Skin and Bone--A Mystery

by Robin Blake

  ‘The hands are my wife’s,’ said Twiss. ‘She had the fingers of an angel. Not ugly like mine.’

  With a gappy grin he held up both hands. The fingers were large, knotted and much calloused.

  ‘Nevertheless, yours are the hands of an artist, Mr Twiss.’

  ‘I thank you sir. I like to think so. Now, this headstone. It’s over here.’

  The stone that he showed us lay propped on a wooden pallet. It was no more than a foot and a half high, by a foot wide, and was etched with elegant flowing letters. The largest of these spelled out the name ‘LOAMMI SCROOP’ under which in smaller script ‘Born and died 1743’.

  ‘You completed the work?’

  ‘I did it the same day, before I knew Mr Scroop was dead. I’d have waited else.’

  ‘So this is the inscription he asked you to put.’

  I lowered myself to the posture of Twiss’s angel and read the words aloud.

  ‘“Plead with your mother, plead.”’

  A strange injunction. Luke, do you recognize these words?’

  ‘No, I cannot place them.’

  ‘Mr Twiss, did Mr Scroop tell you what they mean or why he wanted them on his son’s tombstone?’

  ‘He didn’t.’

  I let my forefinger trace the curl and sweep of the lettering and found that the stone gave the same illusion as the angel’s hands, of being soft instead of hard.

  ‘First this peculiar name for the infant – Loammi – which we think biblical, and then the obscure inscription. Might it be from scripture also?’

  ‘You are asking the wrong person,’ said Fidelis. ‘My knowledge of holy writ is selective at best.’

  ‘But it is such a very bald injunction – “plead, plead”. Was Scroop in his right mind?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Luke. ‘I fancy the man was sending a message. It would certainly be useful to find out who it was for, and what the message means.’

  * * *

  Scroop’s body lay on a table in a damp, stone-walled room at the base of the church tower. Bell ropes mutely surrounded him, hanging down through slots in the vaulted ceiling. While Fidelis opened his medical case, took out a small candle and lit it, I cast my eye over the corpse. It was a study in the diminishment of mortality, for death had entirely undone the substance of the man. His confident living face had crumpled and his body seemed too shrunken, now, for the riding clothes he had died in.

  The first thing we did was strip these accoutrements off him. As I went rapidly through his pockets – finding nothing of note – Fidelis used a measuring rule to take the dimensions of the livid head wound just above Scroop’s right eye. The dent in the forehead bone was two and three-quarters inches long, half an inch wide and a quarter of an inch deep.

  ‘The wound looks quite deadly,’ I said. ‘But is it actually serious enough to kill him?’

  ‘It might not be. The effect of a wound in the head is always variable. However, in this case, I would doubt it did for him instantaneously, as Harrod believed. On the other hand it would certainly have knocked him unconscious.’

  He lowered his head and using the light of the candle examined in minute detail the wound, and then the rest of his head, with particular attention to the dead man’s mouth, nose and ears; but it was only on the left ear that he lingered.

  ‘Well, well!’ he said. ‘I wonder what’s here.’

  He selected a pair of narrow tweezers from his bag and, inserting them into the ear, withdrew a plug made from a small piece of white cloth wrapped in a ball. He held the tweezers to the light and we saw that the cloth was darkly stained on one side.

  ‘That would be blood,’ said Fidelis. ‘And therefore I think we have found the true cause of death.’

  As he often did, Fidelis was running strides ahead of me.

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘If I open the skull, I would expect to find that the brain has been pierced through this left ear by a long, thin, spike-like instrument, and fatally wounded.’

  I formed the scene in my mind.

  ‘So at a place other than the spot where Scroop was found his attacker smashed in his head with some object, or knocked him down in such a way as to smash his head, then carefully killed him while he lay unconscious.’

  ‘And the manner of his execution?’

  Only then did I grasp the import of this.

  ‘He died in exactly the same manner as the baby in the tan-pit!’

  ‘Exactly the same: through the ear with a long needle or spike.’

  It took a few more moments before my astonishment cleared, and I saw the implication.

  ‘My God, Luke! I’ve never seen such a type of attack before, and now we have two. The deaths must be linked.’

  ‘I’ll go further, Titus. I’ll stake the life of the Sultan of Scrafton, and all the money he won for me, that they were done by exactly the same murderer. Now, if you will allow me, I shall open him up.’

  I did not stay. Post-mortem dissections are hard on the layman’s stomach, so I took the opportunity to go to the largest inn in the town, where I engaged its biggest room for the inquest, and then sought out the constable whose job it would be to distribute jury-summonses. By the time I had re-joined Fidelis, I was glad to find him sewing the corpse back together.

  ‘It is just as I thought,’ he said, with much satisfaction. ‘A thin spike into the brain via the ear. The brain bled profusely inside the skull, which is generally fatal. He would have died very soon after.’

  * * *

  My first thought on reaching home in mid-afternoon was to tell Elizabeth about the infant Loammi Scroop’s strange tombstone inscription.

  ‘Tell me what you think,’ I said to Elizabeth. ‘I have seen the writing Abraham Scroop ordered for his child’s gravestone just before he was killed. “Plead with your mother, plead.” What can that mean? Plead for what?’

  Elizabeth repeated the words softly to herself, and added,

  ‘Plead for her forgiveness is likely, I would say.’

  ‘For what offence, though?’

  ‘For some wrongdoing by Scroop himself. He’s asking the innocent child in heaven to intercede on behalf of his sinful father still on earth.’

  ‘Intercession is a papist notion, Lizzie. The Scroops were very much of the Protestant faith, you know.’

  ‘It is not very Protestant for the wife, as soon as her husband is dead, to destroy or dispose of all his possessions. It looks like vengeance, Titus, and “vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord”.’

  ‘Why would she seek vengeance?’

  ‘Suppose that he broke his marriage vows.’

  ‘Abraham Scroop? He gave his wife a string of children. You really think he was unfaithful as well?’

  Elizabeth laughed.

  ‘Titus, my love, he would not be the first man to do both.’

  Even when she is laughing at me, I love to hear it. I put my finger against her lips.

  ‘Are you mocking me, wife? In my eyes Scroop was a righteous man. We may not entirely approve his ruthless way of conducting business, but I am much deceived if he was an adulterer.’

  ‘Faithless men make deception their business.’

  ‘Maybe the point is not whether Scroop was deceiving her, but that Mrs Scroop might, rightly or wrongly, have thought he was. She may have overheard her servants gossiping. O’Rorke told me there was talk amongst the Scroops’ servants that he had a fancy woman.’

  ‘That decides the case. Servants always know what’s what.’

  ‘Well these servants seem more than a little fanciful. O’Rorke went so far as to suggest something untoward in the conduct of Dr Harrod and Mrs Scroop.’

  ‘Titus, this is not to the point. Whatever her own conduct, and whatever she believed about her husband’s, I do not think Mrs Scroop murdered her husband on the road out of Kirkham.’

  ‘Harrod might have. But he was on his rounds seeing patients. Let me tell you what else I have found out today, with Fidelis’s help.’r />
  I told her of the spike-in-ear method by which Scroop had been killed, just like the tan-pit baby.

  ‘Fidelis considers with much reason that the two murders were necessarily done by the same hand. He believes it is something to do with the improvement of Preston Marsh, and not just the tannery.’

  ‘I can have no opinion on that, Titus my love. But it seems to me that if what Fidelis says is true you only have to catch Mr Scroop’s killer and you’ll have the one that killed the newborn in the tan-pit. That will be an excellent thing, after all the trouble the case caused you.’

  ‘Even if it turns out to be one of the tanners? I am very sorry to feel I may have been wrong about them. Not only was the little child found in their yard, but it is known the tanners hated the sight of Abraham Scroop. What’s more, they’re leather workers as well as tanners; they have strong needles and spikes in their gear as a matter of course. I have seen them in use.’

  ‘It would be a strange thing for Scroop, if he were wicked in that way, to be punished instead for doing something perfectly legal, such as improving the skin-yard.’

  ‘But, if you are right about him, fortune is evidently better advised than us. It runs its course and gets its way.’

  * * *

  I went into the office to confer with Furzey, and see what names he had for Saturday’s jury. Within half an hour we had made out the summonses and engaged a messenger to take them to the constable of Kirkham for distribution. I also made out witness summonses for Captain Strawboy, Dr Harrod, Mrs Scroop and Bartholomew Lock, Scroop’s foreman.

  ‘You won’t have heard the rumours, then,’ said Furzey, when we had finished.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About Mr Scroop being attacked deliberately, and not killed by riding into a low branch.’

  ‘Who’s saying this?’

  ‘Everybody. It’s all over town.’

  My first thought was that, despite our agreement not to speak of it, Fidelis had been expanding on his murder theory in some tavern. I had doubted my friend unfairly, as soon became evident, because the talk had in fact reached us from Kirkham. The late Mr Matthews’s gardener had brought some produce to market there, and reported that it was common talk in the Matthews house that the late coroner had believed Abraham Scroop was the victim of an assassin. It did not come out that the idea had come from his speaking with Luke Fidelis.

  By evening the murmur of murder grew to something more like a roar, and my hopes of keeping it under seal until the inquest had vanished like smoke. Now all the talk in Preston’s taverns and coffee houses was of mortal force and malice aforethought, and there was much ado over it, too, at Moot Hall. The burgesses may often have had their differences and their cliques, but collectively they were a club, and they considered any act against one of their members to be an assault upon the whole. So it was announced they would sit in session the next morning to debate the emergency and, that evening, the Mayor sent for the town sergeant, Oswald Mallender, to demand that immediate action be taken to limit the danger of this terrible act. A simpering Mallender asked just what could he do? Thwaite (as Furzey was later told by his cousin Simcox) barked at him, with spittle flying, that he must take measures immediately, measures to satisfy the burgesses when they convened, and nothing short of someone in custody would do the job. In short, he must make an arrest.

  In all the public discussions about who the felon might be, one name predominated. Had not the Irishman O’Rorke just been dismissed from Scroop’s service? Had he not made himself scarce and furthermore did he not have red hair, the sure sign of violent dispositions? Some of those in cock-fighting circles had grown fond of O’Rorke and did their best to speak up for him, but their voices could not outweigh the majority opinion – that Jon O’Rorke must have been the killer.

  Mallender entirely shut his ears to this talk. It was in part because, absurdly, he considered himself independent of mind; but also because the theory that O’Rorke was the felon was no use to him now, since the Irishman had sailed away from Preston. Mindful of the Mayor’s express instruction to find the culprit, Mallender therefore fixed his mind upon another doubtful foreign character on whom he actually could lay a hand: Joss Kay. The land surveyor had been going around loudly complaining that Scroop died owing him money. Mallender had interpreted this to mean Scroop died precisely because he owed Kay money – from which a short step led him to form the idea that only Kay himself could have done the murder. When the sergeant heard report later in the evening that the young man had been seen near the bottom of Water Lane at midday on Monday, at the same time as Scroop’s riderless horse had appeared from the direction of Kirkham, and further that one witness actually saw Kay catch the reins of the horse, Mallender’s suspicion solidified into certainty.

  In logic it made no sense, but logic is not the driver of gossip, or of prejudice, or even of political expediency. Joss Kay was a stranger, and strangers are always the first to be accused when accusation is called for.

  Chapter 28

  ‘SOMEONE MUST HAVE been telling lies about me, Mr Cragg,’ called out Joss Kay. ‘They came for me before I had even had my breakfast.’

  It was true: at daybreak on Friday Kay had been made a prisoner and it was now ten in the morning. He was being marched by the Parkin brothers to Moot Hall, to appear before the magistrates’ bench. I was coming out of my house just as the small group passed on its way along Cheapside, whereupon Kay caught sight of me. His wrists were shackled and his aggrieved voice quavered.

  ‘Keep your head above water, Joss, and all will be well,’ I called back.

  He was hurried onward by his captors and, feeling sorry for him, I followed. If I could snatch a few words more with him before the hearing I might be able to help him. I could suggest some lines of argument for his defence, but I would also have the chance to discover whether he should give testimony at the next day’s inquest.

  The magistrates’ courtroom was closed, however. The Mayor, and all the bench, were in council with the rest of the burgesses, so the hearing of Kay’s case was delayed and the prisoner was thrown into one of the half-flooded cells to wait his turn. A couple of shillings in the palm of Tarlton the turnkey bought me half an hour’s conference with the prisoner in his damp and dripping cell.

  ‘I hope I am right in supposing you’re innocent,’ I said.

  ‘Of course I am. And I am keeping my head above water.’

  We both looked down at the two inches of water in which we were standing.

  ‘Were you at or anywhere near Kirkham last Monday morning?’

  ‘No. I was working on the Marsh – taking my readings.’

  ‘Did you catch hold of the loose horse?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘I was going back to my lodgings for dinner. I reached the junction where the bottom of Water Lane meets the way to Ashton, just by the skin-yard. There was a commotion. They were trying to catch a horse that was running around riderless. He was spooked and nervous. I lent a hand, that’s all I did. I had grabbed hold of the reins for a moment, before someone took them off me. It was just a moment. It doesn’t make me a criminal.’

  There was a catch in his voice.

  ‘You are right, it doesn’t. What did you do then?’

  ‘I went on my way.’

  ‘Good. So, if they bring it up, that’s all you need to say on the subject. But how will you reply when they charge you with holding a grudge against Scroop because he did not pay you what you say he owed you?’

  ‘He did owe me. Don’t you believe me?’

  ‘I am speaking as the court will speak in accusing you.’

  ‘I see. Very well. Yes, I was angry with Scroop. He owed me a great sum of money – well, it was a great sum to me, though not I suppose to him. Anyway, I still expected him to pay me in the end. Why would I kill a man from whom I hoped to receive a sum of money? No one would do that.’

  ‘That is an excellent reply.
You were engaged for this work on the recommendation of Thomas Steers, I believe.’

  Kay was startled.

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘I heard it somewhere. Who is Mr Steers?’

  ‘He is a prominent citizen of Liverpool and a skilled engineer. He is extremely distinguished.’

  ‘And will you tell me, please, exactly what work you were engaged to do on Mr Steers’s recognizance?’

  ‘I am sworn to secrecy about that.’

  ‘You will swear in front of the bench to tell the truth. How will you reply when they ask the same question?’

  ‘They won’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they already know the answer.’

  ‘Is it for the improvement of the Marsh, Joss?’

  He flared with sudden anger, and raised his hands, jingling the chain that bound them.

  ‘I must warn you not to press me too far on the Marsh, Cragg! But yes. Why else would I come to this backward town, but to improve it?’

  ‘What sort of improvement, though? Agricultural? I understand Mr Scroop was becoming interested in fertilizers and suchlike.’

  Kay let out a laugh that echoed around the damp cell.

  ‘No, no, no! This is a much grander thing than mere fertility. It is what we apomecometrists would call a “topographical hysteron-proteron”. That is all I can possibly say to you on the matter.’

  Joss Kay was certainly clever, though the oddest combination of self-confidence and self-pity that I had ever met with. Even though I was not sure he properly understood the force that weighed against all strangers in Preston, I apprehended that he did not want to be schooled by me in defending himself. I went to the door and hammered on it for Tarlton to let me out, then reached into my pocket.

  ‘I’ll leave you, then, with my best wishes for your early release. Meanwhile, here is a paper for you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘What we lawyers would call a summons. It requires your appearance at Kirkham as a witness at tomorrow’s inquest into the death of Abraham Scroop. I shall want you in the morning. If you are still in custody the Sergeant will be instructed to produce you. Until then, I wish you well.’