power to summon a Bow Street runner.
“Not yet, Caleb. Annie was a dipper, not a duchess.” There was no bitterness in Dorcas’s voice. We both knew the ways of this world.
The constable would be unpaid and unskilled, and even a country clergyman might do as well. And I could refuse Dorcas nothing.