by Robin Blake
It was close to seven and the light had just begun to fade when I reached Market Place. I looked in at the office to ask how Furzey had fared at the cottages, but my clerk greeted me by waving a folded paper in my face. My letter to Bailiff Grimshaw was replied to.
Ephraim Grimshaw had so far been elected bailiff four years in succession and, it seemed, the only thing that might persuade him to give up the office would be the certainty of succeeding as Mayor. He thought of himself as a consummate politician and manager of men and money; in reality he was merely rich from having a half-share in his father’s leather-dressing shop, and was otherwise lazy and domineering. The business continued to flourish under the wise direction of his brother, while Ephraim banked half the profits and sought new ways to enhance the prestige of the bailiff by hosting banquets and leading ceremonial processions through the streets on every possible occasion. There was one more thing about Ephraim Grimshaw that I should mention: he hated me.
Mr Cragg, he wrote, if you eschew the use of my officers when enquiring into this doleful event you will exceed your authority. I shall send to you tomorrow with my instructions. Ephraim Grimshaw, Bailiff to the Corporation.
‘Is it another smack from Mr Grimshaw?’ asked Furzey, observing me reading the note.
I gave it to him to read and said, ‘I am ultra vires, it seems. He wishes me to heed his instructions.’
Furzey, who knows as much of the law as I do, at least insofar as it affects the Corporation and its affairs, read through the letter then patted me companionably on the back. The action was in character. He always behaved more like my equal than my clerk.
‘Well, let’s see, Mr Cragg, sir. You always do exceed your authority, in the eyes of Mr Grimshaw. And he will exalt his own instructions. But your jurisdiction is as clear as ever, and wholly distinct from his, as we in this office well know.’
‘Yes, Furzey. But the bailiff doesn’t, and that is where our difficulty lies.’
‘Shall I deal with Mr Grimshaw’s communication in the usual way, then?’
I nodded and Furzey crumpled the letter in his fist and dropped it into the wastebasket.
My Elizabeth’s parents lived in the village of Broughton, two or three miles up the northern road, and she had gone to visit them that afternoon with a pie in her basket. She would not be back until the next day, so I was glad a second pie had been left in the pantry for Matty to serve up for me, as I was exceedingly hungry. I washed my meal down with a glass of wine, and hurried out in good time to meet Fidelis at the Turk’s Head coffee house.
But first, I strolled down Friar Gate, north-west from Market Place, to Edward Talboys’s dressmaker’s shop. Lamplight glowed from within, so I climbed the steps, rapped and tried the handle. Even at this late hour the door was unbolted and I pushed it open, setting a warning bell clanging on a spring above my head. I stepped in and surveyed the front room of the shop, with its counter, its bolts of cloth in their deep pigeonholes, and its hooks, buttons and ribbons displayed for sale in glass-topped cases. It was deserted but through a leather-curtained doorway at the back a tread could be heard coming down a flight of stairs. They stopped a moment, perhaps halfway down, and I heard the dressmaker calling.
‘What have you done with the scissors?’
A moment later his head appeared around the door frame, peering this way and that in the shop.
‘Jerome? Is that you? Where have you been? I can’t lay hands on the Sheffield cuts.’
‘Ned, it’s not Jerome,’ I called out. ‘It’s Titus Cragg.’
He and I had sometimes been playmates together as children, and though our paths had since diverged I still liked him. His wife had died giving birth to the last of a quartet of daughters but he had always tried to preserve a cheerful demeanour in spite of his difficulties. He had a chubby beaming face and what hair he possessed was fair, running in a reversed fringe around the back of his head from one ear to the other. This he had fashioned in sidecurls above the ears and a short tail behind.
‘Ah, Titus!’ he cried as he brushed through the curtain and saw me. ‘I wondered if you were my poxy-faced journeyman. He took himself off on Sunday and I’ve not seen the barmpot since.’
In quick, darting movements he went to the shelves and took down a bolt of grey worsted from its hole. He bumped it straight down on the counter and began unrolling it along the board’s length, feeling the roll as he did so. He had unrolled half of it and palpitated the rest, when he began rolling it up again.
‘No good! They’re not there. I’m sure he was working from this cloth when I saw them last.’
‘The scissors?’
‘The scissors, yes, the cuts – a pair of my sharpest. The man’s done it before, leaving tools rolled up in cloth, not to be found for weeks or months sometimes. The slovenly whelp. But now he’s off somewhere, I don’t know where, so I can’t ask him about it. He’s done that before an’all, going off. He’s exactly like a dog after bitches. Are you paying a call, Titus, or is this business?’
‘Coroner’s business, Ned. The business of Mrs Ramilles Brockletower. You have heard?’
‘Oh, aye, every bugger’s heard. Found dead this morning in the Fulwood, throat sliced open.’
The dressmaker hoisted the bolt back into place, rammed it home and turned to me again, placing his hands flat on the counter between us.
‘And she was in this shop only Saturday, ordering a gown she shall never wear.’ Edward sighed. ‘Nor pay for neither.’
I was grateful to him for bringing me to the point.
‘Yes, so they told me at Garlick Hall. I am considering whether you ought to be called as a witness at the inquest. What can you tell me about her visit?’
‘I passed the time of day, of course. But you should speak with my Abigail.’
‘Abigail – your eldest?’
‘It was she that served her. Mrs Brockletower always asked expressly for Abigail, you see.’
‘Isn’t that out of the ordinary? A rich customer like her …’
‘Quite so. She should wish to be attended by the master craftsman – myself. But no, Titus, she liked his daughter better. Took a fancy to Abigail from the moment she saw her. Wouldn’t let any other person attend her, not me, not Jerome.’
The dressmaker leaned forward and lowered his voice almost to a whisper.
‘She said it was on account of her husband, that he wouldn’t allow a male hand to touch her or take measurements, or a male eye to see such things being done to her. Only Abby, she said, could do it.’
‘I suppose that is a natural, ladylike coyness.’
‘Up to a certain point, it is. And there’s no doubt my girl is a very good seamstress. Also it is her regular job to assist in fitting ladies who do not bring their personal maids with them for the purpose, and Mrs Brockletower did always come alone. But I was not even allowed into the room to see the first fitting, think of that. I mean my upstairs room, which is for private consultations, fittings and the like. Mrs Brockletower always saw Abby there, behind a shut door. She really believed it was indelicate, even a form of nakedness, to parade in front of a man in an unfinished, pinned-together dress. Well, of course, it’s absurd. But she was adamant.’
‘How often did Mrs Brockletower call at the shop?’
‘She ordered many dresses, many. One every month or two, I should say. Perhaps eight or nine in the year. But she was fussy and the work required laborious consultation, and several visits for fitting each one. I offered that we would go out to her at Garlick Hall, but she wouldn’t have it. She came to us, that was the rule.’
‘So Mrs Brockletower spent the time of her visit last Saturday with Abigail?’
‘Yes.’
‘How old is the girl? I forget.’
‘Eighteen.’
‘Old enough to give evidence, then. Is she here?’
He shook his head.
‘I sent her yesterday with a gown for fitting to a lady in Garstang. She will be home thi
s evening.’
‘Did they see each other alone?’
‘Always, when she came here.’
‘And did Abby ever say anything about Mrs Brockletower to you or her sisters? What she said … what humour she was in.’
‘No, she was as close as one of your legal deed-boxes.’
Ned’s information was going to require some further thought, and a conversation with Abigail as soon as possible. I remembered my question that morning to Polly Milroy: in whom did Mrs Brockletower confide? Perhaps now I had the answer. Perhaps she confided in her dressmaker, Abby Talboys.
I returned my hat to my head and prepared to go on my way.
‘So what did you yourself make of Dolores Brockletower?’ I asked as a parting shot. ‘In a general way, I mean?’
‘I am a dressmaker, Titus, and I have four daughters. Is there any man in this town better acquainted with what a woman wants? But I’ll tell you the truth – I could never add that one up. A woman’s a woman across the world, is what I say, but she was a mystery.’
Chapter Six
THE TURK’S HEAD coffee house, which was then kept by Noah Plumtree, stands off Church Gate, a couple of minutes’ walk from my home. That night it was middling full. At one table two men played chess, while a huddled group around another were enjoying a theological argument. As I passed them I thought I heard the phrases ‘seven sleepers’ and ‘my fundament! ’, which brought a thought of Timothy Shipkin and his Heptamerian certainties.
Fidelis had not yet come in and I wondered if he was still operating on Mr Norris, using procedures whose details I could only, and then reluctantly, surmise. I asked for a jug of negus, a couple of pipes, a pen and paper and a copy of the Preston Journal. Then I found an empty cubicle around whose table we would be able to talk privately.
I took the pen and made a list of possible jurors for the inquest – freeholders, copyholders and leaseholders from Garlick and Yolland and the area around the Fulwood. I would need to summon the jury tomorrow, as I had determined to have the inquest the day after, if possible. Having cobbled fifteen names together, I took up the newspaper and was uninterestedly running through a list of ships inbound to the port of Liverpool when Dr Fidelis strode in.
‘Success!’ he crowed. ‘Old Norris is defistulated.’
Screwing up my face to discourage any further confidences on the subject, I poured him a beaker of punch.
‘I would rather hear why you have expressly requested that we place the corpse in Garlick Hall’s Ice-house, Luke.’
‘Because it will last better there.’
‘How?’
‘I’ll tell you.’
Settling himself opposite me he picked up his pipe and a spill. He held the latter to the candle that stood on the table between us.
‘Decomposition goes more slowly when flesh is cold and even more so when it is frozen,’ he continued sitting back and setting fire to the pipe. ‘The philosopher and Lord Chancellor Francis Bacon tried to prove this, having heard it from trustworthy travellers to China, where the fact has been known for centuries. But Bacon caught a cold and died, you know, before the fact was demonstrated.’
‘Died of a chill, didn’t he?’ I jested. ‘The cold did not preserve him, then.’
‘Your mocking only mocks you, Titus. In the far north of Tartary, the people often eat the flesh of animals they have dug out of the permanent ice-fields, centuries after the meat was buried.’
I laughed frankly at the absurdity of this.
‘After centuries? Come come, it’s quite impossible, Luke. I put that on a footing with Sir John Mandeville’s frozen speech. You recall it?’
Fidelis evidently did not. I grant you, Sir John cannot be counted a trustworthy traveller but, then, nor can Lemuel Gulliver. I sometimes marvelled at my friend’s lack of interest in English literature.
‘Mandeville tells of the words being frozen as they left his and his companions’ lips during an Arctic voyage. Because of this, their speech went unheard for weeks until, under a thawing wind, the words warmed up and started to sound in the air all around the ship.’
It was Fidelis’s turn to laugh, this time in delight.
‘Well, for spoken words to be preserved like that would be very useful, even more than the preservation of Mrs Brockletower’s meat, I think. And yet, why not? The preservation of meat by freezing is a fact, after all. Why not freeze words so we can hear them later?’
I shook my head in despair. Fidelis was always confounding me with incredible claims for the future of natural philosophy, derived from his reading and correspondence. But when I tried to fill the gaps in his own education, it only ended with my being wrong-footed again. I must admit I was also disturbed by the thought of Mrs Brockletower as ‘meat’.
Fidelis had laughed again, vastly amused by my discomfort.
‘At all events, Titus, you must believe what I say about the preservation of meat. I occasionally see the transactions of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, where Monsieur Laureus has been working on that very matter in purposefully designed ice-houses. These are not unlike the ones that are presently so fashionable in gentlemen’s houses in England, such as Mr Ramilles Brockletower’s, though he puts the installation to less serious uses.’
Having laid down his pipe he had, while speaking, been searching his pockets. Now he pulled out a folded paper.
‘So you see,’ he went on, wagging the paper at me, ‘in depositing our late Mrs Brockletower in the Ice-house, we lend the place a nobility that it hardly receives from iced syllabubs and other trifles. If we left her there indefinitely I firmly believe she would continue uncorrupted, conceivably for centuries, like certain of the holy martyrs.’
‘Or the Seven Sleepers,’ I murmured.
He did not hear me. He was spreading the paper open on the table between us, smoothing its creases with his long bony hands.
‘Now look here!’ exclaimed Fidelis.
I looked, expecting this to be the latest bulletin from the Swedish Academy. Instead it was my letter to him, written earlier in the day.
‘In this letter, Titus, you wrote “the accident, if so it was, etcetera”. What do you mean by “if so it was”? Either it was, or it wasn’t.’
‘Yes, but at the time I wrote I wasn’t sure. I am sure now that it was no accident.’
Fidelis’s eyes were animated, sparkling in the candlelight. He snapped his fingers.
‘Particulars, particulars, Titus! I am burning to know what I may find when I examine the body tomorrow.’
So I provided an account of everything I had seen and heard at Garlick Hall, confining myself to the facts, since I well knew how Fidelis would subsequently enjoy piling up the inferences.
‘So you see, Luke, when I wrote to you mentioning a possible “accident”, I did not yet have all of the facts.’
‘And now?’
‘I still don’t know what happened. But I have established many more facts.’
‘Telling you what?’
‘For one thing, that she was afraid of something.’
I told him about the quotation written in her commonplace book. The Soul of a Man and that of a Woman are made very unlike. And, on a separate line, Imagine therefore: my pain and fear.
‘Fear, was it?’ mused Fidelis, ‘fear for her life at someone else’s hand, perhaps. Do you know where the quotation comes from?’
I shook my head.
‘I have read it, I think, but I can’t remember where.’
‘Well, wherever it’s from, it’s about the relations or differences between men and women. The only man she had a relationship with was her husband.’
‘As far as we know. But she also refers to her pain. Wanting to get out of pain is a motive for suicide.’
‘Well, if she did kill herself, someone, or something, took away the blade she used.’
‘Some thing?’
‘Some animal …?’
‘Impossible! But maybe Timothy Shipkin did.�
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‘I am inclined to believe him when he says he found nothing. He is a very pious Dissenter. And why would he interfere in that way?’
‘But I take it your enquiries have ruled out an accident, at all events.’
‘I believe so, but I am counting on you to confirm that her injuries could not have been accidental.’
‘Well, from what I’ve heard pure chance seems an unlikely cause. No, Titus, as far as I can see, it looks like nothing less than bloody murder. Which thought calls for more pipes and another jug of negus, I think.’
He snapped his bony fingers again, this time for the potboy, then turned back to me.
‘If not an accident, the cause of death would be there to see. Was anything at all found when they searched?’
I felt in my pocket and brought out the horseshoe.
‘This. It was under the leaves, but not far from where she lay. As you see it is not rusty. But it did not come from Mrs Brockletower’s own horse.’
Taking the shoe, he ran his eyes over it, then laid it down on the board.
‘It was found just like this?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then it may have been cast from the horse of the man that slew her. It may be the key to finding the killer.’
‘A vagabond—’
‘But from the blood on the horse’s neck, it appears she received her wound on horseback. How would a footpad get high enough?’
‘The villain jumped up behind her and cut her from there.’
Fidelis was not impressed.
‘Difficult to do, unless she helped him up.’
‘Then he had climbed the tree.’
‘Yes, that is possible, I agree. But it would mean the crime was done by means of a trap laid for the lady specifically. A man in the tree would have had to know she would be there and call out to her to approach him.’
‘But surely you can see on whom suspicion must fall, if her killer did not chance on his victim.’
Fidelis waved his hand in a gesture of impatience.
‘Oh, yes, yes. On the squire, of course. Until you speak to him – tomorrow with luck – you can be certain of nothing. But what I say is, the information you gathered about the relations between him and his wife is indicative. It points the finger directly at him.’
