by Robin Blake
‘Well, to swing the vote to the Tories, obviously. To frighten off Reynolds’s and Hoghton’s supporters.’
Fidelis shook his head.
‘Don’t be hasty, Titus. We are already suspecting Peters of poisoning Allcroft. Why? To swing the vote to the Whigs. So we must make up our minds. Did he kill Satterthwaite and Wilson for the Tories, or Allcroft for the Whigs? Or did he do none of the murders?’
I sighed. The new information about Peters was forcing us to adjust our view of all these deaths. Knowing Fidelis would pounce like a cat on an ill-considered reply, I spoke carefully.
‘After hearing what Lord Carburton said about him, it does not look likely that he killed Allcroft. You heard my mother-in-law – who is not to be contradicted on the near side of never – maintain that John Allcroft was a staunch Jacobite: king-over-the-water, commemorative medals, Oak Leaf Day, all that. Peters had been in Preston before and if it was on Jacobite business, he would have known Allcroft’s affiliations, and might have met him. And, if he did, he cannot have poisoned him, surely.’
‘There’s an “if” there, which would have to be resolved.’
‘Why else would Peters come here?’
Fidelis did not reply, or open his mouth again for the rest of our walk.
At the office I instructed Furzey to collect Wilson’s body and bring it to the vestry, then went through to my sanctum where Fidelis was waiting. He was humming to himself a tune which, after a moment, I recognized as ‘Rule Britannia!’.
‘Well, we know where we can begin to look for Peters, at any rate,’ I said. ‘And the windmill is not miles away.’
‘We saw him there the day before yesterday, before he was dismissed. By now who knows where he may be? But anyway, I think his whereabouts are irrelevant.’
‘You don’t think Lord Carburton’s letter means he should be pursued?’
‘I see a paradox in the letter. It purports to damn Peters as a scoundrel, but I have come around to your view – that it tends to clear him, in these matters at least. I think we must look elsewhere for our murderer.’
‘But he may still have murdered Satterthwaite and Wilson, surely.’
Fidelis wagged his finger at me.
‘When I hear the word “surely”, Titus, I at once look for the flaw in the assertion.’
Resolving never to use the word again in his presence, I persisted.
‘The relevant point is, we now know that Peters is a Jacobite, a High Tory, who comes in disguise to the Preston election, having been here before a year earlier. Furthermore, shortly afterwards, we have a spate of suspicious deaths, including those of two prominent Whigs, one of whom was shot, possibly from a room to which Peters had access. How can he not come under suspicion?’
‘Because the murders of Allcroft, Satterthwaite and Wilson are linked. I am convinced of it. Not to mention the death of your relative. However, I am curious to know what Peters was doing at the windmill on Tuesday.’
‘At the moment we saw him he looked as if he was waiting for someone – on the lookout, in fact.’
‘Who owns that old windmill?’
‘I don’t know, but Furzey will. Let’s ask him.’
I called for my clerk but, unfortunately, he had already left on his mission to Middleton’s garden. I say unfortunately because, had he been there to answer my question, I would have been spared a good deal of trouble later.
* * *
Fidelis had patients to see and I had a few matters of business to put in hand, which kept me occupied for another half-hour. Then I went through to the house for dinner.
No sooner had I sat down – to a good plate of mutton chops in caper sauce – than Elizabeth mentioned a subject I had quite forgotten in the flurry of recent events: Maggie Satterthwaite. The news was startling.
‘I have been to visit her.’
‘Oh? How does she?’
‘I have not seen her. She is gone, Titus.’
‘How can she have gone? Gone where?’
‘Nobody knows. She has absconded.’
‘From the town cells? That’s impossible without bribing the warder.’
‘She wasn’t put in the town cells. They are so filthy that, when the aunt from Longridge arrived at last, she persuaded Mayor Biggs to consign her niece to house custody. Biggs lodged her with Oswald Mallender, who undertook to lock her safe in a room he has at home just for these occasions. Seemingly he didn’t lock her safe enough because this morning, when his wife went in with Maggie’s breakfast, the window was wide open and she had gone.’
‘How?’
‘Mallender is a fool, of course. The windows had barred gates across them. He swears the bars were secured by bolts on the outside, but he probably forgot to fasten them.’
‘I doubt that. He is a fool, but a conscientious one. She must have had help from outside. You were with her yesterday. Did she talk much?’
‘In fits. She is a contradiction, I think. She is very proud of being known as the prettiest unmarried girl in town, but burdened by it too. She is angry that the loss of her virginity has been made so very public. But she is not sad that it is lost.’
‘What would be the point? Split milk…’
‘What I mean is, she is not ashamed, Husband. She only complains about how the men of the town treat her, knowing as they do that she has already been with a man.’
‘Which was one of them, presumably.’
‘No, no. She swears it was a stranger passing through, a traveller at the Ferry Inn when she worked there – you remember?’
‘Ah, yes – the reason for her dismissal by your uncle and nieces.’
‘When he dismissed her, my uncle called her a common whore, or something like that, but the stranger who seduced her – I am sure she did love him, and still does.’
‘A love wholly undeserved on his part, the rat. Did she name him?’
‘No. She does not speak of him. She regrets only that now any man considers he can have her. Young and not so young, married and single, her grandfather’s friends even – they all try their luck, it seems. She told me that now, without her grandfather’s protection, she will be fair game for all, and eventually…’
She let that eventuality trail away into silence as we finished our meal. Then, as she loaded our empty plates on a tray, she added one further thought.
‘I know I said Maggie was little more than a child. But now thinking about it, I feel something else about her – something reserved, or even hidden. But I cannot see it yet.’
‘We all have something to hide, Wife,’ I said.
I was holding the door for her to pass through with the tray. She paused and, turning her head, planted a kiss on my mouth.
‘I sincerely hope you hide nothing from me, Titus.’
‘Not from you, my love. From the world, perhaps, but not from you.’
* * *
After dinner I took a pipe and a few minutes in which to forget all this confusion of feeling, and dramatic incident, by reading my Chaucer. But the fabulous incidents from The Man of Law’s Tale began to become entangled in my mind with the real things that Elizabeth had been relating to me.
Chaucer’s lawyer tells of the bewitchingly beautiful Constance, daughter of the Emperor of Rome, who is sent across the Mediterranean to make a diplomatic marriage to a Mahometan sultan. Her charm, and her Christianity, antagonize the mother-in-law who has Constance cast off alone in an open boat. She drifts until she beaches in Northumbria, of all places, where the king, naturally, marries her.
I was already thinking of Constance as one of those girls who are too beautiful to be allowed to control their own fate. And sure enough, new mishaps come her way. A would-be seducer whom she has scorned takes revenge by murdering the king’s mother and leaving the bloody knife in Constance’s hand while she sleeps in the same room. The king returns and finds his wife arrested and awaiting execution. Despite his grief for his mother, he makes a thorough investigation, and ‘by wit and sotil
enquerynge’ uncovers the real evildoer.
At this point I was imagining myself as the King of Northumbria, subtly inquiring into a wrongful accusation – or, to put it the other way, I was thinking of the king as the town coroner. And then I came to Chaucer’s words about what he had uncovered: ‘al the venym of this accursed dede’. ‘Al the venym,’ I repeated, and suddenly asked myself, was Maggie’s case the same – a pretty girl adrift in a sea of circumstance? A fury of false accusation? It was then that I made a resolution: I would do all I could for her.
Furzey was still not returned from his errand. I looked out of the window and my eye fell upon young Barty, just a few yards away. To earn a farthing he was shifting crates of chickens in the market. I went out to him in the hope he might have heard something about Maggie Satterthwaite’s whereabouts. To my surprise, at the very mention of her, he took fright and tried to run away, but immediately stumbled over a chicken coop, and I was able to reach him and grab him by the ear. Enduring his squeals and curses as inflexibly as a press-gang sergeant, I led him back to the office.
Inside, I let go of his ear and told him to sit down on Furzey’s writing stool. He did so, rubbing his ear, squirming in his seat, and avoiding my eyes.
‘Barty!’ I said sharply. ‘Why did you run away from me? Have I ever harmed you? You know something about this matter – what is it? You must tell me or it will go hard with you.’
Barty looked at me at last, but defiantly.
‘I don’t care about me, so long as she’s safe away and not hung.’
‘I understand you want to protect her. Then tell me what you know.’
But he kept his mouth obstinately clamped shut.
‘Listen, my lad,’ I said, ‘if it helps you to speak out, I am not sure in my own mind that Maggie is a murderess. It is Burgess Grimshaw who wants her prosecuted, and we all know he hates her for besting his niece in the May Queen election. I will make it my business to help her in the best way I can, by finding the real killer. Meantime, the very worst thing is for her to run, to be a fugitive, with a price on her. She will be caught and, because she ran, she will be found guilty. Do you understand?’
Tears welled up in Barty’s eyes.
‘I did it so she wouldn’t be hung.’
‘Did what?’
‘I went to constable’s house, sir, and found where she lay and climbed up and opened her window. She climbed out.’
‘When?’
‘Darkest time of night, sir.’
‘Where did she go?’
Two glittery runnels were crawling, like snail trails, down his grimy cheeks.
‘To her man. She’s got a man, but she told me not to follow.’
‘But you did follow, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And found out who this man is?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is his name?’
Barty looked down at the ground and said something in so low a voice that I did not catch it.
‘Barty!’ I said. ‘Speak up. Who is Maggie’s young man?’
The moment’s silence that followed was broken by a peal on the brass bell that hung outside the street door. It was immediately followed by the opening of the door itself, and the entry of a young man of somewhere between twenty and twenty-five years.
‘Mr Cragg?’ he said, in a peculiarly shrill voice. ‘We have met only briefly but, in case you forget, I am Jotham Allcroft. I would like a word, if you please.’
I looked at Barty, hesitating. The boy was in turn staring at young Allcroft as at someone who had saved him.
To erase this impression I reached for his arm and propelled him towards the door into the house, saying over my shoulder, ‘Will you excuse us for half a minute? Come on, my lad. I haven’t finished with you.’
Marching Barty into the kitchen I asked Matty to give him milk and some food and keep an eye on him, then doubled back to the office. Jotham Allcroft was standing where I had left him, with his hat in his hand.
‘Mr Allcroft. Come through to my private office and take a seat. This has been a sad business about your father.’
We took our seats on either side of my desk, and I asked him what I could do for him.
‘Well, here it is,’ he piped. He kept his round, popping eyes fixed on me with unsettling intensity. ‘There are stories going around which stem from the poisoning verdict by your inquest. I am concerned about these stories and I wish you to put a stop to them.’
‘In what way?’
‘They are slander, against me and my family.’
‘In what way?’
‘In the way of saying that Isaac Satterthwaite the rat catcher murdered my father for his politics and that he must therefore have been killed in revenge. Folk are saying I shot him. Me.’
He jabbed his thumb emphatically into his chest.
‘You are consulting me professionally, Mr Allcroft? Is it that you wish to bring an action for slander?’
‘No, sir. You mistake me. I know better than to go to law in this land.’
I looked him up and down. He had a fleshy, globular head, a face smooth as an infant and a bodily frame that was narrow about the shoulders and big arsed, giving him a pear-shaped appearance. His clothing was sobriety itself – a black coat and breeches, plain linen collar and a round-crowned, wide-brimmed black hat.
‘Well, such talk is very regrettable,’ I said. ‘But there are no secrets in this town, I am afraid. Speculative talk cannot be curbed.’
‘But the Psalm says it must. Let not an evil speaker be established on earth!’
‘But it is mere tittle-tattle. No sensible person will listen to it.’
‘Slander is slander, Mr Cragg.’
‘Well, such talk does not come from me, or my family. It may – and I say only may – emanate from a member of the inquest jury, or the public attending the hearing into your father’s death.’
In fact, it almost certainly was from the jury. Juries are impossible to silence. They may have returned an uncertain verdict but they will have debated the possibilities of guilt and blame, and will no doubt have talked about them in the tavern afterwards. Allcroft was not a fool: he knew this. He took one hand off his hat and pointed at me while thrusting his chin upwards.
‘I tell you, put a stop to the slander yourself for I hold you and your godless jurors responsible.’
‘Mr Allcroft, this talk is easily refuted. Even if the rat catcher did kill your father, which I doubt, it does not follow that you must have killed the rat catcher.’
‘And indeed I did not kill him. But people keep saying I did. They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent – adders’ tongues are under their lips, Mr Cragg. You must contradict them.’
I took a deep breath. The man’s clothing was highly suggestive but the words he was using were definitive.
‘I wonder if you would have had any reason or desire to revenge your father. You and he had seriously quarrelled, had you not?’
‘Yes, we had.’
‘And it was about religion.’
He grimaced.
‘About that, and about everything. His politics were detestable. His religion was that of the Whore of Babylon.’
‘And what is your religion, may I ask?’
‘I make no secret of it. I am a member of the Society of Friends. We believe in peace. That is why I could never have used a gun, even if I had wanted revenge.’
‘Yet you were a soldier, you knew how to.’
He sighed, closed his eyes as if to summon patience in the face of stupidity.
‘This is the mistake everybody makes. I was a clerk in the pay division, Mr Cragg. I can, if I must, distinguish one end of a musket from the other, but it is all I know about that vile engine.’
‘I believe you.’
This came out spontaneously and it was true. I had difficulty imagining a figure less like a fusilier than the one sitting before me.
‘Is this why you left the army? You became a
Quaker?’
‘I received the Inward Light, yes, and of course then I could no longer stay.’
I rose from my chair and with a gesture of the arm invited him to do the same which, automatically, he did.
‘Well, I can do this for you,’ I said. ‘I’ll write to the jurors and warn them not to speak publicly of any of the jury’s discussions and suspicions, beyond those expressed in their collective verdict. That, as you know, was murder but with no name whatsoever mentioned. Will that satisfy you?’
By now I had manoeuvred him into the outer office, and towards the door, using a method I had mastered with clients over the years: half leading and half ushering.
Young Allcroft hesitated. He was not calculating whether I was trustworthy in general – I doubted he would ever think that – but only whether I would keep my word in this instance. All at once he decided I had nothing to lose by doing so. He proffered a cautious hand.
‘That will be acceptable. Would you be kind enough to send me a copy of the letter?’
We shook hands and I opened the door for Friend Allcroft to leave.
Chapter Twenty-five
LUKE FIDELIS WAS coming in just as young Allcroft was going out, and they almost bumped.
‘Who was that little puritan duck waddling out?’ Luke asked moments later as he crossed into the inner office and threw himself into my desk chair. ‘I’ve seen him about town but never heard his name.’
‘That was Jotham Allcroft. You are sitting in my chair, Luke.’
‘Oh, very sorry.’
We exchanged places.
‘Well, I’m surprised,’ Luke said. ‘Was that really the fearless fusilier, our possible sharpshooter? You wouldn’t have thought it possible.’
‘It wasn’t possible. He was a pay clerk, Luke. He soldiered with the pen, not the sword.’
Luke gave a shout of laughter.
‘The abacus, not the arquebus. Wonderful!’
‘What’s more he’s a devout Quaker. And he and his father had quarrelled irreparably, so he says. I don’t think, despite what his mother foolishly thinks, that he regrets his father’s death at all.’
