The Broken Token

by Chris Nickson

  Sedgwick’s long legs took him over to the first door. He knocked on the thin wood. There was no answer and he moved along, working methodically. He felt comfortable with people like these, flirting with the women and joking with the men, cajoling them gently into opening up. That empathy was his skill, the small, subtle prods that released thoughts and images.

  This morning, though, all his charm seemed to fail him. No one admitted to knowing anything. He knew there’d have been noise until late, the roaring drunks, the fights that let off frustration at having nothing. That was the music of their lives here. But anything more they’d have ignored, either from fear or just because it was so different.

  He continued around the court. A few people offered snippets that might help, but he could tell there was no substance to them. Only one old man offered anything of value, and even that was vague, a sort of stifled scream and blow he believed he’d heard in the middle of the night that roused him briefly from his rest.

  “What time was it?” Sedgwick asked.

  “I haven’t a bloody clue,” the man admitted, idly scratching a wild thatch of hair. “It were pitch dark, that’s all I know. I went back to sleep.”

  Sedgwick sighed silently. It was almost nothing, but it was a place to start, and from there he’d be able to find more.

  He’d come back and try again in the evening. Persistence paid off; he’d discovered that in the past. The Constable had once called him a terrier, and he liked the image, knowing how true it was. Once he caught the right scent he followed it, digging and worrying at things until he uncovered the truth.

  He hadn’t given much thought to the bodies. They were dead, beyond help. He remembered the preacher from Saturday, of course, another tosspot full of words and promises for the hereafter. Sedgwick had no patience for sermons. He’d watched how his father worked himself into the grave, dying young as he tried to keep his family clothed and fed. No god he wanted to believe in would have let that happen. The curate might have talked about a better place when he tossed a sod on the coffin, but what better place for his father than alive, with the people who loved him? Given his druthers, Sedgwick would have left this preacher to the fists and let him take his chances in the here and now. But he’d had his orders, so he’d hustled the man away. Roughly.

  The girl had been unfamiliar. He’d realised immediately that the Constable knew her though, and that she meant something special to him. At first he thought she might have been an old lover, but he dismissed that. To his knowledge Nottingham didn’t stray; if he did he was very discreet. And if he’d wanted a whore there were plenty of younger, prettier girls who’d willingly oblige a man of his rank.

  He’d wait. If Nottingham wanted to tell him, he would. Meanwhile, there were other, more urgent answers that he needed.

  5

  The market was in full spate as Nottingham walked back down Briggate. Servants gossiped as they crowded around the improvised stalls, and mistresses were halted by the cries of the sellers with their boastful promises of the best goods at the cheapest prices.

  When he was a boy the twice-weekly market had been a treasure trove. At the end of the day, while the traders packed up, he and other lads would scavenge, picking up all the rotting pieces of fruit and vegetables no one wanted to buy. It looked like a childish game, but it was all done with deadly seriousness. It meant survival. The food tasted bad, but it filled the belly and staved off aching hunger for another night or two. It had kept Nottingham and his mother clinging to life through a few bad winters.

  Children still did it; if anything, there seemed to be more of them now. He could pick them out easily, dressed in clothes that were dirty rags, their eyes darting everywhere as they tried to remain invisible. Some of them would grow up to be cutpurses. A few would grow up and have jobs and families. But most of them, he knew full well, wouldn’t live long enough to find out.

  Just below the Moot Hall, the building where the business of the city was transacted, he turned into a gap between two houses that opened into a cleanswept flagstone court. A series of small, neat stone buildings were set around it, surprisingly quiet after the raucous bustle of the street. He opened the closest door and walked in.

  Two clerks were working, the only sound in the room the careful scratching of quills on paper. One of the men glanced up as light came into the room, eyes squinting as if he were emerging from a dream.

  “I’m looking for Mr Rawlinson,” Nottingham announced.

  “He’ll be in t’ warehouse,” the man answered, obviously eager to rest for a moment. “I’ll take thee back there, sir.”

  “I’ll go back myself.”

  The warehouse stood at the rear of the court, built against a thick wall. It had no windows, and the stout wooden door, now open, was usually firmly double-locked to protect Rawlinson’s valuable inventory from thieves.

  He was a merchant, making a good living buying cloth at the market then reselling it to the Continent. The wool trade was Leeds’s prosperity and its reputation, and Leo Rawlinson was one of the men who kept the tide of money rolling in.

  Nottingham had little more than a nodding acquaintance with him, but as far as he knew the man was honest enough – as honest as any man in business could afford to be. There’d never been any gossip about his character. He took his family to service every Sunday at Holy Trinity Church on Boar Lane and lived on the other side of the River Aire in a large new house he’d had built the year before on Meadow Lane.

  The Constable knocked on the open door but didn’t enter. This was a merchant’s premises; he’d wait for an invitation.

  Instead the man came out. He was short and running heavily to fat, his face blotchy red and jowly under a freshly-powdered wig. Rawlinson’s coat was of expensive pale broadcloth, only the best, fashionably cut without being ostentatious, the lapels carefully pressed flat against his chest, cuffs fastened with discreet gold buttons.

  “Mr Nottingham,” he acknowledged with a small, imperious nod. “What can I do for you?”

  “I believe you’ve had a Mr Morton staying with you, sir.”

  A fleeting look of astonishment and annoyance crossed Rawlinson’s eyes.

  “I do,” he admitted cautiously, “but what business is it of yours?”

  “Everything that happens in Leeds is my business, sir.” Nottingham allowed himself a short smile to accompany the formal politeness.

  “Happen it is,” the merchant conceded grudgingly. “But if you know the answer, why are you asking the question?”

  “You can vouch for the man?”

  “Of course I can,” Rawlinson said dismissively. “Daniel Morton is a man of strong Christian convictions. My wife and I invited him here from Oxford to preach.”

  Nottingham gave a sage nod.

  “I know, sir. I had to stop a crowd injuring him on Saturday at the Market Cross.”

  Rawlinson stiffened, his pride bristling. “I was very disappointed by that. I hoped those without privilege might have welcomed his words.”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir.” It was the blandest answer the Constable could manage.

  “What’s this about?” the merchant asked suspiciously. “Has there been more trouble? Has someone else attacked him?”

  “Yes, they have.” Nottingham paused. “I’m afraid he’s dead, sir. Someone killed him last night.”

  The colour fled from Rawlinson’s face. He seemed to deflate, all the substance vanishing from his body, and he reached out to steady himself against the stone of the building. He was a man who inhabited a world where violent death didn’t exist, and where tragedies came from God, not man.

  “How?” he asked once he’d regained a little composure, and then, “Where?”

  “He was murdered, over by the workhouse,” Nottingham explained briefly. “I’m sorry, Mr Rawlinson.”

  There was incomprehension and pain on the merchant’s face. It was all beyond his understanding.

  “Would you like me to escort you home?�
��

  “No, no,” he answered unsteadily. “I’ll stay here.”

  A long silence lingered between them before Rawlinson wondered in a wounded voice, “But why would anyone want to murder Daniel?”

  “I don’t know that yet, sir,” Nottingham answered soberly. “We only found the bodies this morning.”

  “Bodies?” The merchant looked up in surprise. “There was more than one?”

  “There was a woman with him, a prostitute.”

  Honest puzzlement crossed Rawlinson’s face.

  “A prostitute? And she was murdered too?”

  “Yes.”

  “My God.” The words seemed to hiss out of the man.

  The Constable waited before pressing on.

  “I’m afraid I’ll need to ask you about Mr Morton, sir.” He knew the merchant would rather be alone, but the more he knew now, the sooner he could resolve the killings.

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” Rawlinson sounded like a man suddenly distracted by images of mortality.

  “When did you see him last?”

  “Yesterday evening, I suppose,” he answered. Nottingham could see the man piecing events together and trying to draw omens from them. “He was with us for supper about eight. He said he was going for a stroll afterwards.”

  “And you’d no idea he hadn’t returned?”

  The merchant shook his head, looking dazed.

  “We retire early, Mr, Nottingham… and then I was at the cloth market by dawn. I assumed he was still in his bed then.”

  “Had he received any specific threats that you knew of, sir?”

  Rawlinson barked a grim laugh.

  “Oh aye, there were plenty of those. More than he told me, probably. But he said they weren’t going to stop him spreading God’s word. I admire that.” He stopped and corrected himself. “Admired.”

  “How long had he been here?”

  “Since Friday.” The merchant sighed. “My wife and I met him when we were visiting friends in Oxford. We heard him preach and we were both very moved.” He glanced up at Nottingham. “I take it you’re a Christian man?”

  The Constable inclined his head slightly and smiled, hoping that would suffice. He believed, and attended church, but the last thing he wanted now was to discuss religion.

  “Daniel was part of a very young group called Methodists,” Rawlinson explained. “We heard him preach three times while we were there, and he truly had a gift from God.” He smiled at the memory. “He could touch people in their souls. This city needs someone like that.”

  “So you invited him here?”

  “We did.” The merchant pulled a large white handkerchief of fine linen from his breeches and wiped his face. From being a man of heft and privilege, he now looked as if the slightest breath of wind would tumble him. “I felt privileged when he accepted. But you know what happened here when he preached.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Constable agreed. It had been an ugly scene, as close to a riot as he’d seen in Leeds in several years. He still had the bruises.

  “Daniel said the people didn’t want to listen, and the church here didn’t want a voice that might be louder and stronger than theirs,” Rawlinson continued. “The Reverend Cookson went to hear him speak, did you know that? He had the nerve to come to my house afterwards and tell me Daniel had to go, and that several merchants and aldermen agreed with him. He claimed Daniel was fomenting revolution.”

  So Daniel Morton was despised not only by the poor he’d come to save, but by their masters too, Nottingham thought with growing curiosity. That made for precious few friends in the city.

  “And was he talking revolution?”

  “Don’t be so daft!” the merchant exclaimed with a withering look. “God’s love is hardly revolutionary, Constable.”

  “I suppose not.” He hadn’t had chance to listen to Morton’s words on Saturday; he’d been too intent on keeping the man safe. But plenty of people had found no love in what the man had said.

  “If there’s any consolation,” Rawlinson said with a wintry bleakness in his tone, “it’s that he’s with God now. He was a devout man. I don’t know why or how he ended up next to a prostitute, but I’m certain it wasn’t for the reasons most people will gladly assume.”

  “I only hope I’ll be able to find out,” Nottingham answered with heartfelt sincerity.

  6

  It was only a short distance back to the jail on Kirkgate, not far enough to let his thoughts wander. The bodies would already be there, waiting on thick stone slabs in the back room they kept as a mortuary, and he needed to look more closely at them.

  It wasn’t a prospect he ever relished. Murder in all its forms was common enough, and he saw the results. The souls might have gone to a better place, but too often it was obvious that the bodies had done all they could to cling to life. Nottingham found no pleasure in examining the wounds or the effect of poisons, and cataloguing the pain on the faces.

  This would be harder than most. Usually the bodies were anonymous, just names on a sheet of paper or faces he’d seen before. This time he had to look at Pamela, to go past the memories and see beyond the girl he’d watched grow into a woman and find anything that might help him discover the person who’d killed her.

  Nottingham felt the chill of the room as he entered, his candle throwing large shadows on the walls as he set it down on the table. He decided to concentrate on Morton’s body first, trying to keep his mind off Pamela, and yanked the sheet off the corpse. The dead man’s face had strong features, and his hair had recently been shaved to stubble under a costly wig. When the Constable turned the wrists, he saw Morton’s hands were those of a gentleman, soft and clean and unused to labour. Slowly, Nottingham unbuttoned the corpse’s long waistcoat and shirt, noting the two cuts on the chest, teasing the material away from the dried blood, working gently and patiently until he revealed skin.

  He judged the blade must have been an inch across and finely sharpened. As far as he could tell, it must have been long, too, driven deep into the body between the ribs. He spent several silent minutes poring over the wounds and imagining the angle of the blows. Not a professional killing, he concluded; that would have only needed a single cut. Yet at the same time, it didn’t look like the crazed work of a madman. That wasn’t much help, but it was better than nothing at all.

  The Constable turned his attention to Morton’s pockets. There was a notebook in his coat, almost new, with a few lines for sermons scribbled in it, and the letter from Rawlinson, written the month before, folded and refolded several times, inviting him to Leeds to preach. A handkerchief, well used, as if Morton had been suffering from a cold. The waistcoat only held a few small coins and a gold watch, still ticking, inscribed To Daniel, from your loving father on the back. So robbery hadn’t been a motive.

  He had to steel himself to move across to Pamela and pull down the shroud that covered her. In death she looked younger, more brittle. One of the men must have found an old, faded shawl in the court and folded it across her belly; the scrap of blue ribbon had been laid on top of it. He remembered Mary giving her that shawl years before, one spring night when she looked chilled. She’d kept it all this time, or maybe she’d never been able to afford a new one. Her dress had been mended so many times that in places it seemed more yarn than material.

  She’d been stabbed twice, too. Like Morton, the blows had been to her chest. Even without pulling down the bodice of her dress, Nottingham could judge that the same knife had killed them both. One of them must have cried out, he thought, idly stroking his chin. Someone must have heard something.

  Cuts and bruises covered her arms, some fading, others more recent. What interested him was a livid mark on her face, by the cheekbone. It hadn’t had time to bloom, but the blow had obviously been vicious. He could almost feel it and see her head snapping backwards. It would have been enough to leave her stunned, gasping and vulnerable.

  Pamela’s small hands were bunched into fists, and he pried them
open carefully. Her fingers were rough and red, the nails cracked and bitten, the palms heavily calloused. No one would have mistaken her for a lady.

  Her hands were empty, and he understood the fists were her last small act of defiance against her murderer. There was no sign of the token he had given her. Had she lost it in the struggle, or had the murderer taken it? If so, why? He leaned back against the wall, gazing at the two bodies. Someone had put them together, thrown them away among the rubbish. But the way they’d been placed, in a harsh, deliberate parody of coupling, meant that whoever did it had wanted people to believe them together.

  Perhaps they had been, Nottingham wondered. Morton would hardly the first preacher to succumb to sins of the flesh. In his time he’d known several whose words and deeds hardly matched, and Pamela couldn’t have afforded to be choosy about her men. Rawlinson had insisted his guest was a devout Christian man, but keeping secrets was easy. An evening stroll could quickly turn into a hunt for a woman.

  Yet why kill them? What had they done, what had they seen?

  Nottingham sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

  Maybe someone had wanted Morton dead, and Pamela had been killed because she was in the wrong place. Or, he thought, turning the idea upside down, Pamela had been the victim, and Morton had been the innocent.

  But it was too early for theories. He needed evidence.

  7

  Nottingham was finishing his daily report for the Mayor when Sedgwick returned. He knew it was pointless, but as he wrote he still attempted to play down the double murder, trying not to give it too much weight among the other events. The cut-purse had struck three more times, including a lady’s reticule. Still no one had seen or felt a thing. But however much he tried to hide it among other crimes, he knew the pressure to solve the preacher’s killing would arrive soon enough. Rawlinson would talk to the Mayor and the notes and questions would flow fast.