Chris Nickson - Constant Lovers

‘Sweet God,’ Lister whispered. ‘It’s Will Jackson.’

Lister was out in the corridor, bent over and retching up his breakfast. Sedgwick looked at the body swinging gently from the beam. One shoe had fallen off, lying on its side on the boards next to a dark stain of piss. A low stool had been kicked over.

‘It’s Jackson, right enough,’ Croft said.

‘Let’s get him cut down,’ the deputy sighed, pulling a knife from his coat and sliced the rope. ‘You take the legs.’ Between them they manoeuvred the corpse to the ground and Sedgwick cut the noose from the neck.

Another suicide, another sad tale, he thought. From the look of him he’d been no more than twenty-five, a neat, trim man.

‘When did you find him?’ Sedgwick asked.

‘Right before I came for you,’ Croft answered, his eyes firm on Jackson. ‘I was getting everything ready for the cloth market.’

‘When did you last look in here?’ Sedgwick stood. Jackson had hung himself with a length of rope knotted over the beam. Nothing special, nothing unusual. He’d probably purchased it at the chandler’s shop.

‘After the market on Saturday.’ Croft ran a hand across his thin, grey hair. ‘Allus make sure they never leave anything.’

‘And what do you know about him?’ Sedgwick gestured at the corpse.

Croft thought for a moment. ‘Nothing, really. I’d seen him a few times, that’s all. He was a cloth dresser, I think.’ He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

Rob came back into the room, his face a pale, terrible white, wiping awkwardly at his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Was he a friend of yours?’ the deputy asked.

‘In a way. Not a close one,’ Lister replied. ‘I’d see him out drinking sometimes and we’d talk.’ He paused. ‘I can’t believe he’d do this.’ He looked at Sedgwick with wide, uncomprehending eyes.

‘Have the coroner see him, then I’ll have a couple of the men bring him to the jail,’ the deputy told Croft then turned to the younger man. ‘Come on, Rob, we’d better get you out in the fresh air.’

The air was full of all the odours of the city but Lister gulped it in deeply, leaning against the smooth, finished stone of the building with his hands on his knees.

‘The first one’s always bad,’ Sedgwick told him, watching the young man’s face. He kept the sympathy out of his voice. ‘You’ll see a lot worse if you stay in the job.’

‘Can you become used to something like that?’

‘Not really. There are never any easy ones. But you learn how to look at it.’ He clapped the lad on the shoulder. ‘Let’s go back to the jail, you look like you need a drink.’

The Constable had returned and was sitting at his desk, scratching away at a piece of paper with the quill pen.

‘How did he do?’ he asked as the others returned.

‘He’s had a rough start,’ the deputy answered as Lister filled a mug. ‘Suicide at the Cloth Hall. A fellow called Will Jackson. Rob knew him.’

Nottingham raised his eyebrows.

Rob swilled the ale in his mouth and swallowed it. ‘Like I told Mr Sedgwick, I didn’t know him well, just in the beer shops and inns. He was a junior partner in one of the cloth dressers.’

‘Do you know which one?’ the Constable asked.

‘No. I’m sorry,’ Lister said.

‘Never mind, we can find out easily enough. No doubt he killed himself??’ he asked the deputy.

‘Positive, boss.’ Sedgwick poured himself a drink. ‘The men are bringing him over here.’

‘Right. We’d better get him in the ground as soon as possible in this weather. The church won’t have anything to do with him if he’s a suicide.’ He turned to Rob. ‘What about his family?’

‘I remember his parents died during the last year of his apprenticeship. And I seem to recall something about sisters.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘I don’t remember more than that.’

‘Do you know where he lived?’ Nottingham brushed the fringe off his forehead.

‘Near the bottom of Briggate somewhere, I think.’

‘Good. You two go and see what you can find and then go over to his work and talk to them. Then we can be finished with this.’

The Constable saw Lister grimace at the rough dismissal of the death.

‘Rob,’ he said gently, ‘I’m sorry. But this is a suicide. We have plenty to keep us busy without that. You’ll learn that.’

The lad nodded.

It only took a few minutes to obtain the man’s address. They knocked on the door of a pleasant-looking house set fifty yards up from the river and the housekeeper reluctantly took them up to the rooms Jackson rented. His front window looked down on the street, the bedroom at the rear over the long, neat garden.

‘He didn’t leave a note at the Cloth Hall,’ Sedgwick explained to Lister. ‘See if there’s anything here, anything to show why he killed himself. You look in here, I’ll take the back.’

Jackson had money; he certainly hadn’t lived hand to mouth. There were three suits, all of good cut, spare shirts and hose. The furniture was old but of good, lasting quality, the mattress of goose down, the sheets clean, expensive linen.

Why, the deputy wondered? Why would someone with all this, someone with a business, kill himself?? There was no sense to it. He kept looking but there was nothing to answer his question and he went into the living room.

‘Have you looked at the desk yet?’ he asked Lister.

‘No.’

It was there, lying on top of a pile of papers. The last thing Jackson would have written. In flowing script on a clean sheet of paper, he’d penned, ‘My sweet S is dead. There can be no more for me with her gone.’

The quill had been cleaned, the small knife for sharpening it lying next at the side, the inkwell carefully capped. A man’s final actions.

‘Rob,’ Sedgwick asked, ‘how well did you know Will?’

‘Not well at all, I told you,’ Lister answered distractedly. ‘Why?’

‘I think he might be connected to the murder we have.’

He left the lad to sort through the correspondence, trying to find anything he could — love letters, the names of relatives, more about Jackson’s work. That was something he could do easily enough without anyone gazing over his shoulder. Sedgwick hurried back to the jail, the note carefully folded in his pocket.

Nottingham was still labouring over his reports, the remains of a mutton pie on the desk.

‘I think you’d better have a look at this, boss.’

He waited as the Constable read and then the two men looked at each other.

‘Sarah Godlove?’

‘That’s what I was wondering.’

Nottingham reached into the desk and found the note he’d discovered in the dead girl’s dress. He placed it next to the brief lines Jackson had left. The writing matched.

‘That would explain her being away one day each week, meeting him, I suppose.’ He sat back, scraping a hand over his chin. ‘Good work, John. I think we’d better find out all we can about Mr Jackson. Men have murdered their lovers before.’

Sedgwick nodded. ‘Rob’s going through his things.’

‘What do you think of him?’ Nottingham asked.

‘He’s got plenty to learn,’ the deputy said cautiously.

‘I know. But we all did when we started. I remember what you were like.’

‘He’s quick, I’ll give him that. If he stays he might be all right. If.’

‘I think he’d make a good deputy when you become Constable.’

Sedgwick smiled. ‘If the Corporation lets it happen that way.’

‘They’ll listen to my recommendation,’ the Constable said firmly. ‘No promises, mind.’ He waited until Sedgwick nodded his acknowledgement.

‘Still, plenty of time before that happens, boss.’