"Of course," Hoare said.
"Of course, as you say," Thoday echoed, his voice heavy with sarcasm. "As to your question, nothing here can tell us. They could be anywhere between London and Penzance. Perhaps the heavy-handed men of the local law, who destroyed so much of the evidence here, will be able to redeem themselves in my-our-eyes by having found something relevant beyond our horizon here. So we must retrace our steps to Dorchester and confront them. Shall we go?"
The three men stood in the middle of the Circle for a moment while Hoare made up his mind what to do next. He made much of studying the sketch map of the district that Rabbett had made for him.
"Let me see. There is no place hereabouts for us to set up headquarters. Dorchester is about five miles away-"
"Four, sir," Rabbett said.
"But I know of nothing there that would help our hunt for the killers. On the other hand, Weymouth is only a little more distant, six miles or thereabouts, it would seem-"
"Ten miles, sir," said Rabbett.
Hoare turned on the clerk. " Will you hold your tongue, sir? Six, ten, whatever distance, Weymouth is a major station… for the excisemen, and it may have been smugglers that killed the Getchells. The Weymouth men are likely to be able to point out possible suspects."
Which was more than the civil authorities in these parts were likely to do when he, Bartholomew Hoare, was the suppliant, Hoare thought. He stood in bad odor in Dorset.
"Yes," he said. "We shall make our base in Weymouth."
Thoday looked at him aghast.
"I protest, sir. Have I not just told you-"
"You do not, by God, take that mutinous tone with me, my man." This was Hoare's best commanding voice, a rasp that he found it excruciatingly painful to produce. He used it seldom, therefore, mostly when, as now, a subordinate provoked him when he had not been expecting it.
"You do not tell your superior officer anything whatsoever except when asked… You shall remember to keep your place, or it shall be the worse for you."
As Thoday stood silent and dumfounded, Hoare whistled for the Admiralty chaise. Weymouth might be, as he had said, a center for useful intelligence, but he knew a rationalization when he heard it, even if it was his own. Weymouth was also the home of Mrs. Eleanor Graves.
"On our way to Weymouth, of course," he said, "we shall retrace our steps to Dorchester. While there, we will talk with this Spurrier, who is apparently the person charged with finding the Captains' killers… Then, Thoday, we shall find out what he has discovered, with particular reference to the missing drivers, the missing chaise, and the missing head."
Hoare finally ran Captain Walter Spurrier to earth at the Mitre Inn, where he was taking an early nooning or a late breakfast. He was also jesting in an intimate way with an admiring young woman of parts. It was not clear to Hoare just what Spurrier was Captain of; the scarlet uniform coat, heavy with bullion, bore cherry-colored facings. Hoare did not recognize the regiment. Judging from the shape of the saber dropped carelessly on the inn table, Spurrier's high boots, and the scar that ran from a ravaged left ear through his reddish side-whiskers to the corner of his sensuous mouth, he was a cavalryman or an ex-cavalryman. If he had not been seated, Hoare could have sworn he was swaggering. All in all, Hoare thought, if ever a man was cut out to play the villain in some fustian Gothick novel, Spurrier was he.
Whatever his regiment, Spurrier was visibly unimpressed by Hoare's own uniform. Though Spurrier removed his spurred boots from the low table before him, he did not rise. He looked Hoare up and down with cold heavy-lidded eyes-Hanoverian eyes, they might have been.
"Navy chap, I see. What brings you this far inland? This might be countryside for the Treasury's men, but you haven't the look of a tide-runner. Impress Service, perhaps? If so, you're not welcome here. Be off."
"Two dead Captains bring me, Mr. Spurrier," Hoare said. "One of them with his head gone astray. A missing chaise, in the Admiralty's service. And two drivers, one of them an Admiralty servant."
"Navy doesn't keep very good track of its property, does it, Bella, me dear?"
The young woman of parts giggled and jiggled.
"Not surprising you feel you must reveal your mission only in a whisper." Captain Spurrier's tone was just short of insolent.
Giggle. Jiggle.
Hoare sighed. The man obviously saw himself as cock of the walk here in Dorchester, and perhaps he was. Hoare itched to put him in his place but needed information. As long as his insolence grew no greater, Hoare felt, he must needs abide it. So he limited his riposte to fixing the idle Captain with his faded gray eyes narrowed and level, his brown face frozen. The basilisk stare as much as said, far more directly and credibly than Hoare's shattered vocal cords could have managed: "I have been defending my good name on the field of honor since I was six and my lack of voice since the Glorious First of June. I am still alive, though my voice may not be, and my name is as good as it was when my father gave it me. Draw your own conclusions, sir. Get yourself killed if you must. It is of no consequence to me."
The silence, and Hoare's stare, stretched on, and on, and on. In due course, Captain Spurrier sobered and rose to his feet, his chair toppling behind him. The young woman of parts forgot to giggle and stooped to right the chair. She hastily brought another for the visitor.
"My muteness is an unfortunate matter, sir," Hoare said in a placatory whisper as he seated himself, "even more for me than it is for you, I assure you… My whisper has less to do with secrecy, however, than it does with an injury. I am sure you understand…
"Now to return to the matter of the missing head and the chaise… I refer, of course, to the deaths of Captains Francis and Benjamin Getchell. Naturally, the Admiralty is much concerned. What can you, as…?"
"Deputy Sheriff of Dorset for the Dorchester region- under Sir Thomas Frobisher, of course. And you'd be…"
"Your servant, sir. The name's Hoare. Bartholomew Hoare, at your service. In all respects," he added warningly. "What, I ask you once again, can you tell me about the deaths of the two Captains Getchell?"
Captain Spurrier was not prepared to be stared out of countenance again.
"I must consult my journals, sir. Will you be pleased to step over to my quarters?"
He led his unwelcome guests across the High Street to what might have once been the house of a prosperous merchant, with a black front door. Grasping an oddly phallic handle, Captain Spurrier opened the door and gestured to the others to precede him.
Hoare nearly coughed as he stepped into the shadowy hallway; beside him he heard Thoday sniff. A few times, particularly in the parish church of Sainte-Foi in Quebec where he had wedded his dear dead Antoinette, Hoare had been present at High Mass. Now he smelled the same cloying, pungent odor of cold incense. Why, he wondered, would Walter Spurrier, bold Captain in the Something Horse, burn incense in his quarters?
If the room to which Spurrier led Hoare was his place of business, it was a peculiarly furnished one, dark-paneled and lit by stained-glass windows as if it were some sort of chapel. Next to a great Bible on a stand, a wide, cluttered desk stood in the stained-glass window. Moving quickly, Spurrier strode to the desk, displacing a chair as he passed it so that it hindered Hoare and Thoday's path. When Spurrier threw a large piece of embroidered fabric over the desk, the breeze of its falling blew several papers to the heavily carpeted floor.
Hoare bent to retrieve them, nearly bumping heads with Thoday and his host.
"Thankee, gentlemen," Spurrier said when they handed him the papers.
"Now, let me see," Spurrier said. He seated himself at the far side of the desk and lifted one corner of the cloth. It looked to Hoare like some kind of garment. "Yes. Yes. Here we are."