Two months went by. In September, Colston’s opened its gates to paying pupils again—though not with Mr. Prichard as the new Head. The disappearance of William Henry Morgan and the suicide of George Parfrey, Latin master, had effectively ruined his chances to succeed to that august position. As the old Head was not there to bear the blame for this nightmare, the Reverend Mr. Prichard inherited its mantle—and its odium. Questions were being asked in the Bishop’s Palace by some very important Bristolians.
At about the same moment as Colston’s reopened, Richard had a letter from Mr. Benjamin Fisher, Collector of Excise, asking to see him at once.
“Ye may wonder,” said Mr. Fisher when Richard reported in, “why we have not yet arrested William Thorne. That we will do only as a last resort—so far we have concentrated our energies upon Mr. Thomas Cave in the hope that he will produce the sixteen hundred pounds’ fine necessary to settle the matter without prosecution. However,” he went on, beginning to smile in quiet satisfaction, “evidence has come to light which puts a different complexion on the case. Do sit down, Mr. Morgan.” He cleared his throat. “I heard about your little boy, and I am very sorry.”
“Thank you,” said Richard woodenly, seating himself.
“Do the names William Insell and Robert Jones mean anything to you, Mr. Morgan?”
“No, sir,” said Richard.
“A pity. Both of them worked at Cave’s distillery during your time there.”
“As still men?”
“Yes.”
Frowning, Richard tried to remember the eight or nine faces he had seen around the gloomy cavern, regretting now that he had held himself aloof from those workmen’s parties while Thorne was away. No, he had no idea which one was Insell, or Jones. “I am sorry, I simply do not remember them.”
“No matter. Insell came to me yesterday and confessed that he had been withholding information, it seems from fear of what Thorne might do to him. At about the time that you discovered the pipes and casks, Insell overheard a conversation between Thorne, Cave and Mr. Ceely Trevillian. They were talking about the illicit rum in plain terms. Though Insell had not suspected the swindle as he went about his work, this conversation made it clear that there was collusion among the three to defraud the Excise. So I intend to prosecute Cave and Trevillian as well as Thorne, and Excise will be able to get its money by garnishing Cave’s property.”
A small shaft of feeling penetrated Richard’s numbness; he sat back and looked contented. “That is excellent news, sir.”
“Do nothing, Mr. Morgan, until the case comes to trial. We will have to investigate matters some more before we move to arrest the three, but rest assured that it is going to happen.”
Two months ago the news would have sent him whooping back to the Cooper’s Arms; today it was merely of passing interest.
“I cannot remember Insell or Jones,” he said to his father, “but my evidence is corroborated.”
“That,” said Dick, pointing into a corner, “is William Insell. He came while ye were away and asked to see you.”
One look at Insell’s face jogged Richard’s memory. A fresh young fellow, good-natured and hardworking. Unfortunately he had been Thorne’s chief butt; twice he had felt Thorne’s rope’s end, and twice he had suffered the flogging without fighting back. Not unusual. To fight back meant losing one’s job, and in hard times jobs were too precious to lose. Richard would never have suffered so much as the threat of a flogging, but Richard had never been in a situation where the rope’s end was an alternative. Like William Henry, he had the knack of avoiding corporal punishment without needing to be obsequious; he was also a qualified craftsman, not a simple workman. Insell was a perfect victim, poor fellow. Not his own fault. Just the way he was made.
Richard carried two half-pints of rum to the corner table and sat down. This was indicative of a change in his behavior that no one had thought it wise to comment upon; Richard was drinking rum these days, and increasingly so.
“How d’ye do, Willy?” he asked, pushing one rum toward the pallid Mr. Insell.
“I had to come!” Insell gasped.
“What is it?” asked Richard, waiting for the burning fluid to start deadening his pain.
“Thorne! He has found out I went to the Excise.”
“I am not surprised, if ye blurt it out to everyone. Now calm yourself. Have some rum.”
Insell drank thirstily, gulped and half-retched on the power of Dick’s unwatered best stuff, and ceased to tremble. Finished with his own half-pint, Richard went to draw two more mugs.
“I have lost my job,” said Insell then.
“In which case, why d’ye need to fear Thorne?”
“The man is a murderer! He will find me and murder me!”
Privately Richard considered that Ceely Trevillian was more likely to do any murders necessary, but did not attempt to argue. “Where d’ye live, Willy?”
“In Clifton. At Jacob’s Well.”
“And what has Robert Jones to do with it?”
“I told him what I had overheard. Mr. Fisher of the Excise was interested in that, but he thinks I am far more important.”
“Rightly so. Does Thorne know you live at Jacob’s Well?”
“I do not think so.”
“Does Jones know?” Richard suddenly remembered Robert Jones, who was a crawler, smarmed up to Thorne. He was how Thorne knew, definitely.
“I never told him.”
“Then rest easy, Willy. If ye’ve nothing better to do, spend your days here. The Cooper’s Arms is one place Thorne will not look for you. But if you drink rum, ye’ll have to pay for it.”
Horrified, Insell pushed the second mug away. “Do I have to pay for this?” he asked.
“These are on my slate. Cheer up, Willy. In my experience, rogues are not very clever. Ye’ll be safe enough.”
The days were beginning to draw in a little, which limited the amount of time Richard had to search for William Henry. His first call was always the dell by the Avon, from which place he would clamber up the frowning cliffs, calling William Henry’s name; from the top of the gorge he would strike across Durdham Down, and so come eventually to Clifton Green. The walk home led him past William Insell’s lodging place, but he usually met Insell on the footpath across Brandon Hill, hurrying to beat the darkness, yet too afraid to leave the Cooper’s Arms until after sunset.
He had worn out two more pairs of shoes, but no one in the extended Morgan family attempted to remonstrate with him; the more Richard walked, the less time he had to drink rum. Brother William suddenly needed to have his saws set and sharpened more often (he pleaded a new West Indian timber), and that gave Richard some other place to walk than Clifton. Who knew? Perhaps the little fellow had gotten himself all the way to Cuckold’s Pill, so the journeys to William’s sawpits were not entirely wasted time. And he could not drink rum when he needed his eye to set a saw properly.
He had not wept, could not weep. The rum was a way to dull his pain, which was the pain of hope, hope that one day William Henry would walk through the door.
“I never thought to say this,” Richard said to Cousin James-the-druggist halfway through September, “but I am beginning to wish that I had found William Henry’s body. Then I could have no hope. As it is, I must assume William Henry is alive somewhere, and that in itself is torture—what sort of life must he be leading, not to come home?”
His cousin once removed eyed him sadly. Richard was thinner yet physically fitter—all that walking and climbing had honed down a body always in good trim until now it was probably capable of lifting anvils or withstanding the ravages of any disease. How old was he now that he had just had another birthday? Six-and-thirty. The Morgans tended to make old bones, and if Richard did not ruin his liver with rum, he looked as if he would live to be ninety. Yet what for? Oh, pray he put this awful business behind him, took another wife and begot another family!
“Two and one-half months, Cousin James! Not a sign of him! Perha
ps”—he shuddered—“that abominable creature hid his body.”
“Dear fellow, put it behind you, please.”
“I cannot.”
William Insell did not arrive at the Cooper’s Arms the next day; glad of an excuse to walk out to Clifton earlier than usual, Richard put his hat on and went to the door.
“Off already?” asked Dick, surprised.
“Insell has not come, Father.”
Dick grunted. “That is no loss. I am very tired of him in his corner looking so woebegone that he puts the customers off.”
“I agree,” said Richard, managing a grin, “but his absence is a worry. I will see for myself why he ain’t here.”
The path across Brandon Hill was so familiar by now that he could have negotiated it blindfold; Richard was outside William Insell’s house within fifteen minutes of leaving home.
A girl sat hunched on the stoop. Hardly aware of her, Richard went to step around her. Her foot came out.
“Bon jour,” she said.
Startled, he looked down into the most bewitching female face he had ever seen. Big, saucily demure black eyes, long-lashed—a dimple in either rosy cheek—a pair of lush, unpainted red lips—a glowing skin—an uncoiffured mop of glossy black curls. Oh, she was pretty! And so clean-looking!
“How d’ye do?” he asked, removing his hat to bow.
“Very well, monsieur,” she said in French-accented English, “but I cannot say as much for poor Willy.”
“Insell, mistress?”
“Oui.” She got to her feet to reveal that her figure was as graciously endowed as her face, and fetchingly dressed in pink silk. Expensive. “Yes, Willy,” she added, pronouncing the name so adorably that Richard smiled.
She gasped. “Oh, monsieur! You are very ’andsome.”
Ordinarily shy with strangers, Richard found himself not shy with her at all, despite her forwardness. Conscious that he had reddened, he wanted to look away but found that he could not. She really was amazingly pretty, and the upper halves of two smooth, creamy breasts were even more beguiling than her expression.
“I am Richard Morgan,” he said.
“And I am Annemarie Latour, serving maid to Mrs. Barton. I live ’ere.” She chuckled. “Not with Willy, you understand!”
“He is sick, ye say?”
“Come and see for yourself.” She walked ahead of him up the narrow stairs, her dress kilted high enough to see two beautifully turned ankles below a foam of ruffled petticoats. “Willy! Willy! You ’ave a visitor!” she called as she reached the landing.
Richard entered Insell’s room to find him lying on his bed looking very bilious. “What is it, Willy?”
“Ate some bad oysters,” Insell groaned.
Annemarie had followed him in and was surveying Willy with interest but no pity. “ ’E would eat the oysters Mrs. Barton gave me. I told ’im that old thing would not give me fresh oysters. But Willy sniffed them and said they were good, so ’e ate them. Et voilà!” She pointed dramatically.
“Then serves ye right, William. Have ye seen a doctor? D’ye need anything?”
“Just rest,” moaned the sufferer. “I have cast up my accounts so many times that the doctor says there cannot be any more oysters left down there. I feel awful.”
“But ye’ll live, which is a good thing. Without you to confirm my testimony, Mr. Fisher of the Excise Office has no case. I will drop in tomorrow to see how you are.”
Richard descended the stairs conscious that Annemarie Latour was close enough behind him to smell the fresh scent of best Bristol soap. Not perfume. Soap. Lavender-scented soap. What was a girl like this doing living alone in a Clifton lodging house? Maids usually lived in. And no maid Richard had ever met wore silk. Mrs. Barton’s cast-offs, perhaps? If so, then Mrs. Barton, apostrophized by Annemarie as an “old thing,” must have an excellent figure.
“Bon jour, Monsieur Richard,” said Mistress Latour on the step. “I will see you tomorrow, non?”
“Yes,” said Richard, clapped his hat on his head and walked away up the hill toward Clifton Green.
His mind was battling to do two things at one and the same moment: William Henry had to be searched for, yet Annemarie Latour was there too, eating away like a worm. For so he saw her, instincts not awry just because his traitorous body was twitching and stirring. A lifetime around taverns had shown him on countless occasions that a man’s reason and good sense could fly out the window at the merest flick of a feminine skirt.
But why now, and why with this woman? Peg had been dead for nine months and by tradition he was still in mourning for her, ought not even to be thinking of his body’s needs. Nor was he a man who had ever dwelled upon his body’s needs. His wife had been his only lover, he had never seriously coveted any other woman.
It is neither the time nor the situation, he thought as he continued to wear out his fourth pair of shoes. It is simply her. Annemarie Latour. Whenever he had met her, in whatever situation he had met her, were Peg alive or dead, Richard divined that Annemarie Latour would have provoked this same bodily reaction in him. Thank God then that Peg was dead. The girl exuded some invisible lure, she was a siren whose chief pleasure was the act of seduction. And I am not Ulysses bound to the mast, nor are my ears stoppered with wax. I am an ordinary man of humblest origins. I do not love her, but Christ, I want her!
Then the guilt began. Peg was dead, he was still in mourning. William Henry had not been gone three months—these feelings were impious, disgusting, unnatural. He began to run, shrieking his son’s name to the indifferent winds of Clifton Hill. William Henry, William Henry, save me!
But he was back at Willy Insell’s door at eight the next morning, turning his hat around in his hands, looking in vain for Annemarie Latour. No one on the stoop, no one inside. Knocking gently, he pushed at the door to Insell’s room and discovered him asleep in the bed, his chest rising and falling regularly. He tiptoed out.
“Bon jour, Monsieur Richard.”
There she was! On the stairs leading to the garret.
“He is asleep,” said Richard lamely.
“I know. I gave him laudanum.”
She was wearing much less than yesterday, but perhaps she had just risen from her own bed: a pink lace robe, some kind of thin pink shift beneath it. Her hair, unpinned, cascaded in masses over her shoulders.
“I am sorry. Did I wake you?”
“No.” She put her finger to her lips. “Sssssh! Come up.”
Well, he was up already, just at the sight of her, but he followed her to the tiny eyrie where she lived and stood with his hat across his groin, gazing about like a bumpkin. Cousin Ann had much finer furniture, but Mistress Annemarie had much finer taste; the room was tidy, smelled of lavender rather than sweaty clothes, and was delicately fitted out in purest white.
“Richard? I may call you Richard?” she asked, plucking his hat away and staring round-eyed. “Oooooh, la la!” she exclaimed, and helped him out of his coat.
He was used to the decencies of nightclothes and darkness, but Annemarie believed in neither. When he tried to keep his shirt on she would not let him, pulled it over his head and left him standing defenseless, not a stitch on.
“You are very beautiful,” she said in a surprised tone, going all the way around him while the lace robe fell, then the pink silk shift. “I am very beautiful too, am I not?”
He could only nod, wordless. No need to worry what to do next; she was in complete control, and clearly preferred it that way. A less humble man might have balked at her mastery, but Richard knew himself a novice at this sort of activity, and had all a humble man’s pride. Let her take the initiative, then he could not be mortified by making a move she did not approve of, or might find laughable.
There were many beautiful ladies paraded around the better bits of Bristol, but voluminous skirts might hide spindled shanks or legs of mutton, and the breasts forced up by stays might sag to a suddenly spreading waist, a wobbling pudding of belly. Not so,
Mistress Annemarie! She was, as she had complacently announced, very beautiful. Her breasts were as high and full as Peg’s had been, her waist smaller, her hips and thighs rounded, her legs slender yet well shaped, her belly flat, her black mound triumphantly, juicily plump.
She strolled around him again, then fitted her front to his back and rubbed herself against him with purrs and murmurs; he could feel the soft hair of her mound against his legs, jumped when she suddenly sank her manicured nails into his shoulders and pulled herself up until the hair was sliding voluptuously across his buttocks. Teeth clenched—for he feared that he would come right then and there—he forced himself to stand perfectly still while she inched around him, rubbing and cooing. Then she sank to her knees in front of him, threw her shoulders back so that her breasts reared up like red-capped, rounded pyramids, tossed her hair out of her face and grinned gleefully.
“I think,” she said in the back of her throat, “that I will play the silent flute.”
“Do that, madam,” he gasped, “and the tune will be drowned in a second!”
She cupped his balls in her hands and smirked. “No matter, cher Richard. There is many a tune in this ’andsome flute.”
The sensation was—sensational. Eyes closed, every fiber of him concentrated upon drawing this astonishing pleasure out for as long as his flesh could bear, Richard tried to store up as many different nuances of the experience as he could. Then, defeated, let himself come in dazzling colors, jerks and black velvet, his hands clutching her hair as she gulped and swallowed him down.
But she had been right; no sooner was the convulsion over than the tyrant at the base of his belly was up and wanting more.