The Hidden Man (38 page)

‘I shall need to take your statement for my inquest into the death of Mr Tybalt Jackson,' I told him. ‘Will you tell me what happened at the Bale Stone last Thursday night?'

He shook his head slowly.

‘I don't know. I wasn't there. You can't prove the assertion.'

‘We found you at John Barton's stable less than a mile from the place where the body was found.'

‘I was only there to see about my running-horse. Barton is its trainer.'

For a moment Suez distracted us by playing his old trick of worrying at our shoe buckles. Having tried Luke Fidelis's and been pushed away he turned to those of Canavan, who raised his foot to kick the dog. But, as he did so, Suez pulled the shoe clean off his foot and took it into a corner of the room.

‘Allow me to get that for you,' said Fidelis, and went to the corner, where Suez was shaking his prize from side to side and growling. At first the dog wanted to play tug of war, but Fidelis eased his mouth open and rescued the shoe, which he carried back to Canavan, but did not hand it over.

‘You say we cannot prove you were present at the death of Mr Jackson,' he said. ‘Well, I believe I can prove, at the least, that you were there at the Bale Stone when his body was laid out upon it.'

‘How?' challenged the prisoner. ‘Not from the deceiving black boy that had travelled with him. People now tell me it is really a female. Nobody's going to believe what a black harlot has to say, any road.'

Fidelis showed the shoe first to me and then to Tarlton, who was lingering in the doorway listening with dropping mouth to all we said.

‘It is not only the girl – her name is Amy by the way – that says you were there, Canavan,' Fidelis went on. ‘This shoe says you were. Just show me the other, if you please.'

He went down on one knee like a pageboy and waited until Canavan, who suddenly looked bemused, raised the foot that was still shod. Fidelis removed the shoe leaving Canavan with his stockinged feet planted on the dirt floor. Fidelis held the two shoes together.

‘See? They are very alike, and much of a size, but they are not a pair of shoes. This one—'

He held up the shoe that Suez had pulled off Canavan's foot for closer inspection.

‘We can show that it belonged to poor Mr Jackson whom you and your confederates so wickedly murdered, because we have recovered the pair to it from Jackson's corpse. This one came off his foot during the struggle to heave his dead or dying body onto the Stone. In the same struggle one of your own shoes also came off and in the dark you accidentally recovered, and put on, the wrong shoe. The correct one – your own errant shoe – was found by Mr Cragg the next day having been kicked under the Stone. It was made for you I think by the shoemaker Mr Thomas Truss of Liverpool. Now, for a witness of what we have found in your possession this evening, let us enlist Mr Tarlton.'

He now showed both shoes to the turnkey, asking him to take careful note of the differences between them, before handing them over to me.

‘I suggest you wear your riding boots to court, Canavan. The shoes will be produced in evidence, and will be enough, I fancy, to see you hanged at Lancaster Castle.'

*   *   *

I sat in the Turk's Head, alone for the moment except for Suez, who lay in an exhausted sleep across my feet. I was waiting for Fidelis and Elijah to join me. My body felt as tired as the dog's, but my brain was working furiously. It was repeating over and over the memory of the moment at which I had stood pointing the gun straight into Barton's twisted, calculating face. Would I have done it – shot him full in the forehead – if I had had to? I could not say, and still cannot. I had never killed a man or even fired a gun and have always detested violence. Yet the question tormented me like an aching tooth.

Fidelis arrived, on the other hand, in excellent humour. Elijah was with him.

‘What a stroke of luck that he had put on the shoes, just for us! You've ascertained that one of them was the pair to the shoe we found at Flat Rock?'

‘Yes. It has the same “T.T.” stamped inside. Odd that Moreton Canavan wasn't to be found in the shoemaker's register.'

‘But he was!' exclaimed my friend. ‘Remember, one of the customers was, we thought, a Mr Martin Carman? Allow for deaf ears and hasty handwriting, and what might you have?'

‘I am with you, Luke. Moreton Canavan! How very stupid we were to miss it. But at any rate we have done good work this afternoon.'

‘Yes, but are you not aggravated that the fool Mallender let Doubleday go?'

I had ordered a bottle, glasses and pipes, which now arrived at our table. I made an effort to banish my obsession and attend to the matters of the moment.

‘I suppose there is no doubt that Doubleday was another conspirator in the death of Tybalt Jackson. Amy saw three men, but surely there must have been four of them.'

Fidelis was inclined to think so.

‘Doubleday was the captain of
The Fortunate Isle
, the ship Jackson was looking into. I cannot be sure of his connection with John Barton, but he certainly knew Moon and Canavan, as they were both investors in his ship.'

‘We don't know that certainly, in Moreton Canavan's case.'

‘Why else was he here in Preston? You can't believe the tale that he came to look to his running-horse! He must have travelled here with Moon as criminal conspirators to stop Jackson's mouth and protect their crime.'

‘But gents, what was their crime?'

The question was Elijah Quick's, and it was a pertinent one. He went on,

‘Now, I have asked folk here and there in the town about this Zadok Moon, and they all say he's been engaged in some fraud, but nobody knows what the fraud is.'

I said, ‘We must assume it is to do with
The Fortunate Isle
, as that is the ship Jackson's company was engaged with.'

‘We heard the old sailor at the dock tell me she was not a Liverpool ship,' said Fidelis. ‘He also said she was unlikely to stand up to a Guinea voyage. Perhaps she never had to, and it was all a game of pretending.'

We were not carrying Quick with us.

‘Why pretend to go on the voyage?' he asked. ‘These men wanted money, and to get it, must they not trade?'

‘The ship was insured, Elijah,' I said. ‘As a total loss, with a full cargo, she was worth 15,000 guineas. We heard at the inquest that Doubleday had reported the ship a total loss. But what if, in reality, she wasn't? What if she returned, let us say disguised under a false name and false colours?'

‘They would hang for that if discovered,' observed Fidelis. ‘And to protect themselves they might murder first.'

‘But why did they beat Jackson about the face?' I went on. ‘I don't understand that. Was it in the hope he would be unrecognized, so the word would not get back to his employers that he was dead?'

Fidelis shook his head.

‘They could hardly hope for that. They left him lying in the clothes he'd been seen wearing in Preston.'

‘And there's the wooden peg they drove into his chest. What of that?'

‘They did that, Sirs, because they wanted people to accuse Amy.'

This was Elijah, speaking deliberately and with a taint of bitterness in his voice.

‘They wanted it to look like witchcraft … you know, what an African would do.'

It sounded possible, especially remembering that Amy was then thought to be a boy.

‘What will happen to her, Mr Cragg?' Elijah asked me.

‘She will be released, now. There is no reason to hold her any longer. She will be required to give her evidence here in Preston about what she saw – at the inquest and the Magistrate's Court – and then, I suppose we must get her back to Liverpool.'

We puffed at our pipes and considered for a few moments. Then Elijah touched my arm.

‘Don't worry, Sir. I will take her back, and I will look after her. She saw bad things at that Stone, and she must be treated kindly.'

‘That is good of you, Elijah,' I said.

But his mention of the Bale Stone had set my mind on another path – the path Suez had taken on our way across the Moor in the afternoon.

‘Luke, I haven't told you what Suez and I found at the Stone today.'

I related how the dog had alerted me to muffled cries, and the sounds of struggle, just as we rode along the part of the racing track that passed the Stone.

‘And there I came upon the legs of the man sticking out of the bramble bush, kicking like a swimmer. I simply pulled him, as you pull a cork from a bottle – and who d'you think he was, Luke?'

Fidelis had been leaning towards me, listening intently and without laughter. His reply caught me by surprise.

‘I think he was Michael Ambler, Titus.'

*   *   *

Next morning I attended the Magistrates' Court at the early hour of eight. The hearing was preliminary to a session in front of a Grand Jury, at which the men would be committed, or otherwise, for trial. Grimshaw was making a journey to Manchester as a guest at a banquet later in the day and he wanted to arrange matters before he left.

First Barton and Canavan, standing together in the dock, were asked to state their names, after which Grimshaw formally told them that they were held in the matter of the death of Tybalt Jackson, and that they would continue to be held until the Grand Jury here in Preston determined whether they must go to the Assizes in Lancaster.

‘I see the Coroner is in court,' he then observed without great enthusiasm. ‘Mr Cragg – doubtless you can enlighten us as to the future of your own deliberations on the death of Jackson.'

I told the court that the inquest into the death of Jackson would be held next day.

‘All matters about this sad and violent death will be aired,' I said, ‘with both of these men required to give evidence. Afterwards, if the indications are towards foul play, I shall forward the inquest papers to the Bench as usual.'

There was little enough that Grimshaw liked about the Coroner's jurisdiction, since it operated outside his control. But he well knew that, even if he were not going away to Manchester, he could not raise a Grand Jury in time to trump my inquest. He extended the present session by a few minutes with some blustering interrogatory remarks towards the two prisoners, which they refused to answer, and at last, exasperated, he ordered that they be kept in custody pending the inquest and then a Grand Jury meeting later in the week. After that we all, except the prisoners, went to our homes and to breakfast.

 

Chapter Thirty

N
OT AN HOUR
later I was sitting in my dining room with the greater part of the meal inside me, when Matty came in.

‘If you please, Sir, the young man from the goldsmithy's in the hall asking to see you.'

Michael Ambler! I had forgotten all about our appointment. I rose from the table and hurried out, finding Ambler looking unaccountably pleased to see me. His face and hands still showed signs of the scratches he'd sustained in the briar patch, but he was otherwise washed, with hair scraped into place and wearing what may have been his best suit of clothes.

‘Come into the office,' I said, leading the way through the door that stood between the domestic half of the house and the business half. I found Ambler's demeanour disconcerting. It was I that had summoned him, yet he chose from the start to treat the meeting as his own, and one that he was eager for.

‘Oh, thank you for seeing me, Sir,' he said. ‘I am right glad now that you found me out rabbiting on the Moor yesterday, for it proves to you how badly we are reduced, my mother and me. We are that short at home, we haven't had a penny-piece come in by way of money since Mr Pimbo died.'

‘Michael, we are not here to—'

But Ambler was not to be interrupted. He had prepared the rudiments of a speech and he was set on to delivering it, walking restlessly this way and that in front of my desk.

‘What I'm here to ask you, Mr Cragg Sir, is would you kindly reopen the shop as soon as possible? I know that I can manage my part of it, if Mr Hazelbury will do his part. That is all we ask, I know he says the same. I am a good craftsman, me, and the best there is in this town by a mile. And Mr Hazelbury knows the books and that, so with the two of us we can do it – we don't need the boss, or anyone else. We are ready and we can do it.'

I told him, with a touch of impatience, to stop pacing and sit down.

‘I am sorry, Michael, but I cannot do as you ask. I have already told Mr Hazelbury that it is out of the question.'

Puzzlement creased his face.

‘But I thought you said he could—'

‘I have allowed Mr Hazelbury to deal with customers that want to redeem their pledges. But, Michael, you mistook me if you thought that means I am going to continue the business as before. It may never be possible to do that. The estate cannot be finally settled until the will is proven but, even then, I would feel it my duty to dispose of the shop on Mrs Pimbo's behalf to a new owner.'

‘A new owner, Sir? Then I shall be that man! I have the ambition, and the—'

‘No, Ambler. I am afraid not.'

I had raised my voice, thinking this fantasy must stop at once.

‘You see, I am aware of the reason you had your head in that rabbit hole.'

‘I know, Sir. I told you.' Ambler was stammering now, and reddening. ‘I was setting a snare.'

‘You were not, Michael. You were looking for something.'

I went to the side-board in which I had stored the sack of unclaimed silver pledges. I brought these out and plumped them down on the desk with a metallic clank that caused Ambler's eyes to widen in shock.

‘You were looking for this sack, I think.'

I pulled it open and began bringing the objects out – the salt, the marrow spoon, the little jug and the buckle.