The Hidden Man (28 page)

‘Now Adam, the world believes that you can no longer hear or understand anything of what I'm saying. But I consider you can. The trouble is that you are not master of your tongue, or your breath, and so cannot speak. But I think there is one thing – or two things as a matter of fact – that you are master of. So let us try it. Will you blink for me, Adam? Simply shut and open your eyelids. Go on.'

Together they watched Adam's eyes. At first nothing happened, and then suddenly he blinked.

Amity looked at Fidelis across her husband's stricken body.

‘Nothing special about that, doctor,' she whispered. ‘He does that anyway.'

Fidelis put a finger to his lips while keeping his eyes on his patient's face.

‘Adam,' he said in a firm voice, ‘have you caught my intention? If so, will you blink for me again, but now I want you to do it three times – three times in a row.'

They waited and at first it seemed nothing would happen. Then Adam blinked, once … and again. But immediately one of those periodic spasms passed through him, and it wasn't clear if he had completed the sequence of three blinks.

Fidelis persevered. He asked him the question a second time, and this time added a refinement.

‘Give me three blinks if you do understand me, Adam, and just two if you don't – go ahead.'

This time it was unmistakable. Adam's eyes shut and opened again three times in succession. Amity gasped.

‘Very good, Adam. So, let us make this into a signalling system. Three blinks are for the answer yes, and two are for no? I am going to put to you a series of childish questions. You must not mind because eventually they will lead to something a good deal more interesting. Are you ready?'

He paused, watching Adam's eyes. They blinked once, twice and then a third time.

‘Good. You are ready. I will speak in a clear voice. Is your name Adam Smith?'

Two blinks – no.

‘Is it Adam Thorn?'

Three blinks – yes.

‘And is this place Peel Lane Cottage?'

Yes. No.

‘Concentrate, Adam. This is not Peel Lane that runs past your house, is it?'

No.

‘It is Peel
Hall
Lane, isn't it?'

Yes.

‘Good. Now, you have two children, I think.'

No.

‘Three?'

Yes.

‘Is one of them called Honor?'

Yes.

‘Is another of them called Theophrastus?'

No.

And so it went on, with Fidelis probing the limits of Adam's understanding and memory. He established that he was not blind, but could see things placed immediately before his eyes, though if put to one side or the other he became doubtful of them. He also established that Adam could do simple mental arithmetic, and could remember events in his life before the accident.

After about twenty minutes, though, Adam's eyes suddenly drooped and then, without warning, he fell asleep.

Fidelis rose and beckoned Amity into the cottage where the eldest daughter, Honor, came and wrapped her arms in a tight clinch around his legs. The boy was banging a stick on an old pot and the baby in the cot-bed was beginning to cry. But Amity's eyes were shining.

‘It's a kind of miracle what you've done, doctor,' she said, picking up the baby and jiggling it up and down. ‘I always believed it, me, but a lot of people didn't. He's himself inside there. He's been buried, like, and you've found him, and given him a way of talking – of getting his messages out.'

‘Yes. We know now that his cognitive power is more or less intact. You can speak with him – you must ask the right questions, of course, and the yes-and-no method will be tedious and frustrating sometimes, I'm afraid.'

‘But it's much, much better than nothing, and nothing's all we've had until now.'

Fidelis gently detached the clinging child's arms from around his knees.

‘I must go back to Preston now. I fancy you will receive another visit from the Coroner, my friend Mr Cragg, in due course. He's interested in how Adam's seizure came about. He will use the method to obtain a statement about it. Oh! And one more thing. May I suggest that just for the time being you don't speak of our discovery to others – to John Barton, for instance? And please, if that man gives you any cause for grave concern, if he becomes any sort of danger to you, apply directly to me.'

*   *   *

Fidelis had told Amity Thorn that he was going back to Preston, but he did not do so directly. Instead he turned right along Peel Hall Lane and purposefully covered the mile or so to Barton's stables in less than a quarter of an hour, getting there shortly after six o'clock.

He found John Barton in the middle of his stable yard, unsaddling a horse. The fellow looked shiftily at Fidelis who decided to deal with the horse-coper in the first instance by using a very formal tone, as if carrying out a diplomatic
démarche
.

‘Mr Barton, I am Adam Thorn's medical attendant. His doctor.'

Barton's relations with people were generally conducted as grudge fights, and he had his own way of dealing with a relative stranger whom he chose to see in the light of a rival.

‘Doctor or medical attendant,' he said in a low, graceless voice, ‘why should I mind what you call yourself?'

‘Either will do, Sir.'

‘What I mean is,' said Barton, ‘I'll have the same low opinion of you either way.'

Fidelis chose to ignore the remark, and continued in a pleasant vein.

‘I wanted to express how gratified I am by your therapeutic gift of a bath chair to my patient. I expect him to make faster progress towards recovery because of it.'

John Barton's eyes flashed a look at Fidelis.

‘Oh aye?' he said. ‘You reckon he will recover?'

‘He might. He can take the sunshine now, and will benefit greatly.'

Barton heaved off the saddle, dropped it to the ground and led the horse towards its stable. When he came out, his faintly twisted face displayed a gleam of pleasure, and Fidelis realized the fellow was in his bitter way enjoying himself.

‘Me, I just did for the Thorns what a neighbour should do.'

He pointed his finger at Fidelis.

‘But I know why
you're
forever going in and out of that house. She tells me you don't charge a fee. Of course you don't! You expect your fee to be paid another way, am I not right?'

‘Mr Barton, I—'

‘You'll deny it of course. My dad told me about doctors. Keep them out of your life, he said, and you'll keep them out of your
wife
. Hah!'

Fidelis was determined to maintain the civilized façade for as long as he could.

‘Your attack on me is not new, Sir. I have heard it many times. So have all doctors. It does not provoke me as, it is clear, you would like to.'

‘Not new because it's true, nine times out of ten. Like I said, I am only a neighbour. I brought Thorn home when he had his seizure. That's my interest. What's yours? I'll tell you – that of a lecher with a medical bag, a wig, and a silver tongue.'

‘You quite fail to grasp what we do, Barton. A doctor promises on oath—'

‘Worthless cock! Lying hypocrisy! I know the game you're after – and money is only the half of it.'

No red-blooded man, however much he wants to play diplomat, can finally stand and receive this kind of assault. Fidelis began to smart and grow heated.

‘I'll tell you something, and you know very well it is true, Barton. Your slanderous accusation against me is exactly what, in fact, is in your own mind. You turn lustful eyes on Mrs Thorn, not me. You've observed the laying low of her husband and you've seen your opportunity.'

Barton had put a bucket of water in with the horse and slammed shut the door of its box. He now took four or five rapid strides forward and brandished his fist in front of Fidelis's face.

‘Listen. Shall you take yourself off, or shall I shut that mouth of yours first?'

Fidelis took a step back.

‘Tell me, Barton, just how long is it you've lusted after Amity Thorn? How long is it that—'

The flimsy catch on Barton's anger snapped. With a snarl he made another leap forward and this time delivered a box on Fidelis's ear. The doctor, taller by several inches, immediately caught the man's wrist and used the grip to force him down towards the ground. Barton was almost on his knees but he managed to kick upwards and deliver the doctor a sharp blow in the shins with his ironshod shoe. Less well equipped for a kicking match, Fidelis stepped backwards and bunched his fists.

‘So come on! Let's have it out! Don't disappoint me, Barton. I'd hate to miss the opportunity to break your nose.'

Breathing heavily through his mouth, Barton climbed to his feet. He was about to speak when he heard a sound from the stables behind him – a cough from one of the horses perhaps. He half turned and in that movement it seemed that sanity returned to him.

‘There'll be no fighting,' was all he said. ‘Get yourself off.'

‘I'll go with the greatest of pleasure, when I have knocked you senseless.'

‘You know something?' sneered the horse-coper. ‘I don't care what you do with Amity Thorn. She's naught but a pretty slice of cabbage, and there's a lot of that in the world. Now get off.'

Fidelis seethed with anger all of the way to Preston, and again when he described these dramatic events to me that evening at the Turk's Head Coffee House. He was far from regretting his part in the argument with Barton, for his feelings towards Amity were entirely chivalrous, as he was quite certain Barton's were not. He only wished that he and the horse-coper really had fought, and he had felled the bloody clown. As a knight from Sir Thomas Malory should – but perhaps not a Lancashire medical practitioner – he passionately wanted to have broken Barton's lance.

*   *   *

That evening as I walked into the Turk's Head to meet Fidelis, a group of men that were enjoying a joke together stopped me.

‘What d'you reckon Titus? What should they have done with that black slip of a child that Mallender arrested?'

‘They should be putting her up with some responsible widow woman,' I said. ‘You know she's mute. She's had a lot of bullying and she needs kindness now if she's to get her voice back.'

‘That's a shame, then.'

‘What do you know?'

‘It's all over town. They've placed her all right – but with Billy Biggs.'

Another eruption of laughter followed me as I moved away.

‘I fear for the safety of the negro girl,' I told Fidelis, telling him the news.

‘You wonder if she will avoid Biggs's wandering hands. Yes, if he thinks he's dealing with a mere slave, he might think anything is allowed.'

‘I doubt Mrs Biggs would allow him anything. But you are right. Some men that are not in the habit of denying themselves feel freer than they should in such circumstances. I would not like either Biggs or Grimshaw to be left alone with her.'

‘Why Grimshaw?'

I described the scene in the courtroom and Grimshaw's reaction to the sight of her bared breasts in court. Fidelis laughed and I reproved him.

‘You laugh – but the possibility is serious.'

‘I laugh because such suspicion can get us into fights, Titus. I will tell you about my own adventures this afternoon in that way.'

And so everything I have described above was divulged to me, with Fidelis being scrupulously unsparing of his own feelings or embarrassments. I was incredulous at first about the experiment with Adam Thorn, and then a little taken aback by the
rencontre
with John Barton. Fidelis dismissed this with a wave of his hand, wanting to return to the subject of his discovery at Peel Hall Lane Cottage.

‘Adam's mind is working, Titus. That's the wonderful thing. He became tired under my questioning, and I had no opportunity to get the details of what happened to him on that day when he was struck down. I am most eager to know more. But what is certain is that you will be able to get a statement from him.'

‘It seems,' I said, ‘that you have most cleverly found the mind of Adam Thorn. I congratulate you. But I too have made some finds today.'

I had the shoe in my coat pocket. Now I produced it.

‘Good heavens, the shoe!' he exclaimed. ‘Where was it?'

‘After you left me this afternoon it occurred to me that we had never looked right
under
the Stone, so that was where I searched. This shoe was right there. It must have fallen off Jackson's foot, and been kicked into the bushy undergrowth.'

‘Well I'll be damned.'

‘That, however, is not all I have found under the Bale Stone today.'

I gave a full account of the bag of silver objects pushed deep into the burrow near where the shoe had been lying. Luke listened intently. I expected he would cap my discovery with observations of his own, but he uttered only one.

‘One thing is certain. The silver, unlike the shoe, was deliberately concealed in that hole. The person who put it there intended to go back for it. That satisfies the definition of treasure trove, does it not?'

‘It would seem to.'

Fidelis chuckled.

‘I wonder how many instances there have been of the Coroner being also the one finding the treasure.'

‘I wasn't the first finder, Luke. Someone found it before me, and I believe his name is Adam Thorn.'

‘How can you be sure?'

‘Because among that silver was a bundle of apostle spoons – eleven of them.'

‘Well, well, well!'

He considered the matter briefly, rubbing his chin, then abruptly rose to his feet and reached for his hat.

‘Titus, it has been a day of remarkable discoveries indeed. But I am tired and would like my bed.'

 

Chapter Twenty-two