by Robin Blake
I had almost cleared my plate, but he now engaged in separating and picking up single flakes of the fish, one by one, with the broad part of his knife. Each flake was examined for a moment, then slid into his mouth and swallowed before another was taken up.
‘I agree, of course. But how does it help us with Pimbo?’
‘A man would surely hang for dishonestly trying to obtain such a sum. No pardon for him, I think.’
‘I agree with that, too.’
‘It’s a thing that a man, to escape from it, might risk committing great crimes.’
‘You mean firing the ship and escaping in the cutter?’
‘No, no, no, Titus, keep up with me! On this hypothesis the fire never happened. I am talking about the killing of Pimbo.’
I sighed.
‘You are returning to your idea of the Hidden Man, Luke! You know I don’t credit that. You really must resign yourself to the fact that Pimbo killed himself.’
Fidelis sighed.
‘But at least not deliberately, I hope. Because, you know, if he did not kill the dog—’
I held up my hand to stop him.
‘The possibility of suicide has shrunk to a speck of insignificance. On the morning he died Pimbo was waiting for Moon, and he was waiting for me. He wrote in his letter to the Mayor that he had a pistol ready and was intent on arresting Moon. It was no time to be killing himself on purpose. It must have been by chance.’
‘Compared to murder it is a dull conclusion. Oh well – will you sum up after dinner and send the jury to deliberate?’
‘I expect so. Miss Peel’s discovery of that letter has changed my whole plan, but I am not sorry. Not to call Miss Peel back will spare the airing of Pimbo’s love for her and, on account of that, his desire to make himself rich very quickly. Those were all matters pertaining to a possible self-murder, while now that is discounted they are altogether nugatory as far as this inquiry is concerned.’
I don’t know if Fidelis had heard me out, for he had now directed his attention back to the plate of salmon, eating it flake by flake.
‘Oh! Don’t mind me, Cragg, if you want to get away,’ he said abstractly.
But before I left he had one request.
‘May I take another look at Pimbo’s pistol, Titus? I am not sure it has yielded up all its secrets yet. I should like to make sure.’
Seeing no harm in this, and having the linen bag with me, I passed it to him, asking him only to bring it back to court within the hour.
Chapter Sixteen
I BEGAN MY SUMMARY by reminding the jury of everything we had heard about the events within Pimbo’s business room in the early morning of the fourth of June. I went on to speak of the health of Pimbo’s business, and of his home life.
‘Mr Pimbo showed signs of lacking money – he deferred payment of bills and he kept his housekeeper chronically short. Yet his business here in Preston, as we have heard, was going along nicely. The source of difficulty therefore lay, I believe, not in Preston, but in his connection with Mr Zadok Moon, with whom Mr Pimbo hoped to establish a banking house. From letters I have with me, and which I shall provide for the jury’s consideration, it is clear that the connection had involved Mr Pimbo in a heavy burden of personal expense and that this caused him anxiety.’
From the bundle of papers in front of me I held up a sample of the letters found in the desk at Cadley Place, all pertaining to the voyage of The Fortunate Isle. I read out those parts proving that Pimbo had undertaken to buy a ship and largely to fit it out for a Guinea voyage, and that the bills found with the letters were all for the sort of items needed on such a voyage. I also showed the letter where insurance is mentioned, and Pimbo is asked urgently to provide the sum of fifteen hundred pounds sterling to pay the premium.
‘The voyage itself evidently began more than a year ago, and such ventures usually take this length of time to be completed. But there has been no sign of The Fortunate Isle returning to Liverpool and, as we have heard, Mr Moon has now put in a claim for insurance compensation and produced a letter from the ship’s captain detailing the ship’s loss. Yet his letters to the deceased prior to the voyage and during its early stages were full of optimism. Let me read to you from another of them.’
I gave them the letter in which Moon dangled the prospect in front of Pimbo’s eyes of a hundred-fold profit, after the ship had bounced home ‘on the bosom of the trade winds’.
‘The profits from the Guinea Trade are very large, as we have heard, but not as incomprehensibly vast as Moon says here. That gross exaggeration is deeply suspicious. Furthermore, as some of those present must already know, the trade winds blow from north to south, so that to descant about a homecoming on the trade wind’s bosom is to promise something impossible. Unfortunately Mr Moon, just as he did not appear on Friday when sent for by Pimbo, has not answered our letters or summonses to attend this inquest. Therefore we cannot question him about these oddities, but we have heard instead that the same man has fallen under suspicion of dishonesty in another quarter – the insurance company.
‘So let me then draw all the threads of this together. Picture Mr Pimbo arriving early, as is his habit, on the morning of last Friday, locking his door and preparing to confront Mr Zadok Moon with an accusation of fraud. He took out the pistol that, as we have heard, he intended to use if necessary to enforce Moon’s arrest. Would not he have then loaded it? And may not this action have accidental consequences – consequences that the deceased could not have foreseen, and that might have been fatal to him?’
As if as an afterthought – though in fact by design – I ended by telling the jury that they should also consider whether Pimbo slew himself, in a moment of despair at the loss of his, and the Corporation’s, money. I would leave the final decision to them, of course, but they must be swayed by the most likely, not the most colourful, explanation. Then, just as I was about to send them back upstairs to deliberate, Luke Fidelis returned to the court and sent a note up to me.
‘I have changed volte-face. Let me take the witness chair again. I have something of the highest importance to convey to the inquest.’
Many say I allow that young Mercury too much latitude, and perhaps I do. Perhaps I did that day, but still I called him back to the chair.
Fidelis took the witness chair and I reminded him he remained under oath.
‘You wished to give us another piece of evidence, before the jury retires. Is it something relating to the pistol, by any chance?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘What have you to say?’
‘I have nothing to say – but something to show. Will you allow me?’
Fidelis had with him a roll of cloth. As I nodded my assent he extracted from this roll, with considerable care, the pistol. He held it high to confirm that it was the same one which had been seen earlier, and which was Pimbo’s gun, then rose to his feet. Holding the gun by its barrel with the butt down, he approached the long table at which we sat. He looked along the row of jurors’ faces, catching the eye of each of them in turn, making sure they were paying attention. Then without any further warning he dropped the pistol from a height of two feet, so that its butt struck the tabletop.
The report that accompanied the impact was extraordinarily loud. Simultaneously the bright flash lit the room and acrid smoke puffed from the gun barrel, which was still smoking after the gun had bounced and clattered to the floor. Everyone save Fidelis himself flinched and most cried out at the suddenness and shock of the demonstration, and there was a moment of profound silence following the explosion, as everyone in the room except Fidelis looked aghast.
Fidelis of course was smiling. He bent and retrieved the pistol and returned to the witness chair.
‘Are there any questions?’ he asked.
* * *
The public did not melt away while the jury deliberated. A few left with business to do, but most stayed on, walking out for some fresh air, or around the room to stretch their legs and exchange
views with neighbours. To leave before the result would be, to them, like letting a novel go unfinished, or a netted fish uneaten. So they waited, as I waited, for the jury’s verdict on the death of Phillip Pimbo.
Grimshaw came bustling up to me.
‘I will say to you now, Cragg, what I was rudely cut off from saying in open court. That this supposed fraud on Pimbo by Moon confirms the strong opinion I gave on the day of the shooting: that when he died Pimbo was ruined and had lost the Corporation’s money.’
‘Did you have any previous knowledge of this supposed fraud?’ I asked.
‘No idea of it. Pimbo had said not a word. He was always sunny when I saw him. But at least we may hope to rescue something from the wreckage. There’s no chance now, I assume, of a self-murder verdict?’
‘Yes, I think that danger has passed, Mayor. Fidelis’s demonstration, that the gun would fire itself spontaneously if dropped on its butt, has made sure of it.’
‘Thank heaven for that. There’ll be no forfeiture of his goods, and we may hope that some of our cash at least can be scooped out of the estate.’
‘I should not count on there being very much there,’ I warned. ‘Perhaps the Corporation should consider alternative means of funding the Guild.’
He gave a brief horse-like snort – in derision presumably at my suggestion – and moved away. I now noticed the little servant from Cadley Hall, who had received a summons to appear but had not, in the event, been called. Wearing a bonnet, she had sat throughout the hearing between two other summoned witnesses, Ruth Peel and Michael Ambler. Now she was alone, as if not knowing what to do. I went and sat beside her.
‘Hello, Peggy. Where is Miss Peel?’
‘She has gone out for some air. She told me to stay here.’
‘I hope you don’t mind that I never called for your evidence.’
‘No. If you want to know, I was scared to do it.’
‘Were you frightened when Dr Fidelis let off the gun?’
‘A little.’
‘That was needless: there was no bullet, you know, only the powder charge.’
She smiled at me in the way older children do when an adult explains something already obvious to them.
‘I like Dr Fidelis, though,’ she said.
‘So do I. So do many hereabouts. He is a skilled doctor.’
‘Well I like him specially because he is kind to my uncle.’
I did not follow her, immediately, though I ought to have.
‘Your uncle?’
‘Yes. He had an accident, and is very poorly. Dr Fidelis looks after him without fee, my auntie says, because they have no money.’
And then I remembered some of the details of Fidelis’s first visit to the Thorns.
‘Of course, of course! You are Adam Thorn’s niece who went into service. I never made the connection.’
‘I hope my uncle wakens up.’
‘So do I, Peg.’
And so I did, for it would make my task with the so-called hoard of Benjamin Peel a good deal easier.
At that moment I noticed the people filing once again into their seats, and those who had gone outside returning. One of these was Ruth Peel and so I rose to allow her to resume her chair. She did it with a bleak smile for me but no word and, a moment later, Michael Ambler took the seat on the child-servant’s other side. I thanked them both for their evidence and, looking as it did that the jury were coming back, I returned to my own place.
They duly came back, each man breathing out the fumes of the ale that had been provided for their refreshment. Fidelis’s demonstration of the unsoundness of the pistol’s mechanism, informed by the special knowledge of juror Peter Lofthouse, had made it all too easy for them. A brief whispered discussion with Foreman Purvis afterwards gave me to understand that there had been a sticking point over Proctor’s suggestion that Pimbo did kill himself and merely wrote the letter to the Mayor as a ruse to avoid the inquest’s verdict of self-murder. Once that was argued out of the way, and the breaker of ale companionably finished, they came to their decision and trooped back into the courtroom. It took no time for Purvis to report the verdict: the pistol had slipped from Pimbo’s fingers just after he had loaded it, perhaps in too much haste. The butt of the gun had struck the desktop and the action of the gun being very loose and easy, the impact had discharged it even though it may have been only in the half-cock position – a possibility that juryman Lofthouse confirmed for us. Thus the ball was fired upwards into the goldsmith’s jaw and brain, killing him instantly. This, in short, was a case of accidental death by the shot of a pistol worth two guineas, that was formerly the property of a Captain Avery.
* * *
Elizabeth always attended my inquests and I relied on her to let me know with candour where I had made my worst mistakes. But this time I already knew where I had been at fault.
‘I am very disappointed with myself,’ I told her that night as we lay in bed. She had just closed Pamela and snuffed her candle.
‘How so, my dearest? Not about the inquest?’
‘Yes, I allowed my feelings about the trade in Africans to get the better of me. I should not have let the discussion go into the moral sphere. It was bad practice and to make it worse the public were joining in most disorderly. My father would never have permitted such a thing to happen in the conduct of an inquest.’
‘Well, I for one am proud of your words, husband, and I wish you had pressed the matter more. We know so little of this Guinea Trade, because no one is talking about it openly. It appears to be a mightily secret process, though one that makes a great deal of money. But people ought to be powerfully interested in the philosophical question that you put to the court – the question of the negroes’ humanity?’
‘And what do you say to the Trade, Lizzie?’
‘I am with those in the audience that called out against it. I say that the negroes are people, and have immortal souls. And I say too that I don’t understand how in conscience one can buy and sell such beings.’
‘Mr Jackson says these traders are righteous men, who are bringing the negro to Christianity.’
Charmingly, she laughed.
‘I doubt it. Their purpose is to make money, not Christians! And our Lord would not endorse that purpose, or their methods, I think. The camel and the needle’s eye – remember?’
‘Yet if there are indeed men among them who wish to bring the Africans to Christianity, perhaps they at least should be applauded. It is hard to judge right and wrong in a cloud of ignorance.’
‘Tybalt Jackson is not a man of means anyway – not from his appearance. I suppose he is a lowly clerk in the service of rich masters. He does their bidding.’
‘Did he do that today, though? When he first came forward to speak, I thought that he was spurred on by the warmth of his blood; and that when he sat down he became increasingly guarded, and afraid of what he was revealing.’
‘I saw the same, my love. Mr Jackson started his evidence as a bull and finished it as an owl.’
I was seized with sleeplessness that night. I had confronted during the day, for the first time, the question of slavery and the traffic of people as if they were cattle. Of course I knew this had existed in the ancient times, and never been opposed by great men. Pericles, Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar all had been the owners of slaves. But in our own modern world we had begun to prize the liberty of men.
People say the African has a black skin and a thick skull and wears no clothes, and so cannot be the same as ourselves. I thought about this. In his essay on cannibals Montaigne advises not to take things on trust from vulgar opinion, but to look at them with the eye of reason. Reason says the negroes are not the equal of us in many things: they cannot build great warships, great cathedrals or engines of great power. They hold perhaps to a rudimentary philosophy of life, and to religions of blood sacrifice, fire-worship and the like. But in these things, they are not so different from our own ancestors, as may be learned from the scholarly writing
s of Sir Thomas Browne in the last century – and we do not call our ancestors anything but our family. Clothing and a fair skin are not tokens of humanity, but of living in a cold climate, out of the sun. Even cannibals, Montaigne finds, are very sensible people and, though different from ourselves, are not in everything inferior. In some ways they are better than we are.
There is another side of this, I told myself. Some people cannot be trusted with freedom and to enslave them is best, while they learn how to be free. That is what we do with children. They are beneficially the property of their parents until they reach the age of freedom. Might that not also be the case with the negro when he comes to the civilized world?
I had decided I must seek out Jackson tomorrow and question him further. I burned to know for my own satisfaction the condition of the slaves and whether they can be civilized. But now I was becoming drowsy, and my mind began drifting on to disparate things – the coat that I would wear tomorrow, the lovely blue of the sky, the beauty of my wife sleeping beside me, how I must pay the roofer that patched the hole in our thatch, the worn cover of my copy of Hobbes’s Leviathan, that took such a pitiless look at the savage beneath the skin of the civil man. Yes, I thought, I might get that book down and see what it says on the matter that had been occupying me.
A furious thunder shattered these peaceful thoughts, and all peace throughout the house. I started up, and so did Elizabeth.
‘What’s that?’
It took me a moment to realize that someone was hammering at the front door, which lay immediately below one of our bedroom windows. I eased from the bed and slid the window open.
‘Who’s there? And what do you want?’
There was a small group of men gathered round the door, one or two of them holding lanterns, others with poles and one, I saw, with a musket. They all started shouting up at me.
‘Send down the Coroner, if you please.’
‘Urgently wanted.’
‘Are you Mr Cragg? We need to speak to Mr Cragg.’