Craven coughed. ‘Captain Adderley said I must point out to you that you now owed him ten guineas.’
Ross stared. ‘Well, of course; do you wish me to—’
‘He said it was not to go into his estate but requested that it be paid to Mr George Warleggan in settlement of a wager.’
Demelza turned sharply from the window, but decided to say nothing.
Ross said: ‘A wager in which I was involved?’
‘Not necessarily, sir. I have no idea what the subject of the wager was.’
Two women were screaming at each other in the street outside, and further down hand-bells were being rung by a variety of hawkers.
Ross said: ‘I take it Captain Adderley had no dependants, Mr Craven?’
‘None. He left a one-line will in which he left everything he owned to Miss Andromeda Page.’
Ross grimaced as he moved his bad arm.
‘I’m much indebted to you, Mr Craven. Can we offer you a brandy? There’s little else.’
‘Thank you, no. I must be on my way. I have to tell Dr Enys. There will be an inquest tomorrow.’
‘Of course I must be present.’
‘Of course you must not. That would defeat the whole object of the conditions for the duel laid down by Captain Adderley from the beginning. As I have said, I do not fancy any part of this affair – certainly not my own.’
‘The fact that I did not see him before he died, to make this matter up, is something I shall regret for the rest of my life.’
Craven shrugged. ‘Well, Captain Poldark, it was a fair fight, fairly conducted. I can vouch for that. You have nothing to reproach yourself with. Monk Adderley was a strange man, given to excess. I have to tell you that though he bore you not the slightest ill will for the mortal wound you inflicted on him, one of his last remarks to me was, “I wish I’d killed that man.”’
V
The coroner’s inquest was held in the upper room of the Star and Garter Inn, Pall Mall. Demelza had wanted to go and listen but Dwight said no. The less sign of any connection with Captain Adderley the better it would be. So she stayed with Ross at home and waited to be told what happened.
It took about an hour. The first witness was a Mrs Osmonde, Adderley’s landlady, who testified to his arrival home at seven-thirty one morning with a severe wound in the groin. He was brought in by two chairmen and was accompanied by Mr Craven and Dr Enys. Captain Adderley then retired to his bed, she said, having told her that he had shot himself accidentally while practising with his pistol in Hyde Park. He had also made a sworn statement to this effect and she had been one of the witnesses to his signature. Mr Craven was then called to the witness-box and said that he had been out riding in the early morning and had heard a shot. He had ridden in the direction of the sound and found his friend, Captain Adderley, lying on the ground bleeding from a body wound. He had at once gone for two chairmen, and on the way had met Dr Enys, who had come back with him to the injured man, and had given him temporary treatment until they could get him home. He confirmed Mrs Osmonde’s further testimony, and had been the other witness to Adderley’s statement. Answering the coroner, he agreed that Captain Adderley was a noted duellist but denied that he knew of any assignation that morning. Further questioned, he stated that there was no one else but Adderley on the scene when he arrived.
Dr Enys was then called, and testified that he had been brought into Hyde Park by Mr Craven and had attended on the wounded man on the spot, and later at his lodgings until the time of his death. ‘Was there no one else about when you arrived to attend to the wounded man?’ the coroner asked. Dr Enys hesitated fractionally, licked his lips, and then said: ‘No, sir.’ Dr Corcoran followed him into the box and confirmed Dr Enys’s report that Captain Adderley had died from the effects of a pistol ball which had wounded him in the groin and later caused a seizure of the blood vessels and cardiac failure. ‘Could this wound have been self-inflicted?’ the coroner asked, a question he had failed to put to Dwight. Dr Corcoran said he considered it unlikely but not impossible. Dr Enys was then recalled and asked the same question. Dr Enys said he thought it was possible.
The coroner then asked if the two chairmen had been traced; but they had not; indeed, it seemed that they had vanished, and none knew their names. The jury retired and were out ten minutes. They brought in a verdict of ‘Death by Misadventure’.
Yet almost by the time the inquest was taking place it had become common knowledge in parliamentary and social circles as to what had happened. No one knew how it had leaked out. There was of course the brief fracas in the House. Perhaps Adderley had said something to Andromeda Page. It then just remained a moot point as to whether the authorities would decide to move against the survivor, whether if they did there was any sort of proof more substantial than ‘common’ knowledge. Ross was determined to go to Adderley’s funeral, and it took Dwight’s brute force to prevent him. To go to the funeral might invite an insult or an outburst from one of Monk’s friends; it would in any event certainly invite comment.
Fortunately, from this point of view, he was still very unwell, and only sat up in his chamber for an hour or two each day. His wounds in America, while in a way more serious, had scarcely incommoded him more. Dwight watched the arm with anxiety. It was refusing to heal.
Demelza forced herself to catechize Ross on what his attitude would be if a constable or some other representative of the law called on them. At first he had said that he could only answer the questions. When she had asked him if he would answer truthfully or untruthfully he had replied that it depended on what he was asked. This did not satisfy her, and she put question after question to him to see what he would say. It wasn’t very satisfactory until she asked him what was the point of two honourable men perjuring themselves on his behalf if at the end of it he was going to despise their help?
So one day slowly followed another, and they both sat indoors waiting for the official knock.
Chapter Seven
I
In his own twisted way Adderley had played the game with his opponent until the very end, so that George Warleggan did not even hear of his wound until the Wednesday. He went round to Adderley’s lodgings on the Thursday morning, to find the curtains already drawn and a landlady going on with her work while she waited for the boy to come back with Dr Corcoran to pronounce life extinct. Even then it took time to elicit the facts. He went along to the inquest, still not sure of them, but suspecting what might have happened. Whispered gossip confirmed his suspicions during the next few days, and he was furious that Adderley’s adversary might escape the law.
On the Monday following he called on Mr Henry Bull, KC, at his office in Westminster. Nine years ago Mr Bull had been concerned as leader for the Crown in a case in Cornwall where a man had been on trial for his life on a charge of riot, inciting others to riot and to wreck, and for assault on a customs officer. At that time George had got to know Mr Bull, and since then had kept in touch with him as he watched his rise to a position of influence. He was now King’s Advocate, which meant he was the principal law officer of the Crown in the admiralty and ecclesiastical courts.
He seemed to George the most suitable person to approach – the most suitable whom he knew, that was – and Mr Bull, aware of Mr Warleggan’s growing power and influence, was careful to welcome him with a due display of courtesy and attention. With courtesy and attention he heard Mr Warleggan state his complaint.
‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘Of course I remember Poldark well. Stiff-necked fellow. He should have hanged then if justice had been done, but your Cornish juries are too sentimental to their own. But this case, sir, this case – even if everything that’s whispered be true, where’s your evidence? Eh? Eh? The inquest’s been held, the verdict’s Death by Misadventure. To overset that we should need some fresh evidence to corroborate all this talk.’
‘Poldark has been wounded and is confined to his apartment. That is common knowledge.’
‘Yes. True eno
ugh. But it’s only an inference that there is a connection. People may be jumping to conclusions.’
‘At least he should be interrogated.’
‘He could be. But I’m not certain on what grounds, eh? No one has actually accused him of anything. Adderley’s dead. No one saw Poldark in Hyde Park that morning. Or if they did they’ve lied to save his skin. Looks to me there must have been some sort of pact. All very irregular, but y’know Adderley’s been in more trouble than Poldark – at least so far as duelling is concerned – I would suppose they agreed to fight it out between themselves without seconds, nobody there at all, devil take the one who fell. Most irregular, I must say: not the way gentlemen should behave. But they’re two army men; infantry at that; both mad as Ajax; what can you expect?’
‘To me,’ said George, ‘it is outrageous to suppose that his great friend Craven should “just have been passing” at the time of the shot. Also that Dr Enys should be out in that area so early in the morning. No attempt – virtually no attempt – has been made to trace the chairmen who bore Adderley home. Nor any attempt to find any other witnesses to the scene. The whole thing stinks of contrivance, sir!’
‘Maybe. Maybe.’ Mr Bull pursed his thick lips and stared at the papers in front of him. ‘Well Mr Warleggan, happy as I should be to help – though it’s not really my territory – there’s little official action I can suggest at this stage. If unofficial inquiries should uncover some promising information I shall be glad to hear it and to forward it to the correct quarters.’
With that George had to be content for the time being, but on his regular attendances at White’s, where he had been careful to go three times a week since his election, he had noticed that Sir John Mitford, the Attorney General, was a member. George knew him by sight but no more; but he had already spotted a member who knew everyone and who was short of money and keen to befriend those who had much of it, so one evening he lay in wait, and after seeing Sir John go into the smoking-room after dinner, he called on his new friend to contrive an introduction.
Presently it was done. Mitford accepted the introduction with a good grace, and after a few moments of casual talk the third man faded out.
So George was able to turn the conversation tactfully in the direction he wanted, and remarked how much the club must be feeling the loss of one of its most popular members. Who was that? asked Mitford; ah, yes, and his eyebrows came together, ah, yes, young Adderley, something of a pity, though the fellow could never play a fair hand of whist without turning it into an outrageous gamble. George said he particularly regretted the loss because Monk Adderley in fact had been his proposer at the club, and was an old and valued friend. After a few more such remarks the word murder got itself inserted into the conversation. Murder? said Sr John, who says so? The verdict was Misadventure. George smiled and said, oh, yes, sir, but nobody believes that.
‘Ah,’ said Mitford, ‘you mean this story of a duel? It’s current, I know. What is the name of the fellow whose name is linked with all this? Pol-something. Don’t know that I’ve ever met him or know anything about him.’
George gave a brief, loaded summary of Ross’s career, with some detail of the charges brought against him in Bodmin and the general agreement that he was guilty of the indictment but had been freed by a prejudiced jury.
‘Ah,’ said Mitford. ‘He sounds a bit of a rake-helly. But then so was Adderley. Little to choose between ’em, I should say. Pity they didn’t kill each other.’
‘Well, Sir John, but they did not,’ said George. ‘If I may venture to say so, should Poldark now go free, without even being charged, it would be a grave miscarriage of justice.’
Mitford looked at the other man from under his eyebrows. ‘My dear Mr Warlesson, I am not, as you will appreciate, able to keep an eye on all the day-to-day mishaps that occur in this metropolis. Nor is anyone else. The city is gravely under-policed, as you must know. In the whole district of Kensington, for instance, there are only three constables and three head boroughs to police an area of fifteen square miles. What can you expect from that?’ Sir John cleared his throat noisily. ‘But then, looking at it all the way round, who is to say Adderley did not take his own life deliberate? We know how hard drove he was for money. There’s some in this club will never see the colour of their gold again. But even if it was as you say . . .’
‘Yes . . .?’
‘Adderley was not shot in the back, was he? No one’s saying this fellow Pol-something didn’t shoot him in fair fight?’
‘Duelling is illegal in the eye of the law, Sir John. All the great authorities – Coke, Bacon and the rest – have stated that it differs nothing from ordinary murder. And this is worse being a secretive assignation.’
Sir John got up. ‘I have a business appointment, so I trust you’ll excuse me, sir. As to the law of the land, it so happens that I am acquainted with it. If a man is killed in a duel, his opponent shall be indicted for murder. The law of the land, however, I would remind you, demands evidence as to fact. Gossip and suspicion are noticeably unreliable witnesses when they go into the box. When you have something more concrete to go on than the tittle-tattle of the drawing-room, pray let me know.’
On the way out to the gaming-rooms Sir John looked at the list of new members posted in the hall to ascertain that Mr Warlesson was on it.
So George paid two men to make further inquiries, and Ross continued to nurse his wound while Demelza waited.
II
They had a fair number of visitors. The fiction that he had shot himself while priming his pistol was elaborately maintained, and talk was of the failure, after all the high hopes, of the campaign in Holland, of the bitterness and suspicion between the Russians and the English as an outcome, of the fact that the Russians who had landed at Yarmouth were drinking the oil out of the street lamps, of the acclaim with which General Buonaparte was being greeted in France, of the hopes of peace and of the weariness of the eight-year war. Or they talked of the latest play, the latest scandal, or the latest rumours as to the King’s health. Nothing more personal at all.
And through it all, in the back of Demelza’s mind, jingling now with a peculiar malevolence, ran the ditty whose tune she could not forget:
Shepherd, I have lost my waist. Have you seen my body?
Sacrificed to modern taste
I’m quite a Hoddy-Doddy. . . .
There was one surprise visitor. When Mrs Parkins gave in his name Demelza went to the door to make sure she had heard aright. It was Geoffrey Charles Poldark.
‘Well, well. Aunt Demelza – looking so anxious! Do you suppose I am a ghost? May I be permitted to see my respected uncle?’
Pale and thin, he came in. Ross was sitting in a chair in a morning gown, his arm still throbbing, but feeling better in health. He smiled at the young man, and offered his left hand, but Geoffrey Charles bent and kissed him on the cheek. Then he kissed Demelza. He was dressed in a blue and brown striped silk cloth coat and breeches with a white silk waist-coat.
‘Blister my tripes!’ he said. ‘Uncle Ross, what is this I hear, that you have been shooting off your own hand? As God’s my life I should never have guessed you could be anything so careless! And how is it? Part mended, I hope? Near as good as new? Are you going to try your foot next, because I should advise against it. Feet are more painful.’
Ross said: ‘I’d warn you it is hazardous to jest with an invalid. My temper is very short. But what are you doing here – playing truant from your studies to become a fop?’
‘What am I doing here? There’s gratitude for you! I’m visiting a sick relative, that is what. Excuse enough to absent myself from any studies, ain’t it?’
‘We’ll pass it this time,’ said Ross. ‘Demelza, could you pull the bell. The boy will be hungry.’
‘I find it very diverting,’ Geoffrey Charles said, ‘at my age, that everyone assumes, as it were takes for granted, that I am always hungry.’
‘And aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
They all laughed.
‘Serious, though,’ said Ross, when tea and crumpets and buttered scones had been ordered.
‘Serious, now that Ma-ma and Uncle George are living in King Street, it is really no distance for me to come down, so I often take an afternoon off and spend it with them – or at least with Ma-ma and Valentine, Uncle George being frequently out and about his business. So I thought, learning of your mishap, I would take the opportunity of calling upon you instead.’
They chatted for a while, agreeably, a sudden lightness in the air for the first time since the duel.
Ross said: ‘I had intended bringing your aunt to see you, or inviting you, as now, to come and see us; but you’ll appreciate that as your Uncle George and I . . . well, I hesitate to make any move that might upset – your mother.’
‘Ah,’ said Geoffrey Charles. ‘Dicenda tacenda locutus. Do you know, Aunt Demelza, one spends hours learning stupid languages solely to enable one to appear superior to those who have never been able to afford the time. I would much rather be with Drake learning to make a wheel.’
Demelza gave him one of her brilliant smiles.
‘They do not know you are here, then?’ Ross said.
‘No. Nor shall they. Though in a short time I shall not give a tinker’s curse what Uncle George thinks. In less than two years I shall be at Magdalen College, and then I shall feel pretty much my own master.’
Ross moved his arm to ease the throbbing. ‘Geoffrey, you cannot come in for Trenwith for at least another three years. Then there is only property, no money. Without your Uncle George to finance you the place would go to ruin – as it was going before your mother married him. So on all counts I’d advise you to exercise some discretion – not merely for your mother’s sake but for your own. If when you are older – say in four or five years – you find it necessary for your own good health to break with Mr Warleggan and to claim your inheritance absolutely, I shall have – by then I shall hope to have – enough money from the mine, and from other sources, to see you come into your inheritance not entirely penniless. But that is the future. At present . . .’