‘Will didn’t have time for courting. He was always working. I used to tease him about it, tell him he’d end up a rich old bachelor.’ She smiled briefly at the fleeting memory. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Because it might give a reason. A cause.’
She shook her head.‘No, I don’t think it can be that.’
He stood up. ‘My condolences again,’ he said formally, and moved towards the door.
‘Constable?’ He heard her draw in a breath and knew what was coming. He’d expected her to ask. ‘Is it possible that my brother’s death wasn’t a suicide? An accident, perhaps?’
He knew the reason for the question. No family wanted the shame of a suicide. It was a stain that never washed out, the quiet whispers behind hands and the pitying looks without words. But there was nothing he could offer her except a short movement of his head that committed him to nothing. By now the word had probably spread too far to be drawn back.
He strolled up Vicar Lane to the Head Row, then back down Briggate to stop at the Ship. The food was tasty, the meat fresh, not rancid and covered in spices, and Michael always carried good ale.
But he barely noticed what he ate or drank. Instead he was thinking about Elizabeth Bradley. She’d said little but revealed much. Will Jackson obviously kept his own life away from his family. If he’d been courting an available girl there’d have been no reason for that.
He’d also had money to invest in his brother-in-law’s business, so the cloth finishing must have been making a profit. That seemed to rule out money as a possible reason behind his death.
Nottingham put the last of the mutton pie into his mouth, washing it down with the ale and made his way back to the jail.
Elias Tunstall had a shifty face, Sedgwick decided. With a sharp nose and a widow’s peak to his greasy hair, he had the look of a rat, eyes constantly moving around as they walked through the business premises of Tunstall and Jackson, Cloth Finishers, on the Calls.
‘Why?’ he asked desperately when the deputy told him of the suicide. ‘Why would he want to do that?’
‘We don’t know yet. That’s what we want to find out. Is the business doing well?’
‘It’s doing grand,’ Tunstall answered, puffing out his thin chest. ‘We’ve got more work than we can handle.’ He deflated again as the realization hit him. ‘Don’t know what we’ll do now, mind.’
The voices in the nap shop stopped as soon as Tunstall entered and he glared around the men. Over in the corner the preemer boy, a lad of maybe twelve, was taking wood fibres out of the teasels used to raise the nap of the cloth. Two men worked side by side on the frame, pulling the combs over the wool.
‘I want you working, not gabbing,’ Tunstall said, heels clacking brightly on the floor as he led Sedgwick along.
In the next room the men laboured silently, working with scissors near as tall as themselves to crop the nap to an even length. Sleeves rolled up and kerchiefs tied at the neck, they moved carefully and precisely, faces drawn in deep concentration. One slip could ruin a length and it would come from their wages, the deputy knew.
Beyond that, in a long hall with windows and doors cast wide open to try and draw in some air, others worked the irons in the steamy, oppressive heat, pressing and bundling the cloth, ready to go back to the merchants and be sold.
‘There’s brass in this,’ Tunstall explained, cuffing a boy who was struggling with a bucket of water, ‘and we’re making it.’ He paused. ‘For the moment, any road.’
‘Did Mr Jackson seem upset about anything lately? Was he quiet?’
‘Will?’ Tunstall chuckled, baring his yellow teeth. ‘As pleasant a soul as you could meet. Always ready to laugh with the workers, said it made them feel better, but I don’t know that it’s true.’
‘Was he courting?’ Sedgwick let the question slip casually. Tunstall shook his head emphatically.
‘Always working, that lad. If he wasn’t here he’d be off seeing customers. Did that one day every week. About the only time he wasn’t busy was Sunday and he’d have crept in here then if he could.’ He sighed. ‘He was no more than a lad, too. What could have made him do summat like that?’
‘We’ll try to find out,’ the deputy promised. ‘Did he go out to customers the same day every week?’
‘No, different days each week.’ Tunstall answered without thinking. ‘But he kept the orders coming and that was all that mattered. What about his family?’
‘The Constable’s informing his sister.’
Tunstall wasn’t going to say too much, but he might have more luck with the workers, Sedgwick thought. They were men who’d need a drink after working here. Catch a few of them in an alehouse, buy them a jug or two and their tongues would loosen. Men always saw more than the bosses imagined.
The afternoon was passing by, and the deputy decided he might as well wait rather than return to the jail. He slipped through the streets to Dyers Garth and lay back lazily on the riverbank. The swirl of the water was lulling and after a few minutes his thoughts started to drift. Come winter he’d be a father again, God willing. A new little bairn, a part of him. He’d loved James as a baby, and found real peace in holding him and watching him sleep. But he knew that the fear would be there, that something would happen, that Lizzie would die in childbed, that the newborn wouldn’t survive. It happened all too often, not one dead but both, leaving only a vast emptiness the heart couldn’t fill.
He breathed deep to clear his head, letting the sun bring back some contentment, and dozed until the bells of the Parish Church tolled six. Slowly he roused himself, brushing grass off his breeches, and wandered back to the Calls. The men came out laughing, loud in their brief freedom. Some went their way, but one group of five passed through Back Lane to Low Holland and the alehouse that had been made from a cottage there.
The deputy gave them five minutes, time enough to sit and wet their throats after a long day’s labour. Then he entered, greeting Nettie behind her trestle and pointing to the twice-brewed that would fight the day’s heat.
‘I know you,’ one of the men called to him. ‘You were at our place earlier. Talking to t’boss.’
‘Aye, I was.’ Sedgwick lifted the mug, took a long, deep swallow and walked over to join them on the bench. ‘I had some news for Mr Tunstall.’
‘What was that, then?’ another man asked. He had a face that seemed faintly familiar, but for the moment the deputy couldn’t put a name to it. ‘What’s the Constable’s man want at Tunstall’s?’
‘It was about Mr Jackson.’ Suddenly he remembered the man’s name — Caleb Rountree. He’d questioned him once about some stolen property, but they’d never been able to prove anything. ‘Did you know him, Caleb?’
The others laughed that the law would recognize him and Rountree reddened, burying his face in his mug.
‘What’s happened to him?’ an older man asked quietly.
‘Dead,’ Sedgwick told them, looking around the table. ‘Killed himself.’
‘What?’ Rountree crashed his pot down on the wood, eyes wide in disbelief. ‘Give over! What would he want to do summat like that for?’
‘I don’t know. Any of you know him?’
The older man struck a flint and lit his clay pipe, the sound of his drawing on the tobacco the only noise at the table. The others glanced at each other, unsure what to say.
‘He were better than Tunstall,’ the man said finally. ‘No side on him for all he were the boss. He knew the jobs and he could do them himself if need be. Crop a good length, too.’
Sedgwick motioned for Nettie to bring a jug.
‘He worked us hard enough, though,’ Rountree complained.
‘You know much about him?’
‘What’s to know?’ asked Rountree sourly. ‘They have their lives, we have ours. Not like we’re going to mix, is it?’
‘Never know,’ the deputy said. ‘You might have heard something. Rumours.’
‘The wife saw him in town once,’ the older man said idly. ‘Middle of the day and he was with a lass.’
‘On a work day?’
‘Aye. She told me when I got home, that’s how I remember.’ He shrugged carelessly. ‘Neither here nor there, I suppose.’
‘How long ago was that?’
The man scratched thoughtfully at the thatch of curls on his head. ‘Had to be before winter, I think. Couldn’t tell you any better than that.’
