2 A Season of Knives: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (35 page)

‘The man’s throat was cut. Yon’s a footpad’s trick.’

‘Is there no other man in Carlisle who can use a knife?’ Carey asked, rhetorically.

‘It’s a footpad’s trick,’ repeated Lowther doggedly.

‘So you actually had no other evidence or reason for thinking that Barnabus Cooke had killed Atkinson?’

Go on, thought Carey, I dare you; I dare you to say you thought I’d told him to do it. For a moment he was sure Lowther would say it, but in fact he did not, he simply stood there with his arms folded and a sour expression on his face.

‘Thank you, Sir Richard.’

Carey made a gesture of dismissal and the Coroner nodded that Lowther could go.

Michael Kerr was ready to be examined next. He gave his evidence in a mutter that the jury had to strain to hear. He had happened to go through Frank’s vennel that morning. No, he had not been sent. Yes, he did know he was on oath. No, he had not been sent, well, he had wondered if there was anything to find there. He couldn’t remember why. Yes, he knew the dead man. Yes, he was Mr James Pennycook’s factor and son-in-law. Yes, he understood Mr Pennycook had left town. He had gone to join the Scottish King’s Court, he believed. No, he didn’t know anything about anything else.

According to the list Carey had provided, the next to be called was Fenwick the undertaker who had come to fetch the body away.

He explained that he had done this but that he had been worried by many things about the body.

‘Oh?’ said Aglionby with interest. ‘What were they?’

Fenwick’s grave face was troubled and he put up one finger. ‘Considering the man’s throat was cut, there should have been blood in the wynd. There was none that I could see. There was blood on his shirt, but not his outer clothes, except the linings. He lay very straight, as if he had been arranged, quite respectfully really, and on his back which is not the way someone falls when they have been attacked from behind.’

‘I see, thank you. Sir Robert?’

‘Did you notice any tracks in the wynd, Mr Fenwick?’

He hadn’t at the time, though now he came to think about it he thought there might have been marks of a hand cart in the softer parts.

The next was Barnabus himself, brought forward under guard to stand by the cross. Of course, as one of the accused he was not allowed a lawyer, even if there had been one available. The day was warm and Carey had already started to sweat under his black velvet: Barnabus was unwell and unhappy in the sunlight after so long in semi-darkness, with his battered round brimmed hat crushed in his hands, his bruised ferret-face with its collection of pockmarks and scars making him look an ugly sight even to Carey, who was used to him. The thin film of moisture on his skin didn’t help either.

The Coroner looked at the unsavoury little man impassively.

‘Barnabus Cooke,’ he said after Barnabus had whinged out his oath with his hand on the cathedral Bible. ‘Remember you are on oath and at risk of sending your immortal soul to hell if you lie.’

‘Yes, yer honour.’

‘Did you kill Mr James Atkinson?’

‘No, yer honour. I didn’t.’

‘Why does such an important gentleman as Sir Richard Lowther think you did?’

‘I dunno, yer honour. Only I didn’t.’

‘Where were you on Monday night?’

Barnabus’s eyes darted from side to side making him look even shiftier.

‘Well, see, yer honour, I was at Bessie’s first, because my master was out wiv a patrol. Then I…I went to a house I know. Perhaps one of the girls lifted my knife while I was there. I never went nowhere near Frank’s vennel.’ Barnabus paused and then smiled slyly. ‘’Course it’s funny in a way and serves me right,’ he volunteered, while Carey winced inwardly. ‘I’ve been teaching the girls to do tricks with dice and such, and I expect one of them used ‘er lessons on me.’

Half of the people in the marketplace knew exactly where Barnabus had been on Monday night. The other half learnt it from them within a few seconds. They hissed and muttered at each other at the news that Madam Hetherington’s girls had been taking lessons in cheating at dice. Carey fought not to laugh. That would teach Madam Hetherington not to betray her customers.

‘Do you mean you were committing the sin of fornication on Monday night?’ interrupted Scrope pompously.

Barnabus didn’t look at him and nor did Carey. ‘Yes, my lord,’ said Barnabus, turning pointedly to the Coroner. ‘I wouldn’t say, if I wasn’t on my Bible oath, yer honour, but I was. I’m a poor sinner, yer honour, and if I’m sentenced to do penance for the fornication, well, I can’t gainsay as I deserve it, but I never murdered Mr Atkinson and that’s a fact. I don’t deserve to swing for a murder I never did, yer honour.’

Lowther leaned over from his place on the other side of the cross.

‘Ye’re a footpad, and that’s a fact,’ he snarled.

‘Sir Richard!’ snapped Aglionby.

‘Well yer honour, ‘e’s right and ‘e isn’t, if you follow. It’s true I was a footpad down in London, but since Sir Robert Carey took me on as ‘is servant, I’ve left my evil ways behind, sir.’

More or less, thought Carey, smiling inwardly at the strained piety on Barnabus’s face.

‘Apart from passing on what small skills I have to Madam Hetherington’s girls,’ he added reflectively, making sure the audience got the point. ‘Anyway, no footpad would make the mistake of cutting someone’s froat, yer honour.’

Aglionby raised his heavy grey brows.

‘Oh? Why?’

‘Specially me, because I’m too short. I’m about four inches shorter than Mr Atkinson, yer honour. If I’d wanted ‘im dead, which I didn’t, I’d have stabbed ‘im in the back. In the kidneys. S’much safer and less messy.’

Carey risked a glance over his shoulder to see how the people in the marketplace were taking this. A lot of them were nodding wisely. Even one or two of the jury were nodding. Barnabus, thought Carey, you don’t need me at all, do you?

‘Yes,’ said Aglionby, impressively straightfaced. ‘Thank you, Cooke.’

Barnabus stepped back among the other suspects and looked modestly at the cobbles.

Somewhere on the other side of the marketplace, Lady Scrope had arrived with the litter transporting Julia Coldale, who was helped down from it. Carey waited for the stir to die down a little, then nodded at Richard Bell to call the next witness.

That was Mrs Katherine Atkinson. She was shaking and as white as her apron. Compared with the other women watching, tricked out to the nines in their best clothes, she was a doleful hen sparrow, her blue working kirtle and her apron showing the signs of her imprisonment. She wasn’t manacled; Carey assumed Dodd had quietly forgotten Scrope’s order to chain her.

She swore her oath in a voice that was almost too soft to hear. Edward Aglionby stared at her solemnly and then said, ‘Well, Mrs Atkinson, tell us how you killed your husband?’

There was a muttering from the people. Mrs Atkinson gripped her hands tight together, looked straight up at him and said clearly, ‘I didna.’

This time there was a distinct gasp. Carey instinctively swivelled his head round to look at his sister’s face and found her very pleased with herself.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Scrope.

‘I didna kill my husband, my lord.’

‘But…but you confessed to it. Yesterday. You stood in front of me and you said you did it.’

Scrope was leaning forward, half-standing, forgetting himself in his outrage. Mr Aglionby had been very patient with him but now leaned towards him and whispered something sharp in his ear. Scrope coughed and sat down again. Carey was starting to like Mr Aglionby.

‘Please, Mrs Atkinson,’ the Coroner was saying to her. ‘Address yourself to the Court.’

‘Ay sir,’ said Mrs Atkinson, quailing at his annoyance. ‘My lord, I did say so. I’m very sorry. But I wasna on my Bible oath then, and I dare not put my soul at risk wi’ perjury.’

‘What’s your story now?’

‘’Tisn’t a story, your honour,’ said Mrs Atkinson, two hot spots of colour starting in her cheeks. ‘I lied to my lord Warden before, because I’m a poor weak-willed woman and I was frightened. But I’ve had time to think and pray to God and what I’m saying now is God’s own truth, your honour.’

Scrope sniffed eloquently but said nothing.

With the Coroner pumping her with questions, Kate Atkinson told the tale in a stronger voice now Scrope had made her angry. She told the sequence of the morning’s events, how she had left her husband sleeping in the dark before dawn and gone down to milk the cow and how Julia had come and finally brought herself to the moment when she took a tray up to her husband and found him dead in his bed.

‘Your honour,’ said Carey, stepping forward again. ‘May I?’

‘Yes, Sir Robert.’

‘Mrs Atkinson, what did the bedroom look like?’

‘Och, it was terrible, sir. It was all covered wi’ blood, like a butcher’s shambles. It was on the sheets and the blankets and the hangings and the rushes…It made me stomach turn to see.’

‘And your husband?’

‘He was lying on the bed…with…with…’

‘With his throat slit.’

She swallowed hard. Her knuckles were like ivory. ‘Ay sir,’ she said.

‘Tell me, when you got up that morning, did you open the shutters?’

She frowned at this sudden swoop away from the awful sight of her husband’s corpse. ‘I didna,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t usually; Mr Atkinson likes to sleep a little longer and it would wake him.’

‘Did you open them on this day?’

‘Nay sir, I didna.’

‘When you came up to see your husband dead, how did you see him. Was there a candle lit in the room?’

‘Nay, sir, it had burned down. I saw by the daylight…Oh.’

‘Were the shutters open by that time, then, Mrs Atkinson?’

She nodded at him. ‘Ay,’ she said in a surprised tone of voice. ‘Ay, they were, and swinging free, what’s more, not hooked back.’

‘Now tell me what happened after you saw your husband.’

She looked at the floor again and mumbled something.

‘Please speak up, Mistress,’ said Aglionby.

‘I said, I fainted, your honour. Then I couldna think what to do, so I went downstairs again and I sent my little girl Mary to fetch…to fetch my friend, Mr Andrew Nixon.’

Her brow was wrinkled now. ‘When he came, what did he look like?’ Carey asked.

‘Oh, he was not well,’ said Mrs Atkinson. ‘He’d been in a fight, and lost it by the looks of him, and his right hand was in a sling and at first he said he didna want to meet my husband because he was angry.’

‘Quite so,’ said Carey hurriedly. ‘What did you decide to do?’

‘Neither of us could think of anything, sir, so Andy…er…Mr Nixon went to his master, Mr Pennycook, to ask his advice, and he took two pieces of silver plate from my chest wi’ him, for a present.’

‘And what did Mr Pennycook advise?’

‘Well, he said we should borrow his handcart and put m…my husband’s body in a wynd and he’d see to it that ye and yer London servant got the blame, not us.’

‘How?’

‘He said he could get hold of one of Barnabus Cooke’s knives wi’ a bit of luck, for the week before he’d left it in pledge at Madam Hetherington’s, which is a house with a lease he owns. He sent Michael Kerr to Andy with it, as well as the handcart. I was busy at washing the sheets and blankets—it took all day—but I sent Mary out and Julia Coldale too and that’s when we brought his body down from the bedroom and into Clover’s byre. Clover’s my cow,’ she added, in case there was any mistake. ‘Andy got the glove.’

This recital was causing immense excitement in the crowd and Aglionby banged with his gavel. The noise died down gradually. Carey saw with interest that Michael Kerr had his face in his hands. Mrs Atkinson had fallen silent.

‘And then?’ he prompted.

‘Well, I kept the children from looking out the window by telling them a story while Andy put the body on the cart under some hay and left it in the back so I could milk Clover before sunset, and then when it was dark, Andy took the cart away.’

‘Why didn’t you send to the Keep for Sir Richard Lowther and tell him what had happened at once, as your duty was?’

Mrs Atkinson licked her lips. ‘I was too afraid to think straight. All I could see was he’d been killed; he was my husband, he’d been killed in his bed and I was about the place and so I was…I was afraid.’

‘Why?’

‘I was afraid…that I would get the blame for it, sir. I know what a terrible sin it is for a wife to kill her husband, sir, and I would never ever do it, but I knew people would say I had. And I was right, sir, they did. You did.’

‘So you decided to try and hide the body and lay the blame on me,’ said Carey sternly.

‘Ay sir. I’m sorry. I’ve done many wicked things in the past few days, sir, but none of them was murder, as God sees me, sir. I never killed him.’

‘One more thing. Exactly when was Mr Atkinson killed?’

‘I told you, sir, it must have been around dawn on Monday, between the time when I got up to milk Clover and when I came back wi’ his breakfast.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Atkinson.’