A Sickness in the Soul

  A SICKNESS IN THE SOUL

  An Ashmole Foxe Georgian Mystery

  William Savage

  Ridge & Bourne

  Contents

  “A Sickness in the Soul”

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  About the Author

  Also by William Savage

  “A Sickness in the Soul”

  by

  William Savage

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events, other than those clearly in the public domain, are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is unintended and entirely co-incidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by William Savage

  All rights reserved.

  Prologue

  “Many people wear masks. Some to hide their feelings, some to conceal their identity,

  and some to hide that most hideous curse of mankind: a sickness in the soul.”

  It is often said that, in the last few moments of your existence on this earth, the whole of your past life passes before your eyes. All Jonathon Danson saw and felt was a heavy blow to his face, which sent him sprawling backwards in his chair. It was closely followed by a crushing pain in his chest. After that, he felt nothing ever again.

  The Reverend Jonathon Danson D.D. left the Dissenting Academy to become a minister. Unfortunately, he proved to be one of profound mediocrity. His manner was dull and pedantic. The fires of his enthusiasm burned but fitfully. As a result, the once flourishing congregation in his chapel was soon reduced by two-thirds, then by nine-tenths. The few left — mostly elderly widows and portly retired merchants — snoozed in contentment through his rambling sermons. None could understand more than one word in three. Danson never used one short word when three long ones would do; never a plain phrase when an obscure one could be found. He filled his sermons with Greek and Hebrew quotations. He made excursions into the most obscure corners of the Scriptures. He even added lengthy expositions from the works of theologians long dead and justly forgotten.

  Danson’s only true interest lay in what he termed ‘the elucidation of hidden knowledge’. Had he been able to remain in academia, he would have seemed no more than one eccentric among many. However, he had few financial resources. At the age of twenty-six, poverty forced him to find employment as a chapel minister — a role for which he was neither suited nor capable.

  To supplement his meagre stipend, Danson took in pupils. He taught them just enough literacy and mathematics to follow their fathers into the world of commerce. His other legacy to these pupils was even more lasting: a conviction that all learning was torture. Being in his school was like becoming trapped in the catacombs while still alive.

  Through all this, Dr Danson pursued ‘hidden knowledge’ with the fervour of a hunting dog scenting a whole warren of rabbits.

  Finally, at the age of forty, fortune smiled upon him. A distant cousin died. The Danson family was noted for failing to produce heirs. The cousin’s considerable wealth thus descended upon Dr Danson as the nearest, indeed the only, relative available.

  At once, Danson resigned his ministry, to widespread relief, and bought himself a substantial house in Norwich. There, he determined to devote the rest of his life to his passion for obscure byways of research.

  He paid a carpenter to turn one room in his new house into a substantial library, and then called him back to block one of the windows for yet more bookcases. He hired a butler to answer the door and tell people the doctor was not at home. Then came a cook to prepare regular meals — he believed his brain functioned best on a full stomach — and a kitchen maid to help her. From the Overseers of the Poor, he hired two young women to serve as housemaids. Last of all, he married.

  This first Mrs Danson died, possibly from boredom, after four years of marriage. A few months later, Danson married again, mostly to avoid having to deal with domestic affairs. He had little faith in his ability to direct or keep his servants, a fact amply proved several times since his first wife had passed away. Thereafter, he devoted himself completely to his researches. He also began spending still more money on books.

  These were not, of course, ordinary books. ‘Hidden knowledge’ was not to be found in the volumes any gentleman of learning might own. Danson bought books that dealt with alchemy. Thick volumes on astrology, numerology, and anything else he could find to do with the occult. Many were in Latin, some in Ancient Greek and a few in Hebrew. They held strange diagrams and symbols. They spoke of the mysteries of the Kabbalah and introduced him to the writings of Hermes Trismegistus. He began to wonder if he dared conjure up spirits. Could not they impart yet greater understanding and open up still more deeply hidden pathways to spiritual knowledge?

  Once married for the second time, Dr Danson paid little attention to his wife. He wanted a housekeeper, not a friend or a lover. Most would have expected her to turn elsewhere for affection. If she did, her husband never noticed. It’s unlikely he would have cared enough to pay attention if he had. All that concerned him was that the house should run like clockwork and his meals should appear on time. He paid what seemed necessary to run his house and gave his wife whatever she wanted for herself. Since she wasn’t vain, greedy or demanding — what she spent on herself was tiny compared to the amount he was spending on books — he was well content. He supposed she was too, if he ever thought about her happiness at all. The couple thus lived free from obvious discord and any social obligations.

  All might have continued on its stable course had not a day arrived when a stranger came to the house. Earlier that morning, Dr Danson informed Archibald Gunton, the butler, to his considerable surprise, that he was expecting a visitor. When he arrived, the butler was told, he must be admitted immediately and without question. He would await the man in his library.

  The man came and spent barely twenty minutes with Dr Danson. No one saw or heard him leave. It was not until the butler entered the library about an hour later that he found the reason. His master lay slumped back in his chair, his mouth and eyes wide open. On his face, there was an expression that the butler later described to his mistress as being ‘as if he had looked into hell itself’. At his feet were his wig and a small dagger; the one which he usually kept on his desk. There was blood on the left side of his chest. It was obvious at once that the Reverend Dr Jonathon Danson, scholar of the occult and seeker after hidden knowledge, was dead.

  As the news spread in the neighbourhood, two schools of opinion formed. The majority, considering Dr Danson’s circumstances, announced that it was plainly a domestic crime. An elderly rich husband takes a pretty, young wife, who was penniless before he married her. ‘Murder!’ they whispered amongst themselves. ‘Stands to reason, don’t it?’ A sizeable number reached a different conclusion; one based on rumours of the man’s strange interests. ‘Witchcraft!’ they muttered, or ‘devilry!’ Either way, that group were certain the powers of evil had come to
claim one of their own.

  Two nights later, and in a place in the city far removed from Dr Danson’s elegant dwelling, another man stood and looked down at the body of his latest victim, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the stench and filth all around him. Parts of Norwich might rival London for beauty and architectural splendour, but this was not one of them. The great church of St Peter Mancroft might stand scarcely fifty yards off, but this noisome alleyway belonged to the other part of what was still England’s second city; the part where the poor lived in hopelessness and squalor. This was the other England. A place where people struggled for survival, where crime was everywhere and murder almost an everyday occurrence.

  Not murder done with such style though. Not a man killed while he slept by a single thrust from a dagger deep into his heart. Not a proper assassination.

  If the killer wondered why he was being paid to deal with a homeless wretch like this, he kept such thoughts to himself. He prided himself on being a professional. It mattered nothing to him whether his selected victim came from the highest ranks of society or the lowest. Both would receive the same treatment.

  He pulled the rags aside, which the man had used to try to cover himself, and looked at the body. Quite a young man, he guessed, though the life he was living had aged him a good deal. Thin too. No sign of drink, which was strange. Usually vagrants like this always had some flask or bottle of filthy, low-grade liquor to keep out the cold.

  A noise startled him, and he crouched, ready to fight or run.

  There it was again. This time he could identify it as the wooden clapper the night-watchmen carried. Coming closer too. This was no time to linger, if he wanted to avoid detection.

  The assassin stooped once more and pulled the rags back over the dead man. Then he took his knife and carefully wiped the blade clean of blood, before slipping it back into the sheath at his waist. Time to disappear as stealthily as he had come.

  A rat, on the hunt for food, stopped and sniffed the air, catching the warm smell of fresh blood as it did so. It looked around carefully, always on the alert for danger. Nothing. It was alone in this alleyway, which formed part of its regular hunting territory. Its whiskers twitching, the rat slipped through the shadows until it found the source of the smell. Then, crouching in the dark, alert as ever, it started to lap.

  1

  Jack Beeston had been Norwich’s long-term principal gang leader for many years, until Ashmole Foxe finally secured his conviction on a long list of capital offences. In the first few months after his execution, the number of crimes committed in the city fell to levels that were unimaginable before. The remnants of his criminal grouping split into factions, each one headed by a lower-ranking subordinate, each determined to take over Beeston’s role. They were so busy beating and killing their rivals they had little or no interest in regular criminal activities. The citizens of Norwich thought it was heaven.

  Samson “Sammy” Ross’s men killed two of David “Smiler” Hayes’s principal supporters, then narrowly missed killing Hayes himself. Hayes plotted revenge. Matthew “Growler” Spetchley’s bully boys raided the house where Ross lived. They left his body hanging in the outhouse, hoping to fake his suicide. That left Hayes and Spetchley. It wasn’t long before attacks by each group left a good number of both gang’s members dead, crippled or severely wounded.

  Meanwhile, the people of the city observed events with rising satisfaction. “Let them kill one another” was the general attitude. “It reduces their numbers and stops them causing trouble for the rest of us.”

  The only exception to the belief in the virtues of this ongoing process of dog-eat-dog was Mr Ashmole Foxe, the aforementioned amateur catcher of criminals. His objection was not on moral grounds, nor was it based on a belief that no one should take justice into their own hands. It was simply practical. It was clear to him that neither Hayes nor Spetchley would be able to defeat the other. Both would realise this, and a truce would be arranged. When that event took place, as surely it must, the city would have two criminal gangs where there had once been only one. Since each would harbour a deep sense of ill-will against the other, what had begun as direct confrontation would change into an ongoing attempt to out-do their rival in committing ever more daring and profitable crimes against the rest of the population.

  During one of their periodic meetings to discuss potential additions to the alderman’s library, Foxe mentioned his concerns to his long-time friend and customer, Alderman Halloran. Halloran also served as Foxe’s link between himself and the mayor of the city and the wealthy merchants who made up the Mercantile Society. They had taken of late to referring to Mr Foxe anything of a potentially criminal nature likely to upset the welfare of Norwich and its businesses. So far, he had not let them down. Facts were unearthed, culprits tracked down and the wheels of justice set in motion. Why Mr Foxe? Simply because, in the absence of either the police force or other investigators, someone was needed to do the job. Who better than a young man of ample wealth who possessed an enquiring mind and the time to indulge it? A young man who had offered a means of livelihood to the widow of a notably unsuccessful bookseller, a Mrs Susannah Crombie, and found someone with all the energy, knowledge and judgement needed to run his bookselling business almost without his involvement. Only the aspect of the business relating to rare and antiquarian books remained firmly in Foxe’s own hands. That was what had brought him to Alderman Halloran’s house in Colegate that day. Halloran was an ardent book collector and relied on Foxe to keep him supplied.

  They had spent more than an hour discussing various volumes which might be of interest to the alderman. Now it was time to move on to other matters.

  The alderman was not impressed with Foxe’s gloomy view of the consequences of Jack Beeston’s demise.

  ‘Are you not being unnecessarily pessimistic?’ he said. ‘So far, the results of this rivalry have been positive for our city as a whole. Why should there be a truce between Hayes and Spetchley? As we all know, they hate each other. That won’t change. Even if one manages to emerge triumphant, this long drawn out struggle will leave them both seriously weakened.’

  ‘We can only hope so,’ Foxe replied. ‘On the other hand, …’

  ‘I hope you are not suffering from melancholia,’ the alderman interrupted. ‘You haven’t been to the theatre of late, according to the manager, nor did you attend either of the last two balls at the Assembly House. It’s not like you to miss opportunities like those. What’s more, Mrs Crombie mentioned to me that your servants have begun to worry about you. No new “pets” they tell her, since that girl went to work for Lady Cockerham. Even your style of dress is less fashionable of late. Look at you now. Where is the heavily embroidered waistcoat and all the gold and silver piping on your jacket? Where is the rich lace at your cuffs and at your throat?’

  It was true, of course. Without noticing it, Foxe had been sinking into something like respectability.

  The answer to Foxe’s state of mind would have been obvious, had the alderman been privy to Foxe’s recent movements. For weeks he had been spending more and more time with Lady Arabella Cockerham. At first, this surprised him. He put it down to a need for relaxation and intelligent conversation. He usually felt some lassitude at the conclusion of a demanding case. Lady Arabella was kind, sharp-witted and managed to comfort him without appearing to do so. Being with her cheered him up. After a while, going to her house in Pottergate became a habit. Then, to his surprise, he found himself growing fond of her. He began to wonder whether he should not marry and settle down, as his friend Captain Brock had done.

  Anyone who knew him would have deemed this a preposterous idea. Foxe had spent all his life, from the onset of puberty until the present day, engaged in a single-minded pursuit of sex without commitment. Why change all of a sudden? He was just thirty years of age and had no difficulty finding fresh bed-mates whenever he wished. He had an excellent housekeeper and the thought of children under his feet appalled him. Even so, the no
tion stuck in his mind. One evening, almost on a whim, he had assumed a serious expression, interrupted their conversation and proposed marriage to Lady Arabella. He assumed she would accept on the spot.

  Instead, she laughed in his face. She had, she told him, married once before and had no intention of repeating such a disagreeable experience.

  Foxe, stung by her cheerful rejection of what he should have realised was a foolish approach, chose instead to stand on his dignity. He nodded and left in a state of high dudgeon.

  It wasn’t long before he regretted his stupidity. He was now shut off from Lady Arabella’s company. He would also be unable to find occasions to enjoy the energetic charms of her maid, Maria. Feeling too embarrassed, and too proud, to make any apology or try to re-establish himself in Lady Cockerham’s good books, he sulked. He moped about his house, feeling sorry for himself and annoying everyone from Mrs Crombie to his apprentice, Charlie Dillon. That lad, eager to copy his master in every way he could, had started to cast his eye over all the girls of his acquaintance — much to the dismay of Florence, the kitchen maid.

  It was in this unhappy state of mind that, one evening, shortly after his talk with Alderman Halloran, Foxe sat at his desk and wrote to his former lover, Miss Gracie Catt.