The Hidden Man (20 page)

‘Is that likely? Were there other pledges as old as that still in the younger Mr Pimbo's possession?'

‘Very likely, Sir. Not all unredeemed pledges were or could be sold. Sometimes the term of the loan was very long – even the length of a lifetime. Those could never be sold on until the owner was known to be dead.'

‘So who originally pledged this pistol, and when was it?'

‘Our records say it was twenty-two years ago, by a Captain Avery, Sir. He was with the militia, I believe, and has long ago moved away.'

‘And was it one of the lifetime pledges to which you have just referred?'

‘Yes, Sir.'

‘And is Captain Avery alive?'

‘I don't know, Sir.'

‘And if he were – or if there were uncertainty about the matter – that would explain the continuing presence of the pistol in the strong room, I suppose. Now, Mr Hazelbury, I would like you to tell us about the state of Mr Pimbo's affairs? I mean, the shop. Was it solvent?'

‘Oh, yes Sir. Insofar as the shop itself went, I have no reason to doubt that it was quite sound.'

‘Mr Pimbo had invited me as his legal adviser to attend him on the morning of his death. Do you know on what business this was?'

‘No, Sir. I cannot think.'

‘What was your employer's state of mind in the days before he died? Would you say he was troubled in any way?'

Hazelbury considered.

‘He might have been. He might not. You didn't know with Mr Pimbo. He was all jokes and hail-me-good-fellow on top, but there was much underneath that you couldn't see.'

‘He was a difficult man to discern?'

Hazelbury nodded his head and I thanked him, then called Michael Ambler. He came to the witness chair with easy grace, a good-looking young man but with a self-pleasing smile that looked out of place in the circumstances.

‘You are Mr Pimbo's journeyman goldsmith?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you worked under Mr Pimbo and Mr Hazelbury?'

‘I worked under Pimbo, not Hazelbury. Though I don't know about “under”. I understand my work. I know gold and silver and how to work it. The workshop, it's mine, really.'

‘You mean you run it?'

‘Yes Sir. I direct it, you might say.'

‘Do you have anything to do with money-handling in the business?'

‘No, Sir. That's Hazelbury's job. He knows about money, I know about precious metal. There's a difference that folk don't always appreciate.'

‘Notwithstanding that, can you give me your estimation of the state of Mr Pimbo's business – of your side of it, I mean?'

‘It seemed all right. Business came in every day, near enough.'

‘What of Mr Pimbo himself? His state?'

Ambler glanced down and drew a deep breath.

‘In my opinion he was a man in pain, Sir,' he said at last, looking up again. ‘Much of his usual old bluster had gone. I saw it on his face every day recently.'

‘You say “a man in pain”. Do you mean physical pain? Was he ill?'

‘No Sir, I mean mental pain. It was as if there were something gone sideways in his life, and he didn't know how to set it right again.'

‘And how long had this been going on?'

‘He was always noisy in company, he was. But, close to, he was close himself, and didn't confide, like Robert Hazelbury just said. But in my opinion he had got much closer over the last weeks.'

‘Thank you Mr Ambler. You may leave the chair.'

Next, I called Luke Fidelis.

‘Would you give the court your purely medical opinion of this unfortunate death?' I opened.

Fidelis raised an eyebrow – a way he had of indicating that he sensed some mild subterfuge in my words.

‘Very well. In my
purely
medical opinion the man died by a pistol ball passing upwards into the centre of the jaw, cutting through the root of the tongue just a little in advance of the epiglottis. It continued on its way, boring through the roof of the mouth and the nasal sinuses before entering in turn the brain stem, the
medulla oblongata
and the
pons
from where it proceeded into the
cerebrum
and burst out through the parietal bone, where it left a jagged hole. The brain being awash with blood, as it always is, much of it flowed or splashed out through this hole, all over the desk and onto the floor.'

‘Would Mr Pimbo have died instantly?'

‘Oh, yes. As fast as I can snap my fingers.'

In the corner of my eye I noticed a hand movement by one of the jury. It was Thomas Proctor, with a question of his own.

‘But what I want to know is, why not the other way, doctor?' he asked. ‘How do you know the bullet did not go downwards?'

‘Quite easily,' said Fidelis. ‘It cannot have done.'

He looked at me and touched his wig. I took the hint, pulling the dead man's own bloodstained peruke from the bag and passing it along, as I had previously passed the pistol. When the wig reached him, Fidelis held it up so that the jurors could see the hemispherical inside.

‘This is his wig,' he said, now addressing Proctor directly. ‘The lining is as you see caked and stiffened with dried blood, with some pieces of the brain intermixed. And here in the centre is a declivity just the size of a pistol ball.'

He looked back at me for an instant and mouthed the word ‘bullet', but this time I was ready with the item which I had taken, wrapped in a handkerchief, from the evidence bag. When it reached him, Fidelis held the pellet of lead up between finger and thumb for all to see and then showed how it fitted exactly into the little cavity in the wig's lining.

‘The bullet lodged itself here after it had blown a hole through the cranium,' he went on in a ringing, dramatic voice, which was now receiving the audience's rapt attention, just as an actor's would in a play. ‘Its momentum carried the wig up into the air and through an arc of flight before landing some feet away on the floor. There, it was picked up by Mr Pimbo's pet dog, who took it into the nearby strong room, where he chewed and shook it until the bullet dropped out and rolled away. It was there that we found both items on the floor, detached from each other. Does that satisfy you, Mr Proctor, or will you be Doubting Tommy still?'

The audience loosened the strain of the moment by laughing heartily. Proctor flushed red and cried out,

‘Dog? What dog? I've heard nowt about a dog.'

He jerked his head this way and that, his mouth pouting angrily.

‘Ah yes, I should explain,' I said, and did so, finishing by saying that the dog was now
pro tempore
in my own possession. Proctor was not mollified. He had taken great umbrage at Fidelis's gibe.

I asked Fidelis, as a matter of form, to be on hand in case the court needed to hear from him again, and I then called Ruth Peel to give her evidence. She had been found a seat at the extreme end of one of the rows and now she stood and walked with a firm step to the chair.

Miss Peel took the oath, confirmed her name and place of residence, and settled herself to answer my questions. She did so throughout in a steady, unwavering voice, with little inflection and no overt emotion.

‘You are housekeeper at Cadley Place, the late Mr Pimbo's home?'

‘I am.'

‘Do you remember the morning of Friday last week?'

‘I do.'

‘Did you see Mr Pimbo that morning?'

‘No. He'd gone to business before anyone else had risen.'

‘At what time did he leave?'

‘He would have left the house at five-thirty. It was his custom to rise at dawn, whatever the time of year, and to go to Preston half an hour after that. He liked to get started early on the business of the day.'

‘I assume you can shed little light on what business he had that day, so I shall move on to your own—'

‘Wait!'

It was Miss Peel that interrupted me. Being about to raise the difficult matter of her relationship to the dead man, I was a little put out.

‘You have something to add?'

‘Yes, Sir, I have. Quite by chance, although he did not discuss it with me in any way, I
do
happen to know something about the business he had that day. It was something important.'

‘How do you know this?'

‘It was because his clothes came back, brought by one of the women who washed him and laid him out.'

‘Yes? What about them?'

‘Well, amongst them I found this.'

With her good right hand she took from the bosom of her dress a paper, which she held up for all to see.

‘What is it, Miss Peel?'

‘If you like, I can read it to you. It is a note addressed to the Mayor; it is dated on the day Mr Pimbo died; and it is in his hand.'

I told her please to lose no time in doing so.

‘
Your Worship
', she read, holding the paper up before her eyes. ‘
Please be advised that I intend to bring before you this day under arrest a man, Moon, whom I believed I could trust in business but whom I now know to be a villain, and to have been so from the first moment of our partnership. For your consideration, as Chief Magistrate, I intend to prefer charges of fraud and embezzlement against him. Subject to his presenting himself as I have asked him to do at my shop, I shall bring him before you at about ten in the morning. I beg you to be ready for us. The matter bears not only upon my own losses but on the good economy of the town. I shall in this business have the assistance of my attorney and a pistol, which I have ready, and shall not need the Constable's attendance to ensure the arrest.
'

She lowered the letter.

‘That is all it says.'

The entire courtroom had fallen silent at this revelation and I myself was astounded. I knew we had searched Pimbo's pockets. How had we failed to discover this?

‘Was this letter a finished copy? Was it sealed?'

‘Yes Sir. It had been sealed ready for delivery, but the seal had cracked open.'

‘Where was this found? Was it in one of his pockets?'

‘No. I asked the woman the same question, because she had stopped for a cup of tea in the kitchen. She said she had found it tucked in between his waistcoat and his shirt.'

‘Had she read it?'

‘No Sir, she said she was not able to. She had just stuffed it back amongst his clothes.'

‘Had Mr Pimbo spoken or dropped any hint about being defrauded?'

‘Not to me.'

I took a few moments to absorb the information, then said:

‘We have heard from Mr Hazelbury that he knew of nothing amiss in Mr Pimbo's business affairs. Can you yourself enlighten the court in any way on this matter?'

The witness was pale but steady.

‘I cannot think of anything.'

‘Is it true that Mr Pimbo had become erratic recently in his settlement of household accounts? That he had been making a smaller amount of money available to you, for instance, for household expenses?'

‘Yes, that is true. But I do not know why.'

‘In that case, may I ask you to stand down for the moment, but to remain in the courtroom, as I may have further questions?'

As she left the witness chair I glanced to left and right along the table, to gather the attention of the jury, and then addressed the public ranged in front of us.

‘Among the witnesses called to this hearing I have summoned a Mr Zadok Moon, who appears to have been the late Mr Pimbo's business partner in a certain venture, and who is the subject of the surprising letter to the Mayor which we have just heard the contents of. So now I ask, has Mr Moon answered the summons? Is he here present?'

No voice was raised.

‘Is there anyone here, then, who can cast light on the matter we have just heard about, or indeed on the venture in which this Moon and Mr Pimbo were colluding?'

No one stirred.

‘I see the Mayor is present,' I went on. ‘Did you, Mr Grimshaw, have any prior knowledge of this charge that Mr Pimbo intended to bring before you?'

From the centre of the audience Ephraim Grimshaw hoisted himself into sight, ready no doubt to deliver a substantial address to the court.

‘None whatsoever, Cragg. But if I may say a few words—'

Grimshaw's speech got no further, for now a man pushed himself out of the standing group of spectators at the back.

‘Mr Coroner!' he called out in a rich, sonorous voice. ‘I believe I can help the court.'

Every head turned to see the interruptor, though from the whispered questions they exchanged none, it seemed, knew who he was.

I motioned the Mayor back into his chair.

‘Thank you, Mayor. And you, Sir, pray come forward. Take the witness chair, if you please.'

And as the newcomer ambled down the side aisle towards the front I believed that I knew who he must be. I glanced at Fidelis across the room for confirmation of the man's identity. He nodded, and his mouth framed the name:

‘
Tybalt Jackson
.'

 

Chapter Fifteen

T
HE STRANGER WAS
a bulky young man unwigged and dressed in clean but drab clothing such as a clerk or a shop assistant might wear. Every eye in the room followed his progress to the chair. Every bottom rose six inches from its seat to see him settling into the witness chair. Every tongue whispered an opinion to its neighbour, before every breath bated itself to hear him speak. The speculation continued as I took him through the witness's oath, which he gave in an accent not of the North country but of somewhere to the south and west of England, I guessed. When we had finished the swearing I called for silence.

‘What is your name, Sir?' I asked.

‘Tybalt Jackson.'

‘From?'

‘From Bristol, Sir.'

‘And your occupation?'

‘I am the agent for a company in London.'