Free Murder by Candlelight by Michael Knox Beran Page B

drove back to Probert’s cottage. Hunt took out the spade and threw it over the hedge to conceal it. When Probert came out, Hunt asked him whether there was a room in which he could change his clothes. Probert showed him to a room upstairs, and a little later Hunt came down dressed in a black coat and waistcoat. Thurtell smiled and told Hunt that he looked very smart, quite like a Turpin. He then jested that Probert “would never do for a Turpin.”
    Probert and Thurtell went down to the garden and the pond. Thurtell asked whether the body had risen. Probert said no—it would lie there for a month. When they returned to the house, they found a neighbor, Mr. Heward, at the door. He was on his way to Mr. Nicholls’s farm at Battlers Green; there was a rumor afoot that something had happened in Gill’s Hill Lane the other night. Probert went down with him to Battlers Green.

    * Dick Turpin, poacher, thief, highwayman, and murderer, was hanged on the gallows at Knavesmire, York, in April 1739.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    Turpin Lads
    It had been good for that man if he had not been born.
    Matthew 26:24
    T hey were now doomed; the deed could not be undone. When Probert returned from Battlers Green, he took Hunt into the garden and told him of Mr. Nicholls’s saying to him that a gun had been fired in Gill’s Hill Lane on Friday night. Another farmer said he had heard pistol shots, while still another heard groans and a man crying out “O John, for God’s sake, spare me. . . .” Such was his fright, Probert said, that his hand began to tremble, and he was afraid he would drop the glass of gin-and-water Mr. Nicholls had given him; but he concealed his agitation and asked Mr. Nicholls what time the shots had been heard.
    â€œAbout eight o’clock.”
    â€œI suppose some of your friends wanted to frighten you, sir.”
    When Thurtell came into the garden, Probert repeated the story.
    â€œThen I’m baked,” Thurtell said.
    â€œI’m afraid it’s a bad job,” Probert continued, “for Nicholls seems to know all about it. I am very sorry it ever happened here. I’m afraid it will be my ruin.”
    â€œNever mind,” Thurtell said, “they can do nothing with you.”
    â€œThe body must be immediately taken up from my pond, John.”
    â€œI’ll tell you what I’ll do—when they are all gone to bed, you and I’ll take and bury him.”
    Probert shook his head, saying it would be “bad if they buried him in the garden.”
    â€œI’ll bury him where you nor no one else can find him.”
    â€œProbert,” Hunt said, “they can do nothing with you, or me either, because neither of us was at the murder.”

    They dined in Probert’s cottage and afterwards played whist; but the game ended when Thurtell threw up his cards, saying they ran cross. He sat up late with Hunt, and when the house was quiet they went out to dig the grave. They began to shovel the dirt with the spade, but the work was hard, and the barking of the dogs unnerved them. It seemed to them that someone was lurking nearby, observing.
    The next morning—it was Monday, October 27—Jack showed Probert the grave he had begun to dig. He confessed that he had second thoughts about the wisdom of burying the body, and was inclined instead to take it away and dispose of it elsewhere. He might, for instance, take it to Manchester Buildings, and when the opportunity arose throw it into the Thames. If the corpse should float on the river, it would, he reasoned, be so changed as to be unrecognizable.
    Probert expressed a fear that the boy Addis had seen too much. Thurtell said he would take him to London on the pretext of findinghim a “place”—a job—there. He and Joe would then come back to Radlett and take the body away. “That,” he said, “will be the better for you altogether.”
    The boy Addis was duly taken