A Dark Anatomy by Robin Blake

called him back.
    â€˜Tell me about the mare,’ I said. ‘What was she like? I mean in temperament. Was she difficult to ride?’
    The man came back to me reluctantly, and with an audible, insolent sigh.
    â€˜Mistress, say what you like about her, she could handle a horse,’ he stated. ‘That mare is a very naughty one. You have to keep her to herself. Other horses, she’ll bite them. She doesn’t like them near. Now, I have my duties. Good day to you, Coroner.’
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    One by one over the next two hours the servants trooped into the parlour and then, after delivering themselves of whatever
information about Mrs Brockletower they could call to mind, trooped out again. In every case they went back to their allotted tasks, the succession of small incessant functions which when added together are the life of a great house – the cheese-making, shall we say? The silver polishing, the currying of horses, the felling of beeches, the pedimentary works. Mr Spectator mounted an argument in his paper that all things pale compared to the significance of death. They had not seemed to do so in this house. If they had, the house itself would sicken and die. But its routines did not flinch in the face of mortality.
    So what did I learn in those ten dozen minutes? Almost all I spoke to agreed that Mrs Brockletower had been in a fury or a fret for much of the day before she died, saying hard words to the servants and sending them scurrying around to fetch and carry. She had been calmer and quieter on the day before that, the Sunday, when she had given the day’s instructions to Leather the butler, a fat red-headed fellow with the sonorous, booming voice of a dragoon sergeant.
    â€˜She asked me to find her a reel of fishing line, she did. I thought it was queer. She was no angler.’
    â€˜Did she intend to take up fishing, then?’
    â€˜She didn’t want a rod, or hooks and bait. Just the line, she said.’
    â€˜What for?’
    â€˜She said it was for the hanging of pictures.’
    â€˜And you fetched some for her.’
    â€˜I did. Ten yards of it, wound on a stick. I asked her if she wanted it cutting but she says no, she’s got scissors.’
    And the day before that, I learned, Mrs Brockletower had been to town.
    â€˜To be measured for a dress.’
    â€˜Who is her dressmaker?’

    â€˜Talboys in Friar Gate.’
    â€˜Did he not attend her at home?’
    â€˜At first he did. But she took against his visits and preferred to go into town.’
    â€˜Why did she prefer that?’
    â€˜You’ll have to ask Mr Talboys that, sir.’
    I must have spoken to a dozen witnesses when, just as I had finished with Philip Barkworth – who divulged nothing I did not already know – there came a clatter of hooves from the yard. A single rider had come in, leading a pack pony slung with baggage. This, Barkworth told me, was the squire’s valet, Tom Cowp, who had accompanied his master to York. Barkworth and I both hurried outside and found that Cowp had ridden in, and was alone.
    Tom Cowp was a slim young fellow with a knowing look. I brought him into the parlour, still bespattered by mud from the road, to find out just what it was that he did know.
    â€˜Have you heard what happened here this morning, Tom?’
    â€˜About Mistress, sir? Yes, I heard about it on the road. People were talking about it already.’
    â€˜Saying what?’
    â€˜Oh, I shouldn’t say, sir. People are that spiteful.’
    I did not press him, remembering the remarks of Miriam Patten as I’d ridden through Gamull. But I noted that his demeanour was like that of the other servants, indeed like poor blind Sarah. None of them felt grief at the death of Dolores Brockletower.
    â€˜Well then, how far had the news got when you heard it?’
    â€˜I stopped in Skipton the night. By this noon I was in Clitheroe, where I heard the name Brockletower