by Jane Jakeman
The door was left ajar and I stood, opposite it. Through the doorway I could see bare whitewashed walls. There was an odd detail which stuck in my mind as trivial things somehow do at such times: a fiddle, hanging on the wall just inside the door.
There was a sudden, terrible scream from within the house. A woman’s shriek. It seemed to echo along the dusty village street, a single cry, a sound as stark and fearful in that bare and empty road as in an ancient tragedy.
Seliman Day appeared in the doorway and leaned his forehead against the rough timber of the doorpost.
I crossed the street, and he looked around and saw me. We did not speak.
The screaming came again.
“His mother,” said Day.
“Did he have a wife? A family?”
“No, only his mother. His father was killed at Waterloo. And Tom was her only bairn.”
He moved away from the doorway of the house, and we walked along the street together, keeping pace for a little way.
“Reckon us’ll miss him sore,” said Day. “He played the fiddle for us, did Tom, at weddings and that. Loved a bit of music, he did.”
I thought of the fiddle hanging, silenced, on the wall of the cottage. Day paused, and struggled with his thoughts.
“My lord, I reckon whoever did for the Crawshays — that was the same as murdered Tom Granby.”
“Aye, and the gypsy, remember, is locked safe away at Anchester.”
Day looked up at me — he was a small man, standing a good few inches below my height. I saw with surprise that his rat-like eyes had tears in them.
“My lord, we did wrong there wi’ the Romany, I confess it. He were an innocent man. But I ask you, find them as killed Tom, find ’em!”
We had reached the alehouse. “I’ll go and tell them in there,” said Day. “Gave them a tune many an evening, did Tom Granby. Maybe they’ll do something for his mother. Them as can will help a bit. We’re not savages in these parts, though I saw by your face that you do think us so, my lord.”
As Day turned into the alehouse, he stopped for a few moments and rubbed his dirty kerchief over his face.
The terrible sound of a woman screaming for her dead son was still audible at the end of the village street. It was the same sound in an English village as I had heard in a Greek one, and no doubt it had been the same in ancient Athens.
How little I knew of their lives, these English villagers! Less than of the Greeks among whom I had lived and fought — these people here, under my very nose, might be some kind of homunculi living on the moon, for all I knew of them. Yes, I was familiar enough with the outward details of their world — their crops, the way they built their wretched houses out of mud, for instance — but of their inner lives, their feelings, of the dead man who had played the fiddle, and the other who now wept for him on the threshold of the village pothouse, of these, I knew nothing.
At Malfine, I slumped into a chair. There was little time to spare — I must get back to the farmhouse before dark, for something was on the loose there, something that now threatened the two women who waited with the child for the night to come.
In a. few words I told Belos of the latest and, to me, most callous murder.
“His mother will be in desperate straits, my lord. She will not be able to pay her rent on her own — she had no one but Tom.”
“Oh, damn it, Belos, see to it, will you? Get her somewhere to live on the Malfine estate — if that’s what she wants.’’
“He was popular with the fellows in the village. Quite the village musician, Tom Granby. Played at all their feasts.”
I had not been aware that Belos knew of this. Something occurred to me, something that I had not thought about previously.
“Belos, you know far more of them than do I. Do you not miss company, shut away here at Malfine, with a hermit such as myself? Is it not a sacrifice, on your part?”
“One that I am glad to make, my lord. I am too old to tread the boards of the stage again! But, to speak seriously, when you found me sick and starving in Greece, you saved my life. I will not leave your service.”
There was a pause.
Belos added, almost as an afterthought, “I’ll offer help to Mistress Granby, my lord, but the Granbys are a proud family — she may not take it.”
“Offer it again, when winter comes and the winds are howling round her door. She’ll take it then.”
CHAPTER 18
I could see Marie’s face looking out from an upstairs window of the farmhouse, gazing out on the countryside, as another woman had once done, many years ago, in that hot and barren country where I got my wounds. That woman, too, had dark curls tumbling round her neck: she too had tilted her head to one side with the very gesture I could now observe in the woman looking out of the farmhouse casement.
That woman in Greece had been a traitor. So traitors watched from their windows, enjoying the pleasure of seeing their victims as they walked unknowingly before them, beneath the walls of their houses, walking to betrayal.
I jerked my mind into the present again and chided myself for fantasising, for sinking into a reverie of the past. Marie Crawshay was the simple wife of an English farmer. Hate, treachery — all the elements that had entered into the Greek rebellion against the tyranny of the Turks — these belonged to another time, another place.
I walked up to the door of the house and rapped upon it. It was opened by Elisabeth Anstruther.
“Lord Ambrose … please enter … I’m afraid Mistress Crawshay is resting … what is it? What has happened?”
I strode into the parlour and she followed me.
“Tom Granby is dead.”
I could have sworn her cry of horror was genuine, that she knew nothing of poor Tom’s killing, nor of how his body had come to be forced through the thorn thickets at the top of Way land’s Mound.
“Where … where did you find him?”
If she was an actress, she was a damned fine one.
“At the top of the Mound, yonder.”
I indicated the long, dark shape of the hill, visible through the parlour window. And then I turned to look at Elisabeth Anstruther, and I felt again, although I knew I might be in the presence of a most cunning murderess, that powerful sexual urge that she had awakened in me during our encounter near the icehouse.
I did not care then if she had killed. I thought nothing of the corpse of poor Tom Granby lying lacerated by thorns. I wanted only to seize her, to press my mouth upon hers, to grasp at the firm white body that must lie beneath the chaste grey silk gown.
“My lord, did you receive the letter which I wrote to you?”
The words saved me, as I was in the very act of moving towards her, for they reminded me of the reason I must not trust this woman — the reason that had recently taken me away to France on a quest for the truth.
“I received it, madam, and I know it to be a dishonest paper — a document not worth the writing, for it conceals as much truth as it reveals.”
“But I … ”
“I have lately journeyed to France.”
“I beg you, my lord … ”
“Don’t trifle with me, madam, I know all about your history. I have made it my business to find out about you. No one but ourselves need know what we speak about here, but I want some truthful answers from you.”
In reality, one of the truthful answers I desired from her at that very moment, for what reason I know not, was whether she would come to bed, for again I felt that stab of desire, as she turned those strange yellow-grey eyes towards me. There was a despairing look in her face, a kind of exhaustion. She slumped into a chair.
“Ask what you will.”
“Firstly, there has been something that puzzled me in the descriptions of old Crawshay in recent months. He was, apparently, something of a reformed character. He wore clean linen, left off much of his drinking, was less foul-mouthed than was considered normal by those who were accustomed to — how shall we put it? — the music of h
is voice. He was dressed in a fine tailored jacket when he was shot, when before that he wore filthy old worsted that had better served for sacking. So why should the old man change so? Was it, perhaps, connected with your presence?”
Her voice was very low, but steady.
“He wished to marry me.”
“Marriage?”
“Yes, does it seem so extraordinary? He had been pressing me for three months before his death — urging me, trying to force me into it — almost threatening me — telling me I should be turned off without a penny like a servant-girl who has been dismissed if I refused him.”
Those strange eyes were looking straight up at me now.
“Oh, I know what you are thinking, Lord Ambrose. He could have taken me by force — he could have had me as his mistress, perhaps. Why offer marriage to a penniless governess?”
“I think you would have refused to be his mistress. As to marriage — I would hazard a guess. The reason was Marie. He wanted to torment Marie. And the thought that there might be another child — a rival to little Edmund — a legitimate child whom Crawshay could make his heir whenever he pleased — that would have tormented her night and day, I imagine.”
“Yes, I could see that, even when he asked me the first time. He made a point of telling me that the farm was not entailed — that he could leave it wherever he would. He could disinherit his grown-up son at the stroke of a pen. And I would be in charge of the household here. ‘Marie need be of no more account than your servant,’ he promised me. ‘You would be the mistress here.’ Of course, I could not accept him.”
Her voice suddenly fell lower.
“I could not bear the thought of … of … ”
“So did you refuse him?”
“I was afraid to absolutely refuse, in so many words — not just because he would have turned me out of doors penniless, for I beg you to believe, sir, that there are some things I value more than money — no, he was a violent man, quite unpredictable — I feared that. So I … I temporised … I begged him to let me answer him another time — and then another time … I gave him to understand that my family … there were hopes of a fortune in my family upon the death of a rich relation, but I must not jeopardise them by a hasty marriage … I held him off by every means I could think of.”
She stood up now and faced me across the dark farmhouse parlour.
“But I did not kill him, Lord Ambrose. I was afraid of him, I even hated him. Yes, it would be true to say those things. But kill him, no!”
“Did Marie Crawshay know of his suit to you? Did she know her husband’s inheritance was in jeopardy?”
“I did not tell her. It’s possible old Crawshay might have done so — merely to torture her with the possibility. But if it was a motive for murder … ”
“Yes, we are thinking the same thought. Marie had cause enough to kill the old man. But why should she kill her husband? He was putty in her hands, by all accounts.”
The problem was gathering complexity. Elisabeth Anstruther had good reason for killing the old man — better than she had admitted, for I now knew the secret at which the gypsy’s wife had hinted, and I knew the truths which Elisabeth Anstruther had kept secret. And in those truths lay the seed of future fear — for her and for those around her.
Yet there was further cause to suspect Marie Crawshay. The shreds of burnt material with the still almost-decipherable pattern, the shreds I had found in the stove after the murders — they had been from a gown sprigged with a dainty floral pattern, exactly like Marie’s charming country dresses. There had been no such garment in Elisabeth Anstruther’s wardrobe — all her clothes had been of plain, expensive materials.
The shreds of cloth in the stove must have come from the same garment as the misshapen and partly melted buttons I had found upon Tom’s body — which had provided the splashes of molten metal I had myself observed on the bars of the stove. So the same gown was implicated in all three deaths. And only one woman had gowns made from material with such a pattern, and that was Marie, though Elisabeth Anstruther was hiding a secret that I had discovered only through the agency of the gypsy-woman whom I had saved from rape. Yes, I could not discard the possibility that Elisabeth was involved in murder.
“You must realise that you and Marie, both of you, are in very grave danger — if anyone in the village so much as suspects that this household had anything to do with the death of Tom Granby, they will be roused against you. Tom was much liked in the village. There are many men there who were his friends, and they saw his body for themselves. I assure you, they will not forgive a murderess. I am afraid they may already suspect that you and Marie are involved somehow in his death — he died protecting you. Now, I advise you both to keep as quiet here as you can — stay out of sight and hope they do not think of you in the village. You will remain in your rooms tonight. Where is the child?”
“Upstairs, with Marie.”
“Good. He must stay there. I shall stay downstairs.”
As night fell, I was in the farmhouse, sitting in the parlour, in darkness. Inside it was sultry; my shirt was clinging with sweat. My pistol was jammed uncomfortably into the waist of my britches; I would have laid it aside on a table, but I was trained never to let a weapon lie beyond my grasp: I had seen men die because they had been taken by surprise. Outside shone the starlight of a clear summer night.
Upstairs, behind locked doors, were the mistress of the house and her son, and further along the corridor, the governess. The keys were turned in the clumsy old locks, on the outside, so they could not roam loose that night. The beasts were in their cages and the foolish zoo-keeper feared nothing. He had his pistol with him, however.
The heavy night was suddenly broken with a great flash of sulphurous light; those who were lying on sticky, sweaty beds, turning and tossing in the hot, wrinkled sheets, gasped and then sighed with relief at the approaching storm, as I myself had so often done.
I did not think there was now any fear of an attack upon the women by a village mob, for the weather was more effective protection than I could ever be: a man would be mad to venture out. It would cool almost any ardour to brave the night.
There was a pause, and then the whole night sky came alive again with a sheet of lightning. The landscape, so familiar by day, was as strange as that of the moon: black, white, grey, with scudding shapes, things driven in the wind, that suddenly came with a howl, sweeping over the countryside.
And the thunder started, great cracking echoes, that rattled round, repeated and faded, to start up again.
Inside the farmhouse, the storm drowned out almost all other sounds, but I could just hear Marie, pounding at the locked door of her room and screaming at the top of her voice:
“Lord Ambrose, I beg you, open the door. It’s Edmund — he’s only a child. He’s terrified of storms.”
I could barely hear the sound of my own footsteps as I ran up the staircase, of an old key scraping as it turned in a lock. Marie was standing there with the child in her arms.
The boy was indeed terrified. Every flash of lightning filled this room. The full force of the storm buffeted its windows.
We were preoccupied and deafened.
Then, only then, the rain started hammering down, like solid rods of metal. It would be drumming on the roofs, bursting through the ragged thatch of the village houses, gurgling in torrents off the leads at Malfine and forming a silver lake inside the great ballroom.
And there at Crawshay’s farm the storm drowned out all other sounds.
CHAPTER 19
AS I turned to leave Marie’s room, having unlocked the door so that she could bring the child down if she wished, all I saw was a flash of silver descending over my eyes — almost like a streak of lightning, another bolt of the storm that played about the farmhouse. Instinctively, I put up my hand, my right hand, in front of my face, and that was the action that saved me. I did not know what I was fighting, had no time to act logically. All I could do was to react instinct
ively.
My hand was being cut as if I had grasped hold of the thinnest and sharpest of blades, but one thing I knew: though my hand was being sliced to the bone, it was held up in front of my neck: it was protecting my throat.
I spun round, with the agony of my hand driving me on, and there came another flash of lightning and I realised what I was struggling against.
There was a wire noose around my neck.
Simple and cruel, but effective, a garrotte that would slice through my windpipe like a wire through soft cheese.
And pulling at the snare, choking the life out of me, was a thin, ragged creature, a man who stood unevenly before me, a fellow with a withered leg but with immense strength in his wiry arms.
The snare was something that he had no doubt learned to make in his wanderings, perhaps from the gypsies themselves, for as a horse-trader he had dealings with them. He would have used it at first when he was living rough in the countryside, for catching rabbits and other small creatures that fell into the noose and then struggled, cut and tore their limbs in the wire.
Then the thought must have come to him to use the wire as a snare for something larger.
But the game he had now caught was too big for him. This was no frightened, helpless animal. My hand was agony, it was on fire, slippery with blood, but still I held it up, keeping the wire from my windpipe, though I felt it biting round the side of my neck. I lurched straight across the room, driving into my tormentor, the torturer who had me on the cruellest of leashes, and my full weight fell against him, and he staggered backwards.
And there was another flash of lightning and I could see the man’s visage: thin, hating, yet still a handsome face. “Oh Lucifer, son of the morning, how thou art fallen!”
