Dark Waters (6 page)

‘It's all writ down,' he said.

‘By you?'

I must have allowed the smallest hint of surprise into my voice because John stopped turning the pages and fixed me with a rheumy eye.

‘I know my letters, Mr Cragg. But no, by them. That is our way at this inn.'

He found the place and turned the book so that I could read it. The page was divided into columns for the date of arrival and the time, a signature, the place where the guest had travelled from, and the date and time of departure. He pointed to the most recent entry.

27 April || 12.25 a.m. || H.P. servant of Mr Destercore (barn) || Liverpool || 27 April || 7.10 a.m.

Immediately above I noted the entry for Peters's master in a different, more scrawled script.

26 April || 7.45 p.m. || Denis Destercore || Liverpool || 27 April || 8.10 a.m.

I took from my pocket the note I had received last night at the White Bull and compared the signatures. They were the same.

‘What was his behaviour, this servant?'

‘How d'you mean?'

‘Was he polished, or rough mannered – how did he carry himself?'

‘He was ill mannered and very ungrateful.'

‘Really?' I tapped the entry in the register. ‘Yet the hand of this servant is polite: an educated hand. Would you say he was educated?'

‘No. To me he was foul spoken and rough.'

Before I swivelled the ledger back towards John, I looked over the rest of the page. Destercore and Peters had not been the only ones staying on the Sunday night: there were three other names – not an unusual number of guests. For most of the previous week there had been three or four putting up at the inn each night – late arrivals who slept there only because they could not cross to Preston by ferry until the next morning.

‘There's just one more thing, John,' I said. ‘You keep to your post here, in the hall, from midnight, is that right?'

‘Aye.'

I pointed towards the inn's front door.

‘And your master would come in by that door after his walk, plainly in your sight?'

‘He would.'

‘When would that be, normally?'

‘Most nights he'd be out half an hour but, odd times, he did stay longer, I reckon.'

‘Would he lock up after he came in?'

‘Aye, unless he forgot.'

‘In which case you locked up?'

‘Aye.'

‘So when he did not come back on the night we're talking about, you kept the door unlocked for him?'

‘Aye.'

‘Why did you not raise the alarm, or go out and look for him, when you knew he had been out such a long time?'

John appeared embarrassed. He leaned nearer to me across the counter.

‘I didn't always mind him, see? Happen sometimes I had even nodded off when he came in, and never saw him at all.'

Then another idea struck him. He screwed up his face.

‘But now I think on it, I did mind I hadn't seen Mr Egan come back yet. Then when I still didn't see him, I made up my mind he'd come in while I was seeing to that Peters, taking him to the barn, like. That is what I thought to myself at the time. But any road, I could not leave this post – not long enough for to go outdoors along the river path looking. I was on duty.'

I thanked John and asked him to stand by to give his evidence later. Then I went in search of Mary-Ann. She was sitting with her sister in their private parlour, which one reached through the kitchen.

‘Where have you put your father to lie?' I asked.

‘In his bedroom,' stated Mary-Ann.

‘Dr Fidelis will be here soon and we will have a quick look at him together before the hearing. Now, do you know whose this is?'

I produced the black hat, which I had folded and tucked into my pocket. I straightened it and pushed the crown into shape.

‘My daddy's hat!' cried Grace, seizing it from me. ‘Where'd you find this?'

‘Near the ferry stage. You're sure it's his?'

‘Of course. Am I not right, Mary?'

She passed it to Mary-Ann who looked inside.

‘Yes, it's his,' she confirmed.

‘And you can testify that he would have been wearing this hat when he went out on Sunday night for his walk?'

‘Oh yes, he always did,' said Grace. ‘I'm right glad you found it.'

‘May I have it back until after the hearing? I will need to show it to the jury.'

Mary-Ann handed it back.

‘Will you tell us what will happen today?' she asked.

I explained the inquest's procedure. The jury would assemble at twelve and be sworn. They would then view the body, taking note of anything that could furnish clues as to how their father had died, before hearing the evidence of witnesses. Finally they would go into a huddle and come up with a verdict.

‘What sort of verdict?'

‘There are really only five possibilities.'

I counted them off on my fingers.

‘Murder, manslaughter, self-murder, self-manslaughter and accidental death.'

Grace absorbed the information for a moment, and said, ‘We had not thought it could be anything but an accident, had we, Mary-Ann?'

Mary-Ann shook her head.

‘I cannot imagine what self-manslaughter is, Uncle.'

‘I use it to mean when persons kill themselves but are not fully to blame. For instance, by reason of insanity.'

‘Oh, I see.'

‘I am sure, as you say, an accident is most likely in this case,' I said. ‘But the inquest must be seen to consider every possibility.'

‘Who will attend?' Mary-Ann asked.

‘Inquests must be open to the general public but I don't expect many of them today, if any at all. Otherwise there will be just myself and Furzey my clerk, the jury members, the first finder – who was Peter Crane the salmon fisher, you know – and witnesses in this household. And other witnesses who may be called or come forward to assist. I shall certainly call Dr Fidelis.'

Mention the Devil, and see his horns. No sooner had I spoken than there came a knock on the door, and Toby entered to say that Dr Fidelis had arrived, and was waiting in the hall. I asked if we could be taken straight up to where the body lay and, two minutes later, Fidelis and I stood one on either side of Antony's bed.

He had been laid out in his nightgown, with a plain nightcap on his head, and his arms crossed piously across his chest. I put my hand under the body, lifting and manipulating it to enable Fidelis to pull the garment up to the neck. Then we looked down together on the naked remains.

‘He has suffered many smaller accidents before this fatal one,' said Fidelis.

He was right. The body had an assortment of scars and bruises, scalds and burns.

‘I have seen this at inquest on many a toper's corpse,' I said. ‘They trip over, they set fire to their wigs, they bump into trees.'

‘I see it on living persons, too,' added Fidelis.

He removed the nightcap and raised Antony's head to inspect it on all sides.

‘There are a few insignificant contusions about the head, but they're old ones.'

‘So you don't think he was clubbed over the head before he fell into the river?'

He laid the head back on the pillow and straightened his back.

‘No. The only conclusion I draw from this examination is that it confirms what we already know. The man was a sot, who towards the end was near incapable.'

‘Let us go down then.'

We found the jury assembling in the taproom, drinking beer and talking loudly about the inconvenience of inquest duty. I did not take them seriously because I knew they spoke like this only to cover up their happiness. Some of them must have known Antony Egan quite well and might have been sorry for his death. But that did not detract from the good feeling of having a holiday while, at the same time, virtuously performing a public duty.

I led the way into the dining room – good sized and well lit by two high windows – to find Furzey already established and writing busily at the end of a long table in the centre of the room, with an empty chair beside him. Here I sat, arranging the men on the forms six to each side, while another chair was left empty at the far end to seat witnesses as they gave their evidence. Mary-Ann and Grace Egan had their own chairs by the window, while another form ranged along the wall to my right was for witnesses after they'd spoken and others in attendance. Among those others were my wife with her mother, the sister of the dead man.

As if unwilling to let it interfere too far with drinking and eating, the jury was in a mood to get the inquest over quickly. Once they were sworn, I took them upstairs to view the body. There were some remarks made about its bumped and scarred state, some pious, others sarcastic; but they did not linger in the bedroom, and within a few minutes we were back in the inquest room ready to hear testimony from Peter Crane, followed by the two Egan daughters, the nightman and finally Dr Fidelis. None of this produced any unexpected information. Finally, with no further witnesses coming forward, I summed up, sketching Antony's sad condition, his habit of taking a late-night walk, the events of the fatal night, and of how the body was found next morning.

‘I myself, in the company of Dr Fidelis, saw the body shortly after it was brought ashore, and the doctor has told us of the view he formed as a medical man, that the lungs were full of water. This meant Antony Egan was breathing when he entered the water, and his death was consequently by drowning. Dr Fidelis and I, as you have also heard, later inspected the riverbank beside the ferry stage, to which Antony invariably took his midnight walks. There we found signs that someone had recently slid down the steep, wet bank in the direction of the water. In a bush nearby we found Antony's hat and you have heard it discussed as a possibility that, nearing the ferry stage, the hat blew from his head and he chased it towards the river but, failing to catch it, slipped into the water and was carried helplessly downstream, drowning as he went. Your task is to decide whether a sequence of events such as this, or some other cause, brought about his death. Are there any questions?'

The foreman looked around the table but no hand was raised. When this happens I find that a jury is already of one mind, even before they have discussed the case among themselves. I therefore rang my handbell and rose, asking everybody who was not a jury member to leave the room so that the twelve could deliberate.

‘Oh, Titus,' said Elizabeth, coming to me with her mother in tow as soon as she saw me entering the hall and shutting the door of the inquest room behind me. ‘Tell us there was no foul play here. The business is horrible enough.'

‘That is for the jury, my dear. But you heard my summing-up. I doubt they will contradict it.'

Five minutes later we received notice to return. The jury had reached a unanimous finding of accidental death. Furzey wrote the verdict on another of our printed forms and the paper was passed round for the signature of each juror. Finally I signed it myself and dissolved the inquest.

It was a satisfactory outcome. We had avoided the financially disastrous finding of self-murder, and the lurking uncertainty of murder. All that remained was for me to release the body for burial, and write my report. I signed the release (another printed sheet – there is no end to their usefulness) and gave it, with the battered old hat, to Mary-Ann.

‘You may lay him to rest,' I said. ‘This business is concluded.'

Of this I was utterly confident – and utterly wrong.

Chapter Five

M
Y FIRST WARNING
of just how wrong I was about the conclusion of the Egan case came within half an hour. Fidelis and I had just stepped off Battersby's ferry and begun the climb up the track to the top of the town, when the gate to one of the gardens lining the track swung open.

‘Hissst!'

We looked. There was no one to be seen.

‘Hissst!'

‘Who's there?' I called.

Stepping into the aperture of the gate I saw, half hidden behind a flowering plum tree, a shape that I realized was Dick Middleton, cultivator of that particular plot.

‘Well, Dick,' I said, ‘come out and tell us what you want.'

The man who now edged into view was a slight figure in his fifties, who lived by selling produce from his garden, and by fishing for eels in the river, for which he had a permit from the corporation. He was also in his very nature nervous and retiring, a solitary fellow, for he had been born with a harelip that distorted his face and muffled his voice.

‘How do, Coroner?' he said, with nods of his head. ‘How do, Doctor?'

Fidelis and I gave him how-do in return and waited to hear what he had to say.

‘I heard them talking,' he said at last, twisting his hands together as if this helped him squeeze out the words. His deformity meant that his mouth sounded blocked and his tongue impeded.

‘Who did you hear, Dick?'

‘Men after coming over from Ferry Inn. William Forrest and John Pitt, on their way up to town.'

‘Yes. They were on the jury that sat over the body of Antony Egan this afternoon.'

‘I know that. I heard, or rather I overheard, them talking to Poll Beattie, when they met her on the path.'

‘Oh, yes? What were they saying?'

His gaze found everywhere to look but into our faces.

‘They were saying that Antony were at ferry stage all alone, and his hat blew off his head, which he chased towards river, and missed it, and fell in.'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘That was the jury's conclusion.'

‘And it's not right. It's not precise.'

‘Oh? Why not?'

‘I were there, see? I know it's not right.'

Fidelis and I exchanged surprised looks.

‘You were
there?
'

‘I was.'

‘Where?' my friend asked. ‘Be specific, Dick.'

‘I was seated on riverbank. It were high tide, best tide for eels. I wasn't over there, mind. I was on this side of river. But I had the opposite ferry stage in the line of my eye. I could see all and I could hear a bit too.'