The audience was in uproar. Many people were calling out obscenities and stabbing their fingers in the direction that the Hawks had fled. Others were jabbering to each other; some laughing, others apparently enraged.
‘We shall continue the evidence, if you please,’ I called out as the tumult at last subsided and I could make myself heard. ‘Dr Luke Fidelis, will you come to the chair?’
Fidelis came forward in a businesslike manner and the room settled down to hear him.
‘How did Thomas Turvey die, in your opinion?’
‘By a deep lacerating wound in the abdomen, which penetrated upwards as far as the heart. He must have died very quickly.’
‘Was it from a knife?’
‘No, a thicker object.’
‘A sharpened wooden stake, then?’
He smiled at me archly.
‘That is conceivable, but the blow must have been an upwards thrust with what I suspect was a curved weapon.’
I frowned. To what could he possibly be referring? A sickle? It didn’t seem likely.
‘And do you have any idea of how long ago the death happened?’
‘I would guess no more than a day before the body was found. There was minimal mortification.’
‘Was there anything else about the body that you noticed?’
‘Yes. There were clear signs that he had been close to a fire. Even after the overnight rain his hands and face had traces of smuts, and his hair was partially singed.’
‘Do you recall that when you and I went to Clover Field looking unsuccessfully for Mr Turvey we found the smouldering remains of his beehives?’
‘It was a sight difficult to forget.’
‘Could the smuts on his face have been signs that he’d tried to put the fire out?’
‘Yes, I suppose they might.’
His tone of voice suggested otherwise, however. Arsy-versy? I’d soon show him, I thought.
‘You may quit the chair, Doctor, and I would like to hear now from Frederick Oldroyd.’
Oldroyd came up and took the stand, looking at me with the full square gaze of an honest and forthright man.
‘Mr Oldroyd,’ I said when I had sworn him, ‘it’s good of you to appear. You employ Harry Hawk, I believe? What is he like?’
‘He is an honest and good worker. I don’t much like looking at him, but I don’t mind paying him.’
There was some suppressed laughter from the audience.
‘Does he have outbursts of anger?’
‘Aye, as we’ve just seen.’
‘Did he tell you his feelings about the loss of his position as beekeeper to Mr Turvey?’
‘He mentioned it. And, yes, he resented it.’
‘Very well. Did you employ him on the day before yesterday, when we think Mr Turvey was killed?’
‘I did. I gave him some tasks about the farmyard.’
‘Until what time of day did he work?’
‘I sent him home at midday, or thenabouts.’
‘And would his path back from your place to Accrington have taken him past Mr Turvey’s Clover Field?’
‘Right past.’
I noticed a pair of hands raised in the air at the back of the room and realized they were those of Luke Fidelis. He was unmistakably miming the action of a hand writing on a piece of paper. My God! I thought. In all the excitement I had forgotten the paper containing his report.
I was forced briefly to pause my examination as I slipped it out of my pocket as surreptitiously as possible and opened it on the table in front of me. I believe my mouth may have dropped open to such a degree at this moment that, had there been a bee in the vicinity, it might have been tempted to land on my tongue and sting it. The report was brief indeed. It consisted of just eight words: Old Nob killed Turvey. Oldroyd will tell you.
I looked across the room at Fidelis. The teasing smile still played on his lips.
‘Mr Oldroyd. Who, pray, is Old Nob?’
‘That’s my bull, Sir.’
‘Your bull?’
‘Yes.’
I remembered the animal – didn’t someone say he was unusually sociable for a bull?
I looked down at the paper again. Old Nob killed Turvey.
‘I have a difficulty, Mr Oldroyd. I’ve heard it said Old Nob is a particularly sweet-tempered and tractable beast. Is there any possibility that it was he that attacked Mr Turvey?’
‘He is very tractable, you’re right, Sir. But not when he’s riled. Then he’s like any other bull.’
‘So what might rile him?’
‘Frustration does it, if he wants to get at a cow. Or pain – I mean a sore head or summat of the kind. You wouldn’t want to provoke him with a smack on the nose or anything.’
My God! All at once I saw how it must have been.
‘And what would he do if you did so provoke him?’
‘He would attack in a fit of rage. That is what bulls do. He would try and toss you with his horns.’
‘And am I right in saying that Old Nob lives in a field adjacent to Clover Field?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could he have got into Clover Field itself if he saw someone there?’
‘Happen, and he would try it more than likely.’
‘So if there were a gate open or a gap in the hedge, he would go through it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And if he found someone setting fire to the beehives, what do you think would happen?’
‘Well, as the doctor said to me this morning, the bees would have been going mad, wouldn’t they? Likely as not the bull’d have got stung and had a fit of rage.’
‘And attacked the person in front of him?’
‘Yes, likely as not.’
‘And have you seen the bull since the day Mr Turvey died?’
‘Aye, I went to look at him with Dr Fidelis this morning. That’s when the doctor and I talked about the matter.’
‘Were there any signs of blood on his horns and head?’
‘There was nothing, but I reckon that’s because it had rained hard. Any blood had washed off. But Dr Fidelis pointed out some marks on his nose. He said they were probably bee stings.’
‘So, Mr Oldroyd, in sum, do you believe that Old Nob killed Mr Thomas Turvey?’
‘I do, Mr Cragg. I am sorry, but I do. I think he went up to the little barn to join Mr Turvey by the burning bee skeps. But he got stung, so he went mad and broke down the fence between the field and the barn and gored Mr Turvey.’
‘But something still puzzles me. How did the body of Mr Turvey end up at the other lower end of the field, away from the little barn?’
‘If he got speared on the horns, Old Nob might have run with him down the field and might not have shaken him off until he reached the bottom.’
I felt a faint sickness in the pit of my stomach. I had been in hot and wholly unjust pursuit of an innocent man, while attributing all sorts of convoluted motives to him. If it had been left to me, Hawk would have been found responsible for two murders. He would then have been taken to Lancaster Castle for the assize and been hanged. How could I have been so foolish?
The truth! Hawk had told me I wouldn’t know the truth from a cow’s arse. But all the time it had lain in a bull’s horns.
I now gave my second summary of evidence, exonerating Harry Hawk as best I could and direly warning the jurors not to be swayed by any prejudice they might feel towards him. I also reminded them of the strong evidence for a verdict of death by bee sting in the first case, and by bull’s horn in the second. I then suggested they go into the Chamber Minor and deliberate, and not take too long about it.
Ten minutes later, with the audience fidgeting and growing impatient, Duckworth, the jury foreman, returned. Would I come with him to the room? The jury had a question.
They were standing in two or three groups, talking quietly together, some frowning and shaking their heads.
‘So,’ I said, ‘what’s the matter, Duckworth?’
The foreman insisted I sit at the table and he took the chair opposite. The rest of them gathered around him.
‘Right,’ said Duckworth. ‘We catch on that Mr Turvey burned his beehives, which got him killed because the bull got stung. But why did he burn them? That’s what we want to know.’
Another juryman thrust his hand towards me.
‘He lived for them bees, Sir. Anyone who knew him knew that. He couldn’t have destroyed them.’
‘In the disturbed state of his mind, he could,’ I said. ‘You see, he was punishing the bees for what one of them had done – the killing of Flora Horntree.’
Duckworth waggled his head in dissent.
‘But how did he know what the bee had done? As far as he knew, Mrs Horntree had upped and left his house with no trace. How could he know she’d been stung in the throat by that bee?’
‘And she’d been buried,’ said a third juror. ‘Are you telling us he found her in the ground and found out about the bee and then reburied her?’
I closed my eyes for a moment. Patience, I told myself.
‘No, he didn’t dig her up and rebury her. He was the one that buried her in the first place. Because he was the one in the barn with her when she died.’
The jurors’ mouths gaped, and one by one they voiced their astonishment.
‘You’re saying it was him that fucked her?’
‘Tom Turvey? I knew him a bit and he’d never, Mr Cragg!’
‘Well, by all! I can’t credit that! I’ll never believe that.’
‘Yes! All of you, listen to me. You think you know somebody. But then they do something that makes you think you didn’t really know them after all. Have you never met that kind of thing? Turvey was a big, strong man, but in society rather timid. He may not have been a good manager of his land, but most people respected and liked him and thought him virtuous. You have to remember, though, that for many years he’d been a lonely man in the prime of life with no woman to warm his bed. Now, Flora Horntree was an ex-whore – you’ve got that, haven’t you?’
‘Oh, aye. We got that.’
‘She came unexpectedly into his house and she offered herself, and so he gave in to temptation. But he wouldn’t do it in his house, not with his daughter there, so he took her up to the little barn.’
‘When was this?’
It felt like a peculiar reversal. Usually it was me making the interrogation.
‘On the morning she was missed,’ I explained. ‘He took her there clobbered up in bee armour, so everybody who saw them thought she was Seb Cook and took no notice. Surely all this was clear from the evidence?’
‘So he never meant any harm to her?’
‘Of course he didn’t. Think of it as a transaction. She needed money, which he gave her – or rather, valuables from his wife’s jewel box because he didn’t have any actual cash. And in return, she let him … you know …’
One by one the clouds of doubt cleared from the men’s visages. Now, radiant smiles beamed out at me, with expressions of satisfaction.
‘That’s tidy, is that. That’s all in a teacup.’
‘So it is,’ I said. ‘So shall you be able to agree your verdicts?’
‘Oh, aye,’ said the foreman. ‘Is that right, lads?’
They nodded their heads as one.
‘We’ll come back with you now and give them out.’
‘No, no,’ I said hastily. ‘Hang on here for a few minutes. Allow me to return to the court room, then come back up yourselves. That would be better.’
‘Anything you say, Mr Cragg.’
I made a move towards the door, but Duckworth stopped me.
‘Now, what was it again, Mr Cragg?’ he said. ‘The bee sting for Mrs Horntree and the bull’s horn for Mr Turvey. Have I got that right?’
‘Yes, Duckworth. When you return to the Chamber Major I will ask you formally, and then you will deliver the verdicts and Mrs Nightingale, my clerk, will record them. And that, I am glad to say, will be the end of this inquest.’
And so it was.
The next morning at the Dower House we began packing up. Belongings were boxed and baled. The rooms were swept. A carter was found who would transport us to Preston on the day following. Seeing all the activity, Suez became excited and ran around yapping and making a great nuisance. Elizabeth was singing as she went about her work, and even Hector seemed to sense the satisfaction in the air. He was more alive, laughing when he was spoken to and feeding vigorously. Only Matty was down in the mouth.
‘Haven’t you noticed?’ said Elizabeth when I mentioned this. ‘She’s had that lad paying her attention, the boy at New Manor. He’s turned the poor girl’s head, so it’s a good thing we’re leaving.’
We had invited Mr Vaux and his mother, with Fidelis and Frances Nightingale, for a last dinner at the Dower House. We had also included Thomasina Turvey but she declined, saying she had a cold coming on.
‘She doesn’t yet feel like being in company,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But I have asked her to visit us in Preston and she has promised to come.’
We sat down to a jugged hare and huge Yorkshire puddings, washed down with the last of the ale I had got in from the Black Bull. We fed well and were tolerably merry, so that by the end of it all we were ready for some music. Mr Vaux had brought a lute, on which he played some antique music by William Byrd very prettily. He then proposed to accompany us in song. The first to perform was Fidelis, who had a rich and expressive voice. He picked up the volume of Shakespeare that I had just returned to Mr Vaux, leafed through the pages, and asked Vaux if he knew Bottom’s Song The Ousel Cock. He did and we had it three times, laughing immoderately at the exaggerated ass’s bray with which it ends.
It was after he had sung Ariel’s song from The Tempest which begins ‘Full fathom five thy father lies’ that I thought again of Thomasina Turvey.
‘What will become of poor Thomasina?’ I asked.
‘She has no relatives,’ said Fidelis. ‘She is alone in the world.’
‘Well,’ said Henry Vaux, in an exaggerated whisper, ‘Mother and I have concocted a plan. Mother, tell them.’
‘There is no need to sound like a conspirator, Henry,’ said Mrs Vaux. ‘It’s simple. There are two good Catholic households in this village that have been sorely bereaved, and I think it would be good to unite them. I mean, of course, Mr Gargrave and Thomasina Turvey.’
‘Oh, Mrs Vaux!’ cried Elizabeth, ‘You cannot mean them to marry. She is still a child and he is fifty.’
Mrs Vaux laughed.
‘Oh, no, my dear, nothing like that. But Gargrave lost his daughter a few years ago and I mean for him to be a sort of foster father to Thomasina. He shall live at New Manor and manage the estate, at which he is skilled. The Turvey acres badly need attention, as we know, but they are not to be despaired of. They have promise, and in his hands I believe New Accrington will have an excellent future.’
It seemed a good enough scheme and we drank a toast to its success. This was followed by more singing, until finally the Vauxes said they must leave before the light faded.
‘One more song before you go,’ insisted Frances Nightingale. ‘I shall sing it. I know something highly appropriate and it contains what we all want – a happy ending.’
She picked up the book we had been singing from.
‘Where is The Tempest? Ah! Here it is, in the first place.’
She found the page and showed it to Henry Vaux, who nodded and then struck up some introductory chords. Holding the book in both hands, she stood beside him and began to sing in a sweet, unaffected voice, the following words:
Where the bee sucks, there suck I
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.