Smuggler's Moon

matters which have to do with putting Berty safe underground. Let Jeremy go now and collect your baggage and return with Clarissa, as well. I’ll be happy to have you all here-and Clarissa not least.”

In this way it came about that I rode in the place beside Mick Crawly on my way out to Great Mongeham and the manor house of Sir Simon Grenville. I liked the man and his ready manner well enough, but his curiosity threatened to become an impediment to good relations between us. It seemed that he had learned something of the hectic and deadly events of the night before, and he wished to learn more. I guessed that the innkeeper was the source of his information. That meant that in little more than an hour, news of our victory-turned-defeat had spread across half the town. This in itself was not surprising when one considered the extent to which Deal depended upon smuggling as its leading local industry. No doubt it would take no more than another hour for the whole of the sad story to be spread cross the rest of the town. Yet if he were to learn more, it would not be from me.

We bounced along at a good rate of speed out the Dover Road and then up the hill. The horses were fresh and well fed and full of life, so that Mick Crawly had all he could do to hold them down to a trot. Nevertheless, that did not stop him from hinting broadly, giving a wink or two, and putting forward a few indirect queries. He would shoot me a glance, smile, then come forth with a question so innocently framed that one could in no wise object to it.

As an instance, he asked, ”Heard you fellas had a bit of trouble last night. Anyone hurt?”

Then I, thinking to give him as little information as possible without actually lying, said: ”There were casualties on both sides.”

“Ah, no doubt there were,” said he. He could not fault me for my ready response, and that did, in a sense, end discussion.

Yet there were two or three more attempts by him to draw information from me-or so it seemed to me. The most obvious was surely his rather direct inquiry: ”You people going to stay around here much longer?” (This, by the bye, was delivered with a wink.)

My reply: ”A bit longer, I should think.”

That ended it between us, for by the time it was asked, and my answer given, we were trailing up the driveway to the manor house, just passing the point where Will Fowler had been forced to pull his team to a swift stop, when a man bolted from the trees to our left, waving his arms and frightening the horses.

But then we were past it, pulling up to the entrance to the great house, looking to the door from which Mr. Fowler himself emerged to welcome us. I instructed Mr. Crawly to wait where we were. There would be baggage to bring down to him, and a passenger to take back to town-as well as myself, of course. He nodded his understanding, and I climbed down from my perch, happy to receive Mr. Fowler’s friendly greeting. Though there was no speech of welcome, as he had given when first we arrived, he did seem truly glad to see me. His smile did fade, however, when I asked after Clarissa.

“How is she?” I asked. ”I’m moving her into town. We’ll be located a bit more conveniently there for our further inquiries.”

“Ah yes, of course,” said Mr. Fowler, ”and perhaps it’s just as well. Clarissa, poor girl, has had a bad night of it, I fear.”

“Oh? What sort of bad night?”

“Truth to tell, it was all bad dreams. She believes she saw the ghost-our ghost, you know-and then it seems she took off on a sleepwalking adventure.”

“Truly so?” I asked. ”That doesn’t sound like her at all.”

I found Clarissa ready to pack. She had no wish to remain another night in the manor house, but would say nothing of what she had endured until we were underway.

When I told her of all that had happened-the battle on the beach, the deadlier battle at the inn, and the murder of Mr. Sarton-she was quite overcome by the drama of it all. Most of all, she declared, her heart quite ached for Molly Sarton.

“I’ll be happy to do what I can for Constable Trotter,” said she, ”and I’m ever so flattered that you thought I should be the one to minister to him, but my proper place is with dear Molly. She needs me, I know.”

Then did Mr. Fowler appear at Clarissa’s door and volunteer to bring her portmanteau down to the hackney coach. As he hauled it away, we two crossed the hall and hurriedly packed Sir John’s portmanteau and my valise. It seemed but a minute or two before he had returned and taken them down as well. We followed him and watched Mick Crawly securing the baggage at the top of the coach. Mr. Fowler nodded his approval as the coachman completed the job.

“All ready?” I called up to Crawly.

“Whenever you are,” said he.

“Then let us be off.” We hopped inside, waved goodbye to Will Fowler, and were thumped back in our seats as the team sprang forward at Mick Crawly’s urging. Then did Clarissa turn to me with a frown and a shake of her head. What could they mean?

“I feel sorry for him,” said she, as if that would explain all.

“Feel sorry for whom?” said I.

“For Mr. Fowler. I don’t believe that he’s like the rest of them.”

“What rest of them? What do you mean?”

“Why, the rest of the servants,” said she rather airily. ”It could not have escaped even your notice that things are not near as they should be hereabouts.”

“Of course not. A man was murdered just a few nights ago.”

”Well, that’s … that’s certainly a sure sign that something’s wrong. But apart from that-perhaps I should say, along with that-there are so many things that are not as they should be-well, you take last night, for example.”

“All right, indeed, what about last night?”

Yet she evaded me still: ”What did Mr. Fowler say about it?”

“He said that you’d had bad dreams, that you’d seen the house ghost, and gone sleepwalking.”

“He must have been told to say that.”

“Not true?”

“Oh, a little of it, I suppose. For instance, I did say that the entire experience was like a bad dream. I didn’t say I’d had a bad dream.”

“And the ghost?”

“That? Well, that was the silliest of all. He wouldn’t have fooled anyone.”

“Perhaps you’d better start at the beginning.”

“All right, I’ll try.”

(And try she did. She had, in fact, improved her storytelling so much since last time that I have simply quoted her entire as best I can from memory. There were few, if any, deviations from the narrative line, and no digressions to tempt her away from the course of the tale she had set out to tell. A few of her comments seemed then, and seem yet today, to be quite pertinent, and therefore I shall quote them entire.)

“I was wakened at a time which seemed to me well past midnight. A great hurly-burly had disturbed me, the sound of men and horses and barking dogs. I jumped from my bed to see what it was had caused such a commotion. I looked out just in time to see a troop of men of no small number ride off at a gallop in the direction of Deal. At their head was Sir Simon Grenville, of whom I had seen very little in the past few days.

“What then? Well, I was awake, wasn’t I? So I put a wrapper round me and found me my slippers. Then, very quietly, did I unlock the door to the hall and step out of my room. In a big house, such as that one, it’s seldom that you have the feeling that it is empty. But this was one of those times. There were no sounds from belowstairs; the dogs barked no more; even the big clock near the door ticked muffled time.

“And so I saw this as an opportunity to go exploring. It seemed to me that I had not been completely on my own- which is to say, unsupervised-since the day after our arrival, when I had discovered a dead man. Did I wish to find another? No, but I had an overwhelming desire to see what was in that chalk mine. Yet first, I told myself, there were corners of this huge house I had not yet explored, rooms whose doors I had not opened.

“In this way I did begin, driven by curiosity, which is in so many of us a great incentive to action. I opened doors up and down the upstairs hall. Most of these led into closets of one kind or another and were altogether disappointing. There were additional guest bedrooms which were, of course, empty; and at the far end of the hall,