Molloy dropped his chin. Miss Chase wet her lips.
“Very well, Susan. I shall lend you the twenty shillings-” and as the girl began to protest-“ and I shall take the ring from you as surety. That way, you know the money is yours to spend as you like.”
Molloy did not look up, just traced a half-moon in the dust before him with his boot.
“Looks like you are getting into my business, Miss Chase.”
She looked at him with disgust but did not reply. Susan’s heart leaped up happily.
“Yes, please. That would be right. And when I am a lady I can pay you back.” Susan paused. “And buy you a carriage, if you would like one.”
“Thank you, Susan. But my father has a carriage, and I am happy to share his.” Susan accepted this with a nod.
The business was transacted. Susan took the money from Miss Chase and dropped her ring into the young woman’s hand. The latter took it reluctantly, but urged by the determination in Susan’s eyes, put it safely away in her purse. Susan then placed the sum owed into Molloy’s hand with the bright smile of a girl buying sugar sweets. She turned away again, but Miss Chase kept her hand on her shoulder.
“The note, Molloy.”
He grinned a little ruefully and took a thick wallet from his coat. It bristled with dirty papers; some had crumpled, and he had tried to smooth them.
“You’d be a caution in business, Miss Chase. Shame you have to stay at home and paint screens all day.”
Again, she said nothing, but watched him steadily as he rifled through his papers, withdrawing one from the center of the greasy clump with a scowl. He put it into Susan’s hand. Miss Chase still watched him.
“And is it noted that the interest has been paid?”
Susan looked blankly at the figures a moment, then turning the page over, said, “Yes, here it is, Miss Chase.”
“Very well.”
Molloy fitted the money into his wallet and put it back into his coat, tapping it gently where it sat over his heart.
“Joy to do business with you, ladies. Young Graves is a lucky man to have such friends.” Susan looked at him with her head on one side.
“And now you have your friends, too.” He smiled at her curiously. “The shillings. You said they were your friends.” He gave a sharp bark of laughter.
“ ’Deed I did, sunbeam, ’deed I did!”
He tipped his greasy hat and turned to walk up the street, whistling as he went.
Miss Chase knelt down till she and Susan were looking at each other eye to eye.
“Tell me, sweet, while we are alone. Have you had a moment to say anything to Jonathan?”
Susan’s feelings of independence, of power seemed to flood away from her. She looked at Miss Chase very sadly.
“Yes, and he said I would have to learn French!”
Miss Chase laughed, throaty and musical, then standing and hugging the little girl briefly to her side, she led her back into the house.
3
Crowther stirred and groaned. The knocking at the front door had been enough to wake him, and now there were voices. He half-listened as he swung from his bed and began to dress, letting the shreds of his too-brief rest scatter about the floorboards of his room. He paused. He could swear he heard a dog yelping. He shook his head and reached for his shirt. The vigil had tired him. His bones felt old.
“Of course he’s asleep, girl! He was at Cartwright’s bed till after dawn. But I must see him, and you must wake him.”
It was Michaels’s voice. Then that yelping again. There was definitely a dog with him. He heard his maid protest once more, though the words were indistinct.
“Oh, just go and get him, for the love of God, Betsy. Or I’ll cut off your father’s credit at the Bear and tell him why, you see if I don’t!”
Another, higher-pitched mumble.
“No, I don’t want to be shown into the library, thank you! Who do you think I am? I’ll wait in the hall. Now go and wake him before I lose my patience.”
Crowther opened his bedroom door and looked down into the hallway.
“No need, Michaels-you have done the job yourself.” He spoke with a smile in his voice, but catching the other man’s eye looking up from the shadowed flags below him, his face became all seriousness. “What has happened?” He started down the stairs. “Coffee, please, Betsy. In the study.”
Michaels looked uncomfortably down at the dog by his side, held close on a leather leash. A black whippet bitch, a little gray around the muzzle.
“The dog, though, Mr. Crowther.”
“It is no matter.”
Crowther pushed open a door on the left of the hall and let Michaels step in front of him. Then he crossed to the shutters and let the summer light in. He turned back. Both Michaels and, it seemed, the dog, were lost in open-mouthed contemplation of the room.
It was a pleasant, generous space, paneled in painted wood.
The previous occupants had used it for a dining room, but Crowther did not entertain, and needed the space for his work. He had had shelves built all along the back wall which housed the volumes and preparations he most valued. In the center of the space was a long, roughly made table, rubbed smooth with much scrubbing, such as one normally finds in the kitchens of better houses. His instruments were laid out upon it. At the far end, under a pair of brass candlesticks sat his writing desk, his neglected notebooks open on top. It was the preparations that held Michaels’s eye. They were the products of almost a decade’s study and careful collection. Crowther had haunted the auction rooms of London and Europe like other men with money and leisure, but he did not buy Italianate art, or marble fragments of the ancients; he bought body parts, each injected with colored resins to show the different vessels and forms we carry, floating in sealed heavy jars of alcohol, or those strange freaks of development, opened up like so many strange texts to be absorbed, learned from. Michaels’s eyes tracked along the shelves.
“What is that?” He pointed at the delicate tracery of a pair of human lungs. It was a magnificent example of the preparer’s art. Each capillary through which air was drawn into the system hung like bare branches on a still day, dazzlingly complex, delicate as lacework.
“The lungs of a young man from Leipzig.”
Michaels’s hand rested on his own chest; he felt it rise and fall under his palm.
“It is beautiful,” he said.
Crowther smiled to himself and set a chair by the table in the center of the room.
“Do sit down.”
The door opened and Betsy came in to set the coffee things between them. Michaels’s leg bounced with impatience as she set down the cups. The dog seemed less concerned, and with a wide yawn, curled itself under his chair and rested its nose on its forepaws. Betsy left, still keeping her eyes away from the shelves, and as the door closed, Crowther said one word.
“Well?”
Michaels balled his fist and worked it into the cup of his other hand. “The kitchen in Cartwright’s house is all smashed up.”
Crowther bent forward. “Good God. Your wife, and Hannah?”
Michaels looked up with a quick smile. “Both well and more angry than frightened. They did not hear anyone come in, and when the noise started they found they could not leave the bedroom. When things got quiet, my wife climbed out of the window and came to fetch me.” He met Crowther’s eye. “Do you still have the bottle?”
Crowther got up without speaking and crossed to the cabinet in the darkest corner of his room. Drawing a key from his waistcoat he unlocked it and withdrew the bundle that Michaels had handed him the night before. He carried it back and set it down on the table between them, then took up his coffee cup again.
“Good,” Michaels said.
“Who did it?”
Michaels put down Crowther’s delicate china with conspicuous care, like a man being careful with his daughter’s playhouse things.
“Squire’s boys, I reckon.”
Crowther nodded. “Why
?”
“I heard him say it to you outside the door yesterday. He thinks Hugh did it, but he is scared of what will happen if Lady Thornleigh and her son get control of the estate. She’s smart. And there is bad blood between them.” Michaels tried to explain. “I suspect they knew each other in town before she married the earl, and she reckoned he treated her badly. She looked like she was going to make life difficult for him when she first came out here. Then Lord Thornleigh took ill, and all the power shifted about again.”
Crowther nodded slowly. “So he thinks it was Hugh, and is aiming to protect him.”
“You’ll see enough of it at the inquest this afternoon. The coroner will be twitching like a rabbit in a snare, not knowing who’s going to end up having authority over him.”
“And do you think Hugh was the poisoner?”
“He handed over that bottle, didn’t he? I always liked him as a boy, but something went wrong with him in America. . and even if it wouldn’t be pleasant to have that whore collecting our rents and teaching her little boy how to keep us small, I’d rather deal with that than a murderer.” He looked up into Crowther’s eyes, the glint of them blue as chipped ice in his dark face. “And there’s such a thing as justice, isn’t there, Mr. Crowther? You and Mrs. Westerman know that. I can see it by the way you are carrying on.”
“We’ll do our best. Are you casting your lot in with us then?”
Michaels shifted a little on his chair.
“I reckon I shall. I can always sell the Bear and move away-I’ve had offers enough in the past. Anyhow. That’s why I brought the dog. Let’s test the bottle on her and we can see if the coroner is willing to stare us down then.”
“Very well, but I think we should send for the vicar.”
“For a dog?”
“For another witness to what happens to her.”
“Very well then, Mr. Crowther,” Michaels agreed. “We shall.”
Miss Chase kept her hand on Susan’s shoulder as they came back into the house, and sat down with her on the sofa in the front parlor. Susan looked up into her face, still slightly flushed from the confrontation with Molloy, and saw there confusion, pity and, Susan thought, amusement chasing itself over her pretty features. She shook her head as if hoping the thoughts would settle out a little, then gave a half-laugh. “Oh Susan, I have no idea what to do. Should I tell Mr. Graves of what you have done?”
Susan bit her lip. “I do not know. I don’t want him to worry about Molloy, but it would make him awkward, don’t you think, to know that we have paid his debt.”
Miss Chase nodded seriously, studying her hands clasped in front of her and letting Susan think out her thoughts.
“Maybe he will think Molloy has had a change of heart, for our sakes, and gone away for a while,” the girl suggested.
Miss Chase brushed a strand of Susan’s hair behind her ear.
“Wise child,” she said. “It is likely. He thinks, I believe, only of you and Jonathan at the moment.”
Susan’s eyes lifted briefly. “And of you.”
Miss Chase looked conscious and down at the floor again. Then, after a pause, “Susan, I think it very important that you know, whatever happens, Graves and I will not leave you. We will stand your friends.”
Susan felt her throat close. “Papa did not mean to leave us either.”
Miss Chase opened up her arms and gathered the girl to her. Susan cried on to her soft shoulder, feeling the young woman’s hair falling across her neck, the stroke of her hand across her back. Susan thought of her father, looking up at her with a smile, heard his sharp laugh and felt her bruised heart stutter and complain as if it had just begun to beat again. She wept, but her tears tasted different.
Harriet woke early despite her vigil of the night before. The household was quiet. She left her room and turned up the stairs that led to the nursery in the topmost part of the house, and gently opened the door to the children’s room. Stephen had been fighting battles alongside his father in his dream. The sheets were caught up about him, his nightshirt twisted and damp across his thin chest. She knelt down beside the bed and smoothed the hair away from his cheek; he murmured and turned without waking.
She would never cease to be astonished by the beauty of this child she had borne. His skin was as pale as the first warm milk of the day, perfectly smooth. She let the back of her hand rest on his cheek a moment; the pleasure of it was a sort of ideal pain.
The door opened softly and the wet nurse came in with the baby. The women smiled at each other as the nurse settled on the easy chair near the unlit fire where the baby’s face would not catch the sun. The child began to feed eagerly, and Harriet felt a dull pull in her own breast, as if of a memory. She knew that women of her class were feeding their own children more and more, and when Stephen was born, rootless and afloat on her husband’s own patch of England, she had had no choice but to sustain him herself. Her little girl, Anne, though, she had handed over to another woman within hours of her birth, bound her own chest and continued with the business of the estate.
As she watched, Harriet hoped that the decision had not been affected by the sex of the child. She had wanted a daughter, her husband had wanted a girl too, and Harriet looked forward to greeting a child much more herself than Stephen could ever be-but when the midwife had put the child into her arms, she had felt with that first terrifying rush of love a sort of hopelessness. And what can you be? she had thought, examining the neat little nails, the dark fuzz of hair, so different from Stephen. Married. Happily or unhappily, you have only one decision to make in your life and your whole life hangs on it. The weight of the thought had left her breathless, and the midwife lifted the baby from her, thinking her still exhausted by her labors. She had heard the child being handed to the wet nurse as she pretended to sleep, looking out over her gardens from her bedroom window, though of course, like everything she wore or ate, the horse she rode or the pen she used to write up the accounts, it all belonged to her husband. She lived on suffrance, like every prettily dressed lady in the world.
She moved over to stand behind the nurse to watch the little girl feed. Her movement distracted the baby, who whined and refused the breast. Harriet shrank back a little.
“Hush, little one.” The nurse smiled down softly, then said to her mistress, “Will you hold her for a moment, ma’am?”
Harriet shook her head. “Anne is like her mother. Hates to be disturbed at breakfast,” then she leaned down to fit her finger into the tiny balled hand. The child’s eyes opened suddenly and they looked long at each other, and in a mist Harriet saw all her possible futures laid out in front of her. Then the child wriggled and opened her pink mouth with a soft mew. The nurse shifted her on her knee.
“She’s flourishing, ma’am.”
“Good, good. Thank you for your care of her.” Harriet stood up straight again. Then left the room without looking back, letting the door close soundlessly behind her.
4
It was only an hour later that Harriet stepped firmly into Wicksteed’s private study with a nod to the maid and sat herself in the low armchair by his window without waiting for an invitation. The estate manager looked up at her with surprise from the desk at which he was writing, then stood and bowed swiftly.
Harriet waved her hand to usher him back to his chair and began to pull off her gloves. He watched her without speaking, as if observing some wild but harmless creature. A monkey behind glass, a bird in a cage. She had meant to study him, but found herself subject. There is a certain sort of man who knows how to look intensely at a woman and make her feel exposed. She wondered if even Jemima, Lady Thornleigh, might find something fresh in a gaze of such violent focus, marveling and amazed, unblinking. It held one. She swallowed before she began to speak.
“Forgive me coming in like this, Mr. Wicksteed, so early in the day.” He began to murmur some compliment; she cut across him. “But I wanted to check with you the figure over the sale of the pretty roan we purchased from
the estate for my sister in March.” She peeped at him through her lashes, with a sigh. “I fear I must have copied the wrong figure into my accounts. The column won’t add up correctly now, no matter how many times I try, and that was the one sum where I thought I might have made the error. I had it as twelve guineas, but twenty-one seems a more likely figure for such a pretty mount-and if that was the error, then all my sums will come out right!”
She beamed up at him hopefully. His expression did not change.
“I am happy to check, Mrs. Westerman. The books for March are in the main office, though I think you are right and twenty-one guineas was the figure.”
Harriet leaned forward confidentially. “Oh, would you, Mr. Wicksteed? It would be such a kindness. The commodore hates coming home to find the accounts in anything but a pristine order, you know.”
Wicksteed stood slowly and looked around the room. “I may be a few moments …”
“Oh, I am most happy to wait!” Harriet leaned back in her chair. “And I have another favor to ask. Your housekeeper has a receipt for jugged hare I think quite wonderful, and I promised Mrs. Heathcote I should try and find the secret of it. Might you ask her to jot it down for me?”
Wicksteed frowned and Harriet thought she might have overplayed herself. He looked at her again and suddenly smiled. She had seen him do so rarely and it almost shocked her. His teeth were very white. She felt like a child who has done something charming in its innocent stupidity. He turned and stepped smartly from the room.
Harriet let her smile drop as soon as the catch fell, and began to stand. The door opened again, and she managed to twist her body as if she had been doing no more than make herself comfortable. Wicksteed was still smiling.
“Perhaps I can offer you some refreshment, while you wait.”
“Oh no, I am perfectly comfortable, thank you,” Harriet reassured him.
He bowed and closed the door. She counted to ten as slowly as she could, then stood and moved swiftly to the writing desk where she had found him. There was a heap of offcuts of paper on the table, but her first thought was for the fabled diary. She searched briefly through the neat pigeon-holes on the desk, looking hopefully for his brown books, his journal books. The little desk had two drawers; the first opened easily enough and contained nothing but spare quills and papers; the lower had a little brass lock and would not yield to pressure. She cursed under her breath and wondered if any of her household might confess a colorful enough past to encompass lock-picking, and whether they might teach her. She should have considered that.
Instruments of Darkness caw-1 Page 20
