by Robin Blake
I quietened the court.
‘I would like to inform the jury that there was to be one further witness, but it appears that she has left town to visit relatives. This was before she could be served with a summons, so I place no particular construction of guilt on her absence. I must tell you, however, that she was asked to give evidence because suspicion had fallen upon her in this locality. It is a suspicion for which there is no evidence that I know of – but I am prepared to hear from anyone present who can assist the court.’
I looked expectantly around, and added, ‘The girl’s name is Kathy Brock.’
The name brought exclamations of dissent from the row of skinners, and a new round of murmurs from all parts of the room. Then Hannah Parsons was on her feet.
‘I will speak, Your Honour.’
‘Very well. Come up.’
Hannah sat very primly in the witness chair as I administered the oath, then broke out with, ‘Mr Cragg, if not for you, this slattern would have been heard today.’
‘Why is it my doing, Hannah?’
‘You know well, Sir. We women took her up for a questioning yesterday. You saw fit to stop us and send her on her way, and so she made her escape. Why did you do that?’
‘I had to. You were treating her roughly.’
‘Not roughly enough – not if she’d done this.’
‘So tell the court. What were your grounds for suspicion of Kathy Brock?’
‘She was talked about as a slattern. And she were as fat as you like. Dr Harrod’s said it: she might have been with child and nobody knew. It deserved having a talk with her, we thought, so we did, until you stopped us.’
‘And what did Kathy say in reply to your charges?’
‘She denied it, of course. But we saw the guilt in her eye.’
Through most of this evidence – if you could call it that – the row of skinners were muttering in discontent. Now Barney Kite called out.
‘Scurrilous! You’ve got no proof, not for any of it – none!’
I held up my hand to silence him and fixed the witness with a severe look.
‘Can you give any substance to this charge, Hannah, beyond what you think was a look in her eye?’
‘I’ve said what I had to say, that’s all.’
She left the chair accompanied by a scattering of applause from the room. I looked along the bench on which sat the skinners.
‘Is there anyone here that can speak for Kathy, in her absence?’
A small woman of perhaps forty raised a timid hand. Her quavering voice was almost lost in the room’s groundswell of noise.
‘I’m her mother, Your Honour.’
‘What is your name?’
‘Margery Brock.’
I motioned her forward and she sat herself uneasily in the witness chair, while I administered the oath.
‘Had Kathy been with child in recent weeks, to your knowledge?’
‘No, Your Honour.’
‘Might she have been, secretly I mean? She is quite a tubby girl, is she not?’
‘She is a little tubby like you say, Sir, but I am her mother and I would know anything like her carrying a babby. Last time I did, any road.’
‘The last time? You mean she has been with child before?’
‘Oh yes, but that were last year, not this.’
A flurry of whispering swept through the room.
‘Last year? She was expecting a child last year, you say?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘What happened to this child?’
‘She miscarried after five months, you see. It never lived.’
‘And you were about to say – you knew of that pregnancy?’
‘Yes, I knew all about it – she confessed it. She would have told me an’ all if it happened again. We were that close, since her father left us.’
‘When she confessed that pregnancy to you, did she tell you what man she had been with? Did she name the father?’
‘She wouldn’t ever say, Sir. After the babby’d dropped untimely, I said no more about it.’
‘Did you suspect anyone of being the father?’
‘We had no idea.’
‘Who is “we”? You and your husband – you and Kathy’s father?’
‘No, Your Honour. Like I said, he’s left us these seven years.’
‘Where’s he gone to?’
‘He’s dead, Sir. I’m a widow.’
Almost from the start of Margery Brock’s evidence I had begun to sense unrest growing at the back of the room. I had taken no notice in order to concentrate on the witness, thinking it must be occasioned by her story. But now the true cause of the shifting of feet and whispering became suddenly apparent. Immediately after Margery Brock had told me of her widowhood, loud comments were heard and, simultaneously, I smelled the reason: there was smoke creeping up between the floorboards around the stairwell wall.
And then someone yelled in a hoarse, urgent voice, ‘Fire! Fire!’
Chapter 7
AS THE UPROAR INCREASED, Margery Brock looked at me, uncertainly.
‘Shall I go on talking, Sir?’
‘No, Margery, I believe we may have to resume later.’
Smoke was seeping into the room, not candle smoke or tobacco, but acrid unaccustomed smoke, puffing up from somewhere around the stair top. Then, all at once, there came through this haze a rushing sound, followed by crackling, and intermittent flickers, and peeps of orange light. There were cries of dismay, which gave way at once to shrieking and screaming, as people surged towards the stairhead, and soon enough began to fight to get there, for the stairs were the only means of leaving the room. I saw fists pummelling and elbows scything. But it seemed that the fire was on or in the stairwell itself and, taking an increasing hold, it threatened to block the way out entirely.
Furzey and I, the jurymen and the row of skinners, and indeed the whole audience, had jumped to our feet and turned towards the events occurring at the far end of the room. I cannot speak for the others, but I experienced at first an odd sense of detachment, and no urgency. With a solid wall of perhaps thirty or forty agitated people between myself and the flames there was in truth little I could do to get to the burning stairs.
A few brave ones launched themselves downward into the smoke and flame to reach safety unscathed, but soon enough the stairhead became congested with those who hesitated, lacking the courage to take the plunge. This was not surprising. As far as I could see the flames were now visible and the heat was increasing. Moments later a curtain or a hanging caught fire in the room itself, blazing upwards and conducting the fire towards the ceiling. The crowd around the stairhead immediately retreated and the makeshift benches collapsed to the floor before the surge. Here and there in the commotion I saw more than one lit candle knocked over, which could only add to the danger, though a greater peril would come when the flames got into the roof. Once the thatch caught fire properly we would all undoubtedly roast to death, or die in a matter of minutes under the collapse of flaming timbers.
My feeling of calm detachment lasted no more than ten seconds, but time in extremity plays extraordinary tricks and the period seemed much longer. Then I came to my senses and saw that the room was fast filling with smoke, and that the screams were combining with thick and raucous coughs. Something had to be done if everybody in this overcrowded room were not very soon to perish. As people began to crowd back from the burning end of the room, I looked to my right and left.
‘The windows!’ I shouted. ‘It’s the only way out.’
I was, of course, not alone in reaching this conclusion. Barnaby Kite and his daughter were opening the nearest window on our left-hand side, and others were doing the same further down the room. Furzey and I made for the casement on the right. We tore away the curtains and got the window open. A gust of untainted air was sucked into the room and we breathed it gratefully.
Leonard Tiddy the nurseryman, coughing and looking stupefied, was the closest of the jurymen. I grabb
ed his arm and pulled him towards us.
‘Now, Len, out you go and quick about it.’
Still looking dazed, he hesitantly raised one of his legs towards the opening.
‘Don’t be daft, husband,’ screeched Mrs Tiddy who had come from the body of the audience to join him. ‘Stick your head out first, and be quick.’
He did so, and with a heave on the belt of his breeches Furzey and I propelled him through the aperture and on to the roof, down which he slid, followed immediately by his wife, and so we proceeded with the next, and the next. Now, throughout the smoke-filled room, men and women were diving out of the windows and sliding down the eaves, before tumbling the ten or twelve feet to the ground, where hands had gathered to catch or pick them up. No doubt injuries were sustained, but every broken pate or dislocated shoulder was yet a life saved.
However, as each frightened choking body was defenestrated, the air that was sucked in through the open windows steadily fed the flames and the fire was now roaring both behind and above us. I caught hold of a curtain and pressed it to my nose between shouting instructions.
‘Be orderly, don’t press! You must go out head first! Head first!’
Chunks of plaster were dropping here and there from between the beams of the ceiling, showing that fire was now taking hold in the roof cavity. The heat was actually toasting my cheeks and singeing my wig. But at last, within three or four minutes of the first signs of fire, the evacuation was virtually complete. On my order Furzey had gone out, too – I had a foolish notion that I should be last to leave – and so I took a lungful of fresh air and turned for a final look around. The stairwell and all of the far end of the room was burning steadily. Dust and smoke threw a gauze film across the scene but I could see that the room was in chaos, with the planks and trestles that had made the audience’s benches being overturned and strewn around the floor. Everywhere possessions had been abandoned – hats, bags, wigs and several hooped skirts stripped off by their wearers as being impossible to fit through any of the windows. The finer, more mature ladies present at the inquest must have descended to the ground in their drawers. I looked up. The ceiling was largely in place, but I knew it would entirely collapse as the fire spread along the thatch. I fancied from the sound that the roof ridge was already burning along much of its length.
I was just about to go through the window when it occurred to me to make quite sure that I really was alone and so I peered through the smoke one more time up and down the room. One of the hooped skirts was moving and seemed fuller, or rather less collapsed, than the others. I went to investigate, and found that it still had its wearer inside it, a small woman in middle age who lay half-conscious, overcome by smoke, with the skirt ballooning up around her legs. I hooked my hands under her armpits and dragged her to the window.
She would not go through while still wearing the hooped skirt, and I decided on desperate measures. A penknife lay on the presiding table with Furzey’s writing gear and this I seized. Pulling up the woman’s outer skirts, I used the blade to attack the complicated, stiff and cage-like petticoat beneath, sawing at it in a circle around the waist so that it sheared off and could be pulled free of her body. I lifted her out of it with no difficulty and thrust her through the window. Then, pausing only to sweep up the inquest papers from the table and stuffing them in my coat pocket, I dived through myself.
We slid down together until there was nothing under us, and I heard a cheer as we dropped into the receptive arms of a crowd of helpers. We were laid on the ground and there I remained for what must have been several minutes, coughing and regaining my senses, which felt scattered and not under immediate control. Recovering myself at last, I propped an elbow beneath me and saw that the woman I had rescued was being attended where she lay on the ground. The man bending solicitously over her had abandoned his coat; his shirt was torn, his dark hair was wild, and his breeches and stockings were scorched and smutched.
‘Will she live?’ I called out.
‘Oh yes,’ said Luke Fidelis, looking round at me. ‘You certainly took your time to bring her out, but she’s remarkably unscathed.’
The survivors of the fire were sitting and lying in various degrees of shock, injury and undress along the stone jetty which extended from the front door of the inn into the river. A few ships were berthed there, and it had been their crewmen who had saved the building from total destruction. No sailor lets fire prosper and, well trained as they are to combat it, they reacted to the sounds of alarm with speed. Smartly running a pair of pumps ashore, they had thoroughly hosed the conflagration until its vigour waned and was finally reduced to smouldering. By the time the town’s own engine arrived from its station under Moot Hall, the inn was a steaming, hissing shell, without a roof but with most of its blackened walls, floors and timbers still in place. The little Customs House and warehouses nearby were unscathed.
The first part of the pier was edged on either side with a low wall and I found Furzey sitting on one of these with three of the jurors. Having assured myself of their well-being, I thanked my clerk for his staunchness at the inquest room window and had a short conversation – in wheezing tones – about the inquest itself. There was no question of concluding it that day and I asked Furzey to prepare a full report on the health of the jurymen, so that I could decide when to resume the hearing. Where we would do so also remained undecided.
I was mortally tired and all at once overwhelmed by the desire to see Elizabeth. Usually she attended my inquests but, mercifully, had been prevented this day by the need to bring her father to the barber’s to have one of his few remaining teeth extracted. At the very moment I was silently thanking God for my father-in-law’s toothache when I heard my wife’s voice calling to me.
‘Titus! Here you are, and alive and well!’
I looked up and saw her walking towards me. Then she was clasping me in her arms, holding me tightly.
‘Oh Titus, Titus, my love, we heard that the engine had been called out, and where to, and I so dreadfully feared the worst.’
‘I am not hurt, except that my lungs pain me a little from the smoke. I am not burnt and I came down chute from the roof without harm. I believe sailors from these ships here caught me as I fell.’
‘Then God bless Jack Tar. Are you ready to come home?’
* * *
At six o’clock, I was sitting beside the parlour fire in my nightgown, with my head nightcapped and woollen blankets warming my shoulders and knees. Elizabeth had dosed me with three spoonfuls of syrup of violets for my cough, and my feet were soaking in a hot preparation of mustard, salt and hartshorn, which she swore to be sovereign against all shocks and distempers. I was in this embarrassed condition when Luke Fidelis came in.
‘You are well ministered to, I see,’ he said.
‘I have the best of care.’
He picked up the bottle of medicine from the table beside me, read the label, then replaced it without comment before changing the subject.
‘I have spent all the afternoon at the wharf.’
‘Were you dealing with casualties? Were they bad?’
‘There were no deaths, many sore lungs from breathing smoke, a few sprains and bruises and one or two cracked bones from falling off the roof. A fortunate outcome, so far.’
‘How did you escape the fire yourself?’
‘I was standing near the top of the stairs, listening to the mother’s evidence. When the smoke appeared I was one of the first to run down. A dozen or so others followed but the stairs quickly became impassable. We therefore roused the sailors from their ships and all stood around the building catching people off the roof. It was good sport.’
‘It did not feel like that from where I was. Does anyone know how the fire started?’
Fidelis shrugged.
‘Not that I have heard, but there’s no mystery. The house was antique and made of wood. It could have burnt at any time.’
‘But it didn’t. It burnt in the middle of my inquest.’<
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‘That weighted the chance, no doubt. There were more people than usual inside, more drinkers and more people smoking pipes jostling for space, knocking over candles.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. Crowds are careless. What of the woman I saw you treating, the one I’d pushed out of the burning room before I came down myself?’
‘She recovered and went away. A gentleman friend was at hand to do the gallantries and escort her safely. She is a visitor to town.’
‘You will review her?’
‘I shall not. I was warned off. She told me she would see no one in Preston but Harrod. The women has more than a touch of haughtiness and she hints at high connections.’
Elizabeth came in and bustled around me.
‘Now, Doctor, is this a medical call, or just a friendly one?’
‘I came to talk about the inquest.’
‘Perhaps not tonight, though,’ she said gently. ‘Poor Titus’s voice is much strained and his breathing is so tight from the smoke. It pains him to talk.’
I almost interrupted, but then I thought, there are times when it is best, and it is even pleasant, to be a patient and have someone else decide matters on one’s behalf – especially when that someone is a loving woman. So I rested quietly in the chair as Elizabeth tactfully showed my friend out of the door.
* * *
‘Nothing like this has happened to me before,’ I said in my croaking whisper.
I had been in bed some time, but sleep never came. Now, when it was past ten o’clock, Elizabeth had come in to join me. She had brushed her hair, cleaned her teeth and put on her nightdress, in which she looked as pretty as a primrose.
‘Nothing like what?’ she said as she slipped in beside me.
‘The inquest today being interrupted – stopped – so violently.’
‘How far did it get, then, when the fire happened? Oh, but don’t tell me if it hurts you to talk.’