The Sudbury School Murders

"It is important, is it?"

"I wish to help Sebastian," I said impatiently. "I seem to be the only person in Sudbury who does not believe he murdered Middleton."

The Romany looked me up and down. He looked neither angry, nor pleased. "He stayed a good long time. Until just before sunrise."

"Sunrise? Are you certain?"

Sebastian had told me he'd returned at two o'clock, long before sunrise. He'd sworn so on oath to the coroner.

"Aye," he said. He smiled, showing brown teeth. "I do recognize sunrise, English man."

I ignored that. "What did you do when Sebastian left you?"

He shrugged. "Pulled up our mooring and started west. I was angry at young Sebastian, did not much want to see him. So we went back down, toward Bath."

"We didn't," said a voice behind him. "We didn't right away."

We both turned. A woman stood on the deck of the barge. She was younger than the bargeman and wore a bright blue shawl around her shoulders. "We did not turn to Bath right away. We floated Sebastian up toward Sudbury, at least as far as Lower Sudbury Lock."

She had a fine voice, soft and contralto. The voice did not match her face, which was quite plain. She had thin lips and a narrow nose, nothing remarkable. Her dark eyes, however, reminded me of those of ladies in Spain, who watched soldiers march by and promised them delights if they turned aside.

"At sunrise?" I asked.

The older man scowled at her. She gazed back at him, undaunted. "Just before. It was still dark, the sky just gray."

"You did not call the lockkeeper to open the lock for you?" I asked.

"We had no need. Sebastian stepped off the boat, and we went back the other way. The next lockkeeper down let us through."

So they had been at Lower Sudbury Lock at sunrise. And the lockkeeper had not heard them? Nor had he heard Middleton's body being deposited in the lock.

"We move like ghosts," Sebastian's uncle said. He smiled again.

The lockkeeper bent over his wheels, cranking them to shut off the pumps. He turned the gear to open the gates. "Bloody Romany," he muttered.

The Romany moved the horse slowly forward, pulling the barge into the canal. I turned my horse next to his.

"Then you were at the site of the murder," I said. "Tell me what you saw."

The Romany raised his grizzled brows. "Nothing to see. Canal quiet, land waking to the day. Nothing more."

"A shadow," the woman said. Again Sebastian's uncle glared at her; again, she took no notice. "A shadow by the lock gate. Someone staying hidden. I could not see who."

Not Sebastian. The murderer? Why the murderer, though? The doctor had said the body had been deposited at least four hours before it was found, and it was found at six o'clock, just after daybreak. Why should the murderer linger?

"If Sebastian was with you at sunrise, according to your evidence, he could not have placed the body in the lock," I said. "He could not have killed the groom. Will you tell the magistrate this?"

The Romany spat. "Will the magistrate listen to me?"

I thought of the magistrate and his treatment of Sebastian. I thought of Rutledge and the constable. They all believed the Roma to be liars. Sebastian's uncle was no fool. "I know a magistrate who might," I said slowly.

I was thinking of Sir Montague Harris, the magistrate of the Whitechapel house in London. He had intelligence, and he actually listened to my ideas, as farfetched as they were.

Sebastian's uncle faced me, angry. "Sebastian has forsaken us. He does not like Romany ways. He would rather be a slave to Englishmen and lust after a girl with pearl-white skin. What need has he of us?"

The woman looked sad. "Must we abandon him?"

"He has abandoned us," the Romany said fiercely. The children on the boat had gone quiet, watching their elders with large eyes. "He has abandoned you."

I tried to placate him. "I am certain Sebastian does not mean to desert you entirely. He seems fond of you all."

"Does he?" The Romany looked me up and down, black eyes snapping. "Then why does he refuse to return to us? That night I argued with him long, yes. And he agreed to nothing. Not anything I said could persuade him, nor could his spending the rest of the night with his wife."

I stared at him, dumbfounded, while his last words struck me. "His wife?"

The Romany jerked his thumb over his shoulder, and I looked again at the young woman standing patiently on the deck. "Aye. Young Megan. She is Sebastian's wife."

I left the Roma on the bank of the canal. I forgot all about breakfast and charged back to Sudbury to persuade the constable's housekeeper to let me see Sebastian.

Sebastian looked slightly better but still gazed longingly at the door when the plump woman let me in.

I called Sebastian a bloody fool, and then told him why. He flushed and would not meet my eyes. "It is true then," I said. "She is your wife, and you were with her that night."

"She is not my wife," he growled. "We were never married in a church, with an English license. My uncle decided she should be my wife about one year ago and brought her to live with us."

I remembered the first time I had visited Sebastian here, remembered the constable's housekeeper telling me that a Romany woman had tried to see Sebastian. Sebastian had blushed and said it had been his mother. I knew now that the visitor must have been Megan. She must have come to see whether he was all right. A wife who loved her husband would do that.

"And you spent all of Sunday night with her?" I asked. "On your family's boat?"

"Yes," he said.

"Then why the devil did you not say so?"

He looked at me as though I'd gone mad. "In the magistrate's court? With Miss Rutledge's father looking on, to take her the news of all that happened?"

I let out a sigh. "So you lied because of Miss Rutledge. I take it from your reluctance that Miss Rutledge does not know about Megan?"

"No," he said.

"Good God, Sebastian. You cannot have it both ways."

He looked at me defiantly. "That is why I took the post at the Sudbury School. To work and have money so that I no longer have to be Romany."

"Megan seems to care about you."

"Megan is an obedient woman. She does what her father tells her, she does what my uncle tells her."

Belinda Rutledge, on the other hand, must seem like a tragic heroine to him, a pretty young woman dominated by her father and chafing at her bonds. Why settle for dutiful kindness when one can have passionate devotion?

"Megan said that she would be willing to tell the magistrate that you stayed with her," I said. "That you did not return to the stables at two o'clock, but left your family at sunrise."

Sebastian's brows knit. "I do not wish her to."

"You would prefer to hang for a murder you did not commit?"

He shook his head, a little desperate. "No."

"You are the most stubborn young man I have ever met, Sebastian. I like you, but your head is in the wrong place."

He gave me a pleading look. "The magistrate will not believe Megan, in any case. She is Romany."

"That is possible. What you need is an independent witness." I thought a moment about the shadowy figure Megan had seen hovering near the lock. I had some ideas about that. I also thought about Megan and her patient eyes. Sebastian was an idiot.

"You are a fool, Sebastian," I told him. "Did you plan to elope with Miss Rutledge? Even if you managed to marry her, your family would never accept her, and her family would banish her. Life is long, my young friend. Do not make it more difficult than it already has to be."

He, of course, did not believe me. "I love Miss Rutledge," he said stubbornly. "I would die for her."

"Perhaps. But would dying for her do her any good? Duty is difficult, and well I know it. But sometimes it is all we have."

Sebastian studied his strong, brown hands. I was asking him to chose between losing his life and losing the woman he loved. To him, at twenty, each choice was equally foul. To die in ignominy or to live in wretchedness must seem the same to him.