by Robin Blake
‘But we have such tasty cheese here in Lancashire, Mr Feather,’ said Fidelis. ‘Do you not like it?’
‘Oh yes, I like it.’
‘Then why have you forsworn it?’
‘Are you not listening to me, young man? I say, if I’d eaten it, I wouldn’t be here talking to you now, would I? I’d be long dead.’
‘Ah! Yes, I do see that.’
Fidelis and I exchanged a glance and he moved on to the business that had brought us there.
‘We have something to ask you, Sir. It’s about a point that’s cropped up in Mr Cragg’s legal work. Ancient history, but I thought you with your knowledge might be able to help me.’
‘If it’s history, I’m your man. Spit out your question.’
‘A little before your time, of course. But during Cromwell’s war against the King, Preston was in some danger from Cromwell’s men, isn’t that so?’
‘From Cromwell himself. My daddy was there. They were coming from the east and there was an attempt to stop them at Ribbleton Moor, Red Scar, that way. But the King’s forces were out-fought, and a few of them were slaughtered, and not only that they were out-manoeuvred, outwitted if you like, and before you knew it Cromwell’s men had got through to Gamull, and they were in Deepdale and they’d killed a few and taken the bridge at Walton. They were swarming all over the eastern end of town. Then he sent word into Preston, did Cromwell, in the midst of all this chaos, that he’d take the town’s surrender in Market Place at such-and-such a time.’
‘Was there fear?’
Old Feather gave a high-pitched laugh.
‘Not fear, Sir: panic. This town’s indefensible. There’s no walls, no ditch around it. It is as open as the Queen of Egypt’s legs. If Cromwell came in fighting there would be fire and rape and God knows what – the town in ruins, Corporation members hanging from gibbets and not a virgin left between the Moor and the Ribble.’
He paused, looking down at his beard and smoothing it with the palms of his hands as you do a bedspread.
‘So what was to be done?’
‘Why, treat with him. Pay him off. But then they remembered, did the Mayor and Corporation, that three or four days earlier they had divided the town’s treasury between three of their number, three of the Burgesses that had been sometime Mayors. This had been on the understanding that each of these worthy men would remove his portion secretly at night to a place of safety, telling no one where, to keep it out of Cromwell’s greedy hands. And that they did.’
‘What had been in the treasury?’ asked Fidelis.
‘Coin, bits of plate, or that sort of thing. The town’s entire portable wealth, more or less, at that time. Well now, of course, they wanted that coin and plate back, or else how could they pay Cromwell? And you know what?’
We waited, and so did Feather. The man was enjoying himself. Finally I broke out.
‘What? Tell us.’
‘They got it back from the first man, and they got it back from the second man, but as for the last chap, they couldn’t find him, nor the money he’d taken charge of. Not a shilling of it turned up. It had disappeared, and so had he.’
‘How did they pay Cromwell?’
‘Had to make up the money with their own personal coins and plate. They had no choice. Every one of them went home and came back with a sack of his own money. But angry? You can hardly imagine it! They would have willingly strung up that old colleague of theirs, only for one thing. It turned out he were dead already. Killed in the battle, along with three of his estate workers. It was reckoned that he had buried the chest with the help of those men and then gone off to fight, without telling anyone where it was.’
With the help of his granddaughter holding the cup to his trembling lips he took a sip of tea.
‘What was his name, this unfortunate man?’
‘It was Benjamin Peel, of Peel Hall.’
I expect my mouth fell open at the coincidence.
‘How very singular! That name was mentioned at my dinner table, not three hours since!’
Old Methuselah was shaking his head in the bemused fashion common to the very old.
‘Not many remember him now. They blackened his name, see? Stead of telling the truth that he died bravely in battle, it was put about that he ran from the enemy. The family never recovered. Never served on the Corporation again, lost their money, lost their estate. Very sad that, and unjust too.’
‘And has the money not been found since?’
Feather looked at me, his eyes twisted in a rheumy squint.
‘You know what me dad said when he told me the story: that Peel had sent the silver away across the sea to the Isle of Man for its safety, and the boat foundered with all hands drowned before they got there. So it’s lost forever, is that silver.’
And giving a sigh he closed his eyes, dropped his chin and reverted to the state we had found him in.
* * *
‘Of course I now see why you think this is Coroner’s business Luke. You have treasure trove on your mind.’
We were strolling back towards Friar Gate. Fidelis smiled.
‘It isn’t me alone. Adam Thorn has it on his mind – or rather he did. Remember what his wife told me when I first spoke to her about the spoon? It’s evident he was much occupied with Peel’s lost hoard, and wanted to find it. Of course, one spoon does not a treasure make. But if any more of the same should turn up, it would become your sworn duty to hold an inquest, would it not?’
Before we parted outside my house, I fetched the letters to Pimbo from Moon that I had been reading, and planted them in his hand.
‘Cast your eye over them, Luke. I would be interested in your opinion. Oh, and will you lend me that spoon, just for a few days? I promise to look after it.’
Chapter Seven
I ENTERED MY HOUSE, and found Matty waiting. She was jigging up and down in a state of some anxiety.
‘The Mayor’s been here this past half hour, and calling for you most impatiently,’ she told me.
The tall, thick-necked figure of Grimshaw, as splendidly accoutred as ever, was planted on the hearth rug with his back to the fire. Elizabeth was sitting and sewing to his left while her parents sat quietly to his right, cowed by the air of pent-up anger that so often surrounded Grimshaw.
‘Cragg, what time d’you call this?’ he cried. ‘I have been looking all over for you. Where the devil have you been?’
‘Making various calls, Mr Mayor. Of course, if I had known you required me…’
Leaving a sentence unfinished is a useful rhetorical device in which lawyers and government servants are adept. I ushered him towards the parlour door.
‘Would you like to come through to the office, where we can be more private?’
Even in my office he would not sit, but paced from wall to wall.
‘Have you been to Cadley Place, Cragg?’
‘This morning.’
‘I trust you found the key to Pimbo’s strong room there.’
‘No. I searched his bureau and around his study. There was no key.’
‘Where else did you look?’
‘There was nowhere else, short of tearing the whole house apart.’
‘Did anyone know about the key? The mother?’
‘She has no memory.’
‘Oh yes? We have heard stories of that sort before, usually on the Bench.’
‘You misunderstand. She suffers from loss of memory. She is not mentally competent.’
‘Was there no one else you could speak to?’
‘A housekeeper. She knew nothing of Mr Pimbo’s business affairs.’
‘This is intolerable, Cragg! Pimbo had creditors. It must now be agreed that the key is irretrievable and steps taken accordingly. The strong room gate must be blown apart with a charge of gunpowder.’
If Grimshaw’s remedy seemed extreme – and it did to me at the time – his urgency was understandable. In the autumn of the previous year he had assumed the mayoralty, much as Nero
ascended the Quirinal Hill, as if by his own divine right. His grandiosity allowed for no doubts, and certainly for no future thwarts and reverses. He had vowed publicly and loudly that his hegemony would present the most golden Guild Year ever known.
The Preston Guild, as the world knows, is a two-week-long festival that occurs every twenty years. Its original ancient ceremonies – the renewal of by-laws, civic freedoms and title to parcels of town land known as burgages – were still performed, but had become almost incidental to what accompanied them – the rout of parades, balls, assemblies, plays, concerts, horse races and other sports, staged more lavishly with every renewal. The eating and drinking would commonly go on throughout the night, laying waste to almost the entire male population and a good part of the female.
Grimshaw well knew that the Guild draws fine society to Preston, and in return for its own expense of money, fine society expects these entertainments to be extravagant. So it’s the duty of every Guild Mayor to make his Guild outshine all previous ones. The outlay in money in that endeavour is prodigious.
However, I had little time, now, for Grimshaw’s petulance, and I had divided feelings about his dilemma. A disastrous Guild would be uncomfortable for our town. On the other hand it would draw a line under Ephraim Grimshaw’s long baleful influence over us, as surely as Great Benjamin Peel had fallen from grace more than a hundred years before. In a trading town like this, to lose the Burgesses’ money on such a scale can only lead to disgrace. Grimshaw may try to deflect the blame to others, but the decision to place the Guild fund into Pimbo’s hands for investment had been, if not his alone, then driven through the Corporation by the strength of his persuasion. If he fell now, it would only be because of his own foolishness, ambition and greed, and I would not be sorry.
I took a deep breath, and inwardly steeled myself to withstand the blast that would inevitably come my way after I had said what I meant to say.
‘Mayor Grimshaw,’ I began. I knew he preferred ‘Your Worship’, but was damned if I would worship him. ‘Have you consulted Recorder Thorneley about such a course of action?’
‘I have.’
Matthew Thorneley acted as the Corporation’s chief legal officer. He was a scheming, self-serving ferret who, as Recorder, was mostly required to ride along in his master’s coat pocket, and to scurry down rat-holes at Grimshaw’s bidding. On the other hand – and this was the reason he was valuable to Grimshaw – he knew the law.
‘Then I am sure he has told you that for you, or any creditor, to blow open the door of a dead man’s private vault before his estate has cleared probate would be illegal.’
Grimshaw snorted a mirthless laugh.
‘You do understand, Cragg, that I am not talking in any personal capacity? It is the great Corporation of this borough that is owed money. It is Preston, Sir! And Preston wants answers to three questions. Is Pimbo’s business sound? What is in his strong room? And most important what has happened to its money?’
‘That is very well but, as you and the Recorder both know, the Corporation stands in relation to the deceased Mr Pimbo’s estate just as any other individual creditor. Until the condition of the estate has been fully determined by the executors, nothing can be paid.’
‘The executors will surely need to inform themselves of what is in the strong room.’
He was of course right. If no key were found, some form of forced entry would be needed. But all in good time.
‘That might be months, even years away,’ I said, then watched as a surge of fury empurpled Grimshaw’s face.
‘Years? Have you taken leave of your senses, man? We do not have years. The Guild opens in thirteen weeks’ time. I shall have these damned slow-footed executors brought before me and give them a kick in their arses. Who are they?’
‘They are two, of whom one is Pimbo’s partner Mr Zadok Moon of Liverpool.’
‘Who has not seen fit to appear as yet. And the other? I’ll have his guts if he doesn’t get that vault open fast.’
I took a certain immodest pleasure in replying:
‘The other executor is myself, Mr Grimshaw.’
* * *
Having this power over Grimshaw was something to be relished, and the glow of it had me in silly spirits all evening, humming tunes about the house, joking for half an hour in the kitchen with Matty and being every way disinclined to return to those papers. Even by bedtime, I was still skittish, and tried to bring Elizabeth along with my mood. But she was again immersed in Pamela and hardly heard me as I lay beside her, embellishing certain details, which I had already told at supper, of my interview with the Mayor and how I had bested him and left him floundering.
‘You are very proud and triumphant tonight, Titus,’ murmured Elizabeth, turning a page.
‘Yes, but the number of times that man has tried to do me down—’
‘And you do know what inevitably follows all attacks of pride? A nasty fall.’
‘A fall will be worth it!’
‘Just don’t break your neck, Titus.’
‘Pride is not only or always bad, I think.’
She read on and, I suppose, half-listened to me as I began to describe the proud Ruth Peel, and what I had learned of the relations between herself and her employer.
‘She’s a proud one all right,’ I was saying. ‘You know you said last night that she was probably Pimbo’s mistress? You had good reason to think so, as I agreed, but I now know that we were wrong.’
The grip of Mr Richardson’s fiction began to loosen as the events of actual life exerted their spell on her.
‘Why were we wrong?’ she asked.
‘Oh, he did try, you know – he pressed and he pressed, she told me, but she would not yield. I think it was actually her pride that saved her.’
‘Good heavens!’ Elizabeth exclaimed. ‘It is like Pamela in reality. The master consumed by lust for the beautiful innocent servant girl, who clings ever more precariously to her virtue.’
‘Although Miss Peel is not a girl. She is the housekeeper.’
‘That is an important difference, Titus, I grant you. Tell me more. I want details.’
I looked into my wife’s eyes. I loved them most when they were like this, bright with concentration and feeling.
‘What troubles me in this, dearest, is that in order to believe Pimbo did indeed want Miss Peel for himself, and also to believe in this virtuous pride of hers, we have to accommodate one difficulty.’
‘What is it?’
‘In every other way she is rather handsome, you see. But when I saw her yesterday she carried her left arm in a sling. On my asking why, she said she had suffered a burn, so I took Fidelis to her today, in case the arm required treatment. Of course I left the room for their consultation, but Fidelis’s later description of the arm was extraordinary. Your mother described the arm as stunted: it is far worse than that. It is hideously deformed, even repulsive. It dangles useless from her shoulder. It’s the reason for the sling, which she always wears in company.’
Elizabeth gave a little gasp.
‘Oh! The poor unfortunate! And otherwise good-looking, you say?’
‘In every other way, Ruth Peel is a positive beauty.’
Elizabeth was openly curious now. She closed Pamela and put it aside for the night.
‘So you are asking, could Pimbo really feel lust for her to that degree, knowing of her gross deformity?’
She turned to me and I took her in my arms.
‘He left her the orchard in his will,’ I murmured into the hair covering her ear. ‘He bound her to celibacy. These are not the actions of indifference. But still, I wonder.’
Then I kissed her tenderly and for the time being we ceased to exchange any more words.
* * *
The next day was Sunday, which the town ideally gave up to religious observance in the morning, roast meat at midday – or a little after – and the continuance of sober, tract-reading domesticity until nightfall. In practice church atten
dance by all could not be enforced, meat for all could not be afforded and, as for sobriety at home, attempts to have Preston’s more than thirty taverns and alehouses closed up on the Sabbath had always failed.
Not every Prestonian planning an evening of indulgence had to spend it in Preston, however: Luke Fidelis, for one, would take himself off quietly to Liverpool from time to time and this was one of those times. It was about half past ten in the morning that he called at Cheapside in full riding habit, with the bundle of Moon’s letters to Pimbo in his hand.
‘I look forward to discussing them on my return,’ he said, passing them over. ‘They are remarkably full of interest.’
I had a letter to give him that I had written myself. It was addressed to Zadok Moon at Pinchbeck’s Coffee House, Liverpool.
‘It informs him of his appointment as co-executor with me of the estate of Phillip Pimbo,’ I explained, ‘and asks him to communicate with me at his earliest convenience. I took the opportunity to enclose a summons requiring his presence at Pimbo’s inquest. Will you be my post-rider, Luke?’
He took the letter and tucked it into a saddlebag. I said:
‘Give it to the keeper of Pinchbeck’s Coffee House of Paradise Street. But keep an eye open for Zadok Moon yourself. He may actually be there when you call. You have read Moon’s letters to Pimbo?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you know about the scheme for a Guinea voyage, in which he and Moon were investors. Pimbo was the principal investor, it seems. I would like to know how the voyage has prospered. Moon writes of it as if it cannot fail. Will you find out more?’
Fidelis, having promised that he would try to do so, rode away.
* * *
I would have been glad to spend the afternoon in my library but after a week of relative cold the weather had begun to warm, and as Midsummer approached, it promised warmer still. So, anticipating complaints from neighbours in Fisher Gate, I decided to remove Pimbo’s body, from where it was still lodged in his former business room, to a cooler and more remote place.
Hazelbury met me there with the key of the goldsmith’s shop. He was disappointed that I had not yet flushed out the missing strong room key, and was concerned about the safety of the shop’s stock.