Dark Waters (15 page)

‘Do the Whigs really think they can swing it?' asked Miss Colley. ‘This town seems so very Tory to me.'

Mrs Bryce replied with a snort.

‘The corporation is Tory. But Mr Reynolds says it's such a fretful long time since Preston voted, there's nobody really knows how it will go. In London they take it most seriously; they have set their eyes on us. Did you know, Mr Cragg, they have even sent an agent to oversee the vote on behalf of their party?'

‘Yes, I did. I have met him. I—'

‘A fretfully clever sort of fellow, I am told, and do you think they would bundle him up here if they thought the election was scuppered, and all Mr Reynolds's work here wasted and poor Sir Harry bound to be ousted from Parliament?' She inflated her cheeks and blew out a puff of air. ‘Of course they would not!'

She swigged her wine.

‘And Mr Reynolds is such a darling little man that I would be made quite ill if our efforts to keep him up to the mark were in vain. Now – what is it you would like me to sign?'

*   *   *

The May Day dancing was to begin at three and would be followed by the May Queen's coronation. The maypole already stood erected in the middle of Market Place, and carpenters were at work building a stage on the east side. A large oak branch, the leaves young and spring green, had been tied to the pole's tip, while coloured ribbons hung down from the top to the ground. A group of four young unmarried women of the town – the candidates for the crown of flowers the May Queen would wear for her procession through the town – had gathered around Barney Lostock, the fiddler and the master of the dance. He was giving out instructions for a rehearsal in the manner of a sergeant of dragoons preparing to attack. As his assault was about to begin, I strolled down to watch the dancers pick up the ends of the ribbons and take their positions around the pole. Barney counted to three and began to play a jaunty tune, upon which the girls began bobbing and skipping around the pole, two in one direction and two in the other. Gradually they wound their ribbons about its shaft until there was none left to wind, at which they made a smart about-turn on Barney's command and danced in the opposite direction, to unwind the ribbons again.

Standing next to me in the small group of passers-by attracted by the music and the pretty sight was Nick Oldswick, the watchmaker with whom I had supped four nights earlier at the White Bull.

‘They're all supposed to be virgins – that's a joke,' he commented drily. ‘But we must all agree to pretend, eh, Titus?'

I agreed that it was our civic duty.

‘By the way,' he went on, ‘I'm glad we met because I am thinking of consulting you.'

‘Oh, yes? A legal matter?'

‘I think so. A person tried to attack me last night, just after I'd locked up my shop.'

‘What happened?'

‘I had an urgent job in hand and had been working late by lamplight. It was eleven or so, very dark, with nobody about that I could see when I went out. After I'd locked up I dropped the key into my pocket and was setting off for home when this someone tried to brain me. He'd been lurking behind a cart that had a broken axle and so was parked for the night, pushed right close to the wall. This man, big he was, swung at me as I passed the cart with a heavy club, or whatever it was. By chance, at that very same moment, my foot tripped on a stone half sunk in the ground and I stumbled, with my head dropping forward, do you see? That stumble saved my life, Titus, and also no doubt my stock of gold in the shop, because the blow missed my head and hit the cart. Then the man ran off. I don't know why. Happen he thought he heard someone else coming.'

‘Who was he?'

‘I don't know. I never saw him at all, except as a shape in the night. I was taken with such a shock that I did not think quickly enough. I did not call or run after him.'

‘If you do not know his name you can hardly contemplate legal action.'

‘It's not him I want to proceed against; it's the owner of the cart. Leaving it in that place was actionable. It greatly facilitated the attempted crime by offering concealment to the criminal.'

Did he have a case? The coming of the election had brought many strangers, some of them also malefactors, which made the present circumstances highly unusual for our town. Ordinarily the leaving of a broken-down cart in the street overnight would not be thought a mischief, and in my view the Court Leet would therefore be inclined to forgive the carter rather than condemn him. Furthermore, the attempted crime had not been seen by anyone else. Oldswick's hobby of going to law was so well known that, without witnesses to back up his story, he risked being derided, disbelieved and, in the end, out of pocket.

I told him as much, as delicately as I could. He huffed once or twice then made off, muttering about obtaining the services of a different lawyer. I turned back to the maypole and found that the ribbons were all but loosed from it, and Barney was terminating the dance with a decisive downward stroke of his bow. It was then that I noticed that one of the dancers was Maggie Satterthwaite. I went forward and drew her aside.

‘Maggie, I hear you served poor Mr Allcroft with his dinner yesterday at the Gamecock.'

‘That I did, sir, in his room.'

‘Some say it might have been his food that made him ill. Would you know anything about that?'

‘I just took plate up to him. I didn't cook it.'

She spoke sharply. I looked at her, but did not see evidence that she was hiding anything.

‘Is there a way it might have had something noxious added to it, after it was put on the plate?'

‘I don't know, sir. I just took it up straight from kitchen.'

‘Was it served out of the common pot?'

‘Yes, sir. I watched as Mr Primrose gave it onto the plate.'

‘And how was Mr Allcroft when you delivered it up? Did he seem ill at all at that point?'

‘I don't know, sir.'

‘Didn't you see him?'

‘No, sir, he was in coffee room. Half the people were there. They were discussing election lists, or the like, with that agent man.'

It took me a moment to realize whom she meant.

‘You mean Mr Thompson, the Tories' agent, conducting his canvas?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘How do you know Mr Allcroft was with him in the assembly room?'

‘Because when I went back to kitchen I sent our boy Peterkin to look for him and tell him his food was waiting in his room, where he'd asked for it to be brought.'

‘So the room had been empty when you left the food?'

‘Unless there were someone hiding under the bed, sir.'

Our conversation went no further because now one of Maggie's fellow virgins ran across to claim her for a second trial of the maypole dance and I walked back to the office. I had heard enough to know that the theory of the deliberate poisoning of Allcroft had gained in credibility. But as to who was responsible, we were little further on. The food had been left alone in the room, if only for a few minutes: anyone might have gone in there and adulterated it.

*   *   *

I reached the Gamecock Inn ten minutes before two. It was almost deserted. News that a man had sickened on Wednesday after eating his dinner and died on Thursday, meant few would relish dining there on Friday. While every other alehouse and inn was at bursting point, the only customers in Mrs Fitzpatrick's dining room were a pair of newly arrived strangers and the stone-deaf tobacconist of Stoney Gate, Nat Parrott, eating with his neighbouring trader, Michael Drake, whom I had met at Lacey's the previous day.

I found the widow Fitzpatrick standing with Luke Fidelis, bemoaning her loss of trade. She greeted me volubly.

‘Oh, Mr Cragg, how very good of you to patronize us once again! Is the Gamecock to be ruined by this staying away? All the prime meat I've bought in for the week will be ruined. We may salt some of it, but when, I should like to know, will I get my investment back? I've dug deep to pay for it all, extra beef, extra beer, preserved fruits and I don't know what.'

I told her I thought the customers would soon come back once they believed any danger had passed.

‘But when will that be, Doctor?' she wailed, turning back to my friend. ‘Another week and the election will be done and the people gone from town like the starlings in winter.'

‘There is no knowing, Mrs Fitz,' he said, ‘but I agree with Mr Cragg. I would be surprised if this sad death is not quickly superseded by other sensations.'

We took our seats at a private table and studied the bill of fare. Fidelis said he would have a cheese tart, cold roast teal and boiled salad.

‘I shall order hotpot,' I said.

‘Good God, man, that is a gamble,' he whispered. ‘Isn't your name on Destercore's list? I could not promise to save you if you happen to ingest what Allcroft did.'

‘Oh, I'm not ordering it to eat,' I said.

Mrs Fitzpatrick herself brought us wine and took our order for food. I asked for ham, cheese, pickled onions with mushroom ketchup, in addition to the bowl of hotpot which, I was reassured, was prepared exactly to the usual recipe. While we waited I enquired after the progress of Miss Plumb.

‘She is completely better today.'

‘And is she still angelic?'

Fidelis looked pained.

‘Yes,' he said stiffly. ‘That is the essential point about angels, Titus. They do not change.'

‘One called Lucifer did, as I remember.'

To which he had no answer.

The food came and we set about our meat and cheese while the dish of hotpot cooled on the table between us.

‘Have you had the opportunity to examine the remains of Allcroft's meal?' I asked.

He nodded.

‘Yes – mutton, kidneys, peas, carrots, onion, cereals. I asked Mrs Lorris, who considered them the usual ingredients.'

‘Cereals, you said? What kind?'

‘Oatmeal and barley. Tell me where this is leading.'

‘To our examination of this plate before us. I want to make a comparison, for I learned something suggestive yesterday.'

Fidelis leaned towards the plate, his face alert. I picked up a spoon and stirred it around in the hotpot, lifting out ingredients as the spoon encountered them. The presence of carrots was easily confirmed; then flesh, kidney, onions, peas each in turn revealed themselves.

‘We have found the meat and vegetables,' I prompted. ‘But what cereals do we have?'

‘Oatmeal is all that I can see.'

‘Good!' I cried, with (I admit) an unseemly show of triumph. ‘This is coming out exactly as I hoped. The usual cereal used in hotpot is indeed oatmeal, as Elizabeth confirmed for me this morning. Barley is only sometimes used, for it is dearer. Here at the Gamecock, it seems, they content themselves with the conventional use of oatmeal only.'

Fidelis looked bewildered.

‘But not in Allcroft's dinner, Titus. It contained barley, I swear it did.'

‘Of course it did, Luke, and I think we shall find that is what killed him.'

Fidelis had been in the act of raising his glass to his lips. He put it down instead.

‘How is that?'

I took him through my conversation on the previous day with Isaac Satterthwaite, stressing that, when working around the brewery, the rat catcher invariably mixed his arsenic with softened barley taken from the brewer's store. As Luke listened, a smile stole over his face.

‘I understand you, Titus,' he said when I had finished, seizing the spoon from my hand and plunging it into the hotpot. He lifted it out heavily loaded with meat. ‘And it's clever. It confirms my opinion that John Allcroft was murdered, even if we cannot yet say who did it.'

He shovelled the meat into his mouth.

‘I have an idea on that score also,' I said, as I watched his jaws working.

Fidelis made a beckoning motion with his fingers.

‘Tell,' he mumbled.

I described how I had seen the servant Peters in the hallway of the inn.

‘He is staying on the spot, which means he might readily have been on the premises when Allcroft died.'

Fidelis, who had swallowed at last, was animated by this news of Peters.

‘This is progress, Titus.' He tapped his chest at the place where the last of his mouthful was still descending his gullet. ‘Excellent hotpot.'

‘Well, suspicion must fall on Peters,' I went on. ‘He could have seduced or corrupted Maggie and made her get the poisoned barley.'

‘She may even have taken the plate of food to Peters's room, waited while he mixed in the poison, and afterwards taken it to poor Allcroft's as if nothing had happened. It could have been done in a minute.'

‘And don't forget, Luke, this is the second death to have occurred near him. Peters was on his way to the Ferry Inn when Antony Egan went into the river. Both men were on his master's list of political enemies.'

‘In other words this may all have been done by the manipulations of Destercore, in which case Peters is only the marionette.'

‘But why? How could it help Destercore's party to kill one or two of the other side's voters?'

‘Fear, Titus. Most of those coming into town will be Tories, won't they? Country people. If they fear for their lives they will not stay to vote, they'll hop straight back to their burrows like rabbits out of the rain. The Tory vote could be decimated.'

I considered.

‘That's plausible. But we've had two deaths and there's been no flight to the countryside yet.'

‘There is still time. Antony Egan's death may not have been part of the plot, but the poisoning of Allcroft was meant to look like a contagion, as you yourself thought it was when you first saw him. Another case or two like this and talk of plague will empty the town faster than a snake can spit.'

We drained our glasses and asked for the bill. When she'd brought it Mrs Fitzpatrick noticed the hardly eaten hotpot. She leaned across the table and sniffed it.