P. Chisholm - A Season of Knives

Carey had stopped and he was an odd greyish colour. ‘If you think I’m stupid enough to set my own servant on to cut someone’s throat for me…’

‘I wouldna hold it against ye, sir. I’ve known others do the like.’

‘Who?’

‘Lowther for one.’

‘When?’

Dodd shrugged. ‘When somebody didna pay him blackrent and give him cheek when he went round to collect. He had some of the Grahams drop by and kill the man. It’s no’ so unusual, ye ken.’

Carey took one of those deep breaths that signalled he was holding on to his anger. Then he laughed and carried on walking.

‘Christ’s guts, Dodd, I’m a bloody innocent in this place. Will you believe me if I give ye my word that, aside from a couple of hangings, I never killed nobody in my life without it was me holding the weapon?’

Dodd nodded gravely, noting with interest how Carey’s voice had changed to pure Berwick.

‘Ay,’ he said. ‘I know ye’re a man of your word, Courtier. Ye’re a bloody hen’s tooth in Carlisle and no mistake.’

The hen’s tooth had several lines of inquiry in mind and was in a fever of impatience to follow all of them. Carey knew he had to be able to present an alternative theory to Scrope. After some thought, he sent Dodd to Bessie’s to find out what he could of Barnabus’s movements the night before, while he himself went to the two-storey house by the market that had belonged to Atkinson.

He knocked at the door, poked his head round it into the ground floor living room. She was surrounded by her gossips: one was making bread and milk for the children by the fire, while two others held her hands and talked in low voices.

‘What d’ye want, Deputy?’ demanded the largest of Mrs Atkinson’s gossips, looming up before him.

‘I want to find out who cut Mr Atkinson’s throat,’ said Carey, politely taking off his morion and putting it on a bench as he came in. His head was crammed against the ceiling beams even without it on.

‘Oh, ay?’ said another, a middle-aged woman with a withered hand. ‘From what I heard, ye should be asking yerself the question.’

Carey looked at her in silence for a while, without anger. He had spent much of the night before with Dodd riding about Gilsland, calling individually on the local Bell and Musgrave headmen. They had mustered two hours before dawn in order to catch Wattie when he crossed the Irthing. Perhaps he had slept for two hours in total. His thinking was slower than usual, that was all, but the women read threat into his lack of reaction. They all fell silent as well and the one who had spoken shrank back.

‘Who are you, goodwife?’ he asked.

‘I am Mrs Maggie Mulcaster, Mrs Atkinson’s sister,’ she said stoutly.

‘Well, you heard wrong, Mrs Mulcaster,’ he said mildly. ‘Who did you hear it from?’

‘Lowther,’ she admitted.

‘You should know better than to trust a man that kills anyone who won’t pay him blackrent.’

The women muttered between each other and Mrs Atkinson stood up, curtseyed and wiped her hands in her apron.

‘What can I do for you, sir?’ she asked, civilly enough.

‘My condolences for your loss, Mrs Atkinson. Will you be good enough to tell me when you last saw your husband?’

She wiped her hands in her apron again. ‘I…I saw him yesterday morning. He went out about the middle of the morning, to deal with some business, he said, and that’s the last I saw of him.’

‘Weren’t you worried when he didn’t come home last night?’

She looked studiously at the fresh rushes on the floor. ‘He often stays out all night. I didn’t think anything of it, and then the man came to…to tell me this morning.’

A well-built girl, fresh-faced and cheerful with red hair streaming down her back, came in carrying a large empty basket.

‘I’ve put them back out again, mistress, but them sheets will take all week to dry with the way the sky…Oh.’

The girl looked at Carey and her mouth dropped open.

‘It’s all right, Julia,’ said Mrs Atkinson. ‘Go and see after Mary and the boys.’

‘Oh, she’s well enough,’ said Julia putting the basket down and picking up the empty pewter mugs. ‘She’s rolling dough for me in the scullery and the boys are feeding Clover.’

‘Did you want to know anything else, sir?’ demanded Mrs Mulcaster.

‘Has anyone here seen Mr Atkinson since yesterday morning?’

They all looked at each other and shook their heads.

‘Can you tell me which undertaker…’

There was a spasm in Mrs Atkinson’s face, but she controlled herself.

‘Fenwick,’ she said shortly, naming the most expensive undertaker in Carlisle, and then stood there waiting.

Carey sighed. He hadn’t expected to be very welcome. ‘Thank you for your help, goodwives,’ he said, picked up his morion and went out. The buzz of talk followed him out as he instantly became the prime subject of conversation.

***

Mr Fenwick was one of the most prosperous traders in Carlisle, with a large house on English street facing the gardens where the old Greyfriars monastery had been. He had a long yard out the back where he kept two different hearses, grew funeral flowers and ran a joinery business on the side for when business was slack. It seldom was. He himself was a large comfortably plump man, balding under his velvet hat, who wore black brocades of impressive richness and had a deep pleasant voice.

‘Well, Sir Robert,’ he said thoughtfully, after Carey had been seated in his sitting room and brought wine to drink. ‘I hadn’t expected to see ye. What can I do for you?’

‘I want to see Mr Atkinson’s body.’

‘Ah.’ There was a pause while Mr Fenwick’s chins dropped onto his snowy ruff and he clasped his hands across his stomach. ‘May I ask why, sir?’

Carey at first wasn’t sure why. It had been an instinctive feeling that he should look at the corpse he was being accused of making. He wasn’t sure how to deal with Fenwick either and in the end decided on honesty.

‘You know how I’m placed here,’ he said, ‘My servant is falsely accused of killing the man and I am wrongly under suspicion for ordering him to do it. I am trying to understand what actually happened.’

‘How will viewing the corpse help you?’

‘I don’t know, Mr Fenwick. I don’t even know if it will. I haven’t got a warrant with me, I am simply asking this as a favour.’

Fenwick had soft brown eyes which suddenly looked very shrewd.

‘We are in the midst of preparing him for his funeral,’ he said. ‘If you are willing…’

‘Of course.’

Fenwick stood and motioned Carey to follow him. There was a shed in the brightly blossoming garden where bodies could be laid out if there were not room for them at home or while they were waiting for an inquest. Atkinson lay there in his shirt and hose, while a slender woman sewed the gaping wound on his neck with white thread. Carey was not particularly squeamish but he looked away from that: it was ugly the way the needle pulled and tugged at the edges of flesh and no blood came.

‘Where did you bring him from?’ Carey asked. ‘Where was he killed.’

‘He was found,’ said Fenwick carefully, ‘in Frank’s vennel, off Botchergate.’

‘Found?’ Carey lifted his eyebrows. Fenwick hesitated.

‘There wasna hardly any blood about,’ he said. ‘In fact, there was none; my litter was hardly marked. He had his clothes on but not his boots. It was…’ Fenwick stopped suddenly.

Carey turned to him urgently. ‘Please, Mr Fenwick,’ he said. ‘I know you must be experienced in these things. If anything struck you as odd about Mr Atkinson, please will you tell me?’