In theory, a coroner conducting an inquest has the responsibilities of the author of a novel – or that’s how I see it. He alone sees every person’s face and notes everything that happens, while the people he observes – audience, jury and witnesses – are all turned towards him. Like the author’s characters, they see what he permits them to see, and know what he thinks it proper for them to know. But, I say ‘in theory’. In practice, it does not always come out like that. An author can exercise complete control over the proceedings in hand, but a coroner is at the mercy of time and chance, and human whimsy. And the chances of his losing control much increase when the witnesses and jury are strangers to him, and he to them.
I looked around the Chamber Major. The villagers were arrayed before me in their stuff gowns, spit boots and patched buffin coats. Their mouths hung open in bovine fascination, most showing toothless and diseased gums and yellowish mottled tongues, and I felt a sudden surge of disgust. What had they to do with me or I with them? We belonged to different worlds that could never truly connect, however much we called across the void that separated us. To my urban ears their speech sounded like the grunting of pigs, and I sometimes thought the things I had to say to them might as well have been spoken in Hebrew.
Well, the inquest was in progress now. I had already taken the jury across to the church and unsheeted the body for their viewing. Most of these men, though they were from Altham way, had known Anne Gargrave, and probably to a greater or lesser extent disliked her. In front of her mortal remains – which were about to be displayed to them naked, as custom prescribed – these feelings were a little softened, though this did not loosen their rigid views on death and destiny.
‘I’ll not say I’m glad, but nor do I weep,’ said Cyril Washbrook, adopting a gloomy tone. He was a butcher and the jurors’ foreman, elected perhaps because of his familiarity with blood and guts. He was noted for watery eyes, beneath which the skin had formed lugubrious swags or pouches.
‘Aye,’ said another by the name of Higgs. ‘This was ordained so, and so it happened.’
His remark was affirmed by a low chorus of ‘Ayes’ from several mouths.
‘Not ordained but preordained, brother Higgs,’ growled James Greaves, a man in the plainest of garb that stood beside him. ‘Our sister must take what she gets in the hereafter. She was a papist. It is not our part to pronounce on her, for she is pronounced on already.’
There was a further outbreak of ‘Ayes’ and ‘Well saids’.
‘One thing I can pronounce, though,’ put in a sandy-haired juror, John Statham. ‘In the face, she don’t look very like she did alive. She used to look like a vixen, and now she’s more like a rabbit.’
‘That’s right, Johnny. She don’t look so sharp-faced,’ said another, Thomas Wharton, with a snorting laugh that he quickly suppressed.
‘Please pay attention,’ I said, raising my hand. ‘You are not here to rule on the woman’s character, only on how she died and on whether it was natural or unnatural. Now, let us look.’
I drew away the sheet and revealed the body. Once the men had recovered from shock at the evidence of Fidelis’s surgical investigations – a roughly sewn-up gash from her breastbone to her navel – I pointed out the injuries she had received.
‘We can see numerous bruises about the body – here, here and here, then here and here. And, as Mr Statham has accurately pointed out, there are several more about the face which are quite disfiguring. Note them well.’
I was using a wooden rule to measure the worst of Anne Gargrave’s bruises and cuts, while Mrs Nightingale noted down the details.
‘There are bumps and scrapes on top of the skull, but nothing so serious as might kill her.’
‘How did she die, then?’ asked Statham.
‘That’s what we’re here to discover, boy,’ the butcher told him sternly.
Statham turned to me.
‘However shall us, though, Mr Cragg, if she was not killed by the wounds that appear?’
‘We shall hear evidence from the doctor and that will help us judge.’
I covered the body with the sheet.
‘Shall we go then?’
The audience had grown restive during the half hour we were away, but having settled the court, I was able to call the first witness, the Gargraves’ servant, Gerald Piper, whom I had identified as first finder. He told how he had stayed indoors during the disturbance, being afraid, but when it was all over had come out and helped John Gargrave into the house. He had then gone back to fetch his mistress.
‘She were lying in the wet ground. I tried to get her to rise, but she were senseless.’
‘Was she alive?’
‘I couldn’t tell straight away, Sir. I called the boy and we carried her inside and to bed. Not that her bed could do her any good, like, because it was then we found she were dead as a stone.’
‘In other words, she had died before you put her to bed?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
Piper had nothing to add, so I called for Susan Bacon. I wanted the court to hear the view of the village as a whole, which I believed she represented. The witness scurried forward in her haste to become the centre of attention, but as soon as she sat in the chair and felt every eye upon her she became abashed. So the first of my questions about how the stang ride began, and what happened as it progressed, elicited no more than monosyllabic answers.
‘Did you witness the stang ride meted out on Mr and Mrs Gargrave?’
‘Oh aye, I saw it. Everybody did.’
‘But not everybody was active in it. Were you?’
‘If you mean did I follow the stang, then yes, I did. A crowd of us did.’
‘Several times up and down the village street?’
‘Yes.’
‘And some people were banging pots and others were throwing missiles of various kinds at the unhappy couple?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you yourself throw things?’
‘I may have. I don’t remember.’
‘Do you know who were the instigators of this? The ringleaders?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Were Simon and Charles Stirk among them?’
‘I couldn’t say.’
‘What about Harry Hawk?’
‘Happen.’
‘That is not what you told me yesterday, is it? You said you thought he was in on it from the very start.’
‘I am saying what I meant yesterday, if only you’d been listening, was he might have been and he might not.’
‘Do you not think the guilt for this crime is spread wider than two – or three – men? That there is a common guilt in all those who took part in the stang ride?’
‘I do not speak of guilt, Sir.’
‘Well shame, then. Do not folk feel any shame for what happened to Anne Gargrave?’
‘It may look different to someone like yourself – not knowing country ways – but the stang wasn’t meant to do her harm, only good. It was to remind her not to spoil her life, and everyone else’s, by being a shrew. It were to tell her to be ruled by her husband like a proper wife, and not the other way around.’
‘And what about John Gargrave? Why was he made to ride?’
‘He were stanged because he wouldn’t put his wife in her place. He let her rule his roost, as you might say, contrary to the commandment of God which is in the Book of Genesis.’
‘Are there not less cruel ways of teaching such a lesson?’
‘There’s more than one sort of cruelty, Mr Cragg. There is that which means to be cruel, and that which means to be kind. The stang is the second sort. If Anne Gargrave hadn’t learned to behave herself by the age of forty, she would not learn by being told. She had to suffer or else never learn.’
‘Were there some there with other reasons for wanting Mrs Gargrave to suffer? Not such worthy reasons?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You were telling me yesterday about Harry Hawk, who she called a fake.’
‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’
I repeated the question in a different form, but I could not get Mrs Bacon to repeat what she had told me the previous day about Hawk.
There was a small disturbance at the back of the room. The big doors creaked open and the boy that I had last seen at Clayton’s Quarry appeared. Behind him, his hand clamped on the boy’s shoulder, Billy Whist shuffled into the room.
‘Ah, Billy Whist!’ I said. ‘The court is right glad to see you. May we also hear from you? Would you please bring him up to the chair? You may get down, Mrs Bacon.’
The boy brought the blind man to the front, stood him in front of the chair, and then pressed the top of his head so that he sat down. Frances Nightingale passed over the Bible and Billy swore the oath, using a light, ironic voice.
‘Mr Whist,’ I said, ‘you were present at the ordeal of Mrs Gargrave on the tenth day of this month?’
‘Aye.’
‘Did you understand why you and many other villagers were there?’
‘Aye. To deal with a shrew wife.’
‘And make her ride the stang.’
‘Aye.’
‘Is this an old custom?’
‘As old as Methuselah.’
‘But it had not been practised around here in living memory, I have been told. Was it you that told the young people how it is done?’
‘No.’
‘You did not instruct them in the conduct of a stang ride?’
‘I did not.’
‘That is contrary to what you told me at your house the other day.’
‘It may happen you didn’t follow my meaning.’
‘You were speaking in English were you not?’
His face twisted into a leer.
‘Aye, but the English of here is not the same as your Preston English.’
‘Did you have a conversation of any sort with the Stirk brothers or Harry Hawk in the days before the tenth of June?’
‘I might have.’
‘Where?’
‘In the Black Bull, like as not.’
‘And what did you tell them?’
‘I told them nowt. They were telling me.’
‘Telling you what?’
‘I was needed with my fiddle. They wanted some rough music next Sunday.’
‘Rough music?’
‘Pots and pans and clappers. Bull bells. Anything to make an infernal noise. When there’s call for it I untune my strings, see?’
He sniggered.
‘It sounds horrible. Musical torture.’
‘Did they say why they wanted this rough music?’
‘They said I’d see on the day. I near pissed myself laughing at that. I couldn’t see a bloody thing to save my life.’
There seemed little point in continuing with this flim-flam. I gave it up for a bad job and let Billy Whist go, calling instead for Peter Castleford.
He stumped to the witness chair and occupied it with confident ease, crossing his wooden leg with his good one and swinging it.
‘You are the village carpenter?’
‘I am.’
‘I understand you were not present when Mr and Mrs Gargrave were subjected to the stang?’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘Most people were there – why were you not?’
‘I wanted no part of it, so I went over to my sister’s in Altham for a visit.’
‘So you knew in advance there was something like that in the air?’
‘Two men came to my workshop on the Saturday morning, asking for the loan of a spar of wood, see? I asked what for and they said it was for trying out as a gatepost, and they’d pay me for it later if it served, or bring it back if not. But then I heard a whisper up in the village of some action against Mrs Gargrave being planned for Sunday, so I guessed what that spar was really for.’
‘Was your spar returned?’
‘Aye. I found it on Monday morning in my yard.’
‘What state was it in – was there blood on it?’
‘No. It was clean. Happen it’d been scrubbed. There were nail holes in it, I noticed, that hadn’t been there before. That’s all.’
‘And who were the two men who came to your shop?’
‘They were Simon and Charles Stirk.’
‘Thank you, Mr Castleford. You may get down.’
I ran my eye around the room.
‘I would like to call one of the Stirk brothers, but I do not see them. Simon or Charles – either would do. Can anyone say where they are?’
Heads turned this way and that, and lips moved in a flurry of whispers, but there was no word on either Stirk brother.
‘Then Harry Hawk. Is he present?’
The susurrations and head-turning intensified, but to no greater purpose. Gubb, for all his promises, had failed to deliver Hawk. Like the Stirks, he had chosen to keep away. Having seen the constable’s age and decrepitude, I was exasperated but not surprised at his failure, and turned to the next witness on my list. This one would have the most difficult of all my questions to answer.
‘Would John Gargrave come forward, please?’
However painful it would be for him, I had little choice but to call Gargrave. He had been next to his wife when she died, and had suffered much the same torment as her. I could only hope that his evidence would steer the jury in my preferred direction, and that he would not break down in giving it. I took a deep breath and began.
‘Mr Gargrave, were you contentedly married?’
He cut a pale figure in the chair and his voice trembled when he spoke.
‘No more so, nor less so, than most that have lived in one house twelve years together.’
‘Were you aware of what your neighbours thought of how you two were together?’
‘Aye, I’ve heard some hard words against us.’
‘What sort of words?’
‘That I didn’t rule her as I should, like Susan Bacon was saying just now.’
‘Was that true?’
‘It might have been better if she were a good obedient wife, but then that wouldn’t have been her, d’you see? It wasn’t in her.’
‘How did this show itself?’
‘She was always ready with a strong opinion. She would not be corrected. Many’s the time we’ve disagreed and she would never give me the last word.’
His eyes were growing watery as he remembered.
‘So you’re saying that, in common parlance, she was a shrewish woman?’
‘That’s not my word but it’s one way of saying it, yes. It was just her nature to be forward.’
‘But in many people’s eyes she did deserve the traditional punishment that she got last Sunday?’
Gargrave had been staring down at his interlaced fingers. Now he glanced up, his eyes flicking this way and that for a few seconds, before he looked down again.
‘I suppose she might have.’
‘And what about you? Did you deserve it?’
This time there was no nervous glance up, but only an inaudible murmur.
‘Speak up, please, Mr Gargrave.’
‘I reckon I might have an’ all.’
There could hardly be any clearer indication of Gargrave’s distressed, even broken, state than this public admission. I had respect and sympathy for the man, but thought he would have done better to deny his tormentors the satisfaction of hearing such an answer.
‘May we turn to the men said to have started it off? Deplorably the Stirk brothers are not here to speak for themselves, but it has been said that they disliked you.’
‘I don’t know. They had no cause.’
‘How did they treat you on that Sunday?’
‘They took the lead in everything. Their eyes were crazy.’
‘What about Harry Hawk?’
The witness lifted his head at last. ‘What about him?’
‘I have been told that your wife was telling tales about him – that he was an impostor, come back from the war in place of the real Harry Hawk – and that’s why he might have encouraged people to persecute you.’
‘She thought she had cause for her suspicion. He was arguing with me about his rent one day and he shook his army discharge papers in front of my eyes. It was only for a moment but I could see there was a different name on them.’
‘What name?’
‘I believe it was Martin Ware, or some such.’
‘Did you question him on that point?’
‘Yes. He said he had signed on under an assumed name.’
‘And did you believe him?’
‘I was prepared to at first. My wife, when I told her, was suspicious.’
‘Why were you prepared to take him at his word, contrary to your wife’s opinion?’
‘I thought there might be an innocent explanation. But Anne, she said we’d heard in the first place that Harry Hawk had been killed, and happen it was a true report, and this fellow had taken our tenant’s place, see? His hair and eyes were the right colour, but with his face all disfigured he was impossible to recognize for certain.’
‘Mrs Hawk, his wife, had accepted him, however.’
‘Even so, my wife told me we couldn’t be sure. She made me think about it again by telling me that if he were an impostor it would make the tenancy at Gunwright’s Heath invalid in law.’
This, of course, might have been true. It would depend on how the lease was written.
‘And do you consider this suspicion of hers caused the man to wish harm on your wife?’
‘It’s possible.’
I told Gargrave he could leave the chair and called Luke Fidelis, asking him first to describe the injuries he’d seen when examining the deceased.
‘And in your medical opinion,’ I said, when he had finished, ‘did any of these injuries cause Mrs Gargrave to die?’
‘They did not, or not directly. Mrs Gargrave drowned.’
This caused a new outbreak of whispering among the audience.
‘Please explain, Doctor.’
‘She was found lying in a rut filled with water. I think she fell into it face down in a faint and so began to drown. Awakening, but weakened and without thought, she inhaled thick mud from the rut’s bottom. It stopped her nose and mouth. She could not breathe, and so succumbed.’
‘If not for the ordeal she had just undergone, would she still have died?’
‘I think a healthy person would have got up out of the water, coughed, and gone on her way. But judging from her wounds, Mrs Gargrave had suffered much. She was weakened, and by the end her wits may have been astray.’
‘Thank you, Doctor. You may leave the witness chair.’
Now it was time for me to give my summary of evidence. When I had done so, I concluded as usual with some instruction about possible verdicts.
‘Gentlemen, you have, as I have told you, only to decide the manner and cause of Mrs Gargrave’s death, nothing more, nothing less. I think we can rule out self-slaughter, so I shall lay before you five possible findings. First, you may decide that she gave up the ghost by some natural cause, such as the failure of her heart. Second, you may think her death was an act of God – in other words, an accident without any human agency.’
Up to this point they had been listening to me intently. Now I noticed the Puritan Greaves whisper something to Higgs, his neighbour. Higgs did not reply, but Tom Wharton, on Greaves’s other side, plucked his sleeve and shushed him. They two exchanged scowling looks.
‘Your third possibility,’ I went on, ‘is that she was murdered deliberately by a felon with malice aforethought. And your fourth is that she died by chance medley. In case you have not heard that phrase before, I should explain that “chance medley” refers to a death caused by another’s actions that, even if they were violent, were never intended to kill. Last of all, if you cannot agree on any of the positive verdicts I have already mentioned – and I very strongly urge that you do agree on one of them – you may return a finding of death by causes unknown. However, I must tell you that I would consider such a verdict lazy, unsatisfactory, and not in the best interests of anyone. It must be a last resort.’
It only remained for the jurors to discuss all this among themselves. I brought them to a huddle around my table, reminding them to try for civility and unanimity, and then stepped back.
I was at the side of the room speaking with Frances Nightingale when we heard the first raised voices from amongst them.
‘Cause of death? There’s nobbut one cause of death, brother Wharton, and that is God’s will.’
This was the voice of James Greaves. Tom Wharton’s reply was equally vehement.
‘And does God will a man to be murdered? Answer me that.’
‘Aye, it’s all one.’
‘That cannot be. That’s a mortal sin, man! Is tha saying God’s a mortal sinner?’
Another juror laughed.
‘I’ve lived a long time and I never heard that!’
‘Tha’ll not live much longer if tha make mock of the Almighty.’
‘Don’t tell me how long I shall live. I’ll see more years than tha’ll.’
A fist was shaken across the table.
‘By God’s hooks, I’ll black those eyes of thine and tha’ll see none of ’em.’
‘Shall tha try? Or are tha shy?’
A moment before, the jurors had been standing around the table engaged in a common task. Now all of a sudden two of them were sprawled on it, kicking and punching at each other while the others took sides, cursing into each other’s faces, tweaking their noses and yanking their hair.
I had picked up my bell and papers when I left the table. Now I began furiously to ring the bell and to shout for order. There was no response. Indeed, there were more bodies wrestling and punching each other, on and around the table, which was bouncing under their weight. One of these was sent reeling towards me, and in my surprise I pushed him away with full force. He staggered backwards, lost his balance, and fell on to the table. With a loud crack the boards split and the table legs collapsed, leaving the entangled men rolling in the ruins. This shock did not stop the fighting, but seemed to intensify it. I could hear the audience, who were thoroughly enjoying the brawl, cheering in encouragement. One enormously fat young fellow in the front row stepped forward to join in, kicking one body in the ribs and kneeling on another’s chest while roaring abuse into his face. I retreated to the wall, picked up two of the fire buckets from their stations, and gave one to Frances. Then I caught Luke Fidelis’s eye in the middle of the room and nodded at a third bucket standing within his reach. He understood me instantly, seized the bucket, and came to my side. As one, we hurled our water, mine and Frances’s into the writhing heap of jurors and his over the head of the violent young giant.
Instantaneously the brawl was stilled. Some of the combatants started up, howling in surprise, their mouths locked open. The fat one gasped and could not have looked more stunned had Fidelis walloped his head with a broomstick. Another fellow seemed to freeze in the act of biting another man’s arm. And yet another stopped on one leg, just as he was swinging back his foot for a kick, and straight away fell over. Then, all at once, the tableau subsided into embarrassment and rueful laughter, and the battle of the Chamber Major was over.