‘Why didn’t you send to the Keep for Sir Richard Lowther and tell him what had happened at once, as your duty was?’
Mrs Atkinson licked her lips. ‘I was too afraid to think straight. All I could see was he’d been killed; he was my husband, he’d been killed in his bed and I was about the place and so I was... I was afraid.’
‘Why?’
‘I was afraid... that I would get the blame for it, sir. I know what a terrible sin it is for a wife to kill her husband, sir, and I would never ever do it, but I knew people would say I had. And I was right, sir, they did. You did.’
‘So you decided to try and hide the body and lay the blame on me,’ said Carey sternly.
‘Ay sir. I’m sorry. I’ve done many wicked things in the past few days, sir, but none of them was murder, as God sees me, sir. I never killed him.’
‘One more thing. Exactly when was Mr Atkinson killed?’
‘I told you, sir, it must have been around dawn on Monday, between the time when I got up to milk Clover and when I came back wi’ his breakfast.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Atkinson.’
Thomas Lowther was whispering to the man on his right, shaking his head. Carey could do nothing about that: truthfulness shone from Mrs Atkinson but the jury could refuse to see it if they chose.
To try and make sure that Andy Nixon made up no more foolish stories, Carey called Goodwife Crawe his landlady next. She stood small and stalwart under the cross before all the solemn men and repeated in a high clear voice what she had told Carey: she had found Andy Nixon in a bad state in her living room, when she went in before dawn on the Monday morning. She had nursed him, bound up his hand and given him food and drink and he had left after the gates opened. She didn’t know where he had gone after that, only he had come home late that night.
Carey approached Andy Nixon with the feeling he might be a lighted bomb. He took his oath, stood straight and frowned with concentration.
Ay, he had been jumped in the alley on Sunday night by Goodwife Crawe’s front door. Ay, they had been four men; he didn’t know who they were or why they were there, or he wasna certain, and he had been too sore to climb the ladder to his own bed in her loft, so he had slept on Goodwife Crawe’s fleeces. Ay, she had nursed him. Ay, he had gone out and met Mary Atkinson and against his will gone to see Kate Atkinson. He had been appalled when she showed him the body of her husband. After that, it had been as she said, he had gone to see Pennycook, who had recommended blaming Carey and to make sure of him, Andy himself had gone up to the Keep and inveigled one of Carey’s own gloves from Simon Barnet his serving lad.
Ay, he had left Atkinson in Frank’s vennel. No, he hadnae left him sprawled; he had laid him out proper, as was right.
‘Why didn’t you go and tell Lowther immediately as your duty was?’ Carey asked. ‘Instead of trying to get me blamed for it.’
Andy Nixon flushed. ‘I wasnae thinking straight. I was afraid Kate... er... Mrs Atkinson would be blamed, and she was afraid too. We’re no’ important people, sir, we didnae think anyone would listen.’
‘It was a disaster that Mr Atkinson’s throat was cut, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh, ay,’ said Nixon feelingly. ‘It was.’
Scrope had learned the manners to look to the Coroner for permission to ask a question. Wisely Aglionby granted it. ‘Mr Nixon, why did you tell me yesterday that you did the murder?’
Andy Nixon stared at the ground, lifted a foot to scrape his toe and was reminded of his leg-irons.
‘I thought ye would think Mrs Atkinson did it,’ he said. ‘I didnae want her to burn, so I said I did it as hanging’s an easier death.’
In France Carey had seen how hanged men could jig for twenty minutes if the executioner botched the drop and he doubted it was as easy as all that. There was a feminine buzz of approval from the audience behind him.
‘But I’m on oath now and feared for my soul if I perjure myself,’ Nixon added with commendable piety. Somebody had been coaching these witnesses and Carey knew it wasn’t him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see his sister nodding approvingly at Andy Nixon. Thomas Lowther snorted in a manner exactly like Sir Richard’s.
‘If you lied once, you might lie again,’ said Scrope irritably.
‘No my lord.’ Andy Nixon was quite steady, for a miracle. ‘Not on oath.’
Aglionby said he could step back now. Carey bowed to him.
‘Your honour,’ he said. ‘May I address the jury?’
Aglionby nodded though it was highly irregular. Carey took a deep breath, paced up to the two benches full of jurymen and removed his hat, bowed to them.
‘Gentlemen, you can see what perplexity I was in yesterday,’ he said. ‘Here were three suspects for a murder and the only one that could in any way have done it was a woman. Now if it had been a less bloody and violent murder, I would have been in less doubt. If Mr Atkinson had died by poison, for instance. But he did not. His throat was cut and in his bed. If you cut a man’s throat from behind, you may avoid being soiled, but that was not possible because he was asleep in bed. It must have been done from the front. Now I myself have sliced open a man’s throat in battle with a sword, and I may tell you, gentlemen, that I never was more dirty with blood in my life. Is it possible to do it without being sprayed? I doubt it.’
Most of the gentlemen in front of him had fought their own battles, perhaps one or two of the elder ones even with Carey’s own father, during the Northern Rising. They were listening gravely, a couple of them nodding.
Their eyes swivelled to where Mrs Atkinson stood and took in the fact that although her clothes were dirty, there were no bloodstains.
‘She is a woman, gentlemen. God made woman to serve man and accordingly he made her weaker, more timorous and less apt to violence. Is it believable she could have cut her own husband’s throat, a dreadful crime and against all nature, and then gone downstairs immediately, spoken with her daughter, set a tray with breakfast, and gone up again? Of course not. Even if she could have done it, why should she? She is not mad nor melancholy. Even if she was such a wicked Jezebel as to turn against her rightful lord, why should she do it in such a way that she was bound to be suspected?’
Apart from Thomas Lowther, whom Cicero himself could not possibly have convinced, the other gentlemen were looking encouragingly puzzled.
‘Well, gentlemen, although I cannot claim to be a learned lawyer, I did finally bring myself to ask the lawyer’s question, cui bono? Who benefits? Who could possibly benefit from James Atkinson’s death? And in particular, who could benefit from the manner of it? The very bloody manner of it which guaranteed that Mrs Atkinson would be accused of the crime of petty treason and would most likely burn.’
He paused impressively to let them think about it and a tiny thought darted through his mind like a silver fish that here was a surprise, the world could be focused down to an intoxicating point of intensity outside a card game or a battlefield. For a second he was intrigued and happy and then he turned his attention back to the jury.
‘Cui bono?’ he said again. ‘Well, gentlemen, it’s important you know that in a case of proven murder, the murderer’s property goes to the victim’s family.’
Lancelot Carleton was frowning at him. ‘Yes, gentlemen. Mr Atkinson’s death would normally mean that Mrs Atkinson inherited his goods and property, including the house where they lived. However, if she was arraigned and burned as his murderer, neither she nor her children could enjoy the gain. Instead, all the property would pass to Mr Atkinson’s family. In this case, to Mrs Matilda Leigh, née Atkinson, his half-sister, and of course, her husband Mr John Leigh, draper, and their next-doorneighbour.’
It was terribly satisfying to listen to all the gasps around him. Carey swept his glance around the packed marketplace, took in Scrope who had his fingers interlaced and a surprised expression on his face, and Edward Aglionby whose expression was very intent, and then went back to the jury who were staring at him with their mouths open.
‘Your honour,’ he said to the Coroner. ‘May I call first Mr Leigh, then Julia Coldale, maidservant to Mrs Atkinson, and then return to Mr Leigh?’
Aglionby wanted to hear the story too. He nodded immediately.
