EQMM 2008-09-10 by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Author:Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Parson and the Highwayman

by Judith Cutler

© 2008 by Judith Cutler

British author Judith Cutler is equally adept with both historical and contemporary settings. This time she’s brought one of her series sleuths, Parson Tobias Campion, to life in a case from around 1810, involving the wrongful hanging of a poacher for armed robbery. Campion also takes the lead in Ms. Cutler’s recent novel The Keeper of Secrets (Allison & Busby, January 2008).

William Scroggins, ragged, emaciated, balding, and bandy-legged, had very little in common with the heroic figure my sister Georgiana always wished would hold up the family coach. She regularly beguiled the long hours on the road from my father’s country seat in Derbyshire to our London house by imagining just such an adventure.

The moonlight glinting on his pistols and his pearly teeth, his eyes a-twinkle through the slits in the mask, a romantic figure on a jet-black horse would appear before us, ready to seize the strongbox. One sight of dearest Georgiana, however, would smite his heart. Begging her to do him the honour of descending from the coach, he would fend off the heavily armed postilions and outriders, swing her across his saddle bow, and gallop off into the night.

Presumably at this point Georgiana’s imagination transformed him from a thieving wretch into the handsome scion of one of the best families in the land, deprived by a cunning relative of his inheritance but not of his sense of propriety. Now he was ready to win and woo her like a Hyde Park beau, whereupon she would help him regain his title.

So what Georgiana would have made of a real highwayman, stinking from his incarceration in Warwick Gaol, and so far from heroic as to be weeping as he knelt in chains at my feet, I do not know.

While the rest of the country gossiped over the declaration that poor King George was to be replaced by his son as Regent, I had come to offer poor William the consolations of the next world, since he had so little time left in this. Indeed, he was to be hanged within the hour. The prison chaplain had already read the service to all the condemned men, but since William was one of my parishioners, and had, moreover, actually attended a few services, I wished to be there to offer my support and friendship.

“I’ve done some bad things, Parson Campion,” he said. “And no doubt I deserve to hang. I’ve poached all my life, stolen a sheep or two, scrumped apples, and I don’t know what besides. Three times the justice has let me off transportation with a warning.” I nodded — I knew the soft heart of that particular justice of the peace. “And three times I’ve let him down. And now I’ve come before the Assizes…” He wiped a tear with the back of his hand. “But I tell you straight, Parson, as God is my witness, I never took that there bauble. Here, let me lay my hand on that Good Book and swear it.

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