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Authors: Robin Blake

BOOK: A Dark Anatomy
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‘You said it would take an hour,' I groaned. ‘It's been all night.'
Instead of replying, Furzey turned and walked out, past the turnkey who was standing immediately behind him holding a lantern, and a thick bunch of keys threaded onto an iron hoop. I followed, stepping out across the cell threshold with that slight hesitation which all prisoners feel upon release.
‘Last night Mayor had the toothache, displacing all other business,' my clerk explained over his shoulder as we made our
way along the dripping passageway that led to the stairs. ‘There was nothing I could do.'
We passed door after door, all closed and iron-bound, from which issued whining, sing-song appeals for relief in response to the sound of our tread.
‘Did you not think of Lord Derby?' I replied. ‘He would not have let me stay incarcerated in this hellish place.'
‘His lordship is on his way to London.'
‘And it was no good applying to Bailiff Grimshaw, I suppose.'
Furzey snorted.
‘Hardly. He's hardened his heart against you. '
Soon we had climbed back to the daylight. As we left the Moot Hall the sun was bright, and my spirits lifted, though I felt much in need of clean linen and a shave.
 
Elizabeth greeted me at home with a shriek, some brief tears, and a set of fresh underwear. Less than an hour later, having breakfasted, I was sitting in Gilliflower the barber's chair in the Shambles, with lather covering my lower face. The street door opened and shut behind me.
‘So, did the prisoner reflect with profit on his crimes?'
The laughing voice was not that of the barber. Luke Fidelis had come in.
‘The lock-up is a bad place for reflection, Luke,' I retorted. ‘Cold and damp. Rats. The incessant cries of the damned in one's ears. But what about you? Did you meet the lady, and buy the forceps?'
‘The less said about any lady the better, Titus, but the forceps are a ridiculous contraption, and positively dangerous to the unborn, as anyone can see except the conceited fool who invented them.'
‘When did you get back?'
‘Not until late, and half dead, so I dived straight into bed. Didn't learn of your incarceration until Furzey told me at your office, a few minutes ago. What in heaven's name happened?'
I related my wife's discovery behind our beehives.
‘The body was cold, you say?'
‘Quite cold.'
‘Had it stiffened yet?'
‘It was stiff as a log.'
‘And had you yourself been in the garden during the previous twenty-four hours?'
‘No, not for days.'
Luke laughed again.
‘And yet you were arrested! The stupidity of our bailiff is boundless.'
‘It isn't stupidity. It is vindictiveness.'
‘That's the same thing, in his case.'
‘I don't think so. Grimshaw wanted to demonstrate his power. That was his whole intention. He knows I didn't kill the architect.'
Gilliflower finished with my face. After patting the remnants of soap from my jowls he allowed me to rise. As I paid him, Fidelis took my place in the chair.
‘Come with me to look at Woodley,' I said. ‘They have him in the Old Friary.'
Fidelis took out his pocket watch.
‘I am expecting a caller at my lodging in thirty minutes,' he said. ‘But he will not keep me long. Come then and I will go with you. We have much to discuss.'
 
 
F
ISHER GATE LEADS west from the Moot Hall, just as Church Gate heads east. Both these thoroughfares are lined by a mix of houses, ancient and new, but generally well found and creditable to the town. They lie along the length of the high bluff, or ridge, which runs parallel to the north side of the Ribble valley, placing us between the river to the south and the moor and forest to the north. It is our height that gives the town its healthy and advantageous position. Houses on the north side of Church Gate and Fisher Gate look out across to the moor, but those on the south command a prospect of river and the old road that snakes across it and away to the villages of Leyland and Chorley and the undulating country beyond. Far fells lie to the east while in the west the flat marshes stretch to the coast.
Fidelis lodged on this more favourable southern side of Fisher Gate, at the house of Lorris, the bookbinder, of whom I was a good customer and friend. I had myself secured the rooms for the young doctor after convening an inquest on their previous tenant, Lorris's aged father-in-law, who had created a vacancy by fatally setting fire to himself. Repaired and repainted, the rooms were pleasant and spacious, on the top floor of the premises, looking onto the street on one side, and over the roof of the playhouse to the distant country on the other.
Admitting me to the hall, Lorris's lady gave me a quizzical look. She clearly already knew where I had lodged overnight – as, I guessed, did most of the town.
‘It was a cruel thing, Titus,' she said. ‘The bailiff is no friend of ours after this.'
‘Thank you, Joan. He has his reasons for what he did, I must suppose.'
‘Not reason enough, anyway.'
A big-boned lad came clumping down the stairs, carrying a leather valise, the contents of which clanked metallically. Glancing at him, I realized it was the young artist's assistant who had waited in the anteroom at Patten House during his master Winstanley's audience with Lord Derby. Having collected his greatcoat, he departed with only a mumbled farewell and I asked Joan Lorris if she knew his name. She did not, only that he had arrived ten minutes before to see Dr Fidelis.
The doctor himself came down a minute later, in coat and hat. I said goodbye to his landlady and we set out.
‘The young fellow I have just seen leaving the house,' I said as we crossed Fisher Gate and started down Chapel Lane, which cuts through to Friar Gate. ‘What's his name?'
‘That's George.'
‘I've seen him at Patten House, with the portrait painter Winstanley.'
‘He's Winstanley's assistant, or apprentice. And according to himself with more talent below the joint of his thumb than Winstanley in his entire body. They've been staying at the Bull whilst painting his lordship.'
‘Was George here to paint you, too?'
Luke laughed.
‘No. I am not yet ready to be made immortal. George takes a strong interest in the anatomy of the body. He came to
borrow some instruments, because he wants to dissect a fox, so he says. Dr Dapperwick with whom he has taken instruction is so long retired and so poor that he has none of the latest engines and contrivances.'
‘Dapperwick!'
In my excitement I jumped ahead of Luke and turned to stop him in his tracks.
‘I saw the doctor last week at his house, just after your departure for York. It was part of the inquiry into the missing body. He obviously couldn't help. But he mentioned he had a young assistant, whom mysteriously he would not name.'
Fidelis nodded.
‘That's George. Dapperwick employs him chiefly as a draughtsman, but he has helped him in dissection too. Dapperwick has palsy and his fingers are all but paralysed.'
‘I have seen them. But why would a boy artist, of all people, want to learn anatomy?'
We resumed out walk.
‘George holds,' said Luke, ‘that in order to draw the outside of the body perfectly one must first become intimate with its inside.'
‘And he says he has a fox to dissect, does he? Suppose his fox is really a lady. Suppose it was your friend George that stole that corpse from Garlick Hall – which is still not found, by the way.'
‘George would not do such a thing by himself. He has no connection with the Hall and is not yet sixteen.'
‘Young as that, is he? I would say seventeen or eighteen, by his looks.'
‘He appears old for his years, but still wouldn't commit such a crime, I am certain. He's called to be a painter, not a transported criminal.'
‘If you say so, Luke. You know the boy.'
‘Can we think of who else might have purloined the body?'
‘There are the building workers at Garlick Hall,' I said, ‘Let me tell you what happened there yesterday.'
By the time we turned out of Chapel Lane and reached the end of Friar Gate I had told him about the previous day's stand-off between workmen and soldiers.
‘It's suspicious,' Fidelis agreed as we rested a moment at Friar Gate Bar.
‘Yes, but I'm damned if I know where it gets us to.'
‘It helps, Titus. Consider this: the men professed to be concerned about damage to the temple, in case Woodley would not pay them. But this would not concern them if they knew he was dead. It's a beautifully balanced proposition. If the men killed Woodley, the corpse is not hidden in the temple; and if it is in the temple, they must not have killed Woodley.'
‘But I say again, where does that lead us?'
Fidelis gestured to the ancient stone remains of the Friary on the other side of the Bar.
‘Let's have a look at Woodley. Maybe he can tell us something.'
 
The friars' church had long ago been pulled down, but the surviving buildings were put to use by the town as a House of Correction. Unlike the Moot Hall lock-up, where I had spent my uncomfortable night, this was a place for the proven malefactor, once the Mayor had passed sentence of imprisonment. The friars' cells were the sleeping quarters and the refectory was the workshop, while the old kitchens, scullery and wash-house still functioned in their original capacity. We found Woodley lying still fully clothed on a table in a room close to the latter. It was pervaded by the smell of slimy water. I thought how little
this delicate man would have enjoyed his situation, had he been aware of it.
His white shirt-front was browned with dirt, so that it almost matched his breeches. The arms lay straight and close to the body. Testing the stiffness of the arms, Fidelis looked as best he could at the inside of the coat sleeves, then at the throat, before turning his attention at last to the head-wound. He tilted the body, inspected the dried blood down the back and then began carefully feeling the slim body all over, pinching and palpitating the muscle and flesh from shoulders to ankles. He looked closely at the scratches to the boyish face, eyed and smelled the inside of the mouth, did likewise with the blank eyes, and the hands. Finally he opened the breeches and examined what lay within.
‘I think the rigor is past its extreme,' he said at last when he had returned Woodley to modesty. ‘If so, he was killed yesterday, early in the morning.'
‘And he died from the head wound?'
‘Undoubtedly.'
‘Struck from behind, then.'
‘Only if you assume he was attacked. I have seen injuries like this in men who fell drunk from their horses, though I admit in this case the skull is more deeply split.'
‘Consistent,' I suggested, ‘with assault by a hand-axe?'
Fidelis leaned again over the broken cranium, running his finger into the jagged, bloody crack.
‘That would do it,' he murmured. ‘But why are you so specific?'
‘I found such an axe near the body. Grimshaw has it now. I was holding it in my hand when he came to the garden. He pretended to believe I'd just used it.'
‘The villain!'
‘Quite. If you have seen enough, let's go up to my garden. It's only five minutes from here. I'll show you where I found the weapon.'
 
Within twenty minutes we had looked over the whole garden and toured its perimeter. We noted the complete absence of blood on the ground where the body had lain, proving this had not been where Woodley died. I showed Fidelis where I found the hatchet, inside the breach in the fence, and we agreed that, from the fence's appearance, it looked as if it was penetrated from the outside by someone who'd arrived on a horse (the hoofmarks were still faintly visible), using the hand-axe for the purpose.
‘Here's what I think happened,' said Fidelis. ‘Woodley was killed somewhere else, possibly with the axe, and brought here across the rump of a horse. The bringer dropped the axe after breaking through the fence. Then he dragged the corpse from the horse and into the garden. The soil on Woodley's shirt-front and inside his sleeves, and the scratches on his face, are there because the killer had hold of the feet, or legs, with the face and body turned down and the arms going up as they trailed in the dirt.'
‘Couldn't the face have been scratched before Woodley died? A fight of some kind?'
‘No. The flesh was damaged, but not bleeding. It happened when his corpse was dragged along the ground.'
‘So once his killer had dragged the corpse to the selected place, he arranged it tidily, with the arms along the sides.'
‘Yes.'
‘So at that point the body was still limp?'
‘Exactly. The whole thing was done within five hours of the murder, or he would not have been able to rearrange the arms without forcing the shoulder-joints, which he did not do.'
‘This has been most useful, I think.'
I realized that the last thirty minutes had been stimulating. The vile chamber I'd been forced to spend the night in had gone from my mind and I forgot the bailiff's deliberate injury to me and my pride. I was enjoying myself and so, I could see, was Luke Fidelis.
‘Come away,' I said. ‘and let's get a drink. There's more to talk about.'
 
We sat in the parlour of the Friary Bar Inn with a bottle of claret between us. I thanked Fidelis for his two letters from York, and told him they confirmed what I had found out independently: that Ramilles Brockletower had wanted to divorce his wife. I asked that he complete the story of his enquiries there.
‘I shall,' he said, ‘but let me deal first with the squire's movements on the night before Mrs Brockletower died, when he was on his way home. I have now ridden the whole road from where Brockletower stayed on the Monday night, and am convinced he could not possibly have made the journey to Fulwood, killed his wife, and returned to his lodging in Yorkshire in time. In short, I am certain that, contrary to our reasonable suspicion, he was not his wife's killer.'
‘Well, I never wanted that to be true.'
Fidelis raised a finger and smiled his clever and faintly vulpine smile.
‘But he may have procured someone to do it.'
‘I know. But who?'
‘Well, it is something else that my friend the backgammon player confided. It concerns Mr Barnabus Woodley. He was known in York.'
‘He certainly styled himself Woodley of York, as if he owned the city.'
‘But if this fellow Sumption is right, the city disowned Woodley. He came there, it appears, from Lichfield. And after a stay of less than a year word followed that he had been investigated by the Dean of Lichfield about a fraud he perpetrated on the cathedral, after he was employed in some repairs.'
‘What fraud?'
‘They say he absconded with fifty pounds that he did no work for.'
‘Had he done anything like it before?'
‘When he fell under suspicion at York, the Recorder wrote to fellow recorders in the cities Woodley is known to have lived in: as well as Lichfield there was Bristol, Exeter and Plymouth. The man had fallen under suspicion in each place before moving on.'
It took me a few moments to absorb this startling information.
‘Did they not take him up in York, then, to answer the charges?'
Fidelis shook his head.
‘Archbishop Blackburne would not allow it. He was charmed by Woodley and, besides, has a deadly dislike for the Bishop of Lichfield. So he protected Woodley and gave him work at Bishopsthorpe and elsewhere. It was he that recommended him to his cousin Ramilles Brockletower. The archbishop is notoriously dissolute. People in York say he looks kindly on all sins except matricide.'
‘So Woodley lay under suspicion. But was he a murderer?'
‘If he was, and Brockletower paid him to kill the fair Dolores, the squire might well have felt that Woodley himself shouldn't continue to breathe.'

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