P. Chisholm - A Season of Knives

‘And ye believe her?’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’

‘Och God. Nobbut a man would believe she could do a thing like that,’ said Janet springing to her feet and advancing on Carey’s desk.

‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘I don’t believe a woman incapable of murder.’

Janet planted her hands on the desk and leaned towards him.

‘Sir Robert,’ she said. ‘Have you ever washed a full set of sheets and blankets and bed-hangings?’

He was not amused at the suggestion, which he might have been under other circumstances.

‘No, Mrs Dodd,’ he said. ‘I haven’t.’

‘Then ye dinna ken what backache is.’

Carey rather thought he did know what backache was, having spent up to twelve hours on his feet waiting on the Queen in one of her moods, and he disliked Janet’s truculence, but he only lifted his eyebrows. This encouraged her.

‘It’s a full day’s work, is that, on top of all the other-or you’d have to hire a woman and risk her telling the world. Ye’d needs be fighting for yer life or gone Bedlam mad to cut anything’s throat in yer bed chamber.’

He looked away and then back at her. ‘I admit, I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘Ay,’ she said. ‘Now, I’ll not deny that a woman’s capable of murder, though it’s a harder thing for her against a man if he’s awake and in his right mind, ye ken.’

‘And besides being a crime, it’s an appalling and wicked sin,’ put in Carey.

‘Ay,’ agreed Janet unexpectedly. ‘It is. There’s rarely any need to murder your husband if ye’ve any men in your family at all.’

Carey coughed. It wasn’t what he had meant.

‘But…’ Janet was sticking her finger under his nose which annoyed him. ‘ But in your ain marriage bed so the blood gets all over the sheets and the blankets ye’ve woven, and the bed-hangings the price they are-no, never. In the jakes, perhaps, with a lance; or poison in his food; or get him drunk and put a pillow over his head…But cut his throat in the bedroom? It’s a man did that, because he wouldnae think of the washing after.’

She finished triumphantly, removed the offensive finger and folded her arms again.

‘Mrs Dodd,’ said Carey allowing a little of his annoyance to show through in his voice. ‘Please be seated.’

She sat, not abashed.

‘Did you know Sir Richard Lowther thinks the same as you?’ Carey asked.

She was stunned. ‘Does he now?’

‘He does. Mainly because he prefers to believe my servant Barnabus did it.’ Or so he says, Carey thought, struck anew by an old suspicion.

‘Oh.’ Her thoughts were plain to be read on her face and typically she gave voice to them. ‘Ay, well then, I expect poor Kate’s a dead woman.’

Very few things annoyed Carey more about the whole business than everyone’s bland assumption that it mattered not at all who had actually done the murder, it only mattered who could be brought to hang for it. They assumed he was as little interested in justice as any of them, and would find the weakest victim he could to blame. At the moment it passed his capacity to think of words to persuade them that if he genuinely thought Barnabus had slit Atkinson’s throat, for whatever reason, he would hang the man himself. It was too outlandish a way of thinking for Borderers.

After a moment he said, ‘I hear what you say, Mrs Dodd. Perhaps you’re right. But the problem is, it’s not enough. Andy Nixon, I think, is safe, but there is no denying that Mrs Atkinson was in the house at the time and had the opportunity of doing it. Now I’m not saying she did…’ he went on hurriedly as Janet Dodd took breath again, ‘…I’m only saying that she’ll have a hard job convincing the Coroner’s jury she didn’t even if she does withdraw her confession.’

‘Ay,’ said Janet thoughtfully. ‘I see. The jury will a’ be men, of course, and they’ll know naught of washing sheets either.’

‘Quite. And the confession will weigh heavy with them, unless I can convince them she was a woman distraught and unable to help herself. It weighs heavy with me and not only because I’m Barnabus’s master. We did nothing to make her confess, you know, Mrs Dodd, she came to us of her own free will.’

‘She was worriting about Andy Nixon, of course, the silly bitch,’ said Janet.

‘Do you think she should have let Nixon hang for her? He was willing to do it; that’s why he lied to us.’

Janet looked at him as if he were mad.

‘Ay, of course,’ she said. ‘He’s a good man, is Andy, but she’s got her bairns to think of. But then she allus was featherheaded, was Katy Coldale, and allus did think the sun and the moon and the seven stars shone out of Andy Nixon’s…er…face.’

She looked over her shoulder at Julia Coldale who seemed mildly shocked at this ruthlessness.

‘Well, go on,’ she said. ‘Tell him about the sheets anyway, Julia.’

Julia wriggled a bit and told the story of the Monday morning in a breathless voice. She had arrived and been set to make the butter while Mrs Atkinson kneaded the bread. Then Mrs Atkinson had fetched some bread and beer for her husband and gone up with it. She came down in a dreadful state and had sent Mary for Nixon, then gone up with a laundry basket. She brought all the sheets and blankets down and they were dirty with blood. They had put the sheets in to soak in cold water in the big brewing bucks they had in the yard sheds, and Mrs Atkinson had gone up to sweep up the rushes and then come back down again saying it was better to do it later, which had puzzled Julia. At the same time, Mrs Atkinson had told her she had had a sudden issue of blood in the night, though it seemed a bit much even for a miscarriage, and Mrs Atkinson didn’t look ill enough for a woman who had had a miscarriage although she certainly was pale, and she hadn’t sent for the apothecary nor the midwife neither. Then most of the day was taken with scrubbing and soaping and bringing out the triple-strained lye to soak the sheets in again. Julia had been kept busy going to the street conduit with buckets and back again, and once she was sent over to Maggie Mulcaster to borrow another scrubbing brush, but they had done the sheets and blankets by the evening, pretty much, and left them to soak in fair water until the morrow when they had wrung them and hung them out on the hurdles. It had ruined the day completely.

‘Ye see,’ said Janet significantly. ‘Nobbut a man would make so much trouble.’

‘Yes,’ said Carey thoughtfully. ‘Now, Julia, what was it you did at dawn on Monday which you haven’t told us about?’

The effect of this simple question was very interesting. Julia gasped and put her hand to her mouth as if the Deputy Warden had struck her. Janet swivelled round and glared at her.

‘Eh?’ she said.

‘You’ve left something out, haven’t you?’

Julia put her hand down again. ‘No sir,’ she said quite calmly. ‘I told you just as it happened.’

‘How did you know that Mr Atkinson had his throat cut on Monday morning?’

‘It were the sheets,’ she said. ‘I knew from the sheets.’

Carey gave her a very hard stare which she returned, quite recovered, and then lowered her eyes modestly to the rushes.

‘Hm,’ he said. ‘If you saw anything, Julia, I strongly advise you to tell me.’

‘Me, sir?’ said Julia. ‘I saw nothing, sir, only what I told you. I helped Mrs Atkinson with the bed covers and such.’

Doubt crept into Carey’s mind; perhaps he had mistaken her reaction. She certainly seemed scared of him, which was a pity. He sighed, caught Janet Dodd’s expression and tried to hide the thoughts and speculations chasing themselves across the surface of his mind. There was a short awkward silence, of which only Julia seemed unconscious, for she picked up a letter she had knocked off the chest, smoothed it and put it back in a very distracting way.