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…'
