A Dark Anatomy (29 page)

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Authors: Robin Blake

BOOK: A Dark Anatomy
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‘Luke!' I cried. ‘We are going to view the body
in situ mortis
. Come with us.'
So Fidelis and I trotted side by side along the Preston road, as the argument about whether the Lammer's granite jaw would prove susceptible to the Churchwarden's cast-iron fist, lurched and swayed along behind us.
 
I find that puzzles are either canine or feline. Some are like a dog that barks and wants to play. The dog runs and leaps around, just out of reach, but you can be confident that, sooner rather than later, it will tire and be mastered. Much worse are the problems that retreat from you, like a cat that creeps under your garden shed. No amount of cajoling will bring it to hand. No words or foodstuffs are sweet enough to persuade it out. The only thing is to go about some other business and only then will it emerge into the light and lap the milk you left for it.
The problem I was presented with at the start of this narrative – the bloody death of Dolores Brockletower – had been of the feline kind. The more strenuously I had pursued the solution, the more elusive it became. Only as the means of her husband's death preoccupied me would I stumble upon exactly how his wife had died.
As we came in sight of the tongue of the Fulwood that licks across the Yolland road I was worrying over this question of Brockletower's death. I told Fidelis of the decision I had made while speaking with Sarah: to do all I could for her sake to deflect the jury from such a verdict.
‘The difficulty is that there is evidence for it. His life was manifestly in great disorder. In addition to which he told me he wanted to end it.'
After a moment's consideration, Luke made an astute remark.
‘He must have been forced to a choice by Woodley's letter. He could not actually pay Woodley – that would have been an impossible indignity. But Woodley's demands made him realize his life's continuance was now impossible.'
‘Yes. But, though he could kill Woodley, he could not kill himself. Someone else had to do it. Last night he was trying to persuade me to blow his brains out for him, in return for having mine blown out simultaneously – not much of a bargain. Yet it seems he had already developed a deranged alternative: a conviction that Uncle Oliver was his real murderer.'
‘The vicar?'
‘Yes, the vicar, whom I have just been to see.'
I told Luke how I had called at the vicarage and discovered its crapulous tenant. He asked me to repeat exactly what Oliver Brockletower had said about his nephew's accusation.
‘Of course,' I added after doing so, ‘he'd already guessed his uncle had betrayed him by telling me about his desire for a divorce.'
‘A betrayal that might have led to his being reasonably suspected of her murder,' said Luke. ‘And to the publication of details about her unusual physical nature. Either event might have been enough to drive him to seek his own death, an event traceable back to his uncle's indiscretion when he talked to you in the churchyard. In which case, he would have been “killed” by his uncle. Have I got it right, Titus?'
‘It is the construction I put on it.'
Luke leaned forward and clapped his hand repeatedly against his horse's neck, in sheer delight.
‘The capacity of the human mind for deluding to itself is truly wonderful,' he crowed. ‘You would think if there is one
person we should each be able to rely on never to lie to us, it would be ourselves. But it isn't the case. We constantly abuse our own trust.'
We drew close to the belt of trees through which the road passed. Compared with the previous week, they were greening doubly fast now in the spring sunshine. From within, where the road curved around, I heard the sound of the woodsmen, whom I had encountered the previous Friday and whom, when we rounded the bend, we came upon, still sawing and loading wood from the great beech tree they had felled.
I caught sight of Shipkin and rode straight across to him. Having given his evidence on the inquest's first day, I had exempted him from attending the second. But I was surprised to see him working all the same.
‘Have you not heard the news of your master?' I asked when I reached him.
‘We've heard,' the woodsman growled, as he moved crabwise around an enormous bundle of logs, testing the knots in the ropes that bound it. ‘But we still must see to the timber, before it rots.'
The men had erected a triangular structure of spars to make a crane or hoist. They were about to haul the logs into the air before swinging them over and dropping them onto the bed of the wagon. The structure consisted of three spars forming a tripod, from the apex of which was suspended asymmetrically a beam that could be raised and lowered by means of a pulley. One end of the beam was to be attached to the load while the other, the longer end, was for controlling – lifting, swinging, lowering – the logs as required, using Archimedes's law of leverage. I had of course seen such contraptions before, and paid little attention to this one.
I cannot say how the idea came to me. I had said goodbye to
the woodsmen as they began hauling the load of logs into the air. I could hear behind me the squeak of the pulley and the rope creaking as I regained the road, where Luke and the jury on their wagon were moving off again. We made a few hundred yards more when suddenly I remembered what Ramilles Brockletower said to me about his wife's intention.
To have the world believe that he killed her
. With the squeak of the woodsmen's pulley still in my ears I stopped my horse. Another image had come into my head, as if lit by a flash of light: Solomon Miller being plucked into the air by the builders' rope.
Immediately I wheeled my horse again and cantered back to the woodsmen.
‘Shipkin!' I called. ‘Will you lend me your axe?'
 
 
W
E LEFT THE wagon in a sunken lane that skirted the edge of the Fulwood, about a quarter of a mile from our destination. Led by Fidelis and myself, the jurors plunged down through the trees, dead twigs popping like small firecrackers under our feet. Having given up the prizefighting argument, the group was murmuring together as uneasily as a gaggle of driven geese.
We came to the clearing where Ramilles Brockletower's body had been found and was still lying, close by the dead oak. I looked at the tree itself, up and down, and felt a thump of excitement in my chest. But that matter would have to wait. The prime reason for our journey must come first.
The two finders of the body were sitting side by side on the stump of another old tree, as far as possible across the clearing from the body. They had unfurled a chequered cloth in front of them and were eating the sort of oatmeal rock that passes for bread amongst the poor, and a couple of cold boiled turnips. The old man still had a few teeth. He bit off a chunk of turnip and masticated doggedly until I saw him hook the food out of his mouth with a grimy forefinger, and pass it to his toothless wife. She took it gratefully, gummed it for a few moments, then swallowed with a great show of satisfaction, smacking her lips. Quite unreasonably, the sight revolted me.
‘Are you not ashamed to be feasting in this solemn place of death?' I asked sternly.
I knew as soon as I had spoken that my words were ridiculous, but it was too late.
The woman cackled with laughter. ‘Feasting, you call it?'
‘I mean, would you eat in … well, in church, woman?'
She looked around her.
‘
Church
, you call it?'
Her consort, swallowing his own mouthful, put a warning hand on her arm, then turned to me.
‘You've been hours coming back to us,' he grumbled. ‘I tell you, without us eating, there'd be a couple more bodies here for you to find.'
‘You exaggerate. There is such a thing as self-control, I believe.'
‘Yer, and there's such a thing as starvation, an'all.'
The argument had no point and I gave it up, beckoning to the jury to gather around.
‘Since we are all present,' I told them, ‘we will reconstitute the court
ad hoc
and take evidence from Jeremiah Holden here, who, with this woman, was first finder of the body of Mr Ramilles Brockletower. For the purposes of the moment I will double as Coroner and clerk. Are you all agreed?'
There were murmurs of assent. Although this was not regular procedure, a coroner's powers of variation are not negligible and I could see every reason to proceed in this way. It would save time and some money.
‘Tom!' I called, beckoning to pious Tom Avery, the reserve juror. ‘You have a pocket scripture about you, I am sure.'
Avery felt in his coat pocket and reverently produced a handy volume.
‘It is but the Pentateuch, Coroner.'
‘That'll do. It's Holy Writ, and doesn't have to be the entire Bible. Jeremiah, place your hand on this book, and repeat after me.'
So I swore Jeremiah Holden as a witness. Then I asked him to tell us when, and how, he and his woman had found the body, what state it was in and what they did about it. After he had given his account, I walked the jurors across to where the body lay. We examined the head wound.
I told how I had witnessed the accident and added, ‘Dr Fidelis will tell us that, having sustained the break to his head, he would have been in danger of fainting at any time, especially if seized by great emotion. Under this danger he rode here, who knows why? It is enough to remember that this is where his wife died on the Tuesday of last week. Once here, he suffered a fit caused by his injured skull, fell from his horse and on impact the gun in his pocket went off. So he died, to be discovered some time later by Mr Holden and his wife. Now, of course, it is not for me to determine if this is true. It is for you. But that is how I suggest it happened.'
Through all this I had not mentioned the letter that I'd also found in Brockletower's pocket. In its way, it was material and perhaps I should have placed it before the jury. But I did not, and was prepared to bear the consequences of that decision, should there be any. But, I reasoned, the deaths of the Brockletowers were simple facts, and could in plain truth be simply accounted for by publicly known facts. The secret ramifications around them were complications and curlicues, and better safely out of sight, I reasoned. For a lawyer, avoiding the unpredictable is a matter of instinct.
Besides all this, I was impatient now to get back to the
hollow tree. So I dismissed the Holdens and invited the jurors to gather around the oak.
 
I picked up Shipkin's axe and began hacking a hole in the tree's bole, a little less than three feet off the ground, just above where the bole had thickened and bulged, as happens to old trees near the ground. I was making hard work of it and after a few chops, Pennyfold stepped forward and held his hand out for the axe.
‘I can see you are not an axeman, Coroner. Let me.'
I thanked him and asked for a hole large enough to reach into. Soon he stood back, having opened a triangular slot big enough to take a man's hand and arm. Bending and squinting, I could see nothing inside. The hollow interior was dark.
‘Anthony, would you be good enough to feel inside the tree? Your arm is longer than mine.'
Maybridge shrank back.
‘Not me, Coroner! There may be vipers, or worse.'
‘Very well. Has anyone got a candle?'
Peter Gardner had. He drew it from his pocket with a tinder-box and struck a light. I held the lighted candle inside the tree and could see glints of reflected light, but they were out of reach.
‘There's something there. It is a job for someone with longer arms than me.'
The jury looked at each other. None fancied it. Then, with an expression of amused sufferance, Fidelis pushed through the crowd, holding his riding crop, with its hooked ivory handle. He knelt and used the light to inspect the dark interior, then thrust his hand and crop, hook end first, through the hole. He cast about for a moment and then withdrew the crop, put it down and felt inside with his hand once more. This time it came out holding a horseshoe.
In my pocket was the shoe that had been found cast aside near Dolores Brockletower's body. Immediately I produced this and held it beside Fidelis's.
‘Are they from the same source, George?' I asked.
Pennyfold took a close look and nodded his head.
‘And I reckon they're my work,' he said.
‘The one from the tree has a line tied to it,' said Fidelis.
A green line, like a fishing line, was tied neatly around the exact middle of the shoe, with its other end still lying inside the tree. Fidelis dropped the horseshoe on the ground and began drawing the line out. With about ten feet smoothly and rapidly withdrawn, it snagged. Fidelis put his hand back into the hole and felt down the inner wall of the trunk.
‘Ah! What's this?'
When he pulled his hand out again, it was holding the very thing I now expected: one half of a pair of scissors, attached to the end of the line through the finger-loop.
‘Be careful,' I warned, ‘the blade is sharp.'
But Luke could see that. He was examining the blade closely, turning it in the light.
‘Feel inside the tree again,' I urged. ‘I rather fancy you may find another. But be cautious.'
After further exploration, the doctor's hand came out again and it was now holding two more horseshoes, tied together at the end of another length of line. Pennyfold confirmed they were identical to the others.
‘Pull on the line! Pull on it!' I exclaimed.
And securely fastened at the extreme end of this second line was, as I knew it would be, the other half of the scissors.
‘This one is different,' Luke stated calmly, examining the second blade as carefully as the first. ‘It is stained.'
‘What with?' I asked, though I knew the answer.
‘It might be blood,' he said tentatively. ‘Dried blood.'
‘That is exactly what I think it is,' I said, quite unable by now to conceal my satisfaction.
Thoughtfully, Luke turned the blade in his fingers once more. Then he turned back to me with sudden vitality.
‘Of course, of course! I've been slow-witted about this. It is the blade that cut her throat. Of
course
!' In Fidelis's voice was a mixture of awe and surprise.
One member of the jury swore, another whistled.
‘So,' I said, ‘how come it is in the tree, on the end of a line? Can anyone tell? Can you, Doctor Fidelis?'
Fidelis frowned, thinking furiously. Suddenly his face brightened.
‘Yes! How dull I am! She cut her own throat, but she wanted to leave no trace. She contrived a way of making the blade disappear as soon as it had done its work! Come on – we can prove it.'
He pushed the circling jurymen aside and ran to his horse. A moment later he was in the saddle, walking the horse back to the tree. Reaching down, he held out his hand and I gave him the two horseshoes and the blade, which were still connected by the length of line. He stood up in his saddle, steadying himself by holding the tree, and then reached up as far as a round hole, a foot across, where a large branch had once been attached. Through this, he dropped the horseshoes.
Watched by the open-mouthed jury, he lowered himself again into the saddle, still holding the half-scissors. The line tied to them was tautened by the weight of the horseshoes dangling inside the tree.
‘Do it, Luke,' I said. ‘Let go the blade.'
He let go and it flew up at once, out of his fingers, being instantly dragged into the tree by the two horsehoes falling inside. We heard the clunk of them as they hit the ground, and then a lighter thump as the blade itself fell beside them.
Fidelis reached through the aperture made by Shipkin, and brought out the evidence a second time. He studied the horseshoes and blade as they lay in the palm of his right hand. With his left he picked up the other blade and horseshoe from where they lay on the ground, and weighed the two of them thoughtfully.
‘The second blade's puzzling me,' said Abel Plint, ‘what's
it
doing in the tree?'
‘A pair of scissors has two blades,' I said.
‘Yes, but she only needed one to kill herself with.'
‘And why does the first have two weights on the end of its line?' asked Peter Gardner, ‘and the second only one weight?'
‘I do not think the blade in your left hand was the second, but the first,' said Luke, quick as ever to perceive the truth.
‘Why's that, sir?' asked Thomas Thorne.
‘It was a trial throw. The single horseshoe was slung through the hole on the end of its line into the hollow trunk. The blade was then released to see if it would indeed disappear safely into the tree-trunk. The test went well enough, but it was judged better, the second fateful time, to double the weight. Just to make sure the blade did not catch at the lip of the hole.'
I clapped him on the shoulder.
‘And the horsehoe we found near the body?' I prompted.
‘The fourth of the set. She threw it aside because it wasn't needed.'
As I spoke I heard the cracking of twigs, and two voices, from lower down in the wood. Pearson was with us at last.
‘Luke, will you drop these items into your medical bag, just
for the time being?' I said in a low voice. ‘We will say nothing of this until we are back in court.'
‘Who's with Pearson?' asked Fidelis.
I listened again.
‘Well, by the sound of it, it is Mr Grimshaw, the bailiff, come to visit us.'

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