The Devil's Monk

by Sara Fraser

  Tom hesitated for a brief moment, then acted upon his own instincts. He unlocked the padlock and drew the door bolts back. ‘Come on out.’

  When they returned to the cell, Tom locked the other man in and told him, ‘You’ll get food and drink later, and some bedding and a bucket for pissing in. Later this week you’ll be formally charged with the robbery and murder of Methuselah Leeson, and the attempted murder of Judas Benton.’

  Tom tensed for an angry outburst, but to his surprise, Jared Styler only shook his head and sneered contemptuously, ‘Oh, Potts! Youm making a bloody fool of yourself if you reckons that I killed Leeson, or that I’se ever tried to murder that piece o’ shit, Judas Benton. You really am a proper prize prick if you thinks I’m the Devil’s Monk!’

  Tom was stung into countering sharply, ‘Are you going to tell me next that you only murder women, such as Carrie Perks?’

  Styler’s jaw dropped in shocked stupefaction, and Tom slammed the hatch shut and instantly walked away, angrily berating himself for having reacted to that goading by momentarily losing his own self-control.

  ‘I’ve put him on his guard about her now, damned fool that I am!’

  As soon as Ritchie Bint came, Tom told him, ‘I’ll report to Blackwell straight away and tell him I’ve urgent need to get a temporary Turnkey.’

  As Tom exited the Lock-Up there were men, women and children making their various ways to the mills, factories and workshops, and to his dismay one man shouted, ‘Ritchie Bint says that you and him has catched the Devil’s Monk!’

  Instantly a loud clamouring of voices came from all directions.

  ‘About time you did it, as well!’

  ‘You ought to have catched him sooner!’

  ‘It’s your fault he was still free to kill poor old Methuselah!’

  Tom clenched his teeth and walked on towards the Red House in dogged silence, knowing that the news of the Devil’s Monk arrest was even now spreading rapidly throughout the entire Needle District, and he would face similar reactions to these wherever he went.

  ‘Well now, Constable, I was watching your progress across the Green, and it appears you were met with a somewhat harsh reception.’ Joseph Blackwell grimaced sympathetically as he greeted Tom’s at the door of the study and pointed to the fireside chairs. ‘Come, let us be seated comfortably while you make your report.’

  When Tom had completed that process and fallen silent, Blackwell frowned thoughtfully. ‘Doubtless My Lord Aston will be most irate when Parkman tells him that your arrest of Styler has hindered the harvesting. However, Aston has told only myself the address where he will be lodging in Malvern. He doesn’t want any visitors calling upon him while he is receiving his particular mode of treatment. So I don’t believe Parkman will succeed in finding him and then returning here within less than a week. I don’t doubt that you will make very good use of that time, Constable, and if I can be of any help in your continuing investigations you need only ask it of me.’

  Tom instantly requested, ‘Ritchie Bint needs to get back to his needle-pointing and earn some decent wages. So while Styler remains in our custody, I’d like your permission to employ a temporary Turnkey to lodge in the Lock-Up, because I fear I shall be spending most of my waking time away from there.’

  ‘You have it,’ Blackwell agreed without hesitation, and they made their goodbyes.

  The door and window of Judas Benton’s shop was shuttered and barred and Tom hammered loudly on the door with his staff several times before a voice from above shouted, ‘If you’ve damaged my door you’ll be paying for it!’

  Tom stepped back and looked up to see Judas Benton’s scowling face poking out from the upstairs window.

  ‘Good Morning, Master Benton. I’m come to inform you that Jared Styler is now being held in custody at the Lock-Up.’

  ‘About bloody time! It’s been costing me money waiting for you to get off your lazy arse and put that murdering bastard where he belongs!’

  ‘How so?’ Tom couldn’t resist challenging.

  ‘Because if I hadn’t stayed hid in here behind locked doors that bastard would have come into my shop and bloody well finished what he’d started.’

  Tom repressed the strong urge to tell Benton that Styler would have undoubtedly garnered many plaudits for fulfilling that particular task. Instead he merely nodded and said quietly, ‘Within the next few days I shall require a written statement from you concerning your dealings with Styler. Good Day to you, Master Benton.’

  Tom then went back up the hill to face what he expected to be another hostile reception. To his great surprise, however, his reception in the Fox and Goose was cordial and congratulatory from all its staff. Tommy Fowkes offered his hand and praises while the four women hastened to excitedly flutter around him.

  ‘All those buggers who was in here jeering and mocking you the other day, Tom Potts, ’ull be having to ate their words now, won’t they just! Youm a hero, so you am!’ Gertie Fowkes declared. ‘Now what does you fancy to drink, my dear? Brandy? Wine? Gin?’

  ‘Whatever it is, it’s on the house,’ her husband announced grandly, ‘no matter if it’s the most expensive beer that we stocks.’

  Amy took both his hands in hers, and with shining eyes told him, ‘I’m ever so glad for you, Tom. Really and truly I am.’

  Tom’s heart thudded as hope flooded through him that this might be the moment of their reconciliation.

  But then she said, ‘You take good care of yourself now.’

  And with that she was gone, and Tom’s hope disappeared with her.

  He swallowed hard and forced himself to smile at the two Fowkes. ‘I thank you both very much for your kind offer of hospitality, but I fear I have very pressing tasks to fulfil. I’m only come here to tell you that I shall be requiring food and drink daily, sufficient for three men, to be sent over to the Lock-Up for the next week, at least. On the usual terms, of course, and the Vestry will, as customary, settle the bills.’

  TWENTY-SIX

  Thursday, midday, 6 August, 1829

  The burning heat intensified the myriad foul smells percolating the air in the near vicinity of the Big Pool – the large, fetid, rubbish-strewn pond on the eastern edge of the town which served as the water supply to the inhabitants of the rows of decrepit housing which surrounded it.

  Tom halted on its northern bank and beckoned to a solitary small, ragged girl. ‘I’ll give you a penny if you take a message to Mother Readman who lives in that big house in Silver Square.’

  ‘Yeah, I ’ull. I knows where it is, and I knows Mother Readman as well. Her’s me auntie!’ The child accepted eagerly.

  Tom spoke briefly, asked her to repeat the message, then sent her off, promising, ‘If you’re really quick to bring me an answer then I’ll give you not one but two pennies.’

  The child whooped with excitement and ran off, returning in a surprisingly brief time. ‘Me auntie says to tell you, the corporal ’ull come to the Lock-Up after dark tonight.’

  ‘Thank you very much, my dear.’ Tom gave her the two coins and, whooping again with delight, she ran off to disappear into the nearest row of houses.

  Thankful to distance himself from the Big Pool, Tom set off on his next errand.

  He was passing the Old Monks Graveyard when a man shouted, ‘Hold hard there, Master Potts!’

  Tom halted and Hector Smout, his features grimed with sweaty dust, came out from the Graveyard, declaring, ‘Well done for catching the Devil’s Monk, Master Potts. Is it right that he’s that Jared Styler who used to live down Studley?’

  ‘That’s so.’

  ‘Ahhhr well, I’ve always said that the bugger ’ud end on the gallows. His dad and his grandad afore him was nasty tempered bastards as well. But anyways, never mind that for now. You’se saved me a walk, Master Potts. I was coming up to see you tonight.’

  ‘How can I be of service to you, Master Smout?’

  ‘You can make Nellie Leeson have Methuselah buried as quick as can
be. This bloody heat has caused him to rot in double-quick time. He’s naught but a cesspit now, and there’s more bloody flies buzzing in and out of our houses than there is around a butcher’s slaughterhouse. He’s stinking the whole bloody lane up, and the neighbours am playing up merry hell about it!’

  ‘I assume she already knows that we’ve arrested her husband’s murderer?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I told her the very minute I heard it meself this morning.’

  ‘How did she react?’ Tom was curious.

  ‘Shouted at me to piss off, and slammed the bloody door in me face! Truth to tell, her’s going down the same road as Methuselah. I often hears her shouting and swearing at him like he’s alive.’ He sighed sadly and shook his head. ‘Her’s losing her marbles, and it’s a bloody shame because her used to be a real nice girl. So nice that when her was young, I once asked her to marry me. But her chose to wed Methuselah.’

  ‘Well, I’d best go and speak with her, Master Smout. I need her to identify this as being her husband’s property.’ Tom pulled the snuffbox from his pocket and displayed it to the other man. ‘Will you come with me?’

  ‘Ohhh no!’ Smout shook his head. ‘These days the less I has to do with her the better. I hates seeing what’s becoming of her.’

  Tom walked on down the lane, and as he neared the row of cottages the foul smell wafted to meet him.

  He walked up to the Leeson cottage and was several paces from it when the door opened. The reeking stench of rotting flesh struck so overpoweringly into Tom’s mouth and nostrils that he involuntarily halted and took a backward step, waving his hand before his face.

  ‘It’ll cost you a fourpence to see him, and the chopper that killed him.’ Nellie Leeson’s cracked voice sounded from within the dark-shadowed interior of the cottage.

  ‘I’m Constable Potts, Mistress Leeson. I’m here to see you, not your husband’s corpse.’

  She burst out of the doorway, brandishing a rusty hatchet, spitting furious recriminations. ‘It’s you who’s stopping folks coming to see Methuselah! Why am you tormenting me? Why am you stopping folks coming?’

  Trying to breathe as shallowly as possible, Tom told her, ‘Mistress Leeson, I haven’t stopped anyone from coming to your house. I’m here to inform you that the man suspected of causing your husband’s death has been arrested and is being held in custody. And to …’

  He reached into his pocket for the snuffbox, but she shook the hatchet at him and screeched, ‘I already knows that, so just bugger off and leave folks free to come here when they wants to.’

  Now Tom realized that she was wearing what looked to be the tasselled schoolboy’s cap that had been her husband’s. He also surmised that the hatchet she brandished was the same one that he had removed from her husband’s skull. He put the thought from his mind and said gently, ‘Mistress Leeson, I can’t help but smell what is happening to your husband’s body. Do you not think that the time has come to lay him to rest? If you lack funeral money, then the Vestry will pay the costs of your husband’s burial.’

  Her red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes narrowed to slits as she hissed menacingly, ‘The Vestry can piss off! And if you knows what’s good for you, you’d best piss off right now!’

  Unnoticed by Tom, interested onlookers had come out from the nearer cottages to cluster close by, and a grossly obese woman shouted, ‘Do what youm paid to do, Tom Potts, and get poor Methuselah away from her and into his grave.’

  ‘You mind your own bloody business, you stinking fat whore! Me husband’s staying where he wants to be. And that’s wi’ me!’ Nellie Leeson screeched.

  ‘Don’t you call me a stinking whore, you mad old bitch. The sooner youm in your own bloody grave the better it’ll be for everybody else who lives down here!’ the obese woman retorted angrily.

  ‘You stinking whore!’ Nellie Leeson repeated in a piercing shriek and came hobbling past Tom, whirling the rusty hatchet around her head, howling, ‘I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!’

  The cluster of onlookers scattered. The obese woman screamed in fright and tried to run with the rest, but stumbled and fell. She lay face downwards, sobbing in terror as she struggled to raise her gross body from the ground.

  Despite being taken off guard, Tom reacted quickly enough to catch up and grab Nellie Leeson before she reached the obese woman.

  With surprisingly wiry strength the old crone struggled furiously, forcing Tom to exert more force than he would have wished to wrest the hatchet from her and hold her writhing body in his close-wrapped arms.

  Then she abruptly collapsed, and dismayed guilt struck through Tom. ‘God forgive me, I should have been gentler with her!’

  He carefully lowered her on to the ground, and she lay there gibbering incoherently, her body convulsing erratically. Tom was considering his best course of action when Hector Smout’s voice sounded.

  ‘Looks like it’s a good job I changed me mind and followed you down here, Master Potts. Nellie’s had a couple o’ these fits lately when her’s been out in this bloody sweltering weather. We needs to get her inside. I’ll dose her with laudanum to keep her quiet, but for her own good I reckon it’s best if she goes into the Poorhouse until Methuselah’s buried.’

  Tom nodded in agreement. ‘I’ll go directly and arrange for her admittance, and get transport to carry her there. Also I’ll go and see Joseph Blackwell and tell him we need to bury Methuselah as soon as possible.’

  ‘And I’ll nail her cottage up, to keep any light-fingered buggers out of it. Not that there’s anything worth much, and the bloody stink ’ull most likely keep anybody from even coming near to it.’

  ‘Many thanks to you for your assistance, Master Smout,’ Tom told him appreciatively.

  Smout shook his head. ‘No need to thank me, Master Potts. I’m doing this for old times’ sake, for the days when I wanted to wed this little wench. Now all I can feel is pity for what she’s become. God have mercy on her!’

  He bent, lifted the old woman’s convulsing body in his arms and carried her into his cottage while Tom turned and strode hurriedly away.

  The sun had long set before Tom returned to the Lock-Up and jerked on its iron bell pull. Metal bars clanked and the door creaked open to reveal Ritchie Bint, who announced, ‘Thank Christ it’s you. I’ve been pestered all bloody day by folks wanting to come in and gawk at Styler. But I told ’um all that it warn’t permitted. Ohh, and that old Redcoat’s waiting to see you. Him that’s settled down in Mother Readman’s.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you didn’t let anyone in, because if Joseph Blackwell came to hear of it he’d be very displeased indeed. And I’m going to offer Corporal Maffey the job of Turnkey.’

  ‘Well, Mother Readman thinks the sun shines out of his arse.’ Ritchie Bint grinned. ‘So that’s good enough for me, because she’s one of the best judges of men I’ve ever known.’

  ‘I share that opinion.’ Tom stepped through the doorway to be faced by the red-coated, shako-topped figure of George Maffey, standing rigidly to attention.

  Tom grinned and asked, ‘Do you accept the post of temporary Turnkey of the Lock-Up, Corporal Maffey?’

  Maffey flashed up a quivering salute. ‘I do, Sir.’

  ‘Good! Then you are the Turnkey from this moment.’ Tom grinned again. ‘And you do not have to call me Sir, or salute me. I’m sure that we’re already good friends enough to be addressing each other by our Christian names.’

  ‘Oh, I knew from the first time I met you that we’d be very good friends.’ Maffey chuckled. ‘And I’m speaking now as a friend when I tell you that I loved being a soldier, and the worst day o’ my life was when I got invalided out of the army. All that stretched before me then was being a licensed beggar man for the rest o’ me days. For me to be doing this job, and having somebody I can truly respect giving me the orders … Well, I loves it! So because you’re my good friend, let me salute you and call you Sir. And you call me Corporal, as if you’re my officer. It makes me feel l
ike I’m a soldier again, and have the right to respect myself, like I could when I was following the drum.’

  Tom laughed and nodded. ‘Then it shall be as you wish, Corporal. Now, there’s a bed for you upstairs in the front room and food and drink in the kitchen. I have to go out again now, but Ritchie will show you where everything is and explain your duties. Normally we keep the front door locked and barred at all times, but only lock it tonight because I may be very late returning, and I’ve no wish to wake you merely to let me in. Now I’ll bid you both a Good Night.’

  Tom left the Lock-Up and went directly to the house of his friend, the Reverend John Clayton, to inform him, ‘I’ve got Nellie Leeson settled in the Poorhouse, and Joseph Blackwell has obtained a coffin. It’s on the handcart in his stables. Hector Smout will be opening the grave as soon as all is quiet down there.’

  The clergyman nodded. ‘I suggest we now drink some coffee and smoke a pipe. It’s best that we allow the neighbours plenty of time to be sound asleep before we do the business.’

  Tom smiled wearily. ‘That’s the most beguiling offer I’ve received all day.’

  It was nearing midnight. There was only the slightest whisper of wind and the orb of the moon shed a soft light as Tom and John Clayton pushed the handcart and the empty coffin it bore along the lane leading to the Abbey Meadows.

  They halted at the gate of the Old Monks Graveyard and carried the empty coffin to where Hector Smout was just completing the crushing down of decayed coffins and their contents to make space in the grave he had reopened.

  When the three of them exited the graveyard, Tom used one of Joseph Blackwell’s Lucifer Friction Lights to fire the wick of his shielded lamp. Then, taking the handcart, they walked on until they neared the row of buildings. They halted and Hector Smout held out two small cloth pouches with cords attached.

  ‘Here, these got strong mint and lavender in ’um. You tie ’um round your noses and they’ll take the edge off Methuselah’s stink.’

  The vile odour he referred to was uncomfortably strong even though they were still yards from the Leeson’s cottage.