P. Chisholm - A Season of Knives

‘Nay, Mrs Mulcaster,’ he said hurriedly. ‘It’s all some notion of the Deputy Warden’s, none o’ mine.’

‘Hmf.’

Very pointedly, Maggie Mulcaster did not invite them over the threshold, but stood stalwart in her doorway with her arms folded, and little Mary shaded by her skirts, while Carey asked her what she remembered of the Monday. There wasn’t much, a day like any other, in fact. It was the next day that stuck in her memory, she said heavily, what with Mr Atkinson found dead in Frank’s vennel in the morning and Kate arrested after. Carey thanked and left her and went to her next-door neighbour.

He painstaking asked each of them the same question. One had helped Julia and Kate Atkinson with washing the sheets from Mrs Atkinson’s miscarriage. She told of that only with much coaxing from Carey who was starting to look very puzzled indeed.

Mrs Leigh was at home, more enormous and lethargic than ever, and very pale. She pushed at wisps of her hair, shoving them back under her cap in such a way that they immediately came out again and whispered that she hadn’t been watching.

Carey started back to the Castle as Dodd’s stomach began growling for its dinner.

‘What’ll we do now sir?’ he asked, hoping to hear the name Bessie in the answer.

‘Hm? said Carey, still lost in thought. ‘Oh, I think we’ll talk to Andy Nixon now.’

Why not before we did all this prancing about the town and spending an hour prattling with little maids about pretty clothes, wondered Dodd. Aloud he said sadly, ‘Ay sir.’

That was all the conversation they had as they walked back up to the Castle, while Dodd reflected that Carey wasn’t deliberately keeping him from his meat; it was simply he was too caught up in thinking to remember food. At this rate Dodd would be reduced to eating garrison rations in the Keep hall simply to keep body and soul together.

Carey was frowning as he knocked on Barker’s door.

‘You know, up until I talked to the child I was quite certain what had happened,’ he told Dodd quietly. ‘Now I’m not so sure.’

‘Ay, but ye willna put too much faith in what a little maid would say?’ protested Dodd.

Barker unlocked the Keep door and led them into the passage full of the cool pungent smell of wine and then the throat-scraping stink of old piss from the dungeons.

‘I don’t think she was lying and there were a number of things she said which don’t fit.’ Carey opened the Judas hole for Andy Nixon’s cell and saw he was lying perched uncomfortably on the narrow stone ledge.

‘Well, she got them mixed up,’ said Dodd. ‘She’s only small. Ye canna call her as a witness in any case.’

‘Of course not.’

Their voices woke Andy Nixon, and he turned and sat up with a clank.

‘Is that ye, Deputy?’

‘It is.’

‘I want tae confess.’

Carey’s mood lightened at once although he was astonished. He had been wondering how to persuade the man. ‘Excellent. Can you wait until I get witnesses and a clerk?’

‘Willna make no odds, will it?’

At last they assembled in Scrope’s council chamber, with Scrope behind his desk and Richard Bell taking notes behind him. Just as Andy Nixon was brought shuffling in, Sir Richard Lowther arrived with his usual foul-weather face. There was quite a crowd in there, including Dodd and Archie-Give-It-Them who were guarding the white-faced Nixon. Carey told Scrope briskly how he had discovered the name of the man who wanted his glove, gone after him and arrested him.

‘What have you to say for yourself?’ asked Scrope gravely.

Andy Nixon took a deep breath. ‘That I killed Jemmy Atkinson. His missus didnae ken a thing about it until the deed was done.’

Lowther snorted disbelievingly.

‘Then what did you do?’

‘We hid the body under the bed. I’d asked a…friend what we should do, and he said, best thing was to dump it in an alley. So after nightfall we got it in a handcart covered wi’ hay and that’s what we did.’

‘Explain to me about Barnabus’s knife and my glove,’ put in Carey.

‘Ay, well,’ Andy Nixon coughed and continued staring at the floor. ‘My…er friend said it wasnae enough to dump the corpse, somebody had to take the blame, and it might as well be ye, sir, since ye hadnae kin here and ye were a gentleman so ye wouldnae swing for it but only go back to London, which would suit Mr Pe…my friend. So he arranged for your man’s knife to be got at the bawdy house.’

‘My glove?’

‘Ay. Well, I thought it weren’t enough to catch ye. so I thought I could get something of yourn to add to it, see, and I went by myself and found out which boy was your servant and then bet him he couldnae get me one o’ your gloves, and he give it me, and then I put it with Jemmy’s body as well. It was me own idea.’

Overegging the pudding, Carey thought; just as well for me you did that, you young fool.

Nixon looked contemplative. ‘I’ll hang for that glove, will I not?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Carey. ‘Tell me how you did the murder?’

‘What’s the point, sir? It’s done now.’

‘The point is that I want to know.’

Lowther tutted and rolled his eyes and Carey noticed that Long George had come up to the council chamber and was standing at the back, sniffling self-importantly. What’s happened now, he wondered.

‘Ay well, the murder, sir.’ Nixon thought for a while. ‘He were killed in bed, in his sleep, sir. I…er…I climbed up from the street and got in at the window, and then I…er…I cut his throat.’

Carey’s eyes narrowed. ‘How did you climb up from the street?’

‘On the Leighs’ shop awning and the scaffolding and then onto the eaves. And then back again when I’d done it.’

‘And when was the murder done?’

‘About dawn on Monday.’

There was a concerted gasp, though of course that had to be right. Scrope interrupted fussily.

‘Wait a minute. Are you telling us that Jemmy Atkinson was killed early on Monday morning, not on Monday night?’

‘Ay sir, of course. We hid the body through the day, first under the bed and then in Clover’s byre and then I put it on a handcart and I…’

‘Quite so, quite so. But his throat was slit on Monday morning.’

‘Ay sir. Dawn or thereabouts.’

‘Hmf.’ said Lowther, ‘Why should we believe you?’

Nixon shrugged. ‘It’s when he died, sir. I dinna ken how to prove it to ye.’

‘After you climbed the awning and got through the upstairs window?’ Carey asked again with a frown.

Nixon nodded. Scrope tutted. ‘What is the point of repeating it, Sir Robert?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Carey admitted. ‘I’d like…’

‘Well then, don’t interfere. Very well, Nixon, you can go back down to the cells for the moment and we’ll consider what to do with you.’

Dodd and Archie marched him out and Long George came forward to whisper urgently in Carey’s ear.

‘One moment, my lord,’ he said. ‘Apparently the woman wishes to confess as well.’

Scrope looked pleased. The whole thing was turning out very neatly. With luck his wife would stop giving him trouble over the way he was treating her brother, as if that could be helped.

Her brother, however, was being aggravating, shaking his head and pacing up and down.

‘That’s not right, that can’t be right,’ he was saying.

‘What on earth is troubling you, Robin?’ Scrope demanded. ‘Nixon has just exonerated Barnabus Cooke for you.’

Carey blinked at him as if he’d forgotten all about Barnabus.

‘But, my lord,’ he said in a voice tight with frustration. ‘What Andy Nixon has told us makes no sense at all. I have the testimony of his landlady that she was with him from the dark before dawn until the sun was up.’