Dark Waters (23 page)

The grand event was the musical entertainment
Alfred,
designed as the curtain-raiser to the week of voting, which would begin the next day. It was going to be performed in the town's theatre by a company of actors, and an orchestra of string and wind, all laid on by Lord Strange. It was this young nobleman that had secured the services of the fashionable Mr Thomas Arne to come from London to direct it. Biggs might be intending to close the theatre, but he didn't dare do so before his young lordship had had his evening of fun.

*   *   *

At home I found Fidelis awaiting me in his riding clothes. He looked pale and strained.

‘I have come to make my excuses,' he said. ‘I must miss dinner, as I have been called to Hoghton Tower. A member of the household has fallen sick.'

‘Can't you stay for your dinner first?'

‘No, the matter is urgent. May I call in later, on my return?'

‘Of course. The afternoon will be wet and we're not going out.'

His forehead was furrowed and, though professing to be in a hurry, he seemed reluctant to go immediately.

‘You seem distracted,' I said. ‘Is there something the matter?'

‘Yes. I think there is.'

‘And?'

‘It is Miss Plumb, Titus.'

At that moment a shadow seemed to flick across his handsome face. He looked suddenly haunted.

‘Has she become ill again?' I asked.

‘I don't know. Possibly. I don't know where she is. She has gone.'

‘Gone?'

‘She was not in her room this morning. She did not sleep there at all last night. I was shown the bed by the Lorrises and that much is evident. But she said not a word, only wrote a note to say she did not want any supper in the evening, and was tired and not to be disturbed. That was during the afternoon. No one saw her go out of the house, and no one knows when she did go out.'

He picked up his hat and riding crop. This was the moment when I might have given him Miss Plumb's message. But he was in a hurry and I missed it.

‘I am sure she will return,' I said.

This lame reassurance was spoken as I saw him out of the door, and onto his horse.

‘I wish I did not have to go to Hoghton, Titus, else I could be looking for her.'

He mounted and rode off, with his medical bag bouncing on the horse's rump. Then, before I could shut the door, young Barty appeared.

‘Mr Cragg, sir,' he said, ‘the two men you asked about. They were seen at Bamber Bridge this morning at six, walking, with a donkey.'

‘A donkey, is it? Well, they must be going south. Thank you, Barty. I think we can say good riddance.'

‘Will you not give chase, sir?'

I shook my head.

‘It's hardly worth it, Barty, and not a job for me at all events.'

I asked if he wanted to come inside for a bite, but he said no, he had to be somewhere else. He was a secretive boy. I did not know precisely where he slept.

I told Elizabeth about the unaccountable disappearance of Miss Plumb, but she implied she thought it some small impediment that kept the young woman away, of little moment. She was more interested in the absconded mountebanks, and wanted a close account of the previous evening.

‘Do you mean to say that the underling Dickon is really the master?' she asked when I'd summarized the events of the evening. ‘I cannot believe it – he looked the perfect idiot.'

‘That was his intention.'

‘Well, of course, I can see it now. A true idiot could never be as perfectly suited to that role as a false one.'

‘Exactly. Andrews is the brain of the enterprise; Shackleberry is only the showman. His tongue may be golden, but his mind is tarnished by drink.'

‘Should they not be pursued, though? They appear guilty of terrible poisoning.'

‘Accidentally, I think. Or even unknowingly. It is the person who gave them the poison that we want to find. Though, as coroner, I need not make even that my concern unless and until someone dies. And the mayor won't take action. He thinks Andrews and Shackleberry are fine fellows.'

‘But one person
has
died, Titus. John Allcroft.'

‘That was before Paracelsus's Patent Preservative made its appearance. If the mixture is the cause of the general sickness in town, Allcroft must be the victim of someone else. But who?'

‘Could it be the same person as him that conveyed the famous kick to the preservative?'

‘I don't know that. But I do think I know who it was that provided the ingredient you mention.'

‘Oh, who?'

‘I will tell you later. I want to make a few more inquiries first.'

In the afternoon, I brought my new Chaucer into the parlour so that my wife and I could read together the poem that had induced me to buy it –
The Parliament of Fowls.
Sometimes we stopped to puzzle over the strange vocabulary – ‘make' instead of ‘mate', ‘slit' for ‘slide' – but we got in the swing of it soon enough.

Expecting to be plunged straight into the world of birds and their politics, I was surprised to find that it began with lines about love.

The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne,

Th'assay so hard, so sharp the conquerynge,

The dreadful joy alwey that sit so yerne:

Al this mene I by love.

It was Elizabeth who, with her eyes shining, opened mine to the genius of the poetry.

‘I think those are very beautiful lines, Titus. It is true for many that love is a “dreadful joy” though it is a surprising phrase – a paradox, isn't it?'

‘Yes, or it might be called an oxymoron.'

Without a word she rose, gently took the book from me and placed it on the floor.

‘But our love is not an oxymoron,' she whispered. ‘It is
only
a joy.'

Then she sank into my lap to kiss me, her fingers digging into the back of my neck as she pulled my mouth fiercely onto hers. It seemed a long time before she finished kissing me.

‘Love does slide away, as Chaucer says, from many,' she said, drawing away at last and looking me hard in the face, ‘but it shall not from us, unless we let it. But your poet is right to say that life is short: we must remember that too.'

‘I do. How can I forget it, in my profession?'

‘So, let's go on with the reading.'

*   *   *

It was apparent that Fidelis had regained some of his good humour, when he stood on our doorstep an hour and a half later. From the sparkle in his eye it even looked as if he might have been laughing.

‘Have you found Miss Plumb?' I asked, thinking this must be the explanation.

His face clouded for a moment, and then lightened again.

‘No, I have not, and shall not. I have told myself, if she can go away without a word, I must resign myself to being nothing to her.'

‘I should tell you she—'

But once again my attempt to pass on Miss Plumb's confidence was stalled. Fidelis raised his hand.

‘No, Titus, not another word about her. Tell me instead, is there any news of the mountebanks? Have you interviewed Shackleberry?'

‘No. The pair gave Barty the slip. The last we heard, they were at Bamber, headed south. But come into the library. I have something to show you.'

We went inside and I related my adventures of the night before, once I'd left Fidelis on Fisher Gate – how Wilson had talked of dispensing poisons and how I had later copied certain details out of his dispensing ledger. I soon had Fidelis's complete attention.

‘You have the paper that you copied onto?' he asked.

I opened the drawer of the escritoire and produced the paper. Fidelis took it and laid it on the desktop. He studied it.

‘These are the sales he made on Thursday, is that right?'

‘Not all of them. I was interrupted in my writing by his wife. There were at least as many that I didn't have time to write down.'

‘Never mind. I think we have the salient ones.'

‘They are all impenetrable to me. I hope not to you.'

‘No, indeed.'

Fidelis was smiling and nodding to himself as he ran through Wilson's notations. It brought to mind a musician casting his eye over a stave of notes and hearing the tune in his head.

‘See here?' he said at last, putting his finger on the paper. ‘Between Mr Boothby's Hungary Water and Miss Wellson's linctus, what do we have?'

I looked. The item was, ‘
Strngr. Grnd Atrp 2 scrp agg. 100:1 ½ lb.
'

‘What does it mean?'

‘It means Wilson
was
dispensing poison. “
Atrp
” can only be
atropinum
– the root of the deadly nightshade.'

‘And on such a scale – half a pound!'

‘Yes, but only two scruples of the active ingredient – the
atropinum
grounds. It is normal when a dangerous poison is sold to the public to mingle it in a certain proportion with an inert substance such as acorn flour – here it is a hundred to one. When one is dealing with very tiny amounts of a noxious element it is very easy to use too much, and perhaps kill someone. By this method even a good pinch of the stuff will deliver only a minute dose of actual poison.'

‘And I suppose he writes “
Stranger
” because he couldn't admit in his records that he knew Shackleberry.'

‘Yes, he may have been covering his tracks. The effects of
atropinum
closely mirror the symptoms we saw yesterday across the town – hallucinations, loss of balance, fear of bright light, constipation, retention of urine, extreme thirst and all the rest. If Wilson had written the name Shackleberry in the left-hand column he might be exposed as the source of poison. He may not have been sober when he wrote the record, but he was not completely careless.'

‘We don't know he was drunk.'

‘He met Shackleberry in an alehouse, and Shackleberry certainly drank.'

‘Does the entry tell us anything else?'

Fidelis rubbed his hands together with undoubted relish.

‘Yes, it does – but not about the Patent Preservative.'

‘What, then?'

‘It is a marvellous chance that you show me this, Titus. It tells us not only what Wilson might have meant last night in his drunken ramblings, but casts medical light on the bedside I was called to today. May I have a pipe and I will tell you?'

Chapter Sixteen

S
O WE SMOKED
, and Fidelis narrated. He had arrived at the outer gate of Hoghton Tower, still without knowing the name of the stricken person he was summoned to attend. Ralph Randall, when he came out to admit him, was silent on the subject. With the horse entrusted to a groom, the steward conducted Fidelis across the outer court, through the second gate and into the inner court, which they crossed to the door of the tower itself. He again asked Randall the name of his patient, but received no reply, except to be urged to quicken his step.

Passing through the hall, Randall led the way up the stair and along a corridor, well windowed with leaded panes on one side and panelled in oak on the other. He opened the door at the end, stood aside, and gestured Fidelis to pass through. He then shut the door, without following the doctor inside.

Sir Henry Hoghton was lying beneath the covers of the great canopied bed, wearing a nightcap and gown. But far from enjoying a peaceful rest, he was writhing in agony, groaning and continually licking his lips. At sixty years old, he had a face with a purple-tinged complexion, and a certain pop to the eyes that gave him an air of permanent grievance. On this occasion, at least, there was an easily seen reason for the grievance. His nose was swollen and his lower lip was split.

There was no one else in the room, so Fidelis presented himself at the bedside and asked Hoghton how he was.

Sir Henry muttered something inaudible and when Fidelis asked again, the stricken man impatiently roared, ‘See for yourself, and damn your eyes!'

He threw back the sheet and blanket. Through the linen of his gown Fidelis could see the full extent of the problem: the parliamentary candidate's
membrum virilis
stood in a condition of gigantic and pulsating erection.

‘The bugger won't go soft,' stuttered Hoghton. ‘Been like that for twelve hours! It's got harder if anything. And it burns, man; it burns like some damnable fire's got into it. I can't piss. I can't do anything, not with my tool like that. It's intolerable. It's hell. It doesn't feel like mine any more. You must do something.'

Fidelis raised the nightgown to examine the engorged member. Gingerly poking it, he asked if this had ever happened before.

‘Course it hasn't. Always been perfectly normal in every way. Never a cause for complaint.'

Fidelis observed that there must therefore have been something different, some new influence, in this instance. Had he been stung by an insect or plant, eaten or drunk anything unusual, or done some other activity immediately before it happened – dancing, riding, bathing – or boxing, perhaps?

‘Boxing?' Hoghton roared. ‘Don't be bloody absurd. And I wasn't playing ring-a-roses either. Use your wits, if you have any. What do you think I was doing?'

‘You were … with a lady, then?'

At which Hoghton writhed around again and, without answering, demanded again that the doctor do something.

‘So what did you do?' I asked my friend, between laughter and suspense.

‘I relieved the bladder. I had been wondering if this stubborn erection was being maintained by pressure on either the prostate gland or the urethra. So I used a catheter, and presto! It worked. I drew off the urine and within a few minutes the member had noticeably deflated.'

‘He was cured?'

‘Not quite, but I thought matters would improve from there. I suggested that a cold compress, even a cold bath, might help soothe the burning, and that the discomfort would slowly dissipate. But there was not much more for me to do except tell him plainly that the influence which had caused this would be best avoided.'