The Duke's Agent (17 page)

‘Wild and wilful,' she whispered. ‘Oh, my bairn, what has your mischief brought you to?' Her body picked up the rhythm of her absent-minded hand and she began to rock, abandoned in her grief.

*

The investigation was recalled at five o'clock. Constable Thaddaeus was nervous as he escorted Jarrett into the chamber. The drink and the sight of Sal's shrouded body had stoked the fires of righteous anger among the crowd, while the impotence men feel at the whiff of death fuelled bluster to cover the fear. Several men stuck their thumbs in their
waistcoats and threw back their heads at him as Jarrett was ushered up the stairs and into the council chamber. He noted the bravado poses, sturdy legs planted out in belligerence, solid bodies set to confront him – the stranger, impostor and even murderer. As the constable struggled to force a way for him through the press, one voice carried above the rest.

‘He didn't arrive by post; his luggage came up without him. He said he rode over from York – had business on the way, so he said. Who's to say if he came from York at all?'

Jarrett was puzzled. The man was a stranger to him. The speaker saw the agent through the crowd and he raised his voice a notch.

‘The innkeeper knows. He was there. I was in the tap at the time and I heard him.'

Someone jostled Jarrett and he nearly lost his balance. The violence was deliberate. Jarrett swung round to his attacker. Whoever his assailant was, he was not yet confident enough to face him. The encircling figures blended into one corporate identity. The hostile expressions told him they were all against him. He knew only his supposed status as Duke's agent held them back. If Raistrick could but strip that away he was done for.

He was conscious of Constable Thaddaeus shifting from foot to foot at his shoulder, making a nervous mumbling sound. In a brief moment of weakness Jarrett was tired of standing alone. With an effort he straightened his shoulders and picked out the most prominent man in the group. As he held the stare the edge of his vision caught a movement to his right. The man who had spoken, emboldened by the attention brought by his tale, executed a smart shuffle towards him and spat. Jarrett did not flinch. The rest of the chamber was noisy but in the space in which they were locked he could hear the short, excited breathing of the men confronting him. Raistrick strode among them.

‘Now, boys, clear a way. We must get started.'

The ring fractured and grudgingly a way opened. The lawyer was back at his table shuffling papers. Jarrett took out his handkerchief and wiped the gob of spittle from his cheek.

‘Gentlemen.' With an ironic bow to the company he made his way to his seat. His leg hurt and the chair was hard. He would not give them the pleasure of seeing him slouch. He eased out his damaged leg and tried to appear alert.

The witness, Ned Turner the carter, was not yet in the chamber. The proceedings restarted with the report of Mr Gilbert, the surgeon who had examined the victim. Mr Gilbert was a plain little man. His voice had a trace of Edinburgh precision about it. The faint accent contributed to a general impression that the good doctor valued himself pretty highly in the measure of men and anticipated that others would do him similar justice. Mr Justice Raistrick took up the questioning as before.

‘Mr Gilbert, you have examined the deceased?'

‘I have, Mr Justice Raistrick. It is my opinion that the victim fell to her death from a height. The scalp covering was split and there was considerable blood lost. That wound, however, was not the likely cause of death. The victim died from her neck being broken – perhaps by striking a stone or some similar object. I remarked a circular discoloration or bruising of the skin about the base of the neck, which mark is consistent with a sharp blow.' Mr Gilbert spoke in a careful, didactic tone. He adjusted his little round glasses on his pointed nose and settled himself more comfortably in his position centre stage. In his discourse he had turned and was now lecturing the vestry as if they were a jury.

‘I observed bruises on the side and back of the torso, and scratches on the arms; these, along with mud and scraps of leaves and twigs caught in the hair and a tear in the red petticoat the victim wore – a tear matching some threads Justice Raistrick, I believe, himself recovered from bushes at the
edge of the rock they call Lovers' Leap' – the little surgeon bowed in the Justice's direction – ‘these are all indications which would lead any reasonable man to conclude that the victim fell to her death.'

‘Would Sally Grundy, this poor young woman,' the lawyer underlined this phrase with a graceful gesture somehow evocative of the pathos of the girl's fate, ‘have died outright?'

Mr Gilbert inclined his head slightly as he applied his mind to this question. ‘No man of science could claim to judge with any certainty. The victim might take a few moments to die from such an injury. In some cases there has been some considerable jerking about of the limbs noted in the shock of the final spasm.'

The watching faces reflected the mood of the chamber as light passing over water. Raistrick stood master of it all, like some pagan god conducting the elements. One could not help but be drawn to the man. Here was a being whose whole power rested in his own form and abilities, without the advantages of birth or connections. Wealth – no doubt he had collected wealth; but watching the lawyer conduct the emotions of the pressed pack of human beings surrounding him Jarrett felt certain that even if he were robbed of all he owned he would, given time, recoup, rebuild and re-emerge strong and powerful once more. With his voice and that one simple gesture Raistrick conjured up for his audience the tragic picture of the beautiful, defenceless young woman cut down by a stranger's deliberate malice.

‘The victim would not have been able to turn herself on her back and fold her arms neatly across her breast?'

Mr Gilbert permitted himself a little smile in recognition of this joke. ‘Oh, no; dear me, no. That would not be possible.'

‘And in your expert judgement, Mr Gilbert, can you suggest the hour that Sally Grundy might have met her death?'

‘I fear science cannot instruct us as to the precise time of death. However, I would propose that if the victim was last seen near half past nine on Wednesday evening – as the storm broke near eleven o'clock that night, and the body was found sheltered above the line of the flooded river – simple deductive reasoning would indicate that the victim died between the hours of close to ten and eleven o'clock that night. Rigor mortis was well established when the remains were discovered.' Ever the pedant, Mr Gilbert took off from this statement to wander with pleasure in the byways of qualification. ‘It is to be regretted that as the onset of that condition is varied, it is not possible to deduce with any scientific accuracy how long the body might have lain in the gully.' Here the surgeon embarked on a lengthy tale of an instance from his experience when rigor mortis was delayed in the corpse of a child kept warm by a fire for two days by a grieving mother who would not accept that God had gathered her child to Him. The tale was reaching its most affecting part when a commotion was heard outside. The long-awaited carter had arrived.

Jarrett examined the new witness with interest. Ned Turner proved to be a short, muscular man with the air of a choleric dwarf. Collateral arches of creased flesh about his eyes mounted up a high forehead and one of his deep-set eyes wandered, giving him a slightly averted look. He held his broad-brimmed hat in his hand, his expression resentful at the excited attention he was receiving.

‘Are you Ned Turner, carter of this place?'

‘I am,' the witness answered shortly. ‘Folk know me here.' As he threw a belligerent glance about the chamber, several heads nodded in confirmation of this statement.

‘And you claim you saw the deceased, Sally Grundy, in Gainford on Tuesday last with a “gentleman”?'

The carter nodded. ‘Just Tuesday past.' He watched the lawyer closely. Jarrett could not decide whether he was
weighing the man up or looking for instructions.

‘Can you describe the man you saw?'

‘A fancy sort of man, not a working man.'

‘His colour, his hair, his height.'

‘A medium-sized man. Fair.'

The economy of the witness's answers was not to the lawyer's liking.

‘What do you mean by medium-sized?' The energy with which Raistrick asked the question gave it an edge of impatience. Ostentatiously he swept his eyes about the room, coming to rest on the fair-haired gentleman sitting in his chair to the left of the table. ‘Mr Jarrett, might I trouble you to stand a moment?'

The agent complied, his face a mask of polite detachment.

‘See this gentleman here, Turner,' continued the lawyer. ‘Do you mean medium height as in the stature of this man? I beg your pardon,' Raistrick bowed elaborately to the agent as if recouping an unintentional insult, ‘medium height as Mr Jarrett's height might be considered to be of medium height?'

Turner glanced at Jarrett's figure. He gave a graceless jerk of his head. ‘About his height.'

Mr Raistrick was too skilful to betray his eagerness to his public, but as he resumed his seat Jarrett could sense the tension under the mask. The Justice stood with one hand negligently hooked in his waistcoat. One had to look closely to notice that the free hand that hung by his side was clenched tight. When he spoke, his tone was almost casual.

‘Mr Turner – do you see any man in this chamber who resembles the man you saw in Gainford?'

The carter seemed unsurprised by the question. His eyes detailed a careful circle about the crowded room until they reached Jarrett. There they lingered as he looked full into the agent's face.

‘He's like, I reckon.'

Raistrick turned to his audience. ‘Mr Jarrett resembles the man you saw talking to the girl in Gainford that day?'

‘That's what I said.'

‘So you testify that Mr Jarrett looks like the man you saw talking to Sally Grundy last Tuesday in Gainford? Did you know, Mr Turner, that Mr Jarrett has told us he never spoke a word to the girl? And yet you saw him talking to the victim in Gainford just this Tuesday past …'

‘No.' Turner's negative cut into the flow of the lawyer's speech and bobbed there in the arrested tide a moment. ‘He's like, but it's not him. I took that fellow for a play-actor – he had this bill in his hand, like the players hand out on fair days. He was asking after a printer.'

An honest witness, by God! In his relief Jarrett almost smiled openly. It seemed that Mr Turner was not the lawyer's man after all. The respite was short-lived. Raistrick's only discernible reaction to this check was to shift his weight a touch, as if planting his feet more securely for the fight. The sense of barely contained energy that always accompanied his presence grew more palpable.

‘How well do you see, Mr Turner – in the general run of things?' The lawyer's fingers sketched a little flurry near his face, drawing attention to the cast in the carter's eye.

‘As well as any, so far as I know,' Turner responded defensively.

‘And how close did you stand, when you saw Sally Grundy in Gainford with this fair-haired gentleman, who resembled Mr Jarrett so closely?'

‘I was unloading my wagon across the green from the Blue Boar. She was standing before the door talking to him and then they went in together.'

‘The man – he was wearing a hat?'

This gave the carter pause. ‘I reckon,' he agreed cautiously.

Raistrick's nimble fingers drew a broad-brimmed hat in the air about his own head. ‘A hat.' His tone was patiently scornful. ‘A hat throws a man's face in shadow, Mr Turner. You were watching from across the green, you say? That's a fair distance, Mr Turner. How can you be sure? Could this not be the man?'

‘Not unless he's been baked in the oven these last few days,' snapped the carter. ‘He's a brown-complexioned man. The other was fair-skinned – I could see that, hat or no. Bright red and complaining of the heat he was.' Turner cast dispassionate eyes over the seated agent. ‘No, I've not seen him before. The other had golden hair, as bright as a guinea of gold.'

The lawyer darted straight for the weakness. ‘How could you see his hair, Turner, if he was wearing a hat?'

‘He took it off,' returned Turner, unabashed. ‘He took off his hat as he took the chickabiddy into the inn.'

Thank God for true Englishmen, thought Jarrett. Raistrick had finally misjudged. He had offended his witness and roused his independent spirit. With luck this sturdy citizen was digging in for a fight.

‘Playing the real gentleman, he was,' elaborated Turner, uncharacteristically warming to his theme. ‘What a to-do. I thought to myself: You're not taken in by that dangler are you, Sally Grundy? By the saints, though, but she was a cockish wench,' he added in an unexpectedly regretful tone.

‘Spare us your fancies, Turner. We seek only facts here.' Raistrick's confidence was unshaken. He seemed to have no fear of insulting his witness. ‘Look again – this man's hair might turn gold where the sun caught it.'

‘No, I tell you.' Ned Turner was beginning to sound querulous. ‘That one was not a proper gentleman – he was like a play-actor or a beau-trap, I tell you.'

Raistrick surveyed the carter as if he were weighing up some heavy object he had to move from his path. The
crowded chamber remained with him. By the occasional exclamation and murmur, the audience indicated it was growing impatient with Mr Turner.

‘Mr Turner,' he began.

A disturbance erupted by the door. A path opened between the press of onlookers and a pair of newcomers entered. The leader was a compact gentleman with sparse hair receding off a high domed forehead. The reverend parson sprang to his feet, a rosy blush rising up his neck to his forehead.

‘Why, Colonel!' he exclaimed.