by Jake Lynch
By the time his apprenticeship formally ended and he became a Freeman of Oxford in the Guild of Joiners, Luke was already bringing in and fulfilling valuable commissions to carve picture frames as worthies of the University and its constituent colleges sat for ever more extravagant portraits, and wanted suitably ornate edgings to match. Later, the family fortunes had received a boost through his appointment to the Bodleian, which then promptly decided to ask all the colleges to contribute pictures of their respective founders to hang in the newer Selden End of Duke Humfrey’s Library.
Now, with constabulary duties taking up so much of his time, Luke accepted a mere trickle of work in comparison. His own eyesight, declining with the onset of middle age and aided by a pair of spectacles, was equal to the really detailed carving only on clear mornings, when light flooded in through the workshop’s large east-facing window. But he looked forward to these interludes of peace and quiet and, today, with so much to trouble his mind, a couple of hours concentrating only on the texture of the material and the precise movements of his tools represented an especially welcome form of solace.
Picking up one long edge, he peered along the bolection, the plain wood separating the two decorative strips, for what seemed like the hundredth time, ensuring its edges were straight, before turning his attention to the scrolling foliage that formed the main adornment, gingerly shaving here and there with his slender file and smallest chisel to bring the fine detail of the pattern into perfect symmetry.
Propped at his side and protected by a cloth was the canvas itself, a somewhat flattering likeness of Sir Thomas Millington, an old friend from the Wadham scientific meetings of Luke’s student days, who was now both Oxford’s Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. The desire of his medical colleagues to honour him by displaying his portrait in their London headquarters was not matched by the Royal College’s finances, which were in poor health; so Millington had discreetly commissioned the work himself.
In truth, the frame was just about finished, and would need only to be fixed into place and gilded with gold leaf before he could take it across the High to the Professor’s rooms at All Souls College. As Luke carved and scraped, his mind could not help but return to the murder. The process of an investigation rather resembled a frame, he’d often reflected: ever-tightening to exclude irrelevant material piece by piece, and homing in on just the key components of evidence and testimony required to make a case for the magistrates. Now, however, that process had gone into reverse, and Gregory, who’d been firmly in the centre of the frame, was suddenly just one more detail in a diffuse and baffling picture.
*
All too soon, it was time to disengage from the gratifyingly responsive oak, and apply himself once more to the murder of William Harbord, which felt, by contrast, impervious to his efforts. As yet, he had no stomach for an encounter with Mayor Bowell and his vapourings, so he waylaid Robshaw on the deputy’s habitual approach to the Guildhall and diverted him across the road to the New Inn, there ordering hot chocolate for them both.
‘Rare treat, this time o’ the morn,’ the deputy said gratefully, spooning in sugar as the steam beaded his whiskers.
‘You’ll need something sweet to wash down the news I’ve got,’ Luke replied, grim-faced. ‘’Tis bitter, indeed.’ He imparted the gist of Radcliffe’s encounter with Gregory and his own calculations of the timing, effectively ruling out their prime suspect.
‘But if Gregory was away on Goat’s Head Yard, how come bits of his coat sleeve ended up in Harbord’s blood from that stab wound?’ Robshaw demanded.
‘How indeed? But that’s a secondary question now. The main question is the same one we started with: if Gregory didn’t kill him, who did?’
Chapter 31
Pulling Threads Together
The master mason and his wife had heard tell of both Emily’s abduction and Richard’s heroism by the time the apprentice called on them on his way home from Magdalen Farm, and his request to delay his arrival at the Jesus College site until noon the next day had been sympathetically received. So, that morning, he went straight to the cottage adjoining the barton and climbed into the back of the cart with Emily, the couple making themselves comfortable on the straw and blankets, while Jacob haltered the old piebald horse and slowly drove back down the path across the marshes.
The young couple found increasingly raucous amusement in playing pinches, and an improvised version of loggits with bits of stick and small pebbles they found in the bottom of the cart – until at last an exasperated Jacob broke his silence:
‘You’re in better spirits today, missy, and no mistake.’ As they neared the Guildhall, however, Emily fell silent. Scenes from her ordeal of the previous day were horribly vivid as they drove up the High Street and past the end of Bear Lane. Still, she knew her duty, and – with Richard and her father alongside – she was ready to give Master Sandys a full account of yesterday’s events. And to think, all along, the man who’d carried her off had actually murdered someone!
Luke and Robshaw were gazing glumly at the samples of singed blue cloth retrieved from Harbord’s body when Jacob, Emily and Richard arrived.
‘You know we’ve been holding Gregory on suspicion of murder,’ Luke began carefully, after listening to Emily’s recollections. ‘Did he say anything, at any point, about that? Anything about William Harbord, or MPs in general?’
‘No, sir – nothing,’ she replied, as Richard and Jacob exchanged puzzled looks.
‘Are you charging him today then, Master Sandys?’ the apprentice asked.
Now it was the turn of the two constables to glance meaningfully at each other. With a sigh, Luke concluded that it would be wrong not to take them into his confidence.
‘I’m afraid it looks as though we’re going to have to let him go.’ Emily let out an involuntary noise that was half-gasp, half-sob.
‘Calm yourself, my dear,’ the father said tenderly, placing his hand on hers.
‘But Master Robshaw said you’d found them bits of cloth from his sleeve on the body, like,’ Richard persisted. Now Robshaw avoided meeting Luke’s irritated glare.
‘Well, Master Robshaw clearly spoke out of turn, but yes, we did find them on the body. However, we’ve since heard from a reliable witness that Gregory was somewhere else at the time of the murder, so he couldn’t have done it.’
‘Mystery is, how them bits of cloth could’ve got where they got,’ Robshaw broke in.
Somewhere deep in Emily’s consciousness a set of connections now finally fused with a distinctness that made her physically flush with realisation, swiftly followed by an equally powerful conviction that she must have got something wrong. From Gregory’s volcanic response the day before, she well recognised the potential perils of her instinct to speak out in the face of injustice. However, she felt compelled to press on, even if it got her into trouble.
‘Master Sandys, did Farmer Pawling give you something when he came in with Father the other day?’
‘Give me something? Why yes, he gave us some information, I suppose. That’s when he told us about the shooting, and your cattle.’
‘Had a hard week haven’t you, love?’ Richard said sympathetically.
Emily still looked doubtful.
‘Father, tell Master Sandys and Master Robshaw what you told me and Ma the other night.’ Jacob gave a slight start at finding himself directly addressed, having assumed his role would be confined to conveying them back and forth.
‘The other night?’
‘Aye,’ his daughter reminded him, ‘when we was sitting by the fire.’ The man looked suspiciously at the row of expectant faces. Was she trying to make a fool of him?
‘What – about Noll Crumble and the hump?’
‘No! The other thing – when they was called away.’
Comprehension slowly dawned on Jacob’s countenance.
‘Ah, you mean when Farmer Pawling went in to look at the cadaver, yonder
?’
‘That’s it, aye.’
‘’Tain’t still there, is it?’ he asked Luke, alarmed.
‘No, we had it taken to the charnel-house.’
Luke was slowly catching up with Emily, although he, too, could not quite credit the way the conversation was heading.
‘Tell me exactly what Pawling said.’ Emily had shared her misgivings with Richard, of course – and, before that, with Jack, the farmyard donkey. Now it came to the moment when she must raise them officially, however, they suddenly felt puny and implausible.
‘Why, he said as how he’d given you something – something as’d mean the shooter wouldn’t have long on the earth to do any more mischief. Seemed like he was saying he’d hang for it!’
There – she’d said it. As she noticed Sandys’ intense, grave expression, she experienced a vertiginous wave of nausea, and a conviction that she was about to be scolded for nurturing ideas above her station. But no: she was evidently being taken seriously, which if anything was still more unnerving.
‘But we had nothing to link Gregory to the murder at that stage. I remember telling Pawling: the matter of scaring cattle would be for the regiment to deal with. And they were never going to hang him for that.’
Robshaw, too, had now cottoned on, and blurted out what the others were thinking.
‘You’re not telling us Pawling put them bits of cloth on the body?’
‘But how could he have got hold of them?’ Luke said, turning his head slightly towards his deputy by way of acknowledgement, while keeping his gaze firmly on Emily.
The young cowherd cast her mind back to when she’d been summoned to the farmhouse to tell her story to the former mayor in person.
‘I told him about the feller taking off his coat and stamping out the fire on the ground.’
‘Perhaps he went and picked up them shreds off of the road?’ Robshaw speculated.
There was one more detail that had been troubling Emily, so she thought she might as well add it to her story.
‘And I saw him ride off out the farm Tuesday morning, at first light, then he came back a bit later to pick up Father, and they set off again to see you and Master Robshaw.’
For a brief interval, nobody spoke. Then, sitting back in his chair, Luke thought aloud, summing up their joint surmise.
‘So, Pawling is angered by the death of his cattle, that’s understandable. He learns from Emily that Gregory had a backfire, then threw his coat down and stamped out the sparks, so he thinks to look for evidence to try and get us to take up the matter. He rides off to the London road, where the incident took place – that’s close enough, from Magdalen Farm.’
‘Aye, ’twould only be a short trot,’ Richard said.
‘He looks on the ground, finds a few shreds of singed blue cloth lying there and picks them up, planning to give them to us later that morning so we can prove which Guardsman fired the pistol.’
‘We told him about the murder, and the corpse lying back there,’ Robshaw reminded him.
‘So we did, when he came in. Then we had to go and see the Mayor. So now he has an opportunity to get the shooter into more trouble – trouble that couldn’t be dealt with internally. It would lead to Gregory’s arrest and trial, and probable execution.’
‘Where was you when he went into the parlour?’ Robshaw asked Jacob.
‘I stayed sat down – dead bodies don’t agree with me.’ The man paled at the mere thought.
‘We were gone for ten minutes or so, getting Bowell to calm down,’ Luke recalled. ‘He’d have had plenty of time alone with Harbord’s corpse to plant the evidence – if he’d had it with him.’
‘’Tis the only way them bits of cloth could’ve got there, if Gregory never put them there himself,’ Robshaw said, shaking his head.
‘Old Night-Mayor’ just about summed him up, Luke thought bitterly. Would they ever be able to prove that Pawling had deliberately interfered with a murder investigation, in an attempt to get revenge on a man who’d wronged him? Almost certainly not: but the thought seemed inseparable from the pronounced air of self-satisfaction both he and Robshaw had noticed in the farmer when news of Gregory’s arrest for murder became known. Why, now he remembered, the man had even urged him to ‘take a good close look at that dead body’ before leaving the Guildhall that day: an injunction that now felt like gloating over his successful interference with the evidence. Would he have knowingly sabotaged their inquiries, in the crucial first forty-eight hours after the crime, in pursuit of his own personal vendetta? He was often rash as to the consequences of his actions, in Luke’s experience, but he had never known Pawling do anything calculatingly wicked. Still, it was difficult not to be angry.
Chapter 32
Rats of Oxford Castle
Conditions in Oxford Castle were not improved by rainfall. These days, the moat was largely silted up, but renewed moisture seemed to stir its secrets of times past. Occupants of the houses built in recent years all round the bailey wall had to contend with a near-constant smell of damp. The great crack in the medieval keep spoke volumes for the building’s inability to keep out water, and they found Gregory in a bedraggled, if not exactly chastened state.
‘Come to pin something else on me, have you?’ he scowled at the jingling of keys as Sandys and Robshaw approached his cell door with one of the warders.
‘I should say, Gregory, that your conduct of yesterday was disgraceful,’ Luke began. ‘In the first place, a Royal Guardsman should know better than to go coney-catching at a market.’
‘I had to make back the money somehow, since my pay’s to be docked!’
‘As to that, you should prepare yourself to go without whisky and tobacco for a long time. I shall give a full written report to the Earl, and it will make clear just what a scoundrel you’ve been, to treat a young woman in that rough and ungentlemanly way.’ From over Luke’s shoulder, Robshaw fixed the trooper with a glare, but the latter’s scowl merely deepened.
In truth, the warders were desperate to get rid of Gregory. The prisoner had complained incessantly: about the food; about the water that formed runnels across the cell floor; and about the noise of rioters as they were brought in. The few cells at the City’s disposal – here and in the Bocardo, the tower at the north gate – were full of men the constables had arrested in the disturbance, who’d been escorted to gaol with help from Captain Sutherland’s Foot Guards and were now facing charges of ‘riotous and barratory behaviours likely to lead to a breach of the King’s peace.’
Ed had stipulated that the trooper must have a cell to himself, and Luke had paid for the privilege, at least for one night – which exacerbated the overcrowding everywhere else. Gregory’s defiant attitude must be catching: the Castle’s notorious rats, far from scuttling off at the sound of footsteps, today stood their ground, staring insouciantly back at the human interlopers in their dark domain. It was with a heavy heart that Luke imparted the news that both Gregory and his attendants wanted to hear: he was to be released with immediate effect.
‘It’ll be for the Colonel to deal with you now. I’m sure he’ll take appropriate measures.’
‘But I’m free to go?’
‘Yes, you’re free to go.’
*
True to form, Bowell fretted long and loud when brought the news that Gregory was now off the list of suspects (not an extensive list, Luke thought to himself – though he did not exactly share this intelligence with the mayor).
‘I suppose ’twould be out of the question, then, sir, to get a warrant to arrest him on a charge of kidnapping instead?’
‘Yes, Sandys,’ Bowell snapped: ‘You suppose right.’ Luke’s humour was not improved by Calvert simpering and snarking in the corner of the mayoral chamber as he delivered the ill tidings.
And Emily? She was, if anything, relieved that her tormentor was not now going to be put to death. Luke had explained, as best he knew, how Gregory’s transgressions would be dealt with under military discipl
ine, but she was inclined to dismiss that as a domain entirely beyond her experience. As Richard went off to his building site at Jesus College, the couple thanked God she had emerged unharmed from her week of traumas. She had, as her mother put it, been ‘scared half to death’ – but, they reflected, it could have been far worse.
Chapter 33
Another Close Shave
Luke curled his toes inside his boots as the deadly steel blade hovered inches from his throat. All of Jackman’s customers would surely experience the same frisson of fear at this moment, as the barber-surgeon doubtless realised – but he showed no sign of it. Did he practise that blank look, lest a minuscule tic inadvertently vouchsafe to the man sitting prone in his chair a shared knowledge of potential doom in one rogue swish of the razor? To betray even the slightest glimmer of awareness would be to risk fatally undermining his trade.
Feeling grimy after his encounter with Gregory in Oxford Castle gaol, Luke headed to Jackman’s establishment through the maze of streets around St Ebbe’s Church to have his stubble scraped off. During his apprenticeship, Luke would often tag along with his father on visits to the colleges to see clients, paying particular attention to the portraits displayed in libraries and common rooms. In many, dating from earlier in the century, the sitters were bearded, but that was before hair became politicised: Puritans were nicknamed ‘roundheads’ for their close crop and bare chin, whereas Cavaliers would grow out their own locks or wear a long wig, and cultivate a distinctive T-shaped ensemble of moustache and beard. But it was a long time since any portrait he had been called upon to frame showed any arrangement more hirsute than a modest covering on the upper lip: the style favoured, in fact, by the King himself.