Skin and Bone--A Mystery

by Robin Blake

  In the next half hour Fidelis danced with my wife, and then partnered Mary-Ann, while Elizabeth took a turn with Nick Oldswick. I myself moved around the room. The public show of support from Lord Derby had already had its effect. People who’d previously turned their backs now miraculously acknowledged me and even asked after my health. I didn’t tell them that I was restless and felt hot. Lord Derby’s kindness had had its strict limits: if he had wanted me back as Coroner he could have made it happen. There were other desiderata, over which my own fate could claim no priority. I was conscious of a rising headache and a sense of oppression.

  After a while I found myself near Lord Grassington, who was standing beside his nephew. They studied to give the appearance of two men watching the dancing while, in reality, discussing something quite different. Manoeuvring myself so that I stood a little in front of them, and myself pretending to watch the dancers, I was able to pick out a few of their words. The topic seemed to be the skin-yard, as I heard reference to Scroop ‘not growing too suspicious’ and this was in relation to the Marsh. There was mention of Lord Derby, the skinners, and then ‘that surveyor fellow’. Finally I caught the words ‘difficulties in that direction’ and a reference to a sum of some thousands of pounds – I could not hear the exact figure. But the upshot (I decided) was that they were discussing finance for the clearance of the skin-yard, while considering the possible obstacles still standing in its way. There were also some words which might have been expressing the hope that Scroop would ‘hold steady’.

  ‘Cragg!’

  I was clapped on the shoulder by someone approaching from behind. I turned to see with surprise it was James Starkey, my opponent at bowls and he who had earlier snubbed me.

  ‘Terrible unfortunate business this matter of Lady Rickaby and her accusation,’ he said as if nothing had happened on the stair on our way in. ‘Nobody takes it very seriously – well, Thwaite has done, and maybe Grimshaw and Scroop and a few others. But no one else. We don’t ostracize you or hold you guilty in any way, Cragg.’

  ‘Thank you. You would support my reinstatement, then?’

  ‘Ah! Not sure I would go so far as that. Strictly speaking of course an offence was committed. Still, no hard feelings, I hope, and all is friends and jollity again – eh?’

  Starkey did not fool me. He was not a bad man, but merely one that always grazed with the herd. Having turned his back on me at the start, but then witnessed my friendly chat with Lord Derby, he’d now reckoned it was safe to resume relations himself.

  I said, ‘We will have to see about our … our game of bowls, then, shall we not? Ah! The dance is finished. I must re-join my wife.’

  Elizabeth was flushed and looking young and so pretty that as I joined her my heart turned over. Then I felt a similar sensation, but a more threatening one: a thump of the heart, a flush of heat in my neck and a small pulse of pain in my head. The atmosphere in the room was warm and humid with the smell of bodies and the stickiness of air breathed many times over. I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and tried to mop my brow but fumbled it and dropped the handkerchief. The pain in my head was growing and a dizziness was overcoming me.

  ‘I think I need to sit,’ I said, but before I could do so I was aware that my knees were giving way and then I was unaware of anything. Only later was I told that the seam of my fine coat split all the way down the back as I hit the ground.

  Chapter 20

  I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT the next thirty-six hours, excepting what others have told me. I was carried across Market Place and home on a litter and lay in bed largely insensible of the activity around me. Luke Fidelis superintended my medical care, calling at the house repeatedly; Matty made me hot drinks under his direction; and Elizabeth sat beside me almost continually, determined to be at her post when my fever broke.

  Fidelis told my wife I was suffering from an acute ague brought on by late events undermining my constitution. The outcome of such a fever was very uncertain, he said, but for the time being the best care was to keep me calm, cool my brow and give me plenty of beef tea to drink. There was no single drug to cure me, but a camomile and tansy root infusion and a little fermented elder juice might do some good.

  The fever raged throughout Sunday and at certain moments Elizabeth even feared for my life. Much of the time I was in a febrile dream. She said I muttered about death and seemed to be holding dream inquests, but whether about old cases or imagined future ones she could not tell.

  But on Monday I rallied. The fever abated and for several hours I slept deeply. As I lay unconscious, the real inquest, that had been taken from me by the Mayor’s Court Leet decision, was reopened under Thwaite’s newly fledged coronership. As he had done at my own ‘trial’ at Court Leet, Furzey attended with his pen and inkhorn and brought a transcript of what had been said to Cheapside where, by eight o’clock the next morning, I was well enough to sit up in bed and demand to see it.

  Only two witnesses had been heard by the reconvened inquest, the first of whom was Kathy Brock’s mother Margery, resuming the testimony that had been interrupted at the Skeleton Inn. Thwaite’s questioning of her was a little more direct than mine.

  ‘You have already – have you not? – testified that this daughter of yours is little better than a whore.’

  ‘No, that’s not true! She’s just—’

  ‘That she was with child last year, unmarried, and would never say who the father was?’

  ‘Well, yes, but—’

  ‘And you have no idea who this man was – none at all?’

  ‘No, Sir.’

  ‘Even though you have testified…’

  Thwaite cleared his throat and picked a paper from the bundle in front of him.

  ‘You testified “We were that close, since her father left us.” Your own words. You were “that close” – and yet you didn’t know which young buck she’d been rutting with?’

  ‘No, Sir, I—’

  ‘Not even a suspicion?’

  ‘No, none.’

  ‘Well, it is a likely story! A likely story! So is this behaviour of your daughter typical of the skinners generally, this loose morality? Are you all at it?’

  ‘At what, Sir?’

  ‘This shocking ungodly lasciviousness. You yourself, for instance? How many bastards have you had?’

  ‘Me, Sir? None!’

  Thwaite selected another document from the pile.

  ‘This is a transcript of the register of St John’s church. It gives your daughter Kathy’s birth date as the sixth of June 1726 – is that right?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘And a page later on the fifteenth July it is written: “Married John Brock, tanner, and Margery Turner, spinster.” Is that you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So when you conceived and gave birth you were still a spinster.’

  ‘Well, John was away. He—’

  ‘Yes or no – did you conceive a bastard?’

  ‘Yes, in that way she was, but—’

  ‘No “buts” – you are admitting it. Earlier you denied the same thing, under oath. That is perjury. You may expect to hear more of that, Margery Brock, as the law punishes perjurers with great severity. You may get down.’

  Having thus terrified Margery Brock, and proved to his satisfaction the whole turpitude not just of the Brock family but of the skin-yard in general, the Mayor now put Jon O’Rorke in the witness chair.

  O’Rorke gave resentful testimony. It seemed that he blamed Kathy Brock for putting him and his habits of life under public scrutiny and, though he passionately denied fathering the child that was dead, his answer to Thwaite’s questions about Kathy’s morals went further than what he had told Luke at the Pride of the Pitt tavern.

  ‘So you did know Kathy Brock well?’ was the question.

  ‘Yes,’ was the answer.

  ‘Did you have intimate relations together?’

  I imagine O’Rorke smirked.

  ‘What do you think we di
d – make daisy chains?’

  ‘I am not here to think, O’Rorke. Did you father a child on her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You knew she was with child, did you not?’

  ‘Yes, but that girl went with a lot of lads. She was like that – she enjoyed it, you know? Sporting with a lad was what she liked to do best.’

  ‘Was she not afraid of conceiving a child when she did this … sporting?’

  ‘No, she told me she knew what to do then.’

  ‘You mean murdering the child, of course. So! What wickedness in this town of ours! What monstrous perversion of religion! You may get down.’

  Thwaite turned to the jury and told them that Kathy could not herself be questioned, as she had absconded (which weighed very heavily against her) and he therefore proposed to proceed straight to a verdict. They were left in little doubt as to their duty and so, dutifully and within a few minutes, they returned their decision: ‘murder by Kathy Brock’.

  Thwaite heard the verdict with a look, so I was told, of pure satisfaction. He felt he had managed the case with supreme finesse and in less than an hour. He did not mind if he congratulated himself.

  ‘I will say in conclusion only two things,’ he told the court before dismissing it. ‘First that I am pleased to have finished this matter with the kind of dispatch rarely seen under the previous Coroner; and second that I have uncovered a serpent in this town and it lives in the tannery. This progenitor of evil shall poison our society for, as the scripture puts it, “he that cleaveth to harlots will become impudent”. And in case you doubt that, remember the disrespectful bearing of the witness O’Rorke, and the shameless perjury of the witness Margery Brock. The serpent must therefore be dug out, I say, and its breeding-ground laid waste. As Mayor I shall now make that my business.’

  These concluding words were a dire enough threat against the skinners, but the verdict alone might spell death to Kathy if she ever came back to Preston. I wondered how long it would take Constable Mallender, having made his way to Wigan with a warrant for her arrest, to prise the girl from the determined grasp of her uncle and to bring her back for trial. The confrontation between the two men – town constables of similar obduracy but unalike in almost every other way – would have been a sight to see, though I was not very happy at the prospect of Kathy being hauled back from Wigan to face the Preston grand jury, and be committed by them for the assizes.

  But news runs faster than nature, as they say. Kathy heard of the verdict naming her long before Oswald Mallender had even got his palfrey saddled, and immediately took the action that she may have planned from the start. We learned about this on Wednesday afternoon, by which time I was well enough to leave my bed and sit for an hour or two by the parlour fire. I was thus installed, wrapped in a woollen rug, when Fidelis arrived. He was carrying a letter from his friend Dr Hume of Warrington, which had just been put into his hands. I have this letter in front of me now.

  Dear Fidelis,

  I have the honour of writing to you with regard to Miss Kathy Brock, the skinner’s daughter whom you have referred to me. She appeared today without warning at my rooms and I found her an unexpectedly intelligent and well-presented young woman. She came straight to the point and asked me to examine her. I enquired what complaint she had and she said none and merely wished to submit to an examination and that a memorandum be then made of the result. I followed her wishes. I found several contusions and bruises about her person and a loose tooth – all the result she told me of the disciplinary methods of her uncle in Wigan with whom she had been living – but there were no broken bones or no other sign of malady arising. Questioned about any abiding symptoms she suffered, Kathy told me she felt sore from these deplorable beatings but had no internal pains and no other unusual physical effects. She then, to my great surprise, pointed out that I had not made a vaginal examination (though not in exactly those words!) and asked me to do so. After I had complied, and told her that I could find no disease, she said to me,

  ‘That is not what I want to know, Doctor.’

  ‘What, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Tell me, have I given birth in the last three weeks?’

  ‘Good heavens!’ I laughed. ‘This is something you must know yourself.’

  ‘I do know. But it is no laughing matter. I am accused in Preston of having had a bastard baby and killed it, just two weeks ago. From what you have found, could I have had that child?’

  ‘No. There is no evidence whatever of a recent parturition.’

  ‘Will you put that down in writing, that I may bring it out on my defence if I need to?’

  I gladly provided her with the paper, which she folded and put away in her pocket, asking that I also communicate the result of our consultation directly to you in Preston – a duty which I hereby discharge. We then spoke about what she might do next. She would not risk a return to her parents, but nor would she stay under the roof of her uncle, whom she calls base and a brute. So she intends leaving the County Palatine altogether and going far away – though whether to London, or America, or some other place I could not prevail on her to tell me. She tried to press a few coins on me by way of a fee, which I refused to accept. I then had my housekeeper give her some food in the kitchen and so at last she went on her way.

  I hope you will be able to put this information to good use in Preston, by clearing the name of this personable and unfortunate young woman.

  Your servant,

  John Hume M.D.

  Postscriptum. Please send me your latest observations on the use of the turpentine clyster in cases of urinary obstruction. In return I will let you have some of my own results in opening the cephalic vein to relieve the megrim.

  On Thursday morning, after another better night, I re-entered the office for the first time since my illness. Furzey handed me a list of cases we had in hand.

  ‘While you’ve been lying on your back, the work’s been building like hair on a barber’s floor. There’s Mr Fleming’s will that’s in draft and needs finalising, Miss Colley’s latest codicil to put into legal language and the signature for notarizing on the deed you drew up for Mr Caddick. I also have two bills we are protesting, and you need to see Mr Oldswick. He was here yesterday, enquiring after your health and also wanting advice about a case he’s bringing against Simon Parbold at Court Leet for selling him rotten fish.’

  I sighed.

  ‘I suppose I should be happy that I still have a legal practice. First I’ll go and see Mr Oldswick at his shop. I haven’t been out of the house since Saturday and will enjoy the fresh air.’

  I was fond of Oldswick, the watchmaker of Friar Gate whose passion was going to law. He once sued a dancer for stepping on his foot, and another time next door’s dog – by way of its owner – for not barking in the night at a thief that was robbing Oldswick’s house.

  Oldswick was one of the twenty-four burgesses of Preston, but his own trade was modest compared with those like Scroop who saw no horizon to their ambitions. He was thus without personal power in the town but was nevertheless one of a strong and vocal Tory-minded party in the Corporation, which opposed the Mayor and his Whiggish friends who constituted the other powerful group. A third part of our ruling body was not committed to either side, but floated between them from issue to issue. One of the issues that always raised hackles was change – almost any kind of alteration to the way in which things were done – whether it be the conduct of the market, the enclosure of common land, making toll-roads, or strengthening the Game Laws. The Whigs were all for these projects and reforms, but Oldswick and his associates invariably opposed them, finding they offended against their traditional freeborn rights.

  After asking how I did in health, and deploring what he called the despicable act of Thwaite in ‘pitching you out of the coronership like an old straw mattress’, Oldswick consented to discuss the business of the bad fish. We dealt with it quickly. It appeared the questionable items, two grayling, had been bought on P
arbold’s stall the previous Saturday. However, since neither Oldswick nor his old servant Parsonage had become ill in the eating of them, I had to tell him his case was weak, and getting weaker with the lapse of time and the continuing absence of illness.

  ‘But it tasted foul.’

  ‘Tastes differ. They cannot be enshrined in law.’

  ‘We might get sick yet.’

  ‘After four days? Perhaps it would be best to let this drop, after all.’

  ‘I want everyone to know that Parbold is a lazy lying cheat. His father was a hard worker who caught the fish himself. Young Parbold never casts a net or a line. He buys his fish from poachers and God knows who, and never asks a question before he sells them on.’

  ‘Write a satire against him in rhyming couplets. Report him to the market viewer of fish. But don’t sue him for damages – you’ll lose.’

  I was surprised at Oldswick’s response. Instead of sulking and threatening to take the business to the none-too-scrupulous firm of Rudgwick and Tench, as he often did, the watchmaker tamely agreed to suspend any action unless and until some sickness ensued in either himself or Parsonage.

  This business being dealt with, our talk turned to the week’s main topic in Preston, the naming by Thwaite’s court of Kathy Brock as a murderess.

  ‘What will happen to her?’ Oldswick asked. ‘Won’t she be brought back for trial?’

  ‘I believe she has got away free.’

  ‘Yes, but she’ll be a fugitive. A warrant for her arrest has been signed, I hear. She could be tried and hung, which some people are thinking would not be good justice.’

  ‘I know it would not be justice, but I think she will be safe all the same, Nick. As long as Kathy is not foolish enough to return to this part of the world, no one will take the trouble to pursue her. The only real victim in this crime – which I am sure she did not commit by the way – was the baby. It is dead. Who is there who’ll seek true justice for its murder? The Mayor only pretends to love justice.’