by Robin Blake
‘And the latter, I think, are the items that solve the legal puzzle. Medically she may have been of intermediate gender, dressed she may have seemed a woman, but the genitalia I fancy made her legally a man. Ergo, if she was legally male, her marriage could not have been valid. What flows from that?’
‘We encroach on the moral column here. What flows is the disgrace of the husband.’
‘Yes, and his financial ruin, too. Think of the debt-encumbered estates that his uncle told me of. She – let’s call her that since we don’t have another pronoun – she had inherited property and securities that kept him from sinking. She was wealthy.’
‘Jamaican sugar.’
‘Yes. And sugar is sweet. But if the marriage is sour, the husband cannot have the sweetness of the money. Her family will recoup the lot. I’m thinking this might be considered a motive for favouring murder over divorce.’
Luke shook his head.
‘No, Titus. I see it as a motive for keeping her alive. Or, if for killing her, only in such a way that it could not be detected. A violent slaying of a kind we have seen would be bound to trigger an inquest and an examination of the body – as it did. That was the last thing Brockletower could permit.’
Fidelis was right, of course.
‘Oh dear,’ I reflected, ‘we already knew it was impossible for him to have killed her in person. But I was beginning to hope that, since it appears the squire wanted an end to his marriage, we could show he killed through an accomplice, whilst he skulked in Yorkshire. But, if what happened in the Fulwood was the wrong kind of killing to be explained by that, I am no further on.’
‘You are further on, a little. He certainly didn’t kill her, or have her killed. We can say that. But you can be fairly sure he stole her body from the Ice-house – using an accomplice also, I would think.’
‘Piltdown?’
‘Why not? His woman’s son was found in possession of the body. But it was all done at the squire’s behest, I am sure. He was forced to it by the inevitability of an inquest following the murder.’
‘Which still goes down as committed by person or persons unknown,’ I said, with an exasperated groan.
For half an hour we continued to turn over these questions until, quite suddenly, the coffee-house hubbub of card players and politicians stopped, as is conversation in a theatre when the curtain rises. Fidelis and I looked out of our booth to see the cause.
‘I’ll be damned,’ whispered my friend.
Ramilles Brockletower, in his riding clothes, had made an entrance from the street. With every eye on him, and awed whispers flurrying in his wake, he stalked wordlessly into the room, checking each table until he reached ours. I saw his eyes bulge fractionally when they met mine, after which, still saying nothing, he spun around and crossed to the internal door that led through to the kitchen and the stairs. The keeper of the coffee house, Noah Plumtree, was standing there in his apron. The two men conferred and Plumtree stepped aside to allow Brockletower’s passage through. I noted that under his arm the squire was carrying something. It looked like the polished cherrywood case I had seen the day before on the floor of his library.
As soon as he had left, the chatter rose again sharply, as the room filled with speculation.
We ordered chops and another bottle of wine and, while we awaited our food, I told Luke about my meeting with Abby Talboys, and her blighted prospects in the Gargrave farmyard.
‘The silly baggage,’ he said. ‘She should have been more careful.’
The chops arrived and I was hungrily preparing to cut myself a slice when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Noah Plumtree leaning towards my ear.
‘Compliments of Mr Brockletower, Coroner,’ he said. ‘He asks would you be so kind as to attend him in our upstairs private room?’
The cherrywood case that I had seen in the Garlick Hall library rested unopened on an oak table in the centre of the private room. It was about the size of a closed gammon board, with brass catches and corners.
Ramilles Brockletower stood awaiting me, with his arms folded, and head lowered. As soon as I entered he roused himself and strode behind me to the door. With a rapid movement he turned the key, snatched it from the lock and slipped it into his pocket.
‘There. We are alone.’
He coughed, a formal clearance of the throat, and went on.
‘We’ve had our differences, Cragg. But can we agree on one thing, at least? Ours is a race of endless airs. Don’t you loathe the prattling, the cozenage and the cupidity of it? Worst of all is its preoccupation with damned trifles and trivialities. Every thought of the human race makes me heave with nausea.’
This frontal assault on humanity was, to say the least, unexpected.
‘Have you taken me from my supper just to preach misanthropy? ’ I asked.
He had begun moving slowly and aimlessly around the room, tapping his chin with his fist. It was a good-sized room floored in a polished wood, which enabled Plumtree to let it to a dancing master for his weekly classes.
‘Preach. That’s good. But I am no divine, Cragg. I have sailed across the oceans. I have seen men disembowelled. I never felt a feather’s weight of pity at the sight. I was weighed down only by a ton of disgust. I have witnessed diseased human flesh bubbling like soup over a flame, sir. Then I have witnessed it swelling up and exploding! When will your painted people, your dancing masters and fops, face that? I would devoutly like the Deluge to come again. Indeed I would, wouldn’t you? And this time let’s agree that Noah and his brood shall perish with the rest. Let everyone be swept away. We are all vermin, are we not?’
‘Your views are too extreme for me.’
He started, as if it were his turn now to be surprised.
‘But I am given to believe you are a clever man, and the possessor of a good library.’
‘I have a library, yes,’ I admitted.
‘Does your reading not lead you, then, to the same conclusion – distaste for every living man, woman and child in creation?’
‘Well, people are less tidy in person than they are in books, I grant you, but I—’
‘That’s not what I mean. I am speaking of the people who write the damnable books! Authors, sir, authors!’
He was becoming increasingly excited, raising his voice and gesticulating.
‘No better than those they scribble about. All are the same.’
Brockletower pulled a book from his pocket and threw it on the table, where, beside the cherrywood case, there stood a pair of candlesticks. Between these lay a silver pen tray containing a bunch of quills, and the book struck the tray, pushing it across the polished surface and over the table’s edge. The tray and quills scattered across the floor’s polished boards.
Ignoring the spilled pens, he pointed at the book.
‘She gave me that to read. Marked one passage specially for me, and I know why. She did it to goad me, torment me.’
I reached and picked up the book. It was volume III of the collected Tatler, a duodecimo edition, smaller than my own octavo, and in a binding not at all as well kept, but rubbed, scratched and broken at the hinges. There was a ribbon in its pages, and I opened it at the place, already feeling sure which passage I would find. And there it was: the story of Mr Eustace.
‘A paltry little tale,’ commented Brockletower, ‘of paltry people, with paltry concerns. I am ashamed she should think us comparable.’
‘Are you not, then? The circumstances seemed similar to your wife, I think.’
‘No, no, they were not a bit similar. Did you know I am hereabouts called “Black Ram”. You remember The Moor of Venice?’
‘Othello? Strange you should refer to that. Only the other day I—’
‘Now that’s similar. You know what the Black Ram did to the White Ewe?’
He laughed derisively.
‘That would be funny if it wasn’t so damned sad. My wife would have me her own Othello, in every way but the colour of my skin.’ He pulled up his
sleeve, and briefly showed me his wrist and forearm. ‘But I doubt Venice valued his wife more than mine was valued in the Jamaican circles in which I found her.’
There was a moment’s silence.
Wanting him to continue, I prompted, ‘How was that?’
‘Think, man, think! It was impossible to calculate her worth out there! A barocco pearl! Nothing like it had ever been seen before. Looked as a woman, and fucked as a man. You don’t hear of that very often.’
I remained attentive. The man was out of his mind, but not incoherent.
‘I stole it from them, their pearl. I had known her but a few days, a few days, when suddenly I found that I would risk everything for her. Of course it was criminal to be married, but only if people knew about her. I thought no one would ever find us out. Her father gave me his blessing, naturally: he was more than glad to be rid of her. But look what she’s done now – made it all public, planned my ruin. Woodley saw that. He told me. But his idea of saving me … that disgusted me as much as she’d come to disgust me. A gallows or a mollyhouse. Bad, bad choice.’
‘How did she plan to ruin you?’
He jabbed his finger at the book, which still lay open in my hand.
‘As his wife ruined the feeble Eustace. My wife wanted the same thing as happened to her, you see: to die at my hand. By that time her barren, monstrous life, her self, was as horrible to her as it was to me. I told her I did not like her enough to kill her and hang for it. I offered instead to send her back to Jamaica but she told me she would rather die than go back. And now she is dead, and I am condemned, though I did not kill her. I have read the story she found in that book, you see, and I know how it must finish. But unlike the other man, the husband in the book, I did not kill my wife, though she wanted the world to believe that I did.’
He was standing now with the table between us. His hands slid down and over the polished case that lay in front of him, his fingers fiddling with the catches. Suddenly he snapped them, flipped the lid up and showed me what the box contained. Nestling together muzzle-to-handle in a bed of red silk lay a pair of duelling pistols.
‘One of these,’ he went on, ‘is the means by which you, sir, are going to do away with me. You have initiated this business with your meddling and snooping. I know this because I have been with my uncle today. The old fool’s tongue has been running away, and told you of things that must be concealed. So now it is for you to complete the task. And, as you do it, this other piece will be the simultaneous instrument of your own death, at my hands. Just like the story. Come on, man, both are loaded. Let us duel, let us die point-blank. Take your weapon and begin.’
I backed away, thinking what little use it would be to argue with him. He was crazy.
‘Why did you kill Woodley?’ I asked, in desperation to keep him talking. ‘And why bring him to my garden?’
Brockletower’s restless movement stopped, and he frowned, as if struggling to remember the details.
‘He knew, you see, about that creature. Foolishly I had made him my confidant. I had reached a point when I had to confide, and I thought he was my friend. He stole the body when I asked him to, and arranged to hide it. But then he wanted money, the villain. So I met him on the road from Lancaster in the night, pretending I had been there for the money, and would pay him. I paid him, all right. I had the means with me: crude, and not gentlemanly, but efficient, silent and swift. The night was dark and no one saw.’
‘And my garden?’
‘Why not your garden? I feared the gallows. I wanted you to bear the burden instead of me. So I took him there at night.’
‘Why would I want to kill Woodley?’
‘How would I know? Because he was loathsome and a cheating extortioner. Because of some quarrel between you.’
In one movement, he seized both guns from the box, one by the conventional grip and the other – evidently the one meant for my use – by its barrel. He sidled around the table and advanced towards me, his own pistol pointing to the floor while he thrust the other’s handle in my direction.
‘Take it, damn you! Don’t back away! It’s time to finish this.’
I cast a wild look towards the door. I remembered it was locked and the key in Brockletower’s pocket – so no way out there. A sideways glance towards the nearest of the two casements informed me that it was a few inches open. I considered it as a means of escape for a moment, before dismissing it. I would not be halfway across the sill before Brockletower fired, killing me almost certainly with a bullet in the back even before I had bounced off the cobbles.
I had never fought a duel either with pistol or sword and was altogether ignorant of the martial arts. I agree with Mr Spectator in scoffing at the duel because it is a system designed exclusively to kill men of courage and honour, whilst preserving the lives of cowards.
I did, however, know that duels are staged only when each contestant is accompanied by a friend to hold his coat. I grasped this fact as a means of playing for time.
‘If we are to duel,’ I said, ‘we shall need seconds. Mine shall be Doctor Fidelis, who was with me below in the saloon. Permit me to go down and fetch him. At the same time you must nominate a friend of your own.’
He glowered.
‘Friend? Is it not yet clear to you, Mr Coroner? I have none.’
‘But think,’ I said hurriedly. ‘Without seconds, we cannot honourably fight. As a naval man you must appreciate how such things are arranged in civilized society.’
He was brought up short by this argument and the hand that had thrust forward the reversed pistol dropped to his side. I considered immediately hurling myself at him but when his left hand went down, his right (as if counterbalanced) came up, this one holding the second pistol in the firing position. I was looking down its barrel.
‘If you will not duel with me,’ he said, his voice choking with emotion, ‘then you give me no choice. I must kill you in cold blood, and then afterwards myself.’
‘But think of your sister,’ I protested. ‘You know the legal penalties of suicide. She would be left destitute.’
He waved the firearm in a circle threateningly, and then showed me the one in his other hand.
‘I shall do it with your weapon, sir, so that when we are discovered, they will assume death was by mutual shots, and that you killed me. That scheming creature, supposed by many to have been my wife, tried to do the same to me, you know: to have the world believe I killed her. Frightened to be put into unconsecrated ground. Feared being buried at the crossroads, with a peg malleted through her shrivelled heart.’
I had no time to reflect on these interesting words, for now Brockletower’s resolve suddenly hardened. He straightened his arm and aimed the pistol directly at my face. The muzzle was three feet from me so that I found myself looking along the top of the barrel, past the cocking-hammer and his cuff, then straight along the arm to his eye, which was narrowed and concentrated on its target. I saw his thumb come up and hook itself over the hammer as, with a dry and, it seemed, unnaturally loud click, he cocked the piece. Breathing heavily, I took a reflexive step back, and then another, until I could go no further. My back was to the wall. I was now expecting to die in a matter of seconds as, like a lunging fencer, Brockletower came in pursuit by stamping smartly towards me once, and then again, to reestablish the yard of distance between his gun and my face.
But he was concentrating all his attention on me, and not on where he was placing his feet. He had also forgotten the bunch of pens he’d spilled a few minutes earlier so that, when his feet landed on them, he was unprepared for their roller-like effect. His feet slipped uncontrollably away from each other so that, with no time to adjust his balance, he teetered, his arms jerking and his head snapping up. A moment later he went flailing to the floor and, as he did so, the back of his head struck the corner of the table. At the same instant his finger pulled the trigger and the gun exploded with a deafening crack, the ball smacking into the ceiling. As the squire landed, the un
discharged piece broke from his other hand and spun across the boards.
He lay still, stunned and bleeding from the head, with a look of staring incredulity on his face. I collected my wits, then scooped up the dropped pistol, and cocked it. I was still trembling and my heart thumped, though my fear was relieved. For a moment I was on the edge of killing him, until reason prevailed. I released the hammer and stooped to pick the key from Brockletower’s breeches’ pocket. With this I opened the door, stepped out and relocked. From the top of the stair I saw the landlord and a group of his customers looking O-mouthed up at me, brought from their pleasures by the sound of the shot. They spied the pistol in my hand and shrank back with a collective gasp.
‘Are you well, sir?’ called Noah Plumtree in an awed and trembling voice. ‘We heard the shot. What has happened? Have you killed him?’
‘I am well,’ I replied, ‘but Mr Brockletower is not. He is injured, though not by gunfire. He took leave of his senses and tried to shoot me, but accidentally fell. He struck his head and fired into the air. Go fetch a watchman to guard him until he is taken up. He’s insane and will have to be arrested.’
Fidelis shouldered his way through the bodies jamming the doorway until he was standing at the stair-foot.
‘Injured, is he?’ he called out. ‘I’m coming up, Titus.’
He took the stairs two at a time. Half a dozen others made to follow him, but I stopped them.
‘Mr Plumtree!’ I called, ‘see to it that no one else comes up to the room.’
I unlocked the door and pushed it a few inches open.
‘Mr Brockletower,’ I called through the crack. ‘I have brought the doctor to see to your wound.’
I pushed the door wide and we went in, looking around. The curtain billowed away from the casement, which was wide open, and the candlelight flashed and flickered in the draught. Of the squire, the only signs in the room were the open pistol-case still lying on the table and, on the floor beside it, a small pool of blood.
