by Robin Blake
I entered by the yard door, passed through the flagged passage and into the hall of the inn, where I was confronted by a tall figure coming in from Stoney Gate.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘You’re Peters, Mr Destercore’s man.’
He reacted with some suspicion though he clearly recognized me.
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, your master will find this a friendly house. It’s famous for its good ale.’
‘I’ve tasted it,’ said Peters. He had a genteel way of speaking, and his manner of dress, too, seemed a cut above that of a manservant. His buckles were of silver and his waistcoat’s piping had woven into it gleaming strands of what looked like silver thread, not as thick or glittery as Ephraim Grimshaw’s, but not the expected trim to the garment of a servant.
‘You stop here?’ I said. ‘I thought you were at Porter’s.’
‘Mr Destercore’s there, and I’m here. Now, if you would excuse me…’
So I let him pass. But our encounter had given me even more to think about.
* * *
When my conscience is taxed, or my understanding falls short, I talk the matter out with Elizabeth for, unless I do, I find it forms lumps in my mind that will not shift. That night, as we lay side by side with our heads resting on the bolster, and she having given me all the details of her mother’s departure that day for Broughton, I told her the full story of my dealings with the Gamecock Inn and the death of Mr Allcroft.
‘It was horrible. Blood, excrement, vomit, excruciating cramps – I am sorry, dear, but Allcroft died no ordinary death. It should have been subject to inquest, as I now know.’
‘But it was a natural illness, wasn’t it? There’s been a fearful story going round that it was plague.’
‘Utter nonsense. Allcroft was sick from what he ate. Death came to him in the form of a stew.’
‘So why not put that to a jury?’
‘I have a difficulty about that,’ I said. ‘The body has already gone from the town and out of my jurisdiction.’
‘So what was wrong with the stew?’
‘Luke has made a rather convincing case for its having been deliberately poisoned.’
‘Poisoned! How?’
I told her about the experiment carried out that morning in Adam Lorris’s garden. When she heard of the rat’s demise she gave an involuntary laugh.
‘Oh, dear! Poor innocent Athene. But how can Dr Fidelis be so sure of his case? Some men are rats, as many women have found, but a rat is not the same as a man.’
‘In much we are the same. If you hurt us we cry, if you cut us we bleed, if you hold us underwater we drown.’
‘Yes, but a rat does not laugh, or write letters, or know God.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘A rat writing letters, Titus?’
‘All right, I concede there are no rat letters, strictly speaking. There might be a rat God.’
‘That is irreligious, dearest.’
‘Probably. I am not concerned with religion, but with facts, and they are these – Allcroft ate some food, the rat ate the same food, they both died. It is therefore my and Dr Fidelis’s submission that a person, or persons, unknown laced that food with a poison, conceivably rat poison. I also adumbrate a possible connection of the culprit. Maggie Satterthwaite was the inn servant who brought the hotpot up to Allcroft’s room, and who is also the granddaughter of Isaac Satterthwaite, our distinguished rat catcher and a man accustomed to the use of white arsenic in destroying rats.’
‘Titus, will you please try not to address me as if I were the House of Lords? Just tell me in plain words why would Maggie, or anyone, kill Mr Allcroft? He was a most amiable gentleman, and my parents’ friend.’
‘I don’t know, my love, but there is one dark possibility at the back of all this. Allcroft was on a list of voters kept by the Whig agent Mr Destercore, who has come here as Mr Reynolds’s corner man in the election. I have seen this list. The names on it are those thought to be particularly likely to vote against Mr Reynolds. They are his political opponents.’
‘You make this list sound so sinister. But isn’t it normal for the parties to collect intelligence and tally the votes?’
‘Of course. But it is definitely not normal for names on their lists to be murdered a week before the election. Elizabeth…’ I took her hand and caressed it. ‘You should know something else. Your uncle Egan’s name was also on that list. I am wondering if he also was a victim.’
‘But he died by misadventure. Your jury said so and you agreed.’
‘But now I am not so sure. Especially when I recall that it happened the very night Destercore stopped at the Ferry Inn. And remember Dick Middleton’s evidence.’
‘You know what I think of that.’
‘But if these were indeed murders – and if they were political – and that became even suspected here in town, there would be incalculable trouble. Mobs have sprung up and great houses been burned to the ground over lesser matters.’
Elizabeth had been resting on her side facing me. Now she rolled onto her back and lay for a few moments in silence. At last she went on.
‘I’ll grant you that Uncle Egan was a proud and deep-dyed Tory, when his head was clear enough to remember it. But the whole thing seems too fantastical. That Destercore has come here to murder Tories to alter the result! How could he? This is not a rotten borough with a mere six or seven votes. There are hundreds of voters here and to make a difference he would have to commit a mass murder, not just kill two or three.’
‘Perhaps his tally tells him the voting will be that close.’
Elizabeth yawned and stretched like a cat.
‘Well, I’ll tell you something. Maggie Satterthwaite may be very pretty and perhaps not very wise. But she has always been a law-abiding girl.’
‘She’s not entirely good, though. She was dismissed from her place at the Ferry Inn – do you know why?’
‘Ah! I wondered if that would be remembered.’
‘Her grandfather remembers it. He is bitter.’
‘Her dismissal was the decision of Mary-Ann and Grace. It was well founded enough but the cause was not her dishonesty.’
‘What, then?’
Elizabeth hesitated.
‘She fell in love, I think.’
‘There’s no disgrace in that.’
‘She was found in bed with the man.’
‘Ah!’
‘Indeed.’
She yawned again.
‘Now I must rest. Remember tomorrow is May Day.’
I leaned across and kissed her sleepy lips.
‘Goodnight, then,’ I said.
‘Goodnight, sweet prince,’ she murmured in reply.
Chapter Ten
ON MAY DAY the chill and rain that had gusted through the week gave way to warm air and sunshine. For most of Preston, this was to be a festive day without work. In place of the Friday market, a fair was to be held in Market Place, beginning at noon, with dancing, the crowning of the May Queen, amusement stalls, boxing booths, bearded ladies and much more in that vein. It was traditional for the girls to go out first thing, to scoop up morning dew with their hands and rub it into their faces, which they believed would give them soft skin. Then they gathered wild flowers for garlands to dress the town wells and the doorways of their houses. It was also customary to perform antics and play tricks, and shout, ‘May gosling!’ at those who were fooled.
It was not a workless day for me. My first act on entering the office in the morning was to write a note to Luke Fidelis. I had the idea of dining at the Gamecock, I wrote, and would he like to join me? This was sent by hand of a boy and, after I had been working for half an hour with Furzey on drawing up Miss Colley’s new will, his reply came back that he would be seeing patients in the morning and at the same time developing an appetite for the meal he would be very glad to take with me at the inn. He suggested we meet at two o’clock.
By ten the will was drawn up and a fa
ir copy in legal hand had been made by Furzey. This I rolled up and then set off to Miss Colley’s on Fisher Gate. My client greeted me effusively.
‘Mr Cragg, have you brought my will for signing? How very genteel of you to come in person. You will take a glass of Madeira? I hope you like macaroons.’
While she saw to my refreshment I sat down at her dining table and unrolled the will.
‘You must read it through before you sign,’ I said.
‘Oh, be a kind attorney, Mr Cragg,’ she begged. ‘Read it to me.’
‘You really should peruse it personally before you sign, you know.’
‘Of course I shall peruse it – after you have read it to me.’
‘Very well.’
I began reading, taking a sip of wine and a nibble of macaroon between each clause. When I had finished I handed the document across.
‘Please have a look over it and then we will need a witness to your signature.’
‘I know the ideal person. I shall send word.’
She left me alone and went downstairs, returning after a few minutes.
‘You must have another glass while we wait,’ she announced.
‘Only if you will engage in the meantime to look over the will,’ I said.
It was agreed and at last she was sitting with the paper on her knee and spectacles on her nose.
‘A beautiful hand your clerk has,’ she remarked as she bent over it.
For the next few minutes she sat looking at the page. Though she exclaimed from time to time – at a name or an item bequested – she was not I think reading the document consecutively, but rather she was examining it, while remarking on one word or another as she randomly noticed them. I had seen this before in female clients of the gentry class. It was not that Miss Colley could not read; she believed reading in public to be somehow indelicate, undignified or unladylike. So she treated the document as if it were there to be appreciated just for its visual quality, like a fine engraving from Salvator Rosa.
Little more than five minutes had passed when there came a knock on the door and a lady swept in. She was voluminously dressed, and her face was heavily rouged and powdered. It was Miss Colley’s neighbour, Mrs Lavinia Bryce.
‘You require a witness to your signature, my dear Miss Colley? Allow me to be the one.’
She spoke heroically, as one volunteering for a gallant and perhaps suicidal military exploit. This tone amused Miss Colley, who tittered that she’d been in no doubt of Mrs Bryce stepping up to the line. However, certain social obligations had to be observed before the signing ceremony could take place. First the will was laid on the table, and Mrs Bryce was put at her ease in an upholstered chair. Then my name and person were presented to her and duly acknowledged, after which a glass of Madeira was placed in her hand and a macaroon offered – and declined on the grounds that Mrs Bryce found the biscuit excessively binding. Finally a certain quantity of conversation was to be made, and the topic that Mrs Bryce favoured was quickly apparent.
‘We are all transfixed by the election, are we not? Poor Mr Reynolds, it is exhausting him extremely. I have to keep him constantly up to the mark, you know, telling him that the Great Prize is within his grasp and that he must not let his resolution waver. Without me I fancy he would have wilted by now. So many speeches to make, and bumpers of wine to drink, and banquets to attend.’
‘Do the Whigs really think they can swing it?’ asked Miss Colley. ‘This town seems so very Tory to me.’
Mrs Bryce replied with a snort.
‘The corporation is Tory. But Mr Reynolds says it’s such a fretful long time since Preston voted, there’s nobody really knows how it will go. In London they take it most seriously; they have set their eyes on us. Did you know, Mr Cragg, they have even sent an agent to oversee the vote on behalf of their party?’
‘Yes, I did. I have met him. I—’
‘A fretfully clever sort of fellow, I am told, and do you think they would bundle him up here if they thought the election was scuppered, and all Mr Reynolds’s work here wasted and poor Sir Harry bound to be ousted from Parliament?’ She inflated her cheeks and blew out a puff of air. ‘Of course they would not!’
She swigged her wine.
‘And Mr Reynolds is such a darling little man that I would be made quite ill if our efforts to keep him up to the mark were in vain. Now – what is it you would like me to sign?’
* * *
The May Day dancing was to begin at three and would be followed by the May Queen’s coronation. The maypole already stood erected in the middle of Market Place, and carpenters were at work building a stage on the east side. A large oak branch, the leaves young and spring green, had been tied to the pole’s tip, while coloured ribbons hung down from the top to the ground. A group of four young unmarried women of the town – the candidates for the crown of flowers the May Queen would wear for her procession through the town – had gathered around Barney Lostock, the fiddler and the master of the dance. He was giving out instructions for a rehearsal in the manner of a sergeant of dragoons preparing to attack. As his assault was about to begin, I strolled down to watch the dancers pick up the ends of the ribbons and take their positions around the pole. Barney counted to three and began to play a jaunty tune, upon which the girls began bobbing and skipping around the pole, two in one direction and two in the other. Gradually they wound their ribbons about its shaft until there was none left to wind, at which they made a smart about-turn on Barney’s command and danced in the opposite direction, to unwind the ribbons again.
Standing next to me in the small group of passers-by attracted by the music and the pretty sight was Nick Oldswick, the watchmaker with whom I had supped four nights earlier at the White Bull.
‘They’re all supposed to be virgins – that’s a joke,’ he commented drily. ‘But we must all agree to pretend, eh, Titus?’
I agreed that it was our civic duty.
‘By the way,’ he went on, ‘I’m glad we met because I am thinking of consulting you.’
‘Oh, yes? A legal matter?’
‘I think so. A person tried to attack me last night, just after I’d locked up my shop.’
‘What happened?’
‘I had an urgent job in hand and had been working late by lamplight. It was eleven or so, very dark, with nobody about that I could see when I went out. After I’d locked up I dropped the key into my pocket and was setting off for home when this someone tried to brain me. He’d been lurking behind a cart that had a broken axle and so was parked for the night, pushed right close to the wall. This man, big he was, swung at me as I passed the cart with a heavy club, or whatever it was. By chance, at that very same moment, my foot tripped on a stone half sunk in the ground and I stumbled, with my head dropping forward, do you see? That stumble saved my life, Titus, and also no doubt my stock of gold in the shop, because the blow missed my head and hit the cart. Then the man ran off. I don’t know why. Happen he thought he heard someone else coming.’
‘Who was he?’
‘I don’t know. I never saw him at all, except as a shape in the night. I was taken with such a shock that I did not think quickly enough. I did not call or run after him.’
‘If you do not know his name you can hardly contemplate legal action.’
‘It’s not him I want to proceed against; it’s the owner of the cart. Leaving it in that place was actionable. It greatly facilitated the attempted crime by offering concealment to the criminal.’
Did he have a case? The coming of the election had brought many strangers, some of them also malefactors, which made the present circumstances highly unusual for our town. Ordinarily the leaving of a broken-down cart in the street overnight would not be thought a mischief, and in my view the Court Leet would therefore be inclined to forgive the carter rather than condemn him. Furthermore, the attempted crime had not been seen by anyone else. Oldswick’s hobby of going to law was so well known that, without witnesses to back up his story, he risked being der
ided, disbelieved and, in the end, out of pocket.
I told him as much, as delicately as I could. He huffed once or twice then made off, muttering about obtaining the services of a different lawyer. I turned back to the maypole and found that the ribbons were all but loosed from it, and Barney was terminating the dance with a decisive downward stroke of his bow. It was then that I noticed that one of the dancers was Maggie Satterthwaite. I went forward and drew her aside.
‘Maggie, I hear you served poor Mr Allcroft with his dinner yesterday at the Gamecock.’
‘That I did, sir, in his room.’
‘Some say it might have been his food that made him ill. Would you know anything about that?’
‘I just took plate up to him. I didn’t cook it.’
She spoke sharply. I looked at her, but did not see evidence that she was hiding anything.
‘Is there a way it might have had something noxious added to it, after it was put on the plate?’
‘I don’t know, sir. I just took it up straight from kitchen.’
‘Was it served out of the common pot?’
‘Yes, sir. I watched as Mr Primrose gave it onto the plate.’
‘And how was Mr Allcroft when you delivered it up? Did he seem ill at all at that point?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘Didn’t you see him?’
‘No, sir, he was in coffee room. Half the people were there. They were discussing election lists, or the like, with that agent man.’
It took me a moment to realize whom she meant.
‘You mean Mr Thompson, the Tories’ agent, conducting his canvas?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘How do you know Mr Allcroft was with him in the assembly room?’
‘Because when I went back to kitchen I sent our boy Peterkin to look for him and tell him his food was waiting in his room, where he’d asked for it to be brought.’
‘So the room had been empty when you left the food?’
‘Unless there were someone hiding under the bed, sir.’
Our conversation went no further because now one of Maggie’s fellow virgins ran across to claim her for a second trial of the maypole dance and I walked back to the office. I had heard enough to know that the theory of the deliberate poisoning of Allcroft had gained in credibility. But as to who was responsible, we were little further on. The food had been left alone in the room, if only for a few minutes: anyone might have gone in there and adulterated it.
