by Sara Fraser
Now he shook his head and replied quietly, ‘Indeed it will not, Sir. Truth to tell, I welcome this investigation. It will prevent me from constantly dwelling upon my current matrimonial difficulties.’
Without any hesitation, Blackwell nodded acceptance. ‘I fully accept that assurance. You may notify Bint that he is to cover your duties when necessary, and you may make use of my stable when you’re in need of a mount. Now tell me how you intend to open your investigation.’
‘My first call will be upon Farmer Parkman. It’s his land and haystack, and he may well have tried to find me at the Lock-Up as soon as the word of her discovery reached his ears. I’ve no doubt that it’s already common gossip throughout the entire district.’
His companion emitted a reedy chuckle. ‘Well, you know the old saying hereabouts, that if somebody in Redditch drops a fart at the sunrise then, come the sunset, the stink of it will have filled the nostrils of everyone in the Needle District. So I’ll bid you Good Night and Good Hunting, Thomas Potts.’
FIVE
Wednesday, 15 July, 1829
Tom rose in the darkness of early morning and walked to the isolated farm, arriving as dawn was breaking. Farmer Andrew Parkman was already in the farmyard giving instructions to the sizeable group of men and women haymakers carrying scythes, rakes and pitchforks.
When he saw Tom, Parkman ordered the group harshly, ‘Right then, get to your work, and remember, if come nightfall I’m not satisfied with what you’ve done I’ll kick your bloody arses all the way back to Paddy Land!’
The straw-hatted, shaggy haired, bearded men led the way and their bonneted, shawl-swathed women followed. As they went past Tom they eyed his unusual height, exchanging voluble comments in their native Irish tongue and emitting roaring bursts of laughter.
Andrew Parkman also came towards Tom, who as always could not help but marvel at how closely the farmer resembled the apocryphal ‘John Bull’ with his broad red features, bulky build and style of dress.
‘Where the bloody hell was you yesterday arternoon, Master Potts?’ Parkman challenged angrily. ‘Was you a-skulking behind the bloody door when I was a-ringing your bloody bells?’
‘No, Master Parkman. I was going about my duties,’ Tom replied quietly.
‘Well, why didn’t you come and tell me what you found on my land afore you went blabbin’ about it all over the bloody parish? There was dozens o’ cheeky bastards come poking around in my fields last night. The buggers was tearing chunks out o’ my new stack and shouting that they was looking to find how many more dead ’uns I’d got hidden in there! They’d have torn it to bits if I hadn’t stung their arses wi’ buckshot and chased them off!’
‘I truly regret that I haven’t been able to call on you until now, Master Parkman,’ Tom apologised. ‘However, I can tell you that the body was that of a young woman who was dressed in a man’s waistcoat, shirt, breeches and boots.’
‘Dressed like a bloke?’ Parkman’s broad features displayed instant interest.
‘Yes indeed,’ Tom assured. ‘Do you know of any young women hereabouts who favour such a mode?’
Parkman shook his head. ‘No.’ He then grinned and added, ‘But I knows a few blokes who by rights ought to be wearing petticoats.’
‘Tell me, Master Parkman, did you see anyone on that field before the mowing? Any couples, local people or strangers, perhaps?’
‘No, and if I had of done, I’d have run ’um off in double quick time. I don’t allow anybody to wander over my property, and all my regular hands knows that very well.’
He paused before offering eagerly, ‘I’ll come and take a look at that dead wench. I might know her, or seen her about sometime.’
‘Sadly, Master Parkman, you seeing her would serve no purpose. Her features and head have been so disfigured as to render her virtually unidentifiable,’ Tom told him quietly. ‘But, if you should by chance learn about any women who have disappeared from their homes or the places they frequent, I’d be very grateful to you for informing me of it.’
Parkman’s expression showed disappointment, but he nodded. ‘It’s a pity I aren’t going to see her, but if I does hear anything then I’ll let you know.
‘There’s none o’ my hands missing, and the Paddies am all present and accounted for. And, speaking of them, I’ve got to go and keep an eye on the buggers, or they’ll be skylarking about and costing me time and money.’
‘Please spare me some moments more, Master Parkman,’ Tom entreated and, when the farmer concurred, asked several questions before they parted.
As Tom walked slowly back towards the turnpike road all his thoughts centred on the dead woman. The work on the stack and field was completed on Saturday evening. Around noon on Sunday morning, Parkman had given it a final inspection. So the woman was left at the stack at some time between Sunday afternoon and dawn on Monday. Judging by the amount of blood and brain matter pooled around her head and the spatters on the platform and side of the stack, he was pretty sure she’d been killed there. When he first touched her it was near seven in the morning, and there were degrees of rigor mortis in her neck muscles, upper arms and shoulders. When they’d got her to Hugh’s house it would have been about eight o’clock that evening, and there was almost total body rigor. And when they began the post-mortem at fifteen minutes past six o’clock the following morning, the rigor was easing from the neck muscles, upper arms and trunk.
He did some mental arithmetic and decided that she was killed somewhere around midnight on Sunday. Tom’s thoughts then turned to another facet of the case: why did the killer make no attempt to hide the body? He answered his own question: God only knows!
When Tom reached the road which led up on to the central plateau of Redditch he was shouted at by an old man who was leaning on a crutch in the entrance of a winding lane. Tom recognized the long white beard, ankle-length brown smock and schoolboy’s floppy-topped tasselled cap and sighed ruefully.
The man was Methuselah Leeson, who was regularly committed for brief stays in the Parish Poorhouse when his mental eccentricities became too extravagant for his aged wife to cope with.
With the dead woman uppermost in his mind, Tom’s first impulse was to wave in reply and walk on. But then he reprimanded himself for his lack of good manners, and went to the other man to enquire politely: ‘Good Morning, Master Leeson. Can I be of service to you?’
‘Service to me, Constable Potts?’ Leeson’s rheumy, watery eyes and toothless mouth gaped wide and his quavering tone was one of utter disbelief. ‘You? Be of service to me?’
‘Well, I assumed that was why you called to me, Master Leeson.’
Cackling with laughter, the old man slowly shook his head from side to side.
Tom struggled to keep his burgeoning impatience from his tone. ‘Master Leeson, I’ve many pressing affairs to attend to. So if you have no need for my services, I must beg you to excuse me.’
Leeson winked knowingly. ‘Oh, yes, Constable Potts, and I knows very well what them pressing affairs be. Don’t I just! You wants to know who it is that’s butchered that dead wench on Andrew Parkman’s stack platform. Don’t you just!’
‘Indeed I do, Master Leeson,’ Tom confirmed. ‘And that’s why I must now leave you and go about that business.’
Leeson winked and cackled again with laughter.
‘I bid you Good Day, Master Leeson.’ Tom turned to leave, but the other man’s bony hand suddenly clamped down upon his arm and halted him.
‘There’s nothing you needs to do about finding out who butchered the wench, Constable Potts, because I can tell you this very instant who it was who done it.’
‘What?’ Tom gasped in shock. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying that I knows who the murderer is.’ Everything in Leeson’s voice, expression and posture radiated his surety. ‘Last Sunday night I was having a wander about and the wind rose and blew real hard. I could hear the wench a-blarting while her was being butchered, and a bit
later on I met the evil bugger running away. And I knew who it was that very same instant as I clapped me eyes on him.’
Tom’s heart was pounding with shock and excitement as he urged, ‘Tell me, Master Leeson! Tell me his name!’
Leeson’s eyes bulged, flecks of spittle sprayed from his toothless mouth as he shouted hoarsely, ‘It’s the Devil’s Monk what done it!’
‘Who?’ Tom demanded, bewildered.
‘I was standing in the middle o’ the meadow when he come rushing past me, as fast as the wind was a-blowing. He was all dressed up in them white robes he wears, and he come so close to me that when he went past his robes swept all over me, and nigh on took me along wi’ ’um. I shouted at the bugger, so I did, but he just kept scarpering as fast as the bloody wind was a-blowing.’
‘Where does this man live?’ Tom asked.
‘Well, he used to live down the bottom there, o’ course.’ Leeson jerked his thumb eastwards to indicate the winding lane behind him which was dotted along its length with ancient thatched cottages. ‘But when he went to the bad, he buggered off and ended up a-living in the woods.’
This time Leeson’s thumb jerked westwards towards the distant woodlands.
Before Tom could ask another question, he was interrupted by the furious screeching of the diminutive old crone hobbling along the lane towards them, brandishing a rusty hatchet above her mob-capped head.
‘Get back here, you barmy bugger! I told you to stop in the house, didn’t I! Get back here afore I has your bloody guts for garters!’
She glared at Tom. ‘Who be you? And what’s you been a-doing wi’ my husband?’
‘I’m Thomas Potts, and I …’
She cut him short. ‘Hold your bloody tongue and bugger off from here afore I cuts your bloody yed off!’ She waved the hatchet threateningly before his face.
Tom involuntarily took a backwards step, protesting, ‘I mean your husband no harm – I was only talking with him.’
Methuselah Leeson howled in pain as his wife grabbed his long beard with her free hand and hobbled back along the lane, dragging him with her.
It took Tom a couple of seconds to realize that Methuselah Leeson’s crutch was left abandoned on the ground and the old man appeared to be managing to move very well without it. He smiled wryly. ‘It just goes to prove needs must when the Devil drives.’ He continued on his way towards the town, mulling over what the old man had told him.
Reaching the central crossroads, Tom noted that the main door of the chapel was wide open and entered the building, calling, ‘It’s Tom Potts. Are you here, John?’
‘I am indeed, Tom.’ Footsteps echoed on the paving and a man came from the shadows.
John Clayton, curate of the Chapel of St Stephen on the Green, was an unusual type of clergyman. He stood six feet in height, with an exceptionally powerful physique, his rugged ugly features bearing the mementoes of bare-knuckle boxing bouts.
‘Do you bring me news of the burial?’ Clayton questioned.
Tom shook his head in negation. ‘Blackwell’s given me no date for it yet. The poor woman will have to remain as my guest for the time being.’
‘Have you made any progress with your investigation?’
‘I think that I may have. I’ve just met up with Methuselah Leeson, and he spoke of a man with the strange nickname of the Devil’s Monk.’ Tom went on to relate what Leeson had told him.
‘So, you surmise that the poor woman was murdered by this Devil’s Monk, who wears white robes?’ Clayton’s lips quirked.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Tom queried curiously.
Clayton returned question with question. ‘Where did you say that Leeson said this fellow used to live?’
‘Well, he jerked his thumb towards the end of the lane he lives in himself.’
‘That’s the lane that leads to the Bordesley Abbey Meadows, is it not?’
‘Yes. Do you know this fellow then?’ Tom pressed.
‘Not personally.’ Clayton grinned broadly as he shook his head. ‘The Bordesley Abbey monks were Cistercians and wore white habits. One of them raped and killed a woman, and the legend is that the Devil took him in. Local superstition has it that the Devil’s Monk returns here at times to rape and kill again.’
Clayton shook his head and smiled pityingly. ‘Poor old Methuselah. His childhood memories of the story are afflicting him.’
Tom shook his head and groaned in self-disgust. ‘I fear that I’m starting to lose my own commonsense. What possessed me to give the old sod any credence in the first place, knowing his history of lunacy as I do?’
The clergyman reached out and patted Tom’s shoulder, reproving him jovially, ‘Don’t you dare begin displaying any self-pity, Constable Potts. You must continue to be the only man in this parish whom I can look up to both in height and strength of intellect.’
Tom drew a deep breath, smiled and nodded. ‘I’ll do my utmost not to fail you, Reverend Clayton.’
‘I’m going to the Crown in a little while to refresh myself. Will you join me?’ Clayton invited.
‘Regretfully I can’t, John. I’ve many enquiries to make, so I must bid you Good Day.’
‘Good Day, Tom.’
Tom spent the entire day trudging from door to door in the outlying environs of the town, fruitlessly enquiring about missing girls or women, and it was evening when he returned to the Green. The sounds of voices and merriment came from the lighted windows of the Fox and Goose, and as he passed he thought he heard Amy’s melodious laughter. Sadness overwhelmed him, and he had to exert all his willpower not to run through the door of the inn.
‘Remember what Gertie Fowkes said to you!’ he reiterated over and over again as he forced himself to continue trudging doggedly on towards the bleak sanctuary of the Lock-Up.
But all through the sleepless hours which followed, the raw grief of his parting from Amy continued to rend him.
SIX
Thursday, 16 July, 1829
In the dark corner of the rear yard, naked to the waist and bent double, Tom drew shocked breath as the pump water jetted over his head and shoulders. He continued working the long handle until the dulled senses engendered by lack of sleep were enlivened by the icy impacts and his thoughts were clear: I must go and see Amy’s parents before I do anything else today.
By sense of touch he shaved his cheeks and throat with a cut-throat razor, then dried himself with rough towelling, rubbing hard to warm his chilled flesh. He brushed his teeth with powdered wood ash and, chewing a sprig of parsley to freshen his breath, went back inside and up the flights of stairs to his garret bedroom. As he dressed the wall clock in the living room below struck four times.
‘It’ll be sunrise in an hour. If I move fast I can maybe catch Josiah before he leaves for the Grange.’
No moonlight showed through the heavy cloud, and all was still and quiet as Tom crossed the Green, turned southwards along the High Street, mounted the Front Hill and followed the long, straight, gently rising ridge of the Mount Pleasant roadway which led to the village of Headless Cross a mile distant.
As he neared the Headless Cross tollgate, he left the road and went down a steep decline of trees and brushwood towards the isolated cottage where Amy’s family lived. A glimmer of candlelight showed from one of its small windows, and he halted some distance away. How best to tell them? Tom wondered and swallowed hard, felt his mouth drying with apprehension and, fighting the urge to turn and head back up to the roadway, forced himself to approach the cottage.
‘Halt! Who goes there?’
The harsh shout shocked Tom to an abrupt standstill. He turned his head and saw the face of his father-in-law grinning at him from between the parted branches of a nearby bush.
Laughing heartily, Josiah Danks, veteran Royal Marine and current Head Gamekeeper on the Earl of Plymouth’s Hewell Grange Estate, walked up to Tom and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Fuckin’ hell, Tom, you’d make a useless poacher! I’ve been right at your
heels since you left the road and you never heard me.’
Tom drew a long, deep breath and shook his head. ‘I fear that I’m also a useless son-in-law, Josiah, and when I tell you about Amy and myself—’
The other man instantly interrupted him. ‘There’s no need for you to tell me what our Amy’s done. She come yesterday to see me and the Missus. And she told us what we already knew: that what she’s done is none o’ your fault because you’ve always been a good husband to her.’
‘Oh, no!’ Tom protested forcefully. ‘I should have known how very unhappy she is, and …’
‘Shush!’ The other man clapped his hand across Tom’s mouth. ‘You’ve nothing to blame yourself for. Youm a very clever man, with more book learning than a dozen parsons. But when it comes to women you knows next to nothing! Theym all born flighty-yedded! All you needs to do is just leave Amy be at present, and in God’s good time she’ll come running back to you.’
Tom’s relief at Josiah Danks reaction to what had happened was so intense that he felt tears stinging his eyes and was momentarily unable to speak.
‘Now come in and have a bite o’ breakfast wi’ me,’ Josiah Danks invited.
Grateful for the offer though he was, Tom above all else needed to be alone with his own thoughts. ‘Thank you for your kindness, Josiah, but I really do have very urgent business to attend to. Have you heard about the dead woman who’s been found?’
‘I reckon the whole o’ the bloody parish has heard about her by now.’
‘Have any of the women from the Grange or estate gone missing?’
‘I’ve not been told of any, but one of our dairy maids was frightened by bloody poachers one night last week. That’s why I’ve been out at night since then looking for the buggers. It might be that the wench down on Parkman’s farm ran across some poachers and they’ve done her in to keep her silent.’
‘That’s something I’ll bear in mind, Josiah. It’s certainly a possibility.’