Dark Waters (17 page)

The noise diminished to a low grumble. Biggs cleared his throat, looked round at Grimshaw as if in search of courage, then fixed his eyes on Maggie, now halfway to the ground in Mallender's unyielding grip. She was sobbing in bewilderment. Biggs raised his eyes and surveyed the crowd. I had never estimated William Biggs highly. He had all the self-regard that drove his friend Grimshaw, but lacked the other's boldness, energy and enterprise. To compare the two men in their appearance confirmed that impression: Grimshaw's features were broad, with mobile, small and cunning eyes; while Biggs had a narrow, unconfident face, a beaky nose and the rolling, vacant eyes of a horse.

‘Now, hear me, please – IF YOU PLEASE – hear me!' Biggs began, in a quavering voice. ‘I am sorry to inform you that one of the candidates for May Queen – I mean Maggie Satterthwaite here – is, well, she is
disqualified.
'

The crowd roared back its disapproval.

‘It can't be helped, it can't,' Biggs went on. ‘Now listen to me! Here is the reason. Word has reached us – we have intelligence, you see – that she can no longer pretend to be a maid. So of course—'

His words were engulfed in a storm of hoots and popular denunciation.

‘Not a maid?' they shouted. ‘Get away! None of them's that! Had her yourself, have you?'

But Biggs persisted.

‘No. By the most ancient tradition, I have to tell you, it is required that the May Queen must be a – a – well, a virgin pure.'

He spread his palms wide.

‘So we have no choice. She must be excluded.'

He drew himself up and declaimed as if to the sky.

‘So now, I go on to perform a very happy duty. It falls to me as mayor to give news that this coming year's May Queen is to be—'

But before he could pronounce the name that would ring with such satisfaction in Burgess Grimshaw's ear, the crowd's anger and frustration overflowed. The mayor looked down and saw that Maggie had been wrenched from Oswald Mallender's grasp and hoisted onto the shoulders of two strong young men. The girl's slim figure wilted and swayed like a reed but gradually her tear-stained face began to smile and then to laugh. She was borne at a jog trot away into the square, three times around the well and the obelisk, and then back in triumph to the stage. To the mob's delight they found that the burgesses had begun fleeing the scene in alarm. The last to launch himself from the stage onto his horse's back was Grimshaw, his face set in a hard scowl as he beckoned his niece towards him and hauled her down bodily to sit behind him. Then he began forcing the animal through the melee with rough curses and shouts of ‘Make way!'

No sooner had Grimshaw exited the stage than Maggie was deposited back on it. Her two remaining defeated rivals still stood at the back with Eliza Tempest, none of them knowing what to do. The young men who had chaired Maggie round the obelisk were in no doubt, however. One of them spoke to Eliza while another brought a stool and placed it at the centre of the stage. Maggie was seated on the stool, flanked by the other two girls as maidens of honour. Then Eliza stepped forward. In spite of the unusual circumstances, she was determined to make all she could of this, her last duty as May Queen. With a flourish she removed the chaplet of flowers from her head, raised it high to show the crowd, and spun like a dancer through 90 degrees to face Maggie. She held the crown for a suspenseful moment over her successor, then lowered it. As she removed her hands and stepped back, a jubilant cheer rose from the throats of the people. They had seen the crowning of the Queen of their choice and, no less happily, pricked the pomposity of the corporation.

I admit that it made me happy too. The look on Grimshaw's face as he rode through the rout of people had prompted a memory of what my father had once told me. Not so long ago bulls and bears had been baited in this very Market Place by mastiff dogs, for public entertainment. As a boy my father had been taken to see the last bear to have been baited there. It was kept in a cage with iron bars but, he said, it had not looked dangerous in the slightest, only rueful and chapfallen, like a gambler who had gone ‘all in' at cards, and lost the hand. That is a fair description of the look on Grimshaw's face as he rode home, with his niece riding rump.

Half an hour later I stepped into the office, meaning to complete a little paperwork. I had pulled out my desk chair without looking down and, on sitting, was aware of something round, followed immediately by a sharp crack as my weight crushed it. Moments later a damp viscidity was soaking into my breeches. I stood up to investigate: I had sat on, and broken, a large raw egg, concealed under a cloth.

‘Furzey, come in here!' I called. My clerk came in. I pointed to the crushed shell and mess of albumen on my chair.

‘What in heaven's name is this – this – this mess?'

‘You have sat on an egg, sir. A goose egg.'

‘A goose egg? How did it get there?'

‘I put it there.'

My voice rose almost to the pitch of a roar.

‘You did
WHAT?
'

Furzey's face was without expression. He regarded me for a few moments, then turned and shuffled back towards his part of the office. At the door he turned once more, his face a mask of gravity.

‘I beg to inform you, sir, that you are a May gosling,' he said.

Chapter Twelve

C
ONSIDERATIONS OF DIGNITY
should not come between a man and his journal. So sitting late that evening to write up the events of the week by my library fire, I did not withold an account of Furzey's May Day goose egg. I even appended a gloss from Mr Spectator that ‘
a Jest is never uttered with a better Grace than when it is accompanied with a serious Countenance'.
That was the essence, in effect, of Furzey's character: frivolity disguised as black mourning.

As I wrote I reflected on the puzzling week that had passed. In the course of it I had dealt unevenly with two unexpected deaths, holding an inquest into one – with what I now thought doubtful results – and not acting in time to proceed to inquest on the other, when it appears that I should have. As long as the two cases were firmly separable from each other I could tell myself they were merely instances of unsatisfactory luck. Only if they came together might they become magnified into a concatenation of bad judgement.

I told Elizabeth as much later that night.

‘To have two humps is not a burden to the camel,' I said. ‘But now they are merging into one – a great towering single hump – and it weighs heavy on the spine.'

‘My poor camel!' teased Elizabeth. ‘Depressed by such heavy metaphors.'

I sighed.

‘You joke, but my ill luck's beginning to look more like ill decision.'

She touched my hand more sympathetically.

‘No, my dearest. How it looks to you is one thing. But no one else will see my uncle's drowning and Mr Allcroft's sudden illness as tied together.'

‘Because they don't know the facts as I do. And as does Luke Fidelis.'

‘What are these facts, then?'

‘They are few, but of importance. They all lead back to the same family, you see. Maggie Satterthwaite resented being sacked from her job at the Ferry Inn. Isaac Satterthwaite lives on the road between the inn and the place where your uncle went into the water. It could have been Isaac that Dick Middleton heard him talking to that night. Isaac's method of poisoning rats looks the same as that possibly used to poison John Allcroft, at the very inn where Maggie now works.'

‘That might all be nothing but circumstance. If Uncle simply fell into the water, and Allcroft also died by accident, or illness, your connection melts away into chance and change all round.'

This time I groaned.

‘Yes, I know. Chance and change. But what keeps me awake is the chance that they both appear on the Whigs' list of Tory voters. So does Nick Oldswick, and he told me this morning that a man took a swing at him with a cudgel in the dark. And if these men died or were attacked because they were Tory voters, that would indeed change everything.'

‘These may be unconnected events. Are there not scores of others on the list, Titus? And the election surely cannot swing on there being two or three fewer Tory votes.'

‘I know, I do know. But knowing does not make me easy in my mind about this business.'

‘Then you must settle your mind, Husband. You must go on inquiring until you get to the truth.'

It was later as I lay in bed, still turning these things over in my head, that I saw the need to know more about John Allcroft. If indeed he was murdered, it might still have nothing to do with the election, or with Antony Egan. It might be a private matter. Or even have to do with the passion for the Pretender that, as my mother-in-law put it, possessed Allcroft. I turned over to sleep, resolving to apportion Saturday morning between a visit to Allcroft's widow and a further conference with Fidelis.

*   *   *

John Allcroft had originally farmed at Barton to the north-west of Preston, near to Elizabeth's parents. But in about 1735 he had inherited a second parcel of land, which stood on the diagonally opposite side of town, at Gregson. The farm was substantial but had been neglected and was in need of close management, so he and his wife had gone to live there, putting an overseer into the Barton house to look after their Fylde interests.

Gregson lies out in the country towards Hoghton Tower, so it was in that direction that I was bound as I crossed Walton Bridge at half past eight next morning. I immediately put the chestnut mare into a smart trot along the Hoghton road. I aimed to interview the widow and be back in town by midday.

After making enquiries for her at Gregson, I was directed to the village of Hoghton a couple of miles further on, where my quarry had gone to shop and pay a visit to a cousin in that village. Arriving there and spotting her almost immediately, coming out of the grocer's with some small purchases, I dismounted and, tying my horse to a rail, approached her with a greeting from my mother-in-law as the easiest method of falling into conversation. She consented to my suggestion that I carry her packages as far as the cousin's cottage, which lay at the village end.

Mrs Allcroft was a haughty woman. She was just two days widowed and yet, when I asked her about her late husband, she seemed more anxious about his reputation than his passing.

‘My husband was a leader of men, Mr Cragg. That was his character. When he spoke, men listened. When he took action, men took it with him. When he told of consequences, there were consequences indeed.'

‘In what field would that be? In farming and husbandry, perhaps?'

‘He had strong views in that direction, most certainly. But I refer to the world of affairs. Only last week he called a meeting here in Gregson and twenty-six attended. Think of that. Twenty-six, no less, coming at his bidding.'

We were at that moment walking past the Hoghton Arms. I indicated it with my thumb.

‘At this inn, was it, the meeting?'

She almost spat at the suggestion.

‘There? John would lose a thousand head of Cotswold sheep before he set foot inside there. On principle. No, the meeting was at the Royal Oak.' She gestured towards the rising ground beyond. ‘Over the hill.'

‘And what was the meeting about?'

‘Why, to make a compact to go to Preston and all to vote against that heretic Hoghton in the election. To oust him from Parliament where he does nothing good, only play lackey to the criminal Walpole and the Germans.'

‘The men attending must have been freemen of Preston, then, if they had the power to vote. I did not know there were so many of those hereabout.'

‘As well as John, twelve of them are free in Preston. The rest came to listen to the argument, and by the end all of them were in agreement. He was that satisfied when he came home, was John. “That's a baker's dozen of votes secured against that Geneva-soaked so-and-so,” as he told me. “Now we must do the same all round.”'

‘Geneva-soaked, did he call him? Surely Sir Henry does not drink gin, Mrs Allcroft.'

‘It would not surprise me if he did. But it is the impiety of Genevan religion that he imbibes in greater quantities. And he expects all his tenants to imbibe it along of him.'

‘Well, not being tenants, these twelve men were free to do and think as they liked.'

‘Indeed. All freeholders, they were. They even outfaced Hoghton's steward, when he had the effrontery to burst into the room and rant like a madman that his master was God's candidate and any man who opposed him was damned to hell. My husband stood up and wilted the man's linen in a minute. Now I am obliged to you for carrying my things.'

By a change in demeanour, rather than by any word – in the manner of a duchess, perhaps, at the York Assembly Rooms – Mrs Allcroft let it be known that our conversation was at an end. I put in a last question as we reached her cousin's gate.

‘Mrs Allcroft – one more thing. Why did you so quickly collect your husband's remains and take them home for burial?'

She turned on the path and pulled the gate shut between us.

‘Because that's the proper thing, Mr Cragg.'

‘Did you know that as coroner it is my business to inquire into any unexpected deaths?'

‘I do that.'

‘Do you not think your husband's was unexpected?'

She was suddenly overtaken by emotion.

‘It was a blow,' she said with a catch in her voice. ‘A mighty blow. But all death comes to shock us, which we are taught we must endure.'

I decided on a hard line: I was damned if this high-minded matron, widowed or not, was going to elude me.

‘This was no ordinary death, madam. I must warn you that I am considering opening an inquest, and if I do I shall require your husband's body.'

She gasped.

‘What can you mean?'