‘I know what you and Miss Fitz-Pennington do. Why is it that so many people end up dead around you?’
No point denying it when they advertised their services discreetly in London. ‘I think you have that wrong. The deaths prompt our investigation, not the other way round.’
‘Is that true?’ Moss gestured to the pole Jacob was using to probe. ‘Barton was alive the day before yesterday, he met Miss Fitz-Pennington and now he’s dead.’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘Splitting hairs. We all think he’s dead– and you came to us asking about him yesterday afternoon.’
‘We weren’t investigating him, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Ah. Then who are you investigating?’
‘Who are you?’
Moss pressed his lips together.
‘I thought so,’ said Jacob. ‘You’ve been sent here by your political masters.’
‘That is information for those who need to know it– and you aren’t on the list.’
‘But that doesn’t stop me wondering. The Lakes are not near any strategic sites of importance. There are no military encampments or ports of note. So that leaves people. You can’t be interested in the literary gentlemen of this area, surely? They may write political tracts for the public, but they are hardly incendiary in tone.’
‘They were in the past.’
‘True.’ Jacob remembered Wordsworth joking about him and Coleridge being pursued around the Quantocks years ago by a man who overheard them talking about Spy Nosey– or Spinoza– the joke implying that the authorities were getting their garters in a knot over nothing.
And yet.
And yet, the lost poem charted a period when Wordsworth was a revolutionary and some of his friends and acquaintances had been tried for treason. He stayed true to the cause of the French Revolution long after others had abandoned it. His autobiographical poem recalled– and Jacob thought this could be no invention– how he sat the only dissenter in a church service, unable to welcome British victories when war broke out in 1793. His views would have seen him executed if he’d published them then.
‘You can’t think Mr Wordsworth guilty of anything like that now?’
‘I never said we were interested in the older generation.’
‘But the younger generation? You mean those attracted to the leaders of the nineties?’
Moss said nothing, which Jacob took as agreement. ‘There has to be more than a vague suspicion to bring you here.’
Moss dipped the oars and shifted the boat another two yards further from the shore and said: ‘Would the murder of a magistrate from Cockermouth be sufficient cause?’
* * *
The search continued until midday and then was given up for the time being.
‘It’s a grisly fact but decomposition means the body will rise to the surface in its own time,’ said Jacob, over a pint and luncheon with Barton’s friends at the Red Lion.
With a grimace, Knotte pushed his plate away.
‘If it’s there,’ added Moss, chewing his bread and ham with the appetite of a man who missed breakfast.
‘Do you think he ran away?’ asked Wright, grasping at the glimmer of hope.
‘It’s possible. Is he in debt? Does he have a guilty conscience about something?’ asked Moss. ‘Had he been dabbling in any dangerous behaviour?’
Jacob let the government agent do his work. He’d not mentioned to Moss that his business had been engaged by Sir Richard Leyburn’s family to investigate that death, not sure yet if he trusted Moss. Like the man said, the ‘need to know’ rule was not lightly broken.
‘Behaviour? Like what?’ asked Langhorne aggressively.
