The Hidden Man (36 page)

‘We have him, Luke! Finally, he stands plain before us. For here I present to you, if I am not very much mistaken, the man we have all been so desirous to meet: Mr Zadok Moon.'

A triumphant feeling had risen inside me, but the mood was not to last. The fellow made no attempt to get away as Fidelis came and stood by my side. His face wore a sly, knowing smile.

‘I am afraid, Titus, you
are
very much mistaken. May I on the contrary introduce you to someone else: Mr Moreton Canavan of Liverpool?'

At that moment a rumble of thunder rolled around the sky.

 

Chapter Twenty-eight

J
OHN BARTON, SKULKING
in a horse box on the other side of the yard, had given himself no way out, or so Mallender thought. With grim satisfaction the Sergeant planted himself obstructively in front of the box that he'd seen Barton enter, with Suez in attendance at his feet, and waited for the Parkins to come up, whereupon they all went boldly in. After a short interval, they came out again, looking baffled.

‘No one in there,' Mallender said, ‘not even a horse.'

I had by now conducted Moreton Canavan back to the tack room, telling him he must stay confined in there for the moment. He was trembling and complied with a docility that surprised me. I bolted the door on the outside and beckoned Quick to join me there.

‘Guard this door, Elijah,' I said. ‘The fellow cannot be allowed his liberty.'

Standing with his legs apart and arms folded, Quick formed an implacable barrier to Canavan's escape, while I turned back to look across the yard.

‘Wait! See there!' I shouted, pointing to the dormer-window immediately above Mallender's head, where a dim face had appeared. ‘He's at the window. There are lofts above the horse boxes.'

Mallender spotted a ladder propped up against a corner of the yard. He sent the Parkins to fetch it and, while waiting, peered warily through the stable door, then paced with fuming impatience in front of it. The two constables made clumsy work of handling the ladder, letting it fall and tripping over it before finally running it across the yard and erecting it under the window. Jacob put a foot on the lowest rung while Esau cautiously climbed up and peered through.

‘Nowt to see, Mr Mallender,' he called.

‘Open the window, and get inside!' shouted the Sergeant. ‘Be quick about it.'

Esau was far from quick about it: he was reluctant to even try it. But after further urgings and threats from the ground he attempted to prise the window open with his fingers. He found he could get no purchase.

‘Can't, Mr Mallender. I'll need a crow.'

‘No you won't. Smash it.'

‘What with, Mr Mallender?'

Mallender cursed and picked up a loose cobble lying near his feet. This he hurled upward but missed his aim and the stone, instead of hitting the window, cracked against Esau's skull. With a cry of surprise the constable lost his footing and slithered down towards his brother, who was still holding the ladder's foot. Esau bowled Jacob to the ground and the two lay in a heap, Jacob on his backside and winded, while Esau rubbed his injured head.

Meanwhile John Barton was taking his chance. The loft ran along the whole length of the stable building, no doubt with trapdoors in the floor for the dropping of clean hay into the stables below. One such door had enabled Barton to get up to the loft and now another, at the extreme end of the building, let him down again into the one where one of his fastest running-horses was quartered – none other, in fact, than Mayor Grimshaw's pride and joy Molly, The Flanders Mare. It was on this animal, bridled but lacking a saddle, that Barton now exploded into the open. He was bent so far forward that he almost lay on the horse's back, as he kicked her flanks and rode like a madman for the yard gate. In a moment he had gone, with his sallow cheek jammed against the horse's neck, and his lean legs clamped around her sides.

‘I'm after him!' said Fidelis, running to his own mare and remounting.

‘You'll never keep up,' I called. ‘That's a racer he's on.'

‘But he's bare-backed,' Fidelis shouted over his shoulder as he turned the horse. ‘I'll keep him in sight. You follow on.'

As he kicked on and was away I shouted that I would. Shortly after that a few spots of rain began to fall.

*   *   *

Divided into two hinged sections arranged vertically, the doors of individual stables can swing together, or separately, as desired. In daytime the lower part is bolted and the upper opened wide, so that an animal may stand for hours with his head sticking out, watching the passing show. Several of John Barton's charges were doing so at this moment.

Quick and I unbolted and swung open the upper door of the stable that contained Canavan and called on him to present his face. Mallender and the Parkins joined us as the merchant's face appeared, looking wary and a little bewildered at the turn of events that had unexpectedly made him a prisoner. He placed his hands on the top edge of the half-door and stared out.

I returned to the back of Wintly's cart, handed Amy to the ground and walked her on my arm back towards Canavan. I placed her in front of him, though being careful to keep her out of his reach.

‘Amy, do you recognize this man?'

‘I do, Sir.'

‘When did you see him last?'

‘He was one of those with my master's body when they put him on the stone table.'

‘One of the three men you saw?'

‘Yes, there were three of them.'

‘Was this man one of those that had assaulted Mr Jackson before that, and killed him?'

‘I don't know. But he was there.'

‘Was it him that damaged Mr Jackson's face?'

‘I don't know. It happened inside … over there.'

She gestured towards Barton's cottage, which stood across the far end of the yard, linking together the two rows of stable boxes.

‘That one that rode away just now – do you know him?'

‘Yes Sir, he was one of those that took the body up to the wild place.'

‘Do you know his name?'

‘No.'

‘It's John Barton. Did your master ever utter the name to you?'

‘No Sir. I've never heard that name before.'

I turned to Canavan.

‘This girl states that she saw you taking the body of Tybalt Jackson away from here at dead of night, with John Barton and another. Have you anything to say?'

Canavan glowered. It had been discomfiting to hear himself accused but he had evidently decided that his best course was to keep his counsel.

A skinny youth, with greasy black hair and a face peppered with pockmarks, now wandered into the yard carrying a rake. I recognized Bobby, the boy that I had seen exercising a horse along with Barton just after the body of Jackson was discovered. I strode over to him and took the rake from his hand.

‘Bobby is it? Are you stable boy here?'

His mouth twitched and he grunted in a way I took to be yes.

‘And what is your full name?'

This time he opened his mouth but another burst of thunder, like a distant cannonade, rendered his reply inaudible.

‘What was that, boy?'

‘'S Robert Roberts.'

‘And do you know me, Robert Roberts? Do you know what I do?'

‘I reckon so. You find out about the dead people. What happened to them.'

‘That's right. Now, I want you to come over here and look at this man. I want you to tell me what you know about him.'

Roberts looked dispassionately towards Canavan.

‘'S been here since end of last week. Mr Barton's guest, like. 'S all I know 'bout him.'

‘Not even his name?'

‘No. What's this about?'

‘Have there been any other guests here at the same time as him?'

‘Yer, other chap went, though. 'S morning.'

‘Do you know
his
name?'

‘Never heard it. Is this about that body on the Stone?'

I ignored the question.

‘Do you know where this other man has gone? Which direction he rode in, for instance?'

‘North, he went.'

Robert nodded his head in the direction he meant.

‘Up the great road. Left some time this morning, early.'

‘What was his horse like?'

‘Grey gelding with a braided tail.'

I went across to Barton's cottage to find some writing materials, and there composed a note to James Shuttleworth Esq of Barton Lodge, the nearest county magistrate. I requested that a hue and cry be raised after one Zadok Moon that had headed northward towards Lancaster on a grey gelding and was suspected of murder. However, as there are magistrates who hold the office of Coroner in a degree of contempt, I called in Oswald Mallender to sign the note. One can never play it too safe when dealing with the gentry magistrates, who on the one hand resent Coroners and on the other rarely put themselves to the trouble of acquainting themselves with the minutiae of the law. I heated the sealing wax while the Sergeant applied his name in a cramped, painstaking script, then seized the paper, folded it and dripped the wax.

*   *   *

What, all this time, had been happening to Fidelis?

He had given hot pursuit across the Moor in the direction of Cadley. Barton was an excellent horseman but even he could not keep a horse going at full pace with no saddle or stirrups, and Fidelis had little difficulty in holding him largely in view. But then, like a chased fox, the quarry went to ground.

It happened when a sharp bend in the way ahead had temporarily made Fidelis lose sight of Barton. He kept up a canter along the road, just as it snaked past Cadley Place, and it was another few minutes before, reaching a straight stretch and seeing no horseman, he understood what had happened. He wheeled around and trotted back.

Barton, it would appear, had seen his opportunity at – of all places – the house of the late Pimbo. He had turned in at the gate, ridden up the carriageway and hammered on the front door. They took him into the house willingly enough, knowing Barton and having little reason to think him anything but a friendly visitor. But no sooner was he inside than he frightened the women with loud shouts, and eventually took one of the maids by the throat until she fetched the keys to the gun room and the saddle room.

By now Fidelis had looked in at the gate of Cadley Place and recognized Barton's lathered and tethered horse. He scanned the house, and saw no figure in any of the windows, but he knew Barton must be inside. What, though, was he doing?

Fidelis hesitated. Rain was falling in larger drops now, but the air was otherwise still so that spatters of water on the shrubbery leaves could be individually heard. He was weighing up the advisability of a frontal approach to the house, and deciding against as he would be at a disadvantage if Barton were looking out. It was better, he thought, to remain on watch.

*   *   *

Wintly had cracked his whip and driven his cart out of the yard. Moreton Canavan, Elijah and Amy were aboard with Esau Parkin who was still in attendance on Amy. Meanwhile his brother rode the luggage-laden horse belonging to Canavan, which before our arrival had been on the point of conveying him away, presumably to Liverpool. The brothers were deputed by Mallender to deliver the two prisoners back to town – Amy at the Biggses' and Canavan to be lodged in the cells below Moot Hall, with an appointment to go before the Bench in the morning, as Mallender and I, with Suez careering dangerously around my horse's feet, followed the cart as far as the main road, where I suggested to Elijah that he go back to Fidelis's house and await developments. The Sergeant, however, was not for going back. He was red in the face and breathing excitedly from the knowledge that he was still in the heat of the action, and in pursuit of murderers and desperate men.

‘I shall ride with you, Mr Cragg,' he said.

At this meeting of lanes, a faint track across the Moor branched off towards the race course and from fresh hoof prints in the ground I saw that this was the way Barton, followed by Fidelis, had taken. According to my promise, I must take it myself – but not, I preferred, in the company of Mallender. I said:

‘Between us, Dr Fidelis and I will comfortably catch him and take him, Sergeant. You may rely on it. Meanwhile hadn't you best join the hue and cry up the north road and make sure in your own person that Zadok Moon is arrested?'

Mallender considered the question, then fell in eagerly with my suggestion. Of course, as the hue and cry had been raised at his own formal request, he certainly ought to be present at any taking up – and receive the credit for it. So he bade me farewell and urged his poor mount into a shambling trot up the road that led to Lancaster. A little relieved I turned my own hack into the branching lane, and set off at a fast trot to catch up with Fidelis. Suez, recovered from his kick and full of alacrity, bounded along in my wake.

We soon joined the racecourse and were heading towards the Bale Stone, when the dog started to bark and shot ahead towards the monument itself. At the course's nearest point to the Stone I pulled the horse up and listened. Suez was barking furiously but beneath his shrill yaps I could hear the calls of a human voice strangely stifled, and not a little desperate. I walked the horse up the bank and across the open ground towards the Stone. From its other side I could hear the noises of a struggle, mixed with oaths. Then, coming to the brambly outgrowth that concealed the place where I had found the sack of Pimbo's silver, I was surprised to see the feet, legs and wriggling rear end of a human being. The forward part of his body was thrust deep into the bush, not in a comfortable way, for he was struggling to get himself out, and signalling his distress with cries and curses. As if to help him out, Suez had now got a mouthful of his breeches and was tugging at them. I immediately dismounted and, pulling the dog away, lightly kicked the calf of the stuck man's leg with my boot. His writhing ceased instantly.