Island of Bones caw-3

by Imogen Robertson

  Harriet had knelt down by the body again, blocking Crowther’s view.

  ‘Was it not said that only Askew had a key?’ she asked Crowther. ‘It is not in his pockets.’

  ‘Most likely the murderer took it with him.’

  Harriet got to her feet again. ‘Perhaps. Or perhaps we are dealing with sprites and ghosts, after all.’

  Crowther crouched down again and continued to examine the body. ‘What time is it, Mrs Westerman?’ He heard the flick as she opened her pocket-watch.

  ‘A little after midday.’

  ‘The corpse appears locked. I suspect death took place late yesterday evening, after the museum was closed, or his limbs would have begun to soften a little by now.’ He looked above him and noticed a thin wire running from the top of the doorframe and along the picture rail, and up the stairs. ‘Mrs Westerman, can you pull on that wire for me?’

  She did so, and they heard a faint ring from behind the locked door at the top of the stairs.

  ‘So,’ she said, crossing her arms. ‘Mr Askew had retired for the evening. He hears the bell, and comes down in his shirtsleeves, careful to lock his private door as he does.’

  ‘A cautious man.’

  ‘Indeed. He even opens the shutters a little to see who is on his doorstep. He is reassured and opens the door. It is only a few days past the full moon — what must he have seen?’

  Crowther sighed and passed his hand over his eyes. ‘He may have thought he saw me on the steps. Do you remember his request that you or I might call on him? I also promised to return those papers to him.’

  ‘Whoever was there must therefore have been dressed as a gentleman,’ Harriet said.

  ‘He would have opened the door to Casper too, I am sure.’

  Harriet shook her head, not so much disagreeing with him but shaking that line of conjecture away from her as it seemed to serve no purpose. ‘He opens the door, and his killer need only take advantage of his surprise for a moment to step in and close the door behind him, then launch his attack.’

  ‘What could Mr Askew have been so keen to share with us, Mrs Westerman?’ Crowther rested his finger on his chin for a moment, then suddenly slapped his hand on the floor at his side.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘That portrait! Askew was showing me a number of articles from his collection the evening before last in that office. Something seemed to surprise him, but I was distracted by my own thoughts, and did not enquire further. It was a portrait of Lord Greta in his later years — he must have seen something in it. I wondered if his call meant he wished to discuss it.’

  In the office Crowther recognised the case in which the Greta relics were stored quite easily, but could not see any sign of the portrait of the last Lord Greta in his age.

  ‘Either the killer took it. .’ Crowther mused.

  ‘Can you recall the detail?’ Harriet interrupted.

  Crowther paused, irritated at having his thoughts broken in upon, but Harriet was too busy peering at the lurid oil of The Luck of Gutherscale Hall to register his displeasure. ‘Or Mr Askew removed it to his apartments to examine more closely in private what he noticed in my company. It was an ordinary portrait — a man in his best apparel, bewigged and bejewelled.’

  He had thought Harriet would take this as a cue to explore Mr Askew’s rooms upstairs, but he saw she had stopped listening to him. Her green eyes were shining as she looked at the magnified jewels of the Luck. Crowther felt a flick of distaste. The habit of women to be attracted like magpies to things that only had a value in their ability to shine was remarkable.

  ‘I’ve only seen Casper’s plain little carvings. This is the Luck that was lost in 1715?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mrs Westerman had an expression on her face half-dreaming, and half-excited. He recognised it.

  ‘Lord Greta, his poverty and exile, his servant coming to your father even as Gutherscale smouldered, the lost Luck. . Crowther, how much was the Luck worth?’

  ‘Its place in the folklore of this area makes that impossible to judge. To the right collector, however. .’

  She frowned. ‘No, not the thing itself. Too slow a thing to sell, too well-known in the area. I meant, what is the value of the jewels themselves?’ She pointed at the painting. ‘What would a trader in precious stones give for the Luck for their sake?’ Crowther went still. ‘Do you see, Crowther? Lord Greta fled the Tower for exile in 1716. Two years later, when your father needs it most, he procures enough ready money to purchase the land from which all his fortunes grew.’

  ‘But how would my father come by the Luck?’

  ‘I can’t say, but in forty-six a Jacobite arrives at Silverside full of threats and your father takes him to the Island of Bones. Suppose he meant to take the Luck, but found it was not where he thought it would be and suspected your father. All that new wealth, the cottage become a grand house. He never leaves the Island, and Greta’s brother and followers are betrayed. When your mother dies, rumours begin to circulate in Jacobite circles that your father was complicit in the betrayal. Your father is then murdered. Mrs Briggs mentioned a legend to me, that Lord Greta walks the hills in violent times. What if that belief dates from the time of your father’s murder?’ She began to pace in the room available. ‘I hope Mr Palmer exerts himself on our behalf. I would gladly sign over half of Caveley to him for some more certain explanation.’

  ‘I had thought,’ Crowther said slowly, ‘we were looking into the past and present, but if I am right, and something that Askew saw in that portrait of Greta led to his death last night, it is all one.’

  Harriet growled in frustration. ‘Oh, but what of Mr Hurst? If we believe Felix is innocent, who did kill that man, and why?’

  ‘Remember also that Lord Greta died years ago, and far away. But as to your speculation about the Luck, Mrs Westerman, there is a rightness to it. Suppose Lord Greta hid the cross, and my father somehow found it. .’

  A shadow appeared in the doorway and Crowther turned to recognise Mrs Briggs’s coachman in the doorway.

  ‘Oh Lord!’ he choked out as he looked down on Askew’s corpse, the lolling purple tongue.

  Harriet stepped between him and the body. ‘What is it, Ham?’

  Ham blinked at her. ‘There is a message from Silverside. A lawyer come to the house wants to speak to you and Mr Crowther most urgently — a Mr Hudson. He followed me down from the house hearing the business you are about, but given the crowd, preferred to wait for you at Mr Leathes’ house. They are old friends, I understand.’

  ‘I hope he is of more use than his partner. Thank you, Ham. We shall join you directly. But what of poor Mr Askew?’

  ‘We shall guard him, madam.’ Two young people had appeared behind Ham in the doorway. It was the girl who had spoken. She had clear blue eyes and dark brown hair that surrounded her face like a cloud. ‘I was his maid, I’m Stella, and he said he’d have me back when my ankle was mended. This is Thomas.’ As she spoke, Harriet took in the sheet over her arm, the thick bandage around her foot. She glanced up at Ham, who nodded.

  ‘Thank you, Stella.’

  Crowther looked the girl up and down. ‘You may cover Mr Askew, Stella. But I would be grateful if you did not begin yet to prepare the body for burial. I must return to examine it when we have met with this lawyer.’

  She curtseyed. ‘Yes, my lord.’

  Harriet turned to the coachman. ‘Ham, did you say something of a crowd?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘It’s market day, madam. Everyone is here and word has got about. There are a number of persons outside.’

  V.3

  Agnes was afraid that the arrow would have broken and the head been lost among the stones across the floor, but perhaps the angle of the tunnel had saved it. She stood by the gap in the barricade and drew in her mind the line along which it must have flown. Into the deep dark. If she crawled off that way she might get lost in the blackness before she ever found it. The thought made her shiver. Better to di
e near this faint glow that still tasted of fresh air rather than go mad in the deeper tunnels. It would be so easy to be turned around, mistake her way.

  She wondered if she might gather pebbles, or wood enough to lay herself a trail. Miss Scales had told her a story once about a man who stopped himself getting lost in a maze by letting a thread out behind him. She had none. Could she unpick the seams of her dress? She shook her head. The little bits of thread would be too weak and short, and she would be dead before she had the chance to make anything stronger and long enough to be of any use. She must trust to her luck and her prayers then. She got down onto her knees and crawled over to the far side of the tunnel. If she kept her left hand on the wall, and swept out with her right, she should be able to cover the ground where the arrow had most likely fallen. If the tunnel split again, if the wall to her left turned off. . She would fret over that when she need. Putting her hand against the rough earth wall, she began to crawl forward, pausing every moment to sweep her right arm out across the ground with her fingers spread as if she were broadcasting seed in her father’s fields.

  As Harriet emerged from the museum behind Ham, she felt Crowther pause beside her and lifted her head. At the bottom of the steps a crowd had indeed gathered. She recognised the landlord from the Royal Oak and one or two of the other faces, but most were strangers to her. These were the weavers, labourers and craftsmen who lived on the other side of the velvet rope. At home in Hartswood she would recognise their faces, see them at church, visit their homes with Rachel when she went among them with her salves and ointments. Here they were as foreign to her as Saracens. For a moment they examined each other across the short distance that separated them. A couple of individuals seemed to be shoving Mr Postlethwaite forward. He took off his hat and looked up at them.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Westerman, my lord. Forgive us, but the word is that Mr Askew is dead.’

  Harriet laid her gloved hand on the railing of the museum steps. It was strange how the people here moved between using Crowther’s given title and the name he used. When they met him on the street they might be happy to address him as Mr Crowther as an indulgence to his eccentricity, but now, looking up at him and with the smell of blood in the air they reminded him in this way that his title still bound him to the place.

  ‘Yes, Mr Postlethwaite,’ he said. ‘Mr Askew is dead.’

  A sorry sort of whisper ran around the crowd. A girl turned towards the matron at her side and buried her head in the older woman’s shoulder.

  Harriet and Crowther began slowly to descend the steps and the crowd shuffled back a little till a sharp-faced woman with full lips and her dark hair escaping from under her cap spoke up.

  ‘Is Sturgess saying our Casper did this too? Because he didn’t. Didn’t do for the other one either, however he laid him out. And Agnes Kerrick is missing. We need Casper to find her.’

  Crowther turned to her. ‘I do not know what Mr Sturgess thinks at this moment, but he wishes to speak to Mr Grace, as is natural.’

  She tucked her hair under her cap. ‘Wishes to carry him off and hang him in Carlisle, you mean.’ Her cheeks were red. ‘And we will not let him.’

  The air was very still. Harriet looked at the faces around her. Only the woman was willing to meet her gaze. The others looked angry or afraid, but their eyes flicked to her and away as if looking at her scalded them.

  Crowther spoke, clearly enough to be heard throughout the little crowd. ‘I believe there is no evidence to hang Casper as yet.’

  ‘Will that be enough to stop Sturgess blaming him though? How many men have hanged that did not deserve it?’ The woman had come close enough for Harriet to taste her breath, sour in the haze.

  Crowther looked at her very steadily. ‘Too many. I assure you Mrs Westerman and I will do everything to make sure that does not happen this time.’

  She studied him a second or two longer, then took a step back. ‘I am glad to hear you say that, my lord.’

  Crowther made to move forward again, but felt a hand placed on his sleeve. A young man with wide eyes, his skin browned with field work, said, ‘We need Casper, my lord. Don’t let them take him from us. He is our Luck-keeper.’

  Harriet frowned. ‘What did you say?’

  He looked embarrassed and tried to back away. ‘Our cunning-man, madam. We need him.’

  Crowther looked carefully into the faces around him. ‘I will do all that is in my power, I assure you.’

  He stepped forward and the crowd made way. There was a reluctance in their movements as they did so, and Harriet did not think all the whisperings were friendly, but move aside they did.

  When Harriet found herself in the carriage and pulling away to travel the short distance to Mr Leathes’ villa, she let go a sigh of relief.

  ‘I thought they would scalp us, Crowther!’

  He looked a little shocked. ‘I doubt that — not today at any rate. But my class rules with the consent of the people, Mrs Westerman. If they decide they can tolerate us no longer, they will have no mercy in their revenge for the bill of petty tyrannies we have run up.’

  She turned her head to take in the sight of Crosthwaite Church against the hillside. ‘Luck-keeper. . I have not heard the phrase before. Curious.’

  ‘What are you thinking, Mrs Westerman? I fear my thoughts on the Social Contract are of no interest to you.’

  She smiled. ‘I like it when you talk like a revolutionary, Crowther. And I agree. But you are right, my mind has been picking at that phrase. What use is a Luck-keeper if the Luck is lost? Yet it must be if our speculations, wild as they are, about your father’s wealth are correct.’ She fell silent for a while, rapping her fingers on the leather of the seat beside her. ‘Oh good Lord!’

  ‘What is it, Mrs Westerman?’

  ‘That chest of Mr Leathes that contained the letter warning your father! With the forced lock. Did you not think it a strange place to leave a letter? And it was covered in soil!’

  ‘Hardly covered, but certainly dirty. .’

  ‘The Luck would have fitted in that, would it not?’

  Crowther nodded. ‘You make me recall that phrase of Lottie’s when I asked her about the concealed strongbox. She said it contained nothing of value by then.’ He closed his eyes.

  ‘What is it, Crowther? You have thought of something further.’

  ‘Mrs Westerman, I made very rare enquiries into my father’s business interests. I knew he had discovered untapped mineral deposits on a parcel of land, so always assumed, when he said. .’

  ‘Crowther, please, explain before I tear my own hand off in frustration.’

  ‘I did ask once on what our prosperity was based. He said it was founded on buried treasure.’

  Old Mr Leathes was waiting for them by the garden gate looking very solemn, and with no more than a bow, led them to the rear of the house, where a gentleman in his middle years was examining the aviary. He made the introductions, then returned to the house to leave Mr Hudson, Crowther and Harriet to examine each other to the trillings of his canaries.

  ‘This is a matter of the greatest delicacy, sir, madam,’ Mr Hudson said. ‘I hope you do not think badly of me for emphasising that. I asked Mr Leathes if I might speak to you alone and without his walls, as even in the household of my old friend I fear that we might be overheard and someone might, in all innocence, learn something that should not be learned.’

  He reminded Harriet of her father as she remembered him from her youth. A man, softly spoken and inclined to be agreeable, though his expression now was the same nature of worried concern that she remembered when her father had some hard duty of his office to perform.

  ‘I think we understand, sir,’ she said.

  He nodded and put his hand to his chin. ‘Thank you. First I must apologise for my junior partner. I suspect that he was uncivil. He knows nothing of the business of the advertisement and is inclined to resent it. As soon as I heard of the matter, I at once visited the personage concerned to see
how far he was happy for us to take you into our confidence. Having done so yesterday evening, I came to you as quickly as I might.’

  ‘You know, Mr Hudson,’ Crowther said, leaning on his cane, ‘that there has been another death. Mr Askew, the owner of the museum in this town, was found strangled this morning. It may be that whoever killed Hurst, killed Askew also. If you can tell us anything that might bring that man to justice. .’

  Mr Hudson kept his chin buried in his chest. ‘I am aware. Remember I came from Silverside. I knew Mr Askew and admired his energy, though how his death is connected to this matter, I cannot say. I must tell you a story. .’

  ‘You have our attention, sir,’ Harriet said.

  ‘Yes, yes. The natural son of Viscount Moreland was travelling in Europe some years ago. He was a pleasant boy, but the man who had been paid to take care of him and guide him in his steps was taken ill in Vienna.’

  ‘Vienna?’ Harriet repeated. ‘It is my understanding that Mr Hurst was a native of that city.’

  Mr White nodded as if this had confirmed some thought of his own, and continued, ‘The young man’s tutor was confined to his rooms some weeks, and in that time his charge managed to lose a great deal of money at a card game held in a house off Rabensteig near St Rupert’s Church.’

  ‘How much?’ Crowther asked. He had seen such things occur during his own years on the continent. Young men caught by smooth-talking strangers in foreign cities.

  The lawyer looked almost tearful. ‘It was a disaster. The boy’s tutor was trusted by the family, and was charged with buying a wide variety of art and sculpture for their country house. He had therefore the letters necessary to draw on a small fortune from the bankers. His charge took those letters and drew on those funds to maintain his place at the table.’

  Crowther noticed Harriet had become very quiet, and wondered if she were thinking of her own son, if he could be caught in such a way.

  Mr Hudson carried on: ‘The boy was distraught and took it upon himself, far too late, to find out something more about the reputation of the men to whom he had lost his father’s money. He became convinced that the game had been crooked, and went to tell them so. He was challenged, and felt himself compelled to face the challenge. Even then he might have been saved if he had spoken to his tutor, but he was stubborn as young men are, and set out to prove his honour with pistols.’