Constant Lovers

by Chris Nickson

  The door opened.

  ‘You’re quick,’ the deputy began, but it wasn’t Lister who entered. Instead it was Joseph Croft, the old man who made his living cleaning the White Cloth Hall. He’d been one of Marlborough’s men at the battle of Blenheim back in ’04, coming back proud but without an arm and surviving as a beggar until the merchants had eventually given him the charity of employment.

  ‘Constable about?’ he asked, his face anxious.

  ‘Nay, Joe, it’s just me this morning.’

  ‘Tha’d better come then, Mr Sedgwick.’ There was a raw edge to Croft’s voice.

  Sedgwick sat upright. ‘What is it?’

  The man said nothing, his skin ghostly pale.

  Lister bustled back in with the jug, opened his mouth to speak, then looked at the others and closed it again.

  ‘Right, Rob, we have work to do. Come on, Joe, show us.’

  The White Cloth Hall was just a short distance down Kirkgate, set back slightly from the street. The men walked silently, following as Croft led them down one of the wings, heels echoing on the cobbles. They went up the stairs to the storerooms, each painted with the name of one of the local townships. Croft stopped at the one marked Kirkstall, and pointed.

  ‘In there,’ he said and stood back.

  Sedgwick pulled the door open.

  ‘Sweet God,’ Lister whispered. ‘It’s Will Jackson.’

  Ten

  Lister was out in the corridor, bent over and retching up his breakfast. Sedgwick looked at the body swinging gently from the beam. One shoe had fallen off, lying on its side on the boards next to a dark stain of piss. A low stool had been kicked over.

  ‘It’s Jackson, right enough,’ Croft said.

  ‘Let’s get him cut down,’ the deputy sighed, pulling a knife from his coat and sliced the rope. ‘You take the legs.’ Between them they manoeuvred the corpse to the ground and Sedgwick cut the noose from the neck.

  Another suicide, another sad tale, he thought. From the look of him he’d been no more than twenty-five, a neat, trim man.

  ‘When did you find him?’ Sedgwick asked.

  ‘Right before I came for you,’ Croft answered, his eyes firm on Jackson. ‘I was getting everything ready for the cloth market.’

  ‘When did you last look in here?’ Sedgwick stood. Jackson had hung himself with a length of rope knotted over the beam. Nothing special, nothing unusual. He’d probably purchased it at the chandler’s shop.

  ‘After the market on Saturday.’ Croft ran a hand across his thin, grey hair. ‘Allus make sure they never leave anything.’

  ‘And what do you know about him?’ Sedgwick gestured at the corpse.

  Croft thought for a moment. ‘Nothing, really. I’d seen him a few times, that’s all. He was a cloth dresser, I think.’ He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

  Rob came back into the room, his face a pale, terrible white, wiping awkwardly at his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘Was he a friend of yours?’ the deputy asked.

  ‘In a way. Not a close one,’ Lister replied. ‘I’d see him out drinking sometimes and we’d talk.’ He paused. ‘I can’t believe he’d do this.’ He looked at Sedgwick with wide, uncomprehending eyes.

  ‘Have the coroner see him, then I’ll have a couple of the men bring him to the jail,’ the deputy told Croft then turned to the younger man. ‘Come on, Rob, we’d better get you out in the fresh air.’

  The air was full of all the odours of the city but Lister gulped it in deeply, leaning against the smooth, finished stone of the building with his hands on his knees.

  ‘The first one’s always bad,’ Sedgwick told him, watching the young man’s face. He kept the sympathy out of his voice. ‘You’ll see a lot worse if you stay in the job.’

  ‘Can you become used to something like that?’

  ‘Not really. There are never any easy ones. But you learn how to look at it.’ He clapped the lad on the shoulder. ‘Let’s go back to the jail, you look like you need a drink.’

  The Constable had returned and was sitting at his desk, scratching away at a piece of paper with the quill pen.

  ‘How did he do?’ he asked as the others returned.

  ‘He’s had a rough start,’ the deputy answered as Lister filled a mug. ‘Suicide at the Cloth Hall. A fellow called Will Jackson. Rob knew him.’

  Nottingham raised his eyebrows.

  Rob swilled the ale in his mouth and swallowed it. ‘Like I told Mr Sedgwick, I didn’t know him well, just in the beer shops and inns. He was a junior partner in one of the cloth dressers.’

  ‘Do you know which one?’ the Constable asked.

  ‘No. I’m sorry,’ Lister said.

  ‘Never mind, we can find out easily enough. No doubt he killed himself ?’ he asked the deputy.

  ‘Positive, boss.’ Sedgwick poured himself a drink. ‘The men are bringing him over here.’

  ‘Right. We’d better get him in the ground as soon as possible in this weather. The church won’t have anything to do with him if he’s a suicide.’ He turned to Rob. ‘What about his family?’

  ‘I remember his parents died during the last year of his apprenticeship. And I seem to recall something about sisters.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘I don’t remember more than that.’

  ‘Do you know where he lived?’ Nottingham brushed the fringe off his forehead.

  ‘Near the bottom of Briggate somewhere, I think.’

  ‘Good. You two go and see what you can find and then go over to his work and talk to them. Then we can be finished with this.’

  The Constable saw Lister grimace at the rough dismissal of the death.

  ‘Rob,’ he said gently, ‘I’m sorry. But this is a suicide. We have plenty to keep us busy without that. You’ll learn that.’

  The lad nodded.

  It only took a few minutes to obtain the man’s address. They knocked on the door of a pleasant-looking house set fifty yards up from the river and the housekeeper reluctantly took them up to the rooms Jackson rented. His front window looked down on the street, the bedroom at the rear over the long, neat garden.

  ‘He didn’t leave a note at the Cloth Hall,’ Sedgwick explained to Lister. ‘See if there’s anything here, anything to show why he killed himself. You look in here, I’ll take the back.’

  Jackson had money; he certainly hadn’t lived hand to mouth. There were three suits, all of good cut, spare shirts and hose. The furniture was old but of good, lasting quality, the mattress of goose down, the sheets clean, expensive linen.

  Why, the deputy wondered? Why would someone with all this, someone with a business, kill himself ? There was no sense to it. He kept looking but there was nothing to answer his question and he went into the living room.

  ‘Have you looked at the desk yet?’ he asked Lister.

  ‘No.’

  It was there, lying on top of a pile of papers. The last thing Jackson would have written. In flowing script on a clean sheet of paper, he’d penned, ‘My sweet S is dead. There can be no more for me with her gone.’

  The quill had been cleaned, the small knife for sharpening it lying next at the side, the inkwell carefully capped. A man’s final actions.

  ‘Rob,’ Sedgwick asked, ‘how well did you know Will?’

  ‘Not well at all, I told you,’ Lister answered distractedly. ‘Why?’

  ‘I think he might be connected to the murder we have.’

  He left the lad to sort through the correspondence, trying to find anything he could – love letters, the names of relatives, more about Jackson’s work. That was something he could do easily enough without anyone gazing over his shoulder. Sedgwick hurried back to the jail, the note carefully folded in his pocket.

  Nottingham was still labouring over his reports, the remains of a mutton pie on the desk.

  ‘I think you’d better have a look at this, boss.’

  He waited as the Constable read and then the two men looked at each other.

&nbs
p; ‘Sarah Godlove?’

  ‘That’s what I was wondering.’

  Nottingham reached into the desk and found the note he’d discovered in the dead girl’s dress. He placed it next to the brief lines Jackson had left. The writing matched.

  ‘That would explain her being away one day each week, meeting him, I suppose.’ He sat back, scraping a hand over his chin. ‘Good work, John. I think we’d better find out all we can about Mr Jackson. Men have murdered their lovers before.’

  Sedgwick nodded. ‘Rob’s going through his things.’

  ‘What do you think of him?’ Nottingham asked.

  ‘He’s got plenty to learn,’ the deputy said cautiously.

  ‘I know. But we all did when we started. I remember what you were like.’

  ‘He’s quick, I’ll give him that. If he stays he might be all right. If.’

  ‘I think he’d make a good deputy when you become Constable.’

  Sedgwick smiled. ‘If the Corporation lets it happen that way.’

  ‘They’ll listen to my recommendation,’ the Constable said firmly. ‘No promises, mind.’ He waited until Sedgwick nodded his acknowledgement.

  ‘Still, plenty of time before that happens, boss.’

  ‘I bloody well hope so.’

  Sedgwick turned to leave.

  ‘John?’ Nottingham held up the paper. ‘Worth learning to read?’

  Sedgwick grinned. ‘Aye, boss.’

  When he walked back into Jackson’s rooms, the deputy saw that Lister had thrown his jacket over a chair and was poring over the papers from the desk, sorting them into four piles on the table.

  ‘What do we have?’ he asked.

  ‘Those are nothing,’ Rob answered, pointing at his handiwork. ‘Just bills. Those are work – he was with Elias Tunstall, by the way – and those are family. Three sisters, one of them’s in Leeds, married to a merchant.’

  ‘And what about those?’ Sedgwick gestured at a small collection.

  ‘Those are his love letters.’

  ‘All from the same girl?’

  ‘The handwriting’s the same in all of them and they’re all signed S. No dates on any of them.’

  ‘S is Sarah Godlove, the murdered girl. Jackson’s writing matches a note she had hidden on her.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Lister began, then couldn’t think of anything more to say.

  ‘An interesting turn, isn’t it?’ the deputy said. ‘You finish looking through these and we’ll take them back to the jail.’

  ‘John?’ Lister asked soon after, looking up from one of the notes. ‘Where did Sarah live?’

  ‘Horsforth. Why?’

  ‘Listen to this: Can we meet in Burley or Kirkstall this time, my love? I won’t have the time to come all the way into Leeds. He wishes us to go to a ball in Bradford that night so I must be back in good time. Both of those are on the way in from Horsforth. She was found at the abbey, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Aye,’ Sedgwick agreed thoughtfully.

  The Constable divided up the tasks. Lister would continue to search through the papers. Sedgwick would go to Tunstall’s to break the news and see what he could discover. He himself would take word of Jackson’s suicide to his sister.

  The house on Vicar Lane was run down, as if the people inside had stopped caring about it some years before. The windows were dirty, the limewash old and worn, its colour faded from brilliant white almost to grey. Not the house of a successful merchant, he thought as he knocked on the door. But then not every merchant made his fortune; many lost everything.

  ‘I’m Richard Nottingham, Constable of Leeds. I need to see Mrs Bradley,’ he told the maid, a toothless old wraith who showed him through to the dusty withdrawing room, sketching a curtsey on her way out. He had to spend ten minutes waiting until Elizabeth Bradley entered, skirts rustling, her face freshly powdered and hair up. She looked to be in her middle thirties, careworn and harassed but putting on a good front.

  ‘Maggie said you’re the Constable?’ she enquired, confusion on her face. Had she dressed up to receive him, he wondered?

  ‘I am. I’m sorry, Mrs Bradley, but I have ill news for you.’ There was never a way to break a death easily. Murder was difficult enough, but suicide was something impossible to understand.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked sharply. ‘Has something happened to Henry?’

  ‘No.’ He looked at her. ‘You’d better sit down,’ he told her. ‘It’s your brother.’

  ‘Will?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She looked up at him, uncomprehending. ‘What is it? Is he in trouble?’

  Nottingham paused.

  ‘I’m afraid he’s dead,’ he said finally. ‘He killed himself.’

  ‘Will?’ She spoke the word again. ‘Will?’

  ‘Yes.’ He watched with concern as her eyes began to lose focus, and took her hand to steady her. ‘Do you want me to get the maid?’

  She shook her head slowly, squeezing her eyes firmly shut to stop any tears leaking out. Her fingers squeezed hard around his, the grip tight. She needed to control herself, he knew that, to let the shock pass. She let go of him, pulling a linen handkerchief from her sleeve and crushing it into a ball in her small fist.

  ‘It’s Will?’ she asked. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘It is,’ he told her in a gentle voice. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘But why . . . why would he kill himself ?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the Constable answered. ‘We’re trying to find out. Can you think of any reason?’

  ‘No,’ she said after a while, her voice full of bafflement. ‘He said that the business was doing well. He was making money. He was going to invest in Henry’s – my husband’s – firm.’ She put her hand to her mouth. ‘Henry.’

  ‘Mrs Bradley.’

  She looked at Nottingham, her thoughts jerking back hard to the here and now.

  ‘Were you and your brother close?’

  ‘He always came to church with us on Sunday. We go to the new church, we have a family pew there.’

  ‘What about your sisters?’

  ‘Alice lives in York and Susan is in Pontefract. I’m the oldest.’ Her eyes widened as another understanding reached her. ‘I’ll have to tell them, won’t I?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

  She dabbed quickly at a tear before it could run down her cheek.

  ‘Did your brother have a girl, by any chance?’

  ‘Will? A girl?’ she asked in astonishment. ‘You didn’t know my brother, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will didn’t have time for courting. He was always working. I used to tease him about it, tell him he’d end up a rich old bachelor.’ She smiled briefly at the fleeting memory. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Because it might give a reason. A cause.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think it can be that.’

  He stood up. ‘My condolences again,’ he said formally, and moved towards the door.

  ‘Constable?’ He heard her draw in a breath and knew what was coming. He’d expected her to ask. ‘Is it possible that my brother’s death wasn’t a suicide? An accident, perhaps?’

  He knew the reason for the question. No family wanted the shame of a suicide. It was a stain that never washed out, the quiet whispers behind hands and the pitying looks without words. But there was nothing he could offer her except a short movement of his head that committed him to nothing. By now the word had probably spread too far to be drawn back.

  He strolled up Vicar Lane to the Head Row, then back down Briggate to stop at the Ship. The food was tasty, the meat fresh, not rancid and covered in spices, and Michael always carried good ale.

  But he barely noticed what he ate or drank. Instead he was thinking about Elizabeth Bradley. She’d said little but revealed much. Will Jackson obviously kept his own life away from his family. If he’d been courting an available girl there’d have been no reason for that.

  He’d also had money t
o invest in his brother-in-law’s business, so the cloth finishing must have been making a profit. That seemed to rule out money as a possible reason behind his death.

  Nottingham put the last of the mutton pie into his mouth, washing it down with the ale and made his way back to the jail.

  Elias Tunstall had a shifty face, Sedgwick decided. With a sharp nose and a widow’s peak to his greasy hair, he had the look of a rat, eyes constantly moving around as they walked through the business premises of Tunstall and Jackson, Cloth Finishers, on the Calls.

  ‘Why?’ he asked desperately when the deputy told him of the suicide. ‘Why would he want to do that?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. That’s what we want to find out. Is the business doing well?’

  ‘It’s doing grand,’ Tunstall answered, puffing out his thin chest. ‘We’ve got more work than we can handle.’ He deflated again as the realization hit him. ‘Don’t know what we’ll do now, mind.’

  The voices in the nap shop stopped as soon as Tunstall entered and he glared around the men. Over in the corner the preemer boy, a lad of maybe twelve, was taking wood fibres out of the teasels used to raise the nap of the cloth. Two men worked side by side on the frame, pulling the combs over the wool.

  ‘I want you working, not gabbing,’ Tunstall said, heels clacking brightly on the floor as he led Sedgwick along.

  In the next room the men laboured silently, working with scissors near as tall as themselves to crop the nap to an even length. Sleeves rolled up and kerchiefs tied at the neck, they moved carefully and precisely, faces drawn in deep concentration. One slip could ruin a length and it would come from their wages, the deputy knew.

  Beyond that, in a long hall with windows and doors cast wide open to try and draw in some air, others worked the irons in the steamy, oppressive heat, pressing and bundling the cloth, ready to go back to the merchants and be sold.

  ‘There’s brass in this,’ Tunstall explained, cuffing a boy who was struggling with a bucket of water, ‘and we’re making it.’ He paused. ‘For the moment, any road.’