The Murder Stone

by Charles Todd

  She had once found comfort in that—but tonight there was none.

  It was as if the ghosts had left. . . .

  He’s at peace— But had he taken the boys as well?

  Her cousins no longer seemed to haunt the foot of the stairs, mourning for lost youth. And her grandfather’s bed was just a bed. There was no sense of the man’s presence lingering to touch her spirit.

  It’s time to return to London, she thought sadly. Time to go back to the trains and the wounded and the women who try to offer comfort.

  It’s the mood I’m in, she told herself, hoping to lift her spirits. It’s the wound in my arm, reminding me of the past—

  That brought her up short.

  Why should the cut on her arm touch a chord of memory?

  I’ll be fine once I’m back in my old life—I’m depressed, that’s all.

  Mrs. Lane would take in Tyler again, and the old dog could come each day to the house he knew best, until he was buried in the back garden. Even he wouldn’t miss her, for he belonged heart and soul to her grandfather. As had her cousins, she reflected.

  Francesca went back to her room and slept well enough for the rest of the night. But her decision had been made, and tomorrow she would tell Mrs. Lane that she was leaving.

  When Bill brought up the post the next morning, there was another half-dozen black-edged cards of condolence from people who had known her grandfather. They were penned with sincerity and often with affection, as if the writers truly regretted the loss of a friend. But Francesca seldom recognized the names, and knew nothing of the relationships between Francis Hatton and the members of his club or other circles of friends. It was kind of them to write, she told Mrs. Lane. He would have appreciated the gesture.

  But one letter in the post was not a card of condolence. Francesca opened it without any warning that she might regret it.

  There was no date, and no salutation.

  You don’t know me, of course, and have no reason to believe what I’m about to tell you. But your grandfather’s sons had no children by their wives. Both died violently—and without heirs.

  She stared in dismay at the sheet of stationery and the words that ran in a thick black scrawl across it.

  Who on earth would have written such a cruel thing?

  Her thoughts flew to Richard Leighton. It was not the sort of thing he would do—but she wouldn’t put such viciousness past Alasdair MacPherson. And what of the men who had attended the funeral—Walsham, angry over the land his father had gambled away; the Scotsman, who had looked more like an undertaker’s man, come to search for a promised box?

  This letter attacked her personally. A change of tactics?

  Remembering the message cursing the Hattons, the one that her grandfather had kept in the solicitor’s box in Exeter, she considered the sheet in her hand again.

  That same venomous spite. She shivered. But from whom?

  I thought I’d reached the end of the catalog of Francis Hatton’s crimes—she thought for a second time.

  Apparently not yet. Not yet . . .

  She balled the sheet of paper up and tossed it in the fire.

  If rattling her had been the aim of the sender, he—she—had succeeded.

  There was much to settle before leaving for London. She had no idea when she might be given leave to come back to the Valley.

  At the end of the second day she accepted an invitation to dine with the rector. Stevens seemed unusually quiet, introspective.

  Smiling, she asked him if he was sorry to see her go, and was shocked at the expression on his face as he lifted his eyes to hers. There was longing, and regret, followed swiftly by resignation.

  All his kindnesses, his concern for her, his care, flashed through her mind. Only partly for her grandfather’s sake had this man watched over her. He loved her. And she had not realized it because William Stevens had concealed his feelings too well.

  Cursing her stupidity, Francesca wished she could call back her words. Then she said with a lightness she was far from feeling, “Well. I shall be back when the war is finished. I don’t like London all that much. Of course I have another choice, the house in Essex. But Grandfather never lived there. I don’t suppose I ever shall either.” She explained briefly about the two properties.

  “I don’t believe Hatton ever wanted to live anywhere but here,” Stevens answered thoughtfully. “He never really wanted to see his grandchildren face the world. I think the early deaths of his sons made him overly protective, unwilling to let any of you find out what was outside the Valley. Like the German fairy tales, he kept you bewitched in his castle. But children grow up. I don’t expect he’d ever looked that far ahead. Or dreamed it would be war that deprived him of his grandsons. It was sobering to watch them march away—and devastating to see them die.”

  Francesca found herself thinking of the letter that had come two days ago. And the other that had arrived only this morning.

  It had said, “Who was your mother? If he was your father?”

  It, too, had gone into the fire.

  “Did you know about the orphanage in Falworthy, Somerset?”

  He shrugged. “I’m one of their bright stars. I never knew who my parents were. I was taken in before I had any memory of a life before that. I had a leaning toward the church. Or so I thought then. And it was cultivated.”

  Surprised, she asked, “You were one of the orphans?”

  “Oh, yes. It wasn’t as bad as you might think—”

  “I’ve seen it for myself—”

  She studied the well-shaped head, the long, slender-fingered hands. A child with a good heritage, perhaps. Or born on the wrong side of the blanket . . . More important, a kind man, compassionate and sometimes wise. She might have come to care for him in time. His scars made no difference.

  Stevens was saying, “That’s how I came to be here, after I was wounded. Your grandfather arranged it. The man before me, Chatham, was probably just as glad to find himself on his way out of the Valley. He was well past retirement. But for me this was a haven. I needed peace and quiet, time for wounds to heal.” He gestured to his scarred face. “Hardly the best appearance for a fashionable church, do you think?”

  Uncomfortable talking about himself, Stevens went on. “I hear by the usual means that you took a turn at stabbing yourself the other evening. Why on earth were you working in the gardens?”

  “I don’t know—” she began, aware that she was lying. “An excess of energy, I suppose. I was tired of watching them languish.”

  “How is the wound?”

  Francesca frowned. “It hasn’t bothered me particularly. Miss Trotter dressed it. Yet every time I change the bandaging, I feel a little sick. As if it were something—horrid to look at. And it isn’t—instead, it’s healing nicely.” It made her uneasy to talk about it and she told him so. “Odd as that may sound!”

  He set his teacup aside. “Perhaps it touched a real memory. I expect you were bloodied often enough as a child, playing with those wild cousins of yours. Or you may’ve been sent off to bed without your dinner a time or two. As a warning to take fewer risks.” A smile took any sting out of his words.

  As if a door in her mind had swung partly open, she could see herself, small, frightened, staring at a terrible wound on someone’s arm. It hadn’t bled although it was ugly and red . . . blistered. She could tell it hurt very badly. Then she was crying, sobbing into the skirts of a woman who had picked her up and carried her away from all the people staring at the burn—

  Not a cut—a burn! And it hadn’t happened to her, but she had seen it.

  Francesca said, “You’re nearly as good as Miss Trotter at mind reading. There was something.”

  “Would you care to talk about it? Would it help?”

  “There isn’t much to tell you. It’s hardly more than a confusion of images—and it probably seems worse because of that. But I know now the wound wasn’t mine. I saw it, and something about it—the circumstances surrou
nding it—badly frightened me. It probably explains why I was always uncomfortable with open fires. Somehow I associate the two. Strange as that may sound.”

  She could see herself standing in tears before Simon, stubbornly refusing to let him burn her at the stake again.

  “You did, only this past Wednesday,” he pointed out for the third time. He was running out of patience.

  “But it hurts. You never warned me that it hurts! It made Freddy cry—”

  “It’s only make-believe smoke, and a handful of twigs. Not real fire.”

  “Promise not to light the fire, and I’ll do it.”

  “That’s silly. If there’s no fire, how can you burn at the stake?”

  In the end they piled the sticks at Francesca’s feet and sprinkled ashes from the drawing room hearth over them. It wasn’t the same, Simon kept telling her, and she mustn’t make a habit of complaining.

  But try as she would, she couldn’t recall what had made Freddy cry. That memory was locked away somewhere, hidden even from herself.

  Rousing herself from the past, she said, “I’d been wondering only this morning if the memory was somehow associated with my parents’ accident. This fear of burning, I mean. But now I don’t think so—” She shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t matter.”

  Yet in an unpleasant way, it did.

  She had no memory of that motorcar crash. She had been far too young. But to see Freddy—who never cried—in tears of pain must have shocked her deeply. She hadn’t ever wanted to hurt that way herself. Even though she hadn’t at all understood what had happened to him.

  “Sometimes knowing the source takes away the terror,” Stevens was saying.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Sometimes.” But not always.

  A message arrived from Mrs. Gibbon. It was a gentle reminder that Francesca had promised to return the Foundation ledgers to Somerset. And it ended with an apology.

  I assure you I didn’t mean to upset Mr. Leighton. I thought, since you spoke so freely of Miss Andrews, that my comment would be of interest to you. Was the young woman in the photograph inside the watch his mother by any chance? I was appalled that I might have touched on something best left buried in the past . . .

  Francesca put aside her packing for an hour or more, to search through the house for the ledgers Francis Hatton had taken from the Falworthy orphanage in early summer.

  But they were not in his study, not in the closet of his bedroom, not in the small estate office. She did find under his bed a wooden crate with the name of a Falworthy greengrocer stamped on it.

  The resourceful Mrs. Gibbon? Offering him a box in which to carry the ledgers safely? How many were there? And what had he done with them?

  Had those ledgers been the magnet for whoever had invaded the house on two different nights? And had whoever it was found them and removed them?

  It was a blow.

  “But you didn’t tell me about the orphans—you never told me the ledgers were here—! How could I have protected them if I didn’t know—!” she demanded of the silent bed where her grandfather had slept—and died.

  Francesca asked Mrs. Lane, who was peeling carrots for dinner, if she knew anything about a box of ledgers, but the housekeeper shook her head.

  “Lord, no, Miss Francesca, he’d never talk to me about such things!”

  “But there was a wooden greengrocer’s box under his bed—surely you knew that?”

  “Of course I did! He told me he’d put it there, and I left it where it was!” She looked up from the carrots as if she thought Francesca had taken leave of her mind.

  But then if Francis Hatton had told her he had put a bit of the moon under his bed, Mrs. Lane would have dusted around it without complaint until he decided to remove it.

  “Was the box full—empty?”

  “I never looked, Miss Francesca! Why should I?”

  The knocker rang through the house. Francesca said, “No, finish your cooking. I’ll see to it. The rector, I should think!”

  She unlocked the door with the heavy key and opened it instead to the man who looked like an undertaker’s assistant. The Scot.

  He said, without greeting, “The funeral’s done with. I’ve come for what’s mine.”

  “Then you must speak to the rector in Hurley or to Mr. Branscombe in Exeter,” she answered coldly. “I don’t deal with people I don’t know.”

  Before she could shut the door, he said rapidly, “The name’s Campbell. I’d think twice about that, if I were you! I handle tasks for gentlemen who don’t wish to be seen to act on their own behalf. It’s not a matter I’d want bruited about, and nor should you!”

  Francesca stopped short. “What are you saying? That it wasn’t aboveboard? Your agreement with my grandfather?”

  “Aboveboard? You have to be daft, woman! He knew what he was getting himself into, well enough. He knew how I intended to use the information.”

  “What information?”

  “It was mine. I paid for it, didn’t I? He set a steep enough price, by God! And then he kept the bloody money and never sent what I’d bought!”

  “You said something at the funeral about a box—what sort of box? Describe it for me!”

  “How in hell’s name am I to know?” He was staring at her in frustration. “He put the damned lot into a box. That’s what he said, and that’s what I’ll have!”

  Francesca would never have leapt to such a conclusion if the message from Mrs. Gibbon hadn’t just arrived. And if she hadn’t just seen the empty crate under Francis Hatton’s bed for herself. “Box— You bought the ledgers from him?” she asked, stunned.

  “Oh, yes, and I have a right to them now! By God, I do. I told him I’d have the newspapers down on that house in Somerset, if he didn’t agree to work with me. And I would have done that. My masters would have been pleased to repay him for his stubbornness.”

  “That was blackmail!” she cried.

  “And perhaps it was. But we understood each other, and in the end, he gave me what I wanted. At a price. It was worth it—in my line of business!”

  “How were you planning to use the ledgers—to harm anyone important whose name you found there? To search out children who might have left the home and gone on to do well?”

  There was stark antagonism in Campbell’s face. “It was a political matter—so I was informed.”

  Miss Trotter’s words suddenly came back to Francesca—how had she known that the Scot had a political connection? Or had Campbell been here before, pressuring Francis Hatton to do what he wished? With Miss Trotter, separating fact from fancy was never easy.

  “Thank you for clearing up the matter!” Francesca retorted sharply. She was furious that this man had badgered her grandfather, furious that Mrs. Gibbon and the Falworthy children should have been put at risk. “As for the ledgers, before he died, my grandfather took them all to the moors and threw them down one of the old mine shafts. You’re welcome to search for them there! At a guess, the ink will have run in the water at the bottom of the shaft, and the paper will be rotting away to scraps by now. But you may find legible bits, if you look hard enough. And if you come here again, my solicitor has been instructed to inform the police to look into your—affairs.”

  She broke off, shocked to hear herself tell him such bald-faced lies. And yet if someone could steal a photograph from the house in Falworthy, Campbell might well break into the strong room there—or threaten Mrs. Gibbon and her young charges. Just as he had threatened Francis Hatton.

  Was that why Grandfather had insisted on taking the ledgers back to Devon, and then purposely failed to return them?

  All the same, the lie had come so easily to her lips, swift and believable, as if her grandfather had stood at her shoulder, urging her on. And that frightened her almost as much as the man standing on her doorstep.

  When had her childhood vanished and this grown woman taken little Cousin Francesca’s place?

  The day Francis Hatton’s will had been read.


  Before Campbell could retort, she had slammed the door in his face and locked it.

  Still breathing hard, she leaned against the wood, listening to the fury of pounding fists hammering on the other side and the strident voice shouting, “Which mine shaft? Where? You must tell me where!”

  But what did my grandfather do with those ledgers? If he sold them once—had he been offered a better price elsewhere?

  No. Not Francis Hatton!

  CHAPTER 22

  Francesca set out on the fourth morning after taking her decision to leave. There had been two more of the anonymous letters, but this time she had shoved them into her desk in the sitting room, refusing to open them. Whoever was writing them, there was malice in the words and an intent to hurt. If they continued to arrive—or followed her to London—she would take the matter up with her solicitor. And these would be evidence.

  She was dressed and in the hall, ready to leave, when she felt compelled to walk out to the gardens and stand for a moment by the Murder Stone. She couldn’t have said why; it was an instinctive urge that went back to childhood and a happiness that had seemed limitless.

  Harry. Peter. Robin. Freddy. Simon.

  She whispered their names as if reaching out to them, calling them back one last time.

  What would she do, after she’d carried out her grandfather’s wishes and somehow transported this familiar lump of stone to far-off Scotland? Could she bear to part with it? For the life of her, she couldn’t see any necessity for taking it away from here, where it had belonged for centuries. In this one thing, she was tempted to defy her grandfather.

  Why, at the end of his life, had he suddenly turned against the Murder Stone? If she could understand that, his request would seem more reasonable.