He pushed the door open and entered, reached for the stick and rested his weight on it. Immediately he felt better.
‘It’s me,’ he said. There was no reply and he went through to the kitchen. In the doorway he had to stop, grab the jamb and steady himself.
NINETEEN
She lay on the floor in all her shattered beauty. A stream of blood on the flagstones glistened in the firelight. He knelt on the floor beside her, fingertips urgently touching her neck, seeking a pulse, or anything at all.
He stroked her hand and kissed her hair. Time passed. Moments or minutes, they didn’t matter any more. She was dead. Murdered.
Silence seemed to fill the room, to press down on him. He wanted to speak, to scream, but there was no sound worth a thing now. His face was wet. At first he didn’t understand why. Then he reached up to touch his skin and realized he was crying.
He looked around for something to cover her, so no one else would see her in the indignity of death. The tears wouldn’t stop and he tried to wipe them away, pushing roughly at his face.
He stood, climbed the stairs, his heart so heavy he believed it would burst from his chest. He pulled the sheet off the bed, took it downstairs and draped it lovingly over her. The memories tumbled through his brain. Her face, the sound of her voice, the way she moved and laughed. Young and older.
Finally he heard the front door and the sharp, awkward sound of shoes on the floor.
‘Don’t come in here,’ he said, his voice as raw as if he’d been shouting.
‘What is it, sir?’ Lucy asked. ‘What’s happened?’
He swallowed, trying to find something in himself. ‘Go to the jail and fetch Mr Sedgwick. If he’s not there, ask people, someone will know where to find him. Tell him to come here as soon as he can.’
‘What’s in there? Tell me.’ She stood in the doorway.
He turned to look at her, the pain clear on his face. The girl understood. She’d seen death often enough.
‘Please,’ he said, ‘just go now. Get him.’
She put down the basket and ran. He could hear the small echo of her footsteps down Marsh Lane and he turned back to Mary, taking her hand and trying to pray her back to life.
Suddenly, so quickly it seemed, the deputy was there, out of breath, Lucy just behind him.
‘What’s wrong, boss?’ he asked. Then he saw the sheet, the shape of the body underneath. ‘Oh Christ. No.’ He looked at Nottingham in confusion. ‘Who?’
The Constable never took his eyes off Mary. ‘You know who, John. You know who it was as well as I do.’ He was surprised that he sounded so ordinary, so matter-of-fact, that the pain inside didn’t turn the words into shrieks.
‘Boss, I. .’
Nottingham shook his head slightly. He didn’t need that. Not now. ‘You know what to do. Get Brogden here, and a couple of men to take her to the jail.’
‘I will.’ He paused for a long moment. ‘Emily can stay with us. You don’t want her around this. I’ll wake Rob and have him meet her.’
He hadn’t even thought about Emily yet. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘What about you?’ Sedgwick asked. ‘You can’t stay here, either.’
‘I’m going to, John.’
‘I’ll stay with him,’ Lucy offered.
‘Are you sure?’ the Constable asked her.
‘Yes.’
He pounded on the door until Rob answered, yawning and running a hand through his hair.
‘Get yourself dressed,’ the deputy ordered.
‘What is it?’
‘Someone’s killed Mary Nottingham.’
‘What?’ He looked as if he hadn’t believed what he’d heard.
‘Someone came in their house and murdered her. The coroner’s on his way over there now. I need you. Go and meet Emily. Tell her gently and take her to my house. Lizzie’ll look after her. Don’t let her go home, you understand? Then I want you at the jail. Wear your good suit.’
‘Who’d do that?’
‘I’m not sure, but the boss said it was Gabriel. And you know what that means.’ His eyes were hard and his voice low with anger. ‘Whoever it was, you and me are going to find them. Come on, get a move on, we have work to do.’
Sedgwick’s next stop was the house on Lands Lane. Lizzie’s face filled with sorrow as he told her.
‘Bring the lass here,’ she said, her eyes glistening. ‘I like Mary. You remember how she came down here when James went missing. She never had any side on her. Bring Mr Nottingham, too. He’s going to need someone around him who cares.’
‘That new servant is going to stay with him.’
She sighed deeply. ‘Well, if anyone knows about death, that girl will. You go and find who did it.’
‘I’m going to,’ he promised.
‘You know who it is, don’t you?’
‘I have a very good idea.’
She looked up at him. ‘Then do one thing, John Sedgwick. When you’re sure and you find him, don’t wait for him to swing on the gallows.’
‘I hadn’t planned on it.’
The coroner came and went, in the house less than a minute, lifting the sheet and seeing the eyes set in the fixed, stunned gaze of death. On his way out he said, ‘I’m sorry,’ but Nottingham barely heard the sound of his voice.
Lucy directed the men who came to remove the body, making them enter and leave through the back garden. The Constable sat in the parlour, staring at the hearth where the fire had died. After they’d gone he heard the girl working, scrubbing away at the stains on the stone. The blood would never go completely, he knew that. He’d see it every day. Worse than anything, he understood that one morning he’d see it and it would be nothing more than a mark on the flagstones.
‘I’ll start another fire,’ the girl said as she raked out the ashes. ‘It’s perishing in here.’
In a few minutes the room was warmed, the flames licking at the air. He hadn’t moved. Whatever was happening, it all seemed unimportant now.
‘Do you want something to drink? To eat?’
He raised his eyes to her. Hers were red with crying, too, but she was doing her best. Nottingham shook his head slightly. He didn’t have any appetite, any thirst. Outside, the day was ending, and she bustled around, closing the shutters and lighting candles. He heard her moving around upstairs and all he could think of was the way Mary walked, how familiar everything about her had been to him.
Lucy returned and sat on the small tied rug in front of the hearth. Its colours had faded and it was covered with small burns from jumping coals. He recalled Mary making it in the fifth year of their marriage, using scraps of fabric and part of an old sack.
‘Do you remember when you were young and you lived out there?’ the girl asked quietly.
‘Yes,’ he answered after a long silence.
‘What did you do when someone died?’
‘I don’t know,’ he answered. In truth he couldn’t recall.
‘We used to tell stories about them. No one else was ever going to remember them.’
‘Not tonight,’ he told her softly. ‘I can’t face that tonight.’
She nodded her head.
‘I just need to be alone.’
For a few minutes she was busy, laying out her pallet in the kitchen. Then there was silence.
It was all his fault. If he hadn’t goaded Howard with the silk pouch and made it clear that he knew the man was Gabriel, Mary would still be here, sitting in the other chair, sewing, reading, talking. But he’d been so confident about the taunt. And now sorrow and guilt wound tight around his heart. She’d paid the price for what he had done.
If he’d listened to her, if he’d retired after he’d been wounded, none of this would have happened. But he’d needed to show he was strong, to prove that he was still the man he’d once been, that he could do the job was well as ever. He had to be a proud man.