“Don’t you gentlemen learn anything useful in your education?” Graves struggled, but the man was rigid as iron. “Thought I’d taught you, with that little shaving nick I gave you.” Graves felt the rancid breath traveling the still-fresh wound on his face. “Thing is, boy, thumb on the blade. And strike up.”
Graves looked down at the glint of the blade, the man’s thumb pressed on the flat of it; he felt the man’s body tense for the blow. So he would fail here; it would end here on the road with London burning in front of him. He thought of Susan, biting her lip, and the anger sung through him. With a roar, he twisted his body away, but not fast or far enough. He felt the cold point of it drive through his skin, and the darkness of the night flood in after it. He fell, the yellow man turned and began to lope off up the track. Then Clode was beside him.
“Graves!”
He shook his head, stumbled upright. He could still walk, the wound could not be deep. The yellow man had got past them. He was heading toward the children. Graves gulped in the air. It tasted like iron, but sweet, black, it bound his wound and threw the pain of it away.
“The children. Come on.”
They raced forward into the dark.
Miss Chase heard the noise behind them on the road and Susan tugged on her hand, tried to turn back. Verity only pulled harder at the girl. The lights of the house were very close. She willed her little party over the last few yards till she reached, half-fell on the head-high metal gates. She lifted Jonathan up under his armpits.
“Go, Jonathan. Now.”
His hands fitted and clasped and she felt him pull himself out of her hands, saw his body swing lightly over the spears.
“Now you, Susan.”
She knelt down to make a cradle for the little girl’s foot with her hands and boosted her up. She heard her tumble on the other side, then began to search for her own footholds in the brick and iron. One foot pushing against the stone, her hand on the bar, the other slipping on the lock, she dragged herself up and felt with her right hand for a higher grip. Her fingers fitted around the muzzle of a stone lion at the top of the gate-post. She swung to the top, then let herself fall on the far side, her skirts billowing around her. She turned to look out into the roadway, peering out through the bars for a sign of what was happening on the road. With a crash, a body fell against the bars from the outside, and she found herself face to panting face with the yellow man of Susan’s nightmares. He smiled, and they held each other’s gaze a moment. She put out her hands, felt the little boy and girl take them. She managed to open her lips.
“Run.”
The three of them turned and scrambled through the long garden of Mr. Hunter’s house. She could hear the gate rattle where the man climbed up behind them. Lights were beginning to move in the house. They charged forward, then suddenly Susan screamed and the ground seemed to fall away beneath them. Miss Chase felt her leg twist as she landed. The breath was forced out of her body.
The darkness here was absolute, but living. There was a noise. Something was already here, moving, twisting in the dark. She heard a noise. Something like the sea, or the tearing of rags, but animal. She put out her arms and gathered the children toward her, shuffling away from the sound, the movement, with her hands over their mouths to stop their noise. There was no need, their thin bodies were rigid with terror. There was a clank of metal, a chain. The strange purring roar. More voices in the distance now, familiar, Clode and Graves. She felt tears in her eyes. They were alive. There was a sudden impact in front of her. A darker shadow among the shadows.
“What ho, pretty ones. What sort of a cave have you found to hide in?”
Her mouth went dry, she struggled to unclamp her throat and shout, “Graves! Clode! Here! He has us!”
She heard footsteps running above. She pushed the children behind her, into the extreme corner of whatever space they were in. She could hear the yellow man’s breathing as he moved toward them in the dark. He began to laugh. Then the other sound came again-like the grumbles of some huge dog. The yellow man turned back toward it.
“What in hell?”
Then he advanced on them again. Miss Chase began to see now. The yellow man in front of them, bearing down, his arm raised, and behind him a strange rippling movement in the shadows. There was a sudden shout, and she saw a figure of a man dart across her view, knocking the yellow man back into the darkness. The strange alien growl behind him became a roar. The shadows were all movement. There was a scream, high pitched. The rippling shadows squalled and tore; another scream, another figure, a ripping sound.
“Graves?”
“Here! They have him!”
An exclamation of horror. Suddenly a man appeared in the darkness, half-dressed and holding a flaming torch over his head.
“What in God’s name?”
The torchlight swam in. Miss Chase clutched at the children. Two huge, cat-like creatures were at the throat of the yellow man, tossing him around like a rag doll. Graves, his trunk bloody and eyes wide with terror, was scrabbling away on his back. She saw Clode, grabbing one of the animals by its neck and throwing it bodily back into the cave, then seizing the yellow man’s leg and attempting to pull him free from those teeth. The torch was dropped; the man who bore it leaped forward to help him, kicking the second cat in the throat till it abandoned its grip. Miss Chase scrambled to her feet, picked up the torch and pointed it into the cave.
“Don’t look,” she said to the children, then glancing back saw they had already seen, and could not look away.
The yellow man lay sprawled almost at their feet, his neck a ragged mess of torn flesh. Across his chest the broad even stripes of clawmarks had torn his clothes and fringed them in red. Miss Chase looked at their strange rescuers. The cats were chained at the collar it seemed, their muscular bodies spotted with markings like tiny hoofmarks. They paced forward to the extent of their reach, their speckled mouths red and running, but they could no longer reach any of their guests. Graves slumped against the far wall, his face white and his side bloody and wet. Susan let out a noise between a whimper and a cry and scrambled over to him. He put his arm around her and pulled her close.
“It’s all right, Susan. I’ll live.”
Clode was on his knees at the yellow man’s side, looking as if he had lost his senses in the fight, panting hard, his front covered in blood. Miss Chase had never thought there was so much blood in the world. They all seemed drenched in it. She glanced at her own hands. Saw them scraped and cut by the walls, and floor. The man who had brought the torch stood in the midst of them, looking around with amazement. She looked up at him.
“What are they?”
“They are two male Panthera pardus of the felidae family. Commonly known as leopards. I am John Hunter. This is my home. Now, madam, who the hell are you?”
Clode blinked and looked about him, then reached into his pocket, dropping his bloody knife on the ground in the process, and pulled out the letter he had received in the Caveley parlor. He remained on his knees, but held the paper up toward Hunter, crumpled and dirty, still struggling to find enough breath to speak. Hunter took it from him as Clode managed in a gasp:
“Sir, with the compliments of Gabriel Crowther.”
4
“Bring them in then.”
Hunter’s voice was muffled behind one of the heavy doors in the back of his house that separated the living areas from those in which he conducted his research, though, in truth, the whole establishment was a monument to his work. Oils of strange animals, meticulously painted, hung around the walls, along with skulls and bones of creatures Susan could not even imagine. Jonathan was transfixed by the skeleton of a snake coiled as if to strike in a glass case by his feet. His sister held tightly onto Miss Chase’s hand as the door swung open.
Hunter was a man in late middle age. His face was rather squashed and red, with a comfortable belly pushing under his waistcoat. Standing next to him, Clode looked very young. He was wearing a fresh shirt, bu
t there were still bloodstains on the skin around his throat. He tried to smile at them, and winced at the pain in his jaw. In front of the men was a huge oak table; on it two forms, bodies under dirty sheets.
“We wanted you to see them before you go to bed,” Clode said. “For the last time. To show he is really gone.”
Susan nodded and let go of Miss Chase’s hand. Hunter turned down the sheet from the yellow face of the body nearest to her, though he kept the throat covered. The children approached and stared at him for a long time. The eyes were open and blank of meaning. The candlelight pooled over the cracked jaundiced skin, and made puddles of shadow swing around the cloth over his throat. The lips were slightly parted.
Jonathan looked up at Hunter. “He is dead?”
“Very.”
“And who is that?” Jonathan pointed across at the other body. Hunter folded back the second sheet to reveal the broad features of Yellow Face’s companion.
Miss Chase saw Clode flinch as the corpse was exposed. So that was your work, she thought to herself. Again the children looked. This time Susan spoke.
“He looks a bit like Mr. Yelling’s son.” She glanced up at Clode, who watched her with friendly concern. “He was a bit simple. It’s not him, though. And I’m glad he’s dead. Thank you for killing them.”
She stepped back, and Clode looked a little embarrassed. The little girl addressed Hunter.
“What will happen to them now?”
Hunter glanced at the younger man, who answered for him.
“The bodies will disappear,” Clode said. “That’s why we wanted you to see them now.”
Jonathan yawned and leaned against Miss Chase’s slender hip.
“How disappear?” he asked.
Hunter grinned at him. “I shall cut them up to show my students. Though I may keep the skulls.”
The boy smiled sleepily. “Good.”
Miss Chase placed her arm around his shoulders. “I must put these children to bed. We are just going to say good night to Mr. Graves.”
The gentlemen bowed, and she led the children from the room, turning back to the strange, froglike man among the candles and corpses.
“Thank you, Mr. Hunter,” she said quietly.
“Delighted, Miss Chase.”
Graves was comfortable, pale from his loss of blood, but neatly bound up and lucid. The children ran to him and buried themselves in his arms as soon as the door opened.
“Steady there! Lord, you’re as much trouble as the man with the knife!” Miss Chase sat at the end of the bed and watched as they burrowed into him like babies. Jonathan looked at him, his eyes shining.
“Mr. Hunter is going to cut them up and keep the skulls.”
“That sounds like a fine plan.”
They talked nonsense to each other for a few minutes, laughing more than would have seemed right to anyone who had not been through the tension of the night, felt it release and wash away from them, till Miss Chase noticed the first wakings of dawn outside, and began to stand, ready to gather them back to bed. The door swung open. Clode appeared, his manner all urgency.
“Good! You are still awake. Look what we found in that man’s coat!” He thrust a handful of paper at them. Graves reached out over Susan’s head to take it. Miss Chase looked at him expectantly. He opened his eyes wide.
“It’s a note: ‘Here is the address. Do him, and any family you find there.’ Well, that’s fairly clear. And this scrap has the address of Alexander’s shop written on it. In a different hand.”
Daniel nodded. “I think I know whose hand wrote the address. Carter Brook.”
“The first man killed at Thornleigh?”
“That’s right. And I bet any money Mrs. Westerman and Crowther will be able to tell me who the other writer is. We have it! We’ll get the vipers out of your house, sir.” He nodded to Jonathan with a wink. “So by the time you come to it, it’ll be fit for you.” He looked around at the faces. “For you all, I hope. But I must go. Hunter will give me horses, and I should get this into Mrs. Westerman’s hands as soon as I may.”
Miss Chase put up her hand. “But Mr. Clode, you’ve hardly slept for days! You are injured! You must rest.”
He shrugged at her, feeling the tender place of his jaw with his free hand.
“There will be time for that later, Miss Chase. This is the endgame, the last cards. I’ll rest when this is done.”
He turned on his heel and headed for the door again. There was a soft patter of feet behind him, and he felt Susan’s arms close around him. She stood on tiptoe to kiss his dirty, stubbled cheek.
“Thank you, Mr. Clode.”
He blushed and as she freed him, gave her a formal bow. “My pleasure, Miss Thornleigh.”
He looked up and caught Graves’s eye. They nodded to each other and in a moment he was gone. Susan watched the space he had occupied for a long time.
Harriet had managed a few ragged hours of sleep, but it was not long after the early dawn that she found herself walking in her woods. Something drew her back here again and again. It was a pleasant situation, right enough, but she knew it was more to see the patch of earth on which Carter Brook had fallen that she came here. She paused there now, her hand resting on the thorn tree where the scrap of embroidery had been found, and walked through her actions of the last few days. Was there something she should have done differently?
Turning back to the bench, she sat down heavily, dropping her head into her hands with a sigh. Images swam around her tired brain. Nurse Bray, hanging in the old cottage, the foul depth of the wound on Brook’s neck, the hissing hatred of the letter that had found its way into her hands last night, the pathetic struggles of Michaels’s little bitch in the face of the poison, Wicksteed, his hand raised to whip Hugh’s lover. Could the poison be tracked? She would ask Crowther who might have such a thing. Why would Hugh not say that the bottle had been put into his hands by his steward? What possible hold did the man have over him?
She heard a movement behind her and leaped up, spinning round to see Wicksteed in the flesh smiling at her.
“Wicksteed!”
“Yes, Mrs. Westerman. You are having an early walk?”
His manner was oddly brash. He had become less watchful, more triumphant. The deference was stripped out of it. He looked straight at her, and she could not help feeling that he was amused at the sight of her. She drew herself up very straight and tried to look at him with an air of cold command. A smile twitched the corner of his lips.
“Yes. As you see,” she said coolly.
“I like to have a little look around my lands before the work of the day begins, Mrs. Westerman.”
“Your lands?” The laugh she tried to give to her voice almost choked her.
“The lands of my betters, I should say, shouldn’t I? Though, if Captain Thornleigh hangs, the heir will be the son of a cripple and a whore, and I think my blood is as good as his.”
He took a seat on the bench with studied ease and smiled up at her, blinking. She stood in front of him.
“Will they still employ you, do you think, Wicksteed, if it is known you speak of Lady Thornleigh in that way?”
A sudden tenderness touched his face, and for a second he seemed almost gentle. He drew a snuffbox, extravagantly jeweled, from his waistcoat and offered it to her, but she waved him away with disgust. Shrugging, he took his time balancing the powder on the inside of his wrist and inhaling. He then spun the little box in his palm as he replied. She noticed that when he was relaxed in this way his voice had a pleasant tenor lilt; it made his words all the more violent.
“Oh, my lady knows what she is, Mrs. Westerman. She is fearless in the face of truth. But what of you-who are you? Some sailor’s bitch charging about the countryside turning over one affair or another like one of your pissed-up crew on shore leave.”
Harriet felt suddenly nauseous. She swallowed. “How dare you speak to me in that way?”
He smiled. “What have I to fear from you?
You and your knife man have tried your best, and done nothing but put Mr. Hugh’s head more neatly in the noose and the squire in my pocket.” He tilted his head to one side and his right hand lifted and danced in the air as if directing the flow of affairs with its lazy parabolas. “No, sweetheart. You should be afraid, not me. I do not like you, and I do not think you should continue at Caveley.”
Harriet blinked. “What have you to say on the matter?”
“Come now! Haven’t I just said? Pay attention, dearie! In a month Hugh will be dead, and I’ll be the power in the house. You know it, just as clear as I do. Then my first, my only task, will be to make your life here hell on earth. None of the gentry will speak to you, you will not be able to supply your household from any concern that has trade with Thornleigh. Your reputation, such as it is, will be beyond respectable, and your sister will be despised.” He paused and said kindly, “This will happen, Mrs. Westerman. Be assured.”
She took a step back from him, as the image of a yellow lizard who shot out a pink tongue to trap flies in Barbados came back to her. It was like seeing the beast again, dressed and conversing.
“Don’t be so sure of yourself, Wicksteed. There is more to come from this. And those scratches on your arm may well condemn you yet.”
He looked genuinely surprised. “Scratches?”
He shrugged off his coat in a moment, and rolled up the loose linen sleeves of his shirt to his shoulders, turning his wrists slowly so Harriet could see that, shoulder to hand, the skin was unmarked. Buttery and pale, but unmarked. He saw her surprise and laughed again.
“You mean to scare me, and leave me all the more secure, honey!”
Harriet felt her heart beating fast; his face was pink with pleasure. Without thinking, she lifted her crop, aiming to strike him. He was too quick for her. His flying right hand darted across and caught the end of it on his palm. He closed his hand around it and pulled hard, so she stumbled forward. He was breathing hard and the amusement of a few moments before became anger. She could see it glinting in the chips of white in his pale blue eyes.
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