by R J Lynch
‘And so you took someone into your home?’ said Blakiston.
King nodded. ‘A widow, fifteen years older than me. Her husband was killed by the French in King George's War. She had three sons and two daughters and no means to keep them unless she sold her body.’
There was a sharp intake of breath from Mistress Spence and Lady Isabella looked discomforted. The rector placed his hand on hers. ‘Mister King, there are subjects that are not suitable…’
‘Which, in a sense, she did, for she married me,’ King went on as though he had not heard. Then he shook himself. ‘I am sorry, Rector, ladies. I have spent too much time alone and my manners were not good at the best of times. Let us speak of other things.’
That would be easier said than done, Blakiston knew. There were things that could not be mentioned in the presence of respectable ladies and those things certainly included the idea that a woman might sell her body. It seemed unlikely that Job King would ever again be invited to dine at the rectory. A coldness hung in the room. To alleviate it, Blakiston said, ‘I should like to talk to you, King, about farming methods in America, but I would not inflict on others here a topic so boring. If you have no objection I shall call on you when the wheat harvest is over and we both have more time?’
King nodded. His expression said he was grateful for the diversion.
‘Lady Isabella,’ said Blakiston, racking his brains for a suitable subject, but he was interrupted. ‘Come, come,’ said Mistress Spence. ‘We are in good company. Mister King, you have raised a subject you should not have raised and I can see that you know it. Lady Isabella and I have lived in the world a while. Are we to see an enjoyable evening spoiled because society would like to believe that we are pampered, protected innocents who must not know what some people have to do? Tell us about life in the colonies. And by that I do not mean, tell us what the ladies there wear.’
At that point, Sarah arrived to help John clear away the soup bowls and carry in the dishes of halibut, roast beef, a stew of chicken and vegetables and steaming bowls of potatoes, cabbage and carrots and the diners lapsed into silence punctuated by quiet murmurs of appreciation. Rosina’s skills as a cook were widely spoken of and Blakiston knew that only her liking for and loyalty to Lady Isabella kept her at the rectory in the face of competing offers of higher pay and more servants to order around.
When maid and manservant had finished serving, Sarah had left the room and John had gone to stand once more against the wall, Mistress Spence turned again to Job King. ‘The colonies, Mister King.’ Blakiston gave silent thanks for a woman so level headed as to have put King’s faux pas behind her. Had Blakiston still been in the place he had once called home, mixing with the people he had thought of as friends, he knew that the women would have affected a fit of the vapours at hearing the merest suggestion of improper behaviour between men and women. What a generous fate it was that had sent him here, where people talked sense and where he had found to marry a young woman who, he knew, would have taken even less umbrage than had Susanna Spence at what so many would deem an unfitting remark.
‘Well,’ said King, ‘the colonies are not like here. They are rough and they are wild. And yet they are exactly like here, because the first thing you understand when you arrive is that this is another England. But a better England. The people who went from this country to the Americas went, or at least some of them did, because they resented a monarchy and, forgive me, Rector, a church that were very good at spending but themselves produced nothing. They did not leave behind, or at least most of them did not, the ways of kindness and gentleness they had known among their equals here. What they wanted in their new country was to enjoy the rewards of their own work and not to have to feel indebted to those set in place above them.’
Blakiston saw a look of high good humour cross Susanna Spence’s face. He had not been in her company before but what was clear was what he had already seen over the matter of Job King’s lapse of judgement – a willingness to engage with the world and its people as they really were and not as an outmoded society said they should be. And it was apt, for was this not exactly the virtue that Job King was ascribing to the American colonists? ‘What happens,’ he asked, ‘to those who fall on hard times and cannot support themselves? Does the Poor Law hold in the colonies as well as here?’
‘It does, of course, because the colonies are subject to English law. But there is there a level of sharing that we do not see here. When you have a house to build, your neighbours arrive with their tools to help you. Their wives bring food so that no one has to stop the work of construction in order to prepare something to eat. When it is over, they drink, eat, dance and then they leave to go to their own homes. If a man is injured on his land or a woman in childbirth the whole township gathers round to help. And that is true even though a township may cover a huge tract of land with only one or two people to every five square miles.’
‘Well, Mr King,’ said Lady Isabella, ‘you have described a paradise on earth. What was it that led you to leave it all behind and come home?’
‘My wife died,’ said King. ‘If you had asked me at the time we married I would have told you that it was an arrangement of convenience only but I found…no. I am misleading you and I do not want to do that. When my wife died, I was free to come home because she would never have wished to leave America and, if she had, it would not have been to come here. My wife was from Waldeck.’ He looked around to make sure that he was being understood. ‘And I was rich, or at least rich by the standards of most people there or here, and I had a wish to show people who had known me in my days of poverty what I had made of myself. I know that is a poor ambition and probably unchristian but…’
‘It is the most natural thing in the world, sir,’ said Susanna Spence. ‘What is not usual is your honesty in being so open with us. You are a credit, either to the place that raised you or the one where you made your fortune. But still I wish that you would treat with your labouring men in the same way as others here do.’
‘Well,’ said King, ‘not everyone here deals in the same way with working men. The whole parish is alive with the tale of how Mister Blakiston fed Emmett Batey a breakfast such as that poor man had never seen.’
‘Good Lord,’ said Blakiston. ‘Is everything known in this place?’
‘The maid who served you could not contain herself. She said the man was saved from starvation by your kindness. And I believe you gave him tea to drink!’
‘Well, you know, small beer is very well but tea is a better drink in the morning. To watch him take it you would think he had never tasted it before.’
‘Nor had he, I should think,’ said King, ‘or at least not legally for the duty the Excise demands puts it beyond the reach of ordinary folk. Most of the tea that is drunk here is smuggled and who knows what matter is mixed with it before it is sold? But your generosity is talked of as though you were Saint Elizabeth of Hungary herself.’
‘I had heard nothing of this,’ said Lady Isabella. ‘I’m sure, Mister Blakiston, that you have earned credit in the world above this one.’
Blakiston was fascinated to see that they had all been so absorbed by the tale that King had to tell that all of the fish and meat courses had been eaten while they listened. Now was the time for another pause while the servants removed the dishes they had wiped clean and brought in two of the puddings Rosina was famous for as well as fruit and the cheese without which the Rector would never consider a dinner to be complete.
Chapter 14
Jeffrey Drabble had told Blakiston that William Snowball was the first person Susannah Ward had seen after finding Margaret Laws dead on the farmhouse floor. Chopwell Garth and New Hope were not the only farms on Lord Ravenshead’s estate that were harvesting, had just harvested or were about to harvest and Blakiston was busy each day from early morning till he fell exhausted into bed after a late supper. Almost a week was to pass before he could find time to think once more about the killer of Margaret Laws an
d Ezra Hindmarsh and it was on Saturday the eighth of September that he went looking for Snowball. Regarded with the caution a squatter must always feel in the presence of a landowner’s agent, Blakiston did little to calm the man’s fears. He did not wish to spend more time than he must in this sad hovel. It occurred to him, too, that if the other Snowballs did not hear what William Snowball told him they would be less able to align their story with his so he walked out of the single room in which the family lived, slept, cooked and ate and signalled with his head that Snowball should follow him. ‘Only you, Snowball. The rest of your family shall remain here.’
When they were outside, Blakiston wasted no time in beginning his attack. ‘How did you come to be so close to New Hope Farm that morning?’
‘I was looking for a lost pig, Sir.’
‘Were you, now? A lost pig. And did you find it?’
‘No, Sir.’
‘Good grief, man, your very countenance gives the lie to your words. Have you so many pigs, a man like you so poor he must make a beggar’s home on common land, that you can afford to let one go? If you had been telling the truth, I and everyone in this parish would have seen you going from door to door searching for your lost treasure. Either that or the air would have been heavy with the smell of roasting pork. Let us put this sad tale behind us; I shall ask you the question once more and this time your answer will be more convincing or you will find yourself in Durham Jail with Joseph Laws. How did you come to be so close to New Hope Farm that morning?’
The hat Snowball turned in his hands looked old enough to have been worn by his grandfather. That could not be, for it was round and in the early years of the eighteenth century when Grandfather Snowball would have been young no-one saw any but three-cornered hats. As Blakiston eyed the grease stains with distaste, he remembered Drabble’s words: “all the Snowballs run to fat”. It was true enough in this case, for Snowball was as round as a bee skep and sweat beaded his skin. He looked as though unsure whether to speak or make a run for it but he must have realised that flight would avail him nothing. ‘I had heard that Joseph Laws was from home, sir.’
‘Indeed. And so you decided to visit New Hope Farm. Was it in expectation of finding something you could purloin? Or did you hope to be yet another having his way with the lady of the house while her husband was elsewhere?’
Snowball looked shocked by the question. His eyes stared wonderingly at Blakiston.
‘Come now,’ said Blakiston, ‘do not waste time dreaming up some new tale that I will see through as easily as the last for you have already shown you are not equipped to lie. Was it his property or his wife you meant to steal from Joseph Laws?’
‘Sir, I am a poor man and I have a wife and three children to provide for.’
‘Yes, yes, and so you look for possessions others have neglected so that you can take them for yourself. What did you steal?’
‘Nothing, Sir. For there was no one in the fields nearby but nor was there anything worth having.’
‘How close to the farmhouse did you go?’
It seemed at first that Snowball would be unwilling to answer the question. At length he said, ‘To the door itself, Master.’
‘To the door! And did you open it?’
‘Master, it was already open.’
Blakiston felt a surge of excitement. Had he found someone who had witnessed the evil doings at New Hope Farm? ‘And when you opened it, what did you see?’
‘Sir, I saw Margaret Laws lying on the floor.’ The words were spoken so quietly that Blakiston struggled to be sure he had heard them at all.
‘You saw the body? Did you go into the house?’
‘Yes, sir, for I did not know then it was a body and I felt the woman might need help. I knew that Joseph Laws had sent Emmett Batey away and I am sore in need of regular work. If I came to his wife’s aid I thought he might be grateful enough to offer me employment.’
‘He was just as likely to wonder what you were doing in his house at that time. But never mind; when you got close to the woman what was your conclusion?’
‘Master, it was clear that she was dead.’
‘Dead? Simply that?’
‘I saw that she had died at someone’s hand.’
‘But you did nothing to raise the alarm?’
‘No, Master, for I feared I might be blamed for her death.’
‘Well, Snowball, that may still happen for there is no-one but you to support your story and you have already shown yourself a man of questionable honesty. What children do you have?’
Snowball appeared bewildered by the sudden change in direction. ‘Three girls, Master.’
‘Their ages?’
‘Nine, seven and two. We lost two more, Master, in the middle. To the diphtheria, you know.’
‘Call for the two eldest.’ When they were before him, Blakiston addressed them with more gentleness than he had used on their father. ‘I want you to run to New Hope Farm and bring Jeffrey Drabble here. Can you do that?’
‘Yes, Master,’ said the tallest of the two.
Blakiston took three pennies from his purse and handed them to her. ‘Good girl. Tell him to come as quickly as he can.’
Blakiston watched the two girls running as fast as their weak and spindly legs would let them. It was a shame to deal with the dispossessed this way and he sometimes felt the weight of the ignominy his class heaped upon those who could not speak up for themselves. Nevertheless, suspicion fell on Snowball and Drabble was needed. He said, ‘This is important, Snowball. If you answer truthfully you may help me find Margaret Laws’s killer. But if you lie and tell me you saw something you did not see in the hope of removing suspicion from yourself, you will merely increase that suspicion and make it more likely that you will hang. Do you understand?’
Snowball nodded.
‘Very well. Think carefully. As you were approaching New Hope Farm and as you were leaving it afterwards, did you see anyone else?’
Snowball stood deep in thought and Blakiston was glad that he had warned him not to invent because he felt sure that the man was considering doing just that. After a long pause, Snowball shook his head. ‘No one’.
‘You saw no one. Well, I believe you, because it would be in your interest to say that you did. Now think once more. Was there anything that was not as perhaps it should have been? Anything there that should not have been there? Anything not there that should have been there?’
Snowball shook his head again.
‘If there was nothing, there was nothing. You said that you had heard that Joseph Laws was from home. How did you hear that? From whom?’
‘I cannot remember, Master.’
‘Think harder.’ A sudden thought came to Blakiston. ‘Can you write, Snowball?’
‘Write, Sir? No, Sir.’
‘You did not write a letter to Joseph Laws? And send it in the post?’
‘I cannot write, Master. And if I could, I could not afford the post when I could as easily carry the letter to Joseph Laws and save myself the price. And if it come to that, if I were going to see him then I could tell him what I wanted to say without the trouble of setting it down in writing which I do not know how to do on paper for which I do not have the money.’
‘Very well. And here is the constable so your daughters have been speedy about my business. Drabble, William Snowball is under suspicion in the death of Margaret Laws and I wish you to take him in charge.’ The same shocked look had returned to Snowball’s face and Drabble, too, looked in some doubt. ‘Do you think you can manage him without trouble?’
‘I can if he comes willingly, Master, but I may struggle if he resists.’
‘I see what you mean. Snowball, I instructed you to give more thought to who told you of Joseph Laws’s absence.’
The dazed look on Snowball’s face intensified at yet another sudden change of direction in the questioning and it occurred to Blakiston that the man was not the brightest among Ryton’s inhabitants. ‘Master, I…I cannot
remember. It was simply something that I heard, I know not where.’
‘Then you must go on trying to remember until you succeed. And now we have to deal with the question of how the constable is to take you in charge with no dragoons to support him, since I would be unwilling to accept any assurance from you that you would not run away between here and Durham.’
‘Master, if you put me in jail my family will starve. They are starving already but that will be the end of them.’
‘Your daughters look skinny enough, it is true. One must wonder how you come to be so fat. Is it at their expense? Do you eat your own portion and that of your family also? Oh, don’t trouble yourself with an answer. Here is the solution to our problem. You will go with Drabble now to New Hope Farm and you will work with him on clearing the yard in which the barn stands so that we can begin the task of putting in iron rails before next year’s harvest. At night you will sleep in the barn and Drabble will check that you are there at the hours of two and six each morning. How fortunate, Drabble, that you have a watch. If he finds you not there, Snowball, or if you disappear during the day, he will come immediately to tell me and doubt not that we will find you before you have gone far.’
Snowball’s expression was brighter than it had been since Blakiston’s arrival. ‘I will be paid for my work, Master?’
‘Nine pence per day. But you need not look so pleased for the money will be given each day to your wife and not to you. Then she may begin to fatten up your children so that they look at last like decent English girls. I have no doubt that Jeffrey Drabble and Dick Jackson will ensure that you do not take more than a fair share of the victuals provided at New Hope. Constable, you do not look happy at my suggestion.’
‘I…Master, it is not for me to be happy or unhappy with what you say.’
‘You are right. It is not. But there is something on your mind and I will hear it later. For now, get away with him to New Hope, for I have things I must do and tomorrow is a special day for me; I want to be free of all concerns save one.’
