New Manor stood at the opposite end of the village street from the inn and the mill. One wall of the house abutted the street itself, while on the opposite side the windows looked out on gardens and orchards that stretched down to the river bank, and then across the stream to the land beyond – fields of hay and pasture that rose up towards the dark-green band of woods – and, above these, to the purple hue of the moor.
Having dealt with ‘the cash consideration’ in what he called his business room, though it was more like a storeroom for guns and old boots, we now stood in the leaded bay window of the Chamber Major (as Turvey called New Manor’s largest room), looking out at this prospect. It was spacious, panelled in oak, and had plaster courses covering the ceiling in a pattern of diamonds connected at their corners by angular knot-patterns or by carved bosses. The fireplace was like a monument in carved stone, and the walls were adorned with weapons, heads of stags and portraits of Turvey ancestors in ruff collars. These splendours of another age were now, however, much chipped, tarnished, mouldy and generally dilapidated.
Standing between Elizabeth and me (Hector had fallen asleep and was in the care of the wrinkled retainer named Sukey), Turvey pointed out a group of ruined walls visible on the far bank of the river, a little upstream of us. They were the remaining stones from an earlier dilapidation – what had been a monastic establishment long ago. The ruins were not extensive (a modest affair compared to the great abbey at Whalley we had seen earlier in the day), but they spoke eloquently of the antiquity and lost grandeur of the place.
‘There is an even better view from upstairs. You must come up and see my dear wife’s room.’
He led the way up a broad oak staircase and on to a gallery that stretched from one end of the house to the other. At each extremity of the gallery was a large window whose leaded lights were set with heraldic shields showing the coats of arms of the Turveys and their relations. One looked over the village street, while the other enjoyed a long view of the river’s course and the distant moors in which it arose. Tom Turvey led us down the gallery towards the latter end. It was hung with more recent portraits of Turvey men – some armoured, others in wigs – interspersed with women in flowing silks. As we passed, they all seemed to glance down at us in supercilious pride. Turvey stopped beside one of these canvases, which from the costume of the handsome woman depicted was the most recently painted of them.
‘Mr Cragg, Mrs Cragg,’ he said, indicating the picture with a flourish of his hand. ‘May I have the honour of presenting to you my dearest wife, Henrietta?’
Involuntarily I began to bow my head, as if acknowledging the presence of a real person. I immediately checked myself, but there was something about New Manor that made the unreal seem real and the inanimate animate. But that was absurd! It would have made this a house of dreams or ghosts, whereas in fact it was made of solid old walls standing on solid foundations.
Turvey opened the door at the far end of the gallery and we passed through it into a chamber containing a bed with carved posts and hangings of good damask, though faded and moth-eaten. A set of linen and a dress were laid out on the bed, and on the dressing table beside the window were pots of powder and face paints, cut-glass perfume flasks, and a tortoiseshell brush, comb and mirror. There was also a jewellery casket.
‘She has the best outlook this house affords,’ observed Turvey, standing at the window. ‘The pasture and forest with the moors above, and the river flowing below.’
He waved his hand high towards the distant skyline.
‘It rises up there in those fells. My own room looks out on the street.’
‘And your wife,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Is she from home at present?’
Turvey let out an exaggerated sigh.
‘She is these last seven years dead, Mrs Cragg,’ he said softly. ‘I keep her room exactly as it was and cannot do otherwise as I feel her continued presence here, watching over everything. She would not like any change.’
He crossed to the dressing table and flipped up the lid of the jewellery casket. He picked up a necklace that appeared to be of white pearls graduated in size.
‘Her favourite,’ he said fondly.
‘Are you not afraid to keep such valuables in the house unused?’
‘Oh, they are not very valuable you know. Paste and glass for the most part, you see.’
He snapped shut the casket lid and turned away from his wife’s dressing table.
‘And now to dinner, my friends. Let us go down.’
The so-called Chamber Minor lay at the other end of the house, beneath Turvey’s bedroom. It was here that the family ate its meals, on a table which tonight had four places laid ready. At one of these, to the surprise of both Elizabeth and myself, a curiously misshapen child sat in a bath chair waiting for us. She seemed to me about nine, but I was misled. She was in fact twelve, though with the childish appearance often seen in invalid cripples.
‘My daughter Thomasina,’ Turvey announced proudly. ‘As ladylike as she is beautiful.’
Thomasina Turvey’s face tightened as she frowned.
‘Oh Father, don’t!’ she said. ‘You know I detest it when you speak like that.’
The food was a dry, scrawny broiled fowl, with a thick gravy and black bread, followed by white cheese just a little penetrated by a blue mould.
‘I had the hen killed on purpose,’ Turvey told us. ‘It’s not so usual we have real meat at table; but it’s not so usual we have visitors, neither. There’s eels and good trout from the beck, which is everyday meat enough for us.’
Turvey produced no wine, and to wash this feast down we drank honey beer in pewter tankards. Hiding as best I could the difficulty I had in swallowing this disgusting sweet-sour liquor, I asked if it was produced at home.
‘Of course it is!’ said Thomasina, who was an alert child with the bright eyes of a bird. She was not afraid to speak up. ‘We are beekeepers, you know.’
‘So are we, back in Preston,’ said Elizabeth. ‘We have hives on our garden patch.’
‘Indeed? How many?’
‘Just two.’
Thomasina smiled complacently.
‘We have fifty hives. Most of them are up on the moor now, working the heather.’
‘Is that where you were summoned to today, Mr Turvey?’ asked Elizabeth. ‘Didn’t you have to put on your bee armour again?’
Turvey chuckled.
‘Armour, you call it? Well, I suppose it is armour in a way – helmet, gauntlets and greaves being armour – but it would put quite the wrong idea into your head. Keeping bees is not a campaign of war. You want bees to know you and like you, as being family. So you’ve to be gentle and familiar with them. If you are, they’ll rarely attack you. The special gear is as much to make you recognized by them as to protect you against them.’
‘You were called to a swarm, you told us,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I hope you did not lose it.’
Turvey grimaced.
‘I did that, and in the worst possible way. By the time I got there the swarm had gone off my land and settled on the property of another man.’
‘Oh dear. He will let you have the swarm back, though?’
‘That he will not – or not willingly.’
‘How disobliging. Who is he?’
‘Father will not mention his name,’ said Thomasina, ‘or have it mentioned in this house. He lives at Hatchfly Hall, at the other end of the village, on the Whalley road.’
‘Yes, I believe we passed its gates on our way.’
Turvey drained his glass.
‘Have we all finished?’ he said. ‘Right, Mr Cragg and I will take a glass of port here. Would Mrs Cragg be kind enough to wheel Thomasina next door, as the Coroner and I have a particularly serious matter to go over?’
We had been served at supper by Sukey’s grandson, the drooping youth – Danny as he was called – that I had last seen taking charge of our packhorse. He now reappeared with a dust-caked bottle and two stem-glasses.
The bottle was opened, and we poured ourselves glassfuls of a thick, brown aged liquor. Turvey seemed in no hurry to get down to whatever business he wished to discuss.
‘My household is greatly reduced in the seven years since my wife’s death,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘She had the management of the money, you see, and good she was at it.’
He tapped his wig.
‘Not me. No head for figures and too soft at bargaining.’
‘Your girl is a bright child.’
‘Aye, she is her mother’s daughter right enough. She’s already beginning to keep my accounts for me. I thought for a while that I should seek a new wife: I have no son and am the last in the male line, you know. But though I miss it terribly, having a wife, I simply didn’t know how to go about finding myself another one. I know what I want, but find myself forever mistaking what women want.’
An awkward silence followed this confession, which I broke with a businesslike question.
‘So, what is it you want to speak to me about, Mr Turvey?’
‘Ah yes! A most regrettable incident occurred here last Sunday.’
He told me of the events that had happened in the village street of Accrington just two days before our arrival – the public punishment of Anne Gargrave for being a shrew and a gossip, and her resulting death.
‘We saw it all from this very window,’ said Turvey in conclusion. ‘The whole procession coming past, led by Billy Whist playing his fiddle like a madman. Mrs Gargrave’s body lies now in the church. She was to be buried this week, but knowing you were coming I have persuaded Gargrave to wait the funeral.’
I took a sip of port while I considered what to say.
‘That is a terrible tale and a deplorable event,’ I said. ‘There is no measuring the cruelty of a mob. As for the body, you have done right. It will have to be inquested before burial, of course. Who is the magistrate here?’
‘The one whose name I cannot mention.’
‘And has he arrested the guilty parties?’
‘No.’
‘Why on earth not?’
‘I suppose he chooses not to. I cannot act officially myself; and our other magistrate, Colonel Walmesley, is sadly reduced by age and does not go abroad. All I have been able to do is dismiss one of the ringleaders from my employ.’
‘Who was that?’
‘A former solider named Harry Hawk, who was my assistant beekeeper. But cannot you as Coroner initiate criminal proceedings?’
‘Not directly. However, I act independently of the Bench and, following an inquest, may recommend a prosecution. My decision holds force – great force. I shall instigate an inquest here without delay. It seems to me that Mrs Gargrave’s death demands justice, if we can obtain it.’
‘I am glad to hear that. Anne Gargrave adhered to the same religion as myself, you know, and we are not in general accustomed to having the benefit of justice. How will you conduct the inquest?’
‘My usual procedure is to gather witness statements, beginning with the first finder. When I have determined who are the key witnesses, I appoint a jury of qualified men and set a date for the hearing, which must be held locally and as soon as possible. At the hearing, the witnesses speak and the jury deliberates on the cause of death, after which, guided by me, they bring in a verdict.’
‘You must go careful, Mr Cragg. It is boggy ground you cross, and there are men here who will make it their business to try to sink you.’
‘I cannot be intimidated, Mr Turvey. I assure you of that.’
Turvey drained his glass and stood.
‘Perhaps it is time to rejoin the women.’
As we made our way to the Chamber Major, we heard music coming from another room that gave off the corridor. Turvey opened the door and showed me what he called his music room, a parlour containing an old spinet on whose much chipped and yellowed keyboard Thomasina was now playing for the entertainment of Elizabeth. The instrument was missing a few of its strings and needed tuning, but Thomasina Turvey did not care, playing on and on with little refinement but much spirit to the end of the piece. We applauded, none more loudly than her father, who fairly battered his hands together in his zeal.
‘Isn’t that grand? She’s a musical treasure, is my little Thomasina.’
We heard infantile mewling from the corridor and Sukey came in with Hector, who had been asleep, under her eye, in the kitchen. Now, having awoken, he was demanding his mother. In an hour it would be quite dark, and Elizabeth said it was time we left New Manor to spend the first night of our stay at the Dower House. We said our goodnights and made our way into the street.
It was a still, warm evening and a number of Accringtonians were out enjoying the twilight air. Elizabeth had quieted the baby, but he would inevitably begin to bawl again unless he was soon fed, so we hurried down the street towards our house.
‘Well, we have solved the mystery of Turvey’s wife,’ whispered Elizabeth as we went.
‘Yes. It’s pathetic to see that room frozen in time except for the work of the moths. All that is left to him is his wife’s clothing and a collection of false jewels.’
‘Oh, they weren’t all false, Titus!’ said Elizabeth. ‘We did not see the entire collection, but unless I am much mistaken that necklace was made of true pearls of excellent quality.’
‘But he said—’
‘I know. Perhaps he doesn’t know.’
‘Or seems not to.’
‘I cannot imagine why he would pretend. So what particular matter was it that he wanted to talk about over your port?’
‘A most unexpected thing,’ I murmured. ‘It seems I have coroner’s work to do here.’
‘What? Here in Accrington?’
‘Yes. An unpleasant business.’
I said no more until we were within doors. Elizabeth sat in one of the spoke-backed chairs and immediately began to feed Hector, while I closed the shutters and lit candles. Then I sat down and told her the whole story of Anne Gargrave’s death, just as Thomas Turvey had related it to me.
‘But why did they go to such extremes?’ she cried when I had finished. ‘The woman may have been a shrew, which is a failing, but no cause for murder.’
‘The people here evidently see the matter otherwise. This stang-riding is no doubt a traditional sanction, centuries old. That she died at the end of it is likely to be considered here as unintentional, in essence an accident.’
‘Then you must make them reconsider, Titus. These young men who started this are responsible. A woman has lost her life because of their actions, whether or not they meant it. They should be punished for manslaughter, at the very least.’
The candlelight flickered around the room, illuminating and in turn hiding its corners and crannies.
‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘Though to my way of thinking there might even be more to it than manslaughter. They might have planned it. There might be a deliberate murder in this.’
For want of a cot we had pulled out an empty drawer from the sideboard, made it into a crib for Hector, and set it down on his mother’s side of the bed. He would be comfortable enough.
‘But you will see about a real crib for him in the morning, Titus?’ Elizabeth pleaded. ‘He cannot sleep in a drawer for all the time we are here!’
I promised that I would. And then the thought of our son, and the reason we had come to this scarcely furnished house, brought to mind an idea I had had earlier.
‘Little Thomasina Turvey,’ I said, settling beside my wife in bed. ‘She is a strange one. Sharp as a bodkin in her mind. Was she born a cripple? I wonder because another possibility occurred to me while we were with them.’
‘I know just what you’re thinking,’ she said, ‘because the same thought occurred to me. And while I was trying to find a tactful way to ask her, she simply came out with it. “I know what you want to know,” she said, “and the answer is I was not born like this. I had the Crippling Ague as an infant, and it left me misshapen and without the power to walk.” I said that the will of God is sometimes hard to understand. She answered only with an ironic laugh and said she was tired of the subject and would play some music for me: she is old beyond her years, that one.’
‘The Crippling Ague! Is that what she called it? Well, its effects seem to me very much like those of Fidelis’s Paralysing Fever.’
‘I asked her if the disease is still found here in Accrington, but she said she hadn’t caught it here but in Warrington while she was staying with her grandparents. Nothing like it has been heard of in Accrington.’
I sighed with relief.
‘That is just as well, or our whole reason for being here is undermined.’
We faced another whole day before Matty would arrive with Wintle’s cart and, as none of the promised food had arrived from New Manor, I took the responsibility of fetching milk, butter, cheese and bread, and finding a source of fuel, of which I carried home a sack and ordered a further three hundredweight for delivery. Then I set and lit a fire under the range.
‘Doing all these unaccustomed tasks, I feel like Robinson Crusoe before he found his man Friday,’ I said.
‘Shall I then play the role of the goat on the island?’ said Elizabeth. ‘I do produce milk, after all.’
‘You make a very beautiful nanny goat, and Hector is your kid.’
‘Who needs somewhere to sleep, don’t forget. That is your next task, Titus.’
So I set off to find the workshop of the village carpenter, from whom I intended to commission a bed for the baby. Two or three that I asked in the street for his name and whereabouts pretended not to hear me; one bent-backed old man scowled and swore by way of answer. Eventually a child rolling his hoop told me that he was Peter Castleford, and that his yard lay a little way from the village, beside a tributary which flowed into the Hyndburn at the southern end of the village.
I fully expected to have to overcome the same reserve, or rather hostility, in my dealings with Castleford. I was wrong. He proved a generous and intelligent man of about thirty-five who greeted me in friendly terms.
‘I’m happy to meet you, Mr Cragg. Not everyone in the village has said the same, I hazard.’
‘They have not, Mr Castleford, and I am glad indeed to hear a friendly voice.’
‘They’ll come around. They are not used to changes, new faces. They see every stranger as an enemy.’
‘But you do not?’
‘Oh, I’ve seen the world, Mr Cragg. Ten year a ship’s carpenter, I was, until this happened.’ He moved his long leather apron aside and I saw that he stood on a wooden leg. ‘A prosthesis – that’s the fancy word for it. I made it myself, of course.’
‘Do you wish you were still at sea?’
‘Well, I feel shipwrecked out here, I do. I was born in the village, but I went to sea as a boy when the press gang came through, so a ship’s been longer my home than my parents’ cottage was.’
‘You were pressed as a boy? That is illegal.’
‘No, not pressed, but when the sailors came here I left with them. I was full of dreams of seeing the sea. I wasn’t disappointed.’
We settled the business of the baby’s cot quickly enough. Castleford made a sketch of a neat cradle on rockers, which looked just right, and soon we were shaking hands on a price. He said that, as this was Thursday, he could finish the job by the end of the week. My child would sleep in his own purpose-made bed on Saturday night.
‘I have heard of the terrible event here on Sunday last,’ I said carelessly, before leaving. ‘A woman died, I am told.’
Castleford frowned.
‘They went too far. I am not against the old country ways, but they went too far.’
‘Did you see it?’
He shook his head.
‘No, I was away that day at my sister’s at Altham. But two lads, the Stirk brothers, came by and had a stout beam from me on the day before. Could be it was that they used for their stang. Any road, I have a box ready for the poor woman when it’s time.’
So we parted and I returned to the Dower House with Castleford’s sketch of the new cradle.
‘Our kid will have sweet dreams in that,’ said Elizabeth.
New Manor had at last sent down some supplies – greens and root vegetables – and so we had a simple village dinner of pottage, bread and cheese. When we’d finished, I rose from the table and prepared to go out again.
‘I am going to the church,’ I said. ‘I need to see the body of this poor woman.’