by Robin Blake
‘Did Shackleberry tell you why he wanted this poison?’
He looked puzzled at the question.
‘Shackleberry? Who’s that?’
‘The Irishman that you met,’ I told him patiently. ‘Whom you talked poisons with, and agreed to supply. Remember?’
This was another chance shot on my part. While there was not much hope that a sober Wilson could admit to such a transaction, I wondered if a drunk one might.
The apothecary’s face briefly flickered to life and then clouded again. He waved his arms.
‘Oh, yes. No. Not talking about him. The other.’
‘Oh? Who is that?’
He did not reply and I repeated the question as we stumbled on towards his shop. After a few paces he was talking again.
‘Goat. Lewd, that’s what. Sir. Cocky. Cocksman. If that’s the man for the job, God help us all is what I say, Mr Cragg.’
‘Who is this, Thomas?’ I pressed. ‘And what job?’
But the meandering flow of Wilson’s thoughts was not to be diverted.
‘Nay, they cannot choose him because before they start talking about me talking about poison let ’em talk about him wanting it. And I know for what, I do. Eunuch.’
When we arrived at his shop I was no wiser about who and what he was talking about. I steadied him in position with a hand on his shoulder while I patted his pockets with the other until I found his keys. Unlocking the door, I hauled him into the front of the shop and lowered him into the comfortably upholstered leather armchair, there for the use of customers waiting for their preparations to be made up. He sat gratefully slumped, still muttering but only half conscious, and hardly aware that I was still with him. I lit a candle and went into the back of the shop thinking to call Mrs Wilson down from the living quarters. On the apothecary’s workbench lay an open register, to which I gave a glance as I looked round, and then quickly returned to when I realized its import: this was Wilson’s drugs book. Not all those in his trade were as punctilious as he in recording what they sold, and to whom.
I felt excitement burn, as along a fuse, from my brain to my fingertip as I ran the latter down the list of the apothecary’s transactions over the last few days. Here might lie the proof of what Andrews had been saying. Counting the columns from left to right Wilson’s system was to list the date, the name of the customer, the item purchased, the quantity and the amount paid over. Taking a pen and a sheet from a pile of scrap paper I jotted down the items that had been sold on Thursday, two days earlier, leaving out only the cost, as being of comparatively little importance.
Miss Bilsboro. Valrn 8 oz. Adder’s tng oil. 10 drops.
Lord Drb’s man. Turps Clystr. 8 fl. oz.
Mrs Coupe. Her peppmnt draught. 1 pt.
Mr Priestley of Bamber Br. Lavdr in susp syrp. 1 bott.
Dr Tewksby. Prescr rcpt no. 334. As per.
Mrs Singleton. Ldnm. 6 fl oz.
Boy pro H.H.? Cnthds pdr. 10 grn.
Lady Pinklb. Oil of clv. 2 oz. Rose Wtr salve. 6 oz.
Dr Dapperw’s man. Tnct casc 2 drachm.
Jos. Boothby Esq. Hngry wtr 8 oz.
Strngr. Grnd Atrp 2 scrp agg. 100:1 ½ lb.
Miss Wellson. Her own linctus. 1 bott.
Mr Jon. Johnson. Sprt jnpr ½ pt. Florence oil 8 oz.
I had still not finished copying the full record of Thursday’s business when I heard the voice of Mrs Wilson.
‘Wilson? Is that you?’
She was calling from upstairs and in the same instant I heard her tread on the stair. Hastily sanding the paper and folding it into my pocket, I stepped away from the bench at the very moment that the apothecary’s wife appeared at the door.
‘Oh, Mr Cragg, is it?’ she asked.
I felt like a boy caught with his hand in the raisin jar.
‘I met Thomas outside the tavern,’ I explained hastily. ‘I have brought him home, as he is a little the worse, I’m afraid.’
Immediately she fluttered with concern.
‘Where is he, where?’
I indicated the front of the shop and she hurried through to minister to her wine-stricken husband, scolding him and petting him by turns. I followed her and asked if I could be of any further service. I couldn’t, so I made my excuses.
At home I found the household preparing to go to bed.
‘Two volumes have arrived from Mr Sweeting,’ Elizabeth told me. ‘They’re in the library.’
I went through with a lamp and unwrapped and opened a volume of my new Chaucer. Flicking through it at random, I found myself looking at the description of the Man of Law:
Nowher so besy a man as he ther nas
And yit he semed besier than he was.
I smiled. I knew lawyers like that, but it had certainly been a busy day for me. Yawning, I shut the book and carefully slid both volumes into a vacant space on the shelf.
Chapter Fifteen
FIRST THING NEXT DAY, which was Sunday, when Elizabeth was at her Mass, I walked down to Nick Oldswick’s house to enquire after his health. Rain had returned during the night and many puddles slowed my progress. Parsonage opened the door of the watchmaker’s shop, his face gurning at me in an approximation to joy.
‘I suppose you want to know how he is, Mr Cragg.’
‘Naturally I do, Parsonage. He is better?’
‘Aye, better is one word. Asleep is another. And beneficial is a third.’
‘Beneficial?’
‘To myself, sir, to myself. He is so much better that I reckon I am not now imminently to be cast into the dark with nowt but the corns on my feet. Glory and praise, sir, I am saved!’
He neither raised his voice, nor spoke more quickly, as he said these triumphal words. Parsonage was too much the seasoned servant to crow or gabble, yet his lugubriousness was edged with undoubted relief.
‘You should give praise that Mr Oldswick’s saved, you know, not yourself.’
Parsonage rubbed his nose thoughtfully.
‘It’s the same thing, as I see it,’ he said at last. ‘If he gets sick, it hurts me and puts me in fear. If he gets better I am relieved.’
‘Well, if he’s sleeping now, I shan’t disturb him. Will you tell him I too am relieved he is out of danger?’
As I was turning into Cheapside on my way home, Barty came running up to me, splashing through the wet.
‘Mr Cragg, sir, those men, they’ve gone! I took shelter from the rain and they left the house before I came back, for I never saw them go. When I asked about them in the morning they weren’t to be found.’
‘Do you mean they’ve packed up and gone, or just gone out?’
‘Packed up, sir. Disappeared you might say. I’m very sorry I missed ’em, sir.’
‘What time did it rain?’
‘Between three and five, sir, by the church.’
‘I don’t blame you for taking shelter, Barty. I would have done just the same. You have earned your money anyway, just by coming to tell me.’
I handed him his promised coins.
‘Shall I find out where they’re gone to?’ he asked eagerly. ‘I can, I think.’
I grasped him by one of his bony shoulders and steered him in the direction of my house.
‘Come in with me for a wash and Matty will give you a bite of breakfast. After that, if you can run around and discover what road these two rogues are travelling, I will be in your debt again.’
At our own breakfast Elizabeth told me about a stranger, Mr Thomas Arne, who had appeared at the Roman chapel.
‘He’s a Londoner, and a musician. A finely dressed figure in a wig that was not cheap, and the finest velvet coat I have ever seen. He’s here to give tonight’s performance. Mr Egerton begged him to play something for us on our old spinet after Mass, and he did. You should have heard it, Titus! His fingers raced up and down the keyboard. Our own Miss Gerard is a beginner by comparison, and I have always thought her playing rather good. She herself was a little put out by his performance, but he cha
rmed her and all was well.’
‘He sounds notable. We’ll enjoy the music tonight, I think.’
‘He was notable for something else, Titus.’
‘Oh? What was that?’
‘For his left eye. It was blacked – I believe he had been fighting. When I looked carefully at his hands as he played the spinet, they seemed grazed around the knuckles.’
‘Fighting? Over what?’
‘Titus, how could we ask, with any degree of propriety?’
At mid-morning Elizabeth accompanied me to divine service, as was her loyal habit, and, when it was over, I let her walk home ahead of me to see to dinner while I delayed. I wanted to intercept Mayor Biggs, who was for a long time locked in conversation with the vicar. It was fully five minutes before he broke free and I was able to secure an audience amongst the gravestones.
‘I have heard that you intend to publish an advertisement today, giving instructions about this supposed contagion,’ I said.
‘True enough,’ he acknowledged, ‘though it is less about the contagion than against it. Contra Pestis, you know. Because of the danger it poses, we’ve allowed the exception of having our injunctions printed and posted on the Sabbath.’
During his not very distinguished mayoralty Biggs had cultivated the habit of using ‘we’ when speaking as mayor. I suppose he would defend this as an expression of the corporate will of the burgesses, but with it came the suspicion that he imagined himself royal. In Preston, as in many towns, there is the pretence of democracy but the continual reality is the pompous rule of a few small men tricked out like kings.
‘I wonder if you should not hold the advertisement back,’ I urged. ‘At least for the moment. A new explanation for the sickness has just been discovered, and must be tested.’
‘You say “tested”. We cannot test every crackpot idea, Cragg. I suppose you are going to tell me we are catching this contagion from birds, or bats, or something equally ridiculous.’
‘No. I am saying that it is no contagion at all, but only the effect of a quack medicine that was sold here on May Day, in Market Place.’
‘A quack medicine? You cannot mean the preparation that the very skilled Mr Shackleberry brought here for our town’s sole benefit.’
A man who rises to a position higher than the limits of his competence and courage must somehow cover himself. Biggs did so by pretending to a mysterious, lofty and unchallengeable cleverness: to knowing all answers while finding them not worth the effort of explanation. The unintended effect was to make him look very much like the fox in so many fables, whose cleverness is far less than he imagines. Biggs’s smile at this moment was decidedly vulpine.
‘I do,’ I said firmly. ‘Dr Luke Fidelis has been finding on his rounds that the sick were in fact those that drank Shackleberry’s so-called preservative, rather than the other way, as should have been the case.’
Biggs, still wearing his foxy smile, winked and tut-tutted.
‘Dr Fidelis, you say? Still a very young physician, I think, and green in judgement. We, on the other hand, have Dr Tewksbury, who has been in practice for thirty years or more. He assures us this is a dangerous contagion, and measures have to be taken to counteract it. So it would hardly be sage of us to ignore his advice. We would be blamed for the neglect of the town’s health.’
‘I’m not saying do nothing,’ I insisted. ‘But don’t threaten to board people up in their homes, or lock them in a pest house. Tell them quite simply, if they do have a bottle of Shackleberry’s medicine, to throw it away at once.’
Biggs tutted again and shook his head, causing the tails of his wig to flap.
‘No, no, that’s quite impossible, Cragg. People have spent sixpence a bottle on it. We cannot then tell them to dispose of it like some poison.’
‘But it is poison.’
‘So you say. We do not agree!’
At this moment Ephraim Grimshaw joined us, his Sunday finery even more splendidly gilded and silvered than his weekday suit.
‘What do we not agree?’ he boomed, clapping Biggs on the back and making the chain of office rattle. Grimshaw did not similarly greet me. He did not approve of me. He thought I was in some way subversive, because I stood outside the sway of the corporation.
‘On the nature of the present wave of sickness,’ I said.
‘Mr Cragg has just seen fit to tell us,’ said Biggs, ‘that we should not publish our agreed points towards defeating the contagion.’
‘Not publish the points?’ protested Grimshaw. ‘But you must.’
I repeated for Grimshaw’s benefit what I had told Biggs.
‘You blame Mr Shackleberry?’ Grimshaw spluttered. ‘You are wrong, sir. He is a benefactor of the town and in receipt of a ceremonial vote of thanks from the burgesses. He would no more poison us than throttle his own grandmother.’
‘Have you met him?’ I asked. ‘His grandmother is in constant danger.’
Grimshaw’s small eyes narrowed to slits.
‘Look, Cragg, you are not in a position to joke about this outbreak of sickness. I’ve heard that you allowed the only dead body to be produced by it to slip through your fingers.’
‘And Shackleberry’s slipped through yours. He’s—’
But Grimshaw was not to be interrupted. He was jabbing his finger in the air in a rather menacing way.
‘Bluntly, Cragg, you’re not an elected officer. Stick to your rotten-ladder accidents and drunks in the river. These higher matters of public policy and common profit are not for the likes of the coroner.’
Before I could reply he had swung round to face Biggs once more.
‘Now, Mr Mayor, if I may, a word about the arrangements for this evening’s grand event. Would you leave us, Cragg? This is a matter of importance.’
The grand event was the musical entertainment Alfred, designed as the curtain-raiser to the week of voting, which would begin the next day. It was going to be performed in the town’s theatre by a company of actors, and an orchestra of string and wind, all laid on by Lord Strange. It was this young nobleman that had secured the services of the fashionable Mr Thomas Arne to come from London to direct it. Biggs might be intending to close the theatre, but he didn’t dare do so before his young lordship had had his evening of fun.
* * *
At home I found Fidelis awaiting me in his riding clothes. He looked pale and strained.
‘I have come to make my excuses,’ he said. ‘I must miss dinner, as I have been called to Hoghton Tower. A member of the household has fallen sick.’
‘Can’t you stay for your dinner first?’
‘No, the matter is urgent. May I call in later, on my return?’
‘Of course. The afternoon will be wet and we’re not going out.’
His forehead was furrowed and, though professing to be in a hurry, he seemed reluctant to go immediately.
‘You seem distracted,’ I said. ‘Is there something the matter?’
‘Yes. I think there is.’
‘And?’
‘It is Miss Plumb, Titus.’
At that moment a shadow seemed to flick across his handsome face. He looked suddenly haunted.
‘Has she become ill again?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. Possibly. I don’t know where she is. She has gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘She was not in her room this morning. She did not sleep there at all last night. I was shown the bed by the Lorrises and that much is evident. But she said not a word, only wrote a note to say she did not want any supper in the evening, and was tired and not to be disturbed. That was during the afternoon. No one saw her go out of the house, and no one knows when she did go out.’
He picked up his hat and riding crop. This was the moment when I might have given him Miss Plumb’s message. But he was in a hurry and I missed it.
‘I am sure she will return,’ I said.
This lame reassurance was spoken as I saw him out of the door, and onto his horse.
&nb
sp; ‘I wish I did not have to go to Hoghton, Titus, else I could be looking for her.’
He mounted and rode off, with his medical bag bouncing on the horse’s rump. Then, before I could shut the door, young Barty appeared.
‘Mr Cragg, sir,’ he said, ‘the two men you asked about. They were seen at Bamber Bridge this morning at six, walking, with a donkey.’
‘A donkey, is it? Well, they must be going south. Thank you, Barty. I think we can say good riddance.’
‘Will you not give chase, sir?’
I shook my head.
‘It’s hardly worth it, Barty, and not a job for me at all events.’
I asked if he wanted to come inside for a bite, but he said no, he had to be somewhere else. He was a secretive boy. I did not know precisely where he slept.
I told Elizabeth about the unaccountable disappearance of Miss Plumb, but she implied she thought it some small impediment that kept the young woman away, of little moment. She was more interested in the absconded mountebanks, and wanted a close account of the previous evening.
‘Do you mean to say that the underling Dickon is really the master?’ she asked when I’d summarized the events of the evening. ‘I cannot believe it – he looked the perfect idiot.’
‘That was his intention.’
‘Well, of course, I can see it now. A true idiot could never be as perfectly suited to that role as a false one.’
‘Exactly. Andrews is the brain of the enterprise; Shackleberry is only the showman. His tongue may be golden, but his mind is tarnished by drink.’
‘Should they not be pursued, though? They appear guilty of terrible poisoning.’
‘Accidentally, I think. Or even unknowingly. It is the person who gave them the poison that we want to find. Though, as coroner, I need not make even that my concern unless and until someone dies. And the mayor won’t take action. He thinks Andrews and Shackleberry are fine fellows.’
‘But one person has died, Titus. John Allcroft.’
‘That was before Paracelsus’s Patent Preservative made its appearance. If the mixture is the cause of the general sickness in town, Allcroft must be the victim of someone else. But who?’
‘Could it be the same person as him that conveyed the famous kick to the preservative?’