A Corpse in Shining Armour. Caro Peacock
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armour. A full-size wax model of a leg dangled from a peg. Other pegs held leather tunics that were presumably for wearing under the armour. It might have been ancient sweat and blood from those that, in the heat, gave the workshop a pronounced animal smell. I noticed Mr Pratt looking round and wrinkling his nose. Wood splintered. The apprentice wrenched off the lid of the case, disclosing a layer of wood-shavings. Miles Brinkburn stepped forward eagerly, then fell back. The smell was suddenly much worse.
‘What the…? Have they gone and put a dead rat in with it?’
Mr Pratt took his place and scooped out double handfuls of wood-shavings, dumping them on the floor. Something rat-coloured, but not as solid as a rat, appeared among the shavings in the crate. Wispy, like human hair.
I was only a few steps away at the time and my heart gave a thump. I don’t know why, but I think I guessed before anybody else in the room what was happening, even before Pratt turned pale and drew his cupped hands back as if he’d been bitten.
‘No,’ he said, as if the thing could be made to go away.
As the shavings in the crate settled, a yellowish dome appeared as if it were rising by its own will. Pratt staggered back. The apprentice screamed.
‘What is it?’ said Miles. ‘What’s happening?’
His view of the crate was screened by Pratt. He sounded impatient. When nobody answered he pushed past Pratt then came to a sudden halt.
‘Oh God.’
In spite of the heat of the day, I was shivering. I told myself: You’ve seen worse than this. It was true, but that didn’t make it any better. I wanted to look away, but there was a terrible fascination about that head. The shavings had settled now, just at the arch of the eyebrows. The skin of the forehead was shiny and tight-stretched, with a small liver-coloured birthmark shaped like a map of Ireland on what would have been the hairline when the person was younger. A man, certainly. A man going bald but not grey yet. A middle-aged man who did not go to expensive barbers. I wished my mind would stop working like that, coolly forming conclusions while the rest of me shivered. It registered too that there had been a peculiar tone about Miles’s ‘Oh God’. It sounded like recognition as well as shock.
To his credit, Pratt must have been cool enough to notice that too.
‘Do you know him, sir?’
Miles retched out a ‘yes’. Then added, ‘I think so.’
‘We’d better get him out.’
When it was clear that he’d get no practical help from Miles, Pratt reached into the packing case. The head flopped forward. The hair at the back of it was black and clotted.
I thought: Head wounds bleed a lot. There’s no blood on the shavings, so he was dead before they nailed him up in the crate. It seemed a relief to know he hadn’t been shut up in there alive and suffocated. I don’t think I said anything out loud, but I must have made some movement that reminded Pratt I was there.
‘Get the lady out of here,’ he said to the apprentice.
In fact, the apprentice needed help far more than I did. He looked near to fainting and I had to guide him towards the door to the shop. Just before we got there, he leaned over and vomited. I jumped aside in time or it would have been all over my shoes. When I glanced back, the body was out of the case and Pratt had laid it on the floor, surrounded by pieces of Sir Gilbert’s armour. It was a man in black trousers and jacket and what looked like a coarse, yellowish shirt. He seemed rather shorter than average and younger than I’d guessed, perhaps in his mid thirties. Above the retchings and gaspings of the lad, I heard Pratt repeat his question:
‘Do you know him, sir?’
And Miles Brinkburn’s answer, as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying:
‘It’s Handy. My father’s servant, Handy.’
I’d have liked to hear more, but had the apprentice to look after. Several well-dressed gentlemen took backward steps as I propelled him through the door into the shop. I sat him down in a chair meant for customers and told the gauntlet salesman to bring him a glass of water. The man looked so horrified at this breach of protocol that I thought it was just as well he didn’t know what was happening in the workshop. He was still dithering when the door from the workshop opened and Pratt told him to go and find a policeman.
‘A policeman, sir? Has something been stolen?’
‘Just go and do it,’ Pratt said.
The man gulped and left the shop at a run. Pratt went back into the workshop. Before he closed the door after him, I heard a snatch of Miles’s voice, saying shouldn’t they wait before calling the police? Wait for what? I wondered. The customers were asking each other and me what was happening. I had no idea, I said. One of the gentlemen said his armour was out in the workshop and he hoped to goodness it wasn’t one of the things stolen. He showed signs of wanting to go through for a look, but luckily the shop assistant was back within minutes with a police constable in tow. There are always plenty of police in Bond Street. The assistant opened the door and let him through to the workroom. The customer worrying about his armour tried to follow, but Pratt barred the way.
‘I’m sorry, gentlemen. A situation has arisen and we are having to close for the afternoon. Our apologies. We shall be open tomorrow morning as usual. No, sir, I assure you that there’s been no robbery. Nothing is missing, nothing at all. An accident, that’s all.’
They filed out, slowly and reluctantly. I was lingering with the last of them when the door to the workroom opened again and Pratt came out.
‘Miss…Miss Lane, is it? I do apologise most sincerely, but for some reason the constable wishes to speak to you. If I may send him out to you…’
‘I’ll come in,’ I said and walked past him, through the door and into the workroom. Partly it was an act of bravado to prove to myself that my nerves were under control, partly that I was curious about the reaction of Miles Brinkburn. He was sitting on a chair at one of the work benches by the wall, head bent, arms hanging between his legs. He stood up and looked at me with the expression of a dog in a rainstorm, hungry for pity, and started apologising for bringing me into this. The constable cut across him, polite but authoritative. If he was surprised that I’d come into the room instead of waiting outside, he didn’t show it.
‘I am sorry to cause you any further distress, Miss Lane, but the coroner will need to know who was present when the body was discovered.’
He seemed well spoken and intelligent for a mere constable. His grey eyes looked me in the face and I was sure he’d recognise me if we met again. The body was on the floor behind him, covered with a caparison ornamented in black and silver chevrons that must have been meant for the back of a warhorse.
I gave him my name and address and he wrote them down in his notebook.
‘I understand you were here at the invitation of Mr Brinkburn, Miss Lane?’
‘Yes.’
‘May I ask if you are a friend of the Brinkburn family?’
‘I met Mr Brinkburn for the first time yesterday.’
A flicker of surprise in the grey eyes.
‘And other members of the family?’
‘I have met no other members of the family.’
He was trying to place me, I could tell that. I was unmarried, with an address in Mayfair (he might not know that it was on the unfashionable side) and I accepted invitations from gentlemen I’d only just met. The conclusion might seem obvious.
‘Had you met Mr Handy?’
‘The man in the crate? No, to the best of my knowledge, I’ve never seen him before.’
That seemed to be all. He thanked me.
‘I’ll see Miss Lane to a cab,’ Miles said.
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