The Hidden Man (25 page)

I ventured in. There were rooms immediately to the right and left of the door, one of which was the punishment room, where whippings were sometimes carried out, and the other was Billy Rawley's personal domain. I eased open the door of the latter and saw the rotund official sprawled in a basket chair, gently snoring.

Shutting the door again I walked along the ground floor passage, looking as I passed through the grilles set in the doors ranged on each side. Two or three centuries ago this building had housed friars, in what may have been some comfort by the standards of the time: I noticed, for instance, that the cells each had a fireplace. But no warming fires burned in those grates now. The place showed in every room the distress of time and, even in June, it felt draughty and damp.

The eighth and last cell on the left contained the prisoner I was looking for, sitting on the bed, back to the wall, legs drawn up, arms wrapped around the knees, head sunk onto the arms. It looked like a case of pure dejection.

‘Hello!' I called out.

The head was raised and two huge brown eyes were turned upon me.

‘I am Titus Cragg,' I went on. ‘I'm Coroner here. It is my duty to investigate the death of Mr Tybalt Jackson. Do you understand?'

But there was no sign of it and after a moment the eyes closed and the head returned to its previous position.

*   *   *

‘How can I eat a good breakfast,' I said, ‘with that poor wretch sitting hungry and shut up in that terrible place?'

Elizabeth put a dish of cold roast lamb and pickled beetroot in front of me.

‘You can, Titus, because as soon as you have done I shall go over there with some bread and soup. What's the boy's name?'

‘I don't know. I don't even know if it is a boy or a girl. Fidelis thinks the latter.'

‘A girl? What a terrible thing, if so. And all alone.'

‘And by the way, it is quite impossible that she – or he – did the murder. Certainly not without help. Oswald Mallender is a fool if he thinks it.'

‘Everyone agrees Mallender is a fool.'

‘The boy – or girl – must have been near Jackson, though, when he was attacked and probably witnessed his killing. I do need to know what happened, if only she – or he – can find her way to telling me.'

It had chimed eight by the time Elizabeth left on her mission to the House of Correction. I went into the office, and found that Furzey had already arrived.

‘We have another body this morning, I hear,' he observed, without looking up from his writing.

‘Yes, found on the Moor. I regret it is our surprise Bristolian witness from yesterday's inquest. He's in the House of Correction, badly hacked about the face. We'll inquest him tomorrow – no, on Saturday. There's a lot needs finding out. We'll go back to the Friary Bar Inn for the hearing, I think. Send a notice over to them directly, will you? I must be going. I want to see if Elizabeth has returned and then I'm due at Moot Hall.'

*   *   *

The Mayor's courtroom was an imposing panelled chamber at the heart of Moot Hall and had been used for centuries by the Court Leet, enforcing the rules for everyday life in Preston. Here traders and townspeople aired complaints against their neighbours or the Corporation, pursued cheats and infringers and, if called upon, gave account of and penance for their own misdemeanours. But the courtroom was also that of the magistrates – of whom the chief was the Mayor – and of quarter-sessions, in which the Mayor sat with two of His Majesty's justices. So the room heard criminal as well as civil matters. It dealt directly with minor felonies while remitting more serious cases through the Grand Jury for trial at the Assizes in Lancaster. And looming over all these proceedings was the versatile power of the Mayor.

The room was constructed to reinforce that power. Grimshaw sat highest of all, in a throne-like seat that commanded a view of every upturned face in the well below. The hearing had been called
ex tempore
, so that on this occasion the court was thinly populated. As well as myself, there was Mallender, the prisoner, a couple of clerks and William Biggs, Grimshaw's mayoral predecessor, whom he had brought in to sit with him. Biggs could be relied upon to agree with whatever was proposed.

‘Now, Mr Mallender,' intoned Grimshaw, looking down from his perch like an overfed cock bird surveying the dunghill. ‘Pray tell us what is the name of this boy standing here before us.'

Mallender had brought the forlorn figure from the House of Correction, still in bare feet, rough trousers and buttoned shirt, though looking perhaps a little less forlorn since hungrily slurping down Elizabeth's soup, as she had described it to me on her return half an hour earlier. Now stationed in the balustraded dock immediately facing Grimshaw's chair, the prisoner's two small hands, one of them wrapped in a bandage, could be seen grasping the rail, on either side of a large and uncomprehending pair of eyes.

Mallender cleared his throat and straightened his back.

‘This boy here is or is pretending to be a mute, Sir. No word of a name have we got out of him.'

‘Then tell us in clear language please why he has been brought here before us.'

I rose to my feet.

‘May I speak, Mayor?'

‘Cragg! Why are you in this court?'

‘As an observer with a demonstrable interest, Sir. I shall shortly be holding an inquest into one Tybalt Jackson, who has been murdered with great violence on Preston Moor.'

‘Yes, murdered by this boy, which is why we're here. So can we please get on?'

‘May I suggest that you do not get on, Sir, but adjourn the hearing pending my inquest?'

‘Why on earth should I do that, Cragg?'

‘I presume it will provide you with more facts—'

‘Do not presume, Mr Coroner! What more facts can I possibly want? I have a dead body, I have a boy caught red-handed for murder.'

‘Well, may we examine one of those facts in particular? Is this really a boy?'

‘Are you in your right mind? Of course it is!'

‘You will find that medical opinion differs from you. Dr Fidelis is sure this is a female.'

Grimshaw, as I was gratified to see, was caught entirely by surprise. With his mouth falling slightly open, he looked the prisoner up and down.

‘A female? But, Cragg, the costume. And there are no … I mean, where are its…?'

‘She is young, Sir, and underfed.'

Grimshaw glanced uneasily at Biggs, and then turned directly towards the dock.

‘Well, will you tell us?' he rasped. ‘What are you? Boy, or girl? Out with it!'

In a trice and without self-consciousness the prisoner undid three shirt buttons and pulled the shirt wide open. Her ribcage was painfully evident but so, above it, were two small but undoubted breasts. Grimshaw's eyes near popped from their sockets.

‘Good God! Cover yourself in this court! This is an outrageous display. Mallender! Cover her up, man.'

I left the court a few minutes later, in a fair way satisfied. Grimshaw had been so disconcerted by what he had just seen that he had taken a completely different view of the case. He had told Mallender that he was an oaf, and had made a wrongful arrest; he ordered that the girl not be sent back to the House of Correction; and decreed instead that she be taken into domestic custody by some good person of the town.

But I felt some discomfort, too, at his handling of the case, for I had detected in the Mayor's face, and that of his fellow magistrate, not just moral outrage at the sight of a young woman's bare breasts in his courtroom, but the slightest glint, just for a moment, of another emotion altogether.

 

Chapter Nineteen

T
HE LANDLORD OF
the Lamb and Flag Inn in St John's Court was George Houndsworth, a dirty fellow who kept a dirty house, in a part of town not much frequented by those who lived on the prosperous ridge of Fisher Gate, or could boast proximity to the Earl of Derby's magnificent Patten House on Church Gate. St John's Court had never boasted fine houses. What it had were hovels of various sizes that canted, tottered and stank together like rows of rotten teeth. Here lived families equally various except for one thing: all were uniformly poor and dirty.

The Lamb and Flag was the most decayed in a street of decayed houses, and so old that it had no history. If there had been any days of its glory, they belonged to a past beyond memory or record. I picked my way from the street into a bridged passage, too narrow for a modern coach (even could a coach-driver be persuaded to make the attempt), and into a smelly yard. Around this, precariously supporting each other, stood the worm-eaten, rot-ridden buildings of the inn.

I pressed my handkerchief to my nose and crossed to the largest door I could see. It opened onto a semi-dark hallway where stood a dusty staircase and a greeting-hatch with, on its ledge, a small much tarnished brass bell. This I rang vigorously.

Mr Houndsworth, a man of about fifty, came himself in answer to the summons, and peered at me. He was dressed in a grubby shirt and grubbier breeches, and had the appearance of one who had been rudely woken from sleep. However, he was affable enough.

‘Mr Cragg, is it? This is an honour, Sir. What can I offer you? A mug of ale? Or some of our elderflower wine?'

I declined all suggestions for my refreshment and asked merely for a few words in private. The landlord took me through to his own quarters, a square fireless room behind the greeting-hatch where a fat dog lay on the bed alternately snoring and farting, and a skeletal cat sat on watch in the middle of the table. Houndsworth cleared the cat off with a sweep of his arm and invited me to take a chair.

‘This must be about the Jackson fellow that was staying here and was found dead,' he said.

The table evidently served for both dining and business, for there were dirty glasses and plates, as well as pen, ink and ledgers on it. I swept crumbs from the seat of the chair with my coat tails and sat down.

‘It is,' I said. ‘He was your guest. Pray tell me about him.'

Houndsworth settled into the chair opposite and spat accurately across the room into the cold fireplace. For a moment he reminded me of one taking the strain on a hauling rope; then he began speaking effortfully, with brief pauses, as if pulling the words uphill behind him.

‘Let me think. They arrived on … Tuesday, was it? Yes, Tuesday. After dark, about … nine o'clock. Said he was staying not less than two, I think it was, days.'

‘Did he say why he was here?'

‘No. He didn't say owt. I don't badger my customers here with questions. I'm just glad of their money, me.'

‘What then?'

‘I put him in the best room – well, the … biggest room, as there's no “best” room here, as such. We call it the White Room.'

‘Tell me about the young negro with him – his servant.'

Houndsworth brightened, even smiled.

‘Right pretty little piccaninny, wasn't it?'

‘It was a young woman, Mr Houndsworth. Did you hear her speak?'

Houndsworth frowned, then humorously wrinkled his nose.

‘A female, was it? I took it for a boy. Well, well. That would explain—'

‘I am curious to know what language was used, Mr Houndsworth.'

‘Well, yes, I did hear it chattering away, I did, in a kind of English. Not exactly the English of these parts but I understood some of it.'

‘And what did Mr Jackson ask for on the evening he arrived?'

Returning to his earlier gravity, Houndsworth gave this some ponderous thought.

‘Oh, I don't know. Not much.'

‘Didn't he eat?'

The landlord frowned.

‘Oh, yes … Asked for drink and bread and cheese for himself and the piccaninny.'

‘And then?'

‘Went out for a night walk. Came back soon enough and shut himself in his room. I didn't see him until the next morning.'

‘How long was his walk?'

He made a shrug.

‘Half an hour. Not long.'

‘Did he say where he'd been?'

‘No. Just good-night.'

‘And next morning, what did he do?'

‘Ate a crust, then went out. Oh! He'd asked me about the inquest you were holding, such as where it was and when, and I told him. That's when I got the idea he was in town to attend that inquest, y'see. I was right in supposing that, wasn't I, Mr Cragg?'

As I ignored the question he was forced to go on, his speech gathering speed now as if the cart with his load of words had finally breasted the brow of the hill.

‘But there was another thing – that street boy Barty, you know him? He turned up asking questions about strangers at the inn. I told him about Mr Jackson and the piccaninny, and he ran off again. I reckoned that boy was sent by someone else, y'see, who had business with Mr Jackson, but who Jackson preferred to avoid because – I forgot to say – on the night he arrived he asked me expressly not to tell anyone asking questions about him. Expressly.'

‘And yet you told the boy Barty?'

Slowly Houndsworth scratched the pate, whose skin was visible through his thinning, greasy hair.

‘Oh, aye, I did. But that weren't … I mean that were next day. It were on the night
before
that he told me to shut up about him.'

‘I see. Let's talk about after the inquest. Did Jackson return here?'

‘Aye, he came back. Went to his room, and asked for some more food which I took in to him.'

‘What was he doing?'

‘He was writing a letter. It looked a long'un.'

‘Was his servant there?'

‘Yes, curled up on the bed, it were.'

‘You didn't see who Jackson was writing to?'

‘No. Later he asked for the post office, and went out. He posted the letter, I suppose.'

‘When was that?'

‘I don't know for sure. Half of four, maybe.'