A Regimental Affair

‘Yes.’

‘What a to-do that is. You’ve heard about the muddle I suppose?’

‘No?’

‘My serjeant-major had it from one of the clerks. It seems that the general wrote months ago to say he wanted to see the regiment before the grass month. Someone failed to take note.’

Hervey frowned. ‘Then I should not like to be who it was that failed.’

Strickland smiled, but thinly. ‘I mean, it lay on the colonel’s desk for an inordinate time.’

‘Oh,’ said Hervey, cast even lower by the intelligence. ‘Had I known that but a half-hour ago I should not have pressed the adjutant on it.’

Strickland smiled again. ‘I shouldn’t trouble yourself on that account. Dauntsey is so terrified of Towcester that he couldn’t bring himself to press him to an order. Nor had he the wit to issue even a preliminary one of his own. He deserved whatever he got.’

‘Then heaven preserve us if ever we have to turn out on some alarm!’

‘Ay, just so,’ nodded Strickland solemnly. ‘I’m glad you’re come back, Hervey.’

Hervey felt the sentiment a shade awkwardly. ‘I’m glad you should say so.’

‘But I believe I must tell you I’m thinking of exchanging,’ added Strickland sheepishly.

‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’ Hervey spoke with feeling, for though they had not served together long, they had at least shared a campaign. He wondered if he might soon have any kindred spirits of the old Sixth to serve with. ‘Do you have to? It won’t be easy to exchange now, unless you’re prepared to go to a regiment warned for India. A troop is hard to come by as things stand, what with disbandments and so on.’

‘I know. I’d go to India, though the climate would serve me ill. I’d exchange into the infantry even, perhaps not taking the difference either.’

This last he said almost defiantly. He must indeed be desperate, thought Hervey, for Strickland was not a rich man, and could ill afford to throw away the difference in price of a captaincy — perhaps a thousand pounds if auctioned well in Charles Street. Could anyone find his commanding officer so unbearable? He put his hand to Strickland’s arm. ‘Do you want to speak of it?’

‘No, not now — not here. When you’re come back.’

The words were so heavy that still Hervey could not break off. ‘My dear fellow…’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Why don’t you come down to Wiltshire with me for a few days. I’d welcome the company, and you could tell me of how things are here.’

Strickland brightened a little. ‘That is exceedingly good of you, but I’m captain of the week.’

‘Then as soon as I’m back let us dine together in the town, and you may tell me of it.’

‘Yes… yes; I should like that.’

When Hervey returned to Longleat, Henrietta seemed to greet him rather anxiously. ‘I had such a presentiment of your not returning,’ she said, taking his arm as they walked up the steps to the house. ‘Matthew, dearest, I do not want us to be apart again unless it is entirely necessary — not even for a night.’

The proposal was scarcely disagreeable. ‘But of course, my darling. I should not have gone to Hounslow alone had I thought for one minute the journey would not have been tedious for you.’

‘But you did not ask.’

He was puzzled. ‘Would you have agreed to come if it had been disagreeable to you?’

‘Yes!’

‘Then you see why I did not ask.’

‘But Matthew, how could it ever be disagreeable to me to be with you?’

What a simple statement of love that was. A lump came to his throat. ‘My dear, I…’

She threw her head back, grinning mischievously. A strand of hair fell across her cheek, but she merely brushed it behind an ear. ‘Then it is resolved on. Only if I am ordered by the Horse Guards itself shall I leave you — and a direct order at that!’

Hervey smiled too, embracing her and taking the pins from her hair so that it fell about her shoulders. ‘Then when I am on manoeuvres with my troop you shall come up at night with the bat-horses.’

‘And share your bivouac?’ She giggled. ‘Would your colonel approve?’

‘He would be jealous.’

‘I could dress as one of your dragoons, then.’

Hervey smiled again. ‘If the disguise worked, then it might lead to my arrest!’

She giggled even more.

‘Besides, the dolman’s a mite too tight-fitting to be any sort of deception.’ He coloured up even as he was saying it.

She blushed too, but it was with the little tell-tale patches of red about her neck. ‘Come,’ she whispered, pulling his arm. ‘We’re not to dine for another hour.’

In the afternoon he took up the Warminster Miscellany to read the account of the trial and execution of the two murderers of farmer Fremantle and his maidservant. The Bow Street investigators had done their work with remarkable despatch, it seemed. They had arrived at Longleat two days after the wedding, and within five more had made their arrests. Not on Warminster Common, as everyone had expected, but in a next-door parish, albeit across the county boundary. And this fact made for alarm in Horningsham, for it was much easier to live with the notion that an outlaw from the common had done this vile thing than a couple of roughs from a village not unlike theirs. Nevertheless, it was some consolation to know that justice would always be served, for this must be a great deterrent to further crime, albeit at the expense of bringing investigators from London.

Hervey had been much taken with the Bow Street men. Lord Bath had asked him if he would see to things while he himself went up to parliament for the estimates, and so each day, of a morning, the detectors would give him a summary of the evidence they had gathered the previous day and tell him of their next intentions. He did not suppose he had met two more intelligent men — in the most practical sense of that quality. The senior of the two had been twenty years in the King’s service, an artificer of sappers and miners. His assistant, by contrast, had for a long time been a bookkeeper with the Lunatic Asylum Protector Insurance Company. Their methods were meticulous, ingenious and complementary, their hours long. Nor did they make the mistake of thinking they were dealing with bumpkins because they were beyond the sound of Bow bells. But one thing had impressed Hervey greatly: from the outset the detectors had had complete confidence that they would bring the perpetrators to justice, and doubtless this had conveyed itself to all whom they interviewed, speeding the ultimate detection.

When this had been accomplished, the three of them had enjoyed a good dinner at The Bell in Warminster (which boasted the best double mutton chops in the county), before the Bow Street men had taken the afternoon stage for Andover, and thence the post back to London. As Hervey now read the account of the hanging, he thought himself lucky that he had had pressing business at Hounslow after all, for the companion gallows at the top of Arn Hill, and two young men scarcely out of their teens brought by their own wickedness to so violent an end, would have been a heavy sight, even with the knowledge of the awful butchery of the farmer and his maid. For he knew there were men in the Sixth who might, in other circumstances, be capable of such a thing. And he would for certain have had to be there, not least to be a support for his father who, with the Vicar of Warminster, had had to officiate on the scaffold. ‘A vast multitude of spectators,’ the Miscellany said there had been. And the Wiltshire Yeomanry had been out to keep order, just as the regulars had been with Cashman — another man who for sure would have been kept from the gallows had he still been in the King’s service. In any event, the Bow Street men were the toast of the Miscellany — ‘the heroes of the multitude’, said the paper.

He was deeply absorbed with The Times when Henrietta joined him. ‘What engages you, my love?’ she asked brightly, leaning over him from behind to kiss his forehead.

‘Nothing agreeable, I’m afraid,’ he sighed.

‘Tell me of it.’

‘Well, habeas corpus is still suspended, and Lord Sidmouth is castigated for the way he is dealing with the agitation over reform. They accuse him of using spies too freely, and agents provocateurs.’

Henrietta looked troubled, rather in the way she had when he had returned from Hounslow. ‘It alarms me sometimes. I might tell you there have been nights here when I have lain awake expecting the house to be attacked, when the slightest noise has made me fear for my life.’

Her tone chilled him. He stood up and took hold of her. ‘My dear, such things don’t come like that. We should