Dark Waters (32 page)

‘I don't see how. And I would have noticed. I was serving it out all dinner time. I would have noticed.'

‘Very well. Let us merely note at this stage how we have heard that the stew eaten by Mr Allcroft contained barleycorns, and that this was unusual. Now, I wish to call Mr Isaac Satterthwaite. Is he present?'

I looked around the room for the witness. There was no Isaac Satterthwaite. Looking at my watch I saw that it was twenty-five past eleven and realized that, if the vote was going according to timetable, he would be on his way to the polling hall with his tally. I whispered to Furzey.

‘How long does it take a tally to go through polling?'

Furzey shrugged.

‘An hour maybe. It depends if there are challenges from the recording officer. The Tory voters get through quicker, because the mayor gives them the nod. The Whigs, of course, are questioned like gypsies.'

I turned back to the court and rapped the table with my gavel.

‘Mr Satterthwaite is, I believe, attending to his duties as a voter in the present election. I understand he will be available later. I shall therefore reconvene this hearing at two o'clock, when I hope we can hear him. Jurors, in the meantime keep your wits about you. Have your dinners, but no strong drink, and no idle gossip please. Adjourned.'

I gavelled the table again and Furzey intoned the order to rise. The court stood and, as I made my way out of the room, I could hear some of the remarks being made in the audience, as they strained to understand why I was calling the rat catcher to give evidence. There were murmurs suggesting I must be up to something.

But as I passed I heard Miss Colley confidently assert, ‘Mr Cragg knows what he is doing, you may depend upon it.'

That was heartening. Unfortunately, I did not yet know what others were doing, and in that lay the downfall of my plans.

Chapter Twenty-one

A
S
I
LEFT
the inn, I found the air had thickened and, just then, a growl of thunder rolled around the sky like a loose cannon-ball on a moving deck. I was on my way to see how things stood in the voting, and to make sure that Satterthwaite would be able to give his evidence in the afternoon. At the Moot Hall I found that his tally had not yet appeared before the mayor, so I went on towards Porter's. I had made only a few yards along Fisher Gate when I was stopped by Nick Oldswick. He had heard report of the testimony given during the morning, and was agitated about it.

‘Cragg, is it true John Allcroft was poisoned? The word is flying round town that the Whigs had Allcroft killed to stop his votes from registering – that would have made a dozen votes lost for Fazackerley and Shuttleworth. I call it an outrage.'

I did my best to damp this speculation down, saying the jury had yet to decide if there was anything deliberate about Allcroft's death and even if there was, the motive would still need settling.

‘Fiddlesticks,' he cried. ‘Everybody knows why Allcroft came here. He thought Sir Henry Hoghton a scoundrel, which is an opinion I see no reason to disagree with. And I never thought I'd see the day that a man should die because of his vote. These Whigs are blackguards.'

I walked on through a light drizzle of rain to Porter's, where I found the place still boiling with people, and plenty of beer being swilled in both the larger and smaller rooms. But on inspection I saw there was more coherence in the room than chaos. The large smoking room was subdivided much like a sheep market into little folds, in each of which was a group of men. They wore the usual party favours, rosettes and the like, and were being served drink from a tray carried by a serving girl. Each little flock had its sheep-dog, the tally captain, who worried around them, keeping them in a group, lecturing them when they looked as if they would get out of hand, leading them in songs and rousing toasts: ‘Pretender to Perdition!' ‘Up With the Land Tax!' A trumpet band was playing to the room on a raised platform. They had by now learned the music of ‘Rule Britannia!', for it was being performed as I walked in. Someone had enterprisingly had the words printed on a broad-sheet, copies of which were distributed around the room. With these to hand, the sing-along was deafening and joyous.

I stepped onto a bench to get a better view. Almost at once I saw the tall, white-haired figure of Isaac Satterthwaite. The rat catcher was being a very active collie to his flock. He patrolled the perimeter of their fold continually, having words in their ears as he passed, and occasionally stopping to address them as a group. I could see his determination that every man should go through the polling bar as efficiently as sheep through the tick bath. He was determined, that is, that every vote he had would be cast, at the very least; whether or not all would be allowed by the mayor was another matter.

I was considering how best to approach him when a loud call for attention cut through the general noise. It came from Denis Destercore, who had mounted the orchestra dais, shushed the musicians and now faced the room with his watch in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other.

‘Mr Satterthwaite! Bring forward your men, if you please.'

The rat catcher's voting detail pushed through the throng and out into the street. I followed them.

The rain was falling a shade more steadily as they formed up in the street. The change of weather had not yet chased people indoors and excited groups of onlookers still swarmed all over Fisher Gate. But the tally would be making plenty of noise to clear their path, being led all the way up the slope to Moot Hall by a bugler and a drummer. On the other hand any such martial music would likely attract the enemy, so a posse of young men was to march alongside the group with cudgels, to repel any attack. This protection was certainly desirable. Several of Satterthwaite's men were either old or sickly, one had a wooden leg and one was being carried by four of the able-bodied ones in a chair.

The drummer began to beat a marching time, the bugler joined in, and they were off. Keeping pace, I saw a few obstructors being pushed intemperately out of the way. Walking immediately behind the drummer, Satterthwaite was visibly the leader; his head constantly moved this way and that, alive to any threat. As we passed Lorris's house, I glanced up. Fidelis had returned home and I saw him leaning on the sill of his open window to watch. I was about to give him a wave when my attention was drawn back to the street. For now an animal roar was heard from a side alley and a band of five or six men broke cover to rush at the voters, waving heavy sticks.

As battle was joined, a bolt of lightning streaked across the sky, and a crash of thunder followed. Now the men were cudgel to cudgel: heads and bodies were clubbed, ribs were cracked, noses and scalps bled. With his protective screen engaged in this way, Satterthwaite ran past the faltering bugler and drummer, and turned to face his voters, hammering one fist again and again into its opposite palm, yelling at them purple faced to keep going. They responded with a defiant cheer and were on the move again. It was obvious as he bustled them along that their captain's only thought was for the objective, which was now less than 50 yards away. As an old soldier, perhaps he ought to have known better than to press on without protection; perhaps he ought to have sensed that the first attack was only a diversion, designed to crack off the flanking defenders like a shell and expose the soft inner body to the tip of someone's sword.

The second group of attackers gave even less warning than the first. They burst silently from an alley on the opposite side of the street, just as the rain began perceptibly to increase. As soon as he saw them bearing down on him, the bugler panicked and ran for his life, but the drummer, encumbered with his instrument, was caught. His drum was quickly punctured and sent rolling away, while its owner was forced to the ground where he received a summary kicking.

Meanwhile the ten members of the tally itself were having mixed fortunes. The able-bodied, including the four chair carriers, had taken to their heels, while the sick and doddery were taking whatever came to them. The one-legged fellow had his peg snapped like a twig, and the chair-bound one was pitched out of it onto the cobbles while work was begun on reducing his chair to matchwood.

A few of the public, including myself, started forward to intervene but were repulsed, as much by threats as fists. Satterthwaite, still in the midst of the melee, was now the focus of the assault. He had picked up a bit of the splintered chair and was beating one of his attackers frenziedly around the shoulders. When another of them leapt on his back, he roared like a sightless Samson and spun around and around, hacking blindly back over his shoulders with the chair spar to dislodge the man. At last he did so and flung him off, then looked around in despair for any remnant of his tally. There was none and seconds later his attackers had melted away even more suddenly than they'd appeared, their work complete. Another crack of lightning ripped the sky with a sound that might have been a second peg leg splintering, but much magnified.

Suddenly I saw Satterthwaite stagger and fall. I ran forward and knelt at his side, trying to see what the matter was. It seemed he had struck his head on the cobbles, for he was unconscious. I patted his rain-spattered cheeks and called his name for a moment, but found no response. Then I was aware of another figure kneeling on his other side, taking Satterthwaite's wrist between his fingers.

‘It's no use, Titus,' said Fidelis in a low voice. ‘I think you'll find he is dead.'

I stared at him.

‘Don't be daft,' I said. ‘He's just knocked out by the fall.'

Fidelis shook his head firmly.

‘There's no pulse. He probably died on his feet.'

‘I still say he might be only—'

‘No, Titus, that's why you should always have a doctor by your side. You don't know a sleeping man from a dead one.'

As I surveyed the stretched-out form of Isaac Satterthwaite I was conscious that the fighting had now stopped as suddenly as it had started, and that the attackers' object had been achieved. Satterthwaite's tally of voters, even as their leader was falling, had been routed and dispersed.

‘I didn't see what happened. He must have been taken with a sudden apoplexy … all that excitement. Or – wait a minute – wasn't there a flash of lightning? Perhaps he was struck. An act of God.'

Although it was raining quite heavily now, a curious crowd several people deep had made a tight hedge around us.

‘Make way there,' called out Fidelis. ‘And lend a hand. This man is mortally hurt. We must get him out of the wet.'

We took him to lie in the vestry at St John's, alongside John Allcroft, and I sent for his granddaughter to come urgently. While we waited for Maggie the rain drummed on the roof and Fidelis and I had the corpse to ourselves.

We both looked down at Isaac Satterthwaite, lying on the vestry table and looking peaceful.

I let a few moments pass, then said, ‘What killed him, Luke? A stroke of lightning, or a stroke of apoplexy?'

‘It wasn't either.'

‘But there was no attacker anywhere near him. And there's no injury. Not a mark.'

‘Isn't there?'

Carefully Fidelis took the bushy beard by its end, and lifted it so that it hung like a little white cloud above the dead man's breast and abdomen. He peered underneath. I also looked from my side of the table.

‘See that?' Fidelis pointed with his finger. ‘That is no act of God, but an act of man.'

At the end of his finger, immediately over the breastbone, was a neat, blood-rimmed hole. I had seen such a hole once or twice before in the course of my work. It was a bullethole.

‘Good God! He was shot!'

‘Yes. And the sound was masked by the storm.'

‘Why did he not bleed more copiously? There was no blood spilt at all.'

‘The ball stopped his heart instantly, before he even hit the ground. So – no heartbeat, no bleeding. It is not like a knife wound.'

I considered the matter. Luke was right in more than one way. A shooting is wholly different from a knifing. Almost any of us could lay our hands on a knife, should we need one. It can be used without a thought: it is all too handy, easy to conceal, easy to wield. Not so a gun. Few people have one. It is unwieldy, and cannot simply be snatched up and used. First you have to load, charge, ram and prime. There's no killing so premeditated as a gunshot – unless it be a poisoning.

In time a distraught Maggie arrived. I waited until the storm of her crying had abated, then asked for a private conversation. It took place in the church porch.

‘At first,' I told her, ‘it appeared that your grandfather had been struck down by illness, or even by the lightning. But now we know someone killed him.'

Maggie's eyes filled again with tears.

‘Who?'

‘Can you think of anyone?'

‘I don't know what to think.'

‘We shall have to inquire into it, and I will in time hold a formal inquest. Unfortunately, as of course you know, I have another inquest in hand into John Allcroft. It will be hard and I am sorry, my dear, but you will have to give evidence once again. Will you be able to?'

She sniffed and nodded her head.

‘Good. Have you anyone to look after you? Who is your closest relative?'

‘I have an aunt married in Longridge.'

‘If I send for her, do you think she'd be willing to come and take you home with her?'

‘I think she would, sir.'

‘Then I'll do it. In the meantime come into my house. You are welcome to sit with my wife and she will comfort you.'

*   *   *

Arriving back at the inquest a little late, I found that word of the latest death had already spread like a bad smell around town. People were treating my temporary court as a news exchange, for the numbers had swollen and the place was in an uproar of speculation and debate. The most popular opinion was that Satterthwaite had been struck by either a seizure or a bolt of lightning; only a minority promoted the idea that he had been murdered.