by Robin Blake
‘I expected that she would walk again.’
I sensed Fidelis coming up behind me to join us and turned to him.
‘Shipkin tells me he expected Mrs Brockletower to walk out of the Ice-house,’ I told him. Fidelis blinked twice and addressed the woodsman directly.
‘Well, Shipkin, Mr Cragg and I have considered this, you know. But she was dead, absolutely dead. She could not possibly have walked out.’
‘And the door was locked, man,’ I added, as a supplementary point. ‘Who do you suppose unlocked the door?’
Shipkin bared his teeth.
‘Unlocked? There is no need for unlocking, sir, when you walk with the Devil.’
Fidelis and I exchanged startled glances, and I turned a stern face on Shipkin, raising my finger in warning.
‘That is impious and nothing but hobble-de-hoy,’ I reproved him. ‘Do not repeat it, Timothy Shipkin, or you will make trouble for yourself, and others.’
‘I must say what I believe, sir. If belief makes trouble, that would be the concern of a higher power. I say as I said all along, from the moment I found her: it was the Devil killed her and now the Devil has taken her to live with him.’
He put his foot to the treadle and, as we retreated, the scream of steel on stone was heard again. I noticed Fidelis looking around as we walked towards the orchard gate. Everything appeared normal. The ground was covered with recently fallen blossom, over which a variety of hens and bantams stalked restlessly in search of their food. Against the rear wall of the buildings that flanked the orchard gate were stacked boarding, stones and tools used by Woodley’s men, the stacks covered in sailcloth to keep them dry. A man in a labourer’s clothing was at work, unfastening one of the covers in order to get at the wooden boards they protected. He was an extraordinary figure, a giant standing perhaps six foot four inches, with a huge round belly, shoulders like hams, and a prodigious bald head. In my curiosity I called out to him.
‘Good day!’
The giant looked up, and it was clear at once he was an idiot. His lower lip lolled, his small, fat-enfolded eyes rolled, and the only sounds he emitted were inarticulate hee-haws.
‘A freak of nature!’ I whispered as we passed through a barred gate and returned to the cobbled yard. ‘I believe I have met his mother.’
‘I notice the bodily superabundance is compensated by a want of intellect,’ replied Fidelis. ‘It is pleasing to find nature balancing itself.’
In the kitchen, we found Mrs Marsden supervising the jugging of a hare. I told her of our latest encounter.
‘Oh, that poor fellow!’ she said, picking up the skinned hare and holding it experimentally at arm’s length. ‘They call him Solomon. They like a joke. That’s two pounds and two or three bits, Maggie.’
She handed the hare back to the girl she was working with.
‘Now, gentlemen, is there anything I can do or get for you?’
‘May we go into your parlour?’ I asked confidentially. ‘There is a matter, which is difficult to discuss here.’
She went to the sink and rinsed her hands.
‘By all means. And you shall take a glass while you do it.’
We hung up the key to the Ice-house on the hook-board on our way to the parlour. When we were sitting beside the unlit grate with welcome bumpers of Madeira wine in our hands, I asked her if anyone had taken the key off its hook – the squire, say – since I had put it back the previous day.
‘Might have, sir, but not that I know of.’
‘Not the squire?’
‘If he went up there, which would be natural, he said nothing to me. Why do you ask?’
I told her what we had seen, or rather not seen, a few minutes earlier in the Ice-house.
‘Well, sirs,’ she said, blowing out her cheeks and plumping into the chair by her writing table. ‘This is most alarming. We must ask Squire if he ordered the body to be moved, though if that is the case he did not inform me of it. Happen he did not think the Ice-house a suitable coffin-house. Shall I send him word that you would like to speak with him about this?’
Less than three minutes after she had left the room the squire himself strode into it, his face sullen with anger.
‘What the Devil’s the meaning of this?’ he said coldly. ‘They tell me my wife is not where you laid her yesterday.’
‘She is not, sir,’ I admitted.
‘Then where is she?’
‘At present, I am sorry to say, I don’t know.’
He stood in the centre of the room for a few moments, scowling and tapping his foot on the floor.
‘You must know one thing, at least, Mr Coroner. You are an officer of the crown and this is rank incompetence.’
I maintained my composure.
‘I thought the body had been moved from the Ice-house with your authority.’
‘Of course it wasn’t! Why would I do that?’
‘You might have thought the place unsuitable.’
The squire looked oddly uncertain, wavering between passive injury and active outrage. I have seen the same manner many times in witnesses at trial and wondered for a moment if he were acting a part.
‘I didn’t consider the matter.’
‘But may I ask, sir: did you not go up to the Ice-house last night, after you arrived home? Or this morning, after you rose?’
‘No, I did not go there. Not at all.’
‘Not even to pay your respects, sir?’ I ventured, looking him directly in the eyes. ‘As would be so natural in a husband in receipt of such shocking news.’
Brockletower faltered under what I hoped was my searching gaze.
‘I couldn’t see her … I mean, I didn’t wish to see my wife in that condition. I have sent to my uncle for the parish coffin to enclose her, until I can have a suitable one made. She should not be exposed to the air. She should not be looked upon.’
‘Regrettably there will be no immediate use for the parish coffin,’ I said. ‘Unless the body is found.’
‘And, I would think, no use for you either, Mr Cragg,’ he said. ‘I hope you can find other business to pursue in the meantime. Be so kind as to take yourself off, with your medical friend, and leave me to locate my wife’s corpse. And when I have done so I shall inform you accordingly.’
A coroner who has lost a body is like a ploughman lacking his plough, a castrato cut off from his song. As we rode back to town, I confessed to Fidelis that the legal situation now was delicate.
‘An inquest can only be called on a body. The real, physical corpse must be there to be viewed by the jury. In its absence, I must suspend preparations for the hearing. And yet, I was summoned to a doubtful death, I have seen the body, I know there has been a murder. As coroner my moral and legal obligations to investigate still press on me. Without the body I feel utterly at a loss.’
We walked our horses thoughtfully and silently for the next few minutes, and then suddenly Fidelis spoke up.
‘I feel a certain loss myself.’
I was surprised.
‘You, Luke? How so? You have not even seen the body yet. And I don’t think you were Mrs Brockletower’s medical attendant.’
‘Of course I wasn’t. She didn’t have one, they say. I am not sure that is significant, by the way. She was young and healthy, and had no need of medicine. In any event the reason for my feeling of loss is purely philosophical. I was looking forward to performing the post-mortem. There were certain aspects of Dolores Brockletower which intrigued me.’
I was dismayed and gave voice to it.
‘Intrigued? Come come, Fidelis. A post-mortem is not designed for the satisfaction of idle curiosity. It is a judicial procedure of the utmost solemnity.’
Fidelis laughed.
‘Have you never looked forward to the cross-examination of a witness in court, merely because she was a pretty young woman and you might see her blush?’
‘You are being frivolous. And I’m surprised to hear you consider Mrs Brockletower in the light of
prettiness.’
‘That is not what I meant. Only that extraneous factors often add spice to the humdrum professional round. It is rare enough that one gets the opportunity to anatomize a member of the gentry. Most subjects are of the common sort. But I would have enjoyed examining that woman in particular as she seemed from the outside such an unusual specimen, physically and in spirit.’
I did not like the trend of the conversation.
‘You speak of anatomy? The word makes me shudder, especially in respect to persons of position in society.’
‘Well, the Empress of Russia’s gall-bladder is no different from yours, or mine, or that of this town’s night-soil gatherer. And the physician or surgeon that is not intimate with the appearance and arrangement of the inner organs is of little use.’
‘But, surely, the knowledge of medicines is the main thing, Luke. The immense body of treatments performed successfully in the past. The proven cures.’
Fidelis let out a brief and sardonic laugh.
‘Proven cures? Most of what we doctors do are not cures at all, Titus. I’ll tell you a professional secret, but you must not divulge it. Our nostrums and receipts are useless. Worse, many of them actually kill rather than cure, and even if they do happen to bring relief, we don’t know why. As a doctor, I say civilization will not make progress until first of all contingency is distinguishable from causation, and accident from purpose.’
This was too much for me.
‘My dear friend, as a lawyer I could not disagree more,’ I countered firmly. ‘The law is the foundation of civilized life and it is never firstly concerned with causation, but with fact, and with precedent. The first duty of the law is to establish what happened and only then to say why. Law is about truth. It seems you are saying physic is about falsehood.’
‘Yes, there is the gulf between our professions, Titus. I would like to bring them closer together.’
Our talk lapsed for a few moments as we met a herd of cows being driven to dairy. For several minutes we were swamped by them, our horses raising their heads and snorting in disdain at this crowd of lowing, beshitten-arsed quadrupeds as they jostled, ungainly, past us.
‘We’ve strayed away from the important question,’ I said, once we were free of the herd and riding side by side once again. ‘The missing body. Did her killer remove the corpse from the Ice-house? And if he did, why?’
‘Plainly, to prevent an inquest.’
‘Why?’
‘Because a viewing of the body would in some way incriminate him.’
‘But if he is concerned about that, he could have buried her in the forest, at or near the spot where he killed her.’
‘He may have meant to, but was interrupted.’
‘I think it unlikely. That part of the forest is hardly frequented and, besides, no witness, no interrupter, has come forward.’
Fidelis could not apparently think of a reply, at least for the moment. ‘Well, it needs more thinking about,’ is all he said. ‘And I have plenty of time to do that tomorrow, while riding into Yorkshire.’
‘Ah yes, Yorkshire. What takes you there?’
‘A little business,’ he said.
I suspected another reason.
‘Is that so? Does not female society come into it at all?’ Fidelis laughed.
‘I go to look at a medical instrument, Titus, a new kind of forceps to assist in childbirth that has been invented there. Perhaps I shall buy one. And there is a patient to visit on the way.’
‘Those matters do not preclude the lady, but only leave less time for her, I suppose.’
I looked sidelong at my friend, but he would not meet my glance.
‘It is all supposing, Titus,’ he said airily.
‘So will you, in all this business, have the leisure to help me discover if Brockletower’s story is truth or falsehood?’
‘I may, Titus. You cannot hold an inquest as matters stand, so anything I do learn in the next few days will be of help to you.’
‘When do you return?’
‘In three or four days. In the meantime if I have news, expect a letter. But be assured there will be no mention of any lady of my acquaintance.’
Shortly after this we parted, I to my office and he to a dropsical patient in the outlying village of Cadley.
But, without my knowing it, something Fidelis had said was already lodged in my brain, and would produce startling results later in the evening.
It was close to one o’clock when I reached the office. Oswald Mallender had not yet brought in the draft of jurors and I told Furzey why there was now rather less urgency in the matter, enjoying the sight of his jaw dropping and mouth falling open. I told him to tell Mallender, when he did turn up, to send word back to his jurors that there would be no inquest tomorrow after all, but that they were to stand by for further instructions. Then I passed through the baize-covered door that connected the office to the house.
Elizabeth was back from her parents’. We dined together on baked marrow and mutton and she told me how her parents fared, and of trivial matters in the village life at Broughton. I listened to this patiently for her sake, though I was burning to give a full account of events that morning at Garlick Hall. At last, I was able to do so.
‘Merciful heaven,’ said Elizabeth when I had finished, crossing herself. ‘There is evil in that house, without doubt.’
I let her sign of the cross go without comment. She was always more the papist when she had been with her mother.
‘Why do so many people think that? Why do they say Dolores Brockletower was …’
I couldn’t find a word that was both respectful and fitted my meaning.
‘A witch?’ said my wife baldly. Elizabeth could always anticipate me.
‘Yes, not that I like the word. There is far too much talk of witches, I think.’
‘That’s because you are a lawyer, my love. Law and magic, you know …’
I did know. I have always considered a world that admits witches and warlocks to be a disorderly one, in which truth cannot operate and law is impossible. Magic runs through the law’s fingers like water. But my wife’s religion obliged her to believe in such things and, wanting her guidance, I pressed on.
‘Well then, why are the people so sure she was seized by the powers of darkness?’
Elizabeth considered the question as carefully as she considers everything, her pretty features upraised as if to confront the matter full on.
‘I suppose because she was a foreigner, Titus. In the West Indies, there are frequent dealings with Satan, is that not so? Especially among the slaves.’
‘What could she have to do with slaves?’
‘Her father certainly must own them. But that is not all there is to this. I think she has a dark reputation because of her nature. She was dark in hair and skin, and dark in character. She did not like society, gaiety. She only liked hunting and they say that was because she loved blood. It is enough to cause gossip and condemnation. Enough to make people believe she had intercourse with devils.’
‘That’s true. Timothy Shipkin, for one. He was sharpening his tools near the Ice-house and I spoke to him. He claims the Devil himself came for her. I do not think so. I do not think Satan is of that kind.’
‘There will be many who agree with Shipkin.’
She wiped her plate with a crust of bread, popped it into her mouth and considered as she chewed.
‘I wonder that Dolores Brockletower can be so important,’ she said when she had swallowed, ‘that the Devil has taken the trouble to return her to life. It would be a life of servitude, I suppose. But what purpose would it serve?’
‘No, this is nonsense,’ I rapped out severely. ‘A life is like one of those sparks from Shipkin’s grindstone. It is struck, it flies briefly, but before it reaches ground it is extinguished. It does not return once it has gone. It cannot.’
‘That is heresy, my love. You are denying the resurrection of the dead on the Last Day.’
&nb
sp; ‘I am no theologian. But I think there is one life, and one death. The Last Day is about something else. The soul – – ’
‘Yes, the soul – that lives on, doesn’t it?’
‘I think it does, but it is not a physical entity. It does not live, it exists. Has anyone ever seen it? Fidelis, who has looked into the human body, has never seen a soul.’
‘Perhaps he has looked in the wrong place.’
‘Well, wherever Dolores Brockletower’s soul may be, it is her body I am concerned with. And whatever business the Prince of Darkness may have in this County Palatine, I don’t think raising the dead is one of them.’
I went back to the office and picked up the traces of a difficult dispute over some burgages, which required such concentration of mind that I forgot the possibility that the Devil had visited Garlick Hall. But later in the evening, after our supper (bacon with a particularly rich cauliflower cheese) I went to my library, stoked up the fire and a fresh clay and sat for a while in thought. As the smoke rose I pondered over the diabolic beliefs of Shipkin and the others concerning possession, wraiths, succubi and all the rest of it. Such things are so easy to make plausible in speeches and sermons. But the law concerns itself with facts, and evidence. How can a rational mind view the death of the body as a transient or reversible state? It is the body that is transient like that spark I had spoken of to Elizabeth. If its end is not decisive and irreversible, it surely is not a body. A body is not like the smoke from my pipe flowing up and around, diffusing and losing definition until only the smell remains.
I realized I was now thinking about ghosts. People everywhere and in all ages have believed in these shape-shifting, half-real appearances. But when Shipkin spoke of Dolores Brockletower walking again, he was not speaking of an insubstantial wraith of that kind; he meant she had been raised from the dead like Lazarus as a physical being. But if so, for what purpose would the Devil, or any other power, do this? And did it have to be connected with the fact that she had been murdered? It might, for instance, be a chance, a coincidence, a random collision of forces, perhaps occasioned by the freezing cold of the Ice-house. Had not Fidelis assured me that coldness prevented decay? Perhaps also it prevented death itself! Perhaps—