The Salisbury Manuscript (29 page)

‘It’s not the pointy tip, Seth, it’s the mind behind it that counts. The mind and the will. Have you killed a man before? Have you?’

The silence from the other was answer enough.

I
have,’ said Adam Eaves. ‘

‘I know. You killed my master Percy Slater. I was there.’

‘Poor old Percy Slater. Well, he shouldn’t have come out the house at that inconvenient moment.’

‘And you did for his brother too, didn’t you, Adam?’

‘We’ve been through that already, Seth. You know it doesn’t mean much to me, this killing lark.’

This was a shocking confirmation to Tom Ansell as he stood below the topmost steps. He remained very still.

‘So I say to you, Seth, that if I can deal with the two Slater brothers just like that –’ and here the gardener snapped his fingers – ‘then I can deal with my own brother.’

Brothers? Eaves and Fawkes, brothers? Tom remembered that there been something faintly familiar about Fawkes the first time he’d seen him. A likeness to Eaves?

‘I’ll keep you here, Adam,’ said Fawkes. ‘I’ll keep you here until justice comes. I will prevent your escape.’

‘Oh, bugger justice,’ said Eaves. ‘You mind what I said to you earlier. If I swing so will you.’

‘I’ll take my chance on that. I’ve had enough of you and your tricks.’

There was a pause as if this was an answer that Eaves wasn’t prepared for. Tom heard the wind whistling through gaps in the fabric of the spire. Then Eaves said to his brother, ‘I suppose you think there’s no way out of here ’cept down the stairs.’

‘There is not,’ said Fawkes, but he did not sound altogether confident.

‘Have you heard that tale, matey, of a sailor who was so glad when old King Charles came back to rule this happy isle and called in on Salisbury town, that he went and capered up the spire and did a handstand on the very top? Have you heard that tale of a sailor?’

‘You go capering up the spire then, Adam,’ said Fawkes, ‘and I’ll say goodbye to you when you’re on the way down.’

‘Or p’raps I’ll just caper in your direction instead.’

And at that, Adam Eaves did a queer kind of dance towards Seth Fawkes, who continued to hold out the implement – was it really a trowel? – in front of him. Tom involuntarily started up the steps until he was almost out in the open. And down below he heard, yes, the the thud of boots and the sounds of voices. Voices calling out – calling his name. ‘Tom!’ or ‘Mr Ansell!’

Eaves seemed to halt in midspring, at the sight of someone emerging from the staircase, perhaps at the sounds coming from below.

‘Up here!’ Tom yelled. ‘Here!’

The gardener changed direction and darted beyond the massive wheel that stood like some treadmill in a prison of nightmares. He fumbled at a door on that side of the spire, the southern aspect. But the door was locked or it stuck fast and he abandoned the attempt after a couple of seconds and scrabbled towards the western wall, on the opposite side to where Tom had appeared.

Meanwhile Seth Fawkes, who was slower than the other man and had started back in shock at Tom’s presence, now resumed his pursuit. There was a clanging sound and a sudden gust of air and a blaze of red light from the setting sun as Eaves managed to wrench open the west-facing door which, once released, slammed back on its hinges under the force of the wind. Tom scrambled and ducked his way through the jumble of beams and struts which occupied the central area of the base of the spire, ignoring bruised shins and a knock to his head. As he neared the door, the rectangle was darkened for an instant by a shape. It must be Fawkes, reaching the entrance before Tom, following his brother out into the open.

The sun was directly in Tom’s eyes. Standing on the threshold of the door, he was aware – without being able to see anything clearly – of a mighty stone spire and infinite acres of space above his head, of the cathedral roof and the grassy close and the fringes of the town below. Of the glint of the river beyond. Of a great orangered ball blurring a distant line of hills. No noises that he could hear, apart from the rushing of the wind. Then he took a deep breath, and stepped out on to the ledge which fronted this angle of the spire.

The ledge or viewing platform was scarcely a yard across and little more than half a dozen yards in length, broken up by buttresses which turned the spaces in between to small bays. There was a parapet of stone but it was less high than a ship’s rail. Tom, his eyes still dazzled by the light, instinctively grasped at the parapet. He glanced to left and right from his vantage point in the middle of the ledge. He could see nothing, and believed for an instant that the two men, Eaves and Fawkes, had somehow effected a miraculous escape.

But no. From behind one of the buttresses to his left there came thumps and groans, and two black-clad figures fell writhing to the ground in a curious, sideways, rag-doll fashion. One of them – Tom could not discern which of the two, since the man’s back was to him and he was still wearing the billycock hat – scrambled to his feet and started to kick at the other. The space was so limited that the kicker could not get much force or swing behind his attack. Then there was a swiping arm, a flash of metal in the sun, and the kicking stopped. Tom guessed that the weapon was the trowel which Fawkes had been wielding. Now the one on the ground dropped the trowel, grabbed hold of the other’s legs and clasped them to him, causing the upright figure to fall back against the parapet.

Tom’s attention was distracted for an instant by a clattering in the chamber behind him. The sounds of panting, of voices straining to call out his name after the rapid climb to the top. He twisted his head and shouted out into the darkness over his shoulder, ‘Here we are!’

When he turned back, he saw that the figure who’d been on the ground and grasped the other by the legs was now rearing up. He was still holding his opponent’s legs below the knee. With a great heave, by bracing himself against the wall, he pushed himself fully upright and seemed to pour – there was no other word for it – seemed to pour his opposite over the parapet, as if he was tipping liquid out of a jug.

In a single, fluid motion the other man pitched over the edge and tumbled outwards into space. With all sense of himself suspended, Tom was barely conscious of what he could see: amid the sun-spots that danced in front of his vision, there was a collection of black rags and sticks (the limbs, he realized, yes, the arms and legs) which grew smaller as it fell towards earth. Or not the earth, precisely, but the sheer flank of the cathedral roof.

Then he felt hands grasping his shoulders and pulling at him and he was afraid that he too was going to be thrown off into nothingness. Automatically he gripped the sides of the doorway. But the hands went on dragging and a voice said, ‘Come inside!’ and another said ‘Get out of the way!’ and they were different voices, neither of them belonging to the two men who’d been struggling on the parapet.

Tom fell back into the chamber at the bottom of the spire. He lay there, as several shapes crowded past him and out through the doorway. His confused state was worsened by several great blows struck on a giant gong, sounds which it took him a moment to identify as the cathedral clock. Then he felt his head being lifted gently, almost cradled.

‘Are you all right, Tom?’

It was Helen. She was kneeling on the floor. He felt the softness of her hands, the fabric of her coat brushing his cheek. He was going to tell her to stand up, otherwise she’d get her clothes dusty and dirty, but instead he said, ‘What happened?’

‘I was going to ask you that,’ she said, leaning forward and kissing his forehead.

Then the crowd who’d gone out on to the viewing platform returned. Only three of them, as it turned out. Inspector Foster, Constable Chesney and another police-man whose name Tom didn’t know.

‘Nobody there,’ said Foster.

Tom stood up. He gripped one of the scaffolding beams, not so much for help in staying upright but so as to hold on to something solid.

‘But I saw them,’ he said. ‘They were fighting.’

‘I mean there’s nobody up here,’ said Foster, pulling on his side-whiskers for emphasis. ‘Down there –’ now he jabbed with his forefinger towards the imagined ground many hundreds of feet below where they were standing – ‘down there’s a different story, and not a very pretty one either.’

And, standing next to his superior officer, Constable Chesney rammed his fist into his open palm to simulate the sound of bodies striking the ground.

Salisbury Station

Or the sound of a body, rather than bodies, and one striking not the ground but a lower roof.

A single corpse was recovered that afternoon as the sun fell and darkness rose in the cathedral close. It was badly battered and disfigured, like a mariner thrown from a ship and tossed among the rocks before arriving on shore. The damage to the mortal remains of Adam Eaves – or Adam Fawkes as he should more properly be called – had been caused by the force of impact against the stone outcrops, the buttresses and finials, in the lower stretches of the cathedral. The black shape which Tom saw plunging to its doom had soared outwards as it went down and then must have bounced and tumbled like a climber falling from a precipice, before landing finally on the roof of the cloisters.

There could not be much doubt that the remains were those of the gardener to Canon Slater. There was Tom’s evidence, that he had seen an improvised weapon (the trowel) in the hands of Eaves’s assailant, and that it was those hands which were responsible for throwing the other off the spire. But, more conclusively, there was a statement, almost a confession, which was found in a pocket of the dead man’s clothing.

It was brief and ill written but clear enough. It told how he, that is Adam Fawkes (also known as Adam Eaves), had murdered both the Slater brothers. Felix had been killed when Eaves had been surprised in the act of stealing the papers from the chest in the Canon’s study, searching for documents and plans which would show the whereabouts of a supposed hoard of ancient treasure buried in the Slater estate at Northwood House in Downton. Slater was sitting down, about to write a note of dismissal, unwisely taking his eyes off the gardener. Then a few days later Percy Slater, the owner of Northwood House, had died not by his own hand but killed by Adam as he was attempting to dig up the place where this treasure was rumoured to be, a spot known as Hogg’s Corner.

There was no mention in the confession of the so-called Salisbury manuscript, whose disappearance (in Tom’s eyes at least) might have been a motive for the murder. But the handwritten memoir of the Slater brothers’ father was discovered among various items in the queer little lodging occupied by Adam in the garden of Venn House. The lock which secured the book from prying eyes had been forced by Eaves. The other items in his stash included bits and pieces of tarnished gold – rings, bracelets, brooches – which had undoubtedly been excavated from burial sites around the town.

With the discovery of Eaves’s body, it was equally beyond doubt that the gardener had been responsible for the death of Andrew North, the sexton. If North had been seized by the mania – which he’d caught from Felix Slater -for digging up old items, stealing them if necessary, then Eaves had obviously seen a way in which he might take a short cut, by thieving from the thief. Even if he had to commit a murder in the process. North, who’d worked for Felix Slater, must have encountered Adam Eaves, must have grown to fear him and to identify the gardener with Atropos, the wielder of shears.

And more bizarrely, the stolen hoard found in the gardener’s lodge also contained toasting forks and jelly moulds together with other kitchen implements which dated back not thousands of years but no further than a few months.

Inspector Foster scratched his head and tugged his side-whiskers over this but he was able to offer some explanation to Tom Ansell and Helen Scott while he was bidding them goodbye on the platform at Salisbury station.

‘It seems to me,’ he said, ‘that this Eaves fellow was a thoroughly bad lot and had been ever since his birth. A walking example of Original Sin, if you like. We’ve established that he was born at Downton to a God-fearing family and that he was brother to Seth Fawkes. He ran into trouble early on in Salisbury – one of the men in the police house has an old cousin as remembers him – and then he disappeared God knows where. To foreign countries maybe. God knows why he came back here either. But he got himself a job as a gardener at Venn House. He enjoyed dressing up and playing a part. And all the time he was on the lookout for ways to make mischief and mayhem.’

‘Mischief!’ said Helen. ‘I’d hardly call murder mischief.’

‘No more would I, miss. But he liked causing trouble and he liked murdering, did Mr Adam Eaves, liked the thrill of it. Mr Ansell here has confirmed he said as much when he overheard Eaves and his brother exchanging insults up the tower.’

‘I don’t know about the thrill of it,’ said Tom, ‘but it didn’t seem to hold terrors for him as it would for most of us. Yes, he probably enjoyed it.’

‘It’s my belief he liked the thrill of thieving too,’ continued the Inspector. ‘It was him as broke into those other houses in West Walk and stole small items that were almost worthless, and he did the robberies just for the hell of it – begging your pardon, Miss Scott.’

Tom nodded. ‘That’s why he didn’t trouble to conceal the burglaries. Wasn’t one of the householders actually woken up by the clatter of pans being dropped in the kitchen, as if the thief wanted to alert everyone to his presence?’

‘Just so,’ said Foster. ‘Mischief and mayhem, you see.’

There were still some mysteries attached to the business. The principal object which Eaves had been seeking in the mound in the grounds of Northwood House had apparently been a solid golden torque or neck-piece. Tom recalled that Felix Slater had made some passing reference to it at their first meeting. But it transpired that it was all moonshine, and well known to be moonshine in the locality. The piece never existed or, if it ever had, was thieved long ago. There was a mention of it in the Salisbury manuscript, which Tom had had the leisure to look through more carefully and which was now safe inside his valise, to be deposited in accordance with the dead man’s instructions at the London office of Scott, Lye & Mackenzie.

Old George Slater described how he had even done a bit of digging himself, and turned up nothing. If Adam Eaves had perused the manuscript more carefully, he might have realized this. But perhaps he
had
read about it, as he skimmed the stories about Byron and Shelley, and refused to believe that there was no treasure. Eaves had also stolen from the Canon’s study some papers and plans which he believed would guide him to the precise spot. Plans which Felix had retained from his own younger days of fossicking about in the family grounds.

A greater mystery was what had happened to Seth Fawkes, once he had succeeded in throwing his brother from the heights of the cathedral. If apprehended and tried, he might have been found guilty of manslaughter or perhaps acquitted because he was acting in self-defence. Who could say? But the coachman to Percy Slater had not been apprehended. Indeed, it was as if he was gone from the face of the earth. Had Tom Ansell not seen with his own eyes the struggle between the two brothers – and had other people in and around the cathedral precincts not also testified to the presence of a pair of men, one seemingly in pursuit of the other – he might have believed that Adam had flung himself off the tower, by himself.

This was the story as reported in the
Gazette
, that the gardener to Canon Slater, overcome with guilt and remorse at his prior acts of murder, had done away with himself in the most public and dramatic fashion. He had conveniently provided a written account of his crimes, as discovered in his clothing. It was the simplest version to credit and it was enthusiatically peddled by Inspector Foster. It wrapped everything up nicely, it accounted for two killings (three, when you included the sexton Andrew North) and it brought the murderer’s own tale to a satisfactory resolution.

There was a rumour to the effect that a second man had been up the tower but when questioned by the newspaper the Inspector cast doubt on it, without going as far as an absolute denial. As he said to Tom later on the evening of the events on the spire, ‘I take you at your word, Mr Ansell. You are a lawyer, after all. But the fact remains that there was no one to be found up aloft apart from your good self. Oh yes, there were two men chasing each other all round the houses, we have other witnesses to that, but the cathedral is a big place with many holes and corners. Who’s to say that this Seth Fawkes did not sneak off into one of them?’

‘In that case, where is he now?’ said Tom.

‘He may turn up and then we shall see what is to be done with him,’ said the Inspector. ‘But remember that if he has killed his brother, as you believe, he may have gone on the run. He may even have done away with himself as well.’

But Seth Fawkes did not turn up, alive or dead. He had not returned to Northwood House nor was he discovered in some ditch outside the town. And Tom was happy to leave the matter there. Privately, it was his belief – no, his conviction – that Seth had battled to the death with Adam, and then managed to escape from the spire. Either by somehow hiding himself in the shadows of the viewing platform even as the police were out there or, more daringly, by climbing round to one of the other faces of the tower. It could be done. There was that story of the sailor who’d climbed to the very top and performed a handstand. All one needed was the steadiest of hands and nerves, and great foolhardiness – or despair.

Other aspects of the Salisbury business had come to a slightly happier conclusion. Walter Slater had emerged again, now cleared of any suspicion of the death of his uncle or father, whichever of the two Slater brothers was credited with whichever role. (The true facts of his parentage remained a secret.) The curate had never returned to Venn House that night, despite his assurances to Canon Eric Selby, but gone back to the shelter of St Luke’s and the ringing room.

The poor young man was badly shaken and his whole life turned upside down. But he was being comforted by Miss Nugent, and in time might reconcile himself with his mother, Amelia Slater. He would inherit the Northwood estate once the legal process was complete – was due to inherit it anyway, regardless of who exactly his father had been – but Elizabeth, Percy’s wife, had the right to dwell there in her lifetime if she chose. Mrs Slater, informed of Percy’s death, was imminently expected from London for the funerals of her husband and her brother-in-law. Her attitude to his death was not known though, given the estranged nature of the lives they’d been leading, she would perhaps not be too distressed.

But in the meantime Walter, perhaps to distract himself from the tragic tangle of recent events, had absented himself officially from his clerical duties and gone with Miss Nugent to busy himself at Northwood. He had made clear his intention to put the place in order, had taken on fresh help from the town of Downton as well as a neighbouring village to start setting the house and grounds to rights. The aged Nan would be left as she was, to live out her days at Northwood dowager-style. It was an open question whether Walter Slater would return to the Church, or whether he might combine his vocation with that of a landed gent. Too early to say yet.

So Tom Ansell and Helen Scott made their goodbyes to Inspector Foster on the up platform of Salisbury station. The train was waiting its moment to depart on time, puffing smuts of smoke into the grey light of the November morning. Tom could see the cathedral spire above the station buildings, seemingly much closer than it really was. Strange to think that he had lately been witness to a life-and-death struggle up there. And it was at this very station that he had glimpsed the earlier tussle between Seth and Adam Fawkes on the fog-bound evening of his arrival.

Inspector Foster was saying something and he had missed it.

‘Sorry?’ he said.

‘The Inspector was wishing us a happy future together,’ said Helen.

Perhaps noticing the look on Tom’s face, Foster said, ‘I hope I have not spoken out of turn, but I am right in thinking that . . . ’

‘Someone has yet to ask the question,’ said Helen.

‘And someone else has yet to make the reply when the question is asked,’ said Tom.

And so they boarded the train.

I suppose it is possible that Tom Ansell might have proposed to Helen Scott there and then on the train, since he had already been frustrated or intercepted in his intention on two or three occasions and had almost given up the search for the propitious moment. The compartment floor was a little dusty and greasy but he might have crouched down in a gingerly fashion rather than kneeling properly, and asked her for her hand. He might have proposed like that and she would almost certainly have accepted, if they had had the compartment to themselves.

But they were not to be alone. At the last instant, as the train was about to pull out of the station, the door was opened and an oldish lady was almost pushed inside by a porter who deposited a capacious bag immediately afterwards on the floor of the compartment. She was wearing a large hat which would have flown off with the speed of her arrival, had she not clasped it to her head with a black-gloved hand. Tom, who was sitting on the other side of the compartment with Helen opposite him, stood up and hoisted the lady’s bag on to the rack above her head. She thanked him,
sotto voce
, and then, without more than the swiftest glance at the young couple, produced a small, serious book from somewhere in her voluminous dress and proceeded to study it as intently as if it were the Bible or a devotional volume.

Tom was disappointed. He’d hoped to be alone with Helen. Even if he wasn’t to propose to her, they might have enjoyed chatting about the events in Salisbury and talking about what the Inspector had told them. But it did not seem appropriate to discuss their part in an exciting drama when there was company. He remembered that when he’d been travelling down to Salisbury, his compartment had been occupied by an old lady whom he’d also helped with her luggage. Was this the same one? He did not think so, but there was a symmetry to this absolutely meaningless coincidence.

Tom settled himself into the seat next to the window and smiled at Helen. Prepared for the train journey, she already had a book to hand. It was titled, Tom could see,
The Shame of Mrs Prendergast
. Another sensation novel, no doubt, to judge by its title and enticing cover, which showed a woman with a low-cut dress and necklace of pearls glancing in apprehension over her shoulder at a man who stood in the doorway to her room. For himself, Tom had nothing to read apart from Baxter’s
On Tort
, which he had considered discarding in The Side of Beef in Salisbury for Jenkins to ponder over but which some last-minute scruple had caused him to pack after all. There was also the Salisbury manuscript in his case, which he would certainly not have got out and opened in a railway carriage. So he had to content himself with looking out of the window at the bare, wintry landscape of the plain.