Death and the Chevalier

By Robin Blake

As the Young Pretender and his Jacobite army approach, Coroner Titus Cragg must solve a brutal murder ― and prevent himself from being executed for the crime.

November 1745. Preston, Lancashire. Rumors abound that Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, has landed in Scotland, intent on marching south to claim the English throne. Meanwhile Coroner Titus Cragg must investigate a headless body discovered in an icy pond. There is evidence to suggest a connection with the approaching rebel army ― unless someone is deliberately using the Highlanders’ invasion as a cover for murder.

As simmering tensions, conflicting loyalties and open hostilities engulf the town, Cragg finds himself arrested for murder. In order to clear his name and escape execution by firing squad, Titus must team up with his old friend, Dr Luke Fidelis, to expose the real killer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Severn House
• Release date: Feb 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781448303717

Robin Blake

Robin Blake is the author of six previous Cragg & Fidelis Mysteries, as well as acclaimed works on the artists Van Dyke and Stubbs. He has written, produced and presented extensively for radio, and is widely published as a critic. He lives in London.

Book preview

ONE

Rumours had been afoot months before the armies mustered. They made the Jacobites of Preston breathless with anticipation. The Whigs, too, whispered it amongst themselves. A reckoning was inevitable. War loomed. He was coming.

Who was he?

He had many names. His real ones were Charles Edward Stuart, but you rarely heard these spoken. His sworn enemies, the Whigs, preferred to revile him as the bedpan bastard’s brat, foxcub Charlie, the girl-prince, the Knave of Jacks. They joked about his effeminacy, his cowardice, his baby face, as if no such feebleness could ever usurp the solid God-given rule of the manly German Georges. He may come, they were saying, but he’d have his little boy’s bottom horse-whipped if he does.

His friends had more reverential names: God’s appointed, the veritable Prince of Wales, the prince in arms to bring his father to his own again, the brave Chevalier. Sometimes the sentiments were coarser: the harrow of Hanover, a boot in the arse for the bloody Brunswickers.

But excitement and scorn were not the only responses. As the year 1745 advanced, our old ones told fearfully of what had happened twice before here at Preston, when Stuart armies had clashed with English forces and received a thrashing. These memorials of history were darkly underwritten by the repetition of prophecies and omens. The ominous words of the old-time seer Robert Nixon of Cheshire were on the lips of many Prestonians at this time. Nobody knew for sure who Nixon was, or when exactly he lived, but he had long been a favourite of the Jacobites. Then, after the disastrous 1715 rebellion, books of his pronouncements had been printed in London with the idea of proving that the Cheshire foreteller’s prophecies were actually in the Hanoverian interest: that he anticipated, for example, the destruction of the Stuarts in 1649, 1688 and 1715.

Nixon’s pronouncements could indeed encompass contrary interpretations. First, he would give a vision of some portent, as ‘when the raven shall nest in the lion’s mouth’, which would be followed by some dire consequence, such as ‘then it shall come to pass that a Grand Liar shall invade the land and come to destruction and be dragged behind the horse’s tail’. The Jacobites hotly maintained that Grand Liar was George of Hanover. The men supporting Hanover were equally adamant it was the Pretender.

The vicar in his sermons denounced Nixon, setting him unfavourably against Jeremiah, the false against the true prophet. The former had clothed his words in ambiguities and insinuations, while the latter spoke the truth with a voice of brass: ‘And the Lord came unto me saying, What seest thou? And I said, A seething pot; and the face thereof is towards the north.’ Prophecies of evil in evil times could not, he thundered, come forth as plainly as that.

So deep emotions were stirring. I was made strongly aware of this myself on a certain day in August, when I went across the river to Walton-le-Dale about the business of a will. My late client, William Entwhistle, was an unmarried mercer who had died from the flux aged fifty-two a few days earlier. Entwhistle had not been rich enough to turn himself into a gentleman, yet he had done moderately well in life. More than three hundred pounds in coin had been found at his house, as well as lots of material goods, such as silver, china and cut glass, as well as the stock of damasks and velvets of his trade. As there were no living Entwhistle relatives, I had come to Walton to assess the distribution of the testator’s goods and chattels as stipulated by his will.

There was one particular clause that required circumspect handling. ‘With regard to my objects appertaining to the cause of him that some believe to be Great Britain’s true king over the water,’ Entwhistle had written (under my advice), ‘I direct they be given as one parcel to my friend Jonathan Parkinson the candlemaker, of Church Gate in Preston, and none other.’ The wording (this being a legal document) was tricky because to adhere openly to the cause of the Pretender might be construed as advocating rebellion against the rule of King George. It might, in other words, be high treason, and to assist a person in any such advocacy might equally draw a charge of conspiracy. I remember drafting Entwhistle’s testament with him. I had only with great difficulty persuaded him to drop the word ‘just’ in front of ‘cause’, and to insert the words ‘him that some believe to be’.

I knew very well what kind of objects Entwhistle’s will referred to. Passionate Jacobites like himself and Parkinson had got into the habit of expressing their loyalties through household objects embellished or inscribed with coded emblems and ambiguous quotations. Now the candlemaker’s wife, Catherine, had come over to Entwhistle’s place to help me find all such Jacobite keepsakes and artefacts in the Entwhistle house. These we assembled on his dining-room table.

‘Eh, Mr Cragg,’ said Catherine, as we surveyed the array of objects before us. ‘It’s a fine lot of goods, is that. And right handsome of Will Entwhistle to tip it towards us with his last wishes.’

I pointed to a wine glass decorated with a thistle and a rose within a wreath of entwined oak leaves. Below was inscribed a single word in Latin.

‘Fiat,’ I said. ‘Let it be. Let what be, Mrs Parkinson?’

She gave me the kind of look a schoolmistress directs at a pupil fallen down at his arithmetic.

‘What do you think, Mr Cragg? Not the Germans governing us for ever from London, any road.’

I now picked up a small leather-covered case and opened it. Nestling in its velvet lining were two bronze medals. One showed an enthroned king being crowned by a descending angel. The inscription gave the date twenty-third of April 1661 – close to the beginning of King Charles II’s reign that followed the collapse of Cromwell’s power.

‘It’s the last King Charles’s coronation medal, is that,’ said Mrs Parkinson. ‘It was made on the day he was crowned.’

I read out the Latin inscription curving around King Charles on his coronation throne: ‘Everso missus sucurrere seclo.’

‘I recognize the words, Mrs Parkinson. They mean something like Sent to set aright the time turned upside down, and refer, I believe, to a famous passage in the Latin poet Virgil’s poem the Georgics.’

Suddenly, Mrs Parkinson was taken aback.

‘I don’t hold with any Georgics! I don’t hold with the name of George at all, as you must know. A dirty old name, is that!’

‘Well, you may change your mind when I tell you that the words – as far as I remember – come from a passage in the poem where Virgil speaks of the end of civil war, with everything tumbled down – or, more precisely, head over heels – and the coming of a prince who will get things the right way up again, and bring peace and plenty. That is what the young Emperor Augustus did in Rome, you know, in Virgil’s time, all those centuries ago. King Charles considered he would do the same for this land on his return in 1660, which is why they put the words on his coronation medal.’

‘With the job of cleaning up the mad mess, you mean? Ha! Right enough, Mr Cragg. That’s just what we need now when all’s said and done, and here’s another Charles that shall do the job an’ all.’

I took out the second medal and turned it in my hand. Each side showed a young man in profile.

‘Who are they?’

‘William brought it back from Rome seven or eight years ago. On this side is the Prince of Wales – I mean the true prince, Charles Edward – and on the other side is his younger brother, Prince Henry. I don’t know what the letters mean, Mr Cragg.’

I read the inscription around the head of the older brother.

‘Hunc saltem everso juvenem. The words don’t make complete sense on their own. They may also be a fragment from a line of poetry. Everso is on the coronation medal too – it’s the word that means head over heels. Juvenem is young man. I must see if I can find it.’

Having made a complete list of Entwhistle’s Jacobite artefacts, we packed them up in a box to be brought in due course to the Parkinsons’ home. Catherine Parkinson then walked with me back to Preston, up the hollow way that led to the end of Church Gate.

‘William Entwhistle was unshakeable in his beliefs,’ she said. ‘And an inspiration. There was none more zealous in the cause than him. He travelled all the way to Rome in ’thirty-eight, you know, just like a pilgrim, all because he had to set eyes on the King. What a pity that he should be carried off just as we hear this beautiful news.’

‘News? What news is that?’

‘Why, the news that the Chevalier has already landed! Haven’t you heard? He is in the Scottish Isles. He is coming, Mr Cragg. Truly, he is coming.’

‘Are you quite sure about this, Mrs Parkinson?’

‘There is no doubt, Mr Cragg,’ she said, her eyes hot with zeal. ‘So now it is fiat, after all. Fiat that the world is put back on its feet. Fiat that the foul Georges are sent packing back to their German rat-holes. Fiat, Mr Cragg!’

It was the first time I heard this rumour of Charles Edward’s landing, but within a few days it was flying about the town like a flock of starlings. It remained a rumour, however, to be taken as an article of faith by some, and to be dourly doubted by others. One of the doubters was my clerk, Robert Furzey.

‘It’s all a fantasy, Mr Cragg. That lot, they shot their bolt thirty year ago. They’ll not dare try it on again. He’s not called the Young Pretender for nothing. It is all a pretence, but all so far away no one can see it.’

Furzey was forced to change his way of thinking when news came in from much closer at hand. A merchant ship, the Ann, inbound to Liverpool from the Baltic, brought information that she’d gathered just a week earlier. To escape a storm, the captain had taken shelter in a bay of one of the western islands of Scotland, and while they rode at anchor, a badly frightened schoolmaster, a faithful Protestant, had rowed out to them in the dark of night with a piece of intelligence he wanted transmitted to London. A French frigate, he said, had set ashore a small party of conspirators including the Young Pretender, whom locals called, in Gaelic, Prionnsa Teàrlach. This gang had proceeded to a gathering place on the mainland where thousands of clansmen had flocked to his standard. This had all happened just a few days earlier.

Despite hearing this from Liverpool, there were still many doubters. At Marcus Porter’s Mitre Tavern on Fisher Gate, Sebastian Beach the poulterer wagered his peruke against that of Paul Judd the tailor that it was all a wishful story, the like of which we had heard several times before, and which no respectable newspaper ought to print. Three days later Seb had lost his wig. The most recent printing of the London Gazette had reached us, and I was present at Porter’s when the landlord called for silence so that he could read out a short government announcement printed in the paper.

‘Mr Beach and Mr Judd to take notice,’ Porter roared. ‘The Gazette contains the following: A report was received from Edinburgh that a French ship of sixteen to eighteen guns had appeared on the west coast of Scotland and had landed several persons there betwixt the isles of Mull and Skye. Amongst these there is the greatest reason to believe is the Pretender’s son.’

Porter lowered the paper and waited for the laughter and jeers aimed at Beach to subside. Then he picked out the thin and plainly dressed figure of Archibald MacLintock, a merchant from Glasgow who traded in salted meat and tobacco.

‘Archie!’ said Porter. ‘What do you make of all this? Is it to be 1715 all over again?’

‘Not a chance!’ said MacLintock, who was evidently no Jacobite. ‘That boy’ll no get very far south. It’s nothing like 1715 in Scotland today. Have ye heard of Fort Augustus that they’ve just finished building? There’s a chain of strongholds like that across the country that’ll keep the foolish fellow bottled up in the Highlands for years. And serve him right!’

There was a murmuring of ‘Hear! Hear!’ from his companions at the table of Whig-minded Prestonians – who included Robert Furzey.

‘They’ve built many a good straight road north to south, and east to west,’ the Scotchman went on. ‘So the army of His Majesty can move around as it likes and pounce like a tiger wherever the boy raises his snivelling little head. Oh, never doubt it. He’ll be mauled in the end and run howling home to his daddy and his friend the Pope, if he isn’t hanged first.’

Suddenly, Jonathan Parkinson, at another table, jumped to his feet.

‘You speak of roads, MacLintock. You will allow me to address the same subject. Roads are there for marching on by anyone who chooses, not just the Elector of Hanover.’

This choice of words called forth a hubbub of protest from MacLintock’s friends.

‘You must call him the King!’ they shouted. ‘Jacobite blackguard!’

Parkinson stood his ground.

‘I tell you, the Prince will not be slow to march down south along those roads. He will not be hindered, and if his cause be just, he and his army’ll receive God’s good grace and sweep all before them.’

This was too much for MacLintock, who also jumped to his feet.

‘His army?’ he shouted, shaking his finger at Parkinson. ‘He’s got no army! The best he can scrape together is a rabblement of savages. No discipline, no organization. They’ll be destroyed in half an hour. They can’t even speak English up there.’

‘They don’t speak bloody German, any road,’ growled Parkinson.

But among the men of Preston, MacLintock’s view – a hopeful view in the eyes of the Whigs – received widespread credit over the next few days. There was no need for alarm, they were saying. The Stuart prince could skulk around the Highlands and Islands to his heart’s content, but he’d be hard put to penetrate into the civilized parts of the country, defended as they were by General Cope with his formidable force of redcoats and his line of forts and barracks. A few days later, however, when I came into my office after breakfast, I found my client Miss Colley awaiting me, and I heard the female view of the matter.

‘Oh, Mr Cragg,’ she said, as I ushered her into my inner sanctum. ‘I feel sure I should review my will. The savage Highlanders are coming to slaughter us all, so I’ve heard. Mrs Bryce insists they make human sacrifice and eat human flesh.’

As always with Amelia Colley, her words were qualified by her tone. The lightness in her voice, that touch of irony, revealed she was far from overwhelmed by her friend Lavinia Bryce’s forebodings. But disbelief in the tale did not mean disapproval of it. On the contrary, Miss Colley was charged with pleasure. Her eyes were sparkling. There was nothing she loved more in real life than a drama, and the thought that people were openly talking of massacre and cannibalism greatly excited her.

‘I believe the provisions of your will are adequate, whatever the future may be,’ I told her.

‘But I have left all my money to my nephew Charles, and he is a sworn friend of the government in London.’

‘What is wrong with that? It will not make his flesh taste any sweeter to the clansmen.’

She fluttered her eyelids.

‘Oh, no, Mr Cragg. Rather the opposite, I should think. No, I do not fear Charles will be roasted and eaten, but at this time of emergency I prefer my last wishes to be those of a neutral observer, do you see? I would not desire to be either condemned or rewarded for them. I wish to sit on the fence and enjoy the fun.’

‘What therefore do you propose?’

‘To divide my fortune equally between Charles and his cousin Henry, who lives in York and is a notorious Jacobite. They hate each other, of course. I can’t think of a better way to express my intense interest in this coming fight.’

‘Very well, Miss Colley.’

I went to the door of the outer office.

‘Furzey! Come through, if you please. There is writing to be done.’

TWO

Some weeks later I was standing in a field on the edge of a windypit a few miles east of Preston. Beside me stood Dr Luke Fidelis and Samuel Norris, constable of the parish of Ribchester in the bounds of which the field lay, and Andrew Ambleside who farmed the field. It was cold at this early hour of the morning. Our out-breaths puffed as steam in the air, and white frost crisped the grass. We were looking down at the frozen surface of the pond, whose ice was spiked around the fringe with the spears of numerous reeds. Its centre, however, was occupied by the large, naked and ice-rimed corpse of a man: a corpse, moreover, without a head.

Trying to describe the body’s attitude I wrote that night in my personal journal:

Imagine the classical marble statue of a spear thrower, in the act of running up to deliver his weapon. The head has been knocked off. The legs are spread, the left before and the right behind, both crooked at the knee. The feet are flexed. Meanwhile, the right arm is bent high above the shoulders ready to deliver the shaft, while the other points forward in the direction of the throw. And now imagine this figure tipped over and lain down on the ground. This was how the body appeared.

‘Do we have any notion of who he is?’ I said.

‘Not one, Coroner,’ said Norris, glancing at Ambleside. ‘There’s been nobody gone missing round here as far as we’ve heard.’

‘So it’s not one of your men, Mr Ambleside?’

The farmer pursed his lips and shook his head.

‘Nay. He’s none of mine.’

‘And it was you yourself that first spotted the body?’

‘Aye. I was out at first light and saw it as I rode cross-field.’

‘The primary question,’ said Luke, ‘is where was it brought from? There was no blood-letting here, or we’d see blood.’

‘What I want to know first off,’ said Norris, ‘is where’s his head?’

‘We know one thing at least,’ I said. ‘He was brought on a two-wheeler cart. The hoof prints and wheel tracks in the frost are clear. The cart entered by the gate from that lane over there, some time last night after the frost whitened the grass. It came up here to the pit and, after the body was thrown down, wheeled around and went back where it came from. Which I would wager is a neighbouring parish.’

‘Aye,’ said Norris.

‘Where are the parish boundaries, Norris?’

The constable stood like a signpost pointing to the north with his right arm and south with his left. He extended his right forefinger.

‘That way’s Goosnargh parish. And the other way’ – he pointed with his left hand – ‘that’s Whalley parish. It’s even nearer.’ He pointed to the west. ‘And our nearest neighbour over there is Preston.’

‘So we’re right next to the boundaries with three other big parishes, none of which would particularly like the bother of a dead body and the cost of an inquest, or so I’m guessing. So did one of them remedy the matter by removing the offending corpse by dark of night to a neighbouring parish – this one? I’ve seen it before. Illegal, but effective as long as you don’t get found out.’

We heard horse snorts and a squeaking axle. Three men from Ambleside’s farm had arrived with a cart.

‘What shall us do wi’ him, master?’ one said.

‘You’ll have a look over him, Luke?’ I said. Fidelis was my unofficial adviser on the practical aspects of death. For a coroner to employ a medical assistant was unorthodox, certainly, but I had long found Fidelis’s insight into the state of a corpse invaluable preparation for an inquest.

Fidelis walked over and cast an eye over the body.

‘Get him under cover,’ he said. ‘I’ll want the frost off him before I take a proper look.’ He turned back to Ambleside. ‘Is there a barn where he’ll be safe?’

The farmer nodded and walked across to give the order to his men, who immediately went down to the pond to drag the rigid body to the shore and then up to the rim of the pit, where they heaved it with a thud on to the bed of the cart. As they handled it, I caught a glimpse of the severed neck – a hole between the shoulders clogged with coagulated blood.

‘I’m going in search of his head,’ I said to Fidelis. ‘Without it I can do nothing. I doubt the law will allow me to inquest a headless corpse. The thawing out’ll take time, so why don’t you come with me?’

‘Where to?’

‘We’ll take the lane towards Simmy Nook. If Mr Headless was carted here from some part of the Whalley side, it was likely from somewhere like Simmy Nook, or if not, it came through it. Abraham Pilling’s the constable for that part, and not only does he live in Simmy Nook, but he’s idle and corrupt enough to lay off any corpse he stumbles on to the neighbouring parish, if he can. And I’ll tell you something else: Pilling is a thatcher. He’ll use a horse and cart every day of the week.’

‘Is he indeed?’ said my friend with interest. ‘We must certainly go and see him.’

It was a ride of half a mile to the boundary with the parish of Whalley, and another half to the village of Simmy Nook. Pilling’s house – a well-maintained cottage, whose roof was testimony to its owner’s craft – stood across the street from the village inn, a run-down establishment called the Black Cat. Pilling’s cart was tipped up with its shafts leaning up against the side wall of his house. His old horse chomped grass in a small neighbouring patch of field. Pilling had evidently not yet begun this day’s work of roof-making.

We dismounted and I knocked at the door while Fidelis strolled towards the side of the house where the cart was propped. No one answered my knock, so I turned away and looked up and down the street. A fellow bent under a loaded sack was making his wobbly way towards me.

‘D’you know where I’ll find Constable Pilling?’

He may have been deaf or mute, or simply a churl, but he went straight past me without breaking stride.

‘I said, have you seen Abe Pilling?’ I called after him.

‘Try the Cat.’

I crossed the road to the inn. Pilling was the only customer, sitting in his work clothes over a pot of ale. His breakfast, no doubt.

‘Mr Cragg!’ he said. ‘Whenever I clap an eye on you, I know by day’s end I shall regret it.’

‘They’ve found a naked man over in Ribchester parish, lying on the ice in a windypit.’

‘Drunk, was he?’

‘No, dead.’

Pilling raised an eyebrow, then sniggered. He was a small wiry fellow and thin in every way except for the roundness of his belly.

‘Dead drunk maybe, if he fell in a windypit and cracked his noddle on the ice.’

I heard a horse galloping away and glanced out through the grimy window. I saw the back end of Fidelis’s horse as he rode off in the direction we had come from.

‘Noddle, you say?’ I asked. ‘What noddle is that?’

Pilling looked at me boldly.

‘His own.’

‘Ah! But his noddle was off, Pilling. And it was missing, you see. Do you know anything of this, such as its whereabouts?’

He maintained his lofty assurance.

‘How would I, Mr Cragg? I am not informed of evil happenings that go off at Ribchester, or anywhere else outside this parish. My duty is only here, as you well know.’

‘I wonder, however, if you perceive your duty as including the removal of dead bodies from your parish to avoid the expense of an inquest.’

He did not blink but looked me steadily in the eye.

‘But that would be contrary to the law, Mr Cragg.’

The flat tone of his voice and his impervious demeanour told me there was no purpose in continuing the conversation. I went outside, wondering what had taken Fidelis away in such a hurry. His actions were often impulsive and abrupt when he conceived a particularly clever idea, though perhaps in this case he had simply gone back to Ambleside’s farm to proceed with his examination of the corpse. I returned to my horse, mounted and set off by a more direct route across the fields, thinking I might get there before him.

With the wide eyes of child as she tells a ghost story, one of the milkmaids at Ambleside’s explained how to find the stone barn where the headless corpse had been taken to thaw out. As I rode towards the building, which stood at the end of a cart-track a half mile away, I saw three or four farmworkers standing around the door. Before I could reach them, I heard a horse catching me up from behind. It was Fidelis.

‘I have it,’ he said, holding high a bulging hempen sack.

‘What have you?’

‘The errant head, of course.’

‘Good God! That was fast work. Where did you find it?’

‘A ditch. It wasn’t hard. The track was potholed, and Pilling’s cart had no tailgate, you see. All I had to do was go back looking for a bump in the road big enough to dislodge it.’

‘It rolled off the back of the cart, you mean?’

‘Exactly. Heads roll. This one did so a quarter mile after he left Simmy Nook.’

‘You’re sure the cart was Pilling’s?’

‘There were scrap ends of thatching stuck to the body, which it must have picked up from lying on the bed of the cart. I noticed them when they brought it up out of the frozen pit. There was even some lodged in the crack of his bottom. I was certain it was his cart as soon as you mentioned Pilling was a thatcher, though I can’t say if Pilling himself did the driving.’

‘I’ll stake my best wig on it. He must have tried to find the head on his way back after leaving the body, but couldn’t see it in the dark. He may have thought he had plenty of time to retrieve it in the daylight this morning – more fool him. Shall we reunite it and find out how he died?’

‘That will not be easy. The body has no visible sign of any wound, and nor has this head.’

The men made way for us a little fearfully as we went into the barn. A wintry light was admitted to it by a single window, feebly helped by the flames of a fire someone had lit in the hearth. A table had been fashioned by resting an old door on some straw bales. A sheet of sailcloth had been stretched across it, underneath which lay our naked and beheaded corpse. Fidelis approached and drew away the covering. The body, no longer iced, lay on its back as if finally at ease. Fidelis drew the severed head from the sack and, placing it face upward, laid it down in such a way that its neck was aligned with that of the body.

‘Now that is curious,’ said Fidelis in a wondering way. ‘And it explains the absence of any wound.’

Without explaining himself further, he took a candle-stump off a shelf attached to the wall and lit it while I crouched and peered at the dead face. It was that of a young man who had been about twenty and no doubt good-looking in life. His fair hair, plentiful on the crown, sprouty on the cheeks and chin, was matted with dirt, and possibly with dried blood. The eyelids were closed. As Fidelis brought the flickering candlelight to bear, the features seemed less rigid, less dead. I put my thumb on one of the lids and drew it up: the eyeball glittered in the light. The iris was blue.

‘What is curious?’ I said at last, unable to stop myself.

But

Reviews for Death and the Chevalier

[vesper1931 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

1745. The Young Pretender's army is on its way southwards, towards Preston when two decapitated bodies are found. Coroner Titus Cragg and Dr Luke Fidelis investigate, is there a connection between the bodies and the approaching army.
The story really didn't catch my interest, this might be because I have not read the previous five books which may be why I didn't find the characters were interesting enough. It was presumed that we would know their individual histories. For me there was not enough of a mystery in the story.
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