by Robin Blake
In addition to this party there were several other customers at the long tables, sitting in disparate groups of three or four. I was shown to a place at the other extreme of the hall from the election party, near the end of one of the long tables. I was opposite Nicholas Oldswick, a watchmaker and burgess, as well as a notorious litigant who in years past had been assisted by my father in various actions at the mayoral Court Leet, where local trading disputes and civil complaints were wrangled over. Oldswick had recently been made a widower and, being childless, took to supping at the White Bull, and other inns, for the company as much as the convenience. But tonight he didn’t seem to be enjoying his meal very much, and was squinting with particular displeasure at the goings-on down the room.
‘What’s all this, Nick?’ I asked as I slid into my place. ‘Election treat?’
‘Aye. Parliament is dissolved and the pig feeding has begun.’
‘Well, we’ve known an election was coming, and we’ll have a contest this time.’
‘For all the good it’ll do us. Pig feeding!’
I didn’t entirely share his revulsion.
‘Nick, it may do us good. We shall all enjoy it. How long since this town’s had a contest in a general election – nineteen years, I think? This will stir the place up wonderfully.’
It had been evident for some time that Sir Robert Walpole, First Lord of the Treasury, would have to call a general election this year. Now for the first time since 1722 we were to have a fight in Preston, with Hoghton and Reynolds standing as Whig candidates against our other incumbent MP Mr Nicholas Fazackerley for the Tories, standing with a young newcomer, Mr James Shuttleworth. So there was a chance that, at the end of it all, the two members elected by Preston would for once be of the same party, and no longer cancel each other out as they had in the old parliament. I looked up the room at Reynolds, whom I had met only in passing.
‘So Reynolds will get his chance at last,’ I said. ‘He’s been assiduous enough in the last few months, working the town. What do you make of him?’
‘Just another lackey of Sir Treasure Shovel. Speaks the King’s German in his sleep, without doubt. He’ll not get my vote.’
‘I never thought he would, Nick. You’ve always been strong for the Tories.’
‘I have, though there’s some that call it the Country Party now. I won’t be bought. There’s plenty he might buy because that’s all their politics is – people putting themselves up for sale.’
‘Don’t both sides do the same?’
Oldswick shrugged.
‘A treat on one side’s a bribe on the other, I grant you. But still, I know the difference, me.’
‘Reynolds may be better than Hoghton, though.’
‘He’s forced to be. There’s nobody worse than Hoghton. The man’s hardly a Christian.’
Oldswick was getting heated now. He was beginning to enjoy himself.
‘I once went over to divine service at his church in Hoghton Tower, you know – well, you’d hardly have called it divine at all. The barest church you ever saw. No candles on the altar, and you were not to call it an altar, but a table, always a table. And they speak of the Elect, you know, who will be saved at the Last Judgement while the rest of us troop off to hell. It’s all been decided in advance, so they claim, before the world was made. Predestination.’
He took a sip from his wine glass and looked at me over its rim, his eyes sparkling as he became more voluble. He put down the glass with a little more force than was strictly necessary.
‘And guess who they reckon are the Elect of this part of the world, Titus.’
‘Sir Harry and his friends?’
‘You have it. And not content with being elected to paradise, he sees himself as God’s elected for this parliamentary seat. Of course, he forgets God’s got no vote in the borough. So let them bid away for votes by giving feasts. I say they can be out-feasted.’
‘Do you know the man on Reynolds’s right? The red-headed stranger?’
‘His name’s Destercore, a political agent. They sent him from London to stick some backbone into Reynolds at the hustings.’
‘Is there a Tory agent also?’
‘Aye, we’ve got Thompson, that helped out with the Wakefield by-election in thirty-three.’
I had got a few mouthfuls of my steak pudding down when the speeches began. There was a string of fine phrases about the Spanish war, which had started a year or so earlier, after years of peace. Mention was also made of the plight of the new Queen of Hungary, who lived so far away that it mattered little what precisely was said, and there was much extolling of the yeomen of England, a class of person that has now entered the realm of the imaginary. No time was given I noticed to extolling the name of Walpole himself. Were Sir Treasure Shovel’s fortunes on the wane?
After I had finished my dinner I went into the coffee room and wrote a note:
Mr Destercore:
As His Majesty’s coroner for this borough I am inquiring into the sudden death last night of the proprietor of the Ferry Inn, where I believe you were staying at the time of the said death. If you have any information to provide to this inquiry please present yourself at the inquest to give testimony, which will be held tomorrow at noon at the aforementioned inn.
Titus Cragg
A few minutes later a reply came back scrawled on the back of the same piece of paper:
Sir,
I regret I cannot help you, knowing nothing of the event to which you refer.
Yr Srvt Denis Destercore
Chapter Four
I ARRIVED AT THE Ferry Inn at ten in the morning, with two hours to spare before the opening of the inquest. I intended to use the time to speak with the inn’s nightman, and to form a clear idea of events on the evening Antony Egan had gone into the river.
John the nightman, who was great-uncle to the potboy Toby, was more than seventy years of age, a tall, skeletal figure with a pillow of white beard concealing most of his chest. His large, shuffling feet pointed outwards at the angle of a clock’s hands upon a quarter past eight.
I apologized for getting him out of his daytime bed, then asked him where we could talk. He led the way to a small room off the passage back from the hall. It was not much bigger than a cupboard, contained a high stool and a workbench, and was lit by a small window that looked out onto the inn’s backyard. Attached to the bench was a vice and cobbler’s last, and on a shelf above, or hanging from it, were a collection of cloths, blacking, brushes, dubbins, waxes and shoe-mending tools. John settled himself on the stool while I leaned against the bench at his side.
First I placed in front of him the black hat that Fidelis and I had found in the riverside bush.
‘Is this, or was it, your master’s hat?’
The old man picked up the hat and peered inside. Then he held it at the extremity of his arm and cocked his head.
‘Aye, I’d say it looks like.’
He spoke from his throat, in a voice that sounded like shifting wet gravel.
‘You’re sure it was his?’
‘That’s not what I said. I’m sure it looks like his.’
I took back the hat.
‘So tell me what happened here on Sunday night.’
He looked at me as if he did not understand my drift.
‘Same as always,’ he said.
‘Which means?’
‘Which means what?’
I could not decide if he was being obstructive or obtuse. I said, ‘John, why don’t you simply tell me what you do here every night, before and after midnight?’
Looking up at the ceiling he took a deep, wheezy breath.
‘All right,’ he said, in a more conciliatory tone. ‘Evenings I work on boots, if there is any. I polish them and mend them if mending’s needed. Here in my boot room, I do that. If there’s nothing of work for me I read my Bible. Then I come out for my duty at midnight.’
‘Your duty?’
‘I’m nightman. I sit by the counter i
n the hall till daybreak. Happen there’ll be a late arrival to see to. Or an early.’
‘And every night after the guests had gone up to bed, and the customers had cleared off, the master would go out for his walk, would he?’
‘He would. Regular, he was.’
‘And would this be before or after midnight?’
‘Just a mite before, I reckon.’
‘And he didn’t do any different last Sunday night.’
‘Likely he did not.’
‘You’re not sure?
He gave me another exasperated look.
‘I told you. I come on duty at midnight. I was in this room until then, so how could I see him go out?’
‘And you didn’t see him come back in?’
He stroked his beard and gave me a long look, appraising or just thinking slowly – it was impossible to know with John.
At last he said, ‘How could I have seen him come back in? He never did come back in.’
I tried hard to contain my impatience.
‘All right. What happened during the night?’
He shook his head and sighed, looking at the floor.
‘He drowned, so they tell me.’
‘Yes, but I mean what happened here, at the inn? Did any guests arrive later? Were there any notable events?’
‘Just the one man came after I started on watch, a servant following his master who’d arrived before him. On the journey up with his master their horses went lame so this man was left at Kirkham to sell the beasts while his master walked on. His name is Hamilton Peters. When he got here he asked for a bed but I turned him out of doors. Told him he was lucky I’d let him sleep on straw in an outhouse. But he was that tired he didn’t argue with me.’
‘Where did he sleep then?’
‘On straw in the barn.’
‘It’s not very hospitable, is it? Why not let him in and give him a bed?’
John spoke guardedly.
‘Maybe I didn’t like him.’
He shrugged and opened his hands. I understood him to mean that he could tell me more, but it was not forthcoming.
‘I was here next morning,’ I said. ‘I saw the gentleman his master having his breakfast but I never saw Peters.’
‘He took first ferry. I saw him at dawn. He went up to his master for a few minutes, and then he cleared off. Said he was going ahead into town to find further accommodation.’
‘Can you remember what time in the night he came in?’
‘I don’t need to.’
John eased off his stool and plodded out into the passage and back to the hall. I followed. The counter stood before the business room and beside it a comfortably upholstered hall porter’s chair, from which one had a view of the front door on one side and the staircase on the other. I stood waiting at the counter as John went behind and inside, coming back with a ledger. He banged this down, opened it, licked his fingers and began leafing through the pages.
‘It’s all writ down,’ he said.
‘By you?’
I must have allowed the smallest hint of surprise into my voice because John stopped turning the pages and fixed me with a rheumy eye.
‘I know my letters, Mr Cragg. But no, by them. That is our way at this inn.’
He found the place and turned the book so that I could read it. The page was divided into columns for the date of arrival and the time, a signature, the place where the guest had travelled from, and the date and time of departure. He pointed to the most recent entry.
27 April || 12.25 a.m. || H.P. servant of Mr Destercore (barn) || Liverpool || 27 April || 7.10 a.m.
Immediately above I noted the entry for Peters’s master in a different, more scrawled script.
26 April || 7.45 p.m. || Denis Destercore || Liverpool || 27 April || 8.10 a.m.
I took from my pocket the note I had received last night at the White Bull and compared the signatures. They were the same.
‘What was his behaviour, this servant?’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Was he polished, or rough mannered – how did he carry himself?’
‘He was ill mannered and very ungrateful.’
‘Really?’ I tapped the entry in the register. ‘Yet the hand of this servant is polite: an educated hand. Would you say he was educated?’
‘No. To me he was foul spoken and rough.’
Before I swivelled the ledger back towards John, I looked over the rest of the page. Destercore and Peters had not been the only ones staying on the Sunday night: there were three other names – not an unusual number of guests. For most of the previous week there had been three or four putting up at the inn each night – late arrivals who slept there only because they could not cross to Preston by ferry until the next morning.
‘There’s just one more thing, John,’ I said. ‘You keep to your post here, in the hall, from midnight, is that right?’
‘Aye.’
I pointed towards the inn’s front door.
‘And your master would come in by that door after his walk, plainly in your sight?’
‘He would.’
‘When would that be, normally?’
‘Most nights he’d be out half an hour but, odd times, he did stay longer, I reckon.’
‘Would he lock up after he came in?’
‘Aye, unless he forgot.’
‘In which case you locked up?’
‘Aye.’
‘So when he did not come back on the night we’re talking about, you kept the door unlocked for him?’
‘Aye.’
‘Why did you not raise the alarm, or go out and look for him, when you knew he had been out such a long time?’
John appeared embarrassed. He leaned nearer to me across the counter.
‘I didn’t always mind him, see? Happen sometimes I had even nodded off when he came in, and never saw him at all.’
Then another idea struck him. He screwed up his face.
‘But now I think on it, I did mind I hadn’t seen Mr Egan come back yet. Then when I still didn’t see him, I made up my mind he’d come in while I was seeing to that Peters, taking him to the barn, like. That is what I thought to myself at the time. But any road, I could not leave this post – not long enough for to go outdoors along the river path looking. I was on duty.’
I thanked John and asked him to stand by to give his evidence later. Then I went in search of Mary-Ann. She was sitting with her sister in their private parlour, which one reached through the kitchen.
‘Where have you put your father to lie?’ I asked.
‘In his bedroom,’ stated Mary-Ann.
‘Dr Fidelis will be here soon and we will have a quick look at him together before the hearing. Now, do you know whose this is?’
I produced the black hat, which I had folded and tucked into my pocket. I straightened it and pushed the crown into shape.
‘My daddy’s hat!’ cried Grace, seizing it from me. ‘Where’d you find this?’
‘Near the ferry stage. You’re sure it’s his?’
‘Of course. Am I not right, Mary?’
She passed it to Mary-Ann who looked inside.
‘Yes, it’s his,’ she confirmed.
‘And you can testify that he would have been wearing this hat when he went out on Sunday night for his walk?’
‘Oh yes, he always did,’ said Grace. ‘I’m right glad you found it.’
‘May I have it back until after the hearing? I will need to show it to the jury.’
Mary-Ann handed it back.
‘Will you tell us what will happen today?’ she asked.
I explained the inquest’s procedure. The jury would assemble at twelve and be sworn. They would then view the body, taking note of anything that could furnish clues as to how their father had died, before hearing the evidence of witnesses. Finally they would go into a huddle and come up with a verdict.
‘What sort of verdict?’
‘There are really only five possibilities.’
/>
I counted them off on my fingers.
‘Murder, manslaughter, self-murder, self-manslaughter and accidental death.’
Grace absorbed the information for a moment, and said, ‘We had not thought it could be anything but an accident, had we, Mary-Ann?’
Mary-Ann shook her head.
‘I cannot imagine what self-manslaughter is, Uncle.’
‘I use it to mean when persons kill themselves but are not fully to blame. For instance, by reason of insanity.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘I am sure, as you say, an accident is most likely in this case,’ I said. ‘But the inquest must be seen to consider every possibility.’
‘Who will attend?’ Mary-Ann asked.
‘Inquests must be open to the general public but I don’t expect many of them today, if any at all. Otherwise there will be just myself and Furzey my clerk, the jury members, the first finder – who was Peter Crane the salmon fisher, you know – and witnesses in this household. And other witnesses who may be called or come forward to assist. I shall certainly call Dr Fidelis.’
Mention the Devil, and see his horns. No sooner had I spoken than there came a knock on the door, and Toby entered to say that Dr Fidelis had arrived, and was waiting in the hall. I asked if we could be taken straight up to where the body lay and, two minutes later, Fidelis and I stood one on either side of Antony’s bed.
