‘Yes, Sir Robert.’
‘Mrs Atkinson, what did the bedroom look like?’
‘Och, it was terrible, sir. It was all covered wi’ blood, like a butcher’s shambles. It was on the sheets and the blankets and the hangings and the rushes…It made me stomach turn to see.’
‘And your husband?’
‘He was lying on the bed…with…with…’
‘With his throat slit.’
She swallowed hard. Her knuckles were like ivory. ‘Ay sir,’ she said.
‘Tell me, when you got up that morning, did you open the shutters?’
She frowned at this sudden swoop away from the awful sight of her husband’s corpse. ‘I didna,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t usually; Mr Atkinson likes to sleep a little longer and it would wake him.’
‘Did you open them on this day?’
‘Nay sir, I didna.’
‘When you came up to see your husband dead, how did you see him. Was there a candle lit in the room?’
‘Nay, sir, it had burned down. I saw by the daylight…Oh.’
‘Were the shutters open by that time, then, Mrs Atkinson?’
She nodded at him. ‘Ay,’ she said in a surprised tone of voice. ‘Ay, they were, and swinging free, what’s more, not hooked back.’
‘Now tell me what happened after you saw your husband.’
She looked at the floor again and mumbled something.
‘Please speak up, Mistress,’ said Aglionby.
‘I said, I fainted, your honour. Then I couldna think what to do, so I went downstairs again and I sent my little girl Mary to fetch…to fetch my friend, Mr Andrew Nixon.’
Her brow was wrinkled now. ‘When he came, what did he look like?’ Carey asked.
‘Oh, he was not well,’ said Mrs Atkinson. ‘He’d been in a fight, and lost it by the looks of him, and his right hand was in a sling and at first he said he didna want to meet my husband because he was angry.’
‘Quite so,’ said Carey hurriedly. ‘What did you decide to do?’
‘Neither of us could think of anything, sir, so Andy…er…Mr Nixon went to his master, Mr Pennycook, to ask his advice, and he took two pieces of silver plate from my chest wi’ him, for a present.’
‘And what did Mr Pennycook advise?’
‘Well, he said we should borrow his handcart and put m…my husband’s body in a wynd and he’d see to it that ye and yer London servant got the blame, not us.’
‘How?’
‘He said he could get hold of one of Barnabus Cooke’s knives wi’ a bit of luck, for the week before he’d left it in pledge at Madam Hetherington’s, which is a house with a lease he owns. He sent Michael Kerr to Andy with it, as well as the handcart. I was busy at washing the sheets and blankets-it took all day-but I sent Mary out and Julia Coldale too and that’s when we brought his body down from the bedroom and into Clover’s byre. Clover’s my cow,’ she added, in case there was any mistake. ‘Andy got the glove.’
This recital was causing immense excitement in the crowd and Aglionby banged with his gavel. The noise died down gradually. Carey saw with interest that Michael Kerr had his face in his hands. Mrs Atkinson had fallen silent.
‘And then?’ he prompted.
‘Well, I kept the children from looking out the window by telling them a story while Andy put the body on the cart under some hay and left it in the back so I could milk Clover before sunset, and then when it was dark, Andy took the cart away.’
‘Why didn’t you send to the Keep for Sir Richard Lowther and tell him what had happened at once, as your duty was?’
Mrs Atkinson licked her lips. ‘I was too afraid to think straight. All I could see was he’d been killed; he was my husband, he’d been killed in his bed and I was about the place and so I was…I was afraid.’
‘Why?’
‘I was afraid…that I would get the blame for it, sir. I know what a terrible sin it is for a wife to kill her husband, sir, and I would never ever do it, but I knew people would say I had. And I was right, sir, they did. You did.’
‘So you decided to try and hide the body and lay the blame on me,’ said Carey sternly.
‘Ay sir. I’m sorry. I’ve done many wicked things in the past few days, sir, but none of them was murder, as God sees me, sir. I never killed him.’
‘One more thing. Exactly when was Mr Atkinson killed?’
‘I told you, sir, it must have been around dawn on Monday, between the time when I got up to milk Clover and when I came back wi’ his breakfast.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Atkinson.’
Thomas Lowther was whispering to the man on his right, shaking his head. Carey could do nothing about that: truthfulness shone from Mrs Atkinson but the jury could refuse to see it if they chose.
To try and make sure that Andy Nixon made up no more foolish stories, Carey called Goodwife Crawe his landlady next. She stood small and stalwart under the cross before all the solemn men and repeated in a high clear voice what she had told Carey: she had found Andy Nixon in a bad state in her living room, when she went in before dawn on the Monday morning. She had nursed him, bound up his hand and given him food and drink and he had left after the gates opened. She didn’t know where he had gone after that, only he had come home late that night.
Carey approached Andy Nixon with the feeling he might be a lighted bomb. He took his oath, stood straight and frowned with concentration.
Ay, he had been jumped in the alley on Sunday night by Goodwife Crawe’s front door. Ay, they had been four men; he didn’t know who they were or why they were there, or he wasna certain, and he had been too sore to climb the ladder to his own bed in her loft, so he had slept on Goodwife Crawe’s fleeces. Ay, she had nursed him. Ay, he had gone out and met Mary Atkinson and against his will gone to see Kate Atkinson. He had been appalled when she showed him the body of her husband. After that, it had been as she said, he had gone to see Pennycook, who had recommended blaming Carey and to make sure of him, Andy himself had gone up to the Keep and inveigled one of Carey’s own gloves from Simon Barnet his serving lad.
Ay, he had left Atkinson in Frank’s vennel. No, he hadnae left him sprawled; he had laid him out proper, as was right.
‘Why didn’t you go and tell Lowther immediately as your duty was?’ Carey asked. ‘Instead of trying to get me blamed for it.’
Andy Nixon flushed. ‘I wasnae thinking straight. I was afraid Kate…er…Mrs Atkinson would be blamed, and she was afraid too. We’re no’ important people, sir, we didnae think anyone would listen.’
‘It was a disaster that Mr Atkinson’s throat was cut, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh, ay,’ said Nixon feelingly. ‘It was.’
Scrope had learned the manners to look to the Coroner for permission to ask a question. Wisely Aglionby granted it. ‘Mr Nixon, why did you tell me yesterday that you did the murder?’
Andy Nixon stared at the ground, lifted a foot to scrape his toe and was reminded of his leg-irons.
‘I thought ye would think Mrs Atkinson did it,’ he said. ‘I didnae want her to burn, so I said I did it as hanging’s an easier death.’
In France Carey had seen how hanged men could jig for twenty minutes if the executioner botched the drop and he doubted it was as easy as all that. There was a feminine buzz of approval from the audience behind him.
‘But I’m on oath now and feared for my soul if I perjure myself,’ Nixon added with commendable piety. Somebody had been coaching these witnesses and Carey knew it wasn’t him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see his sister nodding approvingly at Andy Nixon. Thomas Lowther snorted in a manner exactly like Sir Richard’s.
‘If you lied once, you might lie again,’ said Scrope irritably.
‘No my lord.’ Andy Nixon was quite steady, for a miracle. ‘Not on oath.’
Aglionby said he could step back now. Carey bowed to him.
‘Your honour,’ he said. ‘May I address the jury?’
Aglionby nodded though it was highly irregular. Carey took a deep breath, paced up to the two benches full of jurymen and removed his hat, bowed to them.
‘Gentlemen, you can see what perplexity I was in yesterday,’ he said. ‘Here were three suspects for a murder and the only one that could in any way have done it was a woman. Now if it had been a less bloody and violent murder, I would have been in less doubt. If Mr Atkinson had died by poison, for instance. But he did not. His throat was cut and in his bed. If you cut a man’s throat from behind, you may avoid being soiled, but that was not possible because he was asleep in bed. It must have been done from the front. Now I myself have sliced open a man’s throat in battle with a sword, and I may tell you, gentlemen, that I never was more dirty with blood in my life. Is it possible to do it without being sprayed? I doubt it.’