Skin and Bone--A Mystery

by Robin Blake

  I was soon absorbed in the book. I found that I was not faced with the darkness of a ‘Satanic Bible’, as Mandevil’s enemies had called it. On the contrary, The Fable of the Bees contains much ingenious satire, with the argument lying under that many of the things which we call individual vices are really good for our society. So, vanity and greed lead people to spend money and thereby to increase general prosperity; gluttony improves agriculture; self-love generates virtue and heroism by making us sensitive to how others perceive us; and lust, of course, is needed for the generation of our species.

  I found that only a part of Mandevil’s purpose was satirical; he also rationally expounds his philosophy. Telling people ‘what they are’ was full of peril, though, and he risked much. I only fully understood why so much ordure had been poured on to him by his enemies when I came to his remarks on the sexual feelings of the female. Mandevil goes some way beyond what society calls proper when he writes of a woman’s ‘secret wishes’, meaning of course in the bedroom. A woman’s desire, says he, is ‘the grand truth of the matter which modesty bids her, with all her faculties, to deny’. The author was lucky not to have been banged into the stocks for that – and yet he is right. Women may enjoy a bedding as much as a man; Elizabeth enjoyed one as much as I did; and I thanked God for that.

  Not surprisingly after such reading, this was on my mind as I went up to our bedchamber, but I was a little put out to find that Elizabeth had on her mind a man quite other than myself.

  ‘The projector Captain Strawboy is in town again,’ she said, laying her book down as I came into the bedchamber.

  ‘I know. I saw him tonight. He was being dined by Abraham Scroop and a dozen of Preston’s finest.’

  She sighed.

  ‘Such a waste.’

  ‘Of food?’

  ‘Of a man, Titus, and an unmarried one. He is too fine a fellow to spend his time gluttonising with the likes of Abraham Scroop. He should be dancing at assemblies or playing music and, in between times, fighting a duel or two.’

  ‘He and Scroop are to be business partners, I’ve heard. It surprises me that Captain Strawboy concerns himself with projects. When I last heard, he was in line to inherit Lord Grassington’s estates.’

  ‘He still is,’ she answered. ‘That is why Scroop cultivates him. They say his dearest wish is for the Captain to marry one of his daughters.’

  ‘That would be a stroke of luck for Strawboy.’

  ‘More so for Scroop and his daughter. The Captain is not only handsome, he has many useful connections being not only heir to a title, but a friend to my Lord Strange and other bigwigs all over the county.’

  ‘You are well informed about the Captain’s affairs, my heart.’

  ‘The ladies buzz with news of his return, you know. The captain is such a favourite.’

  But later as I lay waiting for sleep I wondered: what could a projector such as Strawboy do for a merchant like Scroop? Strawboy was a military engineer. What did he know of rags and bones, scraps and ashes?

  Chapter 5

  IN THE MORNING, before making my way to the bath house to meet Fidelis, I slipped into the office and made out a summons for Kathy Brock to give witness at the inquest later in the day. I regretted now that I had not already taken a statement from her. Her neighbours’ accusation, I still believed, had been based on nothing but prejudice whipped up by Hannah Parsons. But my wife’s tears of the day before still lingered in my memory. If Kathy had done this thing she must certainly be openly exposed. But, by the same token, if she were innocent she should have the chance to defend her good name in public.

  Stuffing the completed summons into my coat pocket, I hurried away to the bath house. Passing the gate of the Scroop house on Water Lane, I saw that a carriage stood before its door and that a troop of children of descending height were going from it into the house: it was the brood of Scroop children returned from their temporary exile. They were being ushered into the house by their eldest sister and by a man I recognised as Captain Strawboy who, when the last of the children emerged, tucked her arm in a friendly way into his. He was laughing and trying to jolly her with a pinch of her cheek, which she did not appear to like, pulling away from him. It is not true that youth is always blithe, I thought. It can be surly enough, too.

  I found Fidelis waiting for me with his horse at the bath-house door. Short of sleep, he looked pallid.

  ‘I enquired after you last night at the Turk’s Head,’ I told him.

  ‘I did not come back to Preston last night. I’ve come directly from the boy’s bedside, and have kept a long vigil.’

  ‘You saved his life?’

  ‘He’ll live, probably, though not by any clever work of mine. His fever was abating naturally as I left him.’

  He went ahead of me into the sluicing room, where he moved the table that we had used the day before to a position beneath the window.

  I said, ‘So what are we here for now? Whatever it is, I hope you will be able to give your opinion at last about whether the little one was born alive, or dead. By the way, I did not tell you yesterday that I already had an opinion on the matter. Dr Harrod had a look at the remains before you came yesterday, and his opinion was—’

  ‘Harrod?’ my friend interrupted. ‘You cannot have shown Harrod the body?’

  ‘I did, while you were gadding about the Fylde kissing wenches and playing football.’

  ‘It was cricket, Titus. But of all people, not Harrod!’

  ‘There’s no call to make that sour face. Harrod offered his services freely and, as I had no intelligence on when you would return, I accepted him.’

  ‘The man’s a perfect charlatan. He’s never looked inside a body; I would be surprised if he has ever touched a body.’

  ‘He certainly seemed reluctant to—’

  ‘He just passes out nostrums and talks about the stars and the balance of the humours. I suppose he might have heard the news that blood circulates around the body, since that was demonstrated when his grandfather was a boy. But his prescriptions follow no reason except that of the ancients – and they thought the heart was a species of furnace. You cannot seriously have asked him!’

  ‘He was our family physician for thirty years. We all liked him.’

  ‘I like my tailor, but I won’t ask him to set my broken leg.’

  I admit that I was stung by his scorn and sulked a little. I regarded Harrod as an honourable fellow and he had undeniably long medical experience. Fidelis however could not let the matter go.

  ‘So what arrant nonsense did Harrod tell you? I know in advance that it was nonsense.’

  ‘He told me he was certain that the little girl was stillborn, Luke.’

  ‘I would wager a month of fees that he made no examination.’

  ‘He assured me that he could tell from the general appearance.’

  Fidelis gave a scoffing laugh.

  ‘Then what did he say about the injury to the head?’

  ‘Nothing. He never saw it.’

  ‘Ha! Charlatan. Of course, he would know nothing of the floating test we performed. The lung-in-water test.’

  ‘He made no test at all. Is the lung test a new thing?’

  ‘By Harrod’s standard, it is. It is the test for stillbirth that they do at St Thomas’s Hospital in London. It is commended in his book by Dr Cheseldon.’

  I had never heard of Cheseldon but my respect for the test was a little increased by knowing that it had appeared in a book.

  I said, ‘I watched what you did, Luke, but I’m damned if I know what it all meant.’

  ‘Well, this is how it works. It is surmised that if the baby drew breath then air has been drawn into its lung, and some of that air will still be present in the organ’s hundreds of tiny pockets, even after breathing ceases. This will then bear the tissue up in the water.’

  ‘Making it float.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Which in this case it did, meaning that the baby did draw breath
. So your test proves Harrod was wrong, does it?’

  ‘It is not my test.’

  ‘Cheseldon’s test, then.’

  ‘Yes, Cheseldon’s test. But no, it does not prove any such thing, unfortunately. I would love to show up Harrod’s idiocy but here is the difficulty. If the lung sinks, I would take that as proof positive that the baby never breathed. But if the lung floats there is more than one possible reason for that, especially if it is performed some time after death.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘Putrescence.’

  ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘Putrescence produces air from the dead tissue, or something like air, but foul-smelling.’

  ‘You mean like a fart?’

  ‘More or less. Your fart is made in the gut by much the same process, supposedly. Van Helsing in Holland invented a word for this foul air: he called it “gas”. And this gas, it has been averred, if present within the tissue might have the very same effect as air; it might buoy it up in water.’

  ‘So even if the baby never breathed there could be air in the lung because of putrescence.’

  ‘Not air. Gas.’

  ‘Which means that yesterday’s floating test left us no further along.’

  ‘I am afraid not. As I say, it is only conclusive if the lung sinks to the bottom of the bucket, meaning no breath and no gas either.’

  We may not have been any further along, but I admired Fidelis’s willingness to think fresh thoughts. Certainly Dr Harrod was not flattered by the comparison. Fidelis had fearlessly handled the dead little one, had looked inside it and carried out a test, which would be the basis for his deposition before my inquest. Harrod had disdained even to touch the remains, and had given his opinion in one short sentence. My regard for our old family physician had begun slightly to diminish.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘even if your test—’

  ‘Cheseldon’s test.’

  ‘Cheseldon’s test. Even if we could have used it to show that the baby breathed, we would still have no proof of murder. A child can die naturally or by chance at any time: of disease, for instance, or from falling. What is your conclusion about the wounded head?’

  ‘I have not got one. I have nothing to show how it happened – whether the baby was deliberately struck and so murdered, for instance, or that he died by accident.’

  ‘I, on the contrary, feel quite sure that it was an accident. I propose that the injury occurred when the body was cast into the water, by hitting the side of the tan-pit perhaps.’

  ‘Why are you so sure?’

  ‘Because no woman will batter her newborn child, Luke. If she wanted to kill it she would smother it, or drown it.’

  He sighed and opened his medical bag.

  ‘I will not contradict you, but I would like to do some more work on the body nevertheless.’

  ‘You are going to open it again?’

  ‘Yes, I noticed something yesterday that warrants investigation. It may be nothing; it may on the other hand be highly significant. In order to be sure I must carry out a dissection.’

  ‘Do you require me to help?’

  ‘No, I can work alone.’

  ‘Then I shall stroll a little. I want to visit the Skeleton Inn to ensure their readiness for the hearing. Then I must go down to the skin-yard and serve a summons.’

  I left Fidelis preparing for the operation – unrolling his instruments and setting them out ready for use, removing his coat and rolling up his sleeves, then bringing the wrapped body of the child to the table.

  ‘This will take me about an hour,’ he called after me.

  * * *

  The Skeleton Inn, which overlooked our small river harbour on the edge of the Marsh, may well have seen more prosperous days but was now ill-kempt. The upper room that Furzey had engaged for the afternoon’s inquest was the best they could provide, yet I found it a gloomy, unpleasant chamber. The squeaking floor undulated, the walls were nowhere vertical and the ceiling was low and ribbed with rough-cut black beams. Still, it would have to serve. I left some instructions with Clarkson the innkeeper about seating for myself, Furzey, the jury and the public, then walked out again and quickly along Whatery Lane towards the skin-yard at the Marsh’s edge.

  I first strolled all the way around the yard’s circumference, outside the surrounding wall. This was a good deal higher than a man and, though the cracks between the masonry grew weeds and it was ragged around the top, it was nowhere breached and couldn’t easily be climbed over. I concluded that the skin-yard could be entered without difficulty only through the main gate on the lane.

  This was a high and solid double gate, but it was furnished with a small inset porter’s door. I found it lying open, and stepped through. The smell in the air this morning was so sharp that I involuntarily coughed and put my hand to my nose. The pungency was enough to convince me that Van Helsing’s fart gas might indeed exist and that I was at this moment filling my lungs with it.

  A man whose age was hard to determine walked towards me. He wore a leather apron and carried a leather bucket. I knew little enough of leather, and how it is made, but looking at him I was prepared to believe that his weathered and pugnacious face had also somehow been tanned along with the hides he worked.

  ‘You clap your palm to your nose, Mister,’ he said. ‘Offends you, does it – the smell?’

  ‘Not offends, but it is strong to be sure. You must be bothered by it yourself, working in the yard day by day.’

  He tapped his bulbous nose.

  ‘This here is an amazing organ. It can make friends with the worst. What is your name and business, Sir?’

  I told him my name and that I was on Coroner’s business, at which he bowed and told me grandly, as if laying claim to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, that he was Daniel Gogarty and that his family had worked in the skin-yard for four generations. In a gesture that he seemed to have learned from watching plays, he threw up his free arm and circled it, to encompass not only the breadth but the whole history of the skinners’ domain.

  ‘When we came here,’ he said in a ringing voice, ‘there were ten, no, there were a dozen master tanners that worked these pits. Those were the days – the great days, the days of plenty.’

  He took a step towards me and presented two fingers to my face.

  ‘Now there’s just a couple of master tanners left in the skin-yard of Preston – that’s meself and Barnaby Kite.’

  He frowned over his fingers like a man baffled by fate.

  ‘Is that not enough?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh aye, it is enough. It is enough – for now. But soon even that will be too many.’

  He edged nearer still, lowered his face and then rolled his eyeballs up to look at me. His proximity filled my nose with the skin-yard smell in pure concentration, and I could not prevent my gorge from rising.

  ‘The time is coming,’ he stated in a voice of portent, ‘when there will be no more skinners in Preston, none at all; when we shall cry, as Jerusalem cried, that the adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things, and the heathen entered into her sanctuary. I see it as if in a vision. Our days are few and ruin cometh after.’

  ‘Oh come-come. How shall you be ruined? There will always be call for leather, I know that.’

  I edged as imperceptibly as I could away from him. He seemed half crazy. He shook his head, as if the woe lay heavy on him.

  ‘Do you not know also that there is call for improvements? For enclosure and engrossment? For manufactories and tolls? Many things, none good, and all blown into this town on one man’s bad breath.’

  There was a brief silence, then Gogarty’s expression changed. His eyes narrowed in suspicion, while his lips tensed and relaxed in a sucking motion. I began to wonder if he was more than half mad.

  ‘And now we find you come here. Or rather, you come here. What is your purpose? Are you for us, or against?’

  ‘I am neither,’ I told him. ‘It is really nothing
to do with me. My only business is to enquire into the circumstances of the child’s body that Ellen Kite found here.’

  It was as if his mind, having wandered for some moments, recollected itself.

  ‘Oh, aye! I know that. Babby in tan-pit. Coroner sent for. Inquest today.’

  He paused for a moment of thought, then went on.

  ‘I won’t go. I never leave the skin-yard, me. But young Ellen, she’ll speak up, and very well she’ll do it.’

  ‘I have no doubt of that. And here she is in person!’

  With some relief I saw Ellen Kite crossing the yard with a young man. They had been carrying a tub between them but as soon as she caught sight of me, she spoke to the youth and they put the tub down. Now she was coming on towards us.

  ‘Are you here to remind me of the inquest this afternoon, Mr Cragg?’ she asked. ‘I haven’t forgot, you know. And I’ll wear my cleanest clothes.’

  ‘No, no, Ellen, it isn’t that. I just wanted to know more about your work here – to inform myself of how the skin-yard is operated.’

  ‘I’ll show you round, shall I?’

  She looked about until she spotted a boy of about thirteen.

  ‘Joseph!’ she shouted, pointing at the tub she had left. ‘Help Michael with that.’

  The boy jumped to, and from this I saw that Ellen was a young woman of some authority in this confined world.

  ‘Well, these are the tanning pits,’ she said, taking me on a circular walk around them as she explained that the dark brown and foul-smelling solution in which they steeped was prepared with bark brought from the Welsh and Cumberland oak forests, pounded up and mixed with urine and faeces (those of dogs being especially efficacious) and all boiled in hot water to make a vile but necessary soup.

  ‘There’s eighteen pits here but we only work twelve at the minute. They hold six different strengths of liquor. We start the hides off in the weaker and we move them every couple of months to the next stronger one, and so they slowly get tanned.’

  ‘Why don’t you use all these pits?’

  ‘We are too few to work them. Once we made three qualities of leather, now there’s only two. One’s the cheap sheep hide that we turn into the bazal for working wear – aprons like this one I’m wearing, and gaiters and the like; the other’s the cowhide that’s stronger and goes for shoe leather and saddlery.’