The Butchered Man Read online

  He realised that he was now one of the men from whom Miss Hilliard was trying to protect those girls, one of those who put their money on the table and demanded their goods. He had for so long considered himself superior to this. He had resisted temptation successfully, so why had his will given way now? It was impossible to know. Was it like the attack of a disease upon the body, when a weakened constitution was less able to resist as it should? But then, why had he weakened now? Perhaps it was a hereditary taint expressing itself at last, an inevitable development simply because of who he was. His own conception had been the result of a such a transaction, after all. Perhaps this proclivity was impossible to avoid. He thought of the many times he had come close to it before, when he had been accosted as he walked down particular streets in Edinburgh, streets which he might easily have avoided, but which he had gone down all the same because the whores were there and with them the exciting possibility of actually engaging one. He had looked at such women and yet managed to slake his lust with pity, but Sissy had aroused no pity in him, despite her hunger. Watching her eat had only made it worse. The way she had licked her fingers had only made her more desirable. The recollection of it still unsettled him, despite everything. Was it then only that he had been waiting for one to come along whom he found attractive enough? Was that all it took to move him to hurl himself into the gutter: grubby white satin, skinny shoulders and crumbs on her chin?

  This conclusion was so depressing it was enough to make him get up and start pacing about the room. He wished he was of the disposition for an act of simple repentance, but to heap one’s failings into the lap of an invisible patriarch seemed more a dereliction of duty rather than anything particularly commendable. He had met enthusiastic Evangelicals at the University, of course, men who had transformed themselves after a swooning encounter with God. It was a sort of emotional purge, yet Felix, who feared loss of control more than anything, found it deeply repugnant. But loss of control was what he had deliberately sought last night.

  Stupidity, base stupidity, it had been, nothing more and nothing less. And he would pay for it dearly. He was not going to hell, but he had probably caught the clap. He had already urinated more than usual that morning, and he was quite sure it had stung slightly. He went into his bedroom and standing by the window, he unbuttoned his flies and examined himself carefully for the third time that morning. It was early yet for symptoms to be presenting themselves, of course, but there were always variations in every case.

  Someone was knocking on his door.

  “Mr Carswell, are you there?”

  It was Major Vernon. Felix cursed the man’s timing as he stuffed his shirt tails back into his trousers.

  “A moment, please sir,” he called out.

  “How’s your head?” Vernon asked when Felix came out into the consulting room.

  “Better, sir, I think,” said Felix, considering that the least of his worries.

  “Good. Get your coat on. We are going down to The Three Crowns. I want to talk to Mr Rhodes again – and I believe you owe him a guinea.”

  Felix pulled on his overcoat. The Major really did have the strangest sense of humour.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “He’s in here!” Felix shouted. He grabbed hold of the door of the now moving train and with some difficulty hauled it open. He jumped in and leant out so that he could seize Major Vernon by the elbow and assist him into the compartment. The effect of this was that they both tumbled over in a heap at John Rhodes’ feet. It was not the style of encounter that Major Vernon had planned, but since they had learnt that Rhodes was leaving Northminster by the next down train, they had had little choice but to give chase. The conclusion was successful if undignified.

  “To what do I owe this honour, gentlemen?” Mr Rhodes said through a cloud of cigar smoke.

  The Major had recovered himself and stood towering over Rhodes. Felix was scrabbling to slam the door shut as the train got up speed.

  “You owe it to Sir Sidney Carlingford,” he said, and sat down opposite.

  Collapsing into the corner seat, Felix thought he saw Rhodes frown at the name.

  “This is really most convenient,” the Major went on. “We will not stop for another hour or so. That should be ample time for you to tell me all I want to know, and if it is not, we shall carry on, all the way to London if necessary. In fact, that it is exactly what we shall do, as I happen to know that some of my colleagues at the Bow Street Office will be very interested to talk to you. Mr Carswell and I will escort you there.”

  “Not a pleasure jaunt, then?” said Rhodes.

  “Hardly,” said Vernon.

  Rhodes looked over at Felix.

  “Did you have a good night?” he said. “She’s a piquant little chick, I thought. Very good with her mouth. Or I am being indiscreet in front of Major Vernon?”

  Felix was already feeling a little nauseous from the motion of the train, and this remark did little to help. Were they really going to go all the way to London? It was at least a nine hour journey. He found himself covering his mouth and pushing himself a little more deeply into his corner. He felt desperate for a drink of water.

  Major Vernon had taken out a notebook and a pencil and was settling himself in comfortably.

  “I have been talking to Mr Edward Sutherland this morning,” he said. “I understand you know him?”

  “A little. A glossy-coated leech of a lawyer. What’s he been saying to you?”

  “That Sir Sidney’s will was the cause of the dispute between you and your cousin.”

  “Maybe it was,” said Rhodes, carelessly. He blew out more smoke, most of which went in the Major’s face.

  “We’d better have some air,” Major Vernon said, reaching out and pulling down the window. An icy blast of air rushed into the compartment. “Mr Carswell looks as if he is going to vomit at any moment,” he said calmly. “I think the cigar smoke disagrees with him. Perhaps, sir, if you would not mind desisting?”

  “Thank you, sir,” Felix managed to say.

  “A condemned man is surely permitted his comforts?” Rhodes said, looking at his blown out cigar.

  “There is no comfort for anyone in a railway compartment that stinks of vomit,” said Major Vernon. “Interesting, though – you concede that you are condemned. Is there anything you would like to tell me?”

  “I say I am condemned because you have the manner of a man who has made up his mind. I am surprised you did not bring a rope with you. So what did Sutherland tell you?”

  “That you stood to profit by your cousin’s death. That the only way you will inherit from Sir Sidney is if Stephen Rhodes predeceased you. Which he has, most conveniently.”

  “It may or may not be convenient,” said Rhodes, “for the old man can always change his will again. I’ve given up on expecting anything of that business now my cousin had got him into the habit of doing it.”

  “But you came to Northminster to remonstrate with him, didn’t you? You were angry with him about the will. You felt he had cheated you out of what was rightfully yours.”

  “Yes, that was one reason I came, I concede that.”

  “But you also knew that if Stephen died before you, the bulk still went to you. If he died you would clean up. And how interesting, you come to Northminster and a week or so later he turns up dead.”

  “And I have no doubt that when Sir Sidney hears he is dead, he will draw the same conclusion as you have and the will be redrawn and I won’t get a penny. So why the devil would I risk the noose for such an uncertainty?”

  “Because it was not such an uncertainty. You knew very well when you came to Northminster that Sir Sidney was a very sick man, that he had only a matter of weeks, if that, to live. So you had to remove your cousin from the equation promptly and hope that the man did not change his will again. Yes, it is a risk, but you are a gambling man, aren’t you, Mr Rhodes?”

  “You’ll be accusing me of murdering Sir Sidney next,” said Rhodes, with
a snort of amusement.

  “Well, he is dead, Mr Rhodes,” said Major Vernon. “Perhaps I didn’t mention that? Forgive me.”

  “Dead? You are not in earnest, sir, I trust,” said Rhodes with sudden gravity.

  Felix glanced at the Major.

  “Yes. That is why Mr Sutherland was with me this morning. He has come to Northminster as Sir Sidney’s executor. He came to see your cousin.”

  “Oh dear God in Heaven,” said Rhodes, his voice dry and quiet now. “When, when did this happen? Did he say?”

  “Three nights ago,” said the Major. “He took a sudden turn for the worse and sent for his lawyer. He did not last the evening out, I understand.”

  Rhodes suddenly staggered to his feet and stood at the open window, ripping at his hair with his large hand.

  “I should have been there,” he said. “I should have stayed with him. Damn these bloody railways, damn them!” And he smacked his palm against the window before throwing himself down on the seat again, and burying his face in his hands, to conceal a flood of angry tears.

  At length he composed himself a little, rubbing his face with his handkerchief, but he could not bring himself to look either Felix or the Major in the face.

  “Perhaps you should have a little brandy, sir,” ventured Felix.

  “Perhaps,” said Rhodes and took out a silver flask. He took a long drink and then another. “Forgive me, gentleman. Sir Sidney was as dear to me as a father, and to find...”

  “No, sir, forgive me,” said Vernon. “I was careless in the telling of it.”

  Rhodes waved his hand dismissively and reached for his handkerchief again. He blew his nose noisily.

  “There is something else you should know,” Major Vernon said. “The reason Sutherland came to Northminster. It was to tell your cousin that Sir Sidney had indeed changed his will again.”

  “What did I tell you?” said Rhodes managing a brief smile. “I knew he would. He told me he favoured the foundling hospital. I suppose they got it, then?”

  “He favoured you, Mr Rhodes,” Major Vernon said.

  Rhodes gazed across at Major Vernon, blinking. Then after a moment he said, “I’d rather he was alive and it was going to the foundlings. Well, they may still get it, for it seems I am going to hang for the murder of my cousin. I always supposed I would hang for something, and it may as well be that as anything else – even if I did not do it.”

  “Convince me of that, Mr Rhodes, and you will not hang for it,” said Major Vernon.

  “It won’t be easy,” said Rhodes. “The way things were between us, well – it’s a long story.”

  “We have time on our side,” said Major Vernon, gesturing around the compartment. “Tell me all you can.”

  “I may as well start at the beginning of it all, then,” said Rhodes. “When I was less than a year old both my parents died. I was sent to my uncle and aunt to be brought up by them. They had a child, Stephen, who was only six months older than me, so it seemed a sensible arrangement for all concerned. My uncle Henry was a parson – and a well-off one – and we lived in Dorset, not far from Lyme. One of the most glorious places on this earth, if you ask me. Certainly to me it was paradise. My uncle and my aunt were the kindest, most generous parents you can imagine.”

  Rhodes paused and drank some more brandy.

  “I am not sure when it all began to go wrong between us, between Stephen and me. Perhaps it was never quite right. There was always something a little unapproachable about him, as if he were guarding his feelings. I suppose he resented my arrival and the fact that his parents seemed to love me just as much as they loved him – and for scant reason because I was certainly not a good child. Stephen was, of course. Always the first to get his lesson by heart. Always the first to tell tales on me. As we grew older, I began to understand that he was just as wicked as I was in his own way. But he had a talent for never getting caught. For example, I learnt everything I know about cards from Stephen. He was a real master at it and of course he never deigned to show me how he did it. But I would spy on him when he was practising it and picked up a few tricks for myself that way, but then he caught me practising myself and he beat me black and blue for it. All with a pious speech about the evils of cheating! The hypocrisy hurt more than the beating, I can tell you.”

  “And Sir Sidney? Where does he belong in all this?”

  “He was an admirer of my aunt Catherine. He had asked her to marry him several times and she’d refused. He had not been rich then and he was ugly as sin, but he never got over her and they formed a kind of friendship. My uncle knew all about it and he hardly minded because he liked him too. He was not a difficult man to like, Sir Sidney, despite his very strange appearance. However, by that time Sir Sidney had inherited a ransom or two and made a fair stash for himself in the City. He never married – my theory is he was waiting for my uncle to die and to ask Aunt Catherine again, but as it turned out, my poor aunt died first.” His voice cracked a little as he spoke and he looked away for a moment.

  “So at any rate, we were often with Sir Sidney and he with us, and because of my aunt’s extreme even-handedness to me, he took me as one of her own and loved me accordingly, just as he loved Stephen. And he promised to split his fortune between us, because we were Catherine’s boys.”

  “A remarkable show of devotion,” said Major Vernon.

  “She was worth it,” said Rhodes. “See for yourself. I always keep this by me.” He pulled a miniature from his waistcoat pocket. “It doesn’t entirely do her justice, but it is the best I have of her. Her hair was more gold than this. More like Stephen’s. It’s a shame he did not inherit her other qualities.”

  He did not hand over the miniature, but only displayed it to them, and then only for a moment. It was evidently very precious to him. Then he turned it back to himself and looked down at it.

  “I know I am not a virtuous man,” he said, almost as if to the woman in the picture. “I have not lived my life by the book. If temptation has offered itself I’ve given into it, and I’ve never made a secret of it. But Stephen – he played a different game, and that stuck in my throat.” He looked over at Felix. “All those women – and he used to accuse me of immorality, but what he did was far worse. If I want a woman I pay her for it, straight up. Money on the table. There’s honesty in that. But Stephen wouldn’t pay for his pleasures. He’d cheat a woman out of her virtue just like he’d cheat at cards in respectable company and never own up to it. And then he tried to cheat me out of my half of Sir Sidney’s fortune.”

  “Of course, the old man had been very ill, on and off, and I’d been out at Richmond seeing to him. He liked me to come and I liked to go. It was not a hardship to me – I certainly was not a vulture sitting there waiting for him to die. I’d got him to see another doctor, because frankly the man who had been attending him was less than useless. I got this young fellow – a bit like you, sir,” he said to Felix, “one of these sharp fellows who have all the latest theories at their fingertips. I got him to have a look at Sir Sidney and what do you know, Stephen gets to hear of it and implies that my man is a quack or worse! You know the sort of thing. Then unfortunately I was called away. I had to go away for a few weeks –”

  “Ah yes, why was that?” said Vernon. “Business?”

  “A matter entirely unrelated to this,” said Rhodes coldly after a moment. “And I did not want to go and leave him in such a condition, but I had no choice. It was when I got back, well, that was when the trouble really started. I found that the old man would not see me. I was banned from the house. I wrote and wrote, and tried to get an answer. I wrote to Stephen as well, and he told me that the old man had discovered something unforgivable about me and could not bear to see me again. Now this was strange, beyond strange, because I’d always been frank with him. He knew what I was, and what I was like. He’d reproach me for it, and I’d make a show of repentance but it was a sort of game between us, because he knew I wouldn’t change, not just like that.
And he had a sort of pleasure in my wrong-doing, if you can understand that, being very virtuous himself. It gave him a sort of thrill to hear my adventures. I told him everything, at least everything that was safe for him to hear, that would not hurt him.”

  “But he had learnt something unpleasant?”

  “Yes, yes, he had. From Stephen of course. He was the source of it. It was clear enough to me the moment I got his letter back. That he had told him. And the worst of it was, he hadn’t an iota of shame about it. He had told him just because he knew it would get him the whole fortune instead of half! It was the cold-blooded manipulation of a poor old man’s feelings. He could have died without knowing that, and died happy! I could have happily murdered Stephen for that when I realised it. Money didn’t come into it, to be frank, but to tell him that, of all things!”

  Major Vernon leant forward and said very gently, “And what was that, Mr Rhodes? I must ask, I’m afraid.”

  “It was to do with a certain lady,” said Rhodes after a long moment.

  “You cannot help your cause unless you are honest with me,” said Vernon. “And it may need to go no further after this. If you are innocent, as you say you are.”

  Rhodes took a deep breath and rubbed his face.

  “My aunt Catherine and I,” he said, almost inaudibly. “We were not blood relations of course. It was simply – sometimes one cannot account for the feelings that arise between a man and a woman. It comes from nowhere, and there is no stopping it. We loved each other. That was the simple truth of it, and it was so powerful that we both forgot ourselves. My aunt was the most virtuous of women and yet she gave herself to me and I did not scruple to take what was offered. Why would I? It was the greatest gift I had ever been given. It still is. She is the only woman I have ever truly loved. In that, my devotion equals Sir Sidney’s.”

  “And Stephen knew of this?”

  “Yes, unfortunately. He found us together once. That was near the end of it. She was with child by then, and it was not long after she died carrying the child. Naturally he blamed me for it – and he knew that Sir Sidney would blame me as well, if he had ever learnt of it. He has always held the information over me, threatening me with exposure, and of course when I learnt that he had told him, after all these years, after all that time, well... as I said, damn these railways! They make it too easy to travel. I should have put aside my anger and stayed with Sir Sidney, whether he wanted to see me or not. Perhaps he would have relented at the last and let me see him – and then he might not have died alone, poor soul. But then I’ve never in my life managed to do the right thing. It’s my curse. Never to see until it’s too late what I should have done.”