The Salisbury Manuscript

by Philip Gooden

  It didn’t seem very likely. While Helen slid open the drawers in the chest to see nothing more than a few items of clothing, clean and neatly folded, Tom got down on hands and knees and peered under the bed. Peered at a chamber-pot which was decorated with a frieze of pink roses. It was the same pattern as the china ware on the wash-stand. Tom detected the neat and womanly taste of Mrs Banks.

  The only item of furniture still to be examined was the cabinet. It had a triple function, as a writing desk, book-case and medicine chest. There was shallow ledge for writing on, a shelf immediately above it which contained a few books and on top of the shelf a closed case in which to store potions and pills for when the occupant of the bedroom was sick.

  Tom looked at the books. He was already aware that there were hidden depths to Andrew North but he was surprised to see volumes of poetry, including Palgrave’s Treasury, as well as A Children’s Guide to Classical Myths and histories of Salisbury and Wiltshire. He tugged at the handle on the miniature double doors of the medicine chest but they wouldn’t budge.

  ‘It’s locked.’

  ‘Then try this,’ said Helen, holding up another object which she’d retrieved from her bag. It was a small, dull-looking key.

  She couldn’t help smiling while she waited for Tom to ask the inevitable question. Which he did.

  ‘You remember when they brought the body out of that chamber in the hillside,’ said Helen, ‘and the policemen were wrapping it up in canvas and I was standing close by –’

  ‘Too close, I thought,’ said Tom, ‘but I told myself it was just your way. After all, you have a duty to be curious about everything, Helen, since you intend to write a sensation novel.’

  Helen drew herself up and said, ‘Curiosity brings its own rewards, sometimes. I looked down and saw this key on the ground. It must have fallen out of Mr North’s pocket as the constables were manhandling his body.’

  ‘You should have given it to the Inspector.’

  ‘But the key might not have been the dead man’s. It could have belonged to anyone who chanced to have been wandering over the hillside with a hole in his trouser pocket. Anyway, what does it matter, Thomas?’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d found a key?’

  ‘How was I to know exactly when we might need a key? Maybe we weren’t going to need one at all. I was waiting for the right moment, the appropriate moment, to produce it, just as I waited for the right moment to return her brother’s flask to Mrs Banks. Now are you going to see whether this key will open that chest, or shall I?’

  Tom took the key and inserted it in the lock in the chest. It worked, of course, as he had somehow known it would. He felt the thrill of discovery when the key turned. There were no medicine bottles or pill-boxes inside. Instead four cardboard boxes were neatly arranged. Helen took out the topmost one, which was about the size of a shoe-box. On it was a label, half torn off. In ornamental capitals was printed, Adler’s Ointment: Suitable for all Types of. While Tom was wondering about the application of Adler’s Ointment, Helen unfastened the lid. Inside was a mass of items individually wrapped in brown paper. She placed the box on the ledge of the cabinet. They unfolded a couple of the items. Then all of them, arraying them on the ledge. The result was a jumble of objects, made of stone and metal and baked earth.

  Helen looked a bit disappointed but Tom thought of how, when he was a child, he’d collected bric-a-brac and stored it away in just this fashion, not wrapped up in brown paper but kept in secret in a cigar box belonging to his dead father: a broken bit of clay pipe, an empty snail shell, an old and tarnished coin.

  But he was also reminded of the more formal display in the glass cases in Felix Slater’s study, for here too in Andrew North’s collection were flint arrow-heads and bronze buckles and decorative pins, together with tiny shards of pottery. It seemed to be conclusive proof that the sexton, encouraged perhaps by Slater, had become possessed by the desire to dig up the past and hoard the little treasures which he had found. But this was no trove. The items here didn’t look as though they could be worth much more than the objects in Tom’s childhood box, even assuming anyone had been willing to purchase them.

  While he was picking over the contents of the box, Helen had reached for a black-bound book which was also inside the cabinet.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A kind of diary,’ she said after a moment. ‘At least it has dates and brief entries and some sketches too. The diary of a dead sexton. It is the same writing as on the note which the Inspector showed us.’

  Tom peered over her shoulder as she riffled through a few pages. As Helen had said, there were dates followed by a couple of handwritten lines or a short paragraph, sometimes with a drawing or two.

  ‘It seems to be more of a record or a catalogue of what he’d found, and where and when,’ said Tom, pointing at an entry and reading aloud, ‘“8th March – Glyde Field – 4 arrow-heads and a copper pin. 29th March – Saddler’s Farm pasture – stone axe-head and bronze buckle.”’

  Underneath or alongside some of the comments were simple impressions of the objects. Tom imagined Andrew North, sitting up here in the solitude of his room, and sketching the little artefacts as a way of confirming his ownership of them before he deposited them in the cardboard boxes. As well as pictures of the buckles and flint-heads there were diagrams of squares and circles with shaded areas and crosses, occasionally with initials (G.F., T.B.) next to them. It took Tom and Helen a minute to work out that these were plans of the fields and mounds where Andrew North had made his discoveries or where he hoped to make them.

  ‘Isn’t it extraordinary, Tom? Not this diary or whatever you want to call it, but that someone can go out into the countryside and just dig up long-lost items wherever he plants a spade.’

  ‘I dare say there was some research involved. You’d have to know where to dig in the first place. And there was something which Felix Slater said to me when we met. He said that people have lived on the plain for centuries. There are signs of the past everywhere if you know where to look. It must be true but maybe not all the time. See here: “9th April – FS and I to Hobb’s ditch – came back empty-handed.”’

  ‘FS is surely Felix Slater.’

  ‘I thought Mrs Banks said that her brother and the Canon fell out. Yet he is still going off exploring with him.’

  ‘These entries refer to last year, Tom. Here is more writing with dates, during October and November but with nothing at all for December and then beginning again this year in, let me see, February. Oh! Hear this: “Buried dog at request of FS today – ground hard – She fussed about and rolled her eyes – FS and I had words.” Who is this “she”?’

  ‘Mrs Slater. Her pet dog died and was buried in the garden,’ said Tom, easily able to imagine Amelia Slater fussing and rolling her eyes. ‘I have seen the spot by the river. Perhaps this was when the bad feeling started between North and Slater.’

  ‘The last dated entry is for 3rd October this year, and then just blank pages.’

  There was a silence while they both contemplated the significance of those blank pages.

  ‘When did Mrs Banks say that her brother found the bracelet?’

  ‘In the spring, wasn’t it?’

  Helen turned a few pages back and almost straightaway found the place. She read aloud: ‘“Eureka! – I do better by myself – out by the old road and south of the Martins house – golden bracelet.” He was so excited or distracted that he forgot to put the date but the previous entry is early April.’

  ‘We’d better look through these other boxes.’

  ‘In case there’s a gold bracelet,’ said Helen.

  ‘For the purpose of our investigation.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The other cardboard boxes, hastily examined, proved to contain much the same assortment as the first one. They discovered the bracelet, however. Gold it might have been but it did not look especially attractive or valuable. The discovery proved that North had be
en a hoarder, not a thief, otherwise he would surely have attempted to sell the thing. No, judging by these remains, Andrew North had been a magpie even if a knowledgeable and methodical one.

  Then Tom and Helen sat down side by side on the narrow bed and looked through the rest of the sketchpad or diary for any hint to the dead man’s fate. Closer to the final entry, the handwriting grew less tidy and the comments seemed to become more personal but less easy to follow. There was the same quotation from Ecclesiastes – And if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be – but without the underlining. There were references to a unnamed person who was surely his sister, Mrs Banks. (A good woman but she does not approve.’ ‘Would like to ask but I glare at her and she dare not.) There were even brief descriptions of what might have been dreams (dark yews – shadowed places – Atropos, beware of Atropos.).

  Helen noticed this last entry and said, ‘Tom, what’s Atropos?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  But he did know, couldn’t quite bring it to the surface. Something was lurking in his brain, a story he’d heard once, a picture he’d seen somewhere.

  They discussed whether they should take the the black-bound diary but decided against it. It did not seem to reveal anything significant about the circumstances leading to the man’s death, after all. Similarly, the contents of the cardboard boxes, though valuable to the late sexton, didn’t appear to provide a sufficient motive for his murder and should remain with his other effects.

  They replaced the items in the boxes and restored everything to the cabinet. Helen left the key to the cabinet on the wash-stand, in the place where North could have put it if he’d taken it out of his pocket. Inspector Foster might chance across it when he searched the room. As a competent investigator, he would test it on the locked cabinet and come to his own conclusions.

  Tom and Helen went downstairs to say goodbye to Mrs Banks, who was furiously sewing in the little parlour. She was making a repair to a man’s coat. Needle in one hand, a frayed portion of cloth in the other, she was bent forward over the coat, tugging at a thread with her teeth. Tom remembered that she took in neighbour’s clothes to repair. She looked up, dry-eyed, and folded her hands over her work. She said, ‘Work is good. It takes your mind off things. Have you seen enough?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Mrs Banks,’ said Tom. ‘We have left the room as we found it.’

  ‘We are sorry for your loss,’ said Helen.

  ‘Thank you, my dear.’

  The couple went out into the lane that ran outside the terraced cottages.

  It was mid-morning by now and the light was stronger. Helen made to loop her arm through Tom’s but he was preoccupied. Before they’d gone more than a few yards he stopped and clicked his fingers. Helen almost laughed, it was so like a man acting badly, acting out the pretence of suddenly recalling something.

  ‘Atropos!’

  He walked a few feet further.

  ‘Well, are you going to tell me?’

  ‘It was the sight of Mrs Banks sewing that did it. That and the book on the shelf in her brother’s room.’

  ‘Yes, you may tell me, Tom. You’ve had enough pleasure at my ignorance and slowness by now.’

  ‘Atropos was one of the Fates in Greek legend. There were two others – Clotho was one and the third I forgot the name of. The first unreeled the thread of life, the second decided where it should be severed and the third – that was Atropos – she actually did the deed.’

  Tom mimed snipping a dangling piece of thread with a pair of scissors.

  ‘Andrew North was an enquiring man, self-educated. There was a book about Greek myths in his room, a children’s guide. So it would come naturally to him to make that kind of reference – to talk about Atropos with her shears snipping off the thread of life. And there is more. One of the pictures that Felix Slater had in his study was of the three Fates. North probably saw it on the wall, perhaps the Canon explained to him what it meant.’

  Tom could hear the excitement in his own voice. He felt elated to have deduced this. To have forged the link between a one-word entry in Andrew North’s diary, a classical picture, a children’s guide and a woman bent over her sewing in her parlour. But Helen looked not so much baffled as disbelieving. He waited, eager to explain more. But his love had already understood and was not impressed.

  ‘Very good, Tom, but it doesn’t get us any further. I can see what you’re saying but, for all we know, the sex-ton was doing no more than expressing a sense of doom. Perhaps he had a feeling that someone was after him, and his feeling was right. But Atropos isn’t a real person. Unless . . .’

  Now it was Helen’s turn to grow excited. Rather than click her fingers she clapped her gloved hands though she was encumbered by her bag.

  ‘Unless it is the Canon’s wife. The mysterious Mrs Slater who I have yet to meet. Atropos is a woman, you say. We saw that entry in the diary about the day Mrs Slater’s dog was buried in the garden. She was upset, rolling her eyes, didn’t he say?’

  This time it was Tom’s chance to be sceptical.

  ‘I don’t think so. I can’t see Mrs Slater killing someone because she didn’t like the way he’d buried her dog. Besides it was months ago, back in the winter.’

  Tom and Helen stood facing each other in the lane, silent. A couple of passers-by stared at them, wondering whether they were having a pause in an argument. Eventually the two resumed their progress back towards the cathedral close and the city beyond. There was no more to say for the time being. They’d exhausted the possibilities of Atropos and even Tom had to admit that his insight had provided more sound than light.

  As they were walking along the West Walk and coming closer to Venn House, they saw a gaggle of individuals standing just outside the gate, several men and a couple of women. Tom recognized all of them. There was Inspector Foster and Constable Chesney in company with Henry Cathcart, the store-owner and his father’s old comrade, and Mrs Slater. To one side were Eaves the gardener and Bessie the maid. Eaves sneezed violently, wiped his nose with the back of a grimy hand and gave Tom and Helen a lopsided grin, with his gardening tools clanking in the kangaroo-like pouch he wore. Bessie seemed to be imitating her mistress. She was rubbing at tear-filled eyes. Her collar was definitely askew. Tom wondered what Canon Slater would have said, if he were still alive.

  Inspector Foster and Mr Cathcart were trying to calm Amelia Slater, who was garbed in black. She was alternating between sobs and gesticulation, oblivious to her surroundings. Cathcart put a hand on her shoulder, only for it to be shrugged impatiently off. The Inspector and his constable stood at a slight distance, not attempting to intervene, though Foster was making futile shoving motions with his hands as if to urge everyone to step back inside, out of public view.

  Seeing Tom and Helen, he broke away from the group and met them as they approached. There was relief on his bewhiskered face that he had someone normal to talk to.

  ‘What is happening, Inspector?’ said Tom.

  ‘Peculiar developments,’ he said.

  And they were peculiar, Tom and Helen decided, talking it over later in the calm and comfort of the snug in The Side of Beef. In fact, the news was so disturbing that Helen forgot to make more than a passing reference to her first sight of Mrs Slater and Mr Cathcart. For the news which Constable Chesney had brought to Mrs Banks’s cottage, the news which had to be whispered in the hallway and which caused the Inspector to rush off, concerned the death by shooting of Mr Percy Slater, Felix’s brother. His body had been discovered early that morning by Seth Fawkes and an old woman who lived and worked at Northwood House (‘She is called Nan,’ Tom explained to Helen. ‘She has lived in that place since the time of Percy’s father. She and Fawkes.’)

  Percy Slater had been found in a clump of trees a few hundred yards from the main building, apparently a victim of his own shotgun. But killed by his own hand or by another’s? Who could say? After stumbling across the
body in the early morning mist, Seth Fawkes had taken the carriage to Downton and then, finding that there were no trains leaving for Salisbury, had driven on to the city to report the death of his master at the police house. He appeared wild-eyed and dishevelled.

  There was no further information at this stage, according to Inspector Foster. No one – that is to say, neither the aged Nan nor Fawkes (who slept in the stables for some obscure reason of his own) – could shed any light on the matter.

  It might have been assumed to be a suicide since Percy was known to be somewhat reclusive. He had a reputation for drinking and gambling. His wife spent her time not at Northwood but in London. But, with the recent death of Felix Slater, the Inspector’s mind had inevitably turned to thoughts of murder. The task of finding Walter Slater, whom he believed to be Percy’s son, became more urgent. At the very least, there was the obligation to inform him of his father’s death. Tom Ansell and Helen Scott knew the truth of the matter, that Walter was in fact the son of Felix, but to raise this at the moment would only have muddied the waters. Inspector Foster had gone to Venn House because Tom had told him that that was where Walter was. However, apart from the servants, the only occupants he found inside were a fresh widow and a regular visitor, Mr Henry Cathcart, who had apparently come to discuss mourning clothes with Mrs Slater. There was no sign of Walter.

  Hearing that he was looking for the man he described as her nephew, and pressing the Inspector for the reason, Mrs Slater flew into a great state, not so much on account of the violent death of her brother-in-law but because of the continued absence of Walter. She broke down in tears and as the Inspector tried to leave – seeing that there was no more information for him to gain in Venn House – she pursued him through the garden and out into the West Walk where Constable Chesney was stationed. Chesney was rocking on his heels and no doubt wondering how much longer his guv’nor was going to be inside the big house. Henry Cathcart, meanwhile, was chasing up the garden path after the widow in the attempt not so much to console her as to get her to return inside.