The Murder Stone

by Charles Todd

  “It isn’t bitterness,” she answered. “It’s a reality none of us was prepared for!”

  When she looked in on Leighton an hour later, he wore one of her grandfather’s nightshirts and there was a basin ready on the table by the bed, if the nausea should return. A clean cloth lay beside it. His face was pale, drawn, his eyes shut.

  As she took her seat again, he murmured, “I’m sorry to give your housekeeper so much trouble.”

  “She’s changed her mind about you. Now she’s beginning to look upon you as a wounded hero, eager to return to battle as soon as you’ve healed. My cousins never came home. I expect you’ll become their surrogate.”

  “I won’t be going back to France.” The words were clipped and hard.

  Surprised, she said, “Why not? They’re desperate for men.”

  “They sent me home to die. So far I’ve cheated them.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Dr. Nealy returned in early afternoon, with Leighton’s luggage in his carriage and word of the war. “Ward Carlson stopped at the inn, on his way home to Tiverton. He’d picked up the London newspapers before taking the train to Exeter,” he told Francesca, excitement in his face. “There’s a report that despite the rains, we’ve made important advances along the Somme. Good news indeed! It’s been a quagmire, they say. Impossible to move men or troops through the thick mud. Still, General Rawlinson isn’t letting it stop him. It appears that we have a foothold on the Schwaben redoubt, but the Germans are fighting hard to defend the rest of their line. And the French are using their new guns at Verdun. That should put the Bosche to flight!”

  But all too often such heady pronouncements were premature—or wrong. The War Office and the Army hoarded news, as if half afraid to believe it themselves. By the time it reached the papers, it was often old or incomplete.

  “I’m glad!” Francesca answered, trying to warm to his enthusiasm. To her, battles meant longer trains of wounded coming through, pathetic victims of the Army’s willingness to throw more and more men against the German lines in the hope that numbers would ensure a breakthrough.

  Dr. Nealy saw it differently. “You’re needed in London, my dear! You ought to close the house and go!” He was rubbing his hands with eagerness, as if envying her the opportunity. “Your grandfather would want you to do your bit!”

  “There are more than enough women to do the work I did,” she answered. “There’s nothing left for many of them except to offer comfort where they can. I wonder if there is such a thing as battle fatigue for us, the ones who stay at home and wait.”

  “I never expected to hear you of all people speak like that, Miss Hatton!” He looked at her closely. “Are you sleeping well? It may be that you haven’t fully recovered from your grandfather’s illness and death.”

  “Yes, I’m sure that must be it,” she answered, uncomfortable arguing with him. “When will you move Mr. Leighton?”

  “Mrs. Lane has agreed to stay the night as chaperone, and Mr. Leighton has been told that it will be a day or two before I’m certain he’s out of the woods.”

  Francesca suggested that the doctor leave the luggage where it was, standing in the hall, until Bill could take it up. And as soon as he had disappeared up the stairs, safely out of sight, she knelt by the two leather cases and swiftly searched through them.

  But if there was a photograph of Leighton’s mother amongst his belongings, she failed to find it.

  Mrs. Lane rested after dinner, agreeing to taking over the charge of sitting with the patient at midnight.

  When Francesca went to wake her, the housekeeper was snoring heavily and even shaking her shoulder failed to rouse her. Walking back through the silent house, Tyler’s nails clicking at her heels, Francesca returned to Leighton’s room.

  He had slept fitfully during the afternoon and early evening, but never the dreaded deep sleep that Dr. Nealy had warned about. Nor were there any more rambling regressions to the war. For the most part he seemed to be resting comfortably enough. She sat by the fire, listening to the sound of his even breathing. Tyler, snuffling in self-pity, reminded her that she should be in her own bed and he should be on his thick rug by her. She fondled his ears, but his mournful eyes were enough to fill her with guilt.

  Shortly after the clock struck one, Leighton woke. He said into the silence, “Is anyone there?”

  “I’m here, and my dog,” Francesca replied lightly. “He’s the one who is snoring.”

  A quiet chuckle came from the bed. “Talk to me, if you will,” Leighton said then. “I’ve slept long enough. It’s left me unsettled. We won’t wake the dog.”

  “Talk about what?” she asked warily.

  Leighton lay quietly, eyes shut, face pale, not speaking.

  At length he said, his eyes still shut, “What did your housekeeper mean when she referred to where I was found in the garden as the Murder Stone?”

  “It’s what my cousins called that white stone when they were young. All their executions and so on took place there.”

  “A bloodthirsty lot, I’d say.” There was an undercurrent of amusement in his voice.

  “No more than most, I suppose,” she heard herself saying defensively. “Everyone fell in with Simon’s games. Because I was the smallest, I was often burned at the stake.”

  “Joan of Arc in a lace pinafore? Yes, I can see that.”

  “Sometimes I had my head cut off as William Wallace. Whatever bit of history we were reading at the moment. I rather hated burning.”

  “Surely these cousins never got carried away!”

  “No, they burned twigs in the grass. But the smoke would rise up. It always made me ill afterward . . . I don’t know why. As if I’d actually felt the flames on my flesh.”

  On his last day in Devon, Simon had taken her out to the Murder Stone and said solemnly, “Shall we kill the Kaiser here? Bash his brains in, in that silly helmet of his, and be done with this madness?”

  It would have been better for everyone, she thought, if he’d done just that. War wasn’t at all like playing in the back garden. There all the defeated foes had got to their feet, grinning and filthy, and trooped off to beg treats from Mrs. Wiggins, the cook, before climbing a tree to eat their booty.

  I’m learning to accept how it is, Freddy had written his grandfather. And of course it’s what one must do. My sergeant, on the other hand, seems to feel nothing when the man next to him is decapitated, and blood flies. He spits into the unspeakable mud and shoves the body away from the ladder, calling, “Next,” as if nothing of importance has happened . . .

  Leighton’s voice broke into her memories. “Simon must have been a natural leader.”

  “He inherited that from my grandfather, I suppose. If he’d lived, he was sure to become a famous general. Or it might have been one of the others—who knows? Still, name any battle fought in the last three thousand years, and Simon could tell you how it was planned and executed, and what went wrong. God knows, I was swept up in most of them—I could tell you myself!”

  “What did your nanny have to say about wild goings-on in the garden?”

  Francesca found herself thinking of Mrs. Passmore. “She didn’t last very long, apparently. I was turned over to my cousins’ tutor early on. We were a mixed lot, you know, my five cousins and I. But we got on well enough.” She smiled nostalgically into the fire. “It doesn’t seem possible that they’re all dead now. Lost at Mons and Ypres, Passchendaele and the Somme. And the Murder Stone is still there, at the bottom of my grandfather’s garden, where it has always been.” But not for long . . .

  “You loved them, I think. Your cousins.”

  “More than I ever realized. Harry was as much a leader in his own way as Simon was. And Freddy—he was a composer, as well as an accomplished pianist. Would he have played on the concert stage, if he’d lived? Peter was a wonder with his hands—he designed all manner of things for us to play with, from forts for Simon’s soldiers to a house in a tree. What could he have done for mank
ind, besides digging tunnels under the German lines? And then there’s Robin, the explorer, who really wanted nothing more than to inherit River’s End. Where would he have gone, what amazing things would he have brought back for museums? He had his feet planted firmly on the ground, he was the one who kept us safe. The steady one, who couldn’t keep his own men alive in No Man’s Land, try as hard as he would. It must have broken his heart! That’s the real tragedy of war, you know. None of us will ever see what the dead might have accomplished with their lives. What their sons and daughters would have grown up to do. It’s the waste, not the dying, that’s so horrid.”

  She shrugged, acknowledging the melancholy mood that had swept over her but unable to shift it.

  “I can’t say that I encountered any of them in France. I wish I had.”

  “Yes. Well. Speaking of growing up in a family of boys, I can’t imagine being an only child.”

  The instant she spoke the words she wished she could take them back. In an effort to chase away her own shadows, she had inadvertently brought his back. She could see the darkness envelop him, as it had sometimes enveloped her grandfather in his last weeks.

  After a moment he answered her, surprisingly without the usual anger. “A daughter was born of my father’s second marriage. My half sister. But I was away at school and saw little of her. She’s very like her mother and your cousin Robin. Quiet and practical. Unlike you and your cousins, we have very little in common, other than a father. But she’s affectionate and bright, and I like her. She cried the day I was brought home on a stretcher to be nursed—or buried. Then she turned to and wore herself down trying to save me. It’s one of the reasons I left the house as soon as I was able. To spare her.”

  The clock in the hall chimed two.

  “And the other reason was Francis Hatton’s obituary in the Times.”

  “We’d hammered at him for years. Letters. Private investigators. Once or twice we convinced the police to take a renewed interest in the case.”

  She was reminded of the letter that had cursed the Hattons. Yet it had been written before Victoria disappeared.

  “I suppose in his shoes I’d have walked warily, too, and said nothing. But I—we—had hoped that at the end, his conscience might have goaded him into making a gesture. A little peace for a family who hasn’t known peace in decades.”

  And what peace would it bring to Richard Leighton, she wondered, if he finally discovered the truth? He thinks now that knowing will help. But what if it only makes matters worse?

  “Have you told me everything I ought to know? About my grandfather and your mother? I still find it hard to believe that your grandfather could be so convinced of Francis Hatton’s guilt when there’s only the slimmest evidence.”

  “Francis Hatton wrote to my mother two days before she vanished. I brought her the post that morning, and she read the letter with a frown on her face. Then she burned it. I’d never seen her so angry before, and so I remembered it. But I didn’t realize the importance of what I knew. Not for some years, when I overheard a conversation between my father and my grandfather. Then it all fit together. Why should I not believe the evidence of my own eyes? Hatton wrote to her—and she refused to answer him. And so he came after her.”

  “You said nothing to me about a letter!”

  “I was the only witness to that. I didn’t think you’d believe me.” His voice was weary. “I told you about independent witnesses instead.”

  “But everything still comes back to the central question. Why? What possible motive could there have been?”

  “It may be that the only two people who could answer that are dead. The other factor is that my grandfather and Francis Hatton never liked each other. Hatton was my father’s friend, if you remember. Thomas Leighton’s best man. My father fought my grandfather for months, trying to change his mind about Hatton. And in the end, I suppose, he started to believe the accusations himself. That’s when he began to drink heavily. A part of him died with Victoria.” And then with a wrenching of the spirit, he exclaimed, “I’d wager my soul that she would never have deserted us of her own free will!”

  Francesca stared into the fire. “It’s unthinkable. She must be dead. But I can’t agree that Francis Hatton killed her.”

  “The letter was addressed to her. To Victoria. Not to my father. Why would she have burned it if it hadn’t been some form of—solicitation? Someone had to carry her away from the Downs. She’s not buried there. We’ve searched. And whoever it was couldn’t have done that on foot. That means a carriage—a cart. A horse. Planning—not a chance encounter!”

  “My grandfather had his failings. Why not your mother? What if she’d written to him first—”

  There was silence in the room, the sound of the dog’s breathing threading through the snap of flames.

  “Then what in God’s name became of Victoria Leighton?” her son asked into the stillness. “I won’t give up searching. That’s all that’s left to me now.”

  “I wish you would show me her photograph. I keep trying to imagine her, what there was about her that could have drawn my grandfather to her.” To the woman whose name might well have been on his lips in the last weeks of his life. If she could somehow understand the bond between this woman and her grandfather—

  “To judge her character in her face? Like Miss Trotter?”

  “It’s not her character I want to see. It’s what might have attracted my grandfather—”

  But the door opened at that moment and Mrs. Lane came in, overflowing with apologies for not hearing Francesca call to her earlier.

  Francesca left their patient to the housekeeper and went up to her own bed. But not to sleep.

  The next morning there was a knock at the door. Mrs. Lane was resting and Francesca opened it herself.

  A rawboned man with dark red hair stood on the steps, hat in hand.

  “Begging your pardon, Miss. I was looking for wark in the Valley, and was expecting a sairvant to answer the door. I did knock at the kitchen door first.”

  “Everyone is busy,” she said warily. He was wearing the uniform of a medically discharged soldier. And one eye was hideously scarred. “Have you asked at the inn? Or the Rectory?”

  “There’s naught to be had. Though the rector’s housekeeper was kind enough to gie me a meal.”

  “What brings you to Devon? Your accent, I think, is north of Glasgow.”

  He grinned ruefully. “I havena’ the coin to travel north. I warked for three weeks in Dorset, repairing a barn roof after a storm brought it down. If I can find other wark, I’ll be home by Hogmanay. That’s a holiday, miss.”

  Francesca thought fleetingly about her own gardens, so neglected and overgrown. But she said, “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can offer you. I’m sorry.”

  “If it’s references you’re needing—”

  He reached into his pocket and took out a letter, the envelope smeared and crinkled from being carried around with him. “My last employment, miss.”

  She read the sheet inside, and returned it to the envelope before saying, “This is very glowing. But you’d do better asking at some of the farms over the hill. They’re always shorthanded.”

  “Ah, weel. If ye’re sure?” There was disappointment in his scarred face.

  “I’m sorry.” But she gave him some coins, out of pity.

  She closed the door, but as she passed a window, she saw the Scot standing in the drive, looking at the house. It was only a small step from that to wondering if he had also taken to housebreaking. But that was not fair to a wounded soldier out of work.

  Still, the gruff Scot at the funeral—could he have sent someone to search again for the box he claimed he’d bought from Francis Hatton? What better way to do that than live on the premises and bide one’s time?

  “I’ve grown disgustingly suspicious . . .” she scolded herself, walking briskly to the kitchen to put on a pot of tea. Everything seemed to have hidden meaning, secrets like shadows just b
ehind every action. She found herself swinging from uncertainty to uncertainty. Her grandfather, stalwart and loving, had always stood behind her, and now he was gone. The cousins were gone. She was alone. She would never have dreamt how lonely it would be.

  It bit deep into her bones, and it was what had made her say no to the ex-soldier, for fear that she would decide not on the basis of what he could do but what she wanted him to be, an able-bodied man standing guard at River’s End, bulwark against noises in the night.

  The hot tea and a small slice of stale sponge cake picked up her spirits and she went back upstairs, knocking lightly on the guest room door before entering.

  Leighton was standing, clinging to the bedpost. He had managed to dress himself, after a fashion, shirt unbuttoned, trousers unbelted, stockings and shoes on his feet, but the laces not tied.

  Clicking her tongue in annoyance, Francesca went to him, putting an arm around him, helping him to the side of the bed again, where he sat heavily.

  “I don’t particularly want you here,” she told him, holding her temper in check. “But if you insist upon being foolish, I’ll have you on my hands twice as long!”

  “I’m not foolish. I’m tired of lying there. My back aches. Get me to that chair by the hearth, and I’ll be satisfied.”

  “The doctor ordered you to rest in bed—”

  “The good doctor ordered me to rest. I can’t if I’m in pain.”

  He made an effort to stand again, this time able to remain on his feet without her support. But he kept a hand on her shoulder as he walked to the cushioned chair by the fire. “That’s better,” he said. And color had returned to his face, she could see it for herself. He leaned his head against the chair’s back, saying, “I can’t lie still for long periods. I’m sorry.”

  Francesca recalled what Mrs. Lane had said about the wound in his back. She asked, “Would you care for something to drink?”

  He grinned, a lopsided one. “I’m drowning in broth. It’s quite good, but I’d as soon have something more substantial.”