A Rustle of Silk: A new forensic mystery series set in Stuart England (A Gabriel Taverner Mystery)

by Alys Clare

  I hadn’t expected to meet my friend again.

  But now he stood on my doorstep.

  I threw the door wide open. ‘How good it is to see you again! Come in – there’s beer in the kitchen, cool and refreshing, and—’

  The big man interrupted me. ‘Thank you, but we must save our celebrations for another time, for I am here in my official capacity.’ His expression grew serious, and it seemed to me that he drew himself up straighter, as if coming to attention. ‘My name is Theophilus Davey, I am the coroner, and I have come in search of Doctor Gabriel Taverner.’ The humour flashed again, just for an instant. ‘Unless you are an intruder, I would say that you are he?’

  Our previous acquaintance hadn’t been the sort to encourage a man to vouchsafe his name and station: as far as appellations had been necessary, we had called each other ‘Julius’ and ‘Devon’. Silly maybe, but it was that sort of evening.

  ‘Yes,’ I said now. ‘I’m Gabriel Taverner. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’d like you to come and look at a body,’ said Theophilus Davey. ‘It’s at Old Ferry Quay, down on the Tavy and not far from here. I understand that you are the nearest doctor, which is why I have sought you out.’

  I knew the place. Old Ferry Quay was on the river to the south-west of Rosewyke, a few miles north of where the Tavy meets the Tamar and their conjoined waters tumble on down to Plymouth. Once it was busy with small craft going to and fro across the river, but now it had fallen into disuse. There was a wooden landing stage, a huddle of tumbledown sheds and deserted dwellings and a tavern that barely warranted the name, being the sort of filthy, sordid place that is the last resort of those far gone in addiction. There they sell gut-rot spirits whose only advantage is their cheapness. I very much doubted that this was the first time one of its desperate clientele had been a victim of the ultimate violence. Unless, of course, the poor soul had finally succumbed to the poison of the cheap alcohol, or fallen in the water and drowned.

  ‘I suppose you want me to come with you to confirm death?’ I asked the coroner.

  He grinned briefly, that quick flash of humour once again lighting up his sombre expression. ‘Not much doubt he’s dead, doctor. The rats have eaten quite a lot of his face.’

  ‘Ah. I see.’ I thought quickly: what would I need? Were the right tools and equipment in my bag? Yes. ‘Wait here – I’ll fetch my horse.’

  Shortly afterwards, we set off. Reaching the end of the track, I went to turn left, towards the road that runs roughly south-west, following the course of the river but on higher ground – but Theophilus Davey stopped me. ‘There’s a short cut we can take, avoiding quite a long detour,’ he said. ‘I just came up that way. It’s a bit of a scramble in places, but it’ll save time.’

  I was going to say that surely a few minutes here or there didn’t make much difference since the man was dead, but stopped myself. Perhaps coroners were duty-bound to act always as swiftly as they could. ‘Lead on,’ I said instead.

  We took a narrow track leading down to a lower level, our mounts treading carefully as we followed its bends and curves, hugging the contours of the river bank. In a couple of places the path descended right down to the water, only to climb up again, sometimes very steeply, until once again we rode close to the summit of the bank. Then, after perhaps three or four miles, we made a final descent, emerging on to the foreshore where once a fully operational wooden quay had stood. Four men stood together by the water, heads together, quietly muttering. They greeted the coroner with a touch of the forelock. On the ground behind them lay a stretcher on which there were two folded blankets. The men, undoubtedly, were there to take the body away.

  We had arrived.

  The place was much as I remembered it, although now even more dilapidated. The end dwellings on the ancient row of habitations had collapsed into a pile of wood and plaster. The quay had lost some more of its structure. The tavern seemed to be hiding away in shame, huddled into the bank, its walls stained with mould and green streaks where rain water had leaked from broken gutters, and it gave the appearance of having been deliberately camouflaged. It seemed to be deserted: at some time, someone had broken the door down and now it sagged against the entrance to the dark little passage beyond. A couple of planks had been nailed across the doorway, although quite why anyone would have taken the trouble thus to deter intruders, I couldn’t have said.

  The coroner dismounted, and so did I. We tethered our horses – he rode a thick-set, heavy-bodied bay mare with sturdy legs and a luxuriant black tail – and I followed as he led the way towards the row of tumbledown houses.

  The corpse was propped up against the ruins of the last hovel still standing. It leaned on the rear wall, facing into the river bank so close behind, and was not visible until we had walked round the end of the row. ‘How was it found?’ I murmured to Theophilus Davey. ‘He’s well-hidden here.’ Having just noticed the sex of the corpse, I quickly changed from the impersonal it to he. ‘Did someone smell him?’

  ‘They did,’ the coroner agreed shortly. ‘A fisherman came down to the foreshore to gut and clean his catch and had an unpleasant surprise.’

  I took a step closer to the body. As Theophilus Davey had warned me, the cheeks had been eaten clean away. The eyes were mere bony sockets, and the flesh of the lips had been nibbled. The damage had been done by rats, certainly, but also by maggots. Blowflies are attracted to the blood when a corpse has an open wound: here, they had colonized the body and laid eggs in the nostrils, eyes and mouth, and these eggs had hatched and instantly begun eating. The rats had joined the banquet, eating the exposed flesh of face and hands and one bare foot.

  I had initially judged that the body was that of a man by the prominent brow ridges and the generally heavier build; he had not been a large man, but, even so, few women were as broad in the shoulder. Now that I looked more closely, I saw that the rags of clothing – animals and insects had been busy there, too – looked like a man’s. Hose, one tall leather riding boot – heaven knew where the other one was: in the river, likely as not – and what could once have been a doublet or tunic, now so matted with bird and animal faeces, mud and blood that it was impossible to tell the colour.

  There was no mystery as to how the man had died.

  The body was in a sitting position, the head with its thatch of dirty, tangled hair reaching to just below the narrow sill of a mean little window. There was a blade of some sort thrust deep into the belly, and the corpse’s hands – what was left of them – were clasped around the weapon’s broken-off shaft.

  I straightened up and stood back, gazing down at the body. Theophilus Davey, standing a little apart as if giving me the space in which to inspect and think, kept his silence. I realized I was glad of his company: he had a presence, there was no denying it, and all at once, in that dark, sinister place and facing a body dead by violence, I knew I was very glad not to be alone.

  ‘Dead, as you already knew,’ I said eventually, ‘and it happened perhaps as much as a week ago.’ Blowfly eggs hatch in a day, but even a big swarm of maggots takes time to strip the flesh off a body. ‘The cause of death is obvious.’ I pointed to the blade, driven in at an upward angle, under the ribs and towards the heart. ‘And, from the way the hands are clutching the weapon, it looks very much like suicide.’

  FOUR

  Theophilus Davey and I stood watching as the four men picked up the corpse and placed it, still in its hunched position, on its side on the stretcher. One of them turned away to vomit. I didn’t blame him. As the body had separated from the ground there was an unpleasant squelching sound. Where the buttocks had rested there was a seething pit of maggots. It was a relief to all six of us when the hideous sight of what had been a man was finally covered with the blankets.

  The coroner turned to me. ‘I shall take the corpse back to my house, which, for your information because sooner or later you’ll need to know, is also the place from which I carry out my official duties. It’s at Withyb
ere, which as you undoubtedly know is this side of Plymouth, and I’m between the village and Warleigh Point.’ He hesitated, and I thought his expression was asking something of me.

  ‘Do you wish me to come with you?’

  He shook his head. ‘No need for the present.’ He smiled briefly. ‘I just wanted to make sure you knew where to find me if I have cause to summon you.’

  ‘I’ll be happy to come,’ I said truthfully. ‘Any time.’

  I realized that I liked Theophilus Davey.

  He held out his hand. ‘Farewell for now, Doctor Taverner.’

  I took his hand. ‘Goodbye, Coroner Davey. My name’s Gabriel,’ I added.

  ‘Not Devon?’ His grin widened. ‘And my friends call me Theo.’

  Then he mounted his big bay mare and rode off up the winding path to the top of the bank.

  I would have gone with him willingly if he’d asked, for I was sure there was more that the body could tell me about how the man had met his death. I was, however, relieved that he hadn’t asked, for I had a different and quite pressing errand.

  From the place where the path leading up the river bank met the main track, it was no great distance to Ferrars. I didn’t really fear for my sister’s safety, because I reckoned Jeromy would be home now, and, as well as him, there were the servants. Nevertheless, the fact remained that a dead body had been found in the vicinity, and, even though it looked very much like death by suicide, I knew I wouldn’t be reassured until I’d paid my sister and her husband a visit.

  Although I tried not to, I couldn’t help thinking that there were an awful lot of men I’d prefer to have by my side when danger threatened than Jeromy Palfrey. Virtually every adult male I’d ever met, in fact.

  The other pressing reason for a swift visit to my sister’s house was that my hands stank of rotting meat.

  As I rode along the track above the river, I distracted my mind from the stench by thinking about a subject I had studied during my years at sea: namely, the effect of dirt on open wounds. I didn’t understand the reasons, but my lengthy experiments had led me to believe that dirt made cut flesh more liable to the redness, swelling, accumulation of pus and, finally, dark red streaks and bad smell that always lead to amputation. On the last of the Queen’s ships on which I sailed, where my seniority was sufficient for me to have the captain’s ear, I imposed a particularly ruthless routine of swabbing decks, washing both blankets and clothing and regular sea bathing that had the grumbling crew in a perpetual state of resentment. They weren’t so recalcitrant, however, after we’d been into action. We had a high number of wounded, and the marked difference in healing between those who’d gone along with my dictates and those who hadn’t was enough to convince the dirty ones – those among them who survived their infections – that perhaps the ship’s surgeon was right. The captain thereafter made it a rule that sailors going into action had to don a clean shirt.

  I rode into the stable yard behind the flamboyantly impressive house where my brother-in-law had installed his wife. I can’t say I liked Ferrars: it was built of brash red brick, with turrets on the three towers that rose up at either end and in the middle of the long central wing, and whoever had built it hadn’t missed one opportunity to elaborate and over-decorate. The plain lines, as a consequence, were smudged and complicated by too much fussiness, and the whole building seemed to be shouting, Look at me! I was built by a very rich man with money to burn!

  A groom busy in the stables came out to greet me, and showed me where to wash. He didn’t ask what on earth I’d been doing and I didn’t tell him. He led Hal away to give him a drink and a rub-down, and I went on into the house.

  I found my sister peacefully sewing by an open window, the sun making highlights in her smooth fair hair. She smiled in greeting, depositing her sewing to get up and give me a hug.

  ‘Where’s Jeromy?’ I asked as we sat down. ‘I thought you said when I last saw you that he’d be at home by now?’

  ‘He was home,’ Celia said. ‘I said – as you’ve clearly forgotten – that he was about to come home but then was going away again.’

  ‘Ah.’ She was quite right; I had forgotten.

  ‘He’s gone to Dartmouth to receive a consignment of very valuable silk,’ my sister said importantly. ‘Apparently it’s something really special: a new line fresh from Venice, with some wonderfully rich colours and patterns, that Nicolaus Quinlie hopes will prove irresistible. Because it’s so costly, however, he wants to try it out by acquiring only a limited amount to start with.’

  ‘So that the outlay is not too great in the case of its not selling.’ I nodded. ‘Well, he’s a businessman. He doesn’t like to lose money.’

  Celia ignored that. I’d noticed that she didn’t like to hear criticism of her husband’s employer. ‘We shall have some of it here,’ she said. I glanced at her, for I didn’t detect the usual note of excited anticipation normally present in her voice when she spoke of improvements to her house. Getting up and pacing around – there were new hangings at the windows since my last visit, and Celia wore yet another gown I hadn’t seen before – it occurred to me that perhaps the joy of even the most sumptuous silk in the world paled when you were the person who had to turn it into furnishings and garments.

  ‘When do you expect him home?’ I asked after a moment, stopping my pacing.

  She paused in her stitching, raising her head and looking out of the window. ‘I’m not sure.’ She turned to me. ‘Often he’s unable to say how long he’ll be absent.’ She gave me a teasing smile. ‘Ships take their own good time reaching port, Gabriel, as you’re surely the first to appreciate.’

  I sat down beside her on the window seat – heavy pale-green silk, the colour of the finest jade, so smooth to the touch that you could feel the sheen with your fingertips – and studied her surreptitiously. She had lost the slight plumpness she’d gained after her visit to our parents; a natural concomitant to having ceased to pack away our mother’s gargantuan meals, no doubt. She still looked pale, and also a little strained, I thought.

  ‘Your servants take good care of you?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, indeed they do.’ She carried on sewing.

  ‘And …’ This was delicate: I wanted to make quite sure she was well protected, with some strong, reliable male servant to check all the doors and windows were securely fastened at night, but without alarming her by telling her I’d just found a dead body down by the quay not half a mile from her house. ‘And you feel safe here alone?’

  She dropped her sewing in her lap with what I thought was unnecessary violence. ‘Gabriel, I’ve just said the servants look after me! That includes a twilight ritual of bolting doors and barring windows that at times makes me feel like a prisoner in my own home! Yes, I feel perfectly safe. Thank you,’ she added. I could hear the effort it took.

  I stood up and resumed my pacing. She endured it for a short time, then said, ‘What is the matter with you? You’re like a – a – a cat with piles. Can’t you sit still for five minutes?’

  I grinned. I had never studied a cat with haemorrhoids, and I doubted Celia had either, although it seemed likely such a creature would be reluctant to sit down. It was reassuring to hear my sister resort to the crude language of our childhood, however; sometimes it seemed that her marriage to Jeromy had taken away for ever the little girl with the smutty face and the dirty knees who used to tuck her skirts out of the way so that she could pretend she was a boy and join in her brothers’ games. It still rankles with Nathaniel, I know quite well, that Celia was a better shot with a catapult than either of us. If I’m honest, it still rankles with me, too.

  ‘I should be on my way,’ I said. ‘I only came to make sure you—’ I caught sight of her expression and stopped. ‘Er, because I was passing and I haven’t seen you for a few weeks,’ I said instead. ‘I won’t disturb you further.’ I went to kiss her goodbye.

  She grabbed hold of my hand and, just for a moment, held on hard. ‘You don’t disturb me,’
she said very quietly. ‘I’m always pleased to see you.’ Then she raised her head, gave me a bright smile and let me go.

  Still I couldn’t leave well alone. ‘If Jeromy should be delayed and you feel like company, come and stay at Rosewyke,’ I said. I felt anxious about her although I couldn’t have said why. Trying to disguise any sign of it that might have crept into my voice, I added, ‘Since Sallie seems to be on a crusade to prove to you what a fine cook she is, I get far better food when you’re staying so you’d be doing me a service.’

  She smiled. ‘Thank you, Gabriel,’ she said. ‘If I get lonely, I’ll come.’

  It was, I felt, the best I was going to get. I took my leave and set off for home.

  Theophilus Davey said to himself, If I don’t find a name for that blasted, stinking, disgusting, rotting thing in the next few days, I’m going to bury it anyway and sod the consequences.

  It was almost a week later, and he had had no luck in identifying the dead body in the cellar of the building that served both as coroner’s office and his own private residence. The house was large, and built on three storeys above the extensive stone cellar that was the oldest part of the building. The ground floor and cellar formed Theo’s official headquarters and the top two floors were his private residence, which he shared with his wife and three young children, each of whom had been taught from their days of earliest understanding that visiting their father while he was at work was as strictly forbidden as one of the Ten Commandments, transgression being highly likely to be punished as harshly and certainly more swiftly. Both Theo and his comely but strong-minded wife knew only too well that the matters regularly discussed in Theo’s office were not for childish ears.

  His children, wide-eyed in fascinated horror, were already asking about the funny smell. As for his wife …