by Robin Blake
‘Who’s going to mend all the damage these men are doing?’ I heard Lowry wanting to know, bouncing up and down in agitation. ‘Some of the plants your men are trampling are rare and valuable, never mind sensitive. They’ll die from getting scarified like this.’
The soldier replied in his calm and measured basso. If that voice were an instrument I swear it would be the lower register of the bassoon.
‘I have my warrant, Mr Lowry, from the Lord Lieutenant himself. It directs me with the force of the law to conduct this search. Not you, nor even the squire, can countermand it.’
At this point Sutch noticed my approach and swung round, touching fingers to his scarlet and white hat, bound with golden braid.
‘Good morning, Mr Cragg, sir. We have a fine day for the combing. You’ve come to enquire of any finds, no doubt.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing yet, sir – or nothing of importance.’
But at this point there was a shout from one of the men, who had paused at the crossing point of two grass walkways. The rest of them broke the line to gather around him, and two spades were brought up.
Lowry gave a cry when he saw the spades glinting in the sunlight.
‘My new turf!’ he cried. ‘I have just laid it. They can’t … I won’t allow them to put their spades to my new turf.’
The soldier had evidently seen for himself the chequered pattern of freshly laid turf and, quite reasonably, decided there might be something lying beneath. As Lowry launched himself with a stumbling gait towards the knot of soldiers, it was clear to the sergeant and myself, as we followed, that he would not be in time to stop any digging. He had covered only half the distance when the first spade was driven cruelly into the grass, while Lowry screamed at them that the turf was still young and tender and they must treat it gently. But the soldiers’ style of digging did not even approximate to the gentle spadework of a lawn-keeper. There was no careful peeling up of the new sods, no making a low wall of them in bricklayer’s style ready for reuse, before getting into the exposed earth below. When we reached the searchers, the hole in the grass was already a ragged cannonball-crater, and Mr Lowry was clutching his head and moaning as if in actual pain.
To make matters worse, there was nothing to discover beneath but one or two writhing earthworms that the spades had cut in half. With a shrug the soldiers fanned out again, to resume their positions as the teeth of a comb. They left the hole and the mound of earth they had dug with as little compunction as a mole leaves behind his molehill.
After watching the combing for a few more minutes I left the sergeant, saying I must go and find Mr Ramilles Brockletower. I intended to speak with him about my own progress in preparing the inquest into his wife’s death, and was anticipating a difficult, unpredictable conversation.
In the end there was no need for me to seek out the squire. I was rounding the corner of the house, from where I intended to approach the front door, when I saw him striding purposefully towards me, the heels of his boots banging the paving stones of the house’s forecourt. As he bore down on me, impatiently negotiating the various piles of stone, slate, wood and other building materials that Woodley’s men had left there, I could see he was yet again distempered. As he stamped up to me I wondered when in his life he had last laughed or capered or skimmed a stone across a pond for the pleasure of breaking the water into animated patterns and sunlit sparkles.
‘This invasion of soldiers is disturbing my household, sir, and leaving a trail of destruction behind it in my grounds. And it is distracting these men who are working on my house, taking their minds off the job so that they work too slowly. It’s intolerable. I shall bring an action against it, sir. An action!’
An action? That would have to be against the Lord Lieutenant, which seemed a far-fetched threat. I adopted a light, cheerful tone, as if I had not perceived his words as a threat at all.
‘Well, they are not a bad band of men. They are trying their best to keep within the bounds of their commission.’
‘Then they should keep off my gardener’s lawns and borders. They’re trampling valuable plants and flowers. What next? Will they smash the glass of my hothouses and pluck my peaches and pineapples?’
‘Good lord, is there really such fruit so early in the year?’ I asked innocently, well knowing there couldn’t be. ‘It’s a wonderful contrivance, a hothouse.’
‘Be damned to you, Cragg, don’t try and take a rise out of me. Abandon this futile poking around and pack your soldiers off to wherever they came from.’
‘They are not mine, sir, and it is not for me to call them off. These are Lord Derby’s militia and his lordship does not think the exercise futile. And, I’m afraid, the search must include the lawns and beds. But I shall ask the sergeant on your behalf that his men refrain from breaking any glass, or plucking any fruit.’
At the mention of Lord Derby, Brockletower fell silent. He knew there were some powers against which his bluster was of little avail.
‘Mr Brockletower, I have one small question to ask.’
‘Yes?’
‘Did you on your travels have one of your horse’s hooves re-shod?’
‘Curious things you want to know. But, if you must know, yes. At Settle, he cast a shoe. I stopped at a wayside farrier’s.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
I cleared my throat and adopted a slightly harder tone. This was to show that I was now about to raise a matter less easily dealt with.
‘I fear I must, in addition, broach a more delicate subject.’
The squire sighed deeply, and closed his eyes.
‘Must you, sir?’
‘I must. It concerns your own relations with your late wife.’
Brockletower’s only reply was a bitter, croaking laugh.
‘You laugh,’ I observed.
‘Yes, I laugh. And that is all I do.’
‘Very well, allow me to go on.’
I had changed my tone again, and was speaking with the utmost softness, as to a skittish horse.
‘You and Mrs Brockletower were not blessed with family – I mean, with progeny. It must have been a cause of some distress to you both.’
He turned to me with an unexpected look of anguish, eyes wide open and mouth crushed. Had I made a crack in his shell?
‘Is that correct, Mr Brockletower?’ I persisted.
He seemed to teeter on the brink of speech for a few moments, then fell right in, head first.
‘See here, Cragg. A man that wants an heir is desperate. He thinks about it all the time, he dreams about it.’
The words were tumbling off his tongue. He was near to gabbling.
‘Without an heir a man’s like a ship without ballast. Even without a compass. Barrenness is exactly what the Book says it is: a curse, because it knocks the compass needle off its pin. It knocks the purpose out of life.’
‘But there’s a ready remedy, surely,’ I put in. ‘The law allows a man to adopt an heir.’
‘Adopt? I am a naval man, sir. I would no more bring another man’s child into my family than crew one of His Majesty’s ships with a gang of mulattos and lascars. Such things are for buccaneers, and houses of ill-pedigree. I must have my dignity, don’t you see? Dignity is honour. Nothing is more important.’
‘Did Mrs Brockletower agree with you about adoption?’
But now he was silent again, moodily pushing a stone around on the ground with the toe of his boot.
‘You do not answer me,’ I persisted. ‘I fear I must repeat the question. Much hangs on it. Did Mrs Brockletower, on her part, wish to adopt a child?’
He mumbled a reluctant reply.
‘She asked me to consider it, yes. I don’t see why much should hang on that.’
‘Was this recently?’
‘Oh, two or three weeks ago. A month at most.’
‘And did you consider it?’
‘Of course not,’ he replied, regaining some of his briskness. ‘I dismissed the notion out of
hand. I have told you why, and now will you tell me what these questions are about?’
Not wanting to lose momentum, I ignored the last demand.
‘Squire, I wonder if you asked her if she had a particular child in mind, for the adoption?’
‘Of course I did not! Such a thing never occurred to me. It was enough that I had quashed all further conversation on the subject.’
‘And how did she respond to your quashing?’
‘She sulked.’
‘So you quarrelled?’
‘No! Why don’t you listen? I said that she sulked. Sulking was one of my wife’s prime accomplishments.’
‘But communication did break down between you on this matter.’
‘Yes, of course it did. On that subject, it broke down completely, to my entire satisfaction.’
‘Did you consider breaking off communication with your wife … in any more drastic way?’
‘What do you mean?’
I drew a deep breath and without further thought launched the question towards him.
‘Is it true, Mr Brockletower, that you considered separation … divorce, even?’
He turned to me with suddenly renewed ferocity.
‘Divorce? Has someone suggested this to you? Who have you been speaking with?’
He raised his eyes upwards and his hands too, in a gesture of hapless understanding.
‘My uncle! You’ve been gossiping with my reverend uncle. You know he is a sot? Nothing he says is reliable. Nothing he says will stand up as evidence in any court, not even your own miserable gutter-court of inquest.’
‘You are jumping to conclusions, Mr Brockletower. No one is speaking of evidence in court. I am merely trying to determine Mrs Brockletower’s state of mind at the time of her death.’
‘Why? Why would you want to do such a thing? In what precise way is it any business of yours?’
‘You yourself are a magistrate,’ I went on, my voice straining to convey patience and peacemaking. ‘You know that I must hold an inquiry into the death, because of its suddenness and violence. The ultimate responsibility, I agree, is that of the empanelled jury. But I must preside over the proceedings, and my duty entails calling proper witnesses and marshalling the facts so that a coherent narrative of events prior to the death is put before that jury.’
At this Brockletower raised his index finger and shook it at me.
‘Ah! But you have no body, sir. You cannot hold your inquest without a body. I know the law to that extent, at least.’
We had come almost full circle in our exchange, and I permitted myself the small pleasure of closing it.
‘Which is why we are searching your estate,’ I told him. ‘And why we must go on until we find what we are looking for.’
As I left the squire I felt a peppercorn’s weight more sympathy for him, after the glimpse I’d had of the more relenting side to his character. Virile ferocity may be necessary for the advancement of civilization across the world, but it gives way to more domesticated emotions from time to time. On the other hand, Brockletower had neither confirmed nor denied his reverend uncle’s story about his desire for a divorce.
In hope of getting nearer to the truth of this, I strolled around the side of the house and into the yard, entering by way of the kitchen. I found it in its usual condition of heat, steam and brothy smells. Bethany Marsden was in supervision of a sturdy girl with bare forearms who was mixing a duff in a large bowl.
The housekeeper did not ask about the search and I did not mention it, but I did request the opportunity to speak to Miss Brockletower. A few minutes later my request had been granted and I was seated in the same chair I had occupied before in Sarah’s darkened room, opposite her rocker.
‘Well, Titus! Events have taken a theatrical turn indeed since we spoke last. I hear the sounds of men outside, quite different in tone from those of Mr Woodley’s builders. Are they by any chance a search party for my late sister’s body?’
I told her about the soldiers, and the methods they were applying.
‘“Combing”, is it? I like the notion.’
I asked if I might speak with her so confidentially as to exclude her relating the matter even to her brother.
‘As he is my brother and protector, that is too much to ask,’ she said. ‘But let’s say I shall not reveal anything without warning you first, and in any case not without very good reasons. Will that satisfy you?’
I said it would.
‘Then what is it you want to discuss?’
‘First, your own feelings about Ramilles. Are you affectionate, the two of you?’
‘That question comes close to prurience, Titus.’
‘It must seem so. But I trust your judgement of human nature, Sarah, and I am trying to form an estimate of your brother’s nature – his character and temperament.’
‘You want to know if he killed her, in other words?’
I flinched. Her directness had once again abashed me.
‘Hypothetically, yes.’
‘So be it. Hypothetically. Let me think. I don’t think I know the answer. He is my baby brother and as a baby I loved him. I would cuddle and kiss him endlessly, wishing I could see him. But later he became a very selfish boy, wrapped in his own concerns. He did not bother himself about me and I hardly knew him. And then he went to sea. When he returned a dozen years later with his wife there was a great deal of reserve between us. So, although I respect him as my brother because it is my duty, and as one whom I had once truly loved years ago, I do not now love him well enough to say no, he cannot be a killer. There! You must be satisfied with that. I’ve told far more than I should.’
‘You have expressed yourself finely, Sarah.’
‘Never mind finely, I’ve told the truth. I hope that is all you need to know.’
I looked into the fire, and then at her poodle lying on the hearthrug. The words she had just spoken, ‘one whom I had once truly loved years ago’, might be meant for me, too. ‘Wishing I could see him’: had this also been what she had felt about me? Sadness at the way human feelings can be changed by time and distance overwhelmed me. During our juvenile walks arm in arm, in the clumsily phrased messages we exchanged, and the words we spoke between kisses, it had been Sarah’s blindness that bound us most tightly together. I told her she would never need sight, because I would always be her eyes. And she told me – I remember her words exactly – ‘How can I hope to see more happily than through my Titus’s eyes?’
But now this same function that I’d wished to perform was done by a poodle, and her sightlessness, which had made our babyish love so potent, had fallen like a curtain between us. So was I, in relation to her, no different from all the rest of the seeing world? I saw, at least, how utterly changed I was since we had first known each other. The boy who had wanted to be nothing but a blind girl’s trusted Cicero was now a man of the world, who thought nothing of driving frightened people to tears with his questions. And the girl – she was still blind, and still alone, though no longer a girl.
‘Why are you silent, Titus?’ she demanded sharply. ‘I do not like it, you know. Silence to the blind is like darkness to everyone else.’
‘All right, I shall come straight out with it. There is a story going about that your brother and his wife had become so unhappy that he wished to part from her.’
Sarah gave a gasp and clapped her hands to her cheeks. At last I had surprised her. I went on.
‘You will understand how important it is that I find out the truth of this. Do you know anything about it, Sarah? Did he confide this to you?’
She shook her head.
‘No, he did not. But … part from her, you say? Well, I am shocked. There is no surety in the affection between men and women, is there?’
‘It is only a tale I heard. But it does perhaps fit the case. After our last talk, it was apparent to me that the couple were not happy.’
‘They were not particularly happy, no, but most people are not. Such a
step! Separation? Divorce? I was privy to nothing of the kind. You must ask elsewhere.’
It seemed she was signalling the end of the interview. I began to take my leave when she stopped me.
‘Before you go, I do have one piece of advice, Titus. Look to Mr Woodley for the source of the wickedness in this house. I consider him an evil influence, ever since he kicked Jonathan.’
‘Jonathan?’
‘My dog.’
At the sound of his name the dog raised his chin from his forepaws and gave Sarah an enquiring look. She tilted her chair forward, stretched out her hand until it found his head and stroked it as she explained.
‘Jonathan and I were walking together alone in the park, as we often do. He is on his leash and I allow him to take me where he likes. I fool myself that it gives him a sense of freedom and dignity but the poor creature’s driven by his routines and mostly does the same round every day. First we visit the cedar tree, which he circles several times before cocking his leg. Then it’s down to the gardener’s toolshed under which live rabbits. And on to various other places that his nose leads him to. It’s so curious. Jonathan is happy to be my eyes but for his own purposes he employs his eyes less than his nose.
‘Anyway on this occasion he led me into the wood, well, not exactly into it, but along a tongue of the lawn that makes a grass walk curving into the trees. Quite suddenly Jonathan got excited and he pulled the leash out of my hand, then ran off ahead barking. A few seconds later I heard Mr Woodley shouting at Jonathan in the coarsest language that he shouldn’t go in there, that he’d have him shot if he did, and then I heard a penetrating yelp and Jonathan came running back to me. I can only suppose that Mr Woodley gave him a violent bunt with the toe of his boot, as he was still whimpering when he reached me. So we turned around and came home.’
‘Did Woodley speak to you?’
‘I don’t think he even saw me. As I said, the walk curves sharply to the right. I was standing around that bend and out of view, or so I think.’
‘And what business did Woodley have in that place?’
‘Why, don’t you know, Titus? The end of the walk, that’s where they’re building this temple of his. But I don’t think a man so cruel to a dumb animal should be building temples.’