by David Field
‘You doesn’t have to,’ Tom assured him, ‘because you can tell us what we needs to know while we stand here. But what makes you think that they’ll be watching your door?’
‘Because they’re lodging only a few doors up,’ Pryce whispered as he jerked his head to his left, further up Beastmarket Hill. ‘I’m not sure exactly where, but they said that it was almost alongside Chapel Bar, and that they could keep an eye on my door from there.’
‘Well that’s mighty helpful to learn, for a start,’ Giles said encouragingly. ‘All three of them, you reckons?’ Pryce nodded, and was about to close the door in their faces when Giles jammed his boot in the gap and smiled. ‘We’ll end this conversation when we’re good and ready, Mr Pryce, and the longer we stand here, the more likely them fellers is to think you’re making an official complaint.’
‘What else do you want to know?’ Pryce demanded in a quavering voice, and Tom had a mental list already prepared. ‘We know that one of them had a busted arm, because it were my colleague here what busted it. So what did you do when they come to your door, and how did they know you was a bone-setter?’
‘The sign’s on the door,’ Pryce reminded them, ‘so that anybody can see it. That’s how I acquire my customers. If I was a candle-maker it would be the same.’
‘So what happened the other night?’ Giles persisted, and Pryce appeared to shudder at the memory. ‘It was late on when there was a hammering on the door, and three men stood there, two of them half carrying the third. He was obviously in great pain, so I invited them in, gave the man a mug of wine laced with hemlock to deaden the pain he was in, and the additional pain that I was about to inflict on him, then set the bone in his forearm that had been neatly broken. The neat fractures take longer to heal, because there’s no rough edges to bind together. Then I put the arm in splints, told the man that they would have to stay on for at least three months, and asked for my five shillings. That’s when one of the men with him produced a knife, told me that I wasn’t getting my money, and that if I told anyone what had just taken place he’d come back and slit my throat.’
‘What did these men look like?’ Tom enquired, and Pryce clearly retained a clear memory of the traumatic event. ‘The man with the broken arm had a horrible facial complexion, full of boils that were leaking puss. To judge by the smell of him, that was because of a lack of washing. The man with the knife had a lot of greasy looking dark brown hair, again in need of a good wash. The third man was bald, but with a scar down his face. Now, is that all you need to know? If so, please leave - now!’
‘One final question,’ Tom persisted. ‘You said something about “splints” – is them pieces of wood?’
‘That’s right,’ Pryce confirmed. ‘Two lengths of wood, one on either side of the fracture, tied together with ribbon.’
‘So this feller would be hard to miss if you saw him in the street?’
‘He most certainly would, and I sincerely hope that I don’t,’ Pryce replied as he rammed the butt of the firearm on Giles’s booted foot, then slammed the door shut when Giles removed the foot with a yelp. ‘We could take him up for that!’ Giles yelled as he hopped up and down, but Tom merely grinned. ‘We could, but the poor bugger’s suffered enough, don’t you think? At least if anybody’s been watching from up the street, they’ll think that he told us to get lost.’
‘Why is it me that always has to get hurt?’ Giles protested, and Tom grinned. ‘Because you’re too new at this game. Now, let’s see if we can find them there stables up near the Castle, shall we?’
As they approached what was clearly a large set of stables on the left hand side of the road to Derby, looking down through verdant parkland towards the royal castle, Tom nodded towards its entrance. ‘We done things your way in the stables of The Bell. Now it’s my turn to show that I can be sneaky. Just go along with me, right?’
A man dressed in a heavy riding cloak stepped out of the entrance, and Tom called out to him ‘You Master Bradwell?’
‘That’s me – Daniel Bradwell. What can I do for you?’
‘I’m looking to buy a horse, and you were recommended.’
‘I doesn’t sell horses,’ Bradwell objected, ‘I just stables them.’
‘Then I must have been misinformed,’ Tom replied as he adopted a crestfallen look. ‘But I was told you are a good judge of horseflesh, so can I come in and have a look at how you care for those that are left for stabling with you? If I like what I see, I might commission you to find a good horse for me. The price won’t be a problem.’
Bradwell’s face opened in a slow smile as he waved them inside. ‘I would obviously welcome an extension to my business such as you propose. Step inside, gentlemen, and you won’t find a finer groomed set of horses anywhere.’
Tom took his time working his way down the dozen or so stalls containing mounts of different sizes and breeds, making considerable show of examining their teeth before ducking down and testing their fetlocks and lifting their hooves. Giles followed patiently behind, trying to work out what Tom’s objective might be, and it took the best part of an hour before Tom finally straightened up with a smile.
‘Most reassuring,’ he nodded towards Bradwell. ‘I judge that you yourself have a well developed skill when it comes to horses, so I leave it to you to find me a fine mare. No older than two years, no younger than a year, and pure bred. It’s for my daughter, and it must possess a quiet disposition. You may add two sovereigns to its price by way of your fee, and my man here will call in every few days to enquire whether or not you have met with success. And so I bid you a good day.’
‘Where did you learn to speak all fancy like that?’ Giles demanded, ‘and what were that little performance all about anyway?’ Tom grinned.
‘I can talk like a fancy feller when it suits me. And back there it suited me. The third horse in on the right hand side – the chestnut stallion – has two nails missing from its front right shoe. Just like what we saw in the mud by the mill the other morning. One of them horses were there when Ed Franklin were hung out to dry, and we know from the stable lad at The Bell that the three fellers with Browne was sent to Bradwell to stable their horses. You puts all that together, and what has you got?’
It was dinner time, and they went their separate ways. For Tom it was back home, where Lizzie was clearly in one of her disapproving moods as she dumped the potage bowl down heavily on the table. ‘Next time you goes out pissing it up in an alehouse, try not to come blundering home like a herd of cows and waking me up. It took me hours to get to sleep in the first place, worrying that you wasn’t home, and what with that rapist still loose on the streets. Has you and Giles caught him yet?’
‘I’m sorry if I made a noise coming in,’ Tom replied, ‘but you seemed to be asleep when I got into bed.’ ‘That’s because I was pretending to be, in case you was drunk enough to try any of your nonsense,’ Lizzie advised him, ‘and answer my question.’
‘No, we hasn’t caught him yet, and that’s because we hasn’t been looking. Not for a rapist anyway. But if we’re right in our suspicions, he’ll be one of them what did for Ed Franklin, so we’ll be solving two crimes at once. Or maybe three, since you told me there were another lassie attacked the first night – the night what Ed were in The Bell. But that lass hasn’t seen fit to make a complaint, and until she does there’s nowt I can do.’
‘Maybe she’s too scared to make a complaint,’ Lizzie pointed out, and Tom nodded. ‘That’s Giles’s first job after dinner, since he reckons that the woman called Alice Winters were one of them lying out in Leen Meadows the morning that we thinks Ed Franklin were done in.’
Giles knocked confidently on what passed for the door to the shack alongside the boneyard in Bellar Gate, and recoiled backwards as Alice Winters flung it open from the inside, releasing a foul odour that was redolent of an unswept cow barn. She grinned through her browning gums and invited Giles inside. ‘It’s free to a randy spunk like yourself.’
‘N
o thanks, Alice,’ Giles replied as he held his breath. ‘I’m here on official business.’
‘If you was thinking of taking me in, I can make it worth your while not to,’ she persisted, but again Giles shook his head. ‘Just a few questions, but we’ll do it out here, if that’s all the same to you.’
‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ Alice advised him. ‘I’m only just home from last night, and I hasn’t had time to tidy up yet.’
‘Has somebody died in there?’ Giles enquired, but Alice shook her head. ‘You can probably smell the privy hole out the back. It got blocked a week or so back, and the gong shoveller what normally comes to clear it reckoned that he’d need twice his normal fee to unblock it. I offered him the usual extra, and I won’t tell you what his reply were, because it weren’t very complimentary.’
‘You has to admit, Alice, that your best years is behind you,’ Giles grinned, ‘and the last time I saw you, I has to admit that I wouldn’t have been tempted.’
‘I were recovering from a terrible night,’ Alice nodded. ‘And not just because of too much to drink, neither.’
‘I heard as how some feller gave you a thumping in an alleyway down off Malin Hill,’ Giles persevered, since she’d raised the matter. ‘I’m here to see if you wants him taken in, and if so, who he were.’
‘No fucking idea,’ Alice growled, ‘but when you catches him, stick something hard and blunt up his arse, because that’s what he done to me.’
‘He done the same thing to Susan Coleridge the night after,’ Giles confided, ‘so we’d like to collar him before anyone else gets the same done to them.’
‘If I knew who he were, I might be interested in making a complaint,’ Alice replied grudgingly, ‘but I’ve tried doing that before, and a girl like me, what earns her money by performing a much-needed service for the menfolk of the town, tends to get nowt from you lot except a big laugh, an invitation to take my clothes off, and advice along the lines that I may be charging too much.’
‘So you can’t tell me owt about him at all?’ Giles persevered, and Alice shrugged. ‘Only that he had a bald head and a big scar down his face. I’d been watching him in The White Boar all evening, because he looked like a stranger to the town, and I thought I might get in before any of the younger girls caught his eye. Then he disappeared for a long while, and I assumed that he’d found a girl. When it come to chucking-out time I were standing in the doorway when he come back up Fisher Gate from the bottom end and asked if I were interested in the business. I took him down the bottom of Malin Hill, where I normally takes fellers what likes a bit of privacy, and no sooner are we down there than he starts belting me round the head, then bending me over, lifting up my clothes, and doing me like I were a bitch in a dog yard. Then he ran off, and I never did get my money!’
‘So how did you finish up down in Leen Meadows?’
‘That’s another story altogether. I were sitting by the roadside on Malin Hill, having a little cry to myself, when up comes Martha Longbottom – her from the other side of town, up by Greyfrairs – and asks me what’s up. I told her, and she reckoned as how what I needed were another drink or two. So we got us a big jug of Dragon’s Milk from a place what were still open, and the name of which I can’t remember, and we went and sat out in the Meadows until I don’t remember no more before I woke up with the sun in my face, and Martha were puking into the grass to the other side of me. I just lay there wishing I were dead, then you turned up and started asking questions.’
‘About what happened in the Meadows,’ Giles replied eagerly, ‘you told me you saw Ed Franklin’s cart going from his cottage towards the mill – that right?’
‘You must have got that wrong,’ Alice mumbled, ‘either that or I did, because now I think about it I only heard the cart. I couldn’t get my head upright for a long while, and when I did it made my stomach all churny, so I laid down again.’
‘So anyone could have been in that cart, that right?’ Giles enquired eagerly, and Alice nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s right.’
‘And the horses you saw coming out of Turncalf Alley?’
‘Not me. That were Martha. She mentioned it, in case they was coming our way and we was going to get trampled on, lying where we was lying.’
‘Two horses or three?’
‘Fuck, I can’t remember, can I? I never got to see them, and I can’t remember what Martha said.’
‘But you definitely saw the miller’s boy heading for the mill after that? Robert Franklin?’
‘I saw a young feller, anyway, but since I doesn’t know Robert Franklin from the Pope’s arse I couldn’t tell you if it were him or not. Sorry – you sure you doesn’t want to come inside for a free go?’
‘Not even a free one, thanks all the same, Alice,’ Giles replied in an attempt not to gag at the mere thought. ‘There was a time you wasn’t so choosy,’ she chided him. ‘You got a regular girl, or what?’
‘Several,’ Giles confirmed as he turned to go. ‘And they are girls.’
Giles could hear the loud curses before he was halfway down the hallway that led to the office he shared with Tom, who was quite obviously back from dinner. Giles threw open the door and strode in, just in time to catch Tom hurling an inkpot at the wall, its contents splattering down the panelling and onto the bare floorboards.
‘Dinner not to your liking?’ Giles enquired light-heartedly, and Tom let out a string of oaths fit to curdle milk. When he had seemingly exhausted his repertoire, and apologised, he glared down at a piece of vellum on his desk, then lifted it up and handed it across. ‘Read that, and see if you can outdo me for sweary words,’ he commanded Giles. ‘It were waiting for me when I come back from dinner, all sealed and official, like.’
Giles read it, but couldn’t quite believe it. ‘Tell me I’m dreaming this,’ he asked, open-mouthed, and Tom let fly a few more oaths before replying. ‘If you are, then make it stop, and we can both rest easy.’
‘He can’t be serious, surely?’
‘Have you ever known the Sheriff of Nottinghamshire to be in a mood for jesting?’ Tom snarled. ‘What we has to decide is how long we can ignore it.’
‘But we can’t, surely?’ Giles argued, to be met with a furious glare from Tom.
‘Maybe you can’t, but I certainly bloody can. There’s no way on this sodding earth that I’m prepared to release Thomas Browne and hand him back his money!’
Chapter Six
They argued long and hard, well into the afternoon. Giles was all for doing as they had been commanded, and releasing Thomas Browne, while Tom was adamant that he would do no such thing.
‘But,’ Giles argued, ‘we got no good reason for keeping him. We been reckoning all along that the three what was with him was the ones what killed Ed Franklin, and we doesn’t even know that the money he were carrying were stolen. And if we doesn’t release him, we’ll be in the shit with the Sheriff. You’ve got your orders, and if we doesn’t let the poor bugger out, the Chief Turnkey will.’ Tom smiled unpleasantly.
‘No he bloody won’t – not without my say-so as Senior Constable, anyway. The way things works around here, I takes my orders from the Sheriff, and the Chief Turnkey takes his orders from me. Without me signing the paper he’s got no authority to let Browne out.’
‘But the Sheriff will just go over your head, and you’ll be out of a job,’ Giles argued.
‘But at least Thomas Browne will still be alive for a few more days,’ Tom argued. ‘The minute we lets him out of here, them three will take him up a quiet back alley and slit the poor bugger’s throat, because of what he knows. I doesn’t want to have his death on my conscience, and I’m not going to release all that there money until I’m certain it weren’t stolen.’
Giles absorbed that argument for a moment, then voiced his further thoughts.
‘I’m still not happy in my own mind that it were them three what did Franklin in, if it comes to that. When I spoke to Alice Winters, she told me that she never saw who were in that
cart what went down to the mill that morning. And she didn’t know Robert Franklin by sight, so we doesn’t know for certain that it were him what went down to the mill after Franklin were killed. And for that matter, we don’t know for certain when he were killed. He could have been dead from the night before, and the son might have been carrying the body down there that morning, for all we knows.’
‘How do you explain the hoof marks in the mud at the side of the mill, then?’ Tom challenged him, and Giles shrugged. ‘I’m not saying as how them three didn’t go down there at some time that morning – or at least, two of them. But Alice Winters didn’t see them going over the bridge, and she can’t remember whether the woman she were with said that there was two, or three, of them.’
‘Robert Franklin couldn’t have heaved his father’s body up onto that there platform on his own,’ Tom countered, ‘and you’re forgetting that there was no muddy boot marks on the platform before we climbed up there.’
‘Like I said,’ Giles reminded him, ‘I’m not saying that them three didn’t have a hand in stringing up the body – although even if that were the case, they’d have left boot marks as well, wouldn’t they? All I’m saying is that we may have got it wrong about when the father were killed.’
Tom sat deep in thought for a moment, then looked up. ‘There’s one way to find out, isn’t there? The wife – Mistress Franklin – can tell us whether the old man came home alive that night, and possibly when - and if – he set out for the mill the next morning. Let’s go and ask her, shall we?’
An hour later they approached the Franklin mill cottage in the meadow under the shadow of the Castle Rock, where a plump woman with grey hair was chopping wood with the aid of a small axe, and throwing the cut pieces into a pile at the side of her. Tom hailed her with a cheery ‘Mistress Franklin?’ The woman put down the axe, straightened up and squinted through failing eyes at her two visitors.
