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Authors: Robin Blake

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Fairhurst leant forward slightly and let out another guffaw, accompanied this time by a stuttering fart, which I clearly heard and would shortly smell. I simulated a smile, noticing at
the same time that not a muscle of the sergeant's face had moved.
‘Well, never mind that, to business,' Fairhurst went on as if nothing had happened. ‘We must discuss the details, but first: what will you drink?'
I took a seat and said I would join him in some wine. I then asked if he had received the Earl of Derby's warrant.
‘Yes, I have it here, I warrant you.'
This occasioned more detonations, of laughter and of wind, as he drew from his pocket a folded paper carrying Lord Derby's seal. He gave it me and I looked it over while he spoke to the potboy, ordering wine and more beer for the sergeant. In the warrant his lordship requested and required Ramilles Brockletower Esq of Garlick Hall to render every assistance to the military detachment under the command of Captain Frederick Fairhurst in their efforts to find the missing body of Mrs Brockletower. The warrant encompassed searches of the house, outhouses and grounds of Garlick Hall, and of any other of his lands and property whatsoever, as might be required by Captain Fairhurst in furtherance of his task. It was properly and correctly drawn up and undoubtedly had the force of law. I passed it back to the captain.
‘This seems satisfactory, Captain. Tell me how you propose to proceed.'
‘Sergeant Sutch should tell you.'
The sergeant took a judicious draught of beer, laid down the tankard, wiped his mouth with his hand and looked at me with a steady, confident, almost mocking gaze.
‘First may I say, sir, how gratified I am – ah-hem,
we
are – that you have chosen to employ trained men in this matter. You can never do better than a soldier for a search. A band of estate workers, to take an instance of those who might otherwise be
deployed, understand nothing of thoroughness. To begin with, half of them is going to be women. They go about it in a way I can best describe as being like a flock of farmyard chickens, pecking around without system or sense. They think of a likely place and go to look there, and when they find it empty they do nothing until they think of some other likely place, and then they scurry off to look into that. And so on, sir, aimlessly.'
He was speaking with such gravity, purpose and rhythm that I had nothing to say, but could only nod my head inanely in time with his sentences.
‘Now, the trained man,' he went on lifting a finger, ‘that is to say the soldier, gets down to the job under principles.'
He solemnly lowered his finger to the paper on the table in front of him.
‘So tomorrow, under
principles
, as I say, I shall take twenty men, sir, and they shall fairly put a comb through the grounds of that estate. We shall form a line, with each man representing one of the teeth of that comb, and draw the line across the ground that we wish to search. In that way nothing whatever is missed.'
His finger rapped the paper on the table.
‘This is a rough plan of the area, which I myself drew up after making a reconnaissance this afternoon. I have divided the ground into sections, an inner ring here, consisting of four areas nearest to the house, and another ring consisting of these nine outer areas. We shall clear them one by one in number order, to make sure we miss nothing.'
‘Admirable,' I commented, with absolute sincerity. ‘As you say, it is good to go by a system.'
‘It is essential.'
‘Yes, of course, essential. But what about the house?'
‘A search of a residence requires a different method and is
inclined to create greater disturbance. I therefore propose, with your agreement, to omit the house until after we have finished in the gardens and park. That way, if we find what we're looking for outside, the disturbance will not be necessary inside.'
‘Very good. Very good indeed, Sergeant,' said Fairhurst ardently.
I agreed. Sergeant Sutch seemed an altogether exemplary figure and I turned to his captain and told him as much.
‘Yes, yes,' cried Fairhurst, clutching Sutch's shoulder. ‘I call him
Sergeant Argent
, that is to say, worth his weight in silver. Of course, I
would
say gold, but that would spoil the conceit, you know.'
I raised the glass to my lips and drank the wine down quickly. Then, before the captain could conjure any more conceits, I stood up.
‘Well,' I said, ‘you are at liberty to execute the warrant when you like – tomorrow, perhaps, Sergeant Sutch?'
‘Ay, tomorrow,' said the man. ‘We'll march down there at first light. Don't worry, sir. If she's there, we'll find her.'
After thanking him, I put down my glass, made my excuses and left.
 
 
‘
I
SAW THAT Mr Woodley in Market Street this morning,' said Elizabeth. ‘What a strange type of man he looks. More a boy than a man.'
We were talking in bed that same night, curled together in a comfortable embrace. I had already told her the story of my day, of the revelation by Abigail Talboys, and my encounter with the clumsy persiflage of Captain Fairhurst.
‘Woodley has bulging eyes, like a baby,' I observed. ‘But, though he may look boyish, he walks like a dancing master.'
She laughed merrily.
‘I can hardly believe he has the job of putting up big houses for rich people to live in. I would never employ a babyface like that to give me a roof over my head, Titus. I wouldn't feel safe after.'
‘He's no younger than you are – twenty-five, twenty-six? And you, I perceive, are no child.'
Since my hand was caressing her right breast at the time, I was very much engaged in verifying my last statement.
‘But he is unnaturally young-looking – just like a china doll.'
‘He's got more brains than a doll. He's clever. Though in my opinion he's also a bluffer.'
‘A bluffer? Is he not what he seems, then? Is he not really an architect?'
‘Oh yes, he is an architect. Anyone can call himself an architect, it seems. One day there may be an inn for architecture as there is now for lawyers. But it is probably far off.'
‘He's a liar, then? There's bluffers that are powerful liars, I think, and others that are not liars, but such fools to themselves that they persuade everyone else of the same foolishness.'
‘Woodley's the second kind. He may be a fool—'
‘A fool with brains!' she broke in.
‘Yes, which is the most unfathomable kind of fool. But he believes absolutely in himself. On the other hand there is something fantastical about him. He reminds me of a genie who should be in a bottle but got out. What was he doing when you saw him?'
‘Coming out through the arched entrance of Molyneux Square.'
‘Was he indeed? I wonder why he would go there.'
‘He had an abstracted, thoughtful look about him, that is all I can say.'
She raised herself up on an elbow and kissed me.
‘And now, I must sleep. Tomorrow I am taking some food around the Moor cottages. We have Mr Broome's cart ordered for seven o'clock. We'll be loading a hundred loaves and a whole barrel of pickled herring to give away.'
I returned her kiss fondly.
‘Good night, then, my sweet miracle worker,' I said, turning to snuff out the bedside candle.
 
In the morning I rode back, in spring sunshine, to Garlick Hall, wishing to see how far Sergeant Sutch's men had progressed. I found them, a dozen fusiliers, tramping up and down a part of the garden which sloped away on the south-east side of the house, between it and the Savage Brook which flowed past at a
distance of less than a hundred yards. Standing at a right angle to the house was a long hothouse built of glass, with a chimney emitting a continuous thin stream of smoke from the boiler.
The soldiers carried ash poles and were poking the ground in the flower borders and beneath the shrubs and hedges. Above them by the house itself I found the sergeant with the squire's gardener, an aggrieved, animated, wiry little fellow by the name of Benjamin Lowry.
‘Who's going to mend all the damage these men are doing?' I heard Lowry wanting to know, bouncing up and down in agitation. ‘Some of the plants your men are trampling are rare and valuable, never mind sensitive. They'll die from getting scarified like this.'
The soldier replied in his calm and measured basso. If that voice were an instrument I swear it would be the lower register of the bassoon.
‘I have my warrant, Mr Lowry, from the Lord Lieutenant himself. It directs me with the force of the law to conduct this search. Not you, nor even the squire, can countermand it.'
At this point Sutch noticed my approach and swung round, touching fingers to his scarlet and white hat, bound with golden braid.
‘Good morning, Mr Cragg, sir. We have a fine day for the combing. You've come to enquire of any finds, no doubt.'
‘And?'
‘Nothing yet, sir – or nothing of importance.'
But at this point there was a shout from one of the men, who had paused at the crossing point of two grass walkways. The rest of them broke the line to gather around him, and two spades were brought up.
Lowry gave a cry when he saw the spades glinting in the sunlight.
‘My new turf!' he cried. ‘I have just laid it. They can't … I won't allow them to put their spades to my new turf.'
The soldier had evidently seen for himself the chequered pattern of freshly laid turf and, quite reasonably, decided there might be something lying beneath. As Lowry launched himself with a stumbling gait towards the knot of soldiers, it was clear to the sergeant and myself, as we followed, that he would not be in time to stop any digging. He had covered only half the distance when the first spade was driven cruelly into the grass, while Lowry screamed at them that the turf was still young and tender and they must treat it gently. But the soldiers' style of digging did not even approximate to the gentle spadework of a lawn-keeper. There was no careful peeling up of the new sods, no making a low wall of them in bricklayer's style ready for reuse, before getting into the exposed earth below. When we reached the searchers, the hole in the grass was already a ragged cannonball-crater, and Mr Lowry was clutching his head and moaning as if in actual pain.
To make matters worse, there was nothing to discover beneath but one or two writhing earthworms that the spades had cut in half. With a shrug the soldiers fanned out again, to resume their positions as the teeth of a comb. They left the hole and the mound of earth they had dug with as little compunction as a mole leaves behind his molehill.
After watching the combing for a few more minutes I left the sergeant, saying I must go and find Mr Ramilles Brockletower. I intended to speak with him about my own progress in preparing the inquest into his wife's death, and was anticipating a difficult, unpredictable conversation.
In the end there was no need for me to seek out the squire. I was rounding the corner of the house, from where I intended to approach the front door, when I saw him striding purposefully
towards me, the heels of his boots banging the paving stones of the house's forecourt. As he bore down on me, impatiently negotiating the various piles of stone, slate, wood and other building materials that Woodley's men had left there, I could see he was yet again distempered. As he stamped up to me I wondered when in his life he had last laughed or capered or skimmed a stone across a pond for the pleasure of breaking the water into animated patterns and sunlit sparkles.
‘This invasion of soldiers is disturbing my household, sir, and leaving a trail of destruction behind it in my grounds. And it is distracting these men who are working on my house, taking their minds off the job so that they work too slowly. It's intolerable. I shall bring an action against it, sir. An action!'
An action? That would have to be against the Lord Lieutenant, which seemed a far-fetched threat. I adopted a light, cheerful tone, as if I had not perceived his words as a threat at all.
‘Well, they are not a bad band of men. They are trying their best to keep within the bounds of their commission.'
‘Then they should keep off my gardener's lawns and borders. They're trampling valuable plants and flowers. What next? Will they smash the glass of my hothouses and pluck my peaches and pineapples?'
‘Good lord, is there really such fruit so early in the year?' I asked innocently, well knowing there couldn't be. ‘It's a wonderful contrivance, a hothouse.'
‘Be damned to you, Cragg, don't try and take a rise out of me. Abandon this futile poking around and pack your soldiers off to wherever they came from.'
‘They are not mine, sir, and it is not for me to call them off. These are Lord Derby's militia and his lordship does not think the exercise futile. And, I'm afraid, the search must include the
lawns and beds. But I shall ask the sergeant on your behalf that his men refrain from breaking any glass, or plucking any fruit.'
At the mention of Lord Derby, Brockletower fell silent. He knew there were some powers against which his bluster was of little avail.
‘Mr Brockletower, I have one small question to ask.'
‘Yes?'
‘Did you on your travels have one of your horse's hooves re-shod?'
‘Curious things you want to know. But, if you must know, yes. At Settle, he cast a shoe. I stopped at a wayside farrier's.'
‘Thank you, sir.'
I cleared my throat and adopted a slightly harder tone. This was to show that I was now about to raise a matter less easily dealt with.
‘I fear I must, in addition, broach a more delicate subject.'
The squire sighed deeply, and closed his eyes.
‘Must you, sir?'
‘I must. It concerns your own relations with your late wife.'
Brockletower's only reply was a bitter, croaking laugh.
‘You laugh,' I observed.
‘Yes, I laugh. And that is all I do.'
‘Very well, allow me to go on.'
I had changed my tone again, and was speaking with the utmost softness, as to a skittish horse.
‘You and Mrs Brockletower were not blessed with family – I mean, with progeny. It must have been a cause of some distress to you both.'
He turned to me with an unexpected look of anguish, eyes wide open and mouth crushed. Had I made a crack in his shell?
‘Is that correct, Mr Brockletower?' I persisted.
He seemed to teeter on the brink of speech for a few moments, then fell right in, head first.
‘See here, Cragg. A man that wants an heir is desperate. He thinks about it all the time, he dreams about it.'
The words were tumbling off his tongue. He was near to gabbling.
‘Without an heir a man's like a ship without ballast. Even without a compass. Barrenness is exactly what the Book says it is: a curse, because it knocks the compass needle off its pin. It knocks the purpose out of life.'
‘But there's a ready remedy, surely,' I put in. ‘The law allows a man to adopt an heir.'
‘Adopt? I am a naval man, sir. I would no more bring another man's child into my family than crew one of His Majesty's ships with a gang of mulattos and lascars. Such things are for buccaneers, and houses of ill-pedigree. I must have my dignity, don't you see? Dignity is honour. Nothing is more important.'
‘Did Mrs Brockletower agree with you about adoption?'
But now he was silent again, moodily pushing a stone around on the ground with the toe of his boot.
‘You do not answer me,' I persisted. ‘I fear I must repeat the question. Much hangs on it. Did Mrs Brockletower, on her part, wish to adopt a child?'
He mumbled a reluctant reply.
‘She asked me to consider it, yes. I don't see why much should hang on that.'
‘Was this recently?'
‘Oh, two or three weeks ago. A month at most.'
‘And did you consider it?'
‘Of course not,' he replied, regaining some of his briskness. ‘I dismissed the notion out of hand. I have told you why, and now will you tell me what these questions are about?'
Not wanting to lose momentum, I ignored the last demand.
‘Squire, I wonder if you asked her if she had a
particular
child in mind, for the adoption?'
‘Of course I did not! Such a thing never occurred to me. It was enough that I had quashed all further conversation on the subject.'
‘And how did she respond to your quashing?'
‘She sulked.'
‘So you quarrelled?'
‘No! Why don't you listen? I said that
she
sulked. Sulking was one of my wife's prime accomplishments.'
‘But communication did break down between you on this matter.'
‘Yes, of course it did. On that subject, it broke down completely, to my entire satisfaction.'
‘Did you consider breaking off communication with your wife … in any more drastic way?'
‘What do you mean?'
I drew a deep breath and without further thought launched the question towards him.
‘Is it true, Mr Brockletower, that you considered separation … divorce, even?'

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