Sir Peter Maybold got the news at an hour not far from midnight. He had gone to see an opera, and by arrangement, meet his wife Laetitia there. She had not turned up, despite he had a family box, with wine, and food, and friends to share the pleasure with them, so he had a miserable evening listening to warblings about unrequited love and cuckoldry. He could not leave as he was playing host, his disaffection fed continuously by the veiled amusement he detected in his companions' glances. When he did get home he found a riding officer, half dead with road-dust and exhaustion, and Laetitia with shiny eyes and an elevated mood, despite she said she'd spent the hours alone and not quite well in her darkened boudoir having foolishly given the footmen an evening's liberty and making do with just a maid or so. The officer, who forty minutes earlier had watched a rider leave as he had reached the lane up to the mansion, said nothing, but knew he had another tale to add to the collection.
This man was Sunfield, of Portsea Island, and he had not known Warren. But as he told the news, the sadness of it all came home to him, very strong. As a Customs officer he had been filled with fury, naturally, because any injury or hurt to one was by proxy meant for all. But telling this fat personage the grisly details, and seeing that Sir Peter's hurt was to his office and his standing, not to his heart, the loneliness of Warren's life and death came in on him. He had died and been thrust inside a hayrick and set fire to, and mutilated. And Sir Cuckold hoped it was a step upon a road.
"Ah horrible!" he cried. "Ah horrible! That the poor man should have suffered such a thing! However, it is good we've found the corporeal remains at last. I only wish it had been an officer who could have had the fortune. A farmer, you say? Was he of quality?"
Sunfield shook his head, his features set.
"I'm sorry, sir, I know nothing of the discovery. We Portsmouth officers were called out by the coroner, whose name I do not know.
We have searched up hill and down. Poor Warren was well hidden, and then burnt."
Sir Peter tutted, pulling at his wig. He had a horrid feeling that they were nowhere further on.
"So many men, so little achieved," he muttered. Then, catching Sunfield's face, he added: "Nay, but it is not their faults, nor yours, I'm certain all have done their best. It's only that ... God damn it, where is the other man!? Charles Yorke! They are laughing at us, they are making play!"
Most likely dead as well, thought Sunfield. He had seen the rotting effigy of Warren, and he saw and smelled it yet. Sir Peter would not risk his nostrils on such corruption. Oh Christ, poor Warren; and poor Yorke. He had known neither, but felt he knew them at this moment.
"Who is in charge down there?" asked Maybold. "Is your collector gathering the strands, or is it someone else? Price is the man, Adam Price of Portchester, he is the man for me." He jerked, bodily, as if hearing what he'd said. A flush spread across his jowls. "Nay, I'm speaking out of turn. That will go no further, do you understand? Pocock, is it? Do you understand?"
"Sunfield. Aye, sir," said Sunfield, 'you may depend on it." I do not say on what, he added, to himself. You cuckold bastard. That swine Price is just your sort, and all.
"Aye. Well," said Maybold, tiredly. "You must forgive me, Mr. Sun-field, this is very hard, is't not? Poor Charlie, I knew him, I knew him many years. I wish to Christ I knew how to catch them, what? To run them down and string them up. So very, very infamous."
Both of them, for a moment, were close to tears, with Sunfield, exhausted, the more surprised by it. Suddenly he'd seen through Maybold's mask of privilege, realising that he could suffer for these two poor lost officers as well as he could. They stood for a while, their eyes holding, their bodies awkward. Then Maybold shrugged.
"Fine men," he said. "We must catch the perpetrators, and I'm sure we will. You know the place, don't you? Why is it so hard? Why is there so little information? Every officer I have is on the search, every avenue has been explored. So very, very hard."
Sunfield, sadly, had nothing to offer that he thought might help, and shortly Sir Peter called a man to find him a bed behind the stables. Alone, the Surveyor General poured himself a brandy and sat disconsolate, wondering, to the bottom of his soul, what other they could do. If the officers at the heart of the matter were flummoxed, what use was any order from the top?
Worst of all, he thought with a familiar twinge of pity for himself was the next step, unavoidable. Tomorrow, first thing in the morning, he would have his carriage readied to set out for Langham Lodge to tell Sir Arthur Fisher. Good, in one way, that the body found was Warren and not his nephew, but .. . No Sir Arthur would still hope, and so must he. These men, he told himself, were taken for a reason and Yorke, not Warren, was the senior and could still against the odds turn up. Sir Peter had no warmth for Arthur Fisher in particular, finding him a little acerbic and puritanical for his taste, but strangely, over this, he felt he recognised the kind of pain that was involved. Maybold had no sons nor other young close relatives, but he had a wife, who tortured him. Gazing into the dying embers of the parlour fire, inhaling brandy fumes from his cupped glass, he saw Laetitia as a wayward child who was similarly lost to him. Beloved, lost, but the focus of eternal hope.
Tomorrow morning this morning, it was after one o'clock -he would go and tell Sir Arthur he must not give up the fight.
The journey back to London cost Will Bentley and Sam Holt quite dear in time and money. They had only been walking for about an hour after parting from Shockhead Eaton when they guessed an alarm had been raised, for the sound of horsemen galloping, on such roads at such an hour, was a thing to be remarked on. They took immediately to a ditch, getting wet about it as it was shallow with a dire lack of cover. Neither could raise his head enough to see for certain, but they agreed four horsemen clattered by, and they were riding hard. Out of the mud, they looked comical, but were not inclined to laugh.
"Bastard," said Sam, in a conversational voice. "I had hoped for longer before they found us out. They weren't looking though, they were going too fast for that. I guess they're gathering, then dividing into posses."
Will was wringing water from a sleeve. The flat landscape was not made for hiding in, and his nerves were fluttering.
"Eaton said this road was hardly used," he said. "Do you think we ought to trust him?"
"Oh no," said Sam. "The man's a liar. Let's take any road except the ones he recommended. You choose."
"But there is no William broke off, as Sam shot a grin at him. "You jest too much," he added, rather sourly. "And what if we go to Flaxton and his kinsman is waiting not with mounts but magistrates? Why did he not come with us? We should have ordered him."
Sam had started off along the road again, but faster than before.
"Aye," he said. "And he'd have quaked. Whatever else he is though, Shockhead ain't magic, is he? When we get to his cousin's we'll be the first. Come on, play the man, there!"
They strode at their best pace (it damn near killed Will, with his normal legs compared with Holt's lanky ones), which led them fairly quickly to some better cover, and another road the boatswain's mate had mentioned. This was deep and narrow, hardly suitable for mounted men at speed, so they felt more confident, although they saw too many people out in the fields for comfort. At a crossroads in about two hours they came upon a positive gang of rough heads who may who knew? have been on the keevee for them, and they went to ground until the way was clear. It was mid-afternoon before they got to Flaxton, a distance, Eaton had said, of only about ten miles, which they recognised by the broken steeple on the church that he had told them of. On the outskirts they had to hide for ages because some horsemen rode in ahead of them. Even without their blue coats, which they'd bundled up when heated by the walking, they'd have stood out from the local country sorts like broken thumbs.