Death Be My Theme by Hannah March

Author:Hannah March [MARCH, HANNAH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472229755
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2015-08-12T21:00:00+00:00

Six

At the Spread Eagle he ate a meal, and listened: he hardly needed to ask questions, for the murder of Tabitha Dance was the talk of the inn. Everyone had a theory. Gypsies, tinkers, Irishmen, and even crazed veterans from the Royal Hospital were in turn placed in the dock, convicted, sentenced, and executed by the taproom talkers. Jemmy Runquest was hanged several times, but cut down by his defenders, who said there was no real harm in him. Morals were drawn as freely as the ale, mainly along the lines of bad women coming to bad ends. But useful facts were not so plentiful. That Tabitha had been drinking here last night was definitely established, likewise that she had departed about eleven, alone, spent out, and ‘drunk as a fiddler’s bitch’, as the potman succinctly put it. But whether she had talked to anyone in particular or said anything in particular was a more debatable question. She was a common sight, and not much regarded. One toothless old man, steeped in gin, opined that she had been drinking with a black man who had given her a hatful of gold guineas; but when it was pointed out to him that he had been at his brother’s funeral five miles away last evening, he regretfully conceded that he must have been thinking of something else.

At any rate, the episode of Mr Gabriel Chilcott was quite forgotten now, under the influence of this new and gruesome sensation. Fairfax had almost, but not quite, forgotten it: he realized he had a vague, elfin, weakly hope that somehow it might throw light on this mystery. The one substantial connection was the fact that Tabitha had been known at the Chilcott house, if only by the steward. Not much to justify the tramp across the fields to Kensington, perhaps, but he needed to work off the perplexed energy in his brain. And he had had some of his best inspirations when walking.

Perspiration, however, was his only result when he came in sight of Brockleigh, the imposing residence of the late Gabriel Chilcott. The rhythm of his footsteps had only beaten out repeated images of Tabitha lying pillowed in blood, occasionally interspersed with other images that haunted without telling him anything: Dr Stagg hovering silently outside his chamber door, Emma Henlow beautifully haloed by sun as she stood by Wolfgang’s desk, Jemmy Runquest towelling his sinewy torso, Charles Porteous dropping the silver teapot from his long, elegant fingers, Mr Chilcott frozen in staring, horrified death. He was sick of seeing these things, he was half blind from sun and half swooning with heat, and when he plodded up the steps and rapped at the door all that was in his mind was to beg a glass of water at any price.

It was the ancient footman who answered the door, opening it with as much slow, gasping effort as if it were a great temple door of solid bronze. But before Fairfax could speak, the footman was elbowed aside, and the steward, Minter, thrust his lugubrious face out.

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