Chapter 17
Shortly before nine o’clock that morning, Sir Henry Lovejoy was preparing to leave for the inquest into the deaths of Laura and Emma McInnis when he received a report from the constable he’d assigned to make certain inquiries into Cato Coldfield.
After the man left, Lovejoy sat at his desk for some minutes, his gaze fixed unseeingly on the far wall. Then he drew a deep, steadying breath, pushed to his feet, and reached for his hat.
He rode out to Richmond in a hired hackney. Lord Devlin had offered to take the magistrate up in his carriage, but Lovejoy had declined, partially because he had several other matters to attend to while in the area and partially because he knew his lordship would much prefer to drive himself in his curricle. The surgeon Paul Gibson had also declined his lordship’s offer, for reasons Lovejoy found less clear.
The inquest was being held in the Bedford Arms, the same sprawling eighteenth-century inn that had housed the inquest into the deaths of Julia and Madeline Lovejoy fourteen years before. Even the coroner—a frock-coated relic named Horace Niblett—was the same. The man’s once-smart new gray wig was now moth-eaten and dusty, the creases in his parchment-like pale face dug ever deeper, the rasp in his voice more pronounced. But if Lovejoy allowed his eyes to go slightly out of focus, he might easily have imagined himself hurtled back in time to an occasion he could only remember with a pain so intense it threatened to steal his breath and double him over in agony.
He was careful not to allow his attention to drift.
Sir Ivo was there, a black mourning riband tied around one arm, his manner rigid with a self-control that could have concealed anything.
Lord Salinger was also in attendance, his face haggard with grief for his dead sister and niece, and pinched with concern for his two children, who were required to testify. Although only fifteen, Miss Arabella answered the questions addressed to her with sad, quiet poise, while young Master Percy’s hushed, halting responses moved more than one member of the assembled spectators to sympathetic tears.
Their testimony was followed by that of Paul Gibson. The surgeon’s appearance was a shock, his face gaunt and ashen, his eyes bloodshot, his disheveled clothes hanging on his underweight frame. But his voice was firm and authoritative, his evidence succinctly delivered. After giving his testimony, he walked over to lean down and whisper something in Devlin’s ear, then left.
Lovejoy hadn’t expected to learn anything new from the inquest, and he did not. The inevitable verdict of homicide by shooting by party or parties unknown was returned by the coroner’s jury within minutes.
Afterward, Lovejoy walked with Devlin along the side of Richmond’s sunny, expansive green, where some half-grown lads were playing cricket, their voices and joyous, carefree laughter carrying softly on the warm summer breeze.
“I fear it was a waste of your time, my lord,” said Lovejoy. “Driving all the way out here for this.”
“I was interested to hear what Percy had to say. Salinger has been unwilling to let him talk to me.”
“But neither child added anything to what was already known.”
“No. And while that’s unfortunate in some respects, it will hopefully help keep them safe.”
Lovejoy glanced over at him. “You think the killer could have been amongst today’s spectators?”
“It’s possible. Although I’ll admit most of those who’ve attracted my attention weren’t there. Have you by chance come across a chimney sweep by the name of Hiram Dobbs in the course of your investigations?”
Lovejoy frowned. “I don’t believe so, no. Dobbs, you say?”
Devlin nodded. “Lives in a mean court off St. Martin’s Lane. I’m told Lady McInnis was trying to convince the authorities to take the man’s apprentices away from him after she observed him mistreating a little boy who later died. Dobbs was heard on more than one occasion threatening her over it. He claims he observes the Lord’s Day, so has no real alibi for that afternoon, but his neighbors might be able to tell us something about his movements.”
“I’ll set one of the lads to looking into it.”
They paused at the kerb as a dray loaded with roughly hewn building stones lumbered past. “I’ve also been wondering if it’s possible Lady McInnis was not the main target of the shootings,” said Devlin. “What do we know about Emma McInnis?”
Lovejoy thought about it a moment. “Not a great deal. The girl wasn’t out yet.”
“No. But it might be worth interviewing her governess and abigail.”
“Yes, I can see that—especially now, with the death of young Gilly Harper. The girls might have come from radically different backgrounds, but they were of much the same age—something I hadn’t considered before. I’ve also set one of the lads to looking for the cheesemonger to whom Gilly was once apprenticed. One never knows.” He was silent for a moment, his gaze on the sun-sparkled river now visible at the base of the hill. “It’s peculiar, isn’t it, how one’s understanding of a murder can alter with a slight shift in perspective?”
“I suspect the same could be said of much of life.”
Lovejoy let out a long, slow breath, his voice suddenly unsteady as he said, “How very true.”
After that, Lovejoy took a hackney out to the dilapidated cottage of Cato Coldfield, near the Petersham Gate of Richmond Park.
He found the thatcher stripped down to his shirt and rough breeches and chopping kindling in the dappled shade of a big, half-dead elm that grew to one side of the house. Coldfield watched Lovejoy approach, then turned away to set a length of wood up on his block and let fly with his ax. “Wot ye want with me?” he demanded without looking around.
“You know who I am?” said Lovejoy, drawing up a healthy distance away from the man.
Coldfield snorted and reached for another piece of wood. “What ye think?”
Lovejoy watched the man position the wood on his block. “You lied to my constables.”
Coldfield glanced at him sideways. “Don’t know wot yer talkin’ about.”
“You told us you were ill on Sunday; that you didn’t leave your cottage until late that afternoon. Except we’ve since discovered you were seen in Richmond High Street that morning.”
“So? Ducked out to buy me a loaf of bread, I did. Didn’t have nothin’ in the house to eat. A man needs to eat even when he’s sick, ye know.”
“So why lie about it?”
“Why? Ye think I don’t know what folks was sayin’ about me fourteen years ago? Ye think I want t’ help you lot hang these new murders around me neck? Of course I lied. Anybody with any sense would lie. But I only went to the baker’s, ye hear? I got me bread, then I come right back home. Ye won’t find nobody who’ll tell ye different.”
A black-and-white dog that had been sleeping nearby pushed up, shook himself, then turned around three times and lay back down again. Lovejoy watched the mutt stretch his head out on his paws and sigh. “Lady McInnis’s coachman and footman reported seeing an older man with a dog in the park earlier that day. That wasn’t you, was it?”
Coldfield reached for another block of wood. “Nope.”
Lovejoy watched the man’s massive shoulders flex as he drew back his ax. “When was the last time you were in London?”
Whack. The pieces of kindling went flying, and Coldfield turned to stare at Lovejoy through narrowed eyes. “London? I dunno. Been years, I s’pose. Why ye askin’?”
“Do you know a young girl named Gilly Harper?”
“Who?”
“Gilly Harper. Sixteen years old but looks much younger. Apprenticed to a Piccadilly chocolatier.”
“Never heard o’ her. Wot ye askin’ me about her for? Wot’s she got to do with anything?”
“Possibly nothing,” said Lovejoy.
“Then why ye askin’ about her?”
“Someone murdered her last night.”
“In London? An’ ye come all the way out here, worryin’ me over it? Ain’t ye got enough riffraff in London t’ bother wit this nonsense?” Coldfield swung his ax, the blade digging deep into the wood of the stump before him, then turned to point one meaty finger at Lovejoy. “I didn’t have nothin’ to do wit them two women who was killed out here Sunday, ye hear? Nothin’. An’ I didn’t have nothin’ to do wit whatever yer sayin’ happened in London yesterday. Ain’t nobody can tell ye nothin’ different. Ye hear? Nobody.”
With a rude snort, the thatcher turned away, the muscles of his broad shoulders working beneath the worn cloth of his shirt as he swooped up an armload of kindling. Watching him, Lovejoy felt the gentle breeze caress his face, heard it lifting the leaves of the dying elm beside them. For fourteen years now he had found a measure of solace in the thought that the man who had killed his Julia and Madeline had paid the ultimate price for what he’d done. But that faint comfort, as pitiful as it might have been, was gone now. He felt a cold rage sweep through him, curling his hands into fists at his sides and twisting at something deep inside him. He wanted to seize this crude man by his thick arms and spin him around to slam him back against the elm and make him—make him—tell the truth. Not only about these new deaths but about what had happened fourteen years ago.
Except that Lovejoy knew only too well that he was an old man, barely five feet tall, and never, even in his youth, either strong or pugnacious. Trembling beneath the onslaught of unwanted and unfamiliar emotions, he swiped the back of one hand across his lips, swallowed hard, and forced himself to turn and walk away.
Lovejoy’s next stop was a small whitewashed cottage on the banks of the river Thames.
“I shan’t be long,” he told the driver as he stepped down into the dusty lane. He was only dimly aware of the jarvey nodding in response, for Lovejoy’s attention was all for the older woman he could see bent over pulling weeds near the cottage’s door.
It had been fourteen years since he’d last been here, but the cottage still looked much the same, its windowsills painted a jaunty yellow, the climbing rose rioting around the front door thick with fat pink blooms, the small garden a well-tended jumble of honeysuckle and jasmine, hollyhocks and daisies. He wasn’t certain that the woman he could see weeding and the woman he had come here to speak to were one and the same. But as he walked toward the garden gate, she straightened, her eyes narrowing as she recognized him, and he was surprised to realize that he’d been secretly hoping he wouldn’t find her still here.
He supposed she must be in her sixties or seventies by now, Mrs. Mattie O’Toole. Her hair was iron gray and thinning, her face deeply lined, her dark eyes cloudy and nearly lashless. But she was still sturdy, her back still straight, her expression still closed and guarded. Once, she’d had four sons and a daughter. But her youngest boy drowned in the Thames when he was only eight; one of his brothers had been impressed and died in the Battle of the Nile; another succumbed to fever while in the West Indies with the Army. Her last surviving son, Daniel, had lost an arm and suffered a debilitating head wound fighting for the Crown in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. The Crown had expressed its gratitude for his service by hanging him for the murder of Julia and Madeline Lovejoy.
Lovejoy paused at the gate, his hand on the latch, as the woman continued to stare at him. He wondered how she recognized him, for he himself had changed much in the last fourteen years. He wondered if she’d been there in the crowd outside the Old Bailey when they hanged her son for a crime he died insisting he hadn’t committed. He wondered if she still believed her son innocent; if she still wept for him the way Lovejoy still wept for Madeline and Julia. He figured she probably did.
He cleared his throat. “Mrs. O’Toole?”
Her nostrils flared as she sucked in a deep breath. “And what would you be wantin’ from me, then?” She might have lived in England for decades, but her accent was still very much that of the Emerald Isle.
“May I come in?”
She shrugged and went back to her weeding. “Suit yourself.”
He pushed open the gate and closed it carefully behind him. But he made no attempt to approach any closer.
Her attention still on her weeding, she said, “I heard about them new killings in Richmond Park. That’s why you’re here, ain’t it? You’re thinkin’ maybe you made a mistake all them years ago? You’re thinkin’ maybe you should’ve believed my boy Danny when he told you he didn’t do nothin’ to nobody?” She tilted her head, looking up at him sideways. “Hmm?”
Lovejoy found himself at a loss for words, unsure precisely why he had come. “I frankly don’t know what to think,” he said, surprised by his own honesty.
She huffed a mirthless laugh. “Is that a fact? Well, I’ve no more boys for you to be hanging for somethin’ they didn’t do. Unless maybe you’re thinkin’ about hanging me?” Straightening, she reached for the cane he now noticed leaning against the cottage wall beside her. Her green-stained, gnarled hand tightened around the stick’s curved handle as she limped toward him, not stopping until she was only a few feet from him. “Now, why would I be killin’ some woman and her child I never met?”
He could think of one very good reason why she would do such a thing, but it was obvious that the murders in Richmond Park were physically beyond her. She might have been able to shoot Lady McInnis and her daughter, but she was obviously too crippled to have staged the bodies and then escaped quickly enough to avoid being seen by the Barrows brothers.
When he remained silent, her face creased in a faint, derisive smile. “I see what you’re graspin’ at. You’re thinkin’ maybe I shot that woman and girl so’s everyone would think my boy must’ve been innocent of those other killings.” She gave a faint shake of her head. “But if I was gonna do somethin’ like that, why would I wait fourteen years? Why not do it when it might’ve helped my Danny?”
“I’m not here to accuse you.”
“No? Then who are you accusin’? My girl Bridget? She died six months ago, you know. Her widower and my three grandbabies live all the way down in Plymouth now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you aren’t. You couldn’t give a rat’s arse about either me or mine.”
He wanted to protest, to let her know that he did indeed care. What decent man would not? Instead he said, “Is there anyone else? Anyone you can think of who might have done such a thing?”
“You think I would give you their names if there were? So’s you could hang them, too?” She snorted. “Not likely. But the truth is, there ain’t nobody. Nobody but me and”—she nodded to the gray striped cat with white paws stretched out asleep on a nearby sunny windowsill—“maybe old Toby Cat there.”
Lovejoy kept his gaze on the woman’s wrinkled, broad-nosed face. “Fourteen years ago, at the time of the first killings in Richmond Park, who did you think was responsible?”
“Me? I’d no idea. How could I? Never met your wife and girl; never even been in Richmond Park, meself. Only thing I know is, my boy Danny didn’t do it. Oh, I’m no’ denying he weren’t right in the head after what happened to him in Ireland in the ’Ninety-Eight. But he would never have hurt nobody, man nor beast. He was a gentle soul and he hated the things he saw done in Ireland. Hated doin’ what he was ordered to do—herding innocent women and children into churches and barns and setting fire to them, then listenin’ to ’em scream and watchin’ till every last one of ’em was burned alive. What kind of officer orders his soldiers to do something like that? Them’s monsters, anyone who orders that. But ain’t nobody hanged those officers for murder. Oh, no; their kind get promotions and is called heroes.”
She turned her head and spat, then brought her hard gaze back to Lovejoy’s face. She was silent for so long that he wondered what she saw there.
He said, “You didn’t know either Lady McInnis or her daughter?”
“Me? How could a simple woman such as myself ever meet such a grand lady? Reckon you’re gonna have to look elsewhere to find somebody to blame for the killings this time.” She paused a moment, then said, “And if you discover you were wrong about my Danny, will you admit it, I wonder? Even to yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Huh. I’ll believe it when I see it. Come on, Toby.”
As she turned away, the gray cat stood up, arched his back in a stretch, then leapt down off the windowsill to follow the old woman into the cottage. Without looking back, she shut the door behind them with a snap. But for a long time Lovejoy stayed where he was, standing on the flagged path of her garden, surrounded by a jumble of sun-dappled roses and tansy and comfrey, and prey to an unsettling combination of sadness and uncertainty tinged, undeniably, with shame.