A Dark Anatomy: A Mystery (Cragg & Fidelis Mysteries) - Softcover

Blake, Robin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1250022215 ISBN 13: 9781250022219

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2013

Synopsis

In 1740s England, the roots of evil run deep. When a vicious slaying unleashes a wave of panic, village coroner Titus Cragg finds himself embroiled in the hunt for a murderer in this darkly rich and atmospheric historical mystery, the first in Robin Blake's Cragg & Fidelis series.

The year is 1740. George II is on the throne, but England's remoter provinces remain largely a law unto themselves. In Lancashire a grim discovery has been made: a squire's wife, Dolores Brockletower, lies in the woods above her home at Garlick Hall, her throat brutally slashed.

Called to the scene, Coroner Titus Cragg finds the Brockletower household awash with rumor and suspicion. He enlists the help of his astute young friend, doctor Luke Fidelis, to throw light on the case.

But this is a world in which forensic science is in its infancy, and policing hardly exists. Embarking on their first gripping investigation, Cragg and Fidelis are faced with the superstition of witnesses, obstruction by local officials, and denunciations from the squire himself. A Dark Anatomy marks the arrival of a remarkable new voice in mystery and a pair of detectives both cunning and complex.

About this title

About the Author:

ROBIN BLAKE is the author of acclaimed works on the artists Van Dyck and Stubbs. He has written, produced, and presented extensively for radio, is widely published as a critic, and has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Brunel University. He lives in London.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Dark Anatomy, A
Chapter One ACCORDING TO THE case notes, and checked against my private journal, it was on Tuesday the 18th of March, 1740, that a succession of disturbing events ran their course through the life of our tidy Palatinate town of Preston. That was the day on which, three hours after dawn, Dolores, wife to Squire Ramilles Brockletower of Garlick Hall, was found lying in the forest in her riding clothes, beneath an ancient oak tree.At eight o'clock in the morning, I was sitting down to breakfast alone in the parlour when, having only just filled my tankard, I heard the brass knocker on our front door hammering. Next, a voice could be heard asking for the coroner. Finally, our girl Matty pushed a scrawny lad, whom I recognized to be the Brockletowers' kitchen boy, Jonah Marsden, through the parlour door. His eyes were popping with the import of his news.'Well, Jonah. What's the matter?'The boy extracted from his shirt a folded paper, which I took and opened. It was from his grandmother, the briefest of messages.To Mr Titus Cragg, Coroner. Sir, a deplorable mortal accident has occurred. I beg you to return at once with the boy who brings this. Bethany Marsden, Housekeeper.I studied the signature: firm, confident and businesslike. I put the paper down.'Please elaborate, Jonah.'The boy looked blank.'I mean, what is this about?''Oh! Mistress is slaughtered, sir. In forest. This morning.'I lifted the tankard and took a sip of beer. Twenty years in the law had taught me that a measured manner is the best project in such circumstances. I lowered the tankard again and dabbed my lips with the napkin.'Who found the body? Was it you?''No, sir, I were nowhere near. It were Timothy Shipkin the woodsman found her.''And you say the body was away from the house and in the woods?''Timothy says. In Fulwood, up above Squire's own woods by the hall, under a big old oak. Seemed like she'd come down to earth, through branches.'The night had been one of storms right enough, but Jonah's choice of words had caught my attention.'Come down? How?'Jonah's face twisted this way and that.'I don't know, sir. Timothy says it seemed like Mistress dove down from the sky. Her face and hands were in the earth.''That's a very particular way of describing it, wouldn't you say?'The boy did not reply, but he watched like a cat as I took another sip of beer and sawed through the slice of cold beef on my plate. And though I continued this performance of imperturbable chewing and sipping, I will admit my heart had quickened in the anticipation of interesting discoveries. I looked at this spindly messenger of death, who stood beside me with cap wrung between his hands, eyes tracking the food from the plate to my lips. I cut a crust of bread from the loaf and handed it to him. Without pausing to thank me he stuffed it into his mouth.'So you didn't yourself see the body?'The bread for a time gagged Jonah. He shook his head.'How, then, did you hear of it?'Agony filled the boy's eyes but it was not for the memory of Mistress Brockletower. In his hunger he had tried to swallow the hard crust before properly chewing it.'It's what they're all saying at Hall. First light, Mistress went out riding, as she does,' he managed to say hoarsely, after forcing the food down at last. 'But the mare came back without her. Then us all went out looking until Timothy Shipkin come running down from woods, saying he'd found her. He told my grandma at back door and she wrote that note and sent me down here to give it you, sir.'I rapped the note with my forefinger.'I note that Mrs Marsden says "accident". Why did you, when you first spoke to me, say "slaughtered"?'For a moment the boy looked terrified, as if I had asked him to prove one of Euclid's propositions. Then he screwed up his face as he addressed the question more collectedly.'Don't know, sir,' he said at last. 'I mean, it's how Mistress were found ...'Jonah was shifting from one foot to the other, still watching me as I resumed eating.'Go on.'His face relaxed into a more neutral form of concentration, as if he were about to recite a lesson at school. Not that this boy had ever had any schooling.'It's how she died, sir. See, Mistress's throat were cut. From ear to ear, so Timothy Shipkin says.'And, just in case I had not appreciated the weight of this information, Jonah tilted back his head and drew his forefinger along the line that the blade would have followed: from here - to here.Laying down the fork I closed my eyes, making a picture in my mind of Dolores Brockletower, on the last occasion that I had seen her. It was at a recent hunt - a tall, angular woman whose physical vigour was well known and whose feats on horseback had become part of local mythology.Well known though she was, the simple demise of a squire's lady - of this particular squire certainly - would not be bound to bring much caterwauling, at least outside her own family, and perhaps not even within it. But to have the lady die violently, her throat sliced open, was quite a different matter. It might set off a small earthquake in a pocket-parish like Garlick. Well, it would be my task to quash that possibility, if I could.I picked up the napkin and dabbed my lips. Then, clearing my throat, I leaned back in the chair, and said airily, 'I wonder ... when Mrs Marsden handed you the note, did you happen see Miss Brockletower while you were at the back door?''Well, sir, I - 'But, before Jonah could complete his sentence, my sweet Elizabeth came running in with the folds of her apron bunched in her fists. She had heard the news from Matty.'What a dreadful thing,' she cried. 'Dolores Brockletower dead! What happened to her, Titus?'As she came to me I held out my hand and she dropped her apron to take it. I squeezed her slim, pretty fingers and told her the gist of Jonah's news, omitting only the explicit fact of the gashed throat.'And so, I suppose, I will have to go over there,' I said. 'To find the truth out.'Elizabeth leaned and kissed me on the forehead.'That you must, sir,' she said, 'and go quickly about it, or else the scent will be cold.'I had already ordered my horse to be ready at half past eight since I was due this morning to discuss with a group of cottagers in the country towards Chorley what action could be taken against a farmer illegally enclosing a piece of common land. So now I quickly scraped my plate, drained my beer and rose.'Elizabeth, my love, as always you are right,' I said, leaning to kiss her mouth.Telling the boy to wait for me, I strode into the hall, crossed it and swung open the door connecting the house with the office. Furzey was already at his writing desk. I asked him to represent me with the cottagers as I had been urgently summoned on coroner's business. Furzey protested that the cottagers would be disappointed not to be attended by the attorney himself.I said, 'Just tell them the clerk always knows five times more than his principal and they'll be pacified.'I returned to the house where the boy was waiting by the front door.'Come along, Jonah,' I said. 'You ride behind.'
 A few minutes later I was in the saddle, hoicking the boy onto the cob's rump. And so we jolted off together on the road to Garlick. It was a ride of some forty-five minutes at a gentle pace - which was as fast as I considered young Jonah could sustain. We went east down to the end of Church Gate, where the way branches to the right down a hollow way towards the Ribble bridge and the bridge-end settlement of Fishwick. But we went straight ahead, past the windmill on Town End Fields, and were soon trotting pleasantly along Ribbleton Lane. As we encroached on Ribbleton Moor the lane-side hedges and trees, which had begun to come into bud, were lively with birds twittering and building their nests.It was apparent that news about the Lady of Garlick had already travelled to every corner of the parish, like a spider running around its web. At a squalid place called Gamull, where a row of tottering cottages lined each side of the road, people came out and called after us. At first I took no notice. But then one of them caught my attention and I reined in the horse. It was a woman whose name I knew, Miriam Patten.'What they're saying about the wife of Mr Brockletower,' she croaked. 'Is that true, Mr Cragg?'Miriam was a widow, ancient and raggedly dressed. She was so poor that her house was chimneyless, with just a hole in the thatch to let smoke out - and that only when she had the fuel for a fire. She was one of those who keeps a cow in the house, as much to give warmth at night as milk in the morning. She was also one who, from time to time, receives a sack of coals and a bag of flour in charity from my wife, and other Preston ladies.'I don't know,' I said. 'What are they saying?'She leered up at me, allowing a sight of the blackened stumps of her teeth.'That the Devil finally lost the taste for her society, and chucked her over the roof.'I laughed.'The Devil himself? Coming into this small parish? I think we rather flatter ourselves if we are saying that, Miriam Patten.'I shook the reins and we rode on, leaving the draughty hovels of Gamull behind us.
 This narrative, I suppose, may be read in places, or at times, in which squires are of no account - whatever levelling times as may lie ahead, or future gardens of Eden. If so, I must make it plain first that the squire was ...

About this edition

• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1250022215
• ISBN 13: 9781250022219
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368