The Hidden Man (27 page)

Fidelis looked at his watch.

‘I can spare you an hour.'

*   *   *

We found several knots of Prestonians gathered around the Bale Stone, though at a respectful, or wary, distance: apprentices and their girls, schoolboys and servants, but also respectable shop keepers and their wives, and some from our population of middle-aged retired ladies. Murder, violence, blood: these were the reasons they had been drawn to the place, even though there was nothing much for them to see – a few of the smears of blood that we had noted in the morning, perhaps, even though no one dared approach near enough to see them clearly. Gazing at the Stone from twenty feet they passed the most commonplace remarks about it – how heavy it was, how flat on top, and how rough-hewn beneath, and how lonely the place where it stood.

Amongst these I noticed one of my clients Amelia Colley, with her friend Lavinia Bryce.

‘Oh, la, Mr Cragg!' Miss Colley called out as she saw me approach. ‘Mrs Bryce and I have walked out, as it is such pleasant weather, to see the horrid scene where poor Mr Jackson met his end. Tell us, I beg you, what you found when you came here to the body.'

‘It was not a scene fit for your ears, Miss Colley,' I assured her.

‘Is it true it was a—'

She lowered her voice.

‘A
sacrifice
, by worshippers of Satan and the like?'

‘No, I do not think that was the case.'

‘But they do say he was stabbed by a— Well, there is no delicate way to say it: by a rough stake of wood, Mr Cragg.'

‘Dear Miss Colley,' I said. ‘All these matters will be revealed at the inquest, which you are most welcome to attend.'

‘Oh, yes – yes indeed! Mrs Bryce and I never miss one of your inquests, Mr Cragg. We shall be there, you may depend upon us. They are always so interesting and well conducted.'

‘I am grateful, Miss Colley. Now, the doctor and I do have some business connected with that same inquest. Please would you be kind enough to stand further away?'

The two ladies said they had been here long enough and would set off for home. Luke and I went around all the other groups, chasing them away so that within a few minutes we had the place to ourselves.

During our walk I had devised a plan for our search of the area immediately around the Stone, and this we carried out. We started close to the Stone, circling it in opposite directions. We then continued going round but by taking a couple of steps further away after each turn we gradually widened our area of search. Forty minutes later, when the perimeter of search had reached the other side of the racetrack, and nothing had been found, Fidelis looked again at his watch.

‘I must go.'

‘Not yet. We are still looking.'

‘There is probably nothing to find. Not here. I am more and more sure that Jackson was murdered in another place and merely disposed of on the Stone. Besides, I am due at Adam Thorn's.'

‘Oh? To carry out this new treatment of yours?'

He did not answer, but merely strode off towards Peel Hall Lane Cottage with a wave of his hand. Left alone, I returned to the Bale Stone and heaved myself up to sit upon it and think. The time was after five but I felt warm in the sunshine and mopped the sweat off my face with a handkerchief. Facing north, I had my back to the town and could see the trees of the Fulwood to my right, and the roofs of Cadley to my left. If it had not been here that Jackson died, it may have been out there, somewhere around the rim of the Moor. When and why had he gone there?

I jumped down again and restlessly prowled around the Stone. I picked up a stick as I did so, and poked it into the undergrowth that sprouted from beneath the overhanging sections, hoping to strike the missing shoe. The first four or five times that I poked, the end of the stick penetrated just a few inches before butting into the rock. But the next time I tried, in some particularly thick and bushy furze, I felt something different. Kneeling down I thrust my hand into the undergrowth and my fingers closed around something unexpected. I pulled it out: a man's black buckled shoe.

The explanation was not too complicated. This must have been the place at which Jackson was hoisted onto the Stone. The shoe would have fallen off Jackson's foot during the struggle to lift him, and been kicked further beneath the overhang by the feet of the men doing the lifting. I carefully parted the branches of thick furze and stuck my head in cautiously to see just how the shoe had been placed. I was looking at the opening of a rabbit burrow, or even a fox's den, with a spread of sandy earth in front of it. I was about to withdraw my head again when I noticed a string tied to a furze branch, which extended into the hole. Turning my head to the side, and compressing my cheek against the sandy ground, I reached my fingers towards the string until I hooked one of them around it. And so I began to pull.

The other end of the string was tied to something that seemed bulky enough almost to fill the hole, and which clinked as it moved. It snagged here and there on some roots, and needed to be more firmly pulled where the hole narrowed, but at last it came out. It was a full sack made of gunny, the neck tightly tied by the extreme end of the string. I hastened to untie the knot and open the sack. What I found inside made me forget for the time being all about murder and the missing shoe.

The bag was filled with metal objects, somewhat tarnished to be sure, but consisting of table plate and silver – or what I guessed to be silver: a cream jug, caddy spoon, candle-snuffer, a nest of assorted small dishes and two salt cellars – at most twenty items in all. The last of these was a bundle of spoons, held together with a leather thong. I picked them out and counted them. There were eleven, and they looked very much like Adam Thorn's apostle spoon.

*   *   *

On my way through town I stopped at Oldswick's shop. The watchmaker was sitting at his work-bench and peering into the mechanism of a fob watch that lay open before him.

‘Mysterious in the extreme, some watches,' he said, rising to his feet as I strolled in. ‘Take this one. Everything seems in order, nothing is broken or clogged up or bent out of shape, and yet she won't go. She's like one of your corpses, Titus. Dead for no reason anyone can determine.'

‘I find persistence usually pays off, Nick. If I keep looking I find the answer.'

He sighed.

‘Aye, that's the only way. So, what can I do for you?'

I slid the gunny-sack from my shoulder and laid it carefully on the seat of a chair.

‘Would you put this in your strong cupboard? It contains silver that I fancy the Mayor might try to appropriate for the town's coffer. But I want to investigate it myself first.'

‘I think there's room, now Robert Hazelbury's taken back the bits and pieces he lodged with me. It'll just fit.'

The cupboard was set into the wall and had a thick, ironbound oak door secured by a heavy lock. As it swung open I saw it was fitted with shelves a foot apart, on which were laid parcels wrapped in brown paper, and a range of shallow wood trays containing cases and other watch parts in precious metal.

Oldswick took the gunny-sack and shoved it onto a vacant stretch of shelf.

‘Will you keep this to yourself, Nick?' I asked.

He merely grunted, but I knew he would do so.

*   *   *

I reached the office, still carrying the shoe I had found. Furzey was on the point of leaving for the day.

‘There's a woman in Kirkham, a Mrs Betty Ransom,' I told him. ‘I shall be going to see her early tomorrow morning for a statement, so you must get out the summonses for the jurors and for other witnesses yourself – here's a list.'

‘As if I don't have enough to do,' he grumbled, looking the list over.

‘But even before you do that, you must go to the post office and ask Crick about a letter posted close to four-thirty yesterday afternoon. If the letter itself happens still to be there, seize it. Otherwise get anything Crick can remember about it.'

Furzey raised his eyes from my list of names, suddenly looking a shade happier. There was nothing Furzey liked more than to be sent on business out of the office.

‘And by the way,' I added, ‘as for that silver, I have an idea of whom to consult. Do you happen to know if Mr Marmaduke Flitcroft, of Kirkham, is still living?'

‘Oh, aye, Mr Cragg, I do think so, and I follow your drift exactly. Yes, Mr Flitcroft will suit your purposes admirably, I would say. Quite admirably!'

*   *   *

Over our supper, and unable to keep it to myself, I told Elizabeth of all that I had found at the Bale Stone.

‘It does not sound like my idea of Benjamin Peel's treasure,' she said. ‘I was thinking that would be an ironbound chest full of Spanish coins and jewels set in precious metal.'

‘I am wondering if it is a separate part of a larger hoard, put in the rabbit hole by Adam Thorn for some reason I cannot think of. I think he took that spoon of his from it.'

We turned over various possibilities, none of which convinced us.

‘You have had an eventful day, husband,' Elizabeth said at last. ‘You started with the discovery of a murder and ended with hidden treasure. How does it go with your investigation into poor Mr Jackson's death?'

‘I have been bustling all day long, and getting nowhere,' I said. ‘Tybalt Jackson – what do I know about him? He was from Bristol and had little money, though an insurance company employed him. He read the Bible and Montaigne. He had a black girl with him, probably to warm his bed, that he pretended was a boy. And, finally, someone killed him, mutilating his face and driving a stake into his heart.'

‘That is quite natural, Titus.'

‘What? Mutilating his face? Driving a stake?'

‘No, of course not. Turning the girl into a boy, because it attracts less attention.'

‘That does seem to have been his special concern – causing as little stir as possible. Which makes it so remarkable that he spoke out at the inquest on Pimbo. What his profession required was that he gather intelligence privately, not make it public.'

‘He learned much for himself about Pimbo at the inquest. That will have satisfied him.'

‘It may also have killed him, Elizabeth. That's what I am concerned with. Somewhere around here is a pair of killers who did for a witness because he gave evidence in my court. That concerns me personally. I must find them.'

‘Surely, my love, they will have gone far away by now.'

‘No – I do not believe so. They will not leave until they have the girl. They do not want her blabbing.'

 

Chapter Twenty-one

A
DAM THORN NO
longer lay all day in a dark room on his pallet bed, for Amity had obtained an old bath chair. The basketry was loose and ragged, and the wheels wobbled alarmingly, but it meant she could now bring him into the sunshine outside the cottage door, as she had done today, which, she said, would cure him if anything could. This is how Fidelis found his patient after he had parted from me at the Bale Stone: wrapped in a blanket and with an old straw hat on his head, facing the western sun. He was just as silent as before, though with small shivers or quakes running from time to time through his body.

‘The chair came from Peel Hall Stables – John Barton,' Amity Thorn told Fidelis, when he asked about it. ‘He found it in a corner of his place and brought it over.'

‘But how do you get Adam into the chair? Surely not on your own?'

Quietly she drew him into the cottage, where their talk could not reach Adam's ears.

‘Barton does it,' she said. ‘He comes over and lifts him in. He'll be back tonight to put him to bed.'

‘Kind of him. He is a good friend.'

‘It's not out of kindness, or friendship. The way that man looks at a woman, folk have another word for. But me, I can't lift Adam so without John Barton we can't use this chair at all. And it means such a lot. The children can see their dad more naturally. I put Honor up on his knee to kiss him. But if I want him to use the chair, see, I've not got the choice. I've to put up with John Barton.'

She bustled around the room, picking up things left on the ground by the youngsters.

‘And I've had another visitor,' she said. ‘The constable Oswald Mallender's been round. Seems he didn't understand what's happened to Adam. Got vexed when he wouldn't answer his questions about that spoon and where he'd got it.'

‘It'll have been the Mayor sent him. There's been new talk in town about that old treasure from Cromwell's time. The Mayor wants to get his hands on it.'

‘Well I gave him a piece of my mind for bullying a sick man, and he left. So. What can I give you? A cup of tea?'

Fidelis knew better than to accept tea from a poor household. The poor bought used tea leaves second-hand from the servants of the well-to-do, but even these were hard for them to afford – and in any case made a foul-tasting brew.

‘Thank you, no tea. I am here to make an experiment with your husband.'

‘An experiment?'

‘Yes. I have been thinking about what you said to me, that Adam – the real thinking and feeling Adam – was there all the time inside him, but occluded by his physical paralysis. Well, I have thought of a way in which he might be able to speak to us again.'

‘To get Adam to speak is what I dream of. Can you do it, really? Can you waken up his tongue?'

‘He won't speak with his tongue.'

‘With what, then?'

‘You will see. Let's try it. Let's go out again to him.'

Fidelis carried two chairs from around the family table and placed one on each side of the bath chair, facing towards Adam, who remained with rigid head and fixed expression, as if unaware they were there. Amity settled her children inside the cottage and he sat down, and Fidelis began to address the patient directly.