by Gary Dolman
“But please be aware that this is serious business. It is not some novel where you can sit with your wife politely discussing the evidence whilst your no-doubt handsome fees mount up. People are dying! You both know Britton is guilty; I know Britton is guilty, and the sooner he’s locked safely away in Hexham gaol, the sooner he will be prevented from killing anyone else.”
Atticus shrugged. “Then you will be very pleased to hear that we don’t require Britton in person in order to be able to lift his fingertip prints. We can do that from any smooth, hard object he has recently handled. If I have your permission to enter his cottage we might even be able to do so tonight. Our intention was always to return
there today.”
Robson’s expression lightened. “Well that’s one scrap of good news at least. I’ve no more constables to spare but if you think you’ll be safe up there on your own, then yes, I would be very much obliged if you were to do just that.”
The last red glow of the sun seems to turn the western horizon to fire – the fire of Hell. It bathes Sir Hugh Lowther in its light and turns the steel of his breastplate and the tip of the great spear he holds aloft as red as the smouldering hatred in his heart. There is an abomination on this moor and his hatred can at last burst into the raging conflagration that will send it to the Inferno. It will be the sixth part of the wergild to be paid to the Norns.
“SHE COMES,” Verthandi cries in triumph and the soldier in him cringes.
“Hush, my Lady,” he whispers, “lest she hears you.”
“She will not hear me,” Verthandi retorts and he knows it is so. He has long since learned that few have the honour to hear the words of the Sisters. But then he too hears the footsteps of the abomination. He sees her broad, black silhouette rising in the moonlight.
‘Engage the enemy. Steady now.’
He lowers the spear, the Spear of Destiny, until its fiery tip points to his quarry.
“Use it well,” Verthandi commands him, “and we will guide your arm.”
“I will, my Lady,” he whispers.
He stands, silent and perfectly still, his body almost a part of the shadowy moorland that surrounds him and he waits and watches as she draws near.
Unfortunately there were no lamps of any kind in Michael Britton’s deserted cottage and the combination of dirt-encrusted windows and fast-fading sun meant that Atticus and Lucie elected to return very early the following day.
It was as they were returning through the narrow style in the dry stone wall to the very place where Samson Elliott had met his death that they heard it. The pure, strident note shattered the brittle tranquillity of the gloaming.
It was the note of a bugle.
The call was exactly as Artie Lowther had described it to them and Atticus could picture him, could almost hear him, as he had told them: ‘There were seven notes: two low, two high, two low, one high; repeated thrice.’
At first the sound seemed to come from everywhere; from the moors, from the rocks, from the very air itself. But then as they listened, they realised that it had a source and a direction. It was coming from directly behind them, from beyond Britton’s cottage, towards the great, black crags of the Whin Sill and the fells of Sewingshields beyond. And it was exultant.
And as they looked, they were both convinced that they glimpsed the silhouette of a tall, solitary figure striding among those rocks; sure that the moonlight had glinted off what might have been steel plate on his breast as he turned and disappeared back towards the shadows of the crags.
Lucie shivered suddenly as she stood cased by the big stones on either side of her.
“I don’t like it, Atty,” she said. “Whatever it is, leave it be. Let’s get back to the Tower.”
Atticus looked at his wife and saw his own fear there. He thought for a moment of giving chase. But night had closed in and he, or it, clearly knew the country well. So it was with only the very tiniest of regrets that he agreed.
Chapter 30
As they curved gratefully round the corner of Shield’s Tower into the reassuring sanctuary of its moonshadow, they could plainly see a figure, taller, softer and more benign than the stone grotesques, standing in the pale light of the gibbous moon. It was standing between the first pair of yew trees of the avenue and from the way it peered anxiously into the night it was plain that something was terribly wrong.
Atticus hailed him: “Hello there. Is something amiss?”
The figure started and turned sharply and the moon revealed it as Mr Collier, the butler.
“Mr and Mrs Fox, thank goodness you’re back! Have you seen anything of Miss Armstrong on your travels by any chance?”
Atticus and Lucie exchanged a glance and Atticus said, “No, we haven’t. Why do you ask? Is she missing?”
Collier nodded. “I think so. Twice a week, Miss Armstrong visits a lady-friend who lives alone up on the moors, but she is always returned by ten o’clock sharp. She’s very particular on that score. Tonight she’s still yet to return, and what with the two murders today – Dr Hickson’s and Albert’s – I truly fear for her safety, especially as she always stops by the madman’s cottage on her way back to deliver him his food parcel.”
“We have just come from Britton’s cottage ourselves,” said Atticus. “We didn’t see anything of her there, nor of him, come to that. Perhaps she might be still at her friend’s cottage?”
“I presume you know where this lady’s house is?” Lucie asked.
Collier nodded. “Yes, of course, ma’am, it’s not far at all; no more than a mile and a half from here.”
“Then get a lamp and lock the doors of the Tower securely. We’ll go with you to seek her.”
As Collier hurried off to do as he was bidden, Atticus turned to his wife and frowned.
“There are still two of Arthur’s Hallows left, Lucie: the Spear of Destiny and the Holy Platter, and I can only pray that I’m wrong about them. I declare, why any person would want to venture out alone onto the moors after today’s awful events is quite beyond me, and particularly just to pay a regular house-call.”
“I don’t think Miss Armstrong would be easily intimidated,” Lucie said quietly.
Atticus had to agree. “She’s a strapping, well-built lady to be sure,” he said. “I for one wouldn’t want to take her on, but notwithstanding…”
“And it was surely more than just a house-call,” Lucie added.
She seemed amused by his suddenly puzzled expression. “You really haven’t guessed have you?”
“Guessed what, my dear?”
“Atticus, Bessie Armstrong is quite obviously a sapphist.”
“She’s a what?”
“A sapphist – a uranist, a lesbian woman. Can’t you tell?”
Atticus was aghast.
“A woman who prefers… who prefers intimacy with other women?”
Lucie nodded.
“No, I hadn’t an inkling of it. Good Lord! Are you sure? I’ve heard of such women of course, but I never dreamed I would ever actually meet one. Perhaps I might in Paris or even London, but certainly never here in Northumberland.”
“Well I should say there are two in the county at least. It’s a lady-friend that Miss Armstrong visits on the moors after all.”
Collier’s sudden reappearance stifled the conversation. He had a pistol in one hand and a large, copper bullseye lantern in the other.
“I’ve locked the doors as you ordered, Mr Fox,” he panted. “All except the scullery door but Grey, the coachman, is guarding that with a fowling piece. James isn’t back yet from Hayden Bridge.”
Frantic concern seemed to lend wings to the trio as they half-walked, half-ran between the yew trees of the avenue and up the steep lane beyond. The air chilled perceptibly as they climbed to the high ground of the moorlands and it seemed no time at all before the dark verges on either side of them gave way to the broad junction of the Hayden Bridge road.
“It’s not far now,” Collier said.
Inste
ad of the right-hand route to Hayden that they had followed earlier in the day, he pointed them to their left, which the black letters of the wooden signpost opposite announced was the road to the strangely named village of Twice Brewed.
It was as they looked along the sweep of that road, uncannily white in the moonlight and stark against the black tangle of the moorland around it, that Lucie screamed.
It was a brief scream but shrill, a scream truncated by her own natural courage, and by her long familiarity with blood and the sight of the human form at its most grisly. Perhaps it was this scream that somehow fortified Atticus; that prevented his usual, visceral reaction as he stopped short and could only stare across the lane at what lay in front of them.
Standing proud and erect from the shadows of the roadside verge was what he recognised immediately and with heart-stopping certainty as the missing lance. His eye was drawn down the long length of the slender, wooden shaft, through the bleached stalks of the grass, white in the combined lights of the moon and Collier’s lantern, to the unmistakeable shape of a human body.
As if to a silent cue, they all at once ran to the macabre scene. It was the murder Atticus had dreaded was inevitable. Not inevitable in the fact that the body spread on the grass before them in its man’s shirt and dark slacks was instantly recognisable as that of Sir Hugh’s housekeeper; indeed, in the very moment he had seen her there, the theories that had begun to gradually form in his mind during the three days they had been in Northumberland had all at once been blown apart. It was inevitable only in the fact that the instrument used to murder her was a Hallow. It was the Holy Lance, the Spear of Destiny.
He gazed down at the dead woman, her face frozen in pain and terror. What was it Lucie had called her, a sapphist? He had heard her kind called the ‘third sex’; a woman who, despite opportunities to be married and settle down to a ‘proper, practical life’ had continued to choose intimacies only with other women.
“Her sapphism has killed her,” he murmured.
“What on earth are you talking about? Being a sapphist didn’t kill her; some monster killed her, Atticus!” Lucie’s rebuke was furious as she stooped to examine the wound.
The lance had penetrated deep into Bessie’s lower guts and the prolonged agony of her death was revealed by the hideous contortions of her face and by her hands, which still clutched the shaft as if even in death she was yet trying to pluck it out.
“No, no, Lucie!” Atticus protested, “I didn’t mean it in that way. Please don’t misunderstand me; I only meant that…”
“Hello there!”
There was a shout from the dark void behind them and the sound of heavy boots pounding on the metal of the road. They whirled round to see the two constables hurtling towards them, capes billowing behind like the wings of avenging angels.
They clattered to a halt.
“Mr Collier! What the bloody hell has happened here?” the local constable demanded. “We heard a scream.”
He caught sight of what lay in the grass and stared incredulously.
“That was me,” admitted Lucie, “when I saw the spear and Miss Armstrong’s body lying there.”
The constables continued to stare, speechless.
“Bessie Armstrong, the housekeeper at Shields Tower,” Collier added.
“Why is she dressed as a man?” the constable they didn’t know asked after a moment.
There was another awkward silence, filled only by the distant purr of a nightjar, which Lucie eventually broke.
“I believe she felt more comfortable dressed in that way.”
A briefer pause.
“I see. Well thank you, ma’am; we’ll take charge here now.” He stepped forward and firmly grasped the shaft of the lance.
“Don’t do that!” Atticus exclaimed sending something unseen scuttling away through the grass. “You’ll compromise the evidence.”
The constable looked sideways at him. “We are police constables as you can clearly see, sir, and this situation is under police control now. There is no need for any of you to worry further.”
With a brief but appalling sucking noise, he heaved the lance tip free from Bessie Armstrong’s body and, smeared in thick, congealing blood as it was, held it up in front of his face, regarding it with detached interest like a smith inspecting his art.
“Is this the lance you asked us to get for you?”
Atticus nodded. “Yes.”
The constable turned to look at him at last. “Well we have it now but you’ll be welcome to collect it from the station in Hexham – once the detective superintendent has finished with it, that is.”
Lucie had stooped low over the corpse and gently pulled aside its hands. The silver moonlight illuminated two, long, bloody gashes drawn across the shirt beneath.
“Britton’s ripped her heart oot an’ all,” the constable growled.
Lucie was carefully probing the intersection of the gashes with her fingertips.
“No, I don’t think so. Not this time.”
“What?” Atticus forced his attention back to the body.
Lucie dabbed her fingertips into the wound once more. “Do you see? The cuts are only superficial. No-one has removed the heart or anything else from this body.”
“How peculiar,” Atticus said.
“I wonder if this murder might have been committed by someone else.” Lucie continued, “Someone copying the manner of the others but without perhaps knowing the full details?”
“That’s possible, Lucie,” Atticus agreed. “Except it was committed with one of the Hallows.”
“The detective superintendent will have a better idea,” the constable said firmly. “We need to get Miss Armstrong back to Shields Tower. We can have a better look at her there.”
Chapter 31
Atticus Fox decided not to sleep that night. Instead, after they had informed a fulminating Sir Hugh of his housekeeper’s death, calmed a profoundly distressed Mr Collier, and after Lucie had settled sufficiently to kiss him goodnight and curl up snugly under the counterpane, Atticus picked up one of the oil lamps. He gathered up his travelling chess set, poured a large glass of chalybeate water from a freshly filled, porcelain jug and slipped out of the door.
His mind was a maelstrom of unconnected facts, suspicions and conjectures and in truth he felt a little like a music hall turn, juggling balls or spinning plates and trying with every ounce of his concentration not to allow any single one of them to drop.
What he desperately needed to do now was to think. He needed to ponder each and every one of his thoughts, relate them somehow to each of the others and then link them all logically together to form that elusive picture that was the identity of the murderer – the murderer who had struck five times now in the space of a single week and three times that very day.
The house was deserted, save for the phantoms and spirits conjured onto the walls by the flame of the lamp. Urth silently watched as he flitted down the stairs and without knowing why, he gave her and her sisters a wide berth on his way to the solitude of the orangery.
He set down the oil lamp, his chess set and his water onto a table and allowed his tension to vent in one long sigh. Then at last, he was able to focus his mind absolutely onto the facts of the case and the clear links between the murders and legends of King Arthur.
There was a very particular link to the supposed relics of Arthur, and he listed them in his mind: the sword, the garter, the bugle horn and then the Hallows themselves; the grail, the lance, Excalibur and the platter.
There had been five murders and there were seven relics. Might they therefore expect two more killings yet? Or were they already too late? Had the killer already committed the murders and, like Bessie Armstrong, did they await only their grisly discovery.
He shuddered at the thought.
Seven relics. There was something else about the number seven that niggled at his mind too, something elusive that he couldn’t quite grasp.
Instinctively he reac
hed for the glass of chalybeate water and the movement reflected in the glass panes of the orangery caught his eye.
There was the horrific butchering of the victims too, and the ripping out of their hearts through the curious X-shaped gashes he or she had made across their torsos. All except Bessie Armstrong that is; the wounds on her body were only superficial.
He suddenly thought of Lucie, quite lovely and absolutely at peace somewhere above him and he felt a momentary urge to join her in the warm, soft bed. But his mind was racing and he knew he could have no such tranquillity. Was she right though? Perhaps Bessie Armstrong’s killer was merely copying the modus operandi of the real murderer. He pictured again, the bloody gashes in her shirt. They were in precisely the same position as those on the other bodies and in the same style of cross – the crux decussata – the style of the Cross of St Andrew and of the saltire.
He moved a white pawn forward across two squares of his chessboard.
St Andrew’s Cross; the symbol of the Scots. For centuries the Scots, and before them the Picts, had ravaged this very land. Was there a connection there perhaps? He turned his chessboard and moved a black pawn to meet the threat from its carved-ivory opponent. No, he was sure, there was not. It was merely a coincidence. The link had to be Arthurian.
The crux decussata was also the Roman numeral for ‘ten,’ from decus meaning honour, glory and, yes, he remembered with a shiver, completeness. Where they to expect ten murders in total therefore and not seven? Again, he thought not. The link to the number seven was too strong, somehow too vivid.
The keys to unlocking the puzzle were the number seven and Arthurian legend. He glanced through the orangery windows into the shadowy blackness of the night beyond and thought of Michael Britton, out there alone somewhere. He had to be the murderer.
Or did he?
Atticus grimaced ruefully as he thought of the statue at the foot of the stairs. If only he could read men’s hearts as the Sisters of the Wyrd could, and write their lives in runes.
