The Hidden Man (16 page)

John Barton was down on his knees in one of the horse boxes, feeling the legs of an imposing mare. He was a small, skinny, slightly hunched figure whose complexion looked oddly pasty on a countryman in the business of exercising high-mettled racers day after day in the open air. His mouth was thin, and twisted sardonically beneath a narrow, bent nose.

As I approached the horse box my shadow fell across the mare's eyes and she snorted, her feet skittering.

‘Be careful, man,' warned Barton, immediately springing to his feet and going to the head of the horse. ‘This animal here's the Flanders Mare, or Molly we call her in the stable. She spooks easy,
and
she belongs to the Mayor of Preston, Mr Ephraim Grimshaw. He'll not thank you or me if she rears and hurts herself before the Guild races.'

The way in which he stroked the mare's nose to calm her reminded me of a magician making passes over a crystal ball, and Barton's gesture certainly worked a kind of magic. As his hand floated down and across her nose, which displayed a startling white flash, Molly immediately became placid.

Barton came out of the box, then carefully closed and bolted the lower half of the door before turning to me.

‘I'm talking to Mr Cragg from town, am I not? What brings you up to Peel Hall Stables?'

‘It was you that brought in Adam Thorn after his brain seizure. I just wanted a word about that.'

Barton turned his head sharply towards me, his pallid green eyes narrowing.

‘Adam Thorn is dead, then?'

‘Why do you assume that?'

‘Last time I heard your name being spoken, you were Coroner. You deal in death.'

‘Thorn isn't dead,' I said. ‘However, he may die at any time. In that event, I shall need to convene an inquest and I make it my business to be properly prepared.'

‘Ah!'

With a gesture he indicated that we move away from the Flanders Mare's box and into the centre of the space between the rows of horse boxes. As we walked I noticed that his eyes strayed to the roof of the stable block opposite, or perhaps to the sky. They did not at any time look at me.

‘So, what d'you want to know?' he asked.

John Barton's tone hesitated on the edge of sneering superciliousness. I always try not to leap into judgement of any man, but I found myself instinctively disliking him.

‘Will you tell me, please, the precise circumstances of how you found Adam?'

‘I was riding out on the Moor on King Alfred, one of Lord Strange's string that I keep for him. He's a five year old that His Lordship thinks in his wisdom will make a big success down south. Well it's true he is fast, though if you ask me he's as mad a scrub as I ever saw, which will go all against him at Newmarket and Epsom.'

‘Were you alone when you rode out?'

‘That's what I'm saying. King Alfred won't work with other horses. He only wants to fight them.'

‘So what did you find during the ride?'

‘It wasn't a ride. I was not out for a hack. It was what we call a brushing gallop – that means a fast one.'

‘And?'

‘Well, I was passing the Bale Stone at speed when I saw him – you understand where I mean?'

I nodded.

‘I didn't know him right away. We were flying past and I just got a glimpse – that is all I'd call it – of a man on his knees beside the Stone groaning. I just thought it was some religious fanatic that was praying. But when I pulled the beast up after another furlong, and was trotting back towards the place, he had lurched sideways and fallen to the ground. So I rode up and dismounted, and it was Adam Thorn. He was thrashing about, exactly as a horse will when it's cast in its box, and also he was crying out all the time. I spoke to him but he didn't seem to hear. I touched him but he took no notice. Then all of a sudden he convulsed, like, and after that he just lay still. He was insensible, but staring, like a man I once saw lightning-struck. And his head was pouring blood. He must have hit on a stone in his fit.'

‘What did you do?'

‘Slung him over the withers of the horse and rode him home to that ever so pretty young wife of his.'

His smile was mirthless, but not meaningless. His tongue slipped out furtively, not just to wet his lips but, as I thought, to give point to his estimation of Mrs Thorn.

‘It took all my powers to get that bloody horse not to throw us off.'

‘Were you acquainted, you and the Thorns? Before these events?'

‘Yes. Adam and me – we knew each other.'

‘Was Adam ever a guest in your house?'

‘A few times.'

‘And you took a jar of ale at the Thorn place sometimes?'

Barton shook his head, still smiling, but the smile had grown openly insincere, almost threatening.

‘No. He never had the money for ale. But I bought eggs off her – the wife.'

‘Were you on good terms?'

‘What d'you want to know for?'

‘I am just trying to establish—'

Cutting me off with a laugh, but such a laugh as you hear from a man growing inwardly angry, and outwardly defensive.

‘No. Don't excuse yourself, there's no need.'

The voice was even and the emphasis light, but I was left in no doubt from the look in his eyes of Barton's hostility. He went on in the same way:

‘I see the truth in your eyes, Mr Coroner Cragg. You were just looking for a way to plant the seed of an accusation. You think maybe Thorn and me fell out, and maybe had a fight, and maybe I knocked him down – yes?'

I did not reply, although I might have said that I had indeed been entertaining all of those maybes.

‘Well, let me make it plain,' he went on without a pause. ‘We were on friendly terms, too friendly to have a fight. So anyone saying otherwise – well, they'll soon learn that John Barton does not only know how the law works – he knows how to work the law.'

He stepped a pace back from me. The false merriment was gone from his face, which now displayed the kind of icy satisfaction of one that has fired a gun, and hit the middle of the target.

‘Now I have work to finish,' he added. ‘Will you very kindly be off with you?'

So I had little option but to leave him.

*   *   *

I rode up to the Moor, a rolling wind-scoured tract of houseless semi-scrub, almost a mile across, which wrapped itself around the northern boundary of the town. Once the area had been thickly wooded, but all the trees save a few thorns and coarse bushes had long ago been cut down. Now the place was good for nothing but casual activities like rabbit-snaring, grazing animals, courting and the Preston races.

Half way to the Bale Stone itself my horse entered onto the racecourse, along which John Barton had been riding on Lord Strange's racer at the time that, according to him, he'd played the Good Samaritan. The track was a strip, ten-yards wide and laid with tufty turf, that undulated around the Moor in a course of about two miles. I stayed on it until the Stone came into sight, on a small hillock or vantage point to my left. This sizeable mass of granite, irregular in shape but with a broad, flat upper surface, seemed to preside over the Moor with a certain dismal menace. Some said it was the remnant of a cromlech or standing stone; others an altar set up by our ancestors for sacrificial killings, whether animal or – as some would relate with a theatrical shudder – human. This had given it a certain superstitious notoriety, and in the main the people of Preston steered clear of the Stone.

Even though I have no truck with such nonsense, I will admit that my heart was thudding a little fearfully as I tethered my horse. I approached the Stone and put my hand on it, seeming to feel some sort of warmth, though this must have been my fancy for a cool breeze was blowing and there had been no sun all day.

I paced around it, looking down at the ground. Here and there I crouched or went down on one knee to peer beneath the Stone's overhang. There was a good deal of thick furzy undergrowth, and here and there the bones of small creatures, but nothing notable. I then climbed up – not without difficulty – and stood on the Stone itself where I turned through a full revolution. For a spot only a short distance from habitation it felt bleak and lonely, I thought, as I took in the line of Preston's roofs and smoking chimneys to the south, the distant fells to the east, the northern villages and settlements, with Cadley among them, and the flat cultivated Fylde stretching away to the sea in the west.

I looked in particular towards Peel Hall, and the stables I had just left, and then swung my eyes to the right. There, by the hollow-way known as Peel Hall Lane, was the Thorns' hovel. I decided to make my way down there and see if I could further my double enquiry – into his seizure, as well as the possible treasure he may have found.

*   *   *

As the door lay open I knocked on the door-post and Amity Thorn appeared. She carried a child on her hip.

‘How do, Mr Cragg?' she said, without much enthusiasm.

‘I was passing your house, Amity, and thought I should call and see how you were faring after your fall.'

‘I'm well enough.'

‘And Adam?' I asked.

‘Oh, he's just the same. I don't know what to do nor think. Sometimes I am convinced he has no more wit than a carrot; others, I get the feeling he's still himself inside: concealed, but there, thinking and listening, though not able to move a muscle or say a word.'

‘May I see him?'

She showed me through to the darkened room where her man lay. I bent over him and whispered.

‘Adam! Can you hear me? This is Titus Cragg, the Coroner. I've come up here on the business of the silver spoon you found. Let me be plain. If you have found more silver like it, then you cannot keep it, you know. It must be given up to an inquest, that I shall conduct, with the purpose of determining whether the silver have an owner, or be treasure trove and the property of the King.'

I studied his face. It did not move. Was his wife right in her suspicions? Was Adam Thorn somehow awake and aware inside a cruelly pinioned body? Or was he no more sensible than a vegetable, alive but devoid of thought, of sense, of feelings, dreams, language?

On returning to the other room it was clear that Amity had been listening carefully at the door.

‘I heard you speak of treasure to him, Mr Cragg,' she said. ‘The doctor said something of the kind too, and Adam did himself, more than once.'

‘Did he? What led him to be interested in that?'

‘He'd been talking to some men in a tavern, that's all. I thought there were nowt in it, only talk. But, Mr Cragg, if Adam did find treasure would the King give him a reward?'

‘Yes, I think he would, if Adam truly has unearthed some treasure trove.'

‘What does that mean, Sir? Not everything you find is the King's, I'm sure, or we'd never have an end to giving him things.'

‘Treasure trove is valuables that have been hidden long ago. By ancient law they belong to the Crown, but the King is always grateful to a person that makes such a find, and likes to reward him, you know. However, I see obstacles to such a happy outcome.'

‘What are those?'

‘As Coroner, my task would be to summon a jury to decide the matter by an inquest. But first there must be a treasure. One spoon which may or may not be a part of a treasure will not be enough on its own. Until we do have a quantity of things there is nothing the Coroner can do at all. But even if we do find the treasure, we still must have evidence how it was placed when found, for which the only witness would seem to be Adam. And if he is to be a witness, of course, he needs his wits, which I am sorry to see he has not got.'

I was a little pleased with this touch of word play, though it seemed wasted on Amity, who was chewing her lip.

‘If I could waken him up, I would, Mr Cragg. But he won't come around.'

‘Then I cannot see how he can tell us what he found, and where it is now.'

It occurred to me that having no actual treasure, but only the rumour of one, might be thought by the Thorns to be an advantage, a bargaining point. Amity had already told Fidelis how Adam had run on about an ‘old soldier' who'd buried a fortune in silver. Perhaps she knew more than she had cared to reveal. Perhaps she knew all about Benjamin Peel and the Corporation's silver. If so, she would know, too, that Grimshaw was not the type to reward poor cottagers who brought in Corporation property that they had merely happened upon. But he would surely pay for something he wanted, if this were the only way he could have it.

‘You don't by any chance know where it is, do you, Amity? You haven't taken charge of what your husband found, and hidden it again?'

Her eyes widened in surprise at my suspicion.

‘No Sir! I'd have told you. I've not seen owt like that.'

I watched her face, looking for signs of concealment. There were none.

‘That's a pity,' I said. ‘It would be good to know if this so-called treasure even exists.'

*   *   *

Riding back to town, along the edge of the Moor and coming in by Tithebarn Street, I was thinking my expedition had achieved little. I did not believe Amity was hiding anything from me and, though I had no doubt that John Barton was capable of doing so, I had no evidence of that either. My inspection of the Bale Stone had yielded nothing and now I noticed that the mare was increasingly favouring her nearside forefoot. I cursed. It seemed the outcome of my afternoon would be nothing but a lame horse.

After dismounting and leading the animal the last half mile, I handed the mare over at Lawson's Livery, where the animal was stabled, and where a stone lodged in the hoof was the resident farrier's diagnosis. I left the man to deal with it and walked home to Cheapside, where I found Elizabeth counting linen for the laundry. Immediately our talk made me see that I had made more progress with investigating Benjamin Peel's hidden treasure than I realized. I had been telling her how much I had disliked John Barton – the way he laughed, and the way that his slithery tongue had betrayed a lascivious thought of Amity Thorn.