Skin and Bone--A Mystery

by Robin Blake

‘Tell me more.’

  But Fidelis looked at his watch.

  ‘Not now. It requires further examination and I do not have the time today. The tide has already turned and I must cross the river by the ford to Penwortham, where there is a boy with a possibly mortal fever.’

  ‘But you say we have not finished here. And I am burning to know the meaning of these things you have been doing.’

  My friend was threading a needle.

  ‘The living come before the dead, Titus. And, if I do not go now, the ford will be impassable for ten hours.’

  ‘The inquest is tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘So, I will close this little one up and take him with me. I shall make the examination in the meantime.’

  I was horrified by this suggestion.

  ‘Take him with you? Impossible, Luke! The body must always lie as near as possible to where it was found. It must not be removed until the jury has viewed it. I forbid you to take it with you as if it were no more than a … a sample of merchandise.’

  Fidelis sighed.

  ‘Very well. I shall have to return here in the morning. Will you join me? I can be here by ten o’clock.’

  Five minutes later I was legging him up into the saddle. As he wheeled the horse, I grabbed hold of the reins again.

  ‘At least tell me what you noticed about the navel cord. You said it was interesting.’

  ‘Yes. It suggests an important possibility.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘That the mother of our poor mite did not give birth alone.’

  ‘There was an accomplice?’

  ‘I would not go so far. Perhaps an attendant.’

  He tightened the rein, I let go, and he clattered away down Cold Bath Lane.

  Chapter 4

  ‘DON’T YOU DARE to deny it, Kathy Brock, you dirty murdering bitch! You dropped the babby, you kept it quiet and then you killed it.’

  I had walked down Cold Bath Lane and was about to rap on the door of the Parsons’ house on Water Lane in order to deposit the bath-house key. Through the door I could hear the voice screeching in fury and recognised it as that of Hannah herself.

  Instead of knocking I turned the door handle and stepped inside. The room was filled with women, two of whom had laid hold of a young person of perhaps seventeen and were pulling her roughly this way and that. She struggled under their mauling whilst crying out that their accusations were untrue – a plump girl of short stature, and dressed in the style of the skin-yard, which I recognised from the garb of Ellen and the other tanner-women that I’d met the previous day.

  Kathy Brock continued to struggle and cry out, as the women dragged her across the room to a settle and pinned her down upon it.

  ‘Let’s have a look at her. We’ll soon find out if she’s thrown a babby.’

  ‘Get her jugs out. See if they’re giving milk.’

  Hannah stepped in front of Kathy. She grabbed the bodice of her dress and, with strong arms, ripped it wide open. I was vainly trying to make my voice heard against this violation but the women were babbling encouragement to their leader and were too far in fury to hear me, let alone be stopped from what they were doing. It seemed to me they cheered as the bath-house keeper seized the poor girl’s exposed dugs and worked them between her fingers, squeezing and pulling as her victim squealed in pain and embarrassment. Despite my renewed protests, I was suddenly quite unable to suppress my curiosity. I wanted to know for myself whether milk was coming forth. So instead of looking decently away I craned my neck.

  No milk appeared.

  ‘Well she’s dry but that proves nowt,’ said Hannah. ‘We must have a look lower down.’

  This was finally too much. As two of the women grabbed Kathy’s skirts to pull them over her head, I bellowed,

  ‘STOP THIS AT ONCE!’

  Describing the scene to Elizabeth later, in our parlour, I used a rather boastful tone and military metaphors. The women had been startled not only by my unexpected presence but by the fury of my voice, and I had immediately seized the initiative. Charging straight into the melee, I forced my way to the centre and stood at bay in front of the girl, ready to repel any further attacks by the women and telling them to calm themselves while Kathy collected herself and pulled her clothing together. Then I raised her up and escorted her through the hostile ranks of her accusers to the door, from where I sent her on her way. She was crying, but at least she could return home without being further molested.

  ‘Titus, my love, you were a proper Don Quixote,’ said Elizabeth, as she worked on a complicated piece of embroidery. ‘You heroically hacked your way through an army of sheep.’

  My wife’s laughter was too musical to my ear to be truly offensive, even when I was mocked. So I only said, ‘You should read that great book and you will see the difference. Poor Don Quixote was deluded; I was saving an innocent girl from a vile examination.’

  ‘How do you know she is innocent? Did you question the girl?’

  ‘No. She was much distressed. I sent her on her way.’

  ‘Yet those women suspected the girl.’

  ‘Yes, though without evidence. I put that to them afterwards and they had little to say in their own support.’

  Elizabeth relented.

  ‘Well, Titus, it was cruel of them to persecute her if it really was for no reason, and so I think you did right to let her go without further distressing her.’

  ‘But why did the women take matters into their own hands like that? If they suspect Kathy Brock they ought to call in the law.’

  Elizabeth grew serious as she considered the question, but did not stop working her needle.

  ‘I think because, being women, their suspicion was magnified by passion. We women find it hard to believe that the magistrates who enforce the law can ever regard the birth of a child with the same concern as we do, because they are men, you see.’

  ‘But last night, when we spoke about secret pregnancy, you defended girls guilty of it.’

  ‘I defended poor women held to be murderesses without a hearing, when all they’ve done is deliver a stillborn child.’

  She lowered her sewing to her lap.

  ‘To give birth, and then to kill your child deliberately – that is so different! It lies beyond my powers of forgiveness, or those of any of my sex. If the tannery girl that those women seized had committed such a crime, she would deserve to be exposed and punished. She would have refused God’s charge of giving life to immortal souls.’

  Her mocking tone had long gone and, now, tears were glinting in her eyes.

  ‘My dearest wife,’ I said, kneeling by her chair and clasping her hands. ‘You are not yet thirty and God is merciful. It is not too late for you – for us – I am sure of it.’

  * * *

  Going out at half past six I went straight to one of my favourite resorts – Sebastian Sweeting’s bookshop on Church Gate. After Elizabeth’s brief tears – she is never down-hearted for long – we had changed the subject and spoken of what had happened in the household during the day, and laughed over one or two domestic trivialities. However, I had in mind a gift for Elizabeth from Sweeting’s to cheer her further. I also, not incidentally, thought that a visit there might afford me some enlightenment in the matter of the baby now lying in Cold Bath Lane.

  In truth, every visit to that bookseller was in some way enlightening and the snuff that he gave out to his customers was excellent also. So, as soon as I had entered, the two of us snuffed and sneezed companionably, and then Sweeting asked by way of conversation if I was engaged as coroner in the matter of the dead baby newly discovered. I had been hoping he would.

  ‘You have heard about this?’ I asked.

  ‘Naturally, Titus. It’s spoken of all over town. But no one knows who its murdering mother is.’

  ‘We don’t know if it is a murder at all, you know, but you are right to wonder who the mother is. I am holding the inquest tomorrow. I hope for a decisive verdict, though I cannot be sure o
f one. I find it hard to understand the case myself, and so will the jury. What sort of young woman, a girl as she may be, kills a defenceless baby, and one that is her own flesh and blood, having come out of herself?’

  I paused. Sweeting was squinting at the ceiling, his brow creased. I had deliberately planted a seed, but would it grow? Whenever one put a question to this remarkable bookseller, whether on politics, religion, history or natural philosophy, he regarded himself as challenged to recommend a book on the subject. He almost invariably succeeded.

  ‘I think I have something where this question is addressed,’ he said at last.

  He rose and ambled to the back of the shop, disappearing into some inner recess where shelves reached from floor to ceiling, crammed with his stock. He returned carrying a single volume, which he opened. He riffled through a few of the pages. At last, with a grunt of satisfaction, he placed it in my hands.

  ‘This is The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public Benefits,’ he said. ‘I fancy you will find something to the purpose there.’

  ‘I’ve heard of this book,’ I said. ‘Is it not a notorious tract justifying vice, depravity and crime?’

  Sweeting rubbed his hands together in relish.

  ‘The same. Divines and philosophers everywhere have condemned it as satanic. Rather pleasingly, I think, the author’s name is Mandevil: he is dead now and feeling the bite, according to some, of his master’s red-hot pincers. In his lifetime, however, he never repented but issued half a dozen editions of the book, with more matter added in defence of his case to each of them. This one is the last and the most complete and, if you want to know, I think he occasionally writes good sense. Another pinch of snuff?’

  I took one.

  ‘And does this Mandevil talk directly about women that kill their babies?’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘And says it is permissible?’

  ‘The book begins as a poem like a Fable of Lafontaine,’ said Sweeting, avoiding the question. ‘It is about a beehive where all the features of human society are found in small. Mandevil was a physician in London, but originally a Dutchman I believe. He may or may not have gone to the devil but he was a clever fellow who understood much about the human mind, and why people do good or evil. Here, let me see.’

  He took the book from me, found a page and handed it back.

  ‘Here is the introduction to his lengthy explanation of the poem, which he published to continue the argument with his detractors.’

  I read the first sentence.

  ‘“One of the greatest reasons why so few people understand themselves is that most writers are always teaching men what they should be, and hardly ever troubling their heads with telling them what they really are.”’

  I looked up at Sweeting. He always had the keenest eye for the taste of his customers.

  ‘You knew that sentiment would appeal to me, did you not?’

  Sweeting answered with a complacent smile.

  I went on, ‘And you will warrant that he writes of mothers killing their babies?’

  ‘If he doesn’t, you may return the book without charge.’

  ‘So what does he say?’

  Sweeting merely shrugged. It was, after all, his business to sell me the book, not to tell me its whole contents. I sighed.

  ‘How much, then?’

  ‘Half a guinea.’

  ‘I’ll take it. Now, there’s something else that I need. I have seen it announced in The Gentleman’s Magazine that there is a newly Englished Don Quixote from the London booksellers. Have you got it yet?’

  Sweeting repaired once more to an inner recess of the shop, and came back with two bound volumes in quarto size that he placed on the counter for my inspection.

  ‘A guinea for the set,’ he said. ‘I have been trying to get it in sheets for personal binding, but the booksellers delay and delay in sending them. There is so much more profit in the bound edition and it is selling like smuggler’s brandy, according to my correspondent in London. It seems that Quixotic fever is prevalent there.’

  ‘Who is this latest translator?’

  ‘A very surprising one: the court and society painter Mr Jarvis, now dead. I am told that he had been quietly working on it for many years, though no one suspected him of understanding Spanish. He was a friend of Dean Swift and did his portrait. A very vainglorious fellow, but I find the work to be in good clean English.’

  He took another pinch of snuff while I glanced at two or three passages. Sweeting was right. It looked good reading.

  ‘And there are more than fifty plates illustrating the story,’ he added. ‘They are not by Jarvis, but Mr Vanderbank, which is a good thing as he’s the better artist.’

  I made up my mind all at once.

  ‘Put it on my bill along with the bees book. It is for my wife. She compared me this evening to the Don as a joke and I intend to answer by requiring her to read the novel.’

  ‘That will be no hardship.’

  ‘No, but I am hoping it will instruct her about the difference between her husband and a crazy knight of old Spain.’

  Sweeting began making up my purchases into a paper parcel.

  ‘And now you shall bring her to be as supple as a glove, though you find her harder than a cork tree.’

  The remark caught me by surprise.

  ‘I am sorry, Sweeting?’

  ‘It is Sancho Panza’s promise to Don Quixote, you know, when he supposedly takes the Don’s messages of love to Dulcinea. It is surprisingly poetical, don’t you think? I hope this gift has the same effect on your wife. I’ll have the boy take the books over to your house right away.’

  * * *

  From Sweeting’s I walked the few yards to the Turk’s Head, on the chance that Fidelis had returned from Penwortham and was dining there. The coffee house was in an uproar of noise and jollity. A long table at the far end of the room was laid to a dinner for twelve of Preston’s citizens, presided over by Abraham Scroop, whose home I had called at earlier in the day. Seeing no sign of my friend I stopped the coffee house proprietor Noah Plumtree as he passed by with a steaming haunch of meat for carving.

  ‘Have you seen Dr Fidelis, Noah?’

  ‘No, Mr Cragg. He has not been in for a few days.’

  I gestured towards the banquet.

  ‘And what is this? Can Abraham Scroop be celebrating the birth of his son?’

  ‘No, Sir. Mr Scroop has laid on a dinner in honour of Captain Strawboy there, who is to be partner in his business.’

  ‘Really? Scroop and Strawboy? That seems unlikely.’

  ‘Unlikely but rather lively, don’t you agree?’

  The guests ranged around the table were merchants, most of them solidly prosperous members of the Corporation. They wore clothes with as many buttons and braids of gold and silver as ever they could afford. Some, like the former Mayor Ephraim Grimshaw, were fat and florid, with goitrous necks and bulging eyes. Others were thin, grey skinned and made angular by years of devotion to their ledgers. All were in the process of becoming communally and bestially drunk.

  The young man sitting in the guest of honour’s place to Scroop’s right was of an entirely different stamp from these citizens. His name was Charles Strawboy and he was dressed in a plum-coloured military coat. He, in fact, held a commission in the army as captain of engineers, though he had been on half pay from his regiment for the past three years. Tall, slim and vigorous, Strawboy had regular features and an abundant head of black hair worn simply – with no wig or buckled side-curls. His dress was fashionable but far from foppish. His blue eyes flashed with humour and his voice was a rich baritone, confident and unaffected. Not surprisingly, half the ladies of Preston were anxious to know him.

  I had met Strawboy once or twice when he had first come to town towards the end of the previous year. At that time he was accompanying Lord Grassington, and the pair had placed before the Corporation projects which, they claimed, would be of great benefit to all. One had indeed b
een for the renovation of the spa, but they had also proposed various other schemes: a bridge across the river to Penwortham, it seems, and a permanent stand for the racecourse on Preston Moor, with other useful civic improvements.

  For a moment Strawboy caught my eye looking across the room at him, and he fractionally raised an eyebrow before returning his attention to some bombast of Grimshaw’s, and then to Scroop as he rose to his feet and called for a toast. At this point James Starkey came in from the street. I had not seen him since we had played bowls.

  ‘Cragg!’ he said clapping me on the back. ‘No doubt you want to discuss a return match after my victory yesterday.’

  ‘No, I just came in to see if—’

  ‘Success at bowls is as much a matter of courage as it is of accuracy by eye and hand, you know. To succeed one must seize the wood with all the mettle of Prince Rupert in the field.’

  ‘Yet Prince Rupert lost in the end.’

  ‘Very well, I could say Oliver Cromwell. It matters not. What matters is that a game of bowls is exactly the same as life and society. Striving and winning – that’s the stuff of life, you know.’

  ‘Is that so? Well, I was just listening to Mr Scroop’s address to his guests—’

  ‘And passion. One does need passion. Let me expand on this. Can one truly say that bowls is really exactly the same as life? I argue, Sir, that practice, experience and natural ability all get one so far. But guts, Sir, they are the secret of real success, they are all that counts, whether on the bowling green or in the counting house, the court room, the field of battle et cetera. You see it is my contention that…’

  It took some time to extricate myself from Starkey’s company, and then not without engaging to play bowls with him in the near future. By the time I had done so, Scroop’s speech was over and he had sat down.

  * * *

  When I went home and presented the Don Quixote to Elizabeth, she gave a shout of delight, and hugged me saying she would go to bed and begin reading it immediately. I took The Fable of the Bees into my library in order to do the same. I was hoping it might answer the difficult question of how and why a woman might kill a baby.