400 Boys and 50 More (103 page)

He offered the harried driver a hand strapping their trunks back in place. The man had managed to calm the more nervous of the two horses, shaken after the affright, or attack, or whatever it had been. When the incident occurred, even though it was still shy of noon, Hewell had been dozing uneasily inside the compartment. His seat suddenly slewed, twisting him out of a restless dream, flinging him first against the door and then through it, onto an embankment carpeted in moss. Blessed moss! The coach had very nearly toppled over onto him. Thank God for a skilled driver and at least one imperturbable horse.

Just as their luggage was settled back in place, the other passenger returned from scouting the woods and approached the driver with more questions. “You say the figure rushed from where to where?”

“Well, he come up from here,” the driver said, pointing, “and then run off that way, toward Pellapon Hall. From what I hears, they be having a deal of trouble in these parts, but I never thought to fear any of it meself.”

The other man, who had said hardly a syllable to Hewell on the journey from the local train station—being as buried in notebooks as Hewell was in postal documents—appeared to be traveling in some sort of official capacity. His tone was consistent with his superiority. “I need more details, if you please. Dressed in what fashion? Speak up!”

Hewell felt it was no one’s place to pester the poor, rattled driver. And yet he was interested in the reply.

“As I said, it was all very fast, but . . . I thought I saw a figure all in black, covered head to toe in a peculiar kind of cape. Had on a hood to hide his face and a pair of horns atop it all. Like goat horns, I’d say.”

“Or Devil horns, perhaps?”

“I don’t know about that. Never seen the Devil meself, couldn’t speculate on the nature of his horns. But I seen goats aplenty and I’d say these were more that sort.”

The officious gentleman nodded and turned away, making notes in a tiny journal.

Once they had settled again in the carriage, to be shaken in the more ordinary way by the resumption of their journey, Hewell cleared his throat and said, “I’m an inspector myself.”

The other passenger gave him a direct look. Bushy eyebrows, gray-salted whiskers, a beard barely attended to. Hewell felt a pang of pity for the man: self-groomed, a bit threadbare, yet with an intensity of gaze which suggested that he scarcely noticed the lack of coin or comforts. He would be baffled by Hewell’s sympathy.

“Which is to say, if I am not far amiss, that you, too, appear to be an inspector of some sort.”

The man closed his notebook and returned it to an inner pocket. “Forgive me a professional reticence, but my employer would rather I not speak openly until I have conferred with him.”

“Might I hazard a guess as to your employer’s identity?”

“I can hardly prevent you from speculating.”

“We traverse at this moment the ancestral estate of the Pellapons. Is this name known to you?”

“That great house is indeed my first stop. But I can say no more.”

“Naturally. I myself am free to come forward in my public capacity as an inspector of the Royal Mail. I am traveling only slightly farther along, to the village proper, Binderwood. You are aware, perhaps, of certain irregularities—one might even characterize them as abuses—in the local mail? London has grown alarmed. I am here to investigate.”

“As you say. And without compromising my discretion, you are undoubtedly apprised that these irregularities have affected Lord Pellapon’s affairs in matters of business, person, and privacy.”

“Say no more,” said Hewell. “It is not entirely unlikely that even though the London office ordered me here, a request from Lord Pellapon was behind that command. Therefore, if I may in any way be of service, please do not hesitate to ask. It might be to both our advantages were we to occasionally pool our findings.”

“Indeed.” The eyes of the other gent began to twinkle. “I like this thought. I like it very much. As two outsiders in Binderwood, we are certain to encounter nothing but resistance, doors slammed shut in our paths. But doors are ineffective if one can come at them from both sides at once! We shall beat them at their own game, sir, whatever it may be!”

“Hewell,” said Hewell, extending his hand.

“Deakins,” said the other, almost certainly a detective of the private variety. His skeletal fingers managed a firm grip as they shook.

“I did not see you on the train from London,” the detective said, “despite several strolls from one end to the other to work my legs.”

“I ride in the mail car,” Hewell said. “I wish I could recommend it as a mode of travel but its comforts are few. There is little in the way of seating, and one is constantly hampering the sorting clerks and made to feel unwelcome. Even though I repeatedly reassured them I was there purely as a passenger, they never believed me. In truth, I couldn’t help but notice some deficiencies in their methods, yet could say nothing after my promises. On my return, I will certainly avoid that particular car. The hardest thing is to know a truth one cannot speak.”

The coach stopped and the driver hopped down to put his head in. “I hope it’s no bother, Mr. Hewell, but I been instructed to deliver Lord Pellapon’s guest right quick. It’s a short deviation and we’ll proceed into Binderwood straightaway after, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Hewell answered, pleased that he would get a look at Pellapon Hall. Since it figured into his investigation, he was glad of the opportunity to locate it in relation to various landmarks he had committed to memory. Studying the district map had given him only the faintest impression of the region.

They headed up a long drive among mature yet sickly hornbeams dappled with anemic sunlight, and the woods thinned to give glimpses of the grounds. There was not much to admire: a ragged sweep of bare, salted lawn cresting hills that ran toward the sea; and, at the end of the drive, a tall manor with wings not quite fully spread, like the halves of a traveling apothecary’s dispensary trunk interrupted in the opening. The stone of the place was rimed and spotted; sea spray and lichens had brought the house into sympathy with the local limestone. It was as if an architect had taken a stern hand to an outcrop.

A smattering of domestic staff awaited the coach, at their fore a hale, ruddy-complected figure with a raw nose and wispy hair that had gone to gray yet still retained a memory of orange. This attribute gave unspoken testimony that the twin girls waiting beside him were his daughters.

Hewell attempted to remain within the coach, but Deakins said a few words to Lord Pellapon and he found himself compelled into the house for tea. The driver, having no other passengers, was content to wait.

“Run along, girls!” Lord Pellapon barked as he led the way down a dim corridor toward the sitting room, for the two ginger lasses appeared inclined to lurk and listen to every word. They drifted away with whispers and titters, but Hewell sensed they were never quite out of earshot—his or theirs.

“Twins?” he asked.

“What’s that? The girls? Yes, and a trial to me as never to their mother, God rest her. I have no aptitude for the raising of such angels. Under my care they have become perfect devils!”

His face reddening, he looked on the verge of a fit until Deakins put a hand on his shoulder and said, “But your troubles hatch elsewhere, Lord Pellapon. With those resolved, I have no doubt your family will be restored to a more harmonious state.”

“Naturally,” Lord Pellapon agreed, subsiding into a state of quietude and a chair of oxblood leather near a window overlooking the cliffs. Through lozenges of poor consistency, Hewell saw the gray and restless bosom of the ocean. The sky was at the mercy of mist and cloud, and he supposed he might stand at this window for a year and never see an horizon. He felt grateful that his own chambers in London held no such views, or any at all, to distract him.

“My Lord,” said Deakins, “I thought since Mr. Hewell is here that you might be able to acquaint both of us, as one, with the details of your present difficulties. As I understand it, they revolve around the mail.”

“Yes, and I have had no satisfaction from the local authorities. Merricott is quite unhelpful. Incompetent, I daresay.”

“The local postmaster?” Hewell said. “Well, that is why I’m here. An obstinate fellow will be dealt with to the extent of my powers, keeping in mind that he may have a certain vestigial authority that proves recalcitrant. It is often the case with these local offices. They resist any attempt to bring them in line with the latest procedures, and any mention of increased efficiency is frequently met with outright hostility. If you knew the outcry we faced at the proposal of installing postboxes in regions even less removed than this . . .”

“Shameful, I’m sure,” said Pellapon. “But Merricott is not obstinate. He’s an idiot!”

“That does not necessarily make matters easier,” the detective said. “A measure of intelligence often leads to quicker arrival at an agreed destination—once trouble has been turned from its deviant course. What the perpetrators will not expect is a ferocious imagination—mine!—turned upon their plots. There is no mischief they can concoct that is inconceivable to me, and in this wise I shall expediently outwit them.”

Idiots and deviants
, Hewell thought.
They are certainly eager to work from assumptions.

“On behalf of the Royal Mail,” said Hewell, “I can promise a thorough, sober, and clear-eyed investigation. Now, as I understand it, Binderwood has experienced a tremendous rise in the volume of local correspondence—”

“To such an extent my business is suffering! Letters lost. Valuable communiqués gone missing in this deluge of packets, this . . . this
torrent
. I am constantly receiving missives full of nonsense while my own transactions go astray. A letter of patent I expected a month ago turned up last week in an illiterate cotter’s hut. It would be there still had not Doctor Ogilvy paid the poor wretch a visit to treat a milk-rash and spotted it in service as a blotter.”

“Many villages in Binderwood’s position are in a state of flux,” Hewell said, without trying to sound as if he were justifying the inexcusable. “Modern improvements are planned for all, to meet with the rise in demand, but some areas are still far behind the times. You have the telegraph, of course—”

“But it is the mail I rely upon, and it is the mail that has gone to Hell! I cannot append my signature or set my stamp to a telegram! I assure you, this matter concerns the whole locale. Just because it has not troubled London—”

“Pray do not mistake me, sir! It is a deeply troubling matter to London, and to me personally. The mail in all its parts is our concern, and I thank you for bringing this to my attention. I do feel, given the urgency I sense, that my time would be better spent attending directly to the situation. Meaning no discourtesy, I beg your leave to forego my tea and get on to my meeting with the postmaster, post haste.”

“Well,” Lord Pellapon muttered, “it would be greatly appreciated. Tilly, where are the detective’s biscuits?”

Deakins gave the postal inspector a nod and settled down to business: slurping his Lapsang souchong while the maid scurried off for the missing digestives. Hewell made his own way back along the passage to the foyer. Seeing no servants, he was about to open the front door himself when it flew inward, nearly crushing his nose.

He found himself facing a tall young man in the act of delivering the afternoon mail. Before he quite registered that Hewell was a stranger, the lad had relinquished two handfuls of letters. It was rather a lot of mail for one house, Hewell thought, weighing them in either hand.

“That will be all, boy,” Hewell said to the youth’s bewilderment. The dazed lad nodded, bowed, and returned to his waiting nag, looking back at Hewell several times. Hewell shut the door and inspected the letters in what illumination passed through the high foyer fanlight.

Lord Pellapon’s mail was ordinary enough: the usual admixture of cancellations and the standard Penny Black stamp, self-adhesive pride of the Royal Mail. He could never see one without admiring it: Queen Victoria’s blessed profile, beautifully engraved against a background of engine turnings. The common red cancellation mark was a bit difficult to make out, which had led to talk of printing in new colors, a notion Hewell despised as undignified. The black ink framing Her white visage was elegant, unequalled. He had seen them being printed, had touched the etched plates, had welcomed what they meant for the efficient handling of mail in a reformed and modern postal system. Everything about them pleased him.

The Penny Blacks decorated a number of thin, rustling envelopes, as well as a rather larger bundle bearing the inscription of a solicitor in London. But in his left hand were four or five packets of a more irregular sort: cheap, thick paper, each bearing a stamp he did not at first recognize. Foreign? Or some local variant?

A troubling variety of unauthorized regional postage stamps had sprung up in the shadow of the Penny Black. It was not entirely accurate to call them counterfeit; they were more along the lines of homages, although of course highly unlawful. These were an affliction of remote counties but a manageable one, rarely worth the time it took to suppress them unless they traveled beyond their home districts.

The letters in Hewell’s left hand all bore the same peculiar stamp: it was engraved with care and craft, but printed in violet ink on a press whose plates were minutely out of register, such that the profile was ever so slightly blurred. This figure of royalty wore a fanciful three-tipped crown and was definitely not Victoria Regina. The profile’s most remarkable feature was a sharp dot of carmine red marking out the iris of the eye. As a work of art and amateur production, it was intriguing. However, it also bore the legend “One Penny,” which rendered it a competitor to the Royal Mail, a blatant forgery, and therefore intolerable.

“It is our job to deliver the mail,” said a piping, musical voice.

“We’ll carry those to Papa!”

The packets were snatched from his hands.