Frobisher's Savage

by Leonard Tourney

  “Master Stock, you were present yesterday at Crookback Farm and today when it was searched for evidence. Were any weapons found, bloodstained perhaps, that might have accounted for the wounds upon the bodies?”

  “None was found,” Matthew Stock said.

  “Or any other evidence indicating murder or the agent thereof?”

  “None but what has been offered here—the bodies themselves, their disposition, and the theft of some plate, suggesting perhaps that the murderer was a housebreaker.”

  “What plate was stolen?”

  “Five silver plates, two goblets also of silver, and several pieces of good pewter.”

  “In which case,” Vernon said. “I think we have heard sufficient. Master Stock, have you anything else to say?”

  “Not at this time, Master Vernon.”

  “Then let this honorable jury confer among themselves as to what their verdict is and let those here keep good order and silence in the meantime.”

  The jury did not move from their places but whispered among themselves. Adam watched their faces, looked for some sign of where their sympathies might lie, and saw how frequently those same faces were turned toward himself and toward Nicholas. He had been informed by the clothier on their way to the Sessions House that the inquest was to be no trial for murder, only a means of determining cause of death. But Adam felt it was otherwise.

  He reckoned it must be near midnight as the coroner had warned, but no one made a move in the assembly to go home to bed. All eyes seemed fixed upon the jury, where discussion continued. Finally, Miles Pynchon, a stout greengrocer who had been appointed foreman, signaled to the coroner that the jury’s deliberations were concluded. The silence that fell now made the earlier quiet seem a din in contrast as everyone strained to hear what would be said.

  “What say you, Miles Pynchon? What verdict does the jury give? And pray you speak it so that my clerk may not require you to repeat it.”

  “As to the matter of cause, sir,” Miles Pynchon replied in a loud clear voice, “we say that John and Susanna Crookback, and the issue of the aforementioned, Magdalen and Benjamin, died of wounds received and by blade and by drowning even as Master Day declared, and that all was murder rather than misadventure.”

  “And as to the agent thereof?”

  Pynchon cleared his throat, seemed to gulp some air, and said, “On this point we cannot agree, sir. With some of our number being of one opinion and some of another, saying that evidence permits no accusation, although some of our number think it does.”

  “Well, then,” Vernon said, addressing himself to his clerk. “If such be the case, then the record must show that the verdict was murder by a person or persons unknown.”

  Adam Nemo heard this decision with great relief and he could not help smiling. He looked to where Nicholas was, but of course Nicholas had heard nothing and wore the same expression of fear and bewilderment as before.

  Chapter 7

  On the cusp of midnight, Vernon concluded the inquest, but the crowd remained about the Sessions House as though there were some ceremony yet to be performed or further announcement to be made. They remained even after Sir Thomas had admonished the people to go home and he and his friends and his servants had ridden off on all the fine horses that had turned the market cross into a paddock and left the cobbles smeared with their excrement.

  Fearful of the crowd’s temper, Matthew had taken Nicholas and Adam home, left them in Joan’s care, and then returned to the Sessions House where he found the lingering assembly had fixed its attention on Agnes Profytt and her sister, who were holding forth with their version of the murders. Others with lamps and candles filed by the bodies of the dead, which remained in their places in the Sessions House and, according to Master Vernon’s instructions, were not to be removed until the next day, although the insidious odor of decay was already blending with the smells of woodsmoke, human sweat, animal ordure, and hysteria.

  Matthew noticed too the pervading air of disquiet, the sense that nothing had been settled that had not been well-allowed before. An empty ceremony, a fruitless spectacle, he thought with disgust. Who, after all, had supposed the deaths of the Crookbacks to be anything but murder? And Matthew had taken Nicholas Crookback and Adam Nemo back home with him because he feared for their safety and, as Joan had observed afterwards, where else could either go? Nicholas could hardly return to the place of his new inheritance. What Christian soul, be he witty or witless, could abide a place where memory would be more fearsome than howling ghosts of the unavenged dead?

  And the strange little man called Adam Nemo, whose eyes were like slits and whose face was as brown as wrinkled leather, was now without employment, having been cast out of Burton Court peremptorily despite twenty years of faithful service. Neither man could sleep on the cobbles, and no charges had been preferred against them. Besides, Joan could see how high feeling in the town was running. She was mightily afraid of the number of strangers who had filled the New Inn and every other and left the alehouses so dry, it was currently observed, that nothing remained to drink but old ditch water and horse piss. Everywhere in the darkened town there was talk of the murders, and the jurymen, who were thought to have been privy to some testimony unheard by the general assembly—and may have been indeed, for how could those perched on the very rooftops or in the outward darkness of the street be able to hear more than a few words?—were now beseiged with questions from their curious neighbors as to what was said by official and witness.

  Matthew listened a while and having heard as much as he cared, and seeing that the dispersal of the people must depend finally on their own sheer weariness of talk and of standing in the cold, returned again to his house.

  “You were wise to bolt the door,” he said when she let him in, explaining to him that the whole house was in bed and she had been upstairs and had not heard his knocking. But Matthew knew that was not quite true. Joan had beforehand conducted Nicholas and Adam to their little attic chamber, but daughter Elizabeth, shamelessly bright-eyed and in her afore-bed dishevelment the very image of her mother when a young girl, was sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of chicken broth between her forearms. Matthew was too hungry himself and the savory brew too redolent of home and peace for him to question the propriety of a young girl hardly more than a child being up at such an hour. Joan served him, and the three of them sat down and what else, pray, was there to talk of but the murders?

  Joan said, “I think this should be the longest day of my life.”

  “And of mine, Mother,” Elizabeth said, her voice full of excitement. “For I have seen in it things which I never thought to have seen in this life, and heard too.”

  “You have seen too much, daughter,” Matthew Stock grumbled between spoonfuls. “Did I not tell you to stay at home? Had I known you were in the midst of that multitude I would not have been pleased.”

  “You said the same to Mother, but she went to the market cross,” Elizabeth pointed out. She smiled mischievously and kept her eyes fixed on the table.

  “The child will learn nothing of life if she is locked in when the whole town is in the street,” Joan observed. She spoke with calmness, as she always did when she contradicted Matthew’s will. “If it is murder you worry about, husband, were the two of us not safer in the midst of our neighbors than hiding away in this house where an intruder might enter at his pleasure and slit our throats, having satisfied his lust upon our bodies afore?”

  Matthew winced at this vision of criminal invasion and shook his head. He was cursed with a headstrong wife who would not readily submit to husbandly rule. Why should it surprise him if the child of her body should have the same willful nature? He despaired of finding a husband for Elizabeth, who with her rough good humor and independent nature seemed as unsuited to the yoke of matrimony as a dog to a doublet. What man in his right mind would marry her? Should she not become an old maid and tend neighbors’ children, cluck like a hen, gossiping in the chimney comer, and gr
ow sour in her solitude?

  He dropped the dangerous subject of their lack of compliance and raised one more agreeable.

  “Tomorrow I shall resume my old duties and be once more only husband, father, clothier, neighbor.”

  “But not a ferreter of things mysterious?” Joan said, looking up. Elizabeth continued with her broth but seemed disappointed.

  “Sir Thomas told me that his friend from London comes by midday to take charge. It is all arranged. He is Simeon Fuller, a man very learned in the law and acquainted with crimes and malefactors of every sort. Sir Thomas says Fuller will set all in good order.”

  ‘‘Well may he say that, ’ ’ Joan observed, collecting the bowls, all of which were empty. She went to the cupboard, addressing him over her shoulder. “Although I trow it is easier said than done, this business of finding out who did what, and why. ’ ’

  “Sir Thomas thinks it will not be difficult for Fuller.”

  “Let time disclose whether it will be difficult or easy,” Joan said. “In either case, I doubt he will do better than you would do in the same situation. Take the things you found in John Crookback’s chest. I mean the curious letter from the London goldsmith to—what was his name?”

  “Yet how little he made of it,” Matthew said.

  “Then that speaks ill of him. I know it is important.”

  “How do you know?” he asked, and by her expression knew he had asked foolishly. Joan simply knew things—not by reason but by some womanly intuition that sometimes frightened him with its uncanny power. Was it of heaven or the devil, this knowledge of what was beyond the normal senses? He prayed to God he had married no witch!

  “When this matter is settled and the truth is known, you will see, husband, that what I have said is true as the Gospels. John Crookback did not use that chest to keep useless trash, but for those keepsakes precious to him for whatever reason. Mark my words. And you, Elizabeth,” she said, suddenly turning to her daughter, who was slumped in her chair, sleepy-eyed at last. “You must to bed, and better dreams than the sights you have seen this day, with bodies dead and rotting in the market cross and no conversation save such as concerns murder and housebreaking. Fine views these to entertain a young girl’s head.”

  Joan had to stir Elizabeth from her half sleep, and then, kissing her on the forehead and blessing her twice over, she pointed her toward the door and the stairs beyond.

  Elizabeth gave a little wave of her hand and said, “good night, dear mother and dear father too,” and Matthew felt a surge of paternal emotion as he watched his daughter go off, taking one of the candles with her, for she was a light in his life, despite his frequent complaints to Joan that he had fathered a child no man could tame.

  As for Matthew, he was too wrought up to go to bed but thought he might stay up all the night, so busy was his brain. He was grateful Joan seemed similarly cursed, for he needed someone to talk to, and who better than she?

  “So to what conclusion did Sir Thomas come concerning the inquest?” Joan asked before he could speak himself. “He looked unhappy with Master Vernon’s conduct thereof. More than once I thought he looked disappointed that nothing more was resolved.”

  “He expected no indictment,” Matthew said. “He told me so himself. He told me Vernon thinks Nicholas Crookback killed his family, probably with the help of Adam. But Sir Thomas is of another mind. He thinks such a solution is too simple and that the town wants the matter settled and prefers speed to truth, just to put to rest its own fears.”

  “And what think you?”

  “I think he’s right,” Matthew said after a moment’s hesitation in which he considered his next words. “Adam Nemo has the look of an honest man, though not of English blood. I would far rather trust him than some Italian or Frenchmen.”

  Joan agreed. Whatever race Adam Nemo claimed as his own it could hardly be so untrustworthy as the Italian or French.

  “And as for Nicholas Crookback, I would as soon suspect myself of the crime as him. When I look in his face I see nothing more sinister than grief and confusion. If he knew who killed his family he would find a way to communicate it. He’s not as simpleminded as our neighbors think. I see intelligence in his eyes.”

  Joan agreed. Then they talked of what they had seen in the crowd. Matthew told her of his feeble efforts to keep order, of the dog that would not be stilled and the apprentices who broke windows. He bemoaned the shamelessness of leaving the Crookback dead exposed to public view. “And pray what was accomplished thereby but stir the grief and fears of the town and reap profit for our local merchants of drink and the innkeepers and brothels? Had the Crookbacks been malefactors, the exposure of their bodies would have served some redeeming example of vice to be shunned. But to treat innocent souls in such a manner outrages decency.”

  “The funeral is tomorrow in the afternoon. They will be buried in the churchyard,” Joan responded, suppressing a yawn. “I must go to bed now, husband. My eyes bum from the candle and from weariness. I cannot stay up more. Come. Enough of this talk of the dead. Come to bed.”

  Husband and wife had set their course in that very direction when a pounding came upon the door, the sound of muffled voices was heard, and the clatter of cobbles thrown against the house. Joan looked at Matthew with alarm.

  “Some trouble, I warrant,” he said, nudging her toward the stairs and commanding her in a voice that brooked no denial that she should take immediate refuge above.

  Matthew didn’t know what trouble it was, but he thought it must be roisterers from one of the alehouses, or some honest townsmen with some grievance. He hated the thought of going back out into the cold, and as he made his way through the shop he imagined how he might appease the complainers and still stay withindoors. Promise them a pot of beer when next they met, or a patch for their doublets. The pounding sounded the note of urgency, but the casting of cobbles bespoke anger.

  *

  Despite his injunction that she go to bed, Joan had followed him as he went with his candle through the dark shop to the door. When he drew near he could see through the nearly opaque glass of the mullioned windows the flickering light of torches. He told Joan to stay back from the door. The pounding came again, and now loud voices commanding him to open. Some of the voices he recognized, but their tone had naught of friendship in it.

  He gave Joan the candle, unbolted the door, and opened it. Outside were about twenty or so men and a few women. Matthew recognized Agnes Profytt and her husband, and several members of the coroner’s jury. William Dees was also there and seemed to be the leader.

  “What is it?” Matthew asked, afraid he knew the answer.

  “We would know if you have Nicholas Crookback within.”

  “And Master Burton’s servant, Adam Nemo,” added Hugh Profytt.

  A rumble of voices from the other men affirmed that this was undeniably the purpose of their visit.

  “What if I do?” Matthew answered, trying to keep his voice steady. “What business is that of yours, William Dees, or of yours, Hugh Profytt?”

  This response seemed not to be what either of the men addressed expected, for an awkward pause followed, during which Matthew and the men stood looking at each other as though both sides expected the other to speak next. Agnes plucked on her husband’s sleeve and whispered something in his ear. The pair seemed confused by Matthew’s opposition.

  “I have taken them in for the night, seeing that neither has a place to go,” he said, his confidence growing a little.

  “Well, we like not that,” said Hugh Profytt.

  “What don’t you like?”

  “That you have taken them within your doors.”

  “They are my doors,” Matthew said. “May I not invite within whomever I choose?

  “I suppose you may,” said Hugh, looking at his companions uncertainly, “yet still we like it not.”

  “What he’s trying to say, Matthew,” William Dees said as he came forward, “is that we do not think it fitting that
one suspected of murder be treated as a guest in an honest man’s house.’’

  Matthew waited until the murmurs of assent to this principle died down before responding.

  “No warrant issued from the coroner’s inquest,’’ Matthew said. “I am not aware that either Nicholas Crookback or Master Burton’s servant is suspected of anything, much less murder. If you have more evidence than was presented earlier this night, I suggest you take it to Sir Thomas and let him have a look at it. If he finds it material, he can let me know of it and I will turn my guests, as you call them, over to him or to any other officer.”

  “We have such evidence,” declared Agnes Profytt in a shrill voice. Agnes’s husband turned, and the men closest to the door allowed a person whom Matthew had not recognized before to advance. The man was shabbily dressed and he walked with a limp. Matthew recognized him and nodded.

  “This is Sawyer,” Hugh Profytt said. “He has come all the way from London to bring us evidence.”

  “What manner of evidence?”

  Sawyer was now pushed forward and urged to speak. It was clear from the man’s bleary eye and unsteady gate that wherever he had come from earlier that day, he had spent the more recent hours in some alehouse.

  “I saw your Adam Nemo, as he is called, on the morning of these murders,” Sawyer said, his voice thick and husky. “He was in a foul mood when I met him.”

  “Where did you meet him?” Matthew asked.

  “Why, even as he was walking toward Crookback Farm. As I hope for heaven, he had the look of a murderer about him, and he was swearing out mighty oaths of vengeance upon John Crookback for what he did.”

  “Mighty oaths—against John Crookback?”

  “The very man,” said Sawyer.

  “What did he claim the farmer had done?”