Dark Waters (41 page)

The letter to the jurors had been meant to placate young Allcroft, but it had another, unfortunate and unintended effect, which would have been avoided had I taken greater trouble in the drafting. The problem was in the words I had written in my note to Furzey: ‘
there must be
no
mention made of the Whigs' having plotted Allcroft's murder
'. I had meant these for a drafting instruction to Furzey, not as words to include in the letter. But Furzey had simply transcribed the phrase and, as I now saw, it was open to a grave misinterpretation: to the interpretation, in fact, that the Whigs
had
plotted against the Tories, and that I wished to suppress this.

Now, going out, I found talk of this all over town. Jurors had shown the letter to family and friends, and these had passed its contents on to others, with embellishments, until everyone was debating it, in a process that tended rather to defeat than to fulfil Jotham Allcroft's intentions. I was to meet Fidelis at the coffee house at ten, but first I called in at Wilkinson's bread and pie shop to see Allcroft and, if possible, explain that this new outbreak of gossip was more or less an accident of misunderstanding, inflamed by people's gross appetite for sensation.

When I asked for him, a little girl was told to take me through the shop and down the yard to the ‘meat house'. At the yard's end, a gate gave onto a track, leading after a few paces to a group of workshops or sheds and three adjoining animal pens, in which porkers lay contentedly, half immersed in mud. The girl pointed to the nearest shed, and then skipped back the way we had come. As I approached the door, the sound of a human voice cursing inarticulately, and punctuated by violent thuds, could be heard. Upon entering I could not prevent my mouth from dropping open.

At a heavy rough-hewn table, a man with his back to me was savagely hacking a freshly killed carcase into joints, swearing furiously with, and between, each blow. He wore a long leather apron over a rough buffin shirt with sleeves rolled high and arms slathered with gore to above the elbow. Nearby, a second carcase was hanging by its hind legs from a beam above a bucket, into which dripped the blood from its recently cut throat. Two wooden tubs stood near at hand: one contained the red, blue, pink and grey coils of a pig's entrails; the other held the pig's head reposing in a mess of its own lights. The smell was a powerful compound of blood, sweat and manure.

‘Mr Allcroft?' I called, stepping hesitantly through the doorway, for I was not yet sure it was he. The butcher jumped in his skin at the sound of my voice, then sprang around, revealing himself to be without question Jotham Allcroft, sober Quaker and former clerk of the fusiliers' pay division.

‘You!' he said in his unmistakable fluting voice. ‘You!'

He stood as if at bay, spattered with gouts of fresh blood, his baby face set in something between a snarl and a pout.

I opened my hands.

‘Yes, but good heavens, I did not think to find you doing such work as this!'

He raised the meat cleaver in his hand and I took a flinching step back.

‘What do you want, lawyer? What MORE do you want from me?'

‘Well, I think I owe you an explan—'

I did not finish the sentence for without further warning Jotham ran at me brandishing the bloody cleaver above his head, and giving a squealing cry of pig-like fury. I somehow slipped to one side and his scything blow missed me, the cleaver burying itself in the door post with a splintering crash. At this point I would have taken to my heels but now, though struggling to pull the thick blade from the post, he stood square in the doorway between me and escape. I edged instead into the interior of the shed, taking shelter behind the butcher block. Having extracted his weapon at last, he pursued me there, aiming huge chops at the intervening air with the cleaver. I continued round the table until I bumped into the hanging carcase, which I crept behind. For a few moments I danced this way and that as he aimed blow after blow at me but struck only the hanging pig, which began gradually to be reduced to shreds.

Panting heavily now, he was forced to pause and draw breath, whereupon I saw my chance and made a run for the door. Unfortunately the tub of guts stood in my way. I saw it too late, tried to vault over it and instead caught my foot on the rim and went down, sprawling on the ground. I rolled over to see Jotham looming over me, the gory meat cleaver ready to strike down and, no doubt, part my head from my body.

At that moment, a shadow was cast into the room from the door, and a deep voice shouted, ‘Hey!' Then some sort of heavy staff flashed horizontally through the air, striking Allcroft a heavy jab on the chest. I saw my attacker's face change from rage to surprise. So concentrated had he been upon butchering me that he seemed not to have noticed the shadow, or heard the voice, and the blow, catching him all unawares, sent him staggering backwards two or three paces until his progress was checked by contact with the guts tub. He wobbled there for an instant or two, but momentum had the last say and down he sat, his big arse plopping into the tub. The cleaver fell from his fingers.

Still on the ground I rolled over to acknowledge my saviour and saw a dirty scarlet coat, tricorn hat and a brass-knobbed mace of office: Oswald Mallender. For the first time in my life I was heartily glad to see him.

After helping me up, Mallender produced a piece of paper, which turned out to be a warrant. Holding this up as he might a lot at auction he solemnly intoned, in words that must have been of his own devising:

‘Ahem. It is my sworn duty to inform Mr Jotham Allcroft (here present) that this day a complaint has been made against his person for murder, and that he is therefore arrested by warrant of His Worship the Mayor and must come with me, the duly appointed officer, to be brought before His Worship and to answer to the said charge. Stand up!'

But, with his rear end plugged deep in the container of entrails, Jotham Allcroft could not get up. All he could do in his anger and impotence was kick his feet, wave his arms and weep. Mallender and I regarded him for a few moments, then grabbed his wrists and pulled. He came out with an audible sucking sound and a few minutes later Jotham Allcroft was marched up Fisher Gate to the Moot Hall to answer a charge of murder. Slubbered all over with blood and guts, he was crying like a baby for his mother. It was a sight that people would remember on Fisher Gate for years to come.

Chapter Twenty-eight

H
OME
I
WENT
for a change of clothes and, as it was now past ten, straight out again to meet Luke Fidelis at the coffee house we favoured, the Turk's Head. I found him, with pot and cups before him and a pipe in his mouth, perusing the
Preston Weekly Journal,
which had been freshly issued that morning.

‘It is confidently predicted that both the Whig candidates have lost, Titus. This is based on an unofficial word from the mayor's office. Sir Harry Hoghton is now a laughing stock. His support has collapsed entirely and Reynolds, for all his greasy efforts in the past year, has never been very popular with our tradesmen.'

‘Hoghton will not like being ejected from Parliament, but it's his own fault.'

I settled down opposite Fidelis and he poured the coffee.

‘You have heard about the arrest of Jotham Allcroft?' I asked.

‘I saw the spectacle on Fisher Gate from my window this morning – and saw you there too. What in God's name happened?'

I related the alarming events in the butchery shed. Far from being concerned for my own well-being, Fidelis thought it amusing.

‘Saved by Constable Mallender! There must be a first time for everything.'

‘He prefaced the arrest with a speech when the prisoner was still stuck in the tub – something of his own devising, for it was pomposity itself.'

‘I hope he did not ask the man to come clean.'

I refused to encourage, by laughing, Fidelis's regrettable weakness for wordplay – the punning, Penkethman side of him.

Instead I said, ‘So, how did you sleep?'

‘Not perfectly, but I believe I have puzzled out the vital questions.'

I began filling my pipe.

‘Let's hear your conclusions, then, and see if they tally with mine. Start with last night at Drake's shop.'

‘Maggie was playing for time. She was ready to make up any story that would get us out of the house and give time, not for herself, but one of her accomplices. I fancy he was actually there in the house all the time, waiting upstairs for the chance to get away.'

‘I think it was Drake.'

He nodded.

‘And the question is, why did she want him to get away while she herself remained?'

I knew the answer, but I led him on.

‘Why, then?'

‘To preserve herself, and all her hopes. Absolute blame for the evil deeds of the recent past would naturally fall on the man who runs away, not on the woman who calmly remains. Escaping suspicion, she can enjoy the fruits of the crime.'

‘Ah – so you allow the possibility of a murderous conspiracy.'

‘That is what it must have been. I saw that at about half past midnight. And to find out the reason for any murder, one must address the essential question.
Cui bono?
Who benefits?'

‘We have at least three on our hands, Luke, and maybe four. Was the answer the same in all of them?'

‘I am not yet quite sure of that, but perhaps. Let us take them one by one. First, Allcroft. The obvious beneficiary of his death is Jotham the son, who will inherit all his wealth. We knew the junior Allcroft and his senior had disagreed, but could not see why or how Jotham could have killed his father, and never in fact suspected him. But bring Maggie Satterthwaite into the equation and all that changes.'

‘Yes. Until this morning's events I did not fully grasp that. She meant to marry Jotham, of course. He was besotted by her, so much that he tried to kill me for putting her back in gaol.'

‘But note one thing, Titus. Maggie and Jotham were very careful to keep their connection secret. If we or the mayor and magistrates had known of it, her whole scheme would have been exposed at the start.'

‘
Her
scheme? So you see Maggie actively at the heart of this?'

‘Oh, she will pretend she was passive. But she ensnared Jotham and then convinced him that his father must die to bring forward the inheritance. And, of course, she managed the poisoning by herself. She was a proper Lady Macbeth.'

‘But, as you've said, this plot could never work unless blame was successfully laid off.'

‘Yes, on Drake. And the beauty of the whole idea is that he did not mind. What we learned last night was that, above all, he had to get away. He was hounded by creditors, and on the point of being arrested for debt. I think Drake was always intending to escape his creditors in America. He probably had passage booked on a Liverpool ship – they may even now be at sea – but before he could leave he needed funds. The stratagem, therefore, was for Jotham to provide him with cash, probably by buying his shop's stock. There was some risk, because Drake's many creditors should have first call on the residue of his business, but the risk was mitigated by the secret removal of the stock to the mill. If no one could find it, no one could seize it for the creditors.'

‘If only I had pursued Furzey on the matter, I would have known Allcroft was the mill's owner and we should have tumbled to this much sooner.'

‘The great usefulness of the mill was its distance from town,' Fidelis went on. There was a certain dour relentlessness about his exposition – perhaps the consequence of his lack of sleep in the night. ‘It was safe out of the way and after a decent time Jotham could recoup his money by selling the stuff, and the trinkets and so on, bit by bit.'

Fresh coffee and pipes were brought. I was feeling leisurely now, almost light headed, as one does when days of intense activity have come to an end. I picked up the theme.

‘So let's agree,' I said, ‘that Allcroft's murder was a three-handed conspiracy, with a very wicked leading hand played in it by Maggie.'

‘She is cool, is she not? She is evil, but she has courage.'

Despite everything we knew, and despite (or perhaps because of) her long bamboozlement of us, there was still admiration in Fidelis's voice when he spoke of Maggie.

‘But what about the deaths of Antony Egan, Thomas Wilson and Maggie's grandfather? We must decide where they fit.'

‘I have some ideas, but hazy as yet. I would like to know your opinion.'

He sat back, like a chess player who has taken his turn.

I gathered my thoughts and began.

‘Very well. Remember the role Drake has been playing. He was to shoulder the blame,
in absentia,
for the murder. But he needed to be equipped with a quite different motive for having murdered Allcroft, different from the actual motive, that is – and it was decided this should be
political.
The deception was almost successful. We were led, by the nose, into believing it.'

I lit a taper, put the flame to my pipe, and continued.

‘So what we imagined – and were supposed to imagine – was a small conspiracy of Whigs trying to reduce the Tory vote by removing tally captains and so knocking their tallies out of the vote. I don't know how, but I think Wilson and Isaac Satterthwaite thought they had uncovered this imaginary plot themselves and confronted Drake with it. Naturally they had to die or they would have let out the secret.'

‘That the plot did not exist?'

‘Yes. But in certain ways their deaths served Maggie's and Jotham's turn anyway. They promoted the idea of a political plot even further, because of their having been members of the same Whig group that met regularly with Michael Drake, under the pretext – so goes the suggestion – of a game of cards.'