Skin and Bone--A Mystery

by Robin Blake

  He held up the paper and waved it in the air. I just caught sight of the baby’s designated name – ‘Loammi Scroop’ – before he had folded it and slipped it back into his pocket. I hadn’t seen the inscription but it certainly seemed an unusual name.

  But Harrod was not concerned with the wording of the gravestone.

  ‘What time did Mr Scroop set off again for Preston?’ he asked.

  The mason shrugged.

  ‘It was just after a quarter before eight when I left him. I noticed because the church clock struck and he’d got out his watch to set the time and then wind it. I never saw him ride away as I went back to my yard.’

  He looked around at the encircling Preston men, his good eye rolling around and looking particularly bright beside its cloudy and sightless counterpart.

  ‘So what is your purpose here, gents? Is it a hue and cry? Have you come to arrest him and take him to the gaol? What’s he done wrong?’

  Harrod clicked his tongue irritably. His customary geniality had deserted him.

  ‘Are you trying to be funny, man? Of course not. His horse merely returned without him and we are concerned for his safety. Mr Scroop is a prominent citizen of Preston, as you well know. You may as well leave us if you cannot be of more help.’

  Now that the mason had been dismissed, Harrod gave us his orders.

  ‘You are to search in pairs, each along one of the different ways he might have ridden. He that finds Mr Scroop is to give rapid toots on his horn – and to keep tooting, mind, until I join him.’

  We spent a few minutes discussing the different routes available and agreed a different one for each couple of searchers. Fidelis and I, having ensured we were paired together, were to ride a route that would take us through the hamlet of Treales to the north of the road we had taken getting here.

  We reached Treales, a scattering of mean homes centred on a tumbledown alehouse, and asked if anyone had seen Scroop riding through. None had, so we continued along the lane towards an even meaner settlement known as Treales Cottages, where our enquiries had no better result. For the next two miles there were no dwellings of any kind, and no sign of Scroop, either on foot or lying in or near the road.

  ‘Did you note the name given to the dead child?’ I asked as we entered on a bridle path bisecting a field of stubble.

  ‘Yes. Loammi. Very peculiar. Biblical, do you think?’

  ‘Undoubtedly, yet very strange. I don’t know which book it’s from, and I have never heard of the name being used for a christening.’

  ‘Nor I.’

  We talked for a while about names and their significance, which we agreed express parents’ aspirations for their child.

  ‘So what was your parents’ hope in naming you, Titus?’

  ‘They wanted me to make good connections in my life, I suppose. They were thinking more of Titus, the friend of the Apostle Paul, than of the traitor Oates. And you? Were you named Luke because the evangelist was a physician?’

  ‘My father was an apothecary. He desired I would climb one or two rungs higher than him in the ladder of medicine.’

  Our idle talk was interrupted by the sound of tooting coming from the south across the great stubble field that we were crossing.

  ‘There it is. Scroop is found, I guess. Let’s hurry.’

  We turned off the bridleway and spurred our horses into a canter across the field, in the direction of the sounding horn. After half a mile we broke through a hedge and into a rutted track. Looking along it we saw, a little further on and beside a small wood, or copse, saddle horses and dismounted men standing in a small knot at the wayside. When we came up and ourselves dismounted I realized they were gathered around the form of a man lying in the verge of long grass that separated the road from the trees.

  I straight away recognized him as Abraham Scroop, in riding clothes and lying on his front, with his arms spread, legs crooked and head twisted at an extreme angle, with the right cheek and nose resting on the earth. The uppermost eye was wide open, as if surprised, but there was not a spark of life in it.

  As we joined the group, Dr Harrod was crouching beside the body and I saw him turning the head and attempting to close the eyes: they merely flipped back open again.

  ‘His head’s crushed,’ Harrod said in a doleful voice. ‘My dear friend and neighbour.’

  One of the others held up a pocket watch, the glass smashed.

  ‘Mr Scroop’s. Broke it in the fall.’

  ‘What time does it say?’ put in Luke.

  ‘It stopped at ten thirty-four.’

  ‘There’s nothing to be done for him,’ said Harrod. ‘He fell off his horse, I suppose – no, it’s more likely he was knocked out of the saddle by that low branch there, and broke his skull when striking the ground.’

  Harrod pointed back along the road to the branch of an oak that hung half across it. This was at such a height, more or less, that it would have to be avoided, or ducked, by any passing horseman.

  ‘He was distracted, it must be,’ Harrod continued, in a subdued voice. ‘He didn’t see the danger as he rode towards it. A terrible mishap which happened a little after half past ten this morning – as the broken watch confirms – while poor Abraham was riding back from Kirkham.’

  The gleam of a tear appeared in his eye.

  ‘At half past ten I was at the bedside of another dead man, Peter Chimpton over at Cottam. Well, he wasn’t dead yet, but barely alive and he will certainly have gone by now. The stars were terribly against him. As a doctor I cared for him, of course, but I have seen so many patients dead. When a true friend dies, and in this senseless way, it is different. One feels the tragedy of it more.’

  ‘The mason left him before eight,’ said one of the others. ‘What was Mr Scroop doing in the meantime?’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Harrod. ‘Praying for his son. Riding about without any particular aim. Grief makes us do unaccountable things, does it not? In any case, we can say for a certainty that the horse came home just before eleven, well lathered. He was caught at the edge of Preston and taken to his stable at Water Lane without delay. Even at the trot – even if it found some juicy grass to eat along the way – he couldn’t have taken more than half an hour to get there. So he must have parted company with Mr Scroop about half past ten.’

  ‘It might have been a footpad that knocked him from his horse,’ said another of the party.

  ‘On this little road? It’s not very likely, is it? But let’s turn the poor fellow over. We may see if he’s been robbed.’

  It was quickly done, and Harrod ascertained that Scroop’s purse contained coins. A silver snuffbox lay in his waistcoat pocket.

  ‘That settles it,’ he said. ‘This was not a robbery, but a very unfortunate mishap.’

  ‘And yet the Coroner must be called, Sir,’ I put in. ‘No one has witnessed this accident. In the absence of witnesses there will have to be an inquest.’

  Harrod stood and turned to me.

  ‘Had this happened a few weeks ago it would have been unnecessary to call the Coroner, as you, Cragg, are here already. But now you are no longer in office, I suppose we shall have to send for the Mayor, yes?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Sir,’ I said. ‘Remember where we are. This is five miles from Preston and outside my old jurisdiction. It is therefore also outside Mr Thwaite’s. We must call one of the County Coroners.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘The nearest County Coroner lives not far away fortunately: Mr Thomas Matthews of Poulton-le-Fylde.’

  Harrod smiled and patted me on the shoulder.

  ‘We are lucky to have you here to guide us, Cragg, with your special knowledge of these matters.’

  ‘And in the meantime,’ I added, pointing down at the corpse, ‘Mr Scroop should lie exactly where he was found.’

  Harrod looked around at the circle of men.

  ‘So who will ride post-haste to Poulton? Dr Fidelis, I believe you have the fastest horse.’

  F
idelis was kneeling beside the corpse, not in prayer but in order it seems to inspect it more closely. Rising immediately and without looking in the least put out, he said,

  ‘I’ll bring him as quick as I can.’

  ‘Good, good! Meanwhile we’ll find a cottager willing to mind the body. I am sure we all have business and cannot loiter here for the rest of the day. I certainly cannot.’

  ‘I am at leisure this afternoon,’ I said. ‘I’ll watch over the body until Mr Matthews comes.’

  Harrod fixed me with a quick yet deliberative stare. I wondered if, for a moment, he had doubts about leaving me to guard his friend’s corpse. However, he only said, ‘That’s right neighbourly of you, Cragg.’

  By this time I was legging Fidelis up the flank of his horse. Once seated, and as the other men were laying a horse-blanket over the corpse, my friend leaned down to my ear.

  ‘You will have a good look around?’ he murmured. ‘It will be almost dark by the time I get back.’

  ‘Of course,’ I replied equally quietly. ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘First his hat. And then anything material to the fact that Scroop was murdered.’

  ‘Murdered?’

  ‘Of course. Did you not see that for yourself?’

  With no further explanation he kicked his horse and clattered off back in the direction of Kirkham and beyond that the road to Poulton.

  * * *

  Some of the search party lingered for a while, but within half an hour they had all cut off back to Preston and I was left alone. Two hours later, still waiting for Fidelis to return with Matthews, and now in the dusk, I had made a thorough examination of the place. I did not find the hat. Nor was there anything to substantiate Fidelis’s idea that Scroop had been murdered. On the other hand, nor was there any sign of the accident having happened at the spot as Harrod believed. The overhanging branch showed no marks of collision, and the ground below was not dented to suggest a heavy fall.

  Finally Fidelis returned in company with Tom Matthews. The County Coroner did not look well. I had been slightly acquainted with him over the years, and he’d always appeared a hearty fellow that lived for outdoor pursuits – shooting, angling and fox hunting. On this day, having formerly been plump and ruddy, he was lean-faced and pale; his old trumpet-voice sounded more like a scrannel pipe.

  ‘I have a slight ague,’ he said when I enquired after his health. ‘Nothing serious, you know. Dr Fidelis told me his opinion of the case as we rode along. You are experienced in these things, Cragg. What is your view? Has this man been murdered, as Fidelis believes?’

  ‘I can see no indication at all of how Mr Scroop met his death, Sir. Why do you suspect foul play, Luke?’

  ‘It’s perfectly simple. Scroop died some time in the early morning – between eight and nine. And he—’

  ‘One moment,’ I interrupted. ‘How can you be so precise? Dr Harrod reasoned that he died about ten thirty, which was also when the man’s watch was broken.’

  ‘There are certain things that cannot be altered, and others that can. I deal in things that cannot. For instance, the first thing I noticed was that the dead man’s eyelids would not stay down when Harrod tried to close them. The time then was a little after half past two. Now, eyelids are among the first parts of the body to be affected by rigor mortis, but rigor doesn’t commence less than five hours after death. On that reckoning alone, Scroop cannot have died as late as ten thirty.’

  ‘But the watch?’

  ‘Unlike rigor mortis a watch can be set at will. And so can the position of a body.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘The second thing I noticed as well as his hat being missing was that the ground under the body was soaked with rain.’

  ‘God’s hooks, Luke, that’s interesting!’

  I lifted the blanket and felt the front of the dead man’s waistcoat. He had been lying on his front, and it was soaked through.

  ‘It didn’t rain until after eleven. He must have been put down here at some time after that. The ground was bone dry before.’

  Matthews, who had been listening attentively to all this, now put in,

  ‘Might there not have been dew in the grass?’

  ‘It was a windy morning, Sir. By eight o’clock any dew would have evaporated, and we know Scroop was then still alive, and in Kirkham. No. On the mason’s evidence he died after eight, and on the evidence of the rigor, he died before half past nine.’

  ‘And on the evidence of his wet clothes, he was moved here about three hours after he was dead and without his hat.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Fidelis with satisfaction. ‘The question is, why?’

  Chapter 25

  THE QUESTION OF why Scroop was murdered occupied Fidelis and me for much of our ride to Preston. On the way from Poulton Tom Matthews had ordered a cart to come up behind him for the corpse, since it had to be brought back into Kirkham, where the County Coroner’s inquest would be held. We had helped load it and then, as twilight gave way to darkness, said good-bye to Matthews, both of us promising any help that we could give to his inquiry, including inquest testimony if necessary. When I shook hands with Matthews, the lamplight gleamed in his pinkly tinged, rheumy eyes and I could see that his face was lightly sheened with sweat. As he rode off alongside the squeaking wheel of the cart, I heard a hollow, wheezy cough tearing the breath from him.

  ‘It is certain this is not the work of a footpad – are we agreed on that?’ Fidelis was saying as we rode off in the opposite direction, towards the scattered cottages of Ashton.

  ‘A footpad would have made himself scarce very quickly. He certainly would not have stayed for hours and then moved the corpse.’

  ‘And besides all that, no money was taken. No, the one who killed Abraham Scroop did so out of malice.’

  ‘It may have been simply a quarrel that ended in blows, one of them fatal. It may not have been planned by the killer, whoever it was. But naturally, he still wanted to conceal his crime, and that must have meant making us believe that Scroop died in the late morning, when in fact the deed must have been done earlier, and quite likely in a different place. Why?’

  ‘There is no mystery about the placement of the body, Titus. He wanted to make it look like an accident and to do that he needed to leave it near that overhanging branch. The contrived timing was another matter. I am guessing that he did it to ensure his safety – to be able to plead an alibi should he happen to be questioned.’

  We reached the crossroads on the edge of Preston where the skin-yard stood. Its great gates were closed as usual, but now the porter-door was also shut tight. Yet we clearly heard sounds of laughter and singing from within, and someone playing wildly on the fiddle. There were also flames visible, leaping high enough in the air to be seen over the top of the surrounding wall. A large bonfire had been lit.

  ‘They have something to celebrate, it seems,’ Fidelis remarked in a tone of dark innuendo.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, Luke,’ I said. ‘But I also know those people, and I don’t think they would resort to murder.’

  ‘You can’t deny they had a motive, though. They’d heard Abraham Scroop threatening to destroy them and their livelihood. They can only have hated him for that.’

  I didn’t deny it. The skinners certainly hated Scroop, as I had heard with my own ears. But I remained reluctant to call them killers. Sometimes I think of how fortunate animals are. They never impute evil motives – or any motives at all – to other creatures. This imagining of others’ thoughts is something to which we humans alone are condemned, and which frequently and fatally divides us. It is particularly so when we imagine what is not true, as we do so often, not just from being mistaken, but because we are not impartial when we look around us. I am too partial to find malice or fault in one that I love – in Elizabeth, for example – but I am quick to see it in someone I detest, even though my detestation might originally have been stirred by nothing more menacing than the shap
e of a nose, or a grating voice.

  The truth was that I liked the skinners. I liked their spirit and the way they conducted their affairs according to their own lights, without bowing to any man outside their own circle. They had a certain fibre to them, a steadfastness, and I could not see them doing evil.

  ‘I agree they hated Scroop,’ I said. ‘But anyone can resort to violence, and not only from hatred, but also from fear. And the skinners were surely not the only ones to hate or fear Scroop. He was a powerful man.’

  ‘Well, one thing is sure,’ said Fidelis, ‘all Preston will be agog at his death. And something tells me that, as soon as they know this was an assassination, most will point their fingers at the skin-yard.’

  ‘Then I suggest you and I say nothing about murder, Luke. Let them believe it was an accident for the time being. It is for Matthews, and not us, to make the case for murder, and he must see for himself in which direction the fingers are pointing.’

  ‘How do you think Matthews will do in this?’

  ‘Matthews has long experience and is no fool. He will do very well.’

  * * *

  As expected, the death was being discussed that night and all the next day, in all the taverns, shops and coffee shops, and at every street corner and market stall. The first intelligence had come from Harrod, and the others that had ridden back with him, so the story being told everywhere was that Scroop had killed himself by the mischance of being struck from his horse by the oak branch as he attempted to ride beneath it.

  Besides providing something to gossip about, Scroop’s untimely end was being taken as a matter of serious consequence in some quarters of the town. I heard this myself on entering Gilliflower’s barber shop on Wednesday morning, where I found Recorder Thorneley in the chair ahead of me.

  There was no man in Preston more discreet, and none with more temptations to be indiscreet, than old John Gilliflower. In all his years of dewhiskering and hair cutting he had been privy to every kind of secret. He never solicited them – indeed Gilliflower never initiated a conversation at all, but merely carried on cutting, trimming and shaving, apparently regardless as his customers rattled on about their woes and opinions. All he did was interject an occasional soothing ‘Sooks!’, or an ‘Is-that-so?’, to punctuate the monologue.