In Hoare's cabin, the silent Whitelaw already awaited them, once again bearing biscuits and port. Hoare did not believe he had yet heard the man speak. Was he, perhaps, even more totally mute than his master?
"Well, Mr. Clay, it is my turn to inform you." So saying, he conveyed to his Lieutenant all he had just learned about the affair in the Nine Stones Circle.
"All too little," he concluded. "I propose to make at least the first investigation myself. But I would like your recommendation of a man-not a woman at this time, if you please-to serve as my deputy or amanuensis. I have never worked with one, and it is clear that I must learn how. In your experience, which of our crew is best suited to handle this mission?"
Clay gave Hoare's question a full fifteen seconds' consideration before saying, "Thoday, sir."
"Of course, today," Hoare said in a displeased voice. "Tomorrow at the latest. There isn't a moment to be lost."
"Thoday is his name, sir. Accent on the ultimate. His father was one of Sir John Fielding's best men-the 'blind beak,' you know-and Titus Thoday takes after him. Experienced, cold, sharp. Rated Gunner's Mate, nominally."
"Very good. Let's have a look at him."
Hoare chirruped, and Whitelaw reappeared.
"Get me Titus Thoday, Whitelaw," Hoare said. But first…"
Hoare demonstrated to Whitelaw a few simple signals besides the chirrup that he had found useful in dealing with persons waiting on him-the trills on his boatswain's pipe he had developed with pink Susan Hackins at the Swallowed Anchor, for example. He was already confident that the silent man would need no rehearsal. In fact, the brief experience told him that Whitelaw might well foresee his master's requirements before he knew them himself.
"Now, get me Thoday," he concluded.
"Aye aye, sir." These were the first words the man had uttered. That settled one question: Whitelaw was not mute, but merely taciturn-a rare but welcome characteristic for a Captain's servant, Hoare thought.
Had Hoare been anyone but his Commander, the demeanor of the person who appeared within moments would have been quite intimidating. Thoday stooped to clear his head in what Hoare considered a condescending way, even though Royal Duke's low overhead made the stoop necessary. Thoday's nose was a beak, his eyes an icy pale gray, his thin lips habitually compressed. He accepted as merely his due Hoare's invitation to be seated and listened in silence until Hoare finished his story for the second time in half an hour.
"I shall accompany you ashore tomorrow morning, sir, when you depart," Thoday then said. Neither Hoare nor Clay had said a word about Hoare's coming journey, nor did Thoday seem to doubt that his Commander would accommodate him without boggling.
"We shall require an assistant with local knowledge," he continued.
"Lemuel Rabbett is one of Admiral Hardcastle's clerks," Hoare said tersely. "He is a native of the area, and he has been told to make himself available. I hope you'll find that satisfactory," he added with mild sarcasm.
"I shall find out quickly enough." Thoday's voice was hard, but it bore a faint hint of approval. "We can pick him up in the morning, as we leave town."
Thoday rose to his feet.
"And now, gentlemen, I have my preparations to make-as, no doubt, have you."
"A bit above himself, isn't he?" Hoare asked as the cabin door closed behind the Gunner's Mate.
"You will find, sir, that most of my, your crew have little innate respect for rank," Clay said. "They are something like the Americans in that respect. But, fortunately, our people at least know what correct behavior is and generally choose to adopt it when strangers are present, so no self-esteem is lost on either side.
"I am given to understand that Thoday is an excellent gunner as well, although he has had no chance to demonstrate his prowess with our poor little popguns." So Mr. Clay was a secret fire-eater, thought Hoare.
Aloud, he whispered, "We shall have to correct that as soon as I return, shan't we?"
They had ordered an Admiralty chaise to be ready to leave at the turn of the watch, so Hoare would not even have time to shave. Whitelaw picked up the portmanteau he had yet to unpack for his Commander and, lugging it, led the way from Royal Duke's cabin into the misty evening.
At the boarding port, Whitelaw handed the bag to Thoday, who accepted it without blinking an eye. Mr. Clay doffed his hat in salute.
"Since you have issued no orders to the contrary, sir, may I presume that I should continue with the projects assigned us before Royal Duke left London?"
"Exactly. But I would like you to add some drill with her-er-great guns."
"Even without her gunner, sir?"
"Especially without her gunner, Mr. Clay."
"Aye aye, sir." Hoare thought to see an ironic smile on Thoday's thin lips. Was there an undercurrent of something here? he wondered.
"Give way, all," said the coxswain.
Before the chaise departed Portsmouth in the chill of late evening, Lemuel Rabbett had to undergo Thoday's inquisition. The little clerk showed himself as full of local knowledge about the Nine Stones Circle, and the copses and heathy moors in which it was set, as any harbor pilot must necessarily be about his local waters. Not so long ago, he explained, the area had been largely enclosed and left fallow to support the growing flocks of several local landowners. As the party already knew, it was one of the shepherds whose dog had sniffed out the bodies of Captains Francis and Benjamin Getchell. In his boyhood, Rabbett had roamed the area, studying the birds and his namesake coneys, and he knew most of the lonely men, as well as their dogs.
The Nine Stones Circle, he told them as the chaise trundled through the moonlit October countryside, was itself something of a magnet for the curious. He had even heard that strangers gathered in and around its nine stones at the equinoxes and solstices to conduct ungodly rites. After all, the Poor Lot Barrows lay only a few miles farther west, and everyone knew that there, on those same occasions, the wights came out to dance with the neighboring witches.
Of course, if one were to ask Rabbett his opinion, only the locals believed in that sort of thing. A native of Dorchester himself, four miles distant, Mr. Rabbett knew perfectly well there was nothing in it. Besides, since neither an equinox nor a solstice was at hand, as the Naval gentlemen surely need not be told, the Captains' deaths could have had nothing to do with any Satanistic celebrations in the Nine Stones Circle.
"Nonetheless," Rabbett said, "it's odd, is it not, gentlemen, that All Hallows' Eve is not so many days away?"
And so on and on, throughout the night. Rabbett must be habitually nocturnal. He left Hoare, at least, only a few minutes in which to nap. Whenever he woke, Thoday was sitting opposite him, awake, erect, and silent, and Rabbett was talking.
The bodies of the Captains Getchell, Hoare had been told, were reposing at the Church of All Angels. Here the chaise drew up before sunrise, just as a sleepy sexton trudged into sight.
The sexton made no trouble about letting them see the two corpses. The weather had been mercifully cool, so the odors of corruption were still faint. Nevertheless, Rabbett gagged and pressed a kerchief to his face.
"Have the relatives of the dead men been notified, do you know?" Hoare whispered to the sexton.
"Ye needn't whisper, sir. There's only one of 'em as 'as ears to 'ear with, and 'e ain't listenin'."
For, as Hoare had already been told, only a ragged stump remained on one of the bodies, windpipe and neck-bones projecting obscenely with the shrinkage of the tissue from around them. The other head had been replaced on the neck, where it no longer seemed to fit. The owner had been struck fiercely from behind, his occiput being crushed and part of his brains splattered. The single pair of eyes that remained, now mercifully closed by those who had found the bodies, must have almost bulged from their sockets. Blood and brains stained both uniform coats, suggesting to Hoare that the missing head would display the same injuries. Their coats had been stripped of their gold braid and buttons, their shoes were missing, and their stockings- and their breeches, of course-stained and ruined. Coat and breeches pockets had been turned out.
"Oh, dear me," Rabbett said from behind Hoare and Thoday. The latter looked at each other and shrugged; there was little these sad, dead shapes could tell them. As they turned to leave, Hoare saw Thoday cross himself. This explained something about the gunner-but hardly everything.
"You did not answer my question… except with an untimely impertinence," Hoare whispered to the sexton. "Kindly restrain your misplaced humor and give me a civil answer. Have the relatives been notified?"
"I don't know, sir," the sexton said. "Ye'd be better talking with Vicar, or the Capting. He be crowner, he be."
"The Captain?"
"Aye. Capting Spurrier. Ye don't know the Capting? Well, 'e'll put you right, 'e will."
"His whereabouts?"
The sexton cackled. "Ye'll find him in town hall, if anywhere."
But Hoare's itch to view the scene of the crime was too strong to resist. Captain Spurrier must wait to "put him right," whatever that meant. Rabbett knew that Mr. Trowbridge was vicar at the Church of All Angels but could not enlighten Hoare about Captain Spurrier. Hoare directed the chaise's driver to take them west to Winterbourne Abbas.
The morning sun, still low, was casting shadows ahead of them when the chaise put the scattered cottages of Winterbourne Abbas behind it. The Circle, a broken ring of high gray fangs, appeared out of the ground fog, reminding Hoare of a giant's skeletal lower jaw buried to the teeth in sand, except that here the "sand" was cropped greensward. Once there, and a wandering shepherd found, the two seagoing men needed Rabbett to interpret the heavy local dialect. No, this man was Emmon Tredegar. It was his wife's cousin Dym they wanted, for it was Dym and his dog Boye who had found the horror in the ring. Dym and his flock were probably down over the coombe yonder. The man pointed vaguely northward.
There was no road that way, only a path that wound lazily off into the distance. The three left the chaise in its driver's charge and plodded on in single file, half-asleep, pausing every so often to negotiate a stile. At last, the barking of a dog brought them fully awake. Hoare caught sight of a man standing lofty among his surrounding sheep, their owner's reddle mark blood-red above their dirty tails. Between the strangers and the flock it owned, the dog stood its ground, calling, War! Fear! Foes! at the top of its lungs. Rabbett, who happened to be in the lead, uttered an odd whistle that appealed to Hoare's ear instantly. Apparently the dog was of the same mind, for it quieted, sniffed Rabbett's hand and then, in a more intimate manner, that of each of the two other intruders, and led the way through the flock of its bored-looking, bleating charges to its master, tail waving proudly in a victory signal.
Dym Tredegar, when they managed to communicate with him at last, squatted and offered around some of the hard, strong yellow cheese in his scrip. He must explain first that while he was, indeed, Emmon's wife's cousin, he was also Emmon's own cousin. That understood, he was happy to tell his tale once more to these strangers. He knew the story well, and he was a skilled raconteur, though sometimes unintelligible to foreigners like Hoare. At these points, Dym must turn to Rabbett for an interpretation.
" 'Twas was early mornin'," Dym said, "just about the same time of day as it is now. Boye here got up to some tricks, and I could hear he was in the Ring, so I went to see what 'twas so moithered him.
"Well now, ge'men, what did I see but two other ge'men, a-wearin' coats almost like yours, sir"-he pointed at Hoare with his chin-"a-layin' on their bellies, there… and there, dead as the stones around 'em, in front of that there stone in middle of Circle. I didn't need to touch 'em none to know that, for I could see, plain as plain, they didn' 'a' but one 'ead between 'em. And that 'un 'ad been a-chopped off. It was like two butchers come up behind 'em like they was oxen for the slaughterin' and dopped 'em in back of their 'eads. And so down they'd went, a-dumpin' their blood all over the green in Circle, and the flowers a-layin' scattered roundabout, all in their garlands."
"Where was the other head?" Hoare asked.
"Not to be seen, sir," the shepherd answered through Rabbett.
"Their hats?" Thoday asked.
"Not to be seen, sir."
"Their pockets?"
Dym glowered, stubborn as one of his sheep. Then, as if he realized that these men were not accusing him of looting the dead, he relaxed again.
"Their pockets was turned out, sir, if that's what you mean. And their shoes was gone, too. Wouldn't 'a' been first time that green's drunk 'uman blood, I'll warrant." He shook his head. "Nay. You ask Mye Dabbleworth about that; she be wise enough for all of us."
Mye Dabbleworth, Dym explained, was a wisewoman who collected greens by night-moonlit nights especially, like the nights this week-and preferably there in the Circle.
"She coom all the way up from her darter's house in Dorchester. She used to live in Winterbourne over hill, but when Squire enclosed commons the folk was all evicted. Not that dere was that many…"
Hoare let Dym maunder on. He had found that one could never tell when a compulsive talker would drop a gem instead of a turgidity. But Hoare got no more good from Dym, nor apparently did Thoday, so they retraced their steps along the path and over the stiles to the Nine Stones Circle.
Once there, Thoday began to range the heavily trodden enclosure at an awkward stooping canter, grumbling to himself every so often as he went, while Hoare and Rabbett watched. Hoare almost thought to hear him snuffle as if he were a true sleuth, a bloodhound. He picked up some of the wilted garlands, sniffed them, grunted in a puzzled way, dropped them. He examined several of the stones closely, paying particular attention to the flat-topped ashlar that stood waist-high in the center of the ring, left the Circle to trot as far as the lane where their chaise and its driver still stood, inspected the ruts around the chaise, and returned inside the ring of watching stones. There he walked more cautiously around the enormous double bloodstain before the ashlar.
"It's a disgrace," Thoday declared, "how the men who took the bodies to Dorchester trampled the ground hereabouts. The tracks of their great feet are all over the Circle. They might have been trying to destroy the evidence."
If they were Frobisher minions and Sir Thomas was what Hoare thought he might just be, they might well have been doing precisely that.
"But it's plain as the Great Charter," Thoday declared. "The carriage was held up somewhere east of here, possibly in Dorchester, and highjacked with its passengers. The man-thieves numbered at least a dozen; we can hardly call them kidnappers, can we, in light of their captives' mature years?
No more than jesting Pilate did Thoday pause for answer, but went on, "The victims' arms were bound, and they were brought here. They were hauled out of the chaise here; their shoes were removed here; they were unbound and clubbed from behind like vermin in a drive as they attempted to escape-that way. Shots were fired. One ball struck someone sitting on the chaise-the criminals' driver, I should suppose.
"The killers then beheaded the bodies, robbed them, and clambered into the chaise with their dead companion. They drove off westward, having parted company with the lone horseman.
"That is all the scene of the crime can tell us. It is peculiar, by the by, that though the greensward is badly torn up by human footprints, only a few participants actually stepped in the blood. As you can see, the effusion was considerable."
"I certainly would want to avoid wading about in blood," Hoare murmured.
"Perhaps, sir. Perhaps not." Thoday's voice was mildly scornful. "But a party of some ten or fifteen persons would have had some difficulty in dodging pools of that size. Shall we go, sir?"
"I don't understand how you discovered so much so quickly, Mr. Thoday," Rabbett said timidly. He accented the first syllable of the gunner's name.
"Elementary," Thoday said. "And it is Thoday, if you please, as in today. Moreover, one does not pronounce the full diphthong. But to answer your implied question, I shall show you how I did it. You will then tell me how obvious it was. Come." Thoday led the way out of the Ring.
"As you can see, the tracks of our chaise overlie those of the Captains' vehicle, and the latter-which are deeper than ours, there having been more men in it than would have made for distant travel in any comfort-extend beyond it. Their chaise stood long enough in one place for its wheels to have sunk in slightly but then moved a short distance forward, perhaps when the horses were startled by the shooting of their driver. By then, however, all the passengers had disembarked."
"You deduced that because the ruts are shallower," Hoare said.
"How obvious!" Rabbett declared.
"Indeed," Thoday said. "Excellent, Captain Hoare. Very good, sir. But, actually, you can see the confused tracks of at least four men as they stepped out of the vehicle. Now the Captains walked, at pistol-point, I presume, into the center of the Circle. They were forced to their knees- you can see the marks here, if you look closely-and required to remove their shoes."
"Why?" asked Hoare.
"It is impossible to tell, sir, from the tracks alone." Thoday's raised eyebrows reproved Hoare for a childish question.
" 'How do you know?' is what I meant."
Thoday shrugged. "Very seldom can mere tracks reveal motives, sir," he said. "One can only speculate, which we shall do in due course. It may have been a matter of ritual, whereby to go unshod before divinity showed humility and respect. The presence of out-of-season flowers, some of which were plaited into garlands, demonstrates that a rite of some sort was celebrated. There is something that puzzles me about the flowers, however. I wonder…
"But, to continue: the criminals cut the lines binding the Captains' arms-'why' is again a matter for speculation-and urged the prisoners to flee.
"They gave the demoralized brother officers a lead of a second or two. They fired shots, perhaps to speed the victims on their way. One of the shots struck the driver of the death chaise, as the spray of dried blood beside the tracks shows. Then the killers leaped after their prey, competing, I suspect, for first blood, and struck them down. Like vermin, as I said, or, more likely, like sacrifices. Human sacrifices. The rest I have already told you." Thoday folded his arms and stood silent.
"Amazing," said Rabbett.
"Elementary," said Thoday.
"Where do you suppose their chaise is now? And the driver's body?" Hoare asked.
"Bodies, you mean, sir," Thoday said. "For there were two drivers: the original driver from London and the man who replaced him at the reins when the chaise was highjacked."
"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."
He drew out several rumpled sheets of paper and pretended to inspect them.
"Says nothing here about any Getchell," he said. "You've probably been led astray."
"They were brothers, Mr. Spurrier. Getchell was their name. And I have not been led astray."
Uninvited, Hoare took a seat at the desk opposite the Captain and gestured to Thoday to follow suit.
Spurrier cleared his throat. "Now then, sir. What, more precisely, would you wish to know?"
"Our intention is the same as yours, of course," Hoare whispered, "to lay the culprits by the heels and see them hanged. But if you don't mind… I'll have my colleague, Mr. Thoday, tell you what we know so far and what we would like to know. The spirits are willing, but, alas, as you pointed out so wittily just now, my voice is weak."
Spurrier turned to Thoday with something of a patronizing air.
"Enlighten me, then, my good man."
Unruffled, Thoday summarized the events he had described to Hoare and Rabbett in the Nine Stones Circle, without disclosing his method. When he was finished, Spurrier looked visibly less patronizing.
"I suppose you have evidence for what you have just told me?"
"Indeed," Thoday said.
"For instance, you claim that there were three murders."
"Four, sir. The two Captains whose bodies now rest in the Church of All Angels and two drivers."
"Four, then." Spurrier's voice was impatient. "How do you know about the third death, or the fourth, for that matter?"
"The Navy driver remains unaccounted for. He has simply been either abducted-which would serve the criminals no purpose-or killed, which they would have found far more convenient. The driver who replaced him was struck by a bullet, either aimed or accidentally, and died on his seat."
"Why are you so sure he is dead and not just wounded?"
"The blood he shed, Captain, was under high pressure. It spurted from him like water from a fire hose or, to use an analogy that will surely be more familiar to you, like so much horse piss. It was his heart's blood. Even a skilled surgeon-had one been present, which I beg leave to doubt-would have been hard put to it to stanch the flood in daylight, let alone moonlight. No, the second driver has already gone to his reward, as an unwelcome witness of the other killings."
"Tell us, if you please, what has been found of the other bodies, the missing head, and the chaise," Hoare said.
Again Captain Spurrier made much of looking through his papers.
"Er, I can tell you very little. One of the villagers in Grimstone says he heard a carriage and pair going north through the hamlet during the night at a gallop, but he saw nothing. Probably because he didn't want to see anything. In these parts, seeing too much can be dangerous. However, let me see. This is Saturday. The inquest is to be held on Tuesday. By then, I am confident that my men will have gathered all the evidence there is to be found. Meanwhile, no stone will be left unturned, I assure you. Of course, you are welcome to attend the inquest.
"In fact," Spurrier added, seemingly as an afterthought, "as coroner I may find it necessary to ordain your attendance, in light of your man-er-Thoday's findings. I still have my men out scouring the countryside, of course."
Hoare doubted that. Out of either natural indolence or concern for the wishes of some hidden master, Captain Spurrier would most certainly spend less of his time turning up stones on the trail of the men who had killed two Captains in the Royal Navy than he would turning up the skirts of the young woman of parts.
"Of course, Captain. I am, indeed, assured. Until Tuesday, then."
Captain Spurrier bowed to them from his doorstep and watched his two guests climb into their chaise, where they joined Rabbett.
"Weymouth, driver," Hoare whispered as he boarded.
"Will you be needing my services for a bit, Captain Hoare?" Rabbett asked before the driver could begin to obey. "You see, my mother and father dwell here in Dorchester, and it is more than a year since I have paid them my respects. I would be happy to walk to Weymouth from here. It would take me little more than two hours."
"Very good, Rabbett," Hoare said, "but put yourself to use while you are here. Lurk about whatever lurking spots you believe will bring you the most information… and bring me anything you can learn about what people are saying about this affair."
"I can do better than that for you, sir," said Rabbett. "My mother is gossip with half the womenfolk of Dorchester. I could have her tune her ears to the matter."
"Very good, Rabbett," Hoare said. "Until later, then." With a rap on the roof of the chaise, he signaled the driver to shove off.
This would be excellent. If Rabbett's ears were long, surely his mother's would be longer. So Hoare mused, then chided himself for succumbing, even if only in thought, to the selfsame idiot wit with which others had plagued him all his life.
"The Captain's papers, sir," Thoday murmured as the chaise rolled down the highway to Weymouth. "The ones he let fall from his desk and we helped him recover…"
"Yes?"
"Had I dared, I would have retained one of them, but Captain Spurrier's eyes were on them, and I have yet to pass muster with Blassingame."
"I do not understand you," Hoare said. "Who is Blassingame, and why should you pass muster with him?"
"Beg pardon, sir. Mark Blassingame is sailmaker and prestidigitator-magician-in Royal Duke. Among other things, he teaches filching."
"Good heavens," Hoare whispered. He remembered the man now; he was the one who had been performing magic tricks before a group of shipmates in a corner of Royal Duke's working space.
"But what about the paper you wanted to filch?"
"I have seen Taylor-you remember Taylor at least, our student of codes and ciphers? — studying papers with the same texture and bearing the same distinctive writing pattern as the one I saw here just now. I am quite sure that the text was laid out in five-letter groups. I am therefore of the opinion, sir, that Captain Spurrier failed to conceal a ciphered message from our eyes. Moreover, sir, what was Captain Spurrier doing with a cope in his office?"
"A cope, Thoday? A clergyman's robe? Isn't that what a cope is?"
"Yes, sir. It was a cope he used to cover the materials on his desk. And a peculiar-looking cope it was, too."
"In what way?" Hoare asked idly. He was half-asleep.
"The embroidered figures looked sacrilegious, sir, if I may sound so fanciful."