Coffen stretched, yawned and said, “I’m dead tired, but it’s too late to go to bed.”
The night was far gone and they had to be up and doing so early it hardly seemed worthwhile to go to bed. Evans roused up the Partridges. The husband stoked up the stove and Mrs. Partridge provided them with coffee, gammon and eggs. When they had eaten, Coffen got Luten’s dueling pistols and went to the hotel with Black to dress. Corinne and Evans went back to Norval’s house to see that Flora hadn’t escaped. They went quietly up the attic stairs and saw she had fallen asleep. Corinne, always aware of the difficulties of penniless girls in a harsh world, felt a pang of pity for the girl. In the flickering lamplight, she looked young and innocent.
* * *
Luten and Prance drove to Nile Street to catch Cripps if he left the tavern — if he was at the tavern, that is. They took turns watching at the window as the stars faded and the dark sky lightened to an opalescent white. At five o’clock he had still not come out.
“I wonder if he’s in there at all,” Luten said, rubbing his tired eyes.
“It doesn’t look as if he planned to make the duel if he is there,” Prance replied. “He’d have to go home and get dressed and get his pistols, then arrange to get to the meadow. Surely all that would take over an hour.”
“He might have managed to get a message to Jasper to bring his things —” As the words left Luten’s mouth he lunged forward. “There! Is that him?” Prance leapt from his chair and joined Luten at the window.
Luten was looking at the back of the inn where the door had been bricked in. A man was coming around from some side or front door, or possibly from the street. He had had only a glimpse of Cripps the night before, and a description from Black. The man who had just arrived was about Cripps’s size, dressed in rough clothes and wearing a misshapen black hat pulled down low on his forehead. He pulled off the hat revealing blond hair and a round, pink face. He ran a hand over his tousled locks, then put the hat back on. “By God, it is him! Put on your mask, Prance. We’ll get him. What’s he doing? He seems to be waiting for someone.” The man was looking nervously from side to side. They hastily donned their masks, each picked up a pistol and ran outside.
A young boy came around the corner of the tavern, leading a fine black mount with white markings. He let go of the reins and the horse walked towards Cripps, who patted its head, said a few words and reached for the reins.
Luten saw that if they didn’t get him before he got astride that mount, they’d never get him. He ran forward, followed by Prance, both pointing a pistol at the man. Before he could get a leg over the mount, Luten said, “One move and you’re dead.”
It was a bluff, as he wouldn’t have shot an unarmed man, but Cripps would have, and assumed the other fellow would do the same. He dropped the reins. “Walk,” Luten said, indicating Coffen’s house by a toss of his head. Cripps sneered, but he walked, with a pistol at his back. “Inside,” Luten said when they reached the back door. Prance held it open, Cripps went in.
“My mount,” he said, looking over his shoulder. They looked and saw the mount had followed them. Another problem! “In,” Luten growled. Cripps went in without another word. They were back in the kitchen, where they had been watching the tavern through the window.
“The cellar,” Luten said, nudging him in the back with the muzzle of his pistol. Cripps, obviously familiar with the place, turned towards the cellar door without having to look for it. Prance got the ropes and a lantern and they took Cripps down into the dark, dank cellar. Prance held the lamp while Luten tied him up. He wasn’t sure he was making the knots right, but he bound the man up as securely as he could, then they left him, sitting on the floor in the dark and went upstairs, putting the bolt on the door when they reached the kitchen.
“Well, it’s done,” Luten said, removing his mask. Prance did the same. “Coffen’s safe for today. I feel we’ve behaved about as badly as Cripps throughout this entire affair. Ganging up on the fellow, to say nothing of the way we treated Flora.”
“They brought it on themselves,” Prance said. “It’s fourpence to a groat they killed Mary, and certainly intended to kill Coffen. I wonder if he was planning to go to meet Coffen this morning. Since he had got hold of a mount, he’d have had time to go home to make his preparations. As he obviously has an accomplice at the inn, would he not have had his clothes brought there, though?”
“I have no idea how he thinks, or what he’d do,” Luten scowled. “A demmed fine bit of blood, that mount. What are we to do with it?” He glanced out the back window, looked again, went to the back door and returned. “It’s gone,” he said.
“Must have wandered off,” Prance said. “Probably in Catchpole’s stable. I’ll go out and see if it’s about.” He was back in a moment. “It wasn’t making for Catchpole’s stable. I just saw its tail. It was running hell for leather down the street. No sign of the boy who brought it here. This gets odder and odder, Luten.”
“It’s gone back to its own stable.”
“Very likely. Too late to follow it now, but I’d recognize it if I saw it again. A white star on the nose and one white stocking, left front leg. Well, what do we do now? Sit here and guard our prisoner, or go home and change? I feel as if I’d been wearing this shirt for weeks. You could do with a shave yourself.”
“He’s safe enough,” Luten said. “We might as well go.”
In the meadow behind the churchyard, Black and Coffen waited with Jasper, who had arrived late in a handsome black carriage. Jasper looked at Coffen. “I see Sir Reginald has allowed you to appear without your livery today, Mr. Jones,” he said, using the names they had given. “Is Cripps not here yet?” He looked around in what seemed like genuine surprise. “I was to pick him up, but when I got to his house he was gone. I thought he must have been so eager he had come ahead without me.”
“You’re late,” Black said, drawing out his watch. “We’ve been waiting this quarter hour and he’s not come.”
“He’ll be here,” Jasper said confidently. “Mr. Jones is not that eager to die, is he? Cripps is the best shot for miles around.” He cast a sly grin on Coffen. “Jones will be the third man he’s killed.”
Black lifted his hand to conceal an imaginary yawn. “We’ll give him a little longer,” he said, and sat on a rock to chat quietly with Mr. Pattle.
Jasper pulled a cigar from his pocket and made a production of lighting it. Then he strolled off and leaned against a tree. He drew out his watch and glanced at it from time to time, then looked down the road towards Brighton, frowning. A dozen carriages, carts and mounted riders passed, each carriage causing Jasper to take a closer look, then sigh and resume his pose against the tree when none of the passers proved to be Cripps.
After fifteen minutes, he returned to Black and Coffen. “Something must have happened,” he said. “I can’t replace him as that would leave me no second to see things are carried out properly. I believe I’ll have to reschedule this little match. I suggest –”
“Not so fast, Mister Jasper,” Black said. “Your man’s failed to show. When one of the two turns chicken, he forfeits the duel. Everyone knows that. Mr. Jones and I have better things to do than be rushing out here at dawn and cool our heels while Cripps works up his courage to come.”
“Now really, Sir Reginald. I tell you something has happened to Cripps. He’s ill, or—”
“Or come to his senses. We’ve seen this trick before. This isn’t Mr. Jones’s first duel you must know, nor his second. And there’s not a scratch on him. He doesn’t care to waste more time on cowards. You may tell Mr. Cripps he has forfeited the duel, and that’s an end to it.”
Jasper considered a moment, then said, “You’ll be hearing from us. I shall give Mr. Cripps your message.” He gray eyes narrowed, then he added, “And if by chance he came here early without me and — had an accident —” he said with awful irony.
Before he could say more, Black took a pace towards him, his hands already clenched into formidable fists. “You’d best leave while you’re able,” he growled.
Jasper gave one last sneer, before beating a hasty retreat to his carriage and left.
“Did you hear that?” Black fumed. “He’s trying to make out we did away with Cripps before he got here.”
“So we did. He was just trying to save face, Black. Well, I’m glad that’s over. You did a grand job. I’d no idea I was such a dangerous fellow. I wonder if Luten and Prance caught Cripps, or what happened to him.”
“Let us go home and see,” Black said, and they went to Coffen’s carriage. For this formal occasion he had abandoned his curricle. Fitz, carefully instructed by Black, had got them to the Dyke Road with no trouble. Once on that major thoroughfare it was hard for even him to get lost.
They stopped at Luten’s house. Corinne came pelting forward to meet them. “Coffen, thank God you’re back safely. Come in and tell me all about it. I’ve had breakfast prepared. I knew you wouldn’t be able to eat before you went to the duel. Was it horrid? Did Cripps show up?”
“No, but Jasper was there. Luten ain’t back yet?”
“Not yet. We shan’t wait for him. Come and have a bite.”
The morning’s events had by no means lessened Coffen’s appetite. He made inroads on enough food to feed an army while Black related their recent doings, with Coffen throwing in an occasional remark between bites.
“I hope this is an end to all talk of duels,” she said. “You don’t think Jasper believed you’d done away with Cripps?”
“I believe he was just trying to save face,” Black said. “I wonder what’s keeping Luten?” He was worried lest Cripps had pulled some new stunt.
“I expect they’ll come home soon. They were to wait and watch till after daylight.”
Before they had finished their coffee, Luten and Prance joined them. “We’d have been here sooner but we decided to check out Cripps’s house while it’s vacant. We didn’t find anything of interest.”
“Other than Flora’s wardrobe,” Prance added with a smirk. “You would be amazed what sort of intimate apparel the muslin company is wearing this year, Corrie.”
Luten gave him a repressing stare, and rushed on with relating their tale.
“So I was right,” Black said. “He did go to the tavern.”
“He did. We’ve got him trussed up in the cellar,” Luten said with satisfaction.
Corinne frowned. “I wonder what he’ll do when you release him.”
Luten shrugged. “I doubt he’ll run to Brown and complain that he was forced to miss his duel. If he has a shred of common sense he won’t say a word. How can he admit he ran off and left Flora helpless in the hands of four masked, armed men? Speaking of Flora, I feel badly about the way we treated that young woman.”
“Evans and I looked in on her earlier,” she said. “She was sleeping soundly. She’s the one who could cause trouble. I fancy she’d enjoy boasting of her ordeal, and she has nothing to be ashamed of in her behaviour.”
Black stared to hear it. “You’ve not forgotten her lying to Mr. Pattle to get into his house, milady?”
“And what they did to Mary,” Coffen added, turning fierce at the memory, and the sense of guilt that Mary had been all but forgotten by them all, including himself.
“Flora may be Cripps’s dupe in all this,” Corinne said.
“That hellcat anyone’s dupe!” Black cried. “I’d sooner trust a rattle snake. Don’t you go feeling sorry for her, milady.”
“Well, I hope she loves that rascal enough to protect him by not revealing too much about last night.”
“It seems it’s safe for me to go out in my own duds today,” Coffen said, setting down his cup. “I believe I’ll just stroll around, see if I can spot that mount that Cripps was planning to ride. A black gelding with a white star and one white stocking wasn’t it?”
“Right,” Prance said. “Left foreleg.”
“That’s two white stockings,” Coffen pointed out.
“No, just the one, the left foreleg.”
“You said right.”
“I meant correct. It was the left foreleg,” Prance explained, with eye-rolling patience.
“That’s what he was riding last night,” Black said. “We saw it at the Shoreham Inn. I’ll go with you, Mr. Pattle. We might just make a stop at your house and see that the cellar door is still locked as well.”
“At least he can’t say you were the one who locked him up, Coffen,” Prance said. “You and Black have an alibi, though I wouldn’t want to take it into court.”
“I’d admit I took your name in vain if it came to court, Sir Reginald,” Black said.
“That was not my meaning! I meant dueling is illegal.”
“So’s murder,” Coffen said, his mind reverting to Mary.
“None of this will ever come to court,” Luten said. “I’m going up to have a bath and shave and clean shirt.”
“I shall soak until my skin is puckered,” Prance said, rising. “I only took time to change my shirt. I’d hate to be seen in these rags. Villier will scold at the condition of my buckskins and boots.”
“That’s what you pay him for, keeping you tidy,” Black said.
“Oh Villier is more than just my valet. He’ll be worried about me. When do you want to see us again, Luten? The reason I ask, I thought I might catch a few hours rest.”
“Come for dinner, all of you,” Corinne said. “We must free our captives tonight, you recall.”
Prance pouted. “You have just murdered sleep, Macbeth,” he said, and swanned out.
“Shakespeare,” Coffen explained. “He’s used that line before. Always quotes William when he wants to be smart. That’s what he calls Shakespeare — William. We’re off then. Thankee for breakfast, Corrie.” He turned to Luten. “And thank you for — everything. We’ll meet you back here for dinner. Come on, Black.”