A Dark Anatomy (21 page)

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Authors: Robin Blake

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I took a deep draught of wine and refilled my glass.
‘Yes,' I said, refilling my glass. ‘He might very well have felt
that. And it might have been the very reason he decided to absent himself on a trip to Lancaster.'
At that moment there was a voice, loud and urgent, outside the door. I heard my name. Then abruptly William Pearson burst into the room.
‘Mr Cragg,' he panted. ‘I've brought a horse from your home. Mrs Cragg said it was best, to save time, as you must come, and quick. Mrs Brockletower's found, sir!'
As I rose, Fidelis hesitated.
‘I wish I could come with you, Titus. But first I must attend the Mayor. His toothache requires prescription.'
‘We shall meet later,' I told him. ‘No doctor can afford to leave a mayor in pain.'
Hurriedly Pearson and I left Fidelis and took Moor Lane, the road that skirts the town to the north. Pearson gave me a detailed account of what had happened at Garlick Hall since I was last there, scenes from a drama in which Timothy Shipkin had again played a climactic role. On the previous day, strengthening work had continued at the Temple of Eros, overwatched by the militia man posted by Sutch. But by evening word had come of the death of Barnabus Woodley, upon which the workmen's camp fell into despondency and then truculent anxiety. Neither the Temple of Eros nor the Hall's pediment were fully finished. They wanted to know who would complete the work, and what about their pay if they were to be laid off?
Led by Ganger Piltdown, a group went to the squire, who had returned from his business engagements in Lancaster. Closeted in his library, he would not see them. Back in the camp there were loud words and cuffing fists, not least among the women. At dawn next morning Piltdown and simple Solomon were missing.
At just the same time, Shipkin, as he made his way to work
towards Shot's Hill, came upon the same Solomon stumbling through the woods. He was carrying in his arms a large, long bundle wrapped in sailcloth. When he saw Shipkin coming towards him, Solomon was immediately alarmed. He let his burden roll to the ground and made off at a run into the trees. Shipkin came forward to examine what had been dropped, and found the canvas to be a large bag, and that this had been used to make the improvised shroud of a human body – Dolores Brockletower's.
‘It is remarkable that this is the second time Timothy Shipkin has found Mrs Brockletower's body,' I observed. ‘Was Solomon alone?'
‘Timothy saw no one else with him. But day was not fully broken, and light was not the best.'
In the midst of my own excitement, I wondered if the woodsman himself had been disappointed in the discovery. He had declared the dead woman raised by diabolic force, a delusion further strengthened by the local talk of werewolves. His certainty would have to be revised now.
As soon as Shipkin raised the alarm, the sergeant was sent for, and he instigated a thorough, military manhunt in the woods, though this was called off by noon, without result. The squire might have had little stomach for my presence but, in view of the return of his wife's body, he was forced to send Pearson to fetch me. Meanwhile orders were given to bring her to the Ice-house, pending my arrival. There were to be double sentries at the door.
I went first to the Ice-house, just to be certain of the identification. I entered, doffed my hat and then clapped it back on to ward off the cold. Mrs Brockletower lay once again on the central table, but now enclosed in the sailcloth bag, of a type I had seen before at building sites under use for the storage
and transport of the longer type of tool – two-handled saws, surveying poles, and the like. Whatever its original use, such a bag was well suited to the business of smuggling a corpse.
I pulled the bag open and looked upon the dead one's face. It had become bloated and discoloured since my last sight of it, taking on a surface appearance something like a universal bruise, the skin all yellows and browns, mottled and marbled by blacks and blues. But it was without any doubt at all the face of the late mistress of Garlick Hall.
I felt deeply oppressed by this sight, and by the cold and gloom of the place. So, having made my verification, I quickly slipped back outside. Nothing now could be done about these remains until Dr Fidelis came, but I hoped on the morrow he would conduct his post-mortem examination. So after a brief word of encouragement to the two sentries (warning them to keep each other awake at all costs) I hurried back to the house, where I found Mrs Marsden and secured the use once more of her sitting room as my headquarters.
I asked the housekeeper when Mr Barnabus Woodley had last been seen at the Hall. It was in the morning of the previous day, early, before the squire's departure to Lancaster. Woodley had attended the squire in the library, and ‘the squire was in a terrible rage with him, for the servants heard through the library door violent shouts and curses, such that none dared knock or enter, even though the fire needed attending to'. I asked if there was a servant in the establishment brave enough to go in and ask the squire if it would be convenient for me to speak with him, of practical matters connected with the inquest. Picking up the gauntlet herself, Mrs Marsden said she would do it and, a few minutes later, she returned to say that the squire would see me at once, in his library.
 
 
T
HOUGH IT WAS bright day outside, the library was darkened by the shrouded scaffolding that still clung to the front of the house. Brockletower, sitting in the gloom, appeared to have given himself up to despondency. I found him wigless and wearing slippers and biting his nails in an almost crouching attitude on the edge of an armchair. He was looking down at a slim polished box in cherrywood with brass fittings, its lid closed, which lay at his feet on the Turkey carpet. As I came in he looked up briefly and then set his gaze downwards again.
‘So! No longer the gaolbird!' he remarked acidly.
‘No,' I answered neutrally. ‘That matter could not be laid so easily at my door.'
‘It was laid in your garden.'
‘Not by me. But I have not come to talk about my innocence.'
Brockletower was stroking the highly polished surface of the box with a flattened hand.
‘What, then?'
‘Principally about your late wife: the inquest.'
Brockletower fetched a heavy sigh, like a child's.
‘Why go through all this?' he said. ‘Should death be a matter of public titillation? All you do is rake over cold coals. The dead
should be buried with dignity. My wife should be allowed to go into the night without fuss.'
‘We cannot do that. We must establish how her end came. The agency of it.'
‘The agency was some vagabond, surely.'
‘I cannot make that assumption. A suspicious death has been reported to the coroner, Mr Brockletower. As magistrate you know that my duty in such cases is not ambiguous. It is the law.'
His head dropped and I remembered how he had issued me with a ringing challenge when I previously made the same assertion.
I am the law!
he had said. All such fight was gone out of him now. What had done for it? Grief, perhaps. Or guilt. Or despair.
‘But this post-mortem examination you intend,' he continued, with a suggestion of trembling in his voice, ‘surely
that
is unnecessary.'
‘I cannot agree,' I said. ‘I value my friend Fidelis's skills. No witnesses have come forward to tell us what happened to Mrs Brockletower, so we must rely on physical evidence. The doctor may uncover some cause, some painful disease let us say, which would assist our understanding. I shall therefore ask the jury to authorize a formal examination, which I am sure they will do.'
Brockletower shook his head slowly.
‘She was not ill. I would have known.'
‘I shall of course note that. The jury will be glad to place it in the scales of evidence.'
Brockletower heaved a deep breath, shuddering as if even the act of respiration cost him dear. ‘You do not like me very much, Cragg, do you?'
The question caught me unawares. At a loss for an answer, I began to stammer something when he cut me short.
‘Of course you don't. Nobody does. My father was coldhearted, and my witch of a mother wasted no chance to contrast my vices with the virtues of my sainted brother. Sister Sarah conceals her true feelings under a smokescreen of loyalty, for which she has her own excellent reasons. Likewise, my servants and tenants keep their counsel, but I would wager that they too find it hard to love their squire. But let us come, finally, to the one who has most recently left me – my
wifely companion
. That
person
had come not to like me at all, in any guise or at any price, and told me so to my face.'
I could have found a few words contradicting all this, though it was probably for the most part true, and I felt no obligation to bandage Brockletower's self-pity with lies. So I merely glanced at the mantel clock and said, ‘It is not proper for me to speak of such matters, sir. Instead I must now ask about Mr Woodley, and when it was you last saw him.'
He turned his face to me briefy, then looked away again, as if it were painful to meet another human gaze.
‘I interviewed him early yesterday morning in this room, before I rode to Lancaster. I was told upon my return, late at night, that he was dead. That is all I can tell you.'
‘You quarrelled, I have heard.'
‘I gave him a piece of my mind, yes.'
‘What about?'
‘The works. Costs, delays, matters of that kind.'
‘How do you think he died?'
Brockletower gave an exaggerated shrug, as if trying to disburden himself of something.
‘One of his workmen, I suppose. They are ruffians. They came down in a mob, baying to see me, you know. I had the idlers turned away.'
Beyond the window I could hear the sound of a whistling
man and the creak of an axle passing the window: a barrow loaded perhaps with stone or brick or sacks of sand.
‘They are not idle now,' I observed. ‘They're working again. They still hope to be paid, I suppose.'
‘Ha!'
It was a laugh of pure contempt. I cleared my throat and rose to leave.
‘The inquest will convene early tomorrow morning at the Plough Inn and, if the jury authorizes it, the post-mortem will no doubt follow in the forenoon. I trust I shall see you at the inn, sir, and that you will give your evidence.'
As I spoke I noted that the squire had begun gently to shake, seized by some new inner quaking. His face, already grim, was now set in a mask of desperation. When I rose to leave him, he sprang to his feet and reached out to detain me by gripping my forearm. He was behaving like an actor at Drury Lane.
‘Cragg! Look, I am humbling myself, and I don't do that lightly. I am begging you, beseeching you. Don't proceed with this plan. Don't ask the jury to have this doctor cut open her … her body. I cannot bear the thought of it.'
As gently as I could I prized his fingers from my arm.
‘I am sorry. But I must.'
His face instantly hardened again, then he turned away.
‘Then there is nothing for it. Do not refer again to anything,
anything
, I have said in this room, Cragg. I shall deny it if you do. You understand?'
I said that I did, but gave him no assurance.
 
The afternoon wind was gusting and the trees that stood in massed ranks around the house and garden were as restless as the sea. I left the yard by way of the arch and skirted the side of the house until I reached the front, where I found operations
had recommenced on the facade and pediment, under the direction of a fellow who, I gathered, had for years been Piltdown's second-in-command. Of the ganger himself, there was no trace.
The work had evidently reached a critical juncture. Three men were getting ready to raise a large piece of masonry in the shape of a beam up the side of the house, securing it to a stout rope that hung down the facade. It was part of the parapet that would run around the edge of the roof, or so I guessed, for the stone rested on a neat stack of similarly proportioned dressed stones.
I stood and watched the proceedings. The three men who had tied the rope in place now took the strain and began hauling on the rope's free end. The rope ran up to a pulley mounted on a sturdy wooden bracket that protruded above the roof, passed over the wheel and returned to the ground, where its other end had been securely tied to the stone block. A fourth and a fifth man stood waiting on high to receive the delivery.
It was a heavy pull and I could hear the men grunting, the rope groaning and the pulley squeaking as they hauled it upwards in jerky fashion. When the stone had reached a height of some thirty feet they paused for breath, while the man at the rope's end laboriously wound it around his body for extra security.
At this precise moment we heard an inarticulate, almost bestial cry behind us. It had come across the lawn, from the direction of the trees that surrounded and obscured the tongue of grass that led to the hidden Temple of Eros. I turned and to my astonishment I saw Solomon, the man-child, trundling towards us across the lawn. He had his arms extended and he was uttering a sound that seemed compounded of the lowing of an unmilked cow, and a pig's slaughterhouse squeal.
The reason for Solomon's obvious distress became clear
when we heard a second voice issuing from the trees beyond. It was a sonorous parade-ground shout – the voice, as none of us doubted even before we saw him, of Sergeant Sutch.
‘Lay hands on that man! In the name of the King, arrest him I say! Stop him!'
The voice was followed immediately by the man it belonged to, emerging from the trees in zealous pursuit of his quarry like a hunter that has flushed a hare from the covert. He proceeded towards us at a regular, military trot, the various accessories of his uniform, pouches, powderhorns and the like, flapping up and down in time with their owner's step.
Before I had time to take adequate stock of these events, the enormous form of Solomon was abreast of me. I reached out, and my fingers briefly closed on a fold of his shirt, but he battered my hand away with his clenched fist and blundered on.
He seemed to be making with purpose towards Piltdown's deputy, a dark and sallow man who spoke with a Welsh accent. Solomon was extending his arms imploringly as he continued to groan and squeal and stumble towards the only man who, as he may have thought, could save him from the sergeant's wrath. The Welshman seemingly in no mood to assist, or possibly misunderstanding the appeal as a threat, dodged round to the other side of the heap of stone blocks, where he adopted what looked a pathetically inadequate, half-crouching defensive pose.
The three men on the rope, with backs turned and bent to their task, were not in a position to apprehend their colleague, nor even to apprehend the danger he brought. Anchored to the rope like boats at their moorings, they were unable to act in any way at all. But, in the event, none of us could perceive the disaster that was about to befall. Solomon careered on towards the stack of masonry, his bewilderment made more fearful by the barks of the sergeant behind him. As he reached it he hesitated
for a fraction of a moment, then lurched to the side in an attempt to run around the stones and reach his object. Unfortunately at that moment an empty bucket was caught by a swirl of wind and blew over to roll in front of his feet. In tripping over it he collided with the three rope-haulers who, taken utterly by surprise, wobbled, staggered and let go of the rope. The forward two successfully got out of the way at once, while the other, with the rope-end wound about him, was spun around by the falling weight like a top before he flailed to the ground and rolled himself as quickly as he could to safety. The rope whipped from his fingers as the heavy stone's descent continued unchecked.
Stopped by the collision, Solomon was standing between the rope and the descending beam. In a moment his head and neck came into contact with the rope, which was still spinning like a vortex. It seemed to flick around him for a moment, and then became tightly wrapped around his neck. In the next moment, giving out a sort of strangled cough, his enormous bulk was whisked upward into the air as easy as a dandelion seed. A split second later the massive stone beam crashed with awful finality to the ground. For a moment Solomon continued to ascend, but then jerked down again and settled.
We had all jumped away from the crashing beam. Now we collected ourselves and looked up. The massive bulk of Solomon Miller was hanging by the neck and gently revolving in the breeze. A fraction of a second after the stone struck the ground we had all heard the sickening crack of his neck breaking.

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