The Hidden Man (19 page)

‘It was pushed into that corner, see?' said Hazelbury, ‘Under the lower shelf. It's that dark down there, I only found it by going down on one knee and feeling for it.'

‘Just so, but it makes me wonder,' said Fidelis, murmuring more to himself than to me or Hazelbury.

Fidelis took one of the candles and put it on the floor near the shadowed corner space. Then he stooped to peer into it, before working his way along the length of the shelf, bringing the candle along in one hand while holding the shelf's edge with the other. In this way he searched the space under the shelf from one end to the other.

‘Aha!' he exclaimed suddenly, when he was almost finished. ‘So there it is!'

He reached down and brought something out, which at first I could not properly see.

‘What have you got, Luke?'

Instead of replying Fidelis pushed past us out of the strong room, and examined his find by the light of the window. I joined him there.

‘You see?' he said. ‘Here it is!'

And I did see: he held in his hand a gentleman's wig, whose underside was stained with quantities of encrusted blood.

For some moments I was dumbstruck, and then exclaimed,

‘Good God, Fidelis, you are a wonder!'

I rubbed my chin and considered the wig, a quite ordinary type such as one sees scores of times in the course of a day. This one, however, was in a sorry state, not only bloodstained but with its side curls unravelled and its tails torn.

‘Hazelbury, can you confirm this was Mr Pimbo's wig?'

Hazelbury said he would not swear to it, but it was of the type that Pimbo customarily wore.

‘But doctor,' he added, ‘how on earth did it get into this state? I understand the blood, if he was wearing it when he … you know. But it's been attacked as well. It's been deliberately torn and damaged. Did Mr Pimbo do that himself?'

Fidelis found the suggestion amusing. He smiled.

‘And put it back on his head before blowing his brains out? I think not.'

‘Who then, Luke?' I asked. ‘His murderer? I cannot see that this entirely proves your case for murder by another party.'

But Fidelis was laughing now.

‘No, gentlemen. It was no murderer that did this.'

‘Who, then?' asked Hazelbury.

‘It was Suez, of course. I may have no recent experience of raising a puppy, but I can recall their enthusiasm for chewing things. But there is one more thing.'

He went back into the strong room, where Hazelbury and I followed him. Fidelis went down on his hands and knees as he had before, and began feeling around on the floor, and in particular in the shadowed space underneath the stack of shelving.

‘Ah!' he exclaimed at last.

‘What is it, Luke? What have you found?'

He held up his hand, with his finger and thumb closed around what looked in the gloom like a pea. He jumped to his feet and stepped past us into the office once more. There, by the light of the window, he laid it in the palm of his hand and showed it to us.

‘The ball, Titus. The bullet that killed poor Pimbo.'

‘How did you know it would be there?'

‘Because it lodged in the wig, of course, which Suez took to the strong room where he shook and worried it. So the ball fell out. Here – keep it safe.'

I took the ball and dropped it into my waistcoat pocket.

*   *   *

It was growing dark and I was at home. I had worked all afternoon on the arrangements for tomorrow's inquest, and everything was in place. I was in the mood to read something but, just as I was hesitating between taking a turn with Montaigne or refreshing my memory of Chaucer's ‘Pardoner's Tale', I was interrupted by a rap on the front door. I went myself to answer it. Hutton the tobacconist stood on the step, holding in his arms what looked like a leather tool bag.

‘Mr Cragg, no I won't come in, only I wanted to make sure Mrs Hutton was right when she told me you are Mr Phillip Pimbo's will's lawful executor, and have the duty of tidying up the poor man's affairs.'

I told him that was quite right.

‘Then you'd best tidy up this.'

He thrust the bag into my hands. At the moment of the exchange, the mouth of the bag gaped a little and the head of the puppy, Suez, appeared. He looked at me with a mixture of surprise and – unless I flatter myself – recognition.

Before I could protest, Hutton went on, his voice hard and implacable.

‘He's pissed all over a parcel of new tobacco cake that just arrived from Virginia; he's been sick on one of my best customer's feet; and now he's shat under my fireside chair. We've exhausted our patience at home for him and his tricks, Mr Cragg. We've done our Christian duty by him, and now it's time for you to take charge. Good-night to you, Mr Cragg, and be assured I shall always be gratified to serve you in my shop…'

Hutton was backing down the front door steps now, while keeping a wary eye out in case I should decide without warning to foist the bag, with its cargo of dog, back on him. He relaxed a little as he reached the street without this happening.

‘I refer,' he went, raising his hat as he took a couple more backward steps up Cheapside, ‘to the next time you should need a supply, at which time you may perhaps be so kind as to return the bag. Good-night, Mr Cragg.'

 

Chapter Fourteen

Z
ADOK MOON'S TESTIMONY
, though desirable, was not in my mind strictly necessary at the inquest. I was reasonably sure a just verdict on Pimbo could still be reached without him. In spite of Fidelis's fervent advocacy of the mysterious hidden man – the murderer lurking within the business room and escaping along with Suez under cover of the surging crowd – I could not believe it. We had discovered much about Pimbo and his affairs in the course of our investigations, but we had turned up no one that might have wished him dead – unless it was himself.

Nevertheless I was on tenterhooks of curiosity about whether Pimbo's business partner would after all show his face. There was a ragged orphan, Barty, who scratched his way through life doing odd jobs around the market, but was willing and intelligent, and so got employment sometimes from me to do errands. On this morning of the inquest I sent him very early to go around the inns to ask if the man had arrived from Liverpool and taken a room in town. The boy came back after an hour, panting and hot from running.

‘I've not heard tell of your Mr Moon, Sir. But there's another I'm thinking you want to know about. He's called Mr Tibble Jackson,
and
he's gottun with him a boy who's black as coals. They've put up at the Lamb and Flag and been asking about where inquest is on at.'

The Lamb and Flag was a shabby tavern off St John Street that let a few bug-ridden rooms to our poorer visitors. Having heard about his encounter in Liverpool with my friend, I had supposed Tybalt Jackson must be some rival to Moon in business, and commensurately prosperous with him. Jackson's present address showed him in a more penurious light than this. I already knew that he sought an interview with Zadok Moon: the question was, had he actually pursued his man to Preston, or come merely in the hope of finding him? I could not guess. Nor, more importantly, did I know why he was interested in the inquest.

Fidelis came in and we ran through the evidence he would give later, and the timing of my prompting questions. I told him in severe terms that I would not tolerate any excursions into the wilder shores of conjecture.

‘By which you mean?' he said.

‘That Pimbo was murdered. We must speak only of what we know, from direct observation. Nothing fanciful – is that agreed?'

‘All right,' said Fidelis, a little gloomily.

‘And by the way,' I went on, ‘you will be interested that your friend Mr Tybalt Jackson has turned up in town. And he's accompanied by a negro – his servant, I suppose. They're put up at the Lamb and Flag.'

‘I am not surprised that he's come,' said Fidelis. ‘There was much about that man of the terrier that won't let go its grip.'

‘But is it a terrier or a bloodhound? Has he followed Moon's scent here, nose to the ground?'

‘That is the question. Perhaps Moon is here at this moment preparing to give you his evidence.'

Anticipating a large attendance I had sent Furzey ahead of me to open up the inquest room in good time. When I got there the crowd was already in, jostling and bargaining over sitting space and, when they could find none, occupying the standing room at the back. The jurors stood around in a single group at the front with Furzey, who was instructing them in their proper behaviour.

We lost no time in getting the business under way, swearing the jury, and then taking them off to view the body at the House of Correction, a walk of a few minutes. As we stood around the stretched-out corpse I pointed to the two terrible wounds sustained by the dead man's head.

‘Can you all see that the ball from a gun passed upwards through his jaw, through the roof of his mouth and his brain and came out here, at the top of his head?'

They all craned to look. One of them, the baker Thomas Proctor, said drily, ‘I see two holes in his head, all right. I see no ball.'

‘You will see it later, Thomas.'

‘What I mean is, what's to say it didn't go t'other way – top to bottom?'

Their chosen foreman, James Purvis, gave him a pitying look.

‘Don't be soft, Tommy. How could he shoot his'self through the top of his head?'

‘I'm not saying he did,' persisted Proctor. ‘What if he hasn't shot his'self? What if another's shot him?'

‘That's what we are here to determine,
Thomas
,' I said. ‘But we do know, at least, that the ball was shot upwards through the bottom of his chin.'

‘How could we know it? Was any of us there?'

‘You will hear how in the court, Thomas.'

Back in the inquest room we arranged ourselves around the long table. I took the middle place with Furzey at my right hand as clerk of the inquest, and the jurors along the table's length on both sides. Chairs had been placed in rows facing us for the townspeople, and these were almost all occupied. I quietened their chatter and wasted no time in calling Robert Hazelbury. He had been first through the broken down door of Pimbo's office, which qualified him as the first finder – and so, by tradition, the first witness.

Furzey had placed the witness chair at a right angle to our table, so that both we and the public in attendance could see the speaker's face. The Chief Cashier looked pale and apprehensive, and took the oath with such a shaking voice that it seemed he might even begin to weep. Gently I took him through the events of that shocking morning – the time of day, the locked inner office, Mr Benn's attempts to pick the lock and finally the intervention of the labourers with their crowbar. By this time Hazelbury seemed to have mastered himself.

‘We found him lying athwart the writing table, Sir, as you yourself saw. The blood, it had burst out of his brains and was all around him and dripping on the floor. A terrible sight, it was, terrible.'

‘Tell the court how he lay.'

‘Like he'd fallen forward from t'other side of the table. His head was turned, so that he rested on his cheek.'

‘How was he wounded?'

‘At top of his head. That's all I saw at first. His skull had a horrid big hole in it.'

‘Did you form any opinion as to how he might have sustained this terrible wound?'

‘From the shot of a pistol, Sir, so it seemed. We found one lying on the floor near his table.'

I had brought the pistol to court, now restored to its place in the wooden case. I took the case and laid it flat, then opened it and withdrew the weapon. There was a collective gasp from the audience. I handed the pistol down the table until it reached the witness.

‘Is this the weapon?'

Hazelbury held the piece with grave uncertainty, as if any moment it may fire itself spontaneously in his hand.

‘Yes Sir, I would say it is.'

He hurriedly passed the pistol back to the juror nearest his seat and I indicated that it go hand-to-hand around the table for the rest of them to examine, which they did each in a different fashion: one with a knowing smile, another with startled reverence, a third weighing it in his upturned palms. This was Peter Lofthouse, who was a gunsmith and anxious to convey to us his interest not just as a juror but as a professional man.

‘Mr Lofthouse,' I said, ‘while you have it in your hands, would you help the court with your estimation of the piece?'

‘Aye,' he said. ‘It's an old'un, thirty year or more. What we call a Toby and a dagg – small, you see, to go in the pocket.'

‘Might it be a military weapon?'

Lofthouse shook his head.

‘You couldn't use this in a battle, if that's what you mean, Mr Cragg. See, you've to load it by unscrewing the barrel right off. You've to put the charge and the ball in, screw it back again and pour the priming. Takes too long when you're fighting, you see, and you might drop the barrel, being hot an' all. This is more a one-shot gun for personal safety – or for murder if you'd a mind to it.'

At the mention of murder a kind of audible shiver went round the room.

‘Thank you, Mr Lofthouse, that is very helpful. Now, Mr Hazelbury, had you ever seen this pistol before you found it in Mr Pimbo's business room on the fatal day?'

‘No, Sir.'

‘Were you even aware that Mr Pimbo kept a pistol at the office?'

‘It wasn't that he kept it on purpose, Sir. That pistol was pledged against an advance.'

‘Can you tell the court about that transaction?'

‘Yes Sir, I found it in the book. It's a very old one, Sir. The pistol was pledged long ago, in old Mr Pimbo's time. It was never redeemed and so it lay unnoticed, almost hidden it was, in the strong room.'