A Dark Anatomy Read Free

the whole of its length the sloping wound was caked with a dried lip of black scab half an inch thick. In the leaf-mould below I saw the coagulated pool of gore. Suppressing a spasm of nausea I stood up and surveyed the cold, stiffening bag of flesh that had previously housed the soul of Dolores Brockletower.
    There were four present, apart from the boy and myself. I looked at each of them in turn: Old Matt Thwaite, whose beard reached to his belt, the witty Barkworth, fat Jenny Milroy and pretty Susannah Shipkin.
    â€˜Where’s Timothy Shipkin?’ I asked. ‘Wasn’t he the finder? Susannah, where’s your father?’
    Susannah was a girl of seventeen with clear blue eyes, creamy skin, a raspberry mouth and full hips. She works as dairymaid at the Hall.
    â€˜Medad’s not come home, sir,’ she said. ‘After he told them at Hall what he found, he didn’t come back for his breakfast. Happen he’s gone on to Shot’s Hill. He’s felling a dead beech up there.’
    Shot’s Hill is a tree-crested ridge the other side of the big house, a remnant of the old forest, just a hundred yards wide, with fields lying beyond it that were once part of the woodland, and are now laid to grass pasture for the squire’s cows and sheep. It was strange that Timothy took himself off. For most men, the vanity of being the first finder of a woman’s mysterious corpse is enough to make them stay and enjoy the glory.
    â€˜He’ll be hungry, then,’ I remarked. ‘And what about the squire? Has he not been up here himself? The summons I had was from Mrs Marsden. But why does Mr Brockletower not come to bring his wife home?’

    Thwaite shook his head.
    â€˜Squire knows nowt about it, we’re thinking. He’s away to York on his affairs this past seven days.’
    â€˜Is he indeed? And when expected back?’
    â€˜Our Poll says he’s to come back today, sir,’ said Jenny, whose sister Polly was also a maid at the house.
    â€˜Has anyone touched the body?’
    â€˜We’ve not gone nearer to her than we are now, sir,’ said Jenny.
    â€˜None of you?’
    They all shook their heads.
    â€˜We’ve covered her and guarded her,’ growled Thwaite, assuming the role of foreman. ‘But we’ve not looked close at her. Better to wait for you, sir, is what we thought.’
    I considered for a moment, then pulled the sacking back over the hunched cadaver.
    â€˜And has anything been found? Any weapon, or object, that might have caused this injury?’
    The four looked at each other.
    Thwaite said, ‘Not a thing, sir.’
    â€˜Have you looked?’
    They evidently had not. I strode back towards my cob.
    â€˜I suggest you do. Quarter the ground of this clearing between you. If you find anything, keep it safe for me. Now I must go down to the Hall. I’ll send back a cart and litter for the body. Stay until it comes, and in the meantime you may lay the corpse out before it stiffens.’
    And so I left them, with a host of questions forming in my mind about how Dolores Brockletower had come upon her death. It did not look like an accident. But had it been by her own hand?

Chapter Two
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    I RETURNED TO THE bridleway and set the horse in a descending direction through the woods to Savage Brook, the stream that trickles past Garlick Hall. On coming into the considerable Brockletower inheritance – the Hall, its surrounding and outlying land, a fat bundle of securities, shares in toll-roads, ships and inland navigations – Ramilles had been a 26-year-old naval officer on station in the West Indies. Since this estate made him one of the wealthier gentlemen in Lancashire, he at once resigned his commission. But he returned from the navy accompanied by a surprise. He had a wife, the tall and striking-looking girl with an exotic name, a wealthy sugar-planter’s daughter, so he said, whom he had encountered