“Heh, my sonnies!” said the poacher in a piping voice. “Be that the instrument that done the murder?”
And he pointed an unspeakably dirty hand at the piano.
“Never you mind that,” ordered Roper. “That’s not for your low attention.”
“What have you got to tell us, Tranter?” asked Alleyn. “Good Lord, man, you’re as wet as a water-rat!”
“Wuz up to Cloudyfold when they cotched me,” admitted Mr. Tranter. He drew a little closer to the heater and began stealthily to steam.
“Ay, they cotched me,” he said. “Reckon it do have to happen so soon or so late. Squire’ll sit on me at court and show what a mighty man he be, no doubt, seeing it’s his woods I done trapped and shot these twenty year. ’Od rabbit the man, he’d change his silly, puffed-up ways if he knew what I had up my sleeve for ’un.”
“That’s no way to talk,” said Roper severely, “you, with a month’s hard hanging round your neck.”
“Maybe. Maybe not, Charley Roper.” He squinted up at Alleyn. “Being I has my story to tell which will fix the guilt of this spring-gun on him as set it, I reckon the hand of the law did ought to be light on my ancient shoulders.”
“If your information is any use,” said Alleyn, “we might put in a word for you. I can’t promise. You never know. I’ll have to hear it first.”
“ ’Tain’t good enough, mister. Promise first, story afterwards, is my motter.”
“Then it’s not ours,” said Alleyn coolly. “It looks as though you’ve nothing to tell, Tranter.”
“Is threats nothing? Is blasting words nothing? Is a young chap caught red-handed same as me, with as pretty a bird as ever flewed into a trap, nothing?”
“Well?”
Fox came down into the hall, joined the group round the heater and stared with a practised eye at Tranter. Nigel arrived and took off his streaming mackintosh. Tranter turned his head restlessly and looked sideways from one face to another. A trickle of brown saliva appeared at the corner of his mouth.
“Well?” Alleyn repeated.
“Sour, tight-fisted men be the Jernighams,” said Tranter. “What’s a bird or two to them! I’m up against all damned misers, and so be all my side. Tyrants they be, and narrow as the grave, father and son.”
“You’d better take him back, Roper.”
“Nay, then, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you. And if you don’t give me my dues, dang it, if I don’t fling it in the faces of the J.P.s. Where be your pencils and papers, souls? This did oughter go down in writing.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Letter to Troy
i
On Friday afternoon,” said Mr. Tranter, “I were up to Cloudyfold. Never mind way. I come down by my own ways, and proper foxy ways they be, so quiet as moonshine. I makes downhill to Top Lane. Never mind why.”
“I don’t in the least mind,” said Alleyn. “Do go on.”
Mr. Tranter shot a doubtful glance at him and sucked in his breath.
“A’most down to Top Lane, I wuz, when I heard voices. A feymell voice and a man’s voice, and raised in anger. ‘Ah,’ thinks I. ‘There’s somebody down there kicking up Bob’s-a-dying in the lane and, that being the case, the lane’s no place for me, with never-mind-what under my arm and, never-mind-what in my pockets, neither.’ So I worms my way closer, till at last I’m nigh on bank above lane. There’s a great ancient beech tree a-growing theer, and I lays down and creeps forward, so cunning as a serpent, till I looks down atwixt the green stuff into the lane. Yass. And what do I see?”
“What do you see?”
“Ah! I sees young Henry Jernigham, as proud as death and with the devil himself in his face, and rector’s wench in his arms.”
“That’s no way to talk,” admonished Roper. “Choose your words.”
“So I will, and mind your own business, Charley Roper. And who do I see standing down in lane a-facing of they two with her face so sickly as cheese and her eyes like raging fires and her limbs trimbling like a trapped rabbit. Who do I see?”
“Miss Eleanor Prentice,” said Alleyn.
Mr. Tranter, who was now steaming like a geyser and smelling like a polecat, choked and blinked his eyes.
“She’s never told ’ee?”
“No. Go on.”
“Trimbling as if to take a fit, she was, and screeching feeble, but uncommon venomous. Threating ’em with rector, she was, and threating ’em with squire. She says she caught ’em red-handed in vice and she’d see every decent critter in parish heard of their goings-on. And more besides. You’d never believe that old maiden had the knowledge of sinful youth in her, like she do seem to have. Nobbut what she don’t tipple.”
“Really?” Alleyn ejaculated.
“Aye. One of them hasty secret drinkers, she is. She’d sloshed her tipple down her bosom, as I clearly saw. No doubt that’s what’d inflamed the old wench and caused her to rage and storm at ’em. She give it ’em proper hot and sizzling, did Miss Prentice. And when she was at the full blast of her fury, what does t’ young spark do but round on ’er. Aye, t’ young toad! Grabs her by shoulders and hisses in ’er face. If she don’t let ’em be, ’e says, and if she tries to blacken young maid’s name in eyes of the world, he says, he’ll stop her wicked tongue for good an’ all. He were in a proper rage, more furious than her. Terrible. And rector’s maid, she says, ‘Doan’t, Henry, doan’t!’ But young Jernigham ’e take no heed of the wench, but hammer-and-tongs he goes to it, so white as a sheet and blazing like a furnace. Aye, they’ve all got murderous, wrathy, passionate tempers, they Jernighams, as is well known hereabouts; I’ve heard the manner of this bloody killing, and I reckon there’s little doubt he set his spring-gun for t’one old hen and catched t’other. Now!”
ii
“Damn!” said Alleyn, when Mr. Tranter had been removed. “What a bloody business this is.”
“Is it what you expected?” asked Nigel.
“Oh, I half expected it, yes. It was obvious that something pretty dramatic had happened on Friday afternoon. Miss Prentice and Henry Jernigham showed the whites of their eyes whenever it was mentioned, and the rector told me that he and the squire and Miss Prentice had all been opposed to this match. Why, the Lord alone knows. She seems a perfectly agreeable girl, rather a nice girl, blast it. And look at the way Master Henry responded to inquiry! Fox, did you ever know such a case? One cranky spinster is enough, heaven knows; and here we have two, each a sort of Freudian prize packet, and one a corpse on our hands.”
“The whole thing seems very unlikely sort of stuff to me, Mr. Alleyn, and yet there it is. She was murdered. If that kid had never read his comic paper, and if he hadn’t had his Twiddletoy outfit, it wouldn’t have happened.”
“I believe you’re right there, Brer Fox.”
“I suppose, sir, that was what Miss Prentice wanted to see the rector about on Friday evening. The meeting in Top Lane, I mean.”
“Yes, I dare say it was. Oh, hell, we’ll have to tackle Miss Prentice in the morning. What did Dinah Copeland say about the face-powder?”
“She brought it down with her last night. Georgie Biggins wasn’t behind the scenes at all last night. He made such a nuisance of himself that they gave him the sack. He was call-boy at the dress rehearsal, but the tables and dressing-rooms have all been scrubbed out since then. That powder must have been spilt after half-past six last evening. And another thing: Miss Dinah Copeland never heard about the onion — or says she didn’t.”
“That makes sense, anyway!”