A Dark Anatomy

by Robin Blake

  ‘But it is circumstantial,’ I protested. ‘It doesn’t mean he must have killed her. Many couples make each other miserable without resorting to murder. And murder by Ramilles Brockletower is a verdict I shall very much prefer to avoid. He is still only a young man, but he is very wealthy, and of position in the county. And anyway to kill one’s wife in this way, to cut her throat, would be utterly foolhardy, not to say uncouth, in such a gentleman.’

  Fidelis laughed again.

  ‘How should he do it, then, Titus? What would be the gentlemanly way?’

  Covering my renewed discomfort at Fidelis’s jocularity, our second pipes were brought with a fresh jug of punch. Fidelis sat back watching, as the boy laid everything on the table.

  ‘To continue with the argument, however,’ he said when he was once again puffing smoke, ‘you yourself mention Brockletower’s youth. He is hot-headed, maybe. And he served in the navy, where no doubt he saw and did such uncouth things as we can hardly guess at.’

  ‘I still prefer the notion of the vagabond.’

  ‘Because you want a quiet life. Where’s your spirit? Some poor nameless vagrant dangling from a gibbet for his sins – who cares about that? But Ramilles Brockletower standing on the scaffold in his fine lawn shirt with the neck open – now that’s a ship with a much fuller set of sails.’

  ‘But where would the ship take us?’ I sighed. My friend’s enthusiasm for murder was making me gloomy. ‘Into the unknown, Luke. The good character of the gentry is the rock on which our nation is founded.’

  Fidelis was smiling. He pointed accusingly.

  ‘You don’t believe that, Titus. You say it, but do not feel it.’

  ‘I do,’ I protested. ‘If Brockletower is a murderer I shall applaud his punishment. But all the same I shall wish it were not so.’

  Fidelis did not pursue the point. He leaned forward, wanting to get a rational explanation of what happened in the woods to Mrs Brockletower. He was so much the empiricist that it was sometimes difficult to remember he was also a papist.

  ‘Let us assume that the squire did kill her. We must then ask how he managed it. I say the procession of events was something like this. Brockletower gets from York to Skipton yesterday afternoon, and separates from his man. The man puts up for the night where he is, but Brockletower rides on, supposedly to Settle but in reality to the Fulwood, which he reaches some time during the night. He knows exactly when his lady rides each morning and along what route. He waits for her by the hollow oak, as your informant told us he has done at least once before. His horse, at some point, throws a shoe. When she arrives he surprises her, rides alongside her mount and, with a knife or perhaps a razor ready in his hand, slits open her throat. She falls. The horse gallops away with some of her blood on its neck. Brockletower dismounts and looks her over for a moment to check that she is dead. Remounting, he notices the shoe is missing. He occupies the rest of the day in following a long circuitous route, which takes him back home to Garlick Hall at nightfall. On the way he has the horse re-shod and, we might suppose, passes time at an inn where he is not known.’

  ‘Well that, at least, is something we may be able to prove,’ I said, still unhappy about the drift of his suspicions.

  ‘However, we must bear in mind that facts do not necessarily come first,’ continued my friend, warming to his narrative. ‘We must also consider the prime cause. Death always has a cause and a reason, and the cause leads to the reason, not the other way. If you discover the cause – which as coroner is your task – you shall uncover the reason.’

  ‘What kind of cause do you have in mind?’

  ‘If I were you, for a case of murder, I would consider only three: lucre, love or reputation.’

  ‘In my experience, which is quite long, hatred often comes into it.’

  ‘Yes, of course, but hatred is secondary. It has its causation as well as murder has, and this is always, once again, one or more of the three primary matters I have mentioned. At the bottom, I assure you, Dolores Brockletower’s death will have to do with the state of her marriage. The problem is that she was so close-hearted and tight-lipped. If she’d been more confiding you could proceed by questioning the confidante.’

  ‘Well from what I have heard this evening, there may really be such a person, Luke.’

  I told him of my visit to the dressmaker’s shop.

  ‘So it’s possible,’ I went on, ‘that she found in Abigail Talboys someone she could unburden herself to, which would be why she preferred the two of them to be alone whenever she went there for fittings.’

  ‘Good, good. This is promising. The sooner you see Miss Talboys the better.’

  ‘She may assist with more details of the squire’s joke, played on his wife at the hollow oak a few weeks ago.’

  ‘What if it was no joke?’ asked Luke darkly. ‘What if it was a rehearsal?’

  ‘It may have been simply high spirits. The Brockletowers were a young married couple. Such couples skylark.’

  ‘I’ll have to take your word for it.’

  ‘They do! They flirt and joke. That’s what makes it all such a pleasure.’

  ‘Is it?’

  Luke’s brown, bachelor eyes were upon me, a penetrating look. I suspected he was thinking about me and Elizabeth, and what we might do when we skylark.

  ‘Of course it is. You must marry and you will discover.’

  He picked up his rummer and drank, turning away from my remark as from something disturbing.

  ‘Well,’ he said, putting down his glass at last. ‘I do not think this was skylarking on Brockletower’s part. A joke is not a joke unless it is equally shared by both parties, the joker and the other. Mrs Brockletower was not amused by it. And anyway Ramilles Brockletower does not strike me as a skylarker.’

  I conceded the point with a sigh.

  ‘We have not come to any conclusion tonight,’ I said. ‘I had hoped your darting intellect would provide me with some new ideas.’

  ‘Come, come, Titus, we have only just started and there are many things we need to know. Whose is the horseshoe? What is the significance of the squire’s first rendezvous with his wife at the hollow oak? Why had she been in so disagreeable a humour? Why was she constantly short with the servants? Why did she cut this man Woodley dead?’

  He was speaking hurriedly, like a boy turning over stones to find a worm to bait a hook. I was about to speak but he raised his finger to show he had not finished.

  ‘In cases of unexpected disease I often find it useful to see what is new in the life of the patient; what alteration has occurred to upset the balance of their constitution. We may do the same thing here. And if we do, what is found?’

  I considered for a moment.

  ‘Building works,’ I said. ‘Alterations to the house. Mr Woodley and his pediment.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Mrs Brockletower did find the disturbance irksome,’ I went on. ‘And I am not altogether surprised that she felt the same about Woodley. I do myself, and I am not required to look on his leveret’s face and hear his piping voice every day. But it is not just his person that she could not abide, Luke. She resented the time her husband devoted to it – the endless discussions with Woodley over the plans, and so on.’

  ‘And that suggests?’

  ‘Her continued regard for her husband. She was jealous of his time.’

  ‘All true. But does that suggest she should be murdered?’

  There was nothing but dottle in my pipe. I reached for the punch jug and peered inside. It too was empty except for a sodden, purple mush of lees, lemon peel and cinnamon fibres.

  ‘Time to go home,’ I said.

  Fidelis looked crestfallen.

  ‘Oh, another jug, Titus,’ he pleaded.

  ‘No. We must ride early to meet William Pearson at the hollow oak.’

  ‘For what purpose?’

  ‘To try something I have in mind.’

  I rose and snapped my pipe in half before laying th
e pieces down on the pewter tray.

  ‘I ride at six-thirty. You will join me, of course.’

  Walking home I felt pleased with my parting shot. I did not tell Fidelis of my plan in detail. But I knew he would be quite unable to refuse the lure of a visit to the hollow oak, despite his proven disinclination for early rising.

  Chapter Seven

  A MAN SLEEPS WELL after drinking with Colonel Negus, and I arose refreshed shortly after half past five. I made a hasty breakfast of bread and cheese while the dun cob was saddled and brought to the door. By six-thirty, I was clapping my hat on my head, ready to leave for the appointment I had made on the previous evening with William Pearson.

  I stood for a moment on my topmost front step, looking around. The market-traders to my left had already set out their stalls and the place was noisy with bustle. The house itself stood right beside my office on Cheapside, facing the west flank of the Moot Hall, where the Mayor and Corporation met and the front door of which opened on the conjunction of Church Gate and Fisher Gate. Part of the market spilled over into Cheapside, and my street had become established as the poulterers’ pitch, always flapping with birds brought out of their coops and hung by the legs from stall-poles. Amidst all this squawking and commotion I could not see Fidelis anywhere. But since he was a notorious slug-a-bed and my cob had been ready and waiting for a good five minutes I decided I would ride on, in the expectation that the doctor could catch me up on the road. Leaving word with Furzey to that effect, I set out.

  At the parish church we threaded our way into and around a jam of carts and coops, but I soon reached the end of Church Gate and was trotting through the suburbs under a high, dry canopy of steely grey cloud. It was not until I reached the high point of Ribbleton Moor, on which a few twists of fog or low cloud still lingered, that I heard the sound of galloping hooves coming up behind, and soon Dr Fidelis overshot us on the road, careering past on his big black gelding. He slowed to a trot up ahead, so that now it was for me to catch up with him. When I did I found my friend out of breath and less good-humoured than he had been on the previous night.

  ‘I wish you would tell me what we are doing,’ he said rather testily. ‘I’ve missed my breakfast, which I hope wasn’t for nothing.’

  ‘No doubt you can get a plate of something when we reach the Hall,’ I told him placidly. ‘They press a very good cheese there. But first I want to make a particular trial at the hollow oak. You will see what it is. I have some hopes it’ll benefit our inquiry.’

  I was a little pleased to be able to keep him for the time being in the dark (and hungry). Fidelis was a fond friend to me, yet there will always be a certain competition between us. In this case I was sowing curiosity, in the hope of reaping praise. That may seem ridiculous in relations with a man ten years younger than myself. But Fidelis’s brain was so keen that, whenever I formed what I thought a clever notion of my own, I liked to make the most of it.

  Pearson was not the kind that kept his betters waiting and I was sure he would be at the hollow oak before us. And so he was, sitting astride the mare Molly. My first thought on seeing him was of Ramilles Brockletower.

  ‘Has the squire returned yet?’ I asked, without ceremony.

  ‘I am told he has, sir. Last night.’

  ‘You didn’t see him?’

  ‘No, I returned to my cottage at eight for my supper, and he’d not come home by then. I left Barrowford a-waiting so there’d be someone to take his horse, and he told me this morning that Squire had ridden in about nine, with his horse well spurred and lathered-up. Squire’d already learned the news of the mistress. He heard it on the road, and then he rode like the Devil to get here as fast as he could.’

  ‘Well, I hope he will be there when we reach the Hall later,’ I said. ‘I must see him this morning at all costs. But meanwhile we will get on with this business.’

  I first showed Fidelis the place where she had lain, a patch of relatively bare earth. There had been a pool of blood under the body when I had first seen it.

  ‘There is little blood here now,’ said Luke. ‘You said it was a great quantity.’

  ‘So it was. I’m puzzled. There was a congealed pool of it on the earth, and it’s gone.’

  Pearson leaned forward and scanned the ground. The exposed earth was scuffed and depressed by a number of footprints. Among them he pointed to the indistinct marks of something that might have been an animal.

  ‘Pigs most likely,’ he said without emotion. ‘We should’ve buried that blood. Too late now.’

  ‘Quite,’ I said, a little stiffly. The thought of a woodland boar gorging on the dried blood of the late wife of Squire Brockletower made my stomach turn.

  ‘See here,’ said Fidelis, pointing to the ground. ‘Among these footprints, a depression that might have been made by a knee, made by someone that went down to look at the body.’

  I tried to remember if I had seen this when first looking at the body. I couldn’t.

  ‘It wasn’t made by me at all events,’ I said, remembering how I myself had crouched to avoid soiling my breeches with mud. I asked Pearson if anyone yesterday had knelt. He thought not, at least when he went to collect the body. I asked him to show me the place where the horseshoe had been found. It was about ten yards from the tree, beside a tuft of grass. There was nothing more to show Fidelis, so I turned to Pearson to commence the experiment.

  ‘Will you please station the mare beside the tree, over the place where your mistress lay?’ I asked him.

  ‘Shall I remount, sir?’

  His voice and manner were impassive, that of a servant scrupulously carrying out the instructions of his betters, however daft.

  ‘Yes, of course. We must all remount.’

  We did so and as Fidelis and I moved to the edge of the clearing, Pearson walked the temperamental mare forward to her mark. She shied and danced a little but his horsemanship was equal to her and they were soon standing in the exact place I had indicated.

  ‘Now, Luke,’ I said, ‘I want you to ride up to Mr Pearson and attempt to bring the gelding alongside the mare’s flank. I want you to get in such a position as you would if you were meaning to cut her rider’s throat.’

  Pearson jerked up his head in a sudden show of apprehension, his hand going to the stock at his neck.

  ‘Now, Pearson, don’t be alarmed,’ I reassured him. ‘This is a trial, and your windpipe is quite safe.’

  ‘Now I see what you are about, Titus,’ said Fidelis. ‘All right, let’s try it. Head to tail, I think.’

  Bumping his heels into his horse’s flanks, Fidelis urged him forward. But, as soon as they approached within five yards, Molly tossed her head and snorted her displeasure, then danced backwards out of the way.

  ‘No, no,’ I instructed. ‘You have to get closer, Luke, and stay longer. Try it again from the beginning. Back into position, Pearson.’

  They tried again. This time Molly was even more spooked. Her eye rolled, she spun around and kicked backwards with her hind legs. Her flashing hooves found only air, but the protest was enough. I called Luke back and said I would try it myself, on my less intimidating, shorter-legged mount. But Molly could no more have us alongside her than she could tolerate Luke and his gelding. She whinnied as soon as we approached, then suddenly reared steeply, her forelegs boxing the air. Taken by surprise, Pearson lost his balance and his feet in the stirrups went up. As soon as they passed the vertical, he was lost. He seesawed for a moment but gravity had the last word and he slid backwards, and rather to one side, before toppling off the horse’s rump and crashing to the ground. The delinquent mare took off as if she’d heard a thunderclap and headed down the narrow ride, veering this way and that before jinking into the trees and disappearing from sight.

  Pearson sat with his legs outstretched, dazed. Fidelis immediately dismounted and went down on one knee beside him.

  ‘Are you hurt, man?’

  The huntsman shook his head. I could not tell if this was to cle
ar it or give a negative answer.

  ‘I’ve not been thrown by a horse for twenty year,’ he said. ‘That hurts.’

  The doctor helped him to his feet and dusted the remnants of leaves and twigs from his coat, like a mother picking up a fallen child. Pearson, not much appreciating the solicitude, shrugged him off and went to pick up his hat.

  ‘We’d better follow Molly back to Garlick Hall,’ I said, walking the cob towards Pearson and reaching down with my hand. ‘Pearson, will you come up behind me?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘No, I’ll walk it.’

  He made off through the trees, his gait a trifle stiff. No doubt his backside had been as bruised as his dignity.

  ‘What do you make of my trial?’ I said to Fidelis as we left Pearson behind in the woods and headed down towards the brook-crossing.

  ‘I’d say it was highly indicative,’ he said.

  ‘You mean that her throat could not have been cut by someone on horseback?’

  ‘No, no. I don’t mean that. Molly would clearly allow neither my horse, nor yours, anywhere near her. But what is the difference between our mounts and, shall we say, the squire’s?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t anything about the squire’s horse.’

  ‘You do. You know where it is stabled.’

  He let me ponder this for a few moments, until I grasped the point he was making.

  ‘Why yes, I see!’ I exclaimed. ‘The squire’s animal is Molly’s stablemate. Ergo they would be familiar to each other. Ergo Molly, with Dolores Brockletower up, would perhaps tolerate the presence by her side of an animal she knows, ridden by a man she also knows. But she would shy away if approached by strangers.’

  ‘And the hypothesis of Squire Brockletower’s guilt in this becomes circumstantially stronger as a result – wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘No … Or rather, yes. But, mind, not more so than that of someone else from the household.’