Foxe and the Path into Darkness

by William Savage

  ‘Do so, please. I shall not feel easy in my mind until I know. Now, another thing, I am tired of sitting here and waiting for you to bring me information.

  ‘As I told you the other day, I have already sent Susan out once to ask about Johnson for me. One thing she discovered can be easily dismissed. Many people were convinced he had been caught by the mayor embezzling money. To secure his escape, they say he killed Mr Belton and hid his body. That cannot now be the case. It was simply a case of people jumping to the easiest conclusion. The other information is more interesting. Johnson was known to be a pious and moral man, most unlikely to get involved in anything criminal. Moreover, he has—or had, I suppose I should say—an elderly mother who is severely ill and totally dependent on him. How that poor soul is coping, I dread to imagine. She’s probably going to end her days in the workhouse.’

  ‘I will try to find out and help her, if I can,’ Foxe said. ‘For the rest, it is indeed most useful information, Lucy, and I thank you for obtaining it. Now we know Johnson has been murdered, we must assume that whatever has been going on at Belton’s has claimed him as a victim. He is clearly not a protagonist. What do you plan to do next, if I may ask?’

  ‘My aunt, my sister and I are invited to take tea tomorrow with Alderman Cable’s wife,’ Lucy replied. ‘There are sure to be other aldermen’s wives present. I don’t doubt that the mayor’s disappearance and this murder will be the principal topics of conversation. With luck, I may learn something new, especially if I sit very quietly and encourage them to forget I am there. Dear Maria is always nearly silent on such occasions, so we will sit together and blend into the wallpaper.

  ‘After that, I have quite a few friends and acquaintances about the city whom I have not seen since my return from France. I shall ask my uncle to lend me the use of his carriage so that I may begin a series of visits to them. Many are inveterate gossips and all move in the right social circles. The difficulty will be to stop them talking only about their prospects for marriage and the various eligible young men on whom they have cast their eyes. If I discover anything particularly important, I will send one of the servants to ask you to visit. If you make similar discoveries, please send a servant to establish when I shall be at home. Now, I think we should part. My aunt and sister are already consumed with curiosity about why we have been spending so much time together in recent days.’

  ‘I have told your uncle about your willingness to help me in this investigation,’ Foxe replied. ‘I thought it best to do so, when the opportunity arose. He might have decided I was spending too much time with you for propriety.’

  ‘Hardly, Ash. He likes you too well and trusts you completely. Still, I am glad you have told him. He will tell my aunt. I will tell my sister just enough to stop her pestering me. How did my uncle respond, by the way?’

  ‘With total astonishment. Then he went away shaking his head and saying that he assumed I knew what I was doing. He also said that he had learned not to oppose your decisions, since it was always a waste of time.’

  ‘Quite right. Remember that, Ash. Now, let us say goodbye to one another and press on with our individual tasks.’

  11

  The room in The Maid’s Head Inn where the inquest was to be held was a large one. Even so, when Foxe arrived, he found the public benches already crammed with the curious and the ghoulish. He just managed to squeeze himself onto the end of the very front row, next to a man whose square hat and hessian apron proclaimed him to be a carpenter by trade. Seeing who was now next to him, the carpenter tried to push against the next person in the row to make more space, but it was to no avail. Throughout the proceedings, Foxe was forced to sit with his backside half-on and half-off the bench.

  The coroner, Mr Kingsthorpe, opened proceedings promptly, firstly asking their foreman whether the members of the jury had viewed the corpse, as was required by law. Receiving an affirmative answer, he began the formal proceedings by asking who was to give evidence of identity.

  To Foxe’s surprise, Comiston, the bookkeeper, shuffled in to take his place on the witness stand, looking even more grey and mouselike than when Foxe had last seen him. Once sworn in, he gave his evidence in such a quiet voice that the coroner had to tell him several times to speak up for the benefit of the jury and others in the room. Foxe did his best to turn his head to see if Mrs Belton was attending, but it proved impossible. He would have to wait until the inquest was finished and then stand up quickly to survey the entire range of public benches.

  After the bookkeeper, the next witness was the vagrant, called to describe where and how he had discovered the corpse. It was clear that someone had done their best with soap and water to render the fellow less revolting. Nonetheless, within moments of his appearance, his characteristic smell had begun to pervade the room, causing the coroner to hasten through his questions and direct the man be taken outside immediately.

  Now came the part of most interest to Foxe—the evidence on the cause of death from the medical examiner.

  This witness proved to be a well-known apothecary who spoke clearly and did not lard his testimony with unnecessary medical jargon in Latin. The victim, he said, had been killed by a single, heavy blow to his left temple, delivered from the front and above, most probably with an iron bar or something of similar shape and weight. Asked what else he could deduce from his examination, the apothecary said that the blow must have been made by someone who was right-handed, standing facing the deceased. While the blow had been enough to shatter the man’s skull and bring about his death almost instantly, the force used would not have been outside the ability of almost any adult to deliver, male or female. Since it was delivered directly from overhead, the momentum of the weapon used would have been more than sufficient to cause a breakage of the cranium. No more than moderate force would have been needed to wield it. In short, someone had stood in front of the deceased, raised an iron bar over his head and brought it down smartly on the dead man’s skull. There were no other signs of injury on the body, which suggested there had not been a struggle before the blow was struck.

  The coroner thanked the witness for the clarity of his evidence, then turned to the jury and suggested the only possible verdict must be one of murder. There followed some subdued muttering and nodding from the jury members before their foreman stood to deliver their verdict: wilful murder by person or persons unknown.

  The coroner declared that the verdict was now recorded and closed the proceedings of the court, allowing Foxe to stand up and survey the assembled crowd on the public benches. No sign of Mrs Belton. For whatever reason, she had chosen not to attend.

  On leaving The Maid’s Head, Foxe was greatly tempted to walk the few hundred yards to Halloran’s house and tell Lucy what had occurred. However, he recalled that she had told him she was to accompany her aunt and sister to take tea with some alderman’s wife and probably other ladies of that level of society, so he walked instead to Mistress Tabby’s house, which was further away but could be deemed to be on his way home. Sadly, he found the house locked and its inhabitants absent. His question about Johnson being married would have to wait. Though, now he came to think about it, no mention had been made of a wife during the inquest and he had seen no weeping, distraught woman amongst the crowd. Besides, hadn’t Lucy told him the man looked after his mother? That suggested he had been a bachelor, though it did not prove the point. Exactly what was in Lucy’s mind in wanting to know if the man was married was hard to grasp.

  Foxe had also noted that no one stepped forward at the end of the inquest to ask the coroner to release the body for burial. Maybe Mrs Belton, or even Comiston, would see the poor fellow was given a decent burial. If not, it would be down to the parish and a pauper’s grave. Again, this was not absolute proof the man had been a bachelor, but it clearly suggested as much. There and then, he determined to pay for a decent burial for Johnson, if nobody else did.

  Foxe turned for home again, glad of the chance to think in silence as he walke
d. Should he call into the shop to see if Mrs Crombie had picked up any useful gossip? No, it was too early for that. The inquest had only just ended. He would leave visiting Mrs Crombie until tomorrow at the earliest and then he must go and ascertain whether there was anything to be learned from the gossip or not. He had neglected the shop in the past few days. While he trusted Mrs Crombie completely to keep the place running smoothly, he still ought to take the time to check on business levels and make himself available to provide advice or answer questions.

  Having come from a slightly different direction than usual, Foxe’s path took him around the rear of his house and shop. He therefore approached his front door without needing to pass the shop’s windows. Molly let him in and he handed her his coat and hat After that, he told her to put a jug of good ale in his library and tell Alfred to bring him a banyan and turban. That done, he went to his dressing room to change, before returning to his library and the jug of ale.

  He’d dearly like to relax and fill his mind with thoughts of Lucy Halloran, but he knew now was not the time. Instead, he once again reviewed what little he knew about this most frustrating business. Sometimes this mundane task helped him gain inspiration or spot some vital evidence he had overlooked.

  Thus, Foxe sat, immobile and wrapped in thought, for more than two hours, while Molly came and went and he drank his ale without noticing he had done so. It was all to no avail. At the end, he was no wiser than when he had started. All he could hope was that Lucy would pick up some useful nuggets or that Mrs Belton, during her review of the business accounts, would unearth clues to a new approach.

  As he rose from his chair, feeling stiff, Foxe noticed a thick pile of letters and packages on his desk. That must be the post from yesterday and today. He had seen the result of Belton neglecting his own business in favour of other more fascinating matters, and he was not going to follow his example. He really ought to settle down to being a bookseller for at least an hour or so. He therefore picked up the pile and swiftly scanned through what it contained. As he thought, it included catalogues from London dealers in rare books, requests from local collectors for particular volumes to add to their libraries and payments of outstanding invoices. All the life blood of the most profitable part of his book selling business. High time, therefore, to attend to profit over mystery.

  TRUE TO HIS RESOLUTION, Foxe devoted the rest of that afternoon and the greater part of the next morning to his business. There were several matters he needed to discuss with Mrs Crombie, some arising from the letters he had read the previous evening. It was also well past the usual time of the month for him to inspect the bookshop accounts and talk over sales and plans for the future. Once that was out of the way, he hoped to pick up some useful gossip relating to people’s thoughts about the inquest, the murder of Johnson and whatever might be behind it.

  As he slipped into the shop via the door from the hallway of his house, he could see Mrs Crombie was engaged in talking with a group of customers. If he walked over to join them, he felt sure their conversation would cease. He therefore lingered just inside the door until he was able to catch her eye, before moving quietly into the stockroom. She would come to join him when she had finished with whatever topics the customers were speaking to her about.

  He hoped to find Charlie Dillon in the stockroom. The lad was his apprentice and protégé, but like on that day, he was often away from the shop learning the craft of bookbinding. With something of a shock, he realised it must be more than a week since he had spoken with the lad. That would never do. He hated the thought that poor Charlie might feel he was unwanted and overlooked. There and then, Foxe made yet another firm resolution to find out from Mrs Crombie when the lad would next be in the shop. He would, without fail, come through to spend some time finding out how the lad was doing and what progress he was making in learning his chosen craft.

  As he wandered about the stockroom, too keyed-up to sit down, Foxe noted the contents of the shelves in an almost unconscious way. Plenty of cheap novels, most of which would probably find their way into the lending library on the floor above. Borrowers could be shockingly careless of library books though, to be fair, cheap editions of the latest novels were not made to last. There were more limited stocks of serious books, especially writers on travel and discoveries, but tastes were changing and the theological works and sermons which had once been regular sellers were no longer in great demand.

  Foxe also noted the large stocks of patent medicines. Most booksellers offered patent medicines and they could prove to be a most profitable side-line. Recently, however, certain apothecaries had given up treating patients directly and limited their activities to compounding medicines. These they offered either for direct sale to those who wanted them or as a service to physicians, who could write a patient a prescription and leave it to the chemist to have it made up. Since apothecaries were prevented by law from charging for their time spent consulting, all made their living by selling medicines of one kind or another. Why not call yourself a chemist, or a druggist and concentrate on that part of the apothecary’s trade? If the trend caught on, the booksellers’ trade in patent medicines would soon be under threat. Perhaps he should consider leasing suitable premises nearby and finding a suitably qualified and experienced person to run a chemist’s business? Moving out the patent medicines would free a good deal of shelf space both in the stockroom and the shop for more books. It would also provide extra space for Charlie to set up his bookbinding equipment and working area.

  At last, Mrs Crombie hastened into the workroom, full of apologies for keeping Foxe waiting.

  ‘There was a whole group of customers eager to talk about the murder at Belton’s,’ she said, ‘so I thought you would not want me to dissuade them from saying whatever they wished, in case it might contain titbits of some use to you.’

  ‘Quite right, Mrs Crombie,’ Foxe replied. ‘Come over here and sit down, then I can seat myself as well. I know that we have business matters to discuss but first tell me what the people of Norwich are saying about Johnson’s murder. I attended the inquest yesterday but learned nothing of any real significance.’

  ‘The general view seems to be that Mr Johnson must have stumbled on some wrongdoing in the warehouse,’ Mrs Crombie began, ‘or perhaps in the business as a whole. Mr Johnson was then killed to stop him from reporting it to the magistrate. Many assume a similar fate has befallen the mayor for the same reason. They think his body has been concealed somewhere and will be found someday.’

  ‘That view makes good sense, Mrs Crombie,’ Foxe interrupted, ‘but I have to say I have not yet stumbled upon anything to indicate where any thefts or similar wrongdoing could have been taking place.’

  ‘Two people were eager to claim acquaintance with merchants who did regular business with Belton’s,’ Mrs Crombie went on. ‘According to them, these merchants—mercers, I suppose—said that the warehouse has been shockingly neglected in recent years. It sometimes took the employees there some time to find the bales of cloth mercers had ordered. The system of issuing invoices was also extremely lax. It could take more than a month for the invoice for a sale to be sent and late payment seemed to be tolerated as the norm.’

  ‘Now that is most interesting,’ Foxe said. ‘In circumstances like that, there must have been considerable scope for all kinds of theft and embezzlement, almost certainly by those actually employed there. However, the two people best placed to carry out such criminal activities must have been Johnson, the chief clerk, and Comiston, the bookkeeper. Yet if they were part of some such criminal activities, why kill Johnson and leave Comiston untouched? Was one of them honest and the other one a thief? Did Comiston kill Johnson to avoid being unmasked? I find that hard to believe. I only saw Johnson when he was dead, but he looked to be a strong, upright fellow. Comiston is a perfect mouse of a man, short and apparently frightened of his own shadow. I could credit Johnson killing Comiston but not the other way around.’

  ‘I agree it seems rathe
r odd but, of course, I have not encountered either of them.’

  ‘Has there been anything else?’ Foxe asked.

  ‘Before the news of the murder spread around, people were only just beginning to talk about Mrs Belton stepping in to run the business. Some thought it was extremely brave of a woman to try to keep her husband’s firm going until he should return. Others, noting that Mrs Belton’s father had himself been a cloth merchant of note, thought that she may have been glad of the opportunity to set things right. It is well known that her husband had little interest in business or commerce. Indeed, if some people are correct in their estimation of him, he had very little concern for anything that might demand effort.’

  ‘You will keep listening, won’t you? All this is very useful to me.’

  ‘Of course, I will, Mr Foxe,’ Mrs Crombie replied. ‘Perhaps now we can turn to business matters? It has been very busy in the shop this morning and I don’t wish to leave Cousin Eleanor to cope on her own for too long.’

  FOXE DECIDED that he would write a letter to Lucy to tell her all that he had discovered since they spoke last, little enough though it was. By the time he had sent a servant to enquire when she might be free to speak with him, received a reply and gone to Colegate in person, a significant amount of time would have been expended for but moderate gain. It wasn’t that he didn’t long to be with Lucy in person—he did most ardently—but the enforced distance he must keep to comply with the stipulations she had laid down for their conversations left him feeling bothered for hours afterwards. There would also be an additional benefit in sending a letter. If he asked her to pass on the most relevant points to her uncle, it would perhaps convince him that his “little Lucy” had indeed grown up and should be taken more seriously.

  Foxe took a great deal of time over composing his letter, trying to remain strictly business like, yet inject some degree of warmth and regard at the same time. After the fifth or sixth attempt, he realised he would probably never be fully satisfied with the content and tone so he took up a candle and wax, sealed the letter and handed it to Molly with instructions to have Henry deliver it as soon as he could. Then, at last, he felt able to spend time leafing through the catalogues he had received. He hoped he might find volumes his customers had asked him to look for or other ones that he thought were being offered at a price which might offer him sufficient profit. He had become skilled over the years, both at recognising titles the dealers had under-valued as well as knowing who amongst his customers might be tempted by something unusual and unexpected.