“I’m going to fetch a surgeon. Lock the door behind me, and only open it for me, you understand. For me!” He turned to the crying boy. “Jonathan, go and fetch water for your papa.”
He put his hand on Alexander’s shoulder. “Don’t move. No! For God’s sake-don’t try to speak, man.”
Alexander tried to lift a hand. His stertorous breathing formed into words. The two men looked at each other.
“Care for them, Graves.”
“I swear it. Now …” he stood and dragged Susan to her feet, forcing her to let go of her father’s hand, which made her yelp in protest like a kicked dog. He held her shoulders again, and looking her straight in the eye, said: “Come to the door, Susan. And lock it behind me.” She managed to nod. “And remember: you must not open the door again to anyone till I get back. Will you remember that?”
She nodded again and he pulled her to the door, waiting outside, his eyes wild with impatience till he heard the lock being turned, then set off down the narrow street at a run.
Susan watched him go, almost wondering why he ran so fast, then turned back to her father. She dropped on the floor beside him and gently lifted his head onto her knee. She tried to give him a little of the water Jonathan had brought from the table, weeping whenever he spilled a drop in his hurry. It was difficult, for her hands were all slippery and red, but she thought a little went in between her father’s lips. Jonathan burrowed into her side, and Susan shifted a little so he could get close to her. When she moved she was sorry to see the red had become a pool and her own dress, and Jonathan’s breeches were steeped in it. She set down the water glass and with great care took her father’s hand again. Jonathan took the other. Alexander’s breathing became more ragged still, and slower. He forced his eyes open and swallowed.
“Susan …”
She did not move. Everything was very far away, as it is just before sleep. The world swam in and out of existence around her. She stroked her father’s hair. It had become disarranged when he fell, and he thought it always so important to be neat.
“Susan …” His voice was so deep, it hardly sounded like him at all. “Listen … there is a black wooden box under the counter, hidden under the Bononcini scores.” He paused and shut his eyes again. The breaths were single gasps now. Susan continued to stroke his hair. His eyes opened again, and fixed on hers. “You must take it with you wherever you go … Talk about what you find in it with Mr. Graves.” Again he closed his eyes, again the sucking gulp of air. Stuff trickled from the corner of his mouth, red and thick. Jonathan began to cry again and hid his eyes. “Do not blame me, Susan …”
She did not speak, but continued to stroke his hair. A memory came back to her of lying ill in bed as a child. She remembered the cool of her mother’s hand smoothing her forehead and her singing to her. Her father gasped again, and a tremor ran through him; she felt her hand held almost painfully tight, then his grip suddenly relaxed. Jonathan gulped, and looked up at her.
“Shush, Jonathan. Papa needs to rest.” She wet her lips, and never ceasing to smooth her father’s hair, began to sing in a cracked and whispering voice:
Will you sleep now, my little child?
For the sky is growing dark.
Will you sleep now, my lovely child?
For the sky is growing dark.
She was careful of her word, and would not let anyone into the shop until Mr. Graves returned a quarter of an hour later with a surgeon panting and complaining behind him. When he arrived he had to fight his way through a crowd of the concerned citizenry who had gathered in the doorway, having heard the shouts and seen men running. They were pressed to the plate glass of the window, staring and exclaiming at the sight of the straight back of the little girl, who knelt with her brother in a seemingly shoreless pool of their father’s blood, stroking his hair and murmuring lullabies.
8
Dinner at Caveley Park was a pleasant enough affair considering Crowther said very little, and all were aware of the body of the stranger lying in the stable block.
The various dishes having been brought to table, the family waited on themselves and each other. The scrape of knife on plate and the comfort of good food well prepared provided all the background and counterpoint necessary to the squire’s news and enquiries, and to Harriet’s and Rachel’s good-humored responses.
Crowther let much of it pass without interest or remark until he heard Harriet ask, in response to some light remark of the squire’s which touched on Thornleigh Hall, “My dear sir, I hope you will not mind me asking in the circumstances, but I am curious about your impressions of Lord Thornleigh. We know so little of him. What did you think of him, as a man, before his illness?”
The squire did not reply at once, and pushed his plate a little way from him. He pursed his lips, and for what seemed to be the first time that afternoon, thought carefully before he spoke-and when he spoke, his tone was serious and considered. Crowther saw a more thoughtful man appear to take the squire’s place, or rather saw the mask he habitually wore put carefully aside. Crowther examined him with renewed interest.
“Well, I struggle to say much that is good of him.”
He drew a long slow breath and let his eyes rest on his half-worked plate, though it was clear he was seeing something else.
“I knew him in the blossom of his life, though we were not closely associated, his rank and fortune being so much greater than my own. He was very proud, and the people he had about him I could not like. They held, it seemed to me, their fellow creatures in contempt. Among the staff in his house, good honest creatures did not seem to thrive, and those in this neighborhood I had least cause to love, and most reason to doubt, always seemed to do better in his service than their virtues might merit.” He dragged his gaze upward to meet Mrs. Westerman’s for a moment, then cleared his throat as if to drive some troublesome taste from it. “But these are idle prejudices, and I must not speak ill of one brought so low.”
Crowther spoke for the first time since dinner had begun.
“I understand, sir, that Lord Thornleigh fell victim to a seizure some years ago.”
The squire nodded and gave a slight shrug of his massive shoulders.
“I am not a medical man, Mr. Crowther, but yes, that is what I believe. It was within a year of his second marriage. He lost almost all his capacity for movement, and all his abilities of speech. Yet he lives. What sort of existence it can be I cannot say, yet live he does. Perhaps the Almighty in His infinite mercy is giving him time to repent the wrongs of his youth, though the servants say he is to all intents and purposes an idiot now.”
“Has he so much to repent?” Rachel asked lightly.
The squire did not choose to hear her, but instead lifted his head and stared into the corners of the dining room.
“We assumed he would not long survive the attack, yet still he continues. It speaks well to the care that is taken of him, yet it seems a cruel fate to me, and one I could not wish on any man.”
“You’ll forgive me, Squire,” Crowther said, “but you speak as if you suspect him of some greater sin than pride?”
“Perhaps I do. But that suspicion must remain between me and my God at this moment. I will not slander a man who cannot make a reply, nor share unpleasant stories with the ladies for the time being. I know, Mrs. Westerman, you have the stomach of a warrior, but there are things I would not have your sister hear me speak of.”
Rachel looked down at her plate, and Harriet smiled at him, while gently placing her hand over her sister’s.
“Shall we have rain tomorrow, do you think?” she asked brightly, and the squire took up the subject. Nothing more of significance was spoken of until the ladies retired.
When the wine had been poured and the servants released, Crowther introduced the subject of the squire’s suspicions once more. The older man put down the wine in front of him, and slowly shook his head. Crowther looked hard at the soft red profile the squire presented from under his hooded eyes.
He let the silence between them lengthen till it formed a pressure in the room. The squire was frowning a little, and began to turn Harriet’s delicate wine glass distractedly with his sausagelike fingers until Crowther wondered if it were quite safe.
“Mrs. Westerman wishes to know the truth of what has happened here,” Crowther stated. “It is clear she suspects some dark doings at Thornleigh, and the murder took place on her land. She will not be satisfied with a simple ‘killed by persons unknown’ at the inquest. She has requested my help and I have given my word to assist her.”
As Crowther spoke, the squire let his glass rest, and his profile hardened with deep attention. Crowther had the sense that his companion was listening not merely to the words themselves, but their undertow, what they brought with them. He felt some judgment was being made on him.
“Well, Mr. Crowther, I shall tell you then, since you ask in such a manner,” the squire said heavily. “I have no reason, however, to believe it pertains at all to the death of this poor wretch. You cannot say you speak for the family here without drawing me to you in some degree-though I sometimes feel they might do better in some other place. For all her experience in the larger world, Mrs. Westerman does not yet understand the pull of the little threads that hold us all together and in our place in such a society as ours. Nor do you. Just because the head of Thornleigh is in some ways cut off, it is still a great power. A little king in stone for the county. And she wishes to bang on their gates and cry murder! Her husband has his connections, of course, but not many. I can tell you my story, but I advise you to forget it. Retire to your previous seclusion and persuade Mrs. Westerman to confine herself to her proper duties.” He rubbed his chin with his palm. “Perhaps my story may serve as a parable that in the end we are wise to leave justice in the hands of God.”
He looked up at Crowther’s face. Crowther merely blinked slowly at him. Bridges took a swallow of wine and, having settled himself in his chair, he began to speak.
“Well then, when I was a young man-oh, some forty years ago now, long before Mrs. Westerman was even born or Lord Thornleigh married for the first time-there was a girl killed on the edge of the village of Harden, some two miles south of here. She was a good child, a general favorite in the area and respectably brought up. Search parties were organized and in short order her body was found. Her name was Sarah Randle. She was twelve years old.”
The squire paused and drained his glass, nodding his thanks as Crowther refilled it.
“I found her, I’m sorry to say. I would rather have lived my life free of that image, but the only service I can render her is to remember. I was out riding and came upon one of the search parties as they neared the woods on the outskirts of Harden. Knowing the girl myself, I dismounted to join them. It was a summer’s evening, much this time of year, the air warm and delicate, the paths and fields so alive with the buzz of creation-everything becoming, it seemed, more perfectly itself. Such a pale little thing she was. She had been thrown down, some yards from one of the smaller paths in the wood. So terribly wrong, it seemed, that she lay there all broken and stopped amongst such a profusion, such vigorous life. Her face was quite unmarked, but her clothes were black with blood. Her body had been stabbed about in a frenzy. Thirteen wounds I counted in her breast and stomach. She was in her holiday clothes, and they were so torn and bloodied about her…. It was sunset when we found her, and the sky was gold and red, with magnificent deep purple clouds draining from the day. The two images are linked in my mind. Her broken body and the glory of the sun sinking in the west. Poor innocent. It could not have been an easy death, or a quick one.”
Crowther did not trust himself to speak. He realized he was held by a narrator of talent; he had felt the late sun on his back, heard the thrum of life in the hedgerow.
The squire continued, “Her belly was swollen. There was no doubt she was with child.”
“No one knew who the father could be?”
“There was gossip that damaged several good men over the coming months, but she had been close. Not one of her friends had, I believe, been confided in. Nor had the sister who shared her bed. Some passing peddler in the village was taken up by the hue and cry, but he was vouched for by two or three of the better people, and the crowd had fixed on him more in sorrow than in anger. He got away unharmed. The whole village turned out for the burial, but Lord Thornleigh did not attend. However, he did ride by with one of his friends, while we were burying the poor sinner. They were laughing at something and I looked up from my prayers and caught his eye. That look I saw on his face is the only reason for the suspicion I have ever had against the man. It chilled my soul then, and the memory of it does so still. It was triumphant, exhilarated. Quite wild.”
One of the household passed along the passage outside the dining room, their shoes skimming carpet and stone. Crowther drank deeply.
“And no one inquired further into his connection with the girl?” he asked.
“I believe I have said enough of his character to suggest why no one had the stomach to inquire more closely,” the squire said. “The girl certainly had no Mrs. Westerman to champion her, no one so willfully naive. Or if she did, perhaps he was warned away early and well and has learned his lesson since. Mrs. Westerman may have the same path to tread.” The squire looked a little angry. “Nor did Miss Randle need a champion, nor does this fellow in the woods. Thornleigh has lost his eldest son to the world, his second to drink and lives an idiot while his third is brought up by a whore.” The squire’s voice had become almost hoarse on his final words.
Crowther did not move, merely continued to watch his tented fingertips, his face without expression.
“Sarah Randle died before Thornleigh’s first marriage, you say?”
The squire looked up again, as if surprised to find he had been speaking aloud, and to another. He shrugged, and his voice returned to something like its usual pitch and phrasing.
“Indeed. He spent much of the next few years in London, then returned to us with a wife. And an unhappy affair that was, though the first Lady Thornleigh bore him two sons, as you know, before her death. Three girls died before they reached four years old.”
“And did she die in childbirth?”
“No, a fall, only three years after Hugh was born. I fear the death of her daughters left her … a little nervous. From that point until Thornleigh’s second marriage we saw little of him. He lived mostly in town, only coming to hunt with small parties, and always reluctant to stay long. The children were brought up by the servants, then sent away to school. They seemed good enough men in their youth, though.”
He shifted his chair a little.
“I am grateful to you for examining this wretch, but I wish you would trouble yourself no further in the matter. Mrs. Westerman, and I mean no disrespect, can be impulsive, a little quick to judge. It is the penalty she pays for her own prodigious energy, so I am glad she is to have your counsel, Commodore Westerman being away, and he acting as he does as her sea anchor in the general run of things, if I have understood that term correctly.”
Crowther bowed slightly. The squire nodded, interpreting the gesture according to his own desires.
“The place where you must come to, where damage will be done, you must come to very quick. And if you do not hold her back, you must take a share in the blame for whatever comes to pass. And, of course, your own association with the family, if you intervene or not, may harm them.” The squire paused, watching Crowther’s forehead crease with a slight frown. His voice took on a certain soft sheen. “I should perhaps tell you, while we are being so open, that I know your name was not Gabriel Crowther at birth.”
The silence in the room was like an act of violence. Crowther held himself absolutely still. The corner of the squire’s fat red mouth twisted a little.
“I am that which I appear to be, Mr. Crowther. But there have been other chapters in my career, and some of the habits I learned, I have kept. I make it my business to know a li
ttle of the people of note in the area, beyond the usual gossip. But I shall not address you by any other name or rank than that you have chosen for yourself.” He paused. “I can assure you that my inquiries have been discreet, and my silence on the subject is absolute-for the time being. To my knowledge at least, no one else within the county suspects you to be anything other than who or what you say you are. I will say no more, other than to repeat my request that you attempt to hold Mrs. Westerman back, for her own sake.”
Crowther was conscious of little more than the passage of the air into his lungs and out again. His thoughts would not form into words. The squire sighed deeply and scratched again at his stubble before continuing in the same low voice.
“I am very fond of the family at Caveley Park, and would like to be assured they have protection and support from a man of intelligence and skill such as yourself.”
When Crowther finally spoke, his voice sounded to him like a thing apart. He had no will in it.
“As you say, there may be no great mystery here, but I will do all I can to support the family.”
The squire lifted the wine and filled their glasses, smiling expansively as if he thought Crowther an excellent fellow and charming company. His voice lost its serious tone, and he became once again the expansive country gentleman he had at first appeared to be.
“Excellent, excellent. Now tell me, sir, is that your bay I noticed in the new stables as I came round? Do you hunt? She reminds me very much of a filly I had as a boy. Marvelous jumper, she was …”
Crowther let him talk and drank his wine, though it tasted to him suddenly bitter and black.
9
Mr. Graves had promised not to leave the house, and Mr. and Mrs. Chase and their daughter were happy to let him keep watch within calling distance of the old nursery where the children slept. He had taken them to that family’s house, old friends of Alexander’s, as soon as it was clear nothing could be done for his friend, and before he would allow anyone to see to his own wound. It stung now, but the pain was nothing next to the horrified throb in his throat. He wondered if Susan would ever recover. She had been white and silent since they found her, apart from the moment when he had pulled her away from her father’s body again, and she had let out such a terrible yell that several in the crowd had crossed themselves. The yellow man was searched for, but no one could name him, and with the growing disorder in the town, there was not a man free to look further for him.
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