A Sickness in the Soul Page 4

  Foxe had never thought of that.

  ‘Dr Danson was known to be a recluse,’ his widow continued, ‘and he was also known to be wealthy. After some thought, I decided he would be able to look after me well. His wants would also be modest, and I would not be expected to appear in society to suffer nothing but snubs and sneers. I also believed I could make him a good wife. I asked for little and tried to look after him as well as I could. I found, to my surprise, that the management of servants was not as difficult as I had feared. To my even greater surprise, I discovered most of them enjoyed working in this house.’

  ‘I am sorry to ask this, but can you tell me the source of your husband’s wealth? I understand he was not always a rich man.’

  ‘I have heard that as well. Unfortunately, he never discussed such matters with me. He gave me a regular allowance for housekeeping and paid the servants’ wages. I accounted for all expenditure regularly and to his apparent satisfaction. He also gave me a set amount of pin money and an allowance for clothes. Everything else he dealt with himself. He was not extravagant in his expenditure, Mr Foxe, but not niggardly either. Only in one area did he seem to expend large sums without limit.’

  ‘What area was that?’

  ‘His library. That was where he spent nearly all his time and that was where he died. When you have finished questioning me, I will tell Gunton to take you there.’

  ‘Gunton?’

  ‘Archibald Gunton, the butler. He takes his duties very seriously, but he is not such a rigid creature as he appears. He scared me at first, but we have come to understand each other. If there is anything else you should know beyond what I can tell you, he is the person to ask.’

  Foxe’s head was buzzing with questions, but he needed time and space to digest what he had been told already, not yet more surprises. He therefore thanked Mrs Danson for her candour and said he had no more questions for the moment.

  ‘Then I have some for you, Mr Foxe,’ the lady said. ‘Your visiting card describes you as a bookseller. What is a bookseller doing involving himself in the investigation of a crime involving people whom he has never met?’

  ‘That is a long and involved story, madam,’ Foxe replied. ‘I am quite willing to answer your question fully. However, I must beg your indulgence to postpone my response to another time, when we both have greater leisure available.’

  ‘I will hold you to that, sir. You are not the only one possessed of boundless curiosity. My second question is simpler. Who was it that suggested you come here?’

  ‘His Worship the Mayor, as I told you, via an intermediary.’

  ‘That is what surprised me. Gunton, who bore my message to His Worship yesterday, reported that the man seemed barely interested.’

  That was typical of the present mayor. The man loved the status and trappings of the role but avoided any duties which might demand actual effort. Even so, Foxe thought it best to give a more diplomatic answer.

  ‘It is the responsibility of the family of a murdered man to launch a prosecution, madam, not the magistrate. He did not wish to leave you unsupported, so he made sure I knew about it and could offer my help.’

  Mrs Danson looked at Foxe for what felt like a long time, though it could have been no more than a few moments.

  ‘A most careful answer,’ she said at last. ‘My husband has been dead barely a day and already I am learning many new things. Very well. With your help, Mr Foxe, I may yet surprise His Worship a good deal — as I suspect I have surprised you. Let us hope so. Poor Gunton was much discomfited by the mayor’s response. I have no idea whether he liked his master, but he had a lively sense of what he felt was due to him as a gentleman and a scholar. The dead can receive no comfort from us, but I would be glad to feel that Gunton’s outraged feelings could be pacified.’

  Foxe said nothing. He was too astonished and confused. By this point, he wished only to escape and recover himself. However, it was not to be.

  ‘One last point,’ Mrs Danson said. ‘Not a question this time but what may prove useful information. A stranger came to this house yesterday. I did not see him, since he asked for my husband. According to Gunton, the man was expected. My husband had given instructions he should be admitted without delay. Since, as usual, Dr Danson was in his library, that was where Gunton took the visitor. On his return downstairs, Gunton sent one of the maids up with a tray of refreshments. She told him later that she had found her master and his visitor already deep in conversation. “They was lookin’ at some o’ they old books together” were her exact words. Gunton tells me he did not see the man leave, but you can verify that with him.’

  She stood up and pulled the bell-cord to summon a servant. After a short delay, Gunton came in person, obviously expecting to be instructed to show Foxe out. If he was surprised at being told to take Mr Foxe to the library, allow him to explore as he wished and answer all his questions fully, he didn’t show it. He simply bowed an acceptance of his instructions and walked to the door, where he waited for Foxe to join him.

  As he entered Danson’s library behind the magisterial form of Archibald Gunton, Foxe couldn’t suppress a gasp of awe and admiration. The room must have run across almost the full width of the house. There were six huge windows looking out onto the street, each equipped with a narrow seat where you might catch the full light on some poorly printed page or written manuscript. The ceiling was at least the height of the hall below and richly plastered. No wall coverings were necessary since every wall, including those between the windows, was covered by book-shelving from floor to ceiling. At the far end was a large desk, flanked by two globes on mahogany stands. Opposite the windows stood two upholstered chairs, either side of a fireplace decorated with a magnificent surround of carved marble. Inlaid below the mantle was a thick band of what looked like blue jasper. The only other furniture consisted of a round mahogany table, flanked by two splendid chairs, also in mahogany. It was a library fit for a duke — or the king himself. How the devil had Danson afforded it?

  For a few minutes, Foxe simply wandered from one side of the library to the other. He looked at the shelves of books and read some of the titles. Sometimes he took one down, carefully and reverently, to look at the binding or the title page and frontispiece. He was familiar with almost none of the books he leafed through. What to make of, “Declaratio academica de gaudiis alchemistarum” by Abraham Kaau, an academic paper of 1738. “An Academic Declaration of the Joys of Alchemy”, was that what the title was in English? Foxe’s grasp of Latin was rudimentary. “Sermo academicus de chemia suos errores expurgante” by Herman Boerhaave, published in Leiden in 1718. “An Academic sermon about Purging Chemistry of Its Errors”. Was that a correct translation? Then, at last, a book in plain English: “The Sceptical Chymist” of 1661 by the famous Robert Boyle. And so on, and so on. Books translated from Arabic, the works of Aristotle: ten volumes bound in white vellum. A cornucopia of rare and exotic items to delight the bibliophile.

  If Foxe’s mind had been in a tumult before, it was now a mass of confusion, spiced with rampant envy at all that lay around him. Finally, and with the greatest reluctance, he tore himself away from his inspection of this dazzling repository of volumes and turned to ask the butler a question.

  ‘May I ask you where you found your late master, Mr Gunton?’ Foxe’s polite speech and use of the title ‘mister’ won the butler over in an instant. He did not unbend, but the look in his eye as he replied conveyed both surprise and respect.

  ‘In this chair beside the library table, sir.’

  ‘Was there anything on the table?’

  ‘Just the tray with the coffee pot and cups. I ascertained that both cups had been used when I cleared them away later.’

  ‘No books had been left there?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Yet Mrs Danson said the maid had said that your master and his visitor were examining several books they had set out between them.’

  ‘That is so, sir. I imagine the master had put th
em all away. The master was most particular about his books. He always returned them to their correct places on the shelves himself. He would never have allowed any of them to be placed on a table where there was coffee, or anything else which might stain them.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Gunton. It is clear that you are most observant.’ This won Foxe a slight but perceptible relaxation in the butler’s stance. ‘What are you able to tell me about the visitor whom you brought into this room?’

  ‘I formed the opinion that he was expected, sir. Dr Danson did not, save on rare occasions, receive any visitors and certainly not in his library. On this occasion, however, he informed me he was expecting someone that morning who should be shown into his library without delay.’

  ‘When did your master tell you this?’ Foxe asked.

  ‘On the previous evening. I cannot be certain when or how his visitor had made the arrangement for that day, sir, but Dr Danson did receive a letter some days earlier. He opened it in my presence and I observed it produced unusual excitement when he read it.’

  ‘Can you describe this visitor, Mr Gunton? What name was on his card? What impression did he make on you?’

  ‘As I recall, his card gave his name as Mr Cornelius Wake of Golden Square, London. However, if I may be frank with you, I didn’t like the look of the man. There was something false about him, as if he was acting a part in the theatre. I also became convinced that English was not his native tongue. He spoke it too precisely and sometimes used an odd way of pronouncing certain words. Whatever his origin, the gentleman, to my mind, was almost from foreign parts. The name on his card was not his real name either. In my experience in service, sir, which is extensive, I have developed an instinct in such matters.’

  ‘I believe you, Mr Gunton. One last question. Is everything as it was on the day your master died?’

  ‘It is. Nothing has been touched, save for the removal of the tray, as I mentioned. The master had some system of his own for arranging his books. The servants were forbidden to touch any of them, on pain of immediate dismissal. Apart from one thing, that is. The master kept a dagger on his desk, for slitting the pages of new books I believe. That was what was used to kill him, sir. It was taken away with his body.’

  Foxe thanked the butler for his help and asked to be taken back to Mrs Danson, so that he might take his leave. His mind had been full before he came to the library. Now it could not accept any more information without bursting.

  As he thanked the lady and prepared to leave, Foxe remarked that Dr Danson had possessed a remarkable library.

  ‘It was my husband’s pride and joy, Mr Foxe. He loved it with a passion he never displayed towards anything — or anyone — else. He spent nearly all his time in that room, and he was forever procuring fresh books to add to his collection. To be honest, aside from his obsession with them, I know next to nothing about those books. Nor would I have wished to. They were exactly like my husband, sir: dusty, dull and filled with incomprehensible nonsense.’

  ‘You took no interest in his researches?’ Foxe asked

  ‘None. He would not have welcomed such interest even if I had. He was a secretive man by nature, Mr Foxe. Never more so than when it concerned his library or whatever so-called researches occupied his mind. Sharing was foreign to him. Most nights he stayed up late reading or writing notes by candlelight, while I went to bed. Most days he shut himself away and appeared only for meals — and not always then. As you must have guessed, Mr Foxe, I did not love my husband. I regret his death, as I would the death of any human being, but no more than that. If I urge you to find his killer, it is a combination of curiosity and a proper regard for justice that drives me. It is nothing else, I assure you.’

  3

  Despite his confusion and weariness of mind, Foxe was denied the chance to return home immediately. Halloran had told him the inquest on Dr Danson was to be held that afternoon at the Guildhall. Foxe decided he needed to attend, if only to discover what might have come to light during the necessary medical examination. At least he might be able to find time to order his thoughts during the routine parts.

  Since Foxe arrived late, when the clerk to the court was about to open the proceedings, he had to sit on the front row of chairs. He would have preferred to be at the back, from where he could look around and note expressions and overhear whispers. It was not to be. The best he could do was snatch a brief look at the public benches as he entered. Why were so many people present? It must, he thought, be because the dead man had surrounded himself with an air of mystery. It was soon proved this was a false hope. The onlookers who expected to discover shocking and fascinating secrets were going to be disappointed.

  The coroner opened the inquest with the usual matters: the formal identification of the deceased and the finding of the body. For this purpose, he called the butler, Mr Gunton. The man stood stiffly erect as he gave his evidence, all the while contriving to suggest outrage at being compelled to do so.

  Next, Mrs Danson took the oath. She was asked to explain whether there had been anything unusual about her husband’s state of mind, health or behaviour prior to his murder. Foxe noted that, in deference to public expectation, she was now dressed in black and heavily veiled. He would have accepted a large wager that many of those present had come to see her. Her previous life was well known in the city and the gossips had been busy elaborating upon it. They too were quickly disappointed.

  She spoke firmly and precisely from behind her veil. Foxe had to admire her. She must have known that ugly rumours were already circulating, implying she had a hand in her husband’s death. Yet here she was, standing erect and giving her evidence in a firm, calm voice. Many a wife of better breeding and impeccable virtue would have displayed far less courage and good sense. In successive answers to the coroner’s questions, she denied noticing any change in her husband’s manner, refuted the suggestion that he had shown either anxiety or fear in the days before his death and stated that she knew of no enemies who might have wished him harm. When it came to the matter of her husband’s unusual visitor, the coroner jumped on her words. Could she give the court a description of the man? She could not, since she had not set eyes on him.

  At that point, the coroner asked her to stand down and recalled Gunton.

  ‘The gentleman gave his name as Mr Cornelius Wake,’ the butler said. ‘I understood he was expected. That is all I can tell the court. I had never seen him before and do not know the purpose of his visit.’

  ‘What did he look like?’ the coroner asked.

  ‘As to his appearance, sir, it was largely unremarkable. However, I did reach the conclusion he came from foreign parts. Mostly, I should add, due to his tendency to speak in a stilted manner.’

  This was much more to the audience’s liking. An excited buzz arose. Several turned to their neighbours and stated, as a positive fact, that foreigners were well known to be behind most crimes in the city. Heads nodded all around.

  The coroner banged his gavel several times and demanded silence on pain of having the public expelled from the rest of the proceedings. That reduced the crowd to angry mumbling and earned him a good many hostile looks. However, nothing more of note could be drawn from Mr Gunton. The coroner’s further questions about Mr Wake met with monosyllabic answers and an air of barely-concealed scorn.

  Next came the medical evidence. Foxe began to take greater notice. That the cause of death was stabbing, he knew already. The weapon was also evident, since it had remained in the wound. However, when asked if he could offer any further evidence, the surgeon who had carried out the autopsy sprang one surprise.

  ‘I probed the wound with a thin rod,’ he said. ‘The blade had entered between the ribs on the left side of the deceased’s chest, leaving a small tear in his waistcoat and shirt. It had been directed forwards and slightly downwards. Thus, it had passed through the muscles of the chest wall before piercing the left ventricle of the heart. Death would have been instantaneous — had not the victim alr
eady been dead.’

  ‘Already dead! Are you sure? You’ll need to explain that remark more fully,’ the coroner asked.

  ‘Simple,’ the surgeon said. ‘A dead body does not bleed. A moderate amount of blood had leaked from the site of the wound, sir, but no more than that. Had the blow with the dagger been the cause of death, the whole of the area around and below the wound would have been soaked.’

  ‘Can you estimate how long Dr Danson had been dead when he was stabbed?’

  ‘Not long, in my opinion. Had there been an appreciable period between death and the blow being struck, there would have been no blood at all. The amount of liquid blood found indicates it would have been no more than a few minutes.’

  The coroner shook his head in bafflement. ‘Are you saying the assailant killed the man by some other means, waited several minutes, then stabbed him to make sure?’

  ‘Only the murderer could answer such a question, sir. What I can say is that the man died from a heart attack and then, a little later, was attacked violently. Considerable force was used to drive the blade home. From the angle at which it penetrated, I would imagine the assailant was standing, while the deceased was seated where he was found.’

  ‘Please explain why you believe great force was used?’

  ‘We know the weapon used had a sharp, thin blade, but one which was rather short. To be honest, I am amazed it managed to penetrate as deeply as it did. I therefore attribute that fact to the violence with which it had been forced home.’

  ‘Can you provide any evidence about what caused Dr Danson’s heart to fail at precisely that time?’ the coroner asked.

  ‘My guess would be the blow the man had received to the face, perhaps accompanied by a severe shock. Heart attacks may arise at any time, especially in the elderly. Of course, a severe shock puts additional strain on the heart and may precipitate such an event. There was definite pre-mortem bruising about the lower part of the face. That must have been from a heavy blow, in my opinion.’