“Or observe anything strange there?”
“The house showed no life at all. And John Crookback’s dog lay slain.”
Matthew remembered the dog, alive and as it now was, the corpse in itself a pathetic little portrait of brutality. At least he would not need to uncover the motive for that crime: the dog had been in life a fierce howler and protector of his master. One wanting to usher John Crookback into the world to come would have had to reckon with the dog first.
“There was a deal of blood on the walls,” Adam continued, staring ahead of him as if seeing the entire scene again as he spoke. “I found Nicholas in the corner. He was crouched down and whimpering. I did not know what to think of it, but was sore afraid.”
Nicholas’s eyes were shut and he seemed asleep. Matthew observed for the first time that there was dried blood on the youth’s hands, which were curled around his knees; there were little blotches of blood on the sleeves of his jerkin and some on his chest. The thought struck Matthew that Nicholas might have put his parents and siblings down the well. Stabbed and drowned them himself. It was a disgusting thing to think, and he inwardly shuddered at so repellent a notion. Would a son murder his own parents and his innocent brother and sister? It was beyond Matthew’s imagining, and yet he knew he must consider everything. Then he remembered with what effort William Dees had lifted the body of John Crookback and wondered if Nicholas would have had the main strength to do the same. He wished now that the crowd had not so badly trampled the yard. Perhaps there had been marks showing whether the bodies had been dragged. He supposed that given the bloody interior of the house, it must be assumed the victims had been killed-—slaughtered—there.
“Nicholas said—made no sign to you of what happened. Or who was here?”
“He made no sign but wept piteously and cried little cries, like an animal caught in a trap,” Adam said.
“Did you see any strange footprints or marks in the earth?”
“I saw the marks of many boots, and of something dragged. I saw no man about, and no animals that were yet alive. The cows were in the milk bam still.”
While Matthew had questioned Nicholas, the parson and two men who had remained at the farm at Matthew’s request drifted over to where he squatted and stood listening. One of the men was Jacob Damley, also a farmer. A tall, rawboned man with a bristly red beard, Damley stared at Nicholas and said, in a hushed voice, “I warrant the loony did it, killed his own family. Mark you now, there’s blood on his shirt, and blood on the other’s jerkin.”
Damley had nodded in Adam’s direction and then turned abruptly to Matthew. “Ask him what he was doing here on a Sabbath morning when he should be in church. Marry, I warrant he saw more than he tells and did more than he has confessed to.”
Sensing trouble, Matthew rose to his feet and faced the farmer with a stem look he hoped would serve to remind the man that investigating the murder was his business. “That may be, but let’s not leap before we look, Jacob.”
“Well,” said Damley, glaring at Adam from under heavy brows. “I doubt we shall have to leap far for to know who John Crookback must thank for this mischief. I warned him to send the boy off to London where there are a plenty of his kind. Of what use it is to keep a son who cannot speak or hear or work but must sit all day, doing naught but enticing a gentleman’s servant to be his companion in idleness.”
“I shall ask questions, not you,” Matthew said.
“All well and good,” answered Damley, his face reddening. “I am a simple farmer, yet John Crookback was my neighbor, and if there is a murderer at large I have a right to look to my own safety as well. I have a wife. I have children. Is my own life not a thing of value? Will we sleep o’ nights with this matter unsettled?”
Matthew’s attention was drawn from this question by an anguished wail from nearby. He looked across the yard to see what it was and saw Crookback’s two older daughters and their husbands. Someone had fetched them from town, the daughters having been too skeptical of Adam’s report to have come from the church earlier. But the word of more reliable witnesses had convinced them, along with their husbands, and they were over where the bodies of John and Susanna Crookback and the two young children were laid out upon the ground in a row. Their lamentations struck Matthew to the heart, more than the sight of the corpses had done. At least the dead were beyond pain; the sight of the daughters bent over their parents and siblings’ bodies was almost too much for him to bear.
After a decent interval during which he watched the bereaved women, Matthew walked over to join them. He knew them slightly, the two husbands better than the wives because both men had businesses in the town. The elder sister was Mildred Carew, a frail, stooped-shouldered woman in a plain russet gown bulging with a young Carew shortly to come. Her husband was Miles Carew, a chandler, who was even thinner than his wife, so that the local jest was that were they both to die they could happily share a coffin and have ample room left over. The younger daughter, Agnes Profytt, had favored her father. She had sharp features and close-set black eyes. Not much above twenty, she had large breasts that occasioned much comment among the men in town and not a little discussion among the women. Her husband was Hugh Profytt, a tailor—stout, ruddy-faced, convivial, known as a pleasant fellow who had married without proper caution a woman likely to rule his roost.
Matthew removed his hat and nodded to the sisters and their husbands. He could hardly find words of condolence, for how could mere words suffice? But it was not merely condolence he sought to offer but an apology. Already he felt in charge of matters, felt that he was to blame that there was no answer yet forthcoming as to who stood so fearless of God’s wrath that he could commit the atrocity.
“I am told my brother Nicholas is yet alive,” Agnes said. Behind her her husband looked on blankly while Mildred sobbed and leaned against her own husband. “How is it that he was spared and not my brother and sister, who were as innocent as lambs? Yet they have been slaughtered, my father and stepmother as well, and Nicholas sits idly by, keeping mum as always.”
“He could not do otherwise,” Matthew said, and then felt foolish, for of course she knew.
Agnes frowned, as though her half brother’s affliction was more a perverse willfulness than an incapacity.
Her husband said, “You must admit it looks strange, Master Stock. Why should Nicholas be spared and they not? Surely it was his sin that he was bom dumb; why should grace touch him where it did not do so before?”
Matthew had no answer to this question. He was uncomfortable with theological disputes, and he felt he was being drawn into one now. These weightier matters of God’s justice and man’s fate he was content to leave to the parson. As far as Matthew was concerned, if Nicholas had been spared it was his good fortune. “Perhaps he hid and the murderer did not find him. ”
“Do you really think one man could have done this—killed them all, I mean?”
This comment came from the tearful Agnes, who had gone into the house earlier and now reported that her father’s silver plate, of which there were five good pieces of considerable value, was gone. “It is a common housebreaking,” she said. “They have taken it all.” She looked at Matthew fiercely, almost accusingly. “Four souls are dead. Too many for one man to kill himself. There must needs have been more than one murderer. Two by my reckoning.”
Matthew could not help asking what her reckoning was. She seemed so sure. Has she some evidence to offer?
“Why, Master Stock, one to distract my father while the other thrust the knife into his heart,” Agnes reasoned. “My father was a strong man. He would not simply lie down before the threat of a knife. He must have been taken from behind. And if there had been but one who attacked him, surely my stepmother mother and the children would have run for their lives.”
Matthew allowed that this reasoning had some merit yet he was loath to endorse it too strongly. He could see Agnes was heading somewhere with her theorizing. Agnes’s next comment confirmed
his suspicion.
“This is a profitable farmstead, Master Stock,” Agnes said. “Which Nicholas our half brother now can call his own. No more must he take his parents’ strictures. If you understand my meaning.”
Her meaning was clear enough, Matthew thought. Nicholas as only surviving male heir would inherit; the law was plain on the matter. That meant to Agnes’s mind that Nicholas had a reason to murder—greed, resentment, or who knew what combination of the two.
“We have been told that you will look into these murders,” Agnes said, “and would know what course you intend to take.”
“I am considering my course,” Matthew said.
“Marry, I should think it plain enough,” Agnes declared, “In light of what I have said. If you find a flaw in my reasoning, tell me what it is, Master Stock. The finger of suspicion points to our half brother who sits yonder, does it not? And since he is too simple to have done this by himself, he must have had a confederate.”
Adam, Matthew thought. Agnes was nothing if not predictable. Already he could see how she would have the tale written: Nicholas in conspiracy with Adam, two “different” creatures, each in his way. Matthew had to admit it would be a plausible tale, yet he was hardly ready to act on it. And he was not about to turn his duty over to Agnes, who undoubtedly had her own ax to grind.
“I shall satisfy you of my course of action in time,” Matthew said firmly. “You and your sister being next of kin shall be the first to know.”
“We know already,” Mildred said, looking aside at her sister, whose steady, hostile gaze confirmed that on this point the two women were in accord.
“Remember, Master Stock, we are not without influence in the town,” Agnes said. “Crookbacks lie as thick in the churchyard as Stocks. Is that not so sister?”
“It is so,” Mildred said, her jaw set as firmly as her sister’s was.
The conversation had now grown tense and Matthew was almost relieved when the parson came up to say that Sir Thomas Mildmay, the magistrate, had ordered the bodies of the dead brought into the town. “Sir Thomas will have them shown,” the parson said, shaking his head doubtfully. “He wants them laid out in the Sessions House for all to see.” “Why should he want that?” Matthew asked. “It seems every man and his brother have already seen the bodies, and an ugly sight they are. Besides, it’s unseemly. Even the dead deserve some privacy. The Crookbacks were no criminals that their bodies be on show. How will the crowd keep out?”
“I asked him the same question,” the parson said, “and was told that you were to see to it that order was maintained.” “Until Simon Hunt is able. He’s constable.”
“Simon died this past hour,” the parson said sadly. “There is no constable in Chelmsford now. Sir Thomas says you must serve until another is elected.”
Matthew felt the leaden weight of this charge. He would have gladly excused himself from it, but he could think of no effectual reason he should not do what was bidden. He had sought responsibility among his neighbors, dreamed of being alderman. None of his forbears had enjoyed such distinction, although they too had been honest men and true. There was no response of which he was capable but to say yea and do his best.
He looked at the sky. The light was failing; the air was still and cold. The house and bams of John Crookback were groping toward the night, distilling into shadows.
William Dees had returned from town with Matthew’s wagon and shrouds for the dead, and Matthew called the dead man’s sons-in-law to help him lift the bodies into the wagon. When this was accomplished, he heard Joan’s voice behind him.
“What’s to be done with Nicholas?”
He had almost forgotten about the surviving Crookback son. It was clear Nicholas could not remain at the farmhouse; no soul was sturdy enough for such an ordeal. Did the ghosts of the murdered not haunt the scene of the crime? Would the wretched lad not hear his parents’ howls for vengeance when Matthew could almost hear them himself?
“And Adam?” she said, when he did not respond at once to her question.
“Adam? Why he shall return to Burton Court.”
“His master’s steward will not have it so,” Joan said. “I heard it from this same steward, Jeroboam. The servants are terrified. They say some foreigner did the murders. Others think it is Adam Nemo who did it. They know Adam kept company with Nicholas and that Nicholas alone of his family at home has survived.
“They cannot remain here. It’s unthinkable,” Matthew said.
“We shall have them home with us, then,” Joan said, as though her word settled the matter.
“Are you not afraid?” he said.
“No,” she said, and a look of weariness passed over her face. “Only that the house goes to wrack and ruin in our long absence. Come, Matthew. This is the saddest Sabbath of all my life. The bodies of these poor dead ones go before us. Your wagon will bear a leaden burden. Let us follow after. Our lives will be changed now. You have made a hard bed for yourself and we twain must lie down in this darkness until the truth give us light.”
Chapter 3
It was a strange and solemn procession into town, along a road not the worst in England but not the best either and in any case one that only fools and madmen traveled at night. Joan and Matthew were with Dees in the creaking wagon while Crookback’s grieving daughters and sons-in-law followed on horseback. Adam and Nicholas and about a dozen other men whom the cold and gathering darkness had not driven earlier to home and hearth completed the company. Some on horses, some on foot, but all silent and respectful of the lumbering wagon’s mortal burden.
After a long winter, the road was in poor condition, full of ruts and holes, and the little company traveled slowly. A mist covered the sky; there was neither moon nor stars. A witness to this procession, standing by the roadside and cold sober, would have crossed himself thrice over and evoked a dozen saints, no matter how skeptical about the old religion.
When they arrived in the High Street it was clear that rumor’s thousand tongues had done their work. Everyone was out of his house despite the cold, standing along the street, in doorways, or upon the comers, or half tumbling out of upstairs windows, watching the procession with lantern or torch in hand and in grim silence, as though the Crookbacks had been gentry and not yeoman farmers. The soot from the wood-fires within rained slowly down on them all like a pall. Men removed their hats as the wagon passed and spoke in hushed whispers. Matthew was aware of fingers pointing, not at him or Joan but at Nicholas, and could see that Adam was also suspect—because of his association with Nicholas.
The Sessions House stood at the market cross in the center of Chelmsford, where the High Street divided into roads north and west. Supported on eight columns, it was a solid wooden structure. So crowded was the street that William Dees was at pains to get the wagon through, and Matthew had to order the crowd to make way, which it did quietly but with obvious reluctance. No one seemed to want to miss anything, although there was little to see. The corpses were shrouded; the bodies of the children were so small they might have been bags of com and have passed unnoticed completely if the horrid facts had not already become common knowledge.
Then, as Matthew and William Dees were preparing to remove the dead, the shouting began: appeals that the shrouds be removed so the bodies might be seen; prayers to heaven for the souls; expressions of horror; cries for justice, for vengeance. Shrieks as piercing as needles came from John Crookback’s daughters, whom the assembled neighbors had stirred from their melancholy and advanced to a new position of public prominence.
The crowd seemed as fascinated by the reaction of Mildred and Agnes to the deaths as they were by the mystery of Nicholas Crookback’s survival. The shouts became a growing din, which Matthew did his best to ignore. He motioned to Dees to help him lift John Crookback’s body from the wagon. He was determined not to remove the shroud. The crowd pushed forward. Someone shoved Matthew from behind. He felt hands seize his shoulders, yet he struggled on determinedly, his teet
h clenched and his heart racing, concerned about Joan but not willing to surrender his authority over the bodies.
Matthew let the stonemason bear the weight of John Crookback’s body, the dead farmer having been a tall and broad-shouldered man, and turned to see if Joan was safe. She was by the wagon, pinned in by a group of men, some of whom were among the rougher sort of the town, haunters of alehouses and brothels, former soldiers or runaway apprentices. Although they probably did not know the Crookbacks, their voices were raised as loud as any in their demands that the bodies be disclosed. It was their right to see, they shouted, a public matter, not private business. Matthew heard curses and threats and felt the anger being directed against him, as though in the absence of an agreed upon murderer he must serve as the focal point of the town’s rage and confusion.
So violent was the press and loud the cries that Matthew feared that presently the crowd would seize the bodies and satisfy their curiosity, but at that point there was a general quieting of voices as the beat of horses’ hooves was heard on the cobbles.
Matthew had finished carrying John Crookback’s little girl into the com market when he turned to see whose arrival had subdued the crowd and saw that it was Sir Thomas Mildmay, chief knight of the district and lord of the manor.
Sir Thomas was a small, neat man who made himself seem larger by his erect bearing and by lifting his chin slightly when he spoke. He was accompanied by another gentleman Matthew did not recognize, and about six other horsemen, mostly grooms and other servants from Mildmay Hall. The commotion caused by their arrival had thoroughly distracted the crowd, who now fell respectfully silent as though nothing untoward had occurred prior to Mildmay’s arrival.
Sir Thomas alone dismounted from the troop while the crowd opened up a path to the Sessions House. The lord of the manor marched immediately up to Matthew, looking quite angry. Matthew removed his hat and bowed from the waist.
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