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Authors: Robin Blake

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We turned off the bridle path and threaded our way through the trees, Jonah explaining that Mrs Marsden told him to take me here first, where the body had been found, before I went to the Hall. After a while, the largest clearing in this part of the wood came into view between the foliage and, at its centre, an oak so ancient that it was half decayed. What had been the original trunk still stood thirty feet high, but it was dead. The
sockets of its fallen branches had opened up, making three or four dark portholes into the interior at various heights. But a second bifurcating trunk had grown up from the same deep-set roots and this was thriving. Its leaves were budding and preparing to spread themselves in the air.
Riding nearer, but still at a distance, I heard voices and made out a small group of men and women standing in a huddle, as if meeting together in prayer. The impression was erased when they tossed back their heads in laughter at something one of them said. I was puzzled at first by an object on the ground, a grey hump a few feet from them, lying at the foot of the tree. Then I realized this must be the lady's corpse, concealed under a sheet of burlap. As we approached, the attendant group composed their faces and began watching me sidelong. I pulled up the horse and Jonah slipped to the ground. I more methodically dismounted and walked up to the tree. The small band shuffled a little further away, except for one, Philip Barkworth (author of the witticism that had enlivened the others), who stepped forward and pulled the sacking away. I looked down at what he had uncovered.
These were manifestly the remains of Dolores Brockletower, dressed in her riding outfit of scarlet dress under a black jacket. In death she was no vision of elegance, for she had died in the undignified, rump-in-the-air posture of a pig rooting out truffles. The body had gone down on a patch of almost bare earth, with arms folded under the torso, the hands pressed palm-down by the bosom, the nose pushed into the ground that had been softened by recent rain, as if attempting to inhale the earth. I lowered myself to my haunches and squinted at the neck. A bloody gash evidently began (or perhaps it ended) just below the left earlobe and jagged downwards. Losing sight of it, I rose, took a pace back, stepped around to the other side of the dead
woman, and crouched again. Here I saw, on the right-hand side, where the gash finished up (unless it had in fact started), at a spot lower down than on the other, at least two inches below the hinge of the jaw. Along the whole of its length the sloping wound was caked with a dried lip of black scab half an inch thick. In the leaf-mould below I saw the coagulated pool of gore. Suppressing a spasm of nausea I stood up and surveyed the cold, stiffening bag of flesh that had previously housed the soul of Dolores Brockletower.
There were four present, apart from the boy and myself. I looked at each of them in turn: Old Matt Thwaite, whose beard reached to his belt, the witty Barkworth, fat Jenny Milroy and pretty Susannah Shipkin.
‘Where's Timothy Shipkin?' I asked. ‘Wasn't he the finder? Susannah, where's your father?'
Susannah was a girl of seventeen with clear blue eyes, creamy skin, a raspberry mouth and full hips. She works as dairymaid at the Hall.
‘Medad's not come home, sir,' she said. ‘After he told them at Hall what he found, he didn't come back for his breakfast. Happen he's gone on to Shot's Hill. He's felling a dead beech up there.'
Shot's Hill is a tree-crested ridge the other side of the big house, a remnant of the old forest, just a hundred yards wide, with fields lying beyond it that were once part of the woodland, and are now laid to grass pasture for the squire's cows and sheep. It was strange that Timothy took himself off. For most men, the vanity of being the first finder of a woman's mysterious corpse is enough to make them stay and enjoy the glory.
‘He'll be hungry, then,' I remarked. ‘And what about the squire? Has he not been up here himself? The summons I had was from Mrs Marsden. But why does Mr Brockletower not come to bring his wife home?'
Thwaite shook his head.
‘Squire knows nowt about it, we're thinking. He's away to York on his affairs this past seven days.'
‘Is he indeed? And when expected back?'
‘Our Poll says he's to come back today, sir,' said Jenny, whose sister Polly was also a maid at the house.
‘Has anyone touched the body?'
‘We've not gone nearer to her than we are now, sir,' said Jenny.
‘None of you?'
They all shook their heads.
‘We've covered her and guarded her,' growled Thwaite, assuming the role of foreman. ‘But we've not looked close at her. Better to wait for you, sir, is what we thought.'
I considered for a moment, then pulled the sacking back over the hunched cadaver.
‘And has anything been found? Any weapon, or object, that might have caused this injury?'
The four looked at each other.
Thwaite said, ‘Not a thing, sir.'
‘Have you looked?'
They evidently had not. I strode back towards my cob.
‘I suggest you do. Quarter the ground of this clearing between you. If you find anything, keep it safe for me. Now I must go down to the Hall. I'll send back a cart and litter for the body. Stay until it comes, and in the meantime you may lay the corpse out before it stiffens.'
And so I left them, with a host of questions forming in my mind about how Dolores Brockletower had come upon her death. It did not look like an accident. But had it been by her own hand?
 
 
I
RETURNED TO THE bridleway and set the horse in a descending direction through the woods to Savage Brook, the stream that trickles past Garlick Hall. On coming into the considerable Brockletower inheritance – the Hall, its surrounding and outlying land, a fat bundle of securities, shares in toll-roads, ships and inland navigations – Ramilles had been a 26-year-old naval officer on station in the West Indies. Since this estate made him one of the wealthier gentlemen in Lancashire, he at once resigned his commission. But he returned from the navy accompanied by a surprise. He had a wife, the tall and striking-looking girl with an exotic name, a wealthy sugar-planter's daughter, so he said, whom he had encountered dancing the minuet at a ball in Jamaica.
For reasons I could not discover, the new squire took against me and my services from the start. The day after I acquainted him with his father's will, and the full extent of his sudden wealth, I received a note in his hand summarily asking me, without explanation, to send all papers relating to Brockletower family affairs to the chambers of Messrs Rudgewick & Tench, of Friar Gate, who would henceforth act for and advise him. He had given no hint of this intention on the previous day, so I replied, reminding him of how long I had served his family and
asking him to think again, as I considered Rudgewick & Tench to fall short of the decent diligence required in a family attorney. I simply received a second even curter note repeating the contents of the first and indicating that I should no longer consider myself the Brockletowers' family attorney.
As I rode down towards the brook's valley, where I would turn the horse eastward to ride up towards the house, I noted the closeness of the steep slopes on either side, out of whose red earth grew the tall and ancient trees. Forty years ago the valley floor, no more than a hundred yards broad, had been cleared and turned over to park and pasture – a pretty landscape to look at from the house. Coming down to the water, I forded it, cleared the fringe of trees on the farther bank, and trotted the cob out onto the open grass of this park. The Hall was now a furlong away, a squarely proportioned, three-storey, brick-built house with numerous tall windows and a noble slate roof. Some of the frontage was masked from my sight by a cedar of Lebanon rising in front of it, and some by a screen of scaffolds, ladders and hoists, around which lengths of canvas flapped in the breeze like sails. Builders were at work modernizing the appearance of Ramilles Brockletower's home. In amongst the trees that rose up behind the house, a belt of brown and green between the slates of the house's roof and the blue sky, coils and smudges of smoke rose into the still air: the fires of the building workers' camp.
But little of this work, or outside work of any kind, was being done at Garlick Hall at this moment. In the cobbled stable yard, grouped around the drinking trough, I counted eleven men and women, indoor and outdoor servants mixing with the builder's men, who had met to exchange observations and speculations about the violent death of their employer's wife. As I approached through the arch that divided the yard from the lane, they eyed me in expectation of news.
I swung myself from the saddle.
‘How do, Coroner?' greeted one of the group. ‘Been up in woods?'
I knew the man as an important person in the little kingdom of Garlick Hall: William Pearson, huntsman and head groom.
‘I have that,' I confirmed. ‘I come directly down from there.'
Pearson nipped one of the younger men by the earlobe and propelled him in my direction, to take charge of the cob.
‘Squire's not at home, so I understand,' I said, handing over the reins. No one contradicted me. ‘I therefore desire an immediate interview with Miss Brockletower.'
One of the young females left the group and went in with the message for the squire's sister, while the others muttered amongst themselves, and nudged one another. I strolled across to join them by the watering trough.
‘Is it true then, what Timothy says, Coroner?' asked Pearson. ‘That Mistress's throat's cut and her's bled to death?'
There seemed no reason to keep it from them, and facts are preferable to gossip. So I said, ‘Regrettably, that looks to be the case. We must send a cart as far as the bridge, and a litter so that she can be brought decently home. Will you see to it, Pearson?'
‘Aye. I'll go up myself an'all. It's likely she's murdered, is it?'
‘That is not for me to say. I must summon a jury to decide by inquest how she died.'
‘Happen inquest'll be tomorrow?'
‘If possible, the next day. It will be as soon as I can convene the jury.'
‘And at Plough Inn?'
‘You ask a lot of questions, Mr Pearson. Let me ask you one. When was the last time you – or any of you – saw your mistress alive?'
‘She went out this morning,' said Pearson. ‘I saddled the mare myself to be ready at six. That's her time to ride out in morning.'
‘Did she leave by herself?'
A groom, Isaac Barrowford, ducked his head.
‘No, she had the mare between her legs,' he murmured.
The others sniggered.
‘Don't be facetious, man,' I said curtly. ‘A gentlewoman is dead, and this is no time for joking.'
 
A few minutes later a matron of fifty, generously proportioned and with a bold handsome face, bustled out through the kitchen door. It was Bethany Marsden, grandmother of Jonah, housekeeper at Garlick Hall and a thoroughly sensible body. I beckoned her aside and we walked across the cobbles, past the barn and towards the stable block at the far end of the L-shaped yard.
‘So, Mrs Marsden, this is a shocking discovery.'
‘Yes, sir. I thought it best to send you the message without delay. With Squire away from home, we weren't sure, Miss Brockletower and I, if it was the county coroner that should attend, or the town. Then I remembered that you'd coronered the death of that young vagabond fellow that was found dead up in the Fulwood a year back. So Miss Brockletower asked me to write the note to you.'
‘It was the right thing to do. A coroner's duty is to enquire into death within his area of competence only when it is reported to him. The Fulwood belongs to Preston town, making the jurisdiction mine. The Bailiff of Preston, Mr Grimshaw, will have to be notified also, but you may leave that in my hands.'
I was conscious of sounding pompous. Pomposity is a fault inherent in all who do legal work, and I know I am often guilty of it. I ask my reader for the same measure of forbearance that
I evidently received on that day from Bethany Marsden, who either did not notice it, or accepted it as natural in a figure like myself. I cleared my throat.
‘Is, ah, Miss Brockletower very disturbed?'
‘We all are, Mr Cragg. But Miss Brockletower has taken the news calmly enough. Of course – the way she is – any sudden stroke of bad news like this leaves her, you might say, in the dark …'
‘Has anyone else been sent for?'
‘Well, the first person to think of is the doctor. But, from all that Timothy Shipkin told me, he would be a mite too late. Then the magistrate, but of course that would be squire himself, and he's not here. There's old Mr Southworth at Goosnargh that's still on the Bench after thirty-odd years, but he's …'
She paused as if hovering on the brink of an indelicacy. I completed the thought for her.
‘Not likely to be wheeling over this way in his bath chair. Precisely. Does anyone else know?'
‘Oh, I should say only everyone on the estate, by now. And Mr Woodley offered to ride over to give the news to Squire Brockletower's uncle, the vicar. So he'll have heard by now.'
‘Mr Woodley?'
‘Mr Barnabus Woodley. The gentleman that's been superintending the works to the house. He's gone off to the Rectory this past hour.'
‘When is Mr Brockletower himself expected to return?'
‘This evening.'
‘And have you heard from him since he went to York?'
‘Oh, no, not at all. He only left seven days ago.'
‘Has he not written at all, even to his wife?'
‘I believe it is some time since he wrote to his wife whilst away on business, Mr Cragg.'
I ignored the tartness in her voice.
‘Did you yourself see Mrs Brockletower when she went out this morning?'
‘I saw her, yes. She came past the kitchen at her usual time, just after six, dressed for riding.'
‘Did she speak to you?'
‘No. She went out without a word. Pearson had her hack saddled. I saw him put her up and she rode out.'
‘Does she always ride the same path?'
‘Yes, she goes a little way down the park and sheers off across the stream and up the bridleway through the woods.'
‘And you noticed nothing strange about her as she left today?'
‘No. She seemed as she always was.'
‘I should go in to speak with Miss Brockletower now.'
She led me back in through the yard door. I had always been a professional caller by the front door and had never entered Garlick Hall by any other way. Now, as we trotted along the wide stone-flagged passage between the ‘wet' kitchen and the scullery and dairy, I breathed in an agreeable compound of baking bread, bubbling broth and the lactic rankness of spilt milk in the dairy. Mrs Marsden swung open the thick panelled door at the passage's end, and took me through to the family side of the house, which centred on a spacious hall. This was temporarily in half-light, the glazed front door and windows being shaded on the outside by the scaffolders' tarpaulins. We did not cross the hall, but turned instead up the main stairs to our left. It was an old-fashioned oak stair with massive banisters and it reared darkly up to the floors above. I stopped at the stair-foot for a moment and listened. It seemed there was still nothing being done by way of building work, and the hollow quiet in this part of the house felt expectant, like a withholding of breath.
‘Miss Brockletower's sitting room is on the first floor,' said Mrs Marsden, with a trace of impatience. ‘Come on up.'
We creaked up the staircase. I wondered how it would be, this interview. I had never yet been to the upper floor of the house, and had not seen Sarah Brockletower for – what? – ten years; but it was more than twenty since we had met or spoken together.
At the first floor I was led along a panelled landing, past an array of dim family portraits, whose only clearly visible details were the starched white ruffs of a long-ago fashion. At the end Mrs Marsden opened a door, and ushered me past her.
‘It's Mr Titus Cragg to see you, miss,' she called out.
I took a hesitant couple of sidesteps past the housekeeper and walked into the middle of Sarah's room. The hall's shadows were clarity compared to this. The window curtains were drawn and no candle had been lit. Only a thin, morning firelight from the grate relieved the gloom.
Sarah sat beside the fire in a rocking chair, keeping it in creaking movement all the time. I have often noticed that it is a habit of blind people to rock, or sway, their heads and bodies as if keeping time with some interior tune that we – the sighted – cannot hear. Perhaps Sarah's rocking-chair habit was her way of domesticating that tell-tale impulse.
‘Hello, Sarah,' I said. ‘I'm sorry that we must eventually meet again only in these painful circumstances.'
‘Well, Titus, it has certainly been a long time. But it is better, I suppose, to meet like this than never to meet again until eternity. I have wondered from time to time since my parents died if you would ever come and call.'
Her voice was exactly as I remembered – light on its feet, always poised on the edge of mocking, or at least being ready to mock should the need arise. But it had also been capable of a sweetness that can still make me wince, remembering it.
Sarah Brockletower. The thoughts of her that I write now do not – cannot – in any way undermine my profound, unflagging devotion to my own Elizabeth. They do not amount to anything, in fact, except the remembered tatters of a youthful love. When I was nineteen Sarah had been a difficult creature to get to know. Closeted in Garlick Hall, she never attended assemblies, fairs, fetes or the races, and was brought in and out of church on Sundays clamped to her father's, mother's or brother's arm. But then, at a country wedding in Yolland parish church, I had found myself in the pew behind hers and, afterwards, succeeded in walking her on my arm for an hour around the Green, first convincing her of my love, and after a little while persuading her to love me. I had never in my life been so eloquent. We stole a few meetings after that, when we kissed and held hands, and we exchanged letters through a servant. That was all there was in it before her mother found us out, dismissed the servant and forbade the liaison absolutely. She laid it down as law that no blind girl could ever make a wife, still less a satisfactory mother. So Sarah resumed her anathematized life, and I was sent away to the Inns of Court to think again about the constitution of happiness.

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