by Robin Blake
Ten minutes later, well on along the rutted road, I was musing on the marked difference between the bibulous, amiable uncle and the taut, enraged nephew. For a moment I found myself seized with a resentment of my own against the young squire, and the way he had spoken to me.
‘Scum’ indeed! If anyone was scum …
For a moment I wanted to ride directly to Garlick Hall and throw the insult back in the squire’s face and his entire class.
Sometimes I can glimpse what had so excited the Levellers of the last century. The landowning class that lords it over us is an idle and pampered regiment. Most of mankind struggles to eat and have shelter, which consumes their time and strength. The landowner has no such preoccupation. His life is like an Italian opera in which time is a measure of pleasantness and gratification, with occasional entr’actes for the conduct of business.
And yet – and yet – though the habits of the landowner may be as indulgent as a household pig’s, he is also a provider, and a spender. If all of us lived in cottages, without great houses to bring great works into being, life would be very mean. Costly navigations, new roads, agricultural improvements and philosophical advance would come to an end. There would be no great churches, no ironworks, no ships of the line, no Baltic or East India trade, no lace, or wine, or sugar, or tobacco. How then would we all live?
The classes of society are links in a chain. Willy-nilly they have their positions; they do not choose them, nor are they chosen for them, unless by Providence. Considered in this aspect the rich are less operatic and more like the kings and queens of Sophocles, who cannot exchange roles with the chorus, as the actors that play them can. In this light the rich are more pitiable than contemptible.
After I had suppressed the temptations of levelling, and in contradiction of my views during the discussion with Fidelis in the Turk’s Head coffee house, I began to consider Brockletower in the character of a Sophoclean king, driven to wife-murder. The tragic drama that I wrote in my head was persuasive. He meets her on foreign station and brings her, an heiress, home as his wife. It becomes evident soon enough she will not conceive. The local people evidently do not take to her and she makes few if any friends. The companionable amusements and pleasure of, what the marriage service calls, mutual society – ‘with my body I thee worship’ – begin to pall. Worse, even, she reveals character traits and amatory tastes previously hidden from him, which he cannot support. The excitement of a woman, exotically encountered, is lost in the humdrum surroundings of home. Intoxication is succeeded by a headache and a sour taste in the mouth. Sexual activity ceases.
What does a man do in these circumstances? She is pouring scorn on him at every opportunity. She nags, rages and calls his virility into question. And he begins to hate her.
So he turns his mind to putting her aside. But divorce is a ruinous as well as a tedious procedure, and besides would mean that he forfeit his wife’s sweet sugar wealth. With these reflections his thoughts stray down a darker path. He knows her habits, knows precisely where to find her alone and vulnerable. And so events follow the path that Fidelis had plotted for me two nights before. He departs on his journey to York, dismisses his servant on the way back and rides through the night to the Fulwood, where he encounters Dolores at the hollow oak, kills her and returns home hours later, having had his horse re-shod.
I admit I had performed a volte-face about Brockletower’s guilt. It was all plausible to me now, but there was a caveat: no one had seen it happen. Nothing had been heard, only gossip and idle talk. Would a jury be convinced enough to bring in the finding that I had previously been so averse to: ‘murder by Ramilles Brockletower’?
A verdict of murder by person (or persons) unknown would be all that was required of my court. But now I found myself nurturing a desire to have the killer of Dolores Brockletower found and punished. She might not have been an amiable lady. But she had not deserved to die in that way. I wanted her killer brought to justice.
Chapter Twelve
AFTER CLEARING THE parish church and vicarage, the road to Preston soon passed through a peninsula or outcrop of the old Fulwood. It was no longer a part of the common forest, having been annexed two generations ago by the Brockletower estate, though they had not yet cleared it for pasture or planting. Much anger and some grief had been provoked by the appropriation. The woods were a useful source of fuel and rabbits for the poor, and more than one of the squire’s ricks were burnt that summer. But the Brockletowers had made good their claim with legal parliamentary measures, and (as my father gravely used to tell me) where Parliament shoots, the mark is always hit. In the meantime, it must be admitted, the people’s fuel-gathering and rabbit-snaring went on as before.
No sooner had my road penetrated this contentious belt of woodland than I came up to a long timber cart, hitched to a pair of heavy horses, standing on the wide grass verge that separated the road from the trees. Two great trunks, roughly sawn to length, had already been loaded, and men were at work trimming a third. Supervising the work was the squire’s woodsman Timothy Shipkin. As soon as I saw him, I recalled a small but (as I thought) important thing that I wanted to ask him.
I called out and Shipkin walked across. He had the face of a man who could think of better things to do than bandy words with an official from the town. Yet he couldn’t be faulted on the ground of superficial courtesy.
‘How do, Mr Cragg?’ he asked, automatically swiping his hat from his head to reveal the stiff, abundant bristles of his grey hair.
‘Hello, Shipkin,’ I replied and, thinking I would approach my question by a round-about way, gestured at the work going on behind him. ‘What are you doing here?’
Without shifting his feet Shipkin rotated the upper half of his body until he could nod in the direction of the timber carriage.
‘Nothing but what you can see. Fetching some timber to make spars.’
He held the position for a moment then swung round to face me again. ‘They’re for that architect, as he calls himself. For the supposed temple of his.’
‘Ah, yes. I have heard about it. I imagine you take a disapproving view of such works – pagan temples and the like.’
He shrugged his thin shoulders.
‘It’s not a building concerns me, but what folk do in it. I’m told this one is for doing nowt in, but sheltering from rain. If that’s right, I am content. Rain comes from our creator, but so do the means to shelter from it.’
Surprised that Shipkin had taken a tolerant view of Barnabus Woodley’s folly, I steered the subject away from architectural morality.
‘Well, I’m sorry to call you from your work. Have you come directly from the Hall today?’
‘I have that.’
‘Is there any news about this matter, the disappearance of your mistress’s body?’
‘None, sir, not when I was there. That were three hours since.’
‘And I wonder if the man Mallender was there, the bailiff’s sergeant?’
‘The one in the dirty red coat? Aye, I saw him poking about.’
‘Did he make any discoveries?’
‘Him, sir? He’s not the capacity. If one of them heavy horses were stood behind the door of his parlour I reckon he couldn’t discover it.’
I think I smiled but, feeling I should administer a mild rebuke, said, ‘He is the bailiff’s man, you know, so we must extend him courtesy if possible. Well now, there was one more thing I wanted to ask you. It’s about your own first finding of the body of poor Mrs Brockletower. A small detail.’
‘What’s that, sir?’
‘When I examined the spot where she lay, which I did very closely, there was a depression in the earth beside her. It seemed to be the imprint of a knee.’
Shipkin adopted a look of mild scepticism.
‘A knee, you say?’
‘Yes, an imprint – where I imagine someone went down on one knee beside the body. To look more closely at it, I would imagine. Was it you that made it? Did you kneel beside Mr
s Brockletower in that way when you first came upon her lying by the hollow tree?’
Shipkin is the only man I have ever met who frowned with his whole face. His countenance was so deeply and expressively lined that when he concentrated his thoughts, it was not just the forehead that contracted. The declivities that criss-crossed the cheeks and chin, the fissures that descended from each side of the nose, the mouth and around the bulb of the chin, and the cracks that rayed out from the corners of his eyes, would all deepen and contort. They did so now, as he attempted to locate and root out the answer to my question from his memory.
‘Don’t rightly remember,’ he said warily at last. ‘And what would it signify if I did?’
I ignored his question. A religious enthusiast is an obstinate clown, in Mr Spectator’s estimation. But that sage had never met Timothy Shipkin, who was no fool and (as I could tell from his tone of voice) already knew the precise answer to his own question. The dint in the damp earth might signify much. It might be the only indication of another person present when Dolores Brockletower fell bleeding to the earth. And, if that were the case, it was surely the mark of her murderer.
‘Do you at least recall noticing this knee-print yourself?’
Again his face tightened, but after a moment he shook his head.
‘I do not. Happen it was one of the others that went up after me.’
I shook my head.
‘They told me none of them went as near her as that. So, if you do at any time recall doing such a thing, please send word. It may be important evidence. Now, I will take up no more of your time and be on my way. Good day, Shipkin.’
I kicked my horse’s flanks and was off again, dissatisfied that Shipkin’s defensive wall had not been breached. I had covered only about two hundred yards when my mind received a kick as sharp as the one I had given the horse. I had seen in a rush the import of my metaphor of the wall. It had been produced out of my intuition that Shipkin was on the defensive, that he had something to hide. Suppose, I thought, that what he had to hide was full knowledge of the murder. And, to go one step further, that he knew the killing had not after all been done by the squire. And, finally, suppose he knew this because Timothy Shipkin had done the deed himself.
It was a completely new and contrary hypothesis to the Greek tragedy I had previously constructed.
When acting as coroner or legal adviser, I always try outwardly to show a firmness of decision. No judge, jury, or client can have confidence in a man whose views will forever jump about like fleas on a mattress. But, when I secretly interrogate myself, this solidity deserts me. Though I tell no one except Elizabeth (from whom I hide nothing) I will often doubt my own powers of decision, dithering inwardly about which coat to wear, the black or the brown; which meat to eat, the flesh or the fowl; which wine to serve, the port or the claret. And so it was now. Having, as it seemed, fixed firmly in my mind the idea that the squire was the murderer, I was now hopping off after another suspicion.
But I could not stop myself. The theory formed itself with alarming rapidity in my brain. It enumerated the points suggesting Shipkin’s guilt. First, wasn’t he hostile towards Mrs Brockletower, particularly her masculine way of sitting a horse? Second, hadn’t he indisputably been there at the scene of her death (though oddly going off immediately to Shot’s Hill to fell a dead beech: from one death to another, you might say)? Thirdly, wasn’t he a member of a millenarian group, in whose distorted opinion an act of violence against a sinner might not necessarily contradict the teachings of Our Saviour? And finally, being a forester, did he not have frequent recourse to sharp instruments, such as might be used to cut a person’s throat?
Yes, I thought, there might be a case against Shipkin. But I would have to dispose of one awkward fact. The man was a pedestrian, whereas Fidelis and I had already mutually concluded, almost pro certo, that the cut-throat had been mounted. How could an earthbound Shipkin have managed the business? This and other questions jingled against each together like coins in my pocket as the horse and I jogged along the road to Preston. They had not resolved themselves by the time we arrived back in Cheapside.
‘Timothy Shipkin is no murderer,’ said my wife with decision, lying against the bed pillows as pretty as ever in her lace-fringed night-cap. She looked up from her sampler to watch me as I pulled off my breeches. I had been telling her after supper what the vicar had said. The squire’s desire to sever himself from his wife had astonished her, but reinforced her suspicion that Ramilles Brockletower had murdered her.
I cannot say why I had chosen this particular moment to extenuate the case against the squire by admitting, with a tiny itch of shame, of my suspicion towards Shipkin. Perhaps the act of undressing had made me more confiding, though, of course, I would have told her in the end anyway.
I struggled out of the rest of my clothes and pulled the sleeping gown over my head.
‘I think he might be,’ I said, diving into bed and reaching out for her. But she wriggled away from my touch.
‘Ow! Your hands are cold. Warm them up, Titus.’
I rolled onto my back with a sigh, and folded my hands together across my belly. Elizabeth resumed her stitching.
‘Tell me why you suddenly suspect poor Shipkin.’
‘I met him on the way back from Yolland this afternoon. He was loading tree-trunks he’d felled in the spur of forest that the road passes through.’
‘And?’
‘He told me Mallender has been poking around at Garlick Hall, looking for the body. Found nothing, not that I would expect him to. Shipkin didn’t think much of his powers either.’
‘Nor do I. Nor does anyone. But go on.’
‘I asked Shipkin to think back to when he’d found the body of Dolores Brockletower. I asked if he had gone down on one knee beside the body.’
‘Why would he do that? To pray?’
‘No, no, to look more closely. To inspect the neck wound. There was an impression in the ground in about the right place, and it seemed to be that of a knee. I wanted to know if it was Shipkin’s knee.’
‘I see. And was it?’
‘He couldn’t remember, which I find unaccountable. When such a momentous thing happens as the discovery of a dead body, I would say that a person remembers every detail. Wouldn’t you?’
‘Not always. The shock might wipe the memory away.’
‘I’m wondering if it was deliberate loss of memory, and he knows more than he says, but is trying to keep his distance.’
She frowned, pressed her lips together and made a pout. I could not tell if she was concentrating on what I was saying or on her embroidery.
‘Only yesterday,’ I went on, ‘he told me the woman was a consort of the Devil. If he really believes that he might think it his religious duty to hasten her on the way to hell.’
Under the bedclothes I sent my hand as an experiment across the gap between us. When I found some flesh she whacked her own hand down sharply onto the eiderdown above.
‘Your hand is still cold.’
Reluctantly I took back my hand.
‘What’s your opinion of Shipkin, then?’
Letting her work rest, she lowered her head to the pillow and studied the ceiling.
‘I don’t think he can have done it, Titus. I’ve met the fellow. He’s a religious man and would show the guilt, shock and remorse of any foul act he had committed. And besides, Shipkin has never been known to do any violence to anyone, not even to raise his hand.’
‘There are consummate hypocrites, my dear.’
‘Yes, and I never saw one that I could not see through.’
I sighed. She was right. My wife has formidable powers in reading character.
‘Well I wish you could see it in him,’ I said despairingly, ‘I’ve no particular feeling against Shipkin, in spite of his obnoxious seven sleepers. But if there must be a guilty party—’
‘I know.’ Elizabeth’s interjection was sharp and discomfiting. ‘You would much prefer it to
be him. But is a woman’s style of riding really sufficient provocation to murder? I know what is behind this. It is not that you believe Shipkin is guilty, you only want him to be. And, of course, he is very convenient to your suspicion. The poor man’s a born outsider. His trial and execution would leave the social order undisturbed. Not so if the squire turned out to be a wife-killer, Titus. Then our whole little society is implicated. But this is no reason to convict an innocent man in the place of a guilty one. Shame on you!’
‘It would be shame on me, of course, if he were innocent. But, you know, Shipkin may still be guilty. Though I must admit …’
‘What?’
‘Well, there is one circumstantial reason to support Shipkin being what he says he is. The man does not ride, whereas there’s every reason to believe the assassin was on horseback. Fidelis is of the same opinion.’
Elizabeth picked up her sampler, laid it on the bedside cabinet, then subsided into her pillow again.
‘That settles it, Titus,’ she said brightly. ‘If Dr Fidelis says Shipkin is telling the truth, and if I say the same, it must be the case. So pursue the squire, and leave the woodman alone.’
She turned on her side towards me and laid the back of her fingers against my cheek.
‘Now,’ she murmured, ‘is there any likelihood of your hands being warm at last?’
Chapter Thirteen
ON THE FOURTH morning after the death of Dolores Brockletower, I was awoken by a gunshot. No – I can only have been partially awoken, since I immediately heard another shot, and then a third. I understood that they came from the gun of Ramilles Brockletower, and then I saw him standing up to his waist in the rising morning mist, firing again and again into the woods. His target was the shrouded figure of his wife as she flitted between the trees, like a hunted nymph desperate of her life. Then I opened my eyes and saw the casement window swinging in and out, being hammered against its frame by a squall of wind and rain.
