Chris Nickson - Constant Lovers

‘I bloody well hope so.’

Sedgwick turned to leave.

‘John?’ Nottingham held up the paper. ‘Worth learning to read?’

Sedgwick grinned. ‘Aye, boss.’

When he walked back into Jackson’s rooms, the deputy saw that Lister had thrown his jacket over a chair and was poring over the papers from the desk, sorting them into four piles on the table.

‘What do we have?’ he asked.

‘Those are nothing,’ Rob answered, pointing at his handiwork. ‘Just bills. Those are work — he was with Elias Tunstall, by the way — and those are family. Three sisters, one of them’s in Leeds, married to a merchant.’

‘And what about those?’ Sedgwick gestured at a small collection.

‘Those are his love letters.’

‘All from the same girl?’

‘The handwriting’s the same in all of them and they’re all signed S. No dates on any of them.’

‘S is Sarah Godlove, the murdered girl. Jackson’s writing matches a note she had hidden on her.’

‘Well. .’ Lister began, then couldn’t think of anything more to say.

‘An interesting turn, isn’t it?’ the deputy said. ‘You finish looking through these and we’ll take them back to the jail.’

‘John?’ Lister asked soon after, looking up from one of the notes. ‘Where did Sarah live?’

‘Horsforth. Why?’

‘Listen to this: Can we meet in Burley or Kirkstall this time, my love? I won’t have the time to come all the way into Leeds. He wishes us to go to a ball in Bradford that night so I must be back in good time. Both of those are on the way in from Horsforth. She was found at the abbey, wasn’t she?’

‘Aye,’ Sedgwick agreed thoughtfully.

The Constable divided up the tasks. Lister would continue to search through the papers. Sedgwick would go to Tunstall’s to break the news and see what he could discover. He himself would take word of Jackson’s suicide to his sister.

The house on Vicar Lane was run down, as if the people inside had stopped caring about it some years before. The windows were dirty, the limewash old and worn, its colour faded from brilliant white almost to grey. Not the house of a successful merchant, he thought as he knocked on the door. But then not every merchant made his fortune; many lost everything.

‘I’m Richard Nottingham, Constable of Leeds. I need to see Mrs Bradley,’ he told the maid, a toothless old wraith who showed him through to the dusty withdrawing room, sketching a curtsey on her way out. He had to spend ten minutes waiting until Elizabeth Bradley entered, skirts rustling, her face freshly powdered and hair up. She looked to be in her middle thirties, careworn and harassed but putting on a good front.

‘Maggie said you’re the Constable?’ she enquired, confusion on her face. Had she dressed up to receive him, he wondered?

‘I am. I’m sorry, Mrs Bradley, but I have ill news for you.’ There was never a way to break a death easily. Murder was difficult enough, but suicide was something impossible to understand.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked sharply. ‘Has something happened to Henry?’

‘No.’ He looked at her. ‘You’d better sit down,’ he told her. ‘It’s your brother.’

‘Will?’

‘Yes.’

She looked up at him, uncomprehending. ‘What is it? Is he in trouble?’

Nottingham paused.

‘I’m afraid he’s dead,’ he said finally. ‘He killed himself.’

‘Will?’ She spoke the word again. ‘Will?’

‘Yes.’ He watched with concern as her eyes began to lose focus, and took her hand to steady her. ‘Do you want me to get the maid?’

She shook her head slowly, squeezing her eyes firmly shut to stop any tears leaking out. Her fingers squeezed hard around his, the grip tight. She needed to control herself, he knew that, to let the shock pass. She let go of him, pulling a linen handkerchief from her sleeve and crushing it into a ball in her small fist.

‘It’s Will?’ she asked. ‘You’re sure?’

‘It is,’ he told her in a gentle voice. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘But why. . why would he kill himself??’

‘I don’t know,’ the Constable answered. ‘We’re trying to find out. Can you think of any reason?’

‘No,’ she said after a while, her voice full of bafflement. ‘He said that the business was doing well. He was making money. He was going to invest in Henry’s — my husband’s — firm.’ She put her hand to her mouth. ‘Henry.’

‘Mrs Bradley.’

She looked at Nottingham, her thoughts jerking back hard to the here and now.

‘Were you and your brother close?’

‘He always came to church with us on Sunday. We go to the new church, we have a family pew there.’

‘What about your sisters?’

‘Alice lives in York and Susan is in Pontefract. I’m the oldest.’ Her eyes widened as another understanding reached her. ‘I’ll have to tell them, won’t I?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

She dabbed quickly at a tear before it could run down her cheek.

‘Did your brother have a girl, by any chance?’

‘Will? A girl?’ she asked in astonishment. ‘You didn’t know my brother, did you?’

‘No.’

‘Will didn’t have time for courting. He was always working. I used to tease him about it, tell him he’d end up a rich old bachelor.’ She smiled briefly at the fleeting memory. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Because it might give a reason. A cause.’

She shook her head.‘No, I don’t think it can be that.’

He stood up. ‘My condolences again,’ he said formally, and moved towards the door.

‘Constable?’ He heard her draw in a breath and knew what was coming. He’d expected her to ask. ‘Is it possible that my brother’s death wasn’t a suicide? An accident, perhaps?’

He knew the reason for the question. No family wanted the shame of a suicide. It was a stain that never washed out, the quiet whispers behind hands and the pitying looks without words. But there was nothing he could offer her except a short movement of his head that committed him to nothing. By now the word had probably spread too far to be drawn back.

He strolled up Vicar Lane to the Head Row, then back down Briggate to stop at the Ship. The food was tasty, the meat fresh, not rancid and covered in spices, and Michael always carried good ale.

But he barely noticed what he ate or drank. Instead he was thinking about Elizabeth Bradley. She’d said little but revealed much. Will Jackson obviously kept his own life away from his family. If he’d been courting an available girl there’d have been no reason for that.

He’d also had money to invest in his brother-in-law’s business, so the cloth finishing must have been making a profit. That seemed to rule out money as a possible reason behind his death.

Nottingham put the last of the mutton pie into his mouth, washing it down with the ale and made his way back to the jail.

Elias Tunstall had a shifty face, Sedgwick decided. With a sharp nose and a widow’s peak to his greasy hair, he had the look of a rat, eyes constantly moving around as they walked through the business premises of Tunstall and Jackson, Cloth Finishers, on the Calls.

‘Why?’ he asked desperately when the deputy told him of the suicide. ‘Why would he want to do that?’

‘We don’t know yet. That’s what we want to find out. Is the business doing well?’

‘It’s doing grand,’ Tunstall answered, puffing out his thin chest. ‘We’ve got more work than we can handle.’ He deflated again as the realization hit him. ‘Don’t know what we’ll do now, mind.’

The voices in the nap shop stopped as soon as Tunstall entered and he glared around the men. Over in the corner the preemer boy, a lad of maybe twelve, was taking wood fibres out of the teasels used to raise the nap of the cloth. Two men worked side by side on the frame, pulling the combs over the wool.