Philip Gooden - The Salisbury Manuscript

There could not be much doubt that the remains were those of the gardener to Canon Slater. There was Tom’s evidence, that he had seen an improvised weapon (the trowel) in the hands of Eaves’s assailant, and that it was those hands which were responsible for throwing the other off the spire. But, more conclusively, there was a statement, almost a confession, which was found in a pocket of the dead man’s clothing.

It was brief and ill written but clear enough. It told how he, that is Adam Fawkes (also known as Adam Eaves), had murdered both the Slater brothers. Felix had been killed when Eaves had been surprised in the act of stealing the papers from the chest in the Canon’s study, searching for documents and plans which would show the whereabouts of a supposed hoard of ancient treasure buried in the Slater estate at Northwood House in Downton. Slater was sitting down, about to write a note of dismissal, unwisely taking his eyes off the gardener. Then a few days later Percy Slater, the owner of Northwood House, had died not by his own hand but killed by Adam as he was attempting to dig up the place where this treasure was rumoured to be, a spot known as Hogg’s Corner.

There was no mention in the confession of the so-called Salisbury manuscript, whose disappearance (in Tom’s eyes at least) might have been a motive for the murder. But the handwritten memoir of the Slater brothers’ father was discovered among various items in the queer little lodging occupied by Adam in the garden of Venn House. The lock which secured the book from prying eyes had been forced by Eaves. The other items in his stash included bits and pieces of tarnished gold — rings, bracelets, brooches — which had undoubtedly been excavated from burial sites around the town.

With the discovery of Eaves’s body, it was equally beyond doubt that the gardener had been responsible for the death of Andrew North, the sexton. If North had been seized by the mania — which he’d caught from Felix Slater — for digging up old items, stealing them if necessary, then Eaves had obviously seen a way in which he might take a short cut, by thieving from the thief. Even if he had to commit a murder in the process. North, who’d worked for Felix Slater, must have encountered Adam Eaves, must have grown to fear him and to identify the gardener with Atropos, the wielder of shears.

And more bizarrely, the stolen hoard found in the gardener’s lodge also contained toasting forks and jelly moulds together with other kitchen implements which dated back not thousands of years but no further than a few months.

Inspector Foster scratched his head and tugged his side-whiskers over this but he was able to offer some explanation to Tom Ansell and Helen Scott while he was bidding them goodbye on the platform at Salisbury station.

‘It seems to me,’ he said, ‘that this Eaves fellow was a thoroughly bad lot and had been ever since his birth. A walking example of Original Sin, if you like. We’ve established that he was born at Downton to a God-fearing family and that he was brother to Seth Fawkes. He ran into trouble early on in Salisbury — one of the men in the police house has an old cousin as remembers him — and then he disappeared God knows where. To foreign countries maybe. God knows why he came back here either. But he got himself a job as a gardener at Venn House. He enjoyed dressing up and playing a part. And all the time he was on the lookout for ways to make mischief and mayhem.’

‘Mischief!’ said Helen. ‘I’d hardly call murder mischief.’

‘No more would I, miss. But he liked causing trouble and he liked murdering, did Mr Adam Eaves, liked the thrill of it. Mr Ansell here has confirmed he said as much when he overheard Eaves and his brother exchanging insults up the tower.’

‘I don’t know about the thrill of it,’ said Tom, ‘but it didn’t seem to hold terrors for him as it would for most of us. Yes, he probably enjoyed it.’

‘It’s my belief he liked the thrill of thieving too,’ continued the Inspector. ‘It was him as broke into those other houses in West Walk and stole small items that were almost worthless, and he did the robberies just for the hell of it — begging your pardon, Miss Scott.’

Tom nodded. ‘That’s why he didn’t trouble to conceal the burglaries. Wasn’t one of the householders actually woken up by the clatter of pans being dropped in the kitchen, as if the thief wanted to alert everyone to his presence?’

‘Just so,’ said Foster. ‘Mischief and mayhem, you see.’

There were still some mysteries attached to the business. The principal object which Eaves had been seeking in the mound in the grounds of Northwood House had apparently been a solid golden torque or neck-piece. Tom recalled that Felix Slater had made some passing reference to it at their first meeting. But it transpired that it was all moonshine, and well known to be moonshine in the locality. The piece never existed or, if it ever had, was thieved long ago. There was a mention of it in the Salisbury manuscript, which Tom had had the leisure to look through more carefully and which was now safe inside his valise, to be deposited in accordance with the dead man’s instructions at the London office of Scott, Lye amp; Mackenzie.

Old George Slater described how he had even done a bit of digging himself, and turned up nothing. If Adam Eaves had perused the manuscript more carefully, he might have realized this. But perhaps he had read about it, as he skimmed the stories about Byron and Shelley, and refused to believe that there was no treasure. Eaves had also stolen from the Canon’s study some papers and plans which he believed would guide him to the precise spot. Plans which Felix had retained from his own younger days of fossicking about in the family grounds.

A greater mystery was what had happened to Seth Fawkes, once he had succeeded in throwing his brother from the heights of the cathedral. If apprehended and tried, he might have been found guilty of manslaughter or perhaps acquitted because he was acting in self-defence. Who could say? But the coachman to Percy Slater had not been apprehended. Indeed, it was as if he was gone from the face of the earth. Had Tom Ansell not seen with his own eyes the struggle between the two brothers — and had other people in and around the cathedral precincts not also testified to the presence of a pair of men, one seemingly in pursuit of the other — he might have believed that Adam had flung himself off the tower, by himself.

This was the story as reported in the Gazette , that the gardener to Canon Slater, overcome with guilt and remorse at his prior acts of murder, had done away with himself in the most public and dramatic fashion. He had conveniently provided a written account of his crimes, as discovered in his clothing. It was the simplest version to credit and it was enthusiatically peddled by Inspector Foster. It wrapped everything up nicely, it accounted for two killings (three, when you included the sexton Andrew North) and it brought the murderer’s own tale to a satisfactory resolution.

There was a rumour to the effect that a second man had been up the tower but when questioned by the newspaper the Inspector cast doubt on it, without going as far as an absolute denial. As he said to Tom later on the evening of the events on the spire, ‘I take you at your word, Mr Ansell. You are a lawyer, after all. But the fact remains that there was no one to be found up aloft apart from your good self. Oh yes, there were two men chasing each other all round the houses, we have other witnesses to that, but the cathedral is a big place with many holes and corners. Who’s to say that this Seth Fawkes did not sneak off into one of them?’

‘In that case, where is he now?’ said Tom.

‘He may turn up and then we shall see what is to be done with him,’ said the Inspector. ‘But remember that if he has killed his brother, as you believe, he may have gone on the run. He may even have done away with himself as well.’