by Robin Blake
‘Are you absolutely sure about that? About the timing, I mean.’
I must have altered my tone. I had been customer and suddenly I was inquisitor, and she was too sharp to miss the change. I received a quick look of anxious surprise.
‘Of course I am. But we’ve done nowt wrong, Mr Cragg! Just an act of charity till the little thing were claimed back. We’ve not stolen the dog, I hope. And anyway, if you really want to know, I’ve had my fill of cleaning up after him, and I’ll be glad to get rid, the sooner the better.’
I hurried to reassure her that she was not about to be arraigned as a dog thief, merely that as well as being Pimbo’s executor, I was also Coroner, and so interested in everything that had occurred in Phillip Pimbo’s business room on the morning he died.
She seemed reassured as I pocketed my purchases and, after declining the offer of a dozen clay pipes at a specially reduced price, withdrew from the shop. Out in the street I could just hear the two notes of the file as it travelled along its groove back and forth, cutting into the iron of Phillip Pimbo’s strong room gate. But before going back inside to see how the work progressed, I walked along the street to Fidelis’s lodging and left word with Mrs Lorris that her lodger could do worse than join me as soon as possible at the goldsmith’s premises. He would learn, I said, what had happened to Pimbo’s puppy. I was fairly confident that such a message would bring him in a hurry.
Chapter Thirteen
IN PIMBO’S BUSINESS room they worked furiously by turns, doing a minute of filing, then taking a minute of rest. In this way, after little more than a half hour, the two burly workmen had completed three of the four cuts necessary to remove the iron casing that contained the lock’s mechanism. When I returned from Fisher Gate they were half way through the fourth, though by now they were growing tired, and accompanying the music of the file with bestial grunts of effort. Yet, nearing the completion of the task, the men’s rate of work seemed, if anything, to increase: Grimshaw must have promised them a good fee for their work.
The Mayor stood like a hungry dog with his bulging eyes fixed upon the reciprocating motion of the file, ready to spring forward as soon as it broke through. The moment came with a clatter five minutes later, as the lock fell inwards from its position and onto the stone floor of the strong room. In a moment Grimshaw had pushed the gate open and disappeared inside. We all waited and within fifteen seconds he had reappeared.
‘Well, don’t be idle, you men. Bring us a light. It’s pitch dark in here.’
Hazelbury fetched two candles from Pimbo’s mantelpiece and fumbled with a flint box to light them. Grimshaw snapped his fingers impatiently, and growled.
‘Get on with it, man! I’m waiting.’
At last the lights were ready. Grimshaw seized them, one in each hand, and went back inside. I could see the interior of the room clearly now, as he placed the lights in vacant spaces at either end of a broad shelf, one of the half dozen with which the strong room was furnished from its ceiling almost to the floor. The whole space was ten feet wide, no more, and only perhaps eight feet deep. The shelves were ranged along the length of the opposite wall, and two of these were reserved for trays of items held under pawn. Grimshaw picked through these, greedily examining each in turn – watches, pewter tableware, snuffboxes, ivory combs, a pair of crystal decanters, some scent bottles, a lute and a few items of jewellery. These were not, I thought, the chattels of true poverty, but the pledges of reduced gentility – of solitary ladies struggling to live off a shrinking portion, and of young gentlemen gambling above their means. Each pledge had a paper label attached, inscribed with a number that would correspond to an entry in the loans ledger.
The shelves above were devoted to records, held in case-bound volumes and bundles of paper tied with ribbon. Grimshaw spent a further few moments sampling these before he glanced to his right and noticed something else: a stack of leather-covered deed boxes standing by the wall. After trying the top one and finding it locked he came out of the strong room and ordered the two labourers to bring out the deed boxes, and get them open without delay.
Over the next ten minutes the boxes were wrenched or cut open, and their contents tipped onto the floor. It was all paper, most of it stamped and sealed. The Mayor was disconcerted.
‘Those things inside, on the trays, are mostly trash,’ he complained, ‘and this is nothing but old paper. Hazelbury! Is there nothing in all this rubbish of monetary value?’
The Chief Cashier looked dutifully through a few of the documents, though he knew quite well what they were.
‘I fear none of it will be directly pecuniary, Your Worship,’ he said.
‘This is intolerable!’ Grimshaw moaned, picking up an armful of paper. He began thumbing pages off the top and letting them fall back to the floor, like a dealer at cards, but half way through gave up and hurled the bundle to the ground.
‘Christ! Is there no money here at all? Get back inside the strong room, Hazelbury, and look again.’
‘There’s nothing left to look at now, Sir, but the ledgers.’
‘Do as I say!’
The pawnbroker’s cashier returned to his late master’s strong room with an impassive face, though from the set of his shoulders I could read his resentment at the Mayor and his hectoring.
As we waited Grimshaw glowered at me.
‘This inquest is tomorrow?’
‘It is.’
‘Do you expect to find out what’s happened to my money?’
‘Your money, Mayor? I did not know that you had made personal deposits with Pimbo.’
Grimshaw drew in breath slowly through his nose, controlling himself.
‘Obviously, I speak for the town, Cragg, and I mean the town’s money. The cash we saved over two decades to pay for the next Guild which, as if I need to remind you, is twelve weeks away. If we don’t discover the money, the Guild will be a farce – with the joke against me.’
For a moment his bull-face softened to that of one making a pathetic appeal.
‘I shall be a laughing-stock. I did not promise a golden Guild only to be remembered for a leaden one.’
‘Look here, gentlemen!’
The raised voice was that of Robert Hazelbury, emerging from the strong room carrying a polished wooden case, slim enough for a man to carry tucked under his arm.
‘This was on the floor, pushed back under the lowest shelf,’ he said. ‘That’s why we missed it.’
‘Well, get on, open it! It may contain cash, or something valuable. Open it!’ cried Grimshaw.
The case had a lock in which reposed a small brass key. We gathered round as Hazelbury placed the case on Pimbo’s desk, turned the key, released the catches and opened the lid. The case was lined with velvet and divided into cavities, each sculpted to enclose a particular object. Most of these were small tools; one was for a powder flask, which was missing; the largest cavity was in the shape of a pistol and this, too, was missing.
Grimshaw cursed. Hazelbury placed a couple of fingers into the pistol-cavity and looked up at me.
‘This would be where the weapon that killed him came from, Mr Cragg.’
‘Did you know that it was there, in the strong room?’
He shook his head vehemently.
‘No, Sir. As I told you, Mr Pimbo controlled the strong room – what was in there, what went in and out. But I can tell you one thing about this: it is a pledge against a loan. See this?’
Attached to the brass handle of the pistol case was a label, and on that label a number written in an ornate hand.
‘I should be able to check this number against the Pledges Book,’ added Hazelbury, ‘and find out the particulars.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘That would be helpful.’
‘Helpful be damned!’ said Grimshaw. ‘This is not helpful. This is a waste of my time. I’m leaving.’
Upon which the Mayor turned and jerked his head at his two men. As he led them out he gave a savage kick to a pile of documen
ts in his path on the floor, sending an eruption of paper into the air.
With a sigh of helplessness Hazelbury followed him out. I went down on one knee to look more closely at the heaps of paper, and saw what a farrago it was: redeemed exchequer bills, receipts, old cheques, counterfoils, certificates, deeds, schedules, pedigrees and land surveys – all the records of the Pimbo family’s personal and business dealings over the past hundred years. I groaned inwardly. This was a jungle of detail for the conscientious legal executor to hack his way through.
‘Titus! So it’s true: the strong room is opened!’
This was Fidelis bursting into the room.
‘What was found inside it? The body of the dog, I hope.’
‘No, it contained no dog,’ I said.
‘Good! I was worried you would find that dog dead inside.’
‘As I said in my note, I do have news of the dog, but it is not what you supposed. As for the strong room, it contained assorted items pledged against loans, and all these papers, which it will be a job to go through.’
In a broad gesture I indicated what lay all around on the floor.
‘So you found nothing immediately enlightening?’
‘Just one thing – but a good one: we know where Pimbo obtained the weapon that killed him. Hazelbury found this inside.’
I showed him the pistol case lying open on Pimbo’s desk. While we talked, the Chief Cashier had returned from showing the Mayor out. Now he knelt and began trying to bring some order to the chaos of paper and deed boxes that had been scattered across the floor by Grimshaw – re-filling the deed boxes, sorting the papers into bundles as best he could, and re-tying the ribbons that had held them together.
‘So tell me, Titus,’ said Fidelis, as we watched Hazelbury’s endeavours. ‘What have you found about Pimbo’s dog? Is the mutt dead or alive?’
‘Oh, it is living, Luke, and all the time just across the road.’
Hazelbury looked up from his ribbon tying.
‘Mercy, Mr Cragg,’ he exclaimed. ‘Did I hear right? You’ve found Mr Pimbo’s Suez?’
So I told them everything Goody Hutton had told me: how she and her husband had crossed the street to see what the fuss was about at Pimbo’s; and how, when they returned not half an hour later, they found the animal waiting for them inside their premises.
‘There it was,’ I said, ‘shitting and pissing all over the floor. They’ve been looking after him ever since. The animal was much shocked, apparently.’
‘So do you now believe what I have been saying from the beginning?’ challenged Fidelis. ‘That the dog was inside the room all along, with the corpse of its master?’
‘Yes, that does seem to have been the case.’
‘It was certainly the case.’
Suddenly Fidelis was in the best of humours.
‘Mr Hazelbury,’ he said briskly, ‘would you be so kind as to come with me into the strong room?’
Hazelbury looked up, then got up wearily from his knees and followed the doctor, with me at his heels, into the now almost stripped-out strong room.
‘Please explain,’ said Fidelis, ‘exactly how you discovered this box, for I believe it was you?’
‘It was pushed into that corner, see?’ said Hazelbury, ‘Under the lower shelf. It’s that dark down there, I only found it by going down on one knee and feeling for it.’
‘Just so, but it makes me wonder,’ said Fidelis, murmuring more to himself than to me or Hazelbury.
Fidelis took one of the candles and put it on the floor near the shadowed corner space. Then he stooped to peer into it, before working his way along the length of the shelf, bringing the candle along in one hand while holding the shelf’s edge with the other. In this way he searched the space under the shelf from one end to the other.
‘Aha!’ he exclaimed suddenly, when he was almost finished. ‘So there it is!’
He reached down and brought something out, which at first I could not properly see.
‘What have you got, Luke?’
Instead of replying Fidelis pushed past us out of the strong room, and examined his find by the light of the window. I joined him there.
‘You see?’ he said. ‘Here it is!’
And I did see: he held in his hand a gentleman’s wig, whose underside was stained with quantities of encrusted blood.
For some moments I was dumbstruck, and then exclaimed,
‘Good God, Fidelis, you are a wonder!’
I rubbed my chin and considered the wig, a quite ordinary type such as one sees scores of times in the course of a day. This one, however, was in a sorry state, not only bloodstained but with its side curls unravelled and its tails torn.
‘Hazelbury, can you confirm this was Mr Pimbo’s wig?’
Hazelbury said he would not swear to it, but it was of the type that Pimbo customarily wore.
‘But doctor,’ he added, ‘how on earth did it get into this state? I understand the blood, if he was wearing it when he … you know. But it’s been attacked as well. It’s been deliberately torn and damaged. Did Mr Pimbo do that himself?’
Fidelis found the suggestion amusing. He smiled.
‘And put it back on his head before blowing his brains out? I think not.’
‘Who then, Luke?’ I asked. ‘His murderer? I cannot see that this entirely proves your case for murder by another party.’
But Fidelis was laughing now.
‘No, gentlemen. It was no murderer that did this.’
‘Who, then?’ asked Hazelbury.
‘It was Suez, of course. I may have no recent experience of raising a puppy, but I can recall their enthusiasm for chewing things. But there is one more thing.’
He went back into the strong room, where Hazelbury and I followed him. Fidelis went down on his hands and knees as he had before, and began feeling around on the floor, and in particular in the shadowed space underneath the stack of shelving.
‘Ah!’ he exclaimed at last.
‘What is it, Luke? What have you found?’
He held up his hand, with his finger and thumb closed around what looked in the gloom like a pea. He jumped to his feet and stepped past us into the office once more. There, by the light of the window, he laid it in the palm of his hand and showed it to us.
‘The ball, Titus. The bullet that killed poor Pimbo.’
‘How did you know it would be there?’
‘Because it lodged in the wig, of course, which Suez took to the strong room where he shook and worried it. So the ball fell out. Here – keep it safe.’
I took the ball and dropped it into my waistcoat pocket.
* * *
It was growing dark and I was at home. I had worked all afternoon on the arrangements for tomorrow’s inquest, and everything was in place. I was in the mood to read something but, just as I was hesitating between taking a turn with Montaigne or refreshing my memory of Chaucer’s ‘Pardoner’s Tale’, I was interrupted by a rap on the front door. I went myself to answer it. Hutton the tobacconist stood on the step, holding in his arms what looked like a leather tool bag.
‘Mr Cragg, no I won’t come in, only I wanted to make sure Mrs Hutton was right when she told me you are Mr Phillip Pimbo’s will’s lawful executor, and have the duty of tidying up the poor man’s affairs.’
I told him that was quite right.
‘Then you’d best tidy up this.’
He thrust the bag into my hands. At the moment of the exchange, the mouth of the bag gaped a little and the head of the puppy, Suez, appeared. He looked at me with a mixture of surprise and – unless I flatter myself – recognition.
Before I could protest, Hutton went on, his voice hard and implacable.
‘He’s pissed all over a parcel of new tobacco cake that just arrived from Virginia; he’s been sick on one of my best customer’s feet; and now he’s shat under my fireside chair. We’ve exhausted our patience at home for him and his tricks, Mr Cragg. We’ve done our Christian duty by him, and now it�
��s time for you to take charge. Good-night to you, Mr Cragg, and be assured I shall always be gratified to serve you in my shop…’
Hutton was backing down the front door steps now, while keeping a wary eye out in case I should decide without warning to foist the bag, with its cargo of dog, back on him. He relaxed a little as he reached the street without this happening.
‘I refer,’ he went, raising his hat as he took a couple more backward steps up Cheapside, ‘to the next time you should need a supply, at which time you may perhaps be so kind as to return the bag. Good-night, Mr Cragg.’
Chapter Fourteen
ZADOK MOON’S TESTIMONY, though desirable, was not in my mind strictly necessary at the inquest. I was reasonably sure a just verdict on Pimbo could still be reached without him. In spite of Fidelis’s fervent advocacy of the mysterious hidden man – the murderer lurking within the business room and escaping along with Suez under cover of the surging crowd – I could not believe it. We had discovered much about Pimbo and his affairs in the course of our investigations, but we had turned up no one that might have wished him dead – unless it was himself.
Nevertheless I was on tenterhooks of curiosity about whether Pimbo’s business partner would after all show his face. There was a ragged orphan, Barty, who scratched his way through life doing odd jobs around the market, but was willing and intelligent, and so got employment sometimes from me to do errands. On this morning of the inquest I sent him very early to go around the inns to ask if the man had arrived from Liverpool and taken a room in town. The boy came back after an hour, panting and hot from running.
‘I’ve not heard tell of your Mr Moon, Sir. But there’s another I’m thinking you want to know about. He’s called Mr Tibble Jackson, and he’s gottun with him a boy who’s black as coals. They’ve put up at the Lamb and Flag and been asking about where inquest is on at.’
The Lamb and Flag was a shabby tavern off St John Street that let a few bug-ridden rooms to our poorer visitors. Having heard about his encounter in Liverpool with my friend, I had supposed Tybalt Jackson must be some rival to Moon in business, and commensurately prosperous with him. Jackson’s present address showed him in a more penurious light than this. I already knew that he sought an interview with Zadok Moon: the question was, had he actually pursued his man to Preston, or come merely in the hope of finding him? I could not guess. Nor, more importantly, did I know why he was interested in the inquest.