Dark Waters (11 page)

‘Ah, yes!' he said at last. ‘I see the case very clear. The patient must be bad set.'

‘He is,' I agreed. ‘I've seen him. He's dying, I think.'

Wilson gave me a knowing look and indicated the paper.

‘If he needs this, he must be.'

‘What is the receipt for?'

But Wilson widened his eyes and shook his head, his loose jowls wobbling.

‘My goodness, I cannot tell you that, Mr Cragg. That is a matter of confidence. My lips are professionally sealed. It is enough to say that the poor fellow must be very bad set, yes, very bad set indeed.'

He rose and scanned the shelves, finally reaching down a flask labelled
Spirits of Wine,
which he brought back to the workbench.

‘You will send the preparation round to the Gamecock as soon as it is ready?' I said, watching as he took down a measuring vessel, inscribed down its side with a graduated scale. ‘Dr Fidelis says the case is urgent.'

Wilson lifted the stopper from the jar and remounted his stool.

‘Have I not indicated that I know the urgency, Mr Cragg? I will be ready to take the preparation there myself in fifteen minutes, if you will be kind enough to indulge me.'

I accepted the hint and left Wilson to his work, picking my way through the darkness with care for the bottle and jar that Fidelis had entrusted to me. A few minutes later I let myself into my office and locked Fidelis's samples inside a drawer in my desk, to await his collection in the morning. I felt considerably reassured now. I remembered Fidelis's words as he had handed them to me that, far from lying in the miasma of Allcroft's room, the sickness that had seized him was in his food and drink. I myself had breathed Allcroft's air for half an hour or more, but I had not eaten his food, or drunk his beer, and the thought made me feel lighter in my mind as I passed through the connecting door and into my house.

Chapter Eight

I
WAS SITTING BEHIND
my desk at the office, looking over some affidavits, when Luke Fidelis appeared shortly after ten the next morning. He was carrying a wicker basket, of the kind that might be used to transport small birds to market. This he deposited, without explanation, on the floor beside his medical bag and sat down with a heavy sigh in my client chair. His face was pale and drawn. I suppressed the desire to ask what was in the basket.

‘How is the sick man?' I asked instead.

‘No longer sick. May I have the samples you brought away with you?'

I unlocked the drawer containing the jar and bottle that Fidelis had entrusted to me, and handed them over.

‘That is excellent news, Luke!' I exclaimed. ‘So he's on the mend after all.'

‘No, he's dead,' said Fidelis, finding room for the samples in his medical bag.

My elation subsided.

‘So, it was just as you'd predicted.'

‘Yes.'

‘And in spite of your prescription from Wilson.'

His answer was a little brusque.

‘That wasn't intended to cure the man, only to make him more comfortable until the end.'

‘And the cause of death?'

He scrubbed his face with his hands.

‘Look, Titus, it has been a long night. Might I trouble you for a plate of something and some small beer?'

I immediately hurried around the desk and raised him up by the arm.

‘Of course, Luke. How thoughtless of me. Come into the house.'

Fidelis picked up his medical bag and followed me back through the outer office and into the house, where I sat him in the dining parlour and called for Matty to bring some breakfast. A moment later we were interrupted by a loud, importunate knock on the front door. Matty was piling food onto a tray for the doctor – food which, I am sure, she would willingly have spooned down his throat if he had asked her – and Elizabeth and her mother, who still stayed with us, had gone to market. So I was forced to appear at the door myself.

I opened to Denis Destercore, the red-headed political agent whom I had last seen sneering at the Shuttleworths' meeting in Market Place. His bearing was confident, straight backed, legs apart. His big-framed servant Peters stood behind him on the step below, holding a notebook, pen and inkhorn.

‘Good morning, my friend,' Destercore began, smiling with an expression I had previously seen on the mouths of certain fish lying on the slab. ‘We have not been introduced. I am Denis Destercore, friend to Mr Reynolds in the coming election. Today we are conducting the canvas, so I would be much obliged if you would tell me which of the candidates you propose to support.'

Destercore, with his lists and political intriguing, was interesting to me, in spite of his fish's smile and his presumption that I was his friend. So, instead of sending him away like the hawker that, in one sense, he actually was, I agreed to see him next door at my office.

‘But it will have to be a little later in the morning. My clerk will make an appointment and, in the meantime, you may canvas him, as he too is an elector, and may even be one of your supporters. His name is Furzey.'

As my tone had been ostentatiously neutral, I was sure Destercore detected the ghost of mockery in it. He certainly did not like being put off, though there was not much he could do about it. So he produced a watch from his fob pocket and frowned at it.

‘Very well,' he said, resuming his outward cheerfulness, ‘we shall see you later.'

I went back in to find Fidelis eating slices of veal pie. He looked a good deal fresher and more alert.

‘By the way, what's that basket you left in the office?' I asked.

‘It is for you. I am hoping you might be visiting Middleforth Green again today, to see how your cousins are doing. If not, I shall have to go over myself, for I want to collect something from old Isaac Satterthwaite.'

‘Well, you are in luck. I've been asked to call in on legal business. I can also call at Satterthwaite's on my way back, if you wish. But why will I need the basket?'

‘To bring back the rat that I wish you to get from him.'

I was taken very much by surprise.

‘A rat? What do you want a dead rat for?'

Fidelis shook his head.

‘You don't follow me, Titus. I don't want a
dead
rat.'

‘But surely any rat I get from Satterthwaite will be dead. He is a rat catcher.'

Fidelis laughed.

‘He always has a few live ones that he's trapped. He uses them to train his terriers, and he also sells them. He is selling one to me. I have sent him a note with instructions to have it ready.'

‘All right. If you really want a live rat, I shall bring one. Do you have any preference as to colour, age and gender?'

‘Any, just so long as it is adult and healthy.'

‘Will you tell me what it is for?'

But at this moment, between question and answer, I was thwarted. Elizabeth and her mother came in from market, and all discussion of rats was necessarily suspended. My wife took her produce straight through to the kitchen but Mrs George, upon hearing that Dr Fidelis was within, immediately rushed to the dining room to join us, without even taking off her bonnet.

‘Now, Doctor,' she said, her eyes shining at the prospect of conversation with the handsome physician, ‘tell me, is it true what I hear from my daughter – that you have been up all night at the Gamecock Inn bravely tending a dangerously sick man that's come to town to cast his vote?'

‘I have, madam,' he replied, ‘but the fact is my efforts have been useless.'

‘Oh, dear! He has succumbed?'

‘Yes, Mr John Allcroft died at eight this morning.'

At the mention of this name, she started.

‘Mercy! Mr John Allcroft who farms at Barton and Gregson, was that him?'

‘Did you know the man?'

‘Certainly I did. Mr George has done business with him. I have visited Susan, his wife, and she me. We have all dined together. Oh, poor man, he's dead, is he?
Requiescat.
'

She crossed herself, and went on.

‘We, that is, Mr George my husband and I, were hoping John would join us in religion, you know. The signs were there, increasingly.'

My friend had been calmly taking a sip of beer, but this startled him and he put down his tankard precipitately, slopping some of its contents onto the table.

‘I wish I had known that,' he said, mopping up the spill with his napkin. ‘I would have sent for Mr Egerton to give last rites.'

Mr Egerton was the Roman priest who lived, not so secretly, in Back Lane behind Friar Gate.

‘Mother-in-law,' I said, ‘what did you mean by the signs being there that he would change religion? Did he go to your Roman services?'

‘No, he went to the English services, and he subscribed outwardly to the Protestant heresy, as it is in our view.'

She sniffed, and looked straight at me in a challenging way. I also subscribed to the Protestant heresy, and was proud of it, but I refused her bait.

‘So what signs were in Mr Allcroft of incipient Catholicism?'

‘Well, as I observed, he was very much like a Roman in his politics. He was really tenacious, he had a passion you could say, for our true king, our
Catholic
king. More than once have I heard him make the toast, you know…'

She looked from Dr Fidelis to me as she mouthed the words.

‘
The king over the water.
'

Her reference to the Pretender did not anger me – I had heard such talk from Mrs George often enough before – but it did make me a little nervous. There were towns in other parts of the country where even to whisper such words might land a person in gaol. Northern parts such as Preston contained a larger proportion of Jacobites – there were even some in the corporation – and they were not averse on occasion to speaking their minds out loud. But that was in normal times. This was an election, when political sensitivity was much sharpened, and zealous Whigs like Sir Henry Hoghton would cut savagely at anything that looked to them like sedition.

Fortunately we were able to venture no further down the Jacobite path, as at this point Matty came in with a note from Furzey. It read:

The politician is here waiting for you with his man. I have engaged you to see him at eleven o'clock, that is, in ten minutes.

At the same moment Fidelis jumped to his feet, his powers apparently restored by the beer and pie. He picked up his medical bag.

‘I must be on my way, Titus. I am to be consulted at Mrs Parbold's in Water Street. Don't forget the rat!'

‘But you haven't told me what it is for,' I protested. ‘And what about Allcroft? If he has become coroner's business I need to know.'

‘He hasn't – not yet, but we may settle the matter today. Come to my house this afternoon, and bring the rat in that basket I left in your office.'

Then he was gone.

The clock was pointing to a few minutes before eleven when I returned to the office. Destercore and his servant were waiting. I bowed to them and, asking their indulgence for a moment, told Furzey to follow me into my room. Picking some papers from his writing desk, he did so.

‘What's in the basket?' he asked, nodding towards it.

‘Nothing. It's for Dr Fidelis's rat.'

Furzey opened his mouth to speak, and then checked himself. I laughed.

‘I know no more than you. Now, about this fellow out there.' I lowered my voice and cocked my head towards the door. ‘I suspect he's come here from London to make trouble.'

‘You would see trouble in a boiled egg,' whispered Furzey. ‘He is an agent, that's all, a helper at election time. I see no harm in him. Now, I have done what you asked. Here.'

He handed me the papers he was carrying and I placed them in one of the desk drawers.

‘While I am closeted with the master,' I said, ‘you talk to the servant. Anything you can glean … you follow me?'

Furzey gave me a wink, called Destercore in, and left us. The agent sat opposite me at my desk, opened his notebook and helped himself to pen and ink. He moved in sudden jerks as if he were worked by a wound-up spring that released itself in short periods.

‘You are Mr Titus Cragg, attorney. Is that right?'

I agreed that it was and he entered me in his book. It appeared, from the upside-down view that I had of it, that he was using a different page for each street, for I could make out
Cheapside
at the top of the page and the names of some of my neighbours in the list below.

‘And for whom, may I ask, do you think your vote will be cast in the election?' he went on.

‘You
may
ask, but I will reserve my answer.'

A subtle look came over his face.

‘Does that mean you have a settled choice, but will not tell me? Or have you not made up your mind?'

‘It means what I say – I reserve my answer.'

‘Everyone will know your choice when you cast the vote, so why not declare it now?'

I shrugged.

‘It is my preference not to do so.'

Destercore sighed in a cool display of irritation at my obstructing him. He dashed down a note against my name and abruptly sprang to his feet.

‘Well, I must be on my way, Mr Cragg. I thank you for your time.'

‘Before you go, Mr Destercore…'

I reached into my desk drawer and took out the list of voters that he had dropped at Porter's.

‘I am glad to have the opportunity to return this to you. I happened to be sitting in the parlour room of Porter's Inn when you walked by. You dropped this paper as you passed, but left the inn before I could return it to you.'

For a moment Destercore's eyes narrowed and then bulged as he made to snatch the paper from my hand. But I jerked it fractionally up to evade his grasp. I wanted him to realize that I had studied the list.

‘I see my own name is written here. I wonder what I may infer from that.'