by Robin Blake
The fight went out of Fidelis at last. To go bursting alone into a house such as Mrs Bryce’s – if, indeed, he got in at all – and to try to apprehend desperate men would be a very different matter from going in with one to back him up.
‘Very well, Titus,’ he said, brandishing his index finger in my face. ‘But you had better have very good reasons for this.’
We moved down the street, more slowly now, until we stood with crowds of other spectators on the opposite side of the street from Mrs Bryce’s house. This address was still subject to the attentions of a group of Tory zealots, shouting slogans against Hoghton, Reynolds and Walpole, and constantly raising three cheers for the ‘martyr’ John Allcroft.
‘They are sadly deluded,’ I said with seraphic confidence. ‘He was no martyr at all.’
The torch throwers and the band approached with the coach immediately behind. Some in the crowd threw streamers of paper, which occasionally caught fire from a torch and caused screams of delight as they flared and died, like parodic streaks of lightning. As the mayoral coach came up, the band launched into the tune of the moment, ‘Rule Britannia!’. I looked up at the two windows of Mrs Bryce’s music room. On the right I saw a downcast-looking Reynolds with Mrs Bryce herself. She was at one moment laughing and cheering, because she could not help it, and at the next patting Reynolds on the shoulder, and running the backs of her fingers fondly across his cheek. On the left stood Denis Destercore, scowling down at the revellers. Though the results had not yet been announced, few held out any hope for the Whigs.
The mayor’s coach drew level with the house. I was aware of Fidelis craning his neck by my side, but I felt quite complacent as the mayor rumbled safely on, past Miss Colley’s and past Wilkinson’s pie shop, and up the gently sloping street without harm or incident.
Fidelis turned to me and gripped my upper arm a fraction tightly. ‘How could you be so sure?’ he demanded.
‘I had sensed something at Drake’s shop, something not right. It was dark and impossible to be certain, and it wasn’t until after we’d left that I knew what it was.’
‘And?’
‘That shop was a shell. There was no stock. A haberdasher’s should be full of cloth, bolts of it, and boxes of ribbons and trinkets and suchlike lining the walls. That room where we sat had nothing in it that absorbed sound. It was hollow, empty. The stock was gone and it resounded.’
Fidelis thought for a moment. He was recalling the interior scene, when we were listening to Maggie’s sad tale.
‘Yes, you are perfectly right. I did not notice but, now you mention it, the place felt as if it had been hollowed out.’
‘And I think we know where the goods that used to fill it are to be found now.’
‘Yes. Those boxes and packages heaped up without any system.’
‘I would say they were the whole contents of the shop brought higgledy-piggledy in three cartloads and dumped in a hurry.’
‘But why? That’s the question we must address now. Drake could tell us, but where is he?’
‘He’s running,’ I said simply. ‘Running, while Maggie lurks in the covert.’
‘In the covert? What in heaven’s name are you babbling about?’
I had not seen my friend at such a loss for a long time. For once he had been distracted from dispassionate observation – something with which the heart-melting prettiness of Maggie Satterthwaite had much to do – and now he was groping for a logical solution to a problem created by forces that were not logical.
‘I read it in a story when I was a child. A fable. Come along. I know where we can get more information.’
‘What about Maggie?’
‘I think she will stop where she is but if not, there is no great danger in it.’
I led the way back to the Old Shambles, which we cut down before crossing to the north side of Market Place.
‘So, where are we going?’
Fidelis was growing a little tetchy, his brain still unable to establish the connections that would explain my actions, or rather my failure to act. I admit I was rather enjoying his bemusement.
‘Molyneux Square. I intend to look into Mr Drake’s finances. And to do that we must find his man of business.’
Preston’s three money-lenders – or money-scriveners as we called them – all lived on the substantial square built during the last century for the dwellings of Preston’s richer merchants and professional men. The first address we tried was Frederick Taylor’s, but he was not at home. The second was that of John Furbelow, where the door was opened by the old father, Ezekial, in his nightshirt and cap and with candle in hand.
Ezekial had himself been a scrivener in his day but, he told us curtly, ‘I have never to my knowledge had any dealings with a haberdasher, sir. Goodnight to you.’
Finally we came to the house of Alphonsus Parr, a fellow bibliophile and genial friend of mine.
‘Yes, Titus,’ he said in reply to my enquiry, ‘Mr Drake does indeed do business with us – or rather he did. Come into the library, both of you, and take some wine and a pipe.’
Parr’s collection of books was twice the size of mine, and included many volumes that I would not have refused the gift of. But he collected more for show than I did and, settling into one of his comfortable chairs and looking around at the long, expensive sets of Milton, Shakespeare and Bishop Atterbury in folio, with their tooled bindings, I wondered how much he read them.
‘What is it about Mr Drake that you would like to know?’ Parr asked me.
‘About his accounts, his financial affairs – anything you can tell us.’
Parr cleared his throat.
‘Well, normally, that would be bound under the seal of discretion, as you ought to be glad to hear, Cragg. We professional men are nothing if not discreet.’
There was caution in Parr’s voice. The scrivener’s reticence is always a little different, I find, from that of the attorney or, for that matter, the doctor. When called upon to be discreet Fidelis and I can hide behind professional mysteries. But, since everybody believes they know money, the scrivener finds it harder to erect barriers of mystique between himself and the enquirer. He is forced back on the weaker notions of confidence and trust.
‘However,’ he went on, ‘I believe I no longer owe a duty of discretion to Mr Drake comparable to what I would extend to you.’
He drew on his pipe thoughtfully.
‘The fact is that Drake has been a persistent defaulter for years. He owes money everywhere. He raises mortgages and then does not honour the repayments; he borrows privately and does not pay back; he orders stock that he does not pay for.’
‘Is he insolvent?’
Parr held up his hand, with finger and thumb a quarter of an inch apart.
‘If you ask me, he is that close to imprisonment, Cragg.’
* * *
We returned once again to the town’s centre where, under the portico of the Moot Hall, its main door now locked, Oswald Mallender had set out a table and an oil lamp, and was sitting with pen in hand puzzling over a large sheet of paper. I went to speak to him.
‘Mr Mallender,’ I said. ‘Are you still commander-in-chief of the search for the absconded prisoner?’
He fixed me with his small eyes, upholstered with fat.
‘Yes, I am still engaged in that business. We have looked all over, sir, and found not a hair of her head.’
He tapped the paper.
‘I have listed here all the places my men have searched. I have now sent them out again and await their return. But it is my belief she quit the town as soon as she left my custody.’
‘Really? Then she must have returned very promptly, for I have seen her in the past hour. I had thought you must have discovered her by now.’
Mallender looked up at me with increased suspicion.
‘You saw her and did not report the matter?’
‘I am reporting it now. I strongly recommend you try Mr Drake’s shop in Stoney Gate. If yo
u go there straight, I believe you’ll find she is waiting there, ready for you to take her.’
We walked on, leaving the constable open mouthed.
‘Is it not a bit hard, Titus, turning the poor girl in like that? You were previously convinced of her innocence.’
‘If that is hard, she’s harder, Luke. Parr’s information has capped it for me. She’s not a poor girl, she’s a killer, I’m sure of it now. I also hope that having her publicly arrested once more will flush out her accomplice.’
‘I would not think Drake – a debtor, dodging prison – will show himself.’
‘Maybe not. But there is also her admitted lover, Hamilton Peters. That kiss Barty saw was not a trivial thing. What did he say? “Like biting each other.” That’s passion, is that.’
‘Come into the Turk’s Head and we’ll have a bottle,’ urged Fidelis. ‘I want to talk this out.’
But I was too tired. It had been an extraordinary day, and a long one.
‘No, Luke, go to bed. That’s what I’m doing. We shall meet in the morning and when you have slept on it, you’ll have the answer for yourself.’
‘That is my worry, Titus – that I won’t sleep on it. That you are condemning me to a sleepless night while I hunt for the truth.’
‘Your brain’s too quick for that, Luke. Just loose it and it will run down the hare.’
* * *
I woke at the late hour of eight o’clock. As soon as I’d returned the night before Elizabeth had given me soup and a few cuts of ham, and warmed a cup of punch for me, before sending me straight to bed to cure my yawns. It had been a deep and dreamless sleep and I rose feeling as sharp and shiny as a needle. The day, bright and clear, matched my mood.
Straight after breakfast I was in the office, talking to Furzey. He told me how he had lodged Wilson’s body in the vestry, and how Churchwarden Fleetwood had wailed despairingly at the prospect of the parish giving hospitality to yet another dead guest. We discussed inquest arrangements, and I told him we could safely have the hearings on Monday, using the same panel of townsmen for both. I told him I would have to think about whom we should call: with criminal charges impending, these inquests might by Monday be reduced to formalities.
‘Did you find the note I left about the letter to the jurors who sat on Allcroft?’ I asked.
‘Aye, the letters went out by six.’
‘Good. I ask only because you were late back, or so I thought.’
‘Not late. Voting. Not that it did any good. It seems we took a beating.’
‘Yes, that is what everybody is saying.’
The letter to the jurors had been meant to placate young Allcroft, but it had another, unfortunate and unintended effect, which would have been avoided had I taken greater trouble in the drafting. The problem was in the words I had written in my note to Furzey: ‘there must be no mention made of the Whigs’ having plotted Allcroft’s murder’. I had meant these for a drafting instruction to Furzey, not as words to include in the letter. But Furzey had simply transcribed the phrase and, as I now saw, it was open to a grave misinterpretation: to the interpretation, in fact, that the Whigs had plotted against the Tories, and that I wished to suppress this.
Now, going out, I found talk of this all over town. Jurors had shown the letter to family and friends, and these had passed its contents on to others, with embellishments, until everyone was debating it, in a process that tended rather to defeat than to fulfil Jotham Allcroft’s intentions. I was to meet Fidelis at the coffee house at ten, but first I called in at Wilkinson’s bread and pie shop to see Allcroft and, if possible, explain that this new outbreak of gossip was more or less an accident of misunderstanding, inflamed by people’s gross appetite for sensation.
When I asked for him, a little girl was told to take me through the shop and down the yard to the ‘meat house’. At the yard’s end, a gate gave onto a track, leading after a few paces to a group of workshops or sheds and three adjoining animal pens, in which porkers lay contentedly, half immersed in mud. The girl pointed to the nearest shed, and then skipped back the way we had come. As I approached the door, the sound of a human voice cursing inarticulately, and punctuated by violent thuds, could be heard. Upon entering I could not prevent my mouth from dropping open.
At a heavy rough-hewn table, a man with his back to me was savagely hacking a freshly killed carcase into joints, swearing furiously with, and between, each blow. He wore a long leather apron over a rough buffin shirt with sleeves rolled high and arms slathered with gore to above the elbow. Nearby, a second carcase was hanging by its hind legs from a beam above a bucket, into which dripped the blood from its recently cut throat. Two wooden tubs stood near at hand: one contained the red, blue, pink and grey coils of a pig’s entrails; the other held the pig’s head reposing in a mess of its own lights. The smell was a powerful compound of blood, sweat and manure.
‘Mr Allcroft?’ I called, stepping hesitantly through the doorway, for I was not yet sure it was he. The butcher jumped in his skin at the sound of my voice, then sprang around, revealing himself to be without question Jotham Allcroft, sober Quaker and former clerk of the fusiliers’ pay division.
‘You!’ he said in his unmistakable fluting voice. ‘You!’
He stood as if at bay, spattered with gouts of fresh blood, his baby face set in something between a snarl and a pout.
I opened my hands.
‘Yes, but good heavens, I did not think to find you doing such work as this!’
He raised the meat cleaver in his hand and I took a flinching step back.
‘What do you want, lawyer? What MORE do you want from me?’
‘Well, I think I owe you an explan—’
I did not finish the sentence for without further warning Jotham ran at me brandishing the bloody cleaver above his head, and giving a squealing cry of pig-like fury. I somehow slipped to one side and his scything blow missed me, the cleaver burying itself in the door post with a splintering crash. At this point I would have taken to my heels but now, though struggling to pull the thick blade from the post, he stood square in the doorway between me and escape. I edged instead into the interior of the shed, taking shelter behind the butcher block. Having extracted his weapon at last, he pursued me there, aiming huge chops at the intervening air with the cleaver. I continued round the table until I bumped into the hanging carcase, which I crept behind. For a few moments I danced this way and that as he aimed blow after blow at me but struck only the hanging pig, which began gradually to be reduced to shreds.
Panting heavily now, he was forced to pause and draw breath, whereupon I saw my chance and made a run for the door. Unfortunately the tub of guts stood in my way. I saw it too late, tried to vault over it and instead caught my foot on the rim and went down, sprawling on the ground. I rolled over to see Jotham looming over me, the gory meat cleaver ready to strike down and, no doubt, part my head from my body.
At that moment, a shadow was cast into the room from the door, and a deep voice shouted, ‘Hey!’ Then some sort of heavy staff flashed horizontally through the air, striking Allcroft a heavy jab on the chest. I saw my attacker’s face change from rage to surprise. So concentrated had he been upon butchering me that he seemed not to have noticed the shadow, or heard the voice, and the blow, catching him all unawares, sent him staggering backwards two or three paces until his progress was checked by contact with the guts tub. He wobbled there for an instant or two, but momentum had the last say and down he sat, his big arse plopping into the tub. The cleaver fell from his fingers.
Still on the ground I rolled over to acknowledge my saviour and saw a dirty scarlet coat, tricorn hat and a brass-knobbed mace of office: Oswald Mallender. For the first time in my life I was heartily glad to see him.
After helping me up, Mallender produced a piece of paper, which turned out to be a warrant. Holding this up as he might a lot at auction he solemnly intoned, in words that must have been of his own devising:
‘Ahem. It is my sworn
duty to inform Mr Jotham Allcroft (here present) that this day a complaint has been made against his person for murder, and that he is therefore arrested by warrant of His Worship the Mayor and must come with me, the duly appointed officer, to be brought before His Worship and to answer to the said charge. Stand up!’
But, with his rear end plugged deep in the container of entrails, Jotham Allcroft could not get up. All he could do in his anger and impotence was kick his feet, wave his arms and weep. Mallender and I regarded him for a few moments, then grabbed his wrists and pulled. He came out with an audible sucking sound and a few minutes later Jotham Allcroft was marched up Fisher Gate to the Moot Hall to answer a charge of murder. Slubbered all over with blood and guts, he was crying like a baby for his mother. It was a sight that people would remember on Fisher Gate for years to come.
Chapter Twenty-eight
HOME I WENT for a change of clothes and, as it was now past ten, straight out again to meet Luke Fidelis at the coffee house we favoured, the Turk’s Head. I found him, with pot and cups before him and a pipe in his mouth, perusing the Preston Weekly Journal, which had been freshly issued that morning.
‘It is confidently predicted that both the Whig candidates have lost, Titus. This is based on an unofficial word from the mayor’s office. Sir Harry Hoghton is now a laughing stock. His support has collapsed entirely and Reynolds, for all his greasy efforts in the past year, has never been very popular with our tradesmen.’
‘Hoghton will not like being ejected from Parliament, but it’s his own fault.’
I settled down opposite Fidelis and he poured the coffee.
‘You have heard about the arrest of Jotham Allcroft?’ I asked.
‘I saw the spectacle on Fisher Gate from my window this morning – and saw you there too. What in God’s name happened?’
I related the alarming events in the butchery shed. Far from being concerned for my own well-being, Fidelis thought it amusing.
‘Saved by Constable Mallender! There must be a first time for everything.’
‘He prefaced the arrest with a speech when the prisoner was still stuck in the tub – something of his own devising, for it was pomposity itself.’
