by Robin Blake
Fidelis nodded.
‘That’s George. Dapperwick employs him chiefly as a draughtsman, but he has helped him in dissection too. Dapperwick has palsy and his fingers are all but paralysed.’
‘I have seen them. But why would a boy artist, of all people, want to learn anatomy?’
We resumed out walk.
‘George holds,’ said Luke, ‘that in order to draw the outside of the body perfectly one must first become intimate with its inside.’
‘And he says he has a fox to dissect, does he? Suppose his fox is really a lady. Suppose it was your friend George that stole that corpse from Garlick Hall – which is still not found, by the way.’
‘George would not do such a thing by himself. He has no connection with the Hall and is not yet sixteen.’
‘Young as that, is he? I would say seventeen or eighteen, by his looks.’
‘He appears old for his years, but still wouldn’t commit such a crime, I am certain. He’s called to be a painter, not a transported criminal.’
‘If you say so, Luke. You know the boy.’
‘Can we think of who else might have purloined the body?’
‘There are the building workers at Garlick Hall,’ I said, ‘Let me tell you what happened there yesterday.’
By the time we turned out of Chapel Lane and reached the end of Friar Gate I had told him about the previous day’s stand-off between workmen and soldiers.
‘It’s suspicious,’ Fidelis agreed as we rested a moment at Friar Gate Bar.
‘Yes, but I’m damned if I know where it gets us to.’
‘It helps, Titus. Consider this: the men professed to be concerned about damage to the temple, in case Woodley would not pay them. But this would not concern them if they knew he was dead. It’s a beautifully balanced proposition. If the men killed Woodley, the corpse is not hidden in the temple; and if it is in the temple, they must not have killed Woodley.’
‘But I say again, where does that lead us?’
Fidelis gestured to the ancient stone remains of the Friary on the other side of the Bar.
‘Let’s have a look at Woodley. Maybe he can tell us something.’
The friars’ church had long ago been pulled down, but the surviving buildings were put to use by the town as a House of Correction. Unlike the Moot Hall lock-up, where I had spent my uncomfortable night, this was a place for the proven malefactor, once the Mayor had passed sentence of imprisonment. The friars’ cells were the sleeping quarters and the refectory was the workshop, while the old kitchens, scullery and wash-house still functioned in their original capacity. We found Woodley lying still fully clothed on a table in a room close to the latter. It was pervaded by the smell of slimy water. I thought how little this delicate man would have enjoyed his situation, had he been aware of it.
His white shirt-front was browned with dirt, so that it almost matched his breeches. The arms lay straight and close to the body. Testing the stiffness of the arms, Fidelis looked as best he could at the inside of the coat sleeves, then at the throat, before turning his attention at last to the head-wound. He tilted the body, inspected the dried blood down the back and then began carefully feeling the slim body all over, pinching and palpitating the muscle and flesh from shoulders to ankles. He looked closely at the scratches to the boyish face, eyed and smelled the inside of the mouth, did likewise with the blank eyes, and the hands. Finally he opened the breeches and examined what lay within.
‘I think the rigor is past its extreme,’ he said at last when he had returned Woodley to modesty. ‘If so, he was killed yesterday, early in the morning.’
‘And he died from the head wound?’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘Struck from behind, then.’
‘Only if you assume he was attacked. I have seen injuries like this in men who fell drunk from their horses, though I admit in this case the skull is more deeply split.’
‘Consistent,’ I suggested, ‘with assault by a hand-axe?’
Fidelis leaned again over the broken cranium, running his finger into the jagged, bloody crack.
‘That would do it,’ he murmured. ‘But why are you so specific?’
‘I found such an axe near the body. Grimshaw has it now. I was holding it in my hand when he came to the garden. He pretended to believe I’d just used it.’
‘The villain!’
‘Quite. If you have seen enough, let’s go up to my garden. It’s only five minutes from here. I’ll show you where I found the weapon.’
Within twenty minutes we had looked over the whole garden and toured its perimeter. We noted the complete absence of blood on the ground where the body had lain, proving this had not been where Woodley died. I showed Fidelis where I found the hatchet, inside the breach in the fence, and we agreed that, from the fence’s appearance, it looked as if it was penetrated from the outside by someone who’d arrived on a horse (the hoofmarks were still faintly visible), using the hand-axe for the purpose.
‘Here’s what I think happened,’ said Fidelis. ‘Woodley was killed somewhere else, possibly with the axe, and brought here across the rump of a horse. The bringer dropped the axe after breaking through the fence. Then he dragged the corpse from the horse and into the garden. The soil on Woodley’s shirt-front and inside his sleeves, and the scratches on his face, are there because the killer had hold of the feet, or legs, with the face and body turned down and the arms going up as they trailed in the dirt.’
‘Couldn’t the face have been scratched before Woodley died? A fight of some kind?’
‘No. The flesh was damaged, but not bleeding. It happened when his corpse was dragged along the ground.’
‘So once his killer had dragged the corpse to the selected place, he arranged it tidily, with the arms along the sides.’
‘Yes.’
‘So at that point the body was still limp?’
‘Exactly. The whole thing was done within five hours of the murder, or he would not have been able to rearrange the arms without forcing the shoulder-joints, which he did not do.’
‘This has been most useful, I think.’
I realized that the last thirty minutes had been stimulating. The vile chamber I’d been forced to spend the night in had gone from my mind and I forgot the bailiff’s deliberate injury to me and my pride. I was enjoying myself and so, I could see, was Luke Fidelis.
‘Come away,’ I said. ‘and let’s get a drink. There’s more to talk about.’
We sat in the parlour of the Friary Bar Inn with a bottle of claret between us. I thanked Fidelis for his two letters from York, and told him they confirmed what I had found out independently: that Ramilles Brockletower had wanted to divorce his wife. I asked that he complete the story of his enquiries there.
‘I shall,’ he said, ‘but let me deal first with the squire’s movements on the night before Mrs Brockletower died, when he was on his way home. I have now ridden the whole road from where Brockletower stayed on the Monday night, and am convinced he could not possibly have made the journey to Fulwood, killed his wife, and returned to his lodging in Yorkshire in time. In short, I am certain that, contrary to our reasonable suspicion, he was not his wife’s killer.’
‘Well, I never wanted that to be true.’
Fidelis raised a finger and smiled his clever and faintly vulpine smile.
‘But he may have procured someone to do it.’
‘I know. But who?’
‘Well, it is something else that my friend the backgammon player confided. It concerns Mr Barnabus Woodley. He was known in York.’
‘He certainly styled himself Woodley of York, as if he owned the city.’
‘But if this fellow Sumption is right, the city disowned Woodley. He came there, it appears, from Lichfield. And after a stay of less than a year word followed that he had been investigated by the Dean of Lichfield about a fraud he perpetrated on the cathedral, after he was employed in some repairs.’
‘What fraud?’
‘They say he absconded with fifty pounds that he did no work for.’
‘Had he done anything like it before?’
‘When he fell under suspicion at York, the Recorder wrote to fellow recorders in the cities Woodley is known to have lived in: as well as Lichfield there was Bristol, Exeter and Plymouth. The man had fallen under suspicion in each place before moving on.’
It took me a few moments to absorb this startling information.
‘Did they not take him up in York, then, to answer the charges?’
Fidelis shook his head.
‘Archbishop Blackburne would not allow it. He was charmed by Woodley and, besides, has a deadly dislike for the Bishop of Lichfield. So he protected Woodley and gave him work at Bishopsthorpe and elsewhere. It was he that recommended him to his cousin Ramilles Brockletower. The archbishop is notoriously dissolute. People in York say he looks kindly on all sins except matricide.’
‘So Woodley lay under suspicion. But was he a murderer?’
‘If he was, and Brockletower paid him to kill the fair Dolores, the squire might well have felt that Woodley himself shouldn’t continue to breathe.’
I took a deep draught of wine and refilled my glass.
‘Yes,’ I said, refilling my glass. ‘He might very well have felt that. And it might have been the very reason he decided to absent himself on a trip to Lancaster.’
At that moment there was a voice, loud and urgent, outside the door. I heard my name. Then abruptly William Pearson burst into the room.
‘Mr Cragg,’ he panted. ‘I’ve brought a horse from your home. Mrs Cragg said it was best, to save time, as you must come, and quick. Mrs Brockletower’s found, sir!’
As I rose, Fidelis hesitated.
‘I wish I could come with you, Titus. But first I must attend the Mayor. His toothache requires prescription.’
‘We shall meet later,’ I told him. ‘No doctor can afford to leave a mayor in pain.’
Hurriedly Pearson and I left Fidelis and took Moor Lane, the road that skirts the town to the north. Pearson gave me a detailed account of what had happened at Garlick Hall since I was last there, scenes from a drama in which Timothy Shipkin had again played a climactic role. On the previous day, strengthening work had continued at the Temple of Eros, overwatched by the militia man posted by Sutch. But by evening word had come of the death of Barnabus Woodley, upon which the workmen’s camp fell into despondency and then truculent anxiety. Neither the Temple of Eros nor the Hall’s pediment were fully finished. They wanted to know who would complete the work, and what about their pay if they were to be laid off?
Led by Ganger Piltdown, a group went to the squire, who had returned from his business engagements in Lancaster. Closeted in his library, he would not see them. Back in the camp there were loud words and cuffing fists, not least among the women. At dawn next morning Piltdown and simple Solomon were missing.
At just the same time, Shipkin, as he made his way to work towards Shot’s Hill, came upon the same Solomon stumbling through the woods. He was carrying in his arms a large, long bundle wrapped in sailcloth. When he saw Shipkin coming towards him, Solomon was immediately alarmed. He let his burden roll to the ground and made off at a run into the trees. Shipkin came forward to examine what had been dropped, and found the canvas to be a large bag, and that this had been used to make the improvised shroud of a human body – Dolores Brockletower’s.
‘It is remarkable that this is the second time Timothy Shipkin has found Mrs Brockletower’s body,’ I observed. ‘Was Solomon alone?’
‘Timothy saw no one else with him. But day was not fully broken, and light was not the best.’
In the midst of my own excitement, I wondered if the woodsman himself had been disappointed in the discovery. He had declared the dead woman raised by diabolic force, a delusion further strengthened by the local talk of werewolves. His certainty would have to be revised now.
As soon as Shipkin raised the alarm, the sergeant was sent for, and he instigated a thorough, military manhunt in the woods, though this was called off by noon, without result. The squire might have had little stomach for my presence but, in view of the return of his wife’s body, he was forced to send Pearson to fetch me. Meanwhile orders were given to bring her to the Ice-house, pending my arrival. There were to be double sentries at the door.
I went first to the Ice-house, just to be certain of the identification. I entered, doffed my hat and then clapped it back on to ward off the cold. Mrs Brockletower lay once again on the central table, but now enclosed in the sailcloth bag, of a type I had seen before at building sites under use for the storage and transport of the longer type of tool – two-handled saws, surveying poles, and the like. Whatever its original use, such a bag was well suited to the business of smuggling a corpse.
I pulled the bag open and looked upon the dead one’s face. It had become bloated and discoloured since my last sight of it, taking on a surface appearance something like a universal bruise, the skin all yellows and browns, mottled and marbled by blacks and blues. But it was without any doubt at all the face of the late mistress of Garlick Hall.
I felt deeply oppressed by this sight, and by the cold and gloom of the place. So, having made my verification, I quickly slipped back outside. Nothing now could be done about these remains until Dr Fidelis came, but I hoped on the morrow he would conduct his post-mortem examination. So after a brief word of encouragement to the two sentries (warning them to keep each other awake at all costs) I hurried back to the house, where I found Mrs Marsden and secured the use once more of her sitting room as my headquarters.
I asked the housekeeper when Mr Barnabus Woodley had last been seen at the Hall. It was in the morning of the previous day, early, before the squire’s departure to Lancaster. Woodley had attended the squire in the library, and ‘the squire was in a terrible rage with him, for the servants heard through the library door violent shouts and curses, such that none dared knock or enter, even though the fire needed attending to’. I asked if there was a servant in the establishment brave enough to go in and ask the squire if it would be convenient for me to speak with him, of practical matters connected with the inquest. Picking up the gauntlet herself, Mrs Marsden said she would do it and, a few minutes later, she returned to say that the squire would see me at once, in his library.
Chapter Twenty-one
THOUGH IT WAS bright day outside, the library was darkened by the shrouded scaffolding that still clung to the front of the house. Brockletower, sitting in the gloom, appeared to have given himself up to despondency. I found him wigless and wearing slippers and biting his nails in an almost crouching attitude on the edge of an armchair. He was looking down at a slim polished box in cherrywood with brass fittings, its lid closed, which lay at his feet on the Turkey carpet. As I came in he looked up briefly and then set his gaze downwards again.
‘So! No longer the gaolbird!’ he remarked acidly.
‘No,’ I answered neutrally. ‘That matter could not be laid so easily at my door.’
‘It was laid in your garden.’
‘Not by me. But I have not come to talk about my innocence.’
Brockletower was stroking the highly polished surface of the box with a flattened hand.
‘What, then?’
‘Principally about your late wife: the inquest.’
Brockletower fetched a heavy sigh, like a child’s.
‘Why go through all this?’ he said. ‘Should death be a matter of public titillation? All you do is rake over cold coals. The dead should be buried with dignity. My wife should be allowed to go into the night without fuss.’
‘We cannot do that. We must establish how her end came. The agency of it.’
‘The agency was some vagabond, surely.’
‘I cannot make that assumption. A suspicious death has been reported to the coroner, Mr Brockletower. As magistrate you know that my duty in such cases is not ambiguous. It is the law.’
His head dropped and I rem
embered how he had issued me with a ringing challenge when I previously made the same assertion. I am the law! he had said. All such fight was gone out of him now. What had done for it? Grief, perhaps. Or guilt. Or despair.
‘But this post-mortem examination you intend,’ he continued, with a suggestion of trembling in his voice, ‘surely that is unnecessary.’
‘I cannot agree,’ I said. ‘I value my friend Fidelis’s skills. No witnesses have come forward to tell us what happened to Mrs Brockletower, so we must rely on physical evidence. The doctor may uncover some cause, some painful disease let us say, which would assist our understanding. I shall therefore ask the jury to authorize a formal examination, which I am sure they will do.’
Brockletower shook his head slowly.
‘She was not ill. I would have known.’
‘I shall of course note that. The jury will be glad to place it in the scales of evidence.’
Brockletower heaved a deep breath, shuddering as if even the act of respiration cost him dear. ‘You do not like me very much, Cragg, do you?’
The question caught me unawares. At a loss for an answer, I began to stammer something when he cut me short.
‘Of course you don’t. Nobody does. My father was coldhearted, and my witch of a mother wasted no chance to contrast my vices with the virtues of my sainted brother. Sister Sarah conceals her true feelings under a smokescreen of loyalty, for which she has her own excellent reasons. Likewise, my servants and tenants keep their counsel, but I would wager that they too find it hard to love their squire. But let us come, finally, to the one who has most recently left me – my wifely companion. That person had come not to like me at all, in any guise or at any price, and told me so to my face.’
I could have found a few words contradicting all this, though it was probably for the most part true, and I felt no obligation to bandage Brockletower’s self-pity with lies. So I merely glanced at the mantel clock and said, ‘It is not proper for me to speak of such matters, sir. Instead I must now ask about Mr Woodley, and when it was you last saw him.’
