Instruments of Darkness

by Imogen Robertson

  “Of course, Susan.”

  They walked through the last of the mourners, each of whom muttered their condolences and lifted their hats to the little girl, till they reached Miss Chase, and as Graves told her of their mission, Susan went across to her brother. The adults watched the children negotiate—Jonathan looked around him with wide eyes, alarmed at any separation, then seemed to grow calm under his sister’s caresses and whispers. They saw her pause as if waiting for an answer, and watched Jonathan nod slowly. She then turned and came back to them, and with a composure that almost broke their hearts said, “I am ready, Mr. Graves. May we go?”

  He bowed and offered her his arm.

  5

  Mrs. Westerman, Crowther and Rachel were the only mourners at the burial of Carter Brook. When they arrived in the churchyard the sexton and his men were already shuffling the coffin into the open ground. As they crossed from the path to the church door to the graveside, there was a brief conversation between the men, and the youngest, only a boy really, put down his spade and ran swiftly to the vestry. Crowther smiled thinly as the boy returned a moment later with the vicar on his heels, adjusting his collar and trying to look as if he had meant to be there all along.

  Crowther glanced at Miss Trench. It was at her insistence they were there at all. The strange sinuous current that spread news between the households, between the sexton’s boy and the butcher’s, which then found its way into Caveley Park with the beef shanks, meant that Rachel knew that the burial would take place that evening before Harriet and Crowther had even thought of it. When they had returned from the inquest, they found their late dinner already laid out and Rachel determined they should be quick about it as they would have to turn back into the village within the hour. Harriet had protested.

  “Rachel, we must have some peace! And some time to talk about what has passed.” She looked up wide-eyed at her sister from the little sofa where she had dropped. “Surely that is the best service we can render to Mr. Brook—that we discover why he died and at whose hand. You don’t think it was an unlucky thief, do you?”

  Her sister’s slim frame shone with all the moral conviction that eighteen years, and only eighteen years, can give.

  “No. I wish I could, but no. But you can consider later, or tomorrow, Harriet. You too, Mr. Crowther. This poor man will only be buried once, and I think someone should bear witness to that. Would you like to be put in the ground all alone and unmourned?”

  “I doubt very much I’d care at that point.” Harriet saw she had lost the argument and abandoned her attempt at reasonable sweetness. She folded her arms and buried her chin in her chest. “And how are we fit to mourn him, anyway? I only met the man when he was cold.”

  Rachel clenched her hands, and looked in danger of stamping her foot.

  “Harry, it is the right thing to do, and you know it. You are bearing witness to his death—very well, then bear witness to his funeral. Whatever sort of a man he was, he was one of God’s creatures and deserves this courtesy from the rest of us.”

  Harriet did not move—except, Crowther noted, to wrinkle her nose when God was mentioned. Rachel narrowed her eyes.

  “If you do not come, I shall ask Mr. Crowther to take me alone. Really, Harry, if you are going to be thinking about death all evening, you may as well do it in the peace of a churchyard.”

  That made her sister laugh at least, and so it was agreed. Before their supper had time to settle in their stomachs they set off for the village again, this time on foot as Harriet felt the carriage would carry, along with themselves, altogether too much noticeable pomp for such a quiet visit.

  Seeing the priest tumble out to the graveside, Harriet was glad her sister had bullied her, and it was a good place to think about death. She had not been surprised by the verdict of the coroner, although she wondered how many of the villagers truly believed it. It had been a very convenient conclusion, plausible enough if one could swallow the notion of robbers pursuing each other in leisurely fashion over a day’s ride for the sake of a ring. For a moment she considered the option of believing it herself. She could then put on the self-satisfied smile of a country matron, play with the baby and go about seeing only what was in front of her, like her sister. She frowned quickly, knowing the characterization was untrue and unfair, and angry with herself for thinking it. The priest caught the expression and looked momentarily confused, checking his prayer book to be sure the fiery Mrs. Westerman had not found him out in some mistake. Reassured, he read on.

  Harriet looked across at her sister. She was not self-satisfied in the least, and knew more than Harriet about the pressures and secrets of life in the country. The trouble with Rachel was, she was actually good. It gave her a patience and moral certainty her sister sometimes envied, and sometimes found almost unbearable. When they had finished their prayers, Rachel gave her hand to the priest with a smile that made him look comically proud. Harriet and Crowther made their bows and the little party moved away back onto the road to Caveley, each traveling in their own thoughts to various destinations.

  They had not gone far when they saw the figure of a man ahead of them. The evening was still bright enough to see, before they had approached much farther, that it was Hugh Thornleigh. Crowther felt more than saw the slight falter in Rachel’s steps, and from the corner of his eye observed her chin lift in determination. What torture it must be, he thought, to live always in the presence of disappointed love. He wondered why Harriet had not taken her sister away. Perhaps it was Rachel’s own decision to face her demons daily. It would not be Crowther’s recommendation for an easy mind, no matter what the habits of industry and religion did to ease her.

  Hugh became conscious of their presence and turned. They exchanged bows.

  “I came to see Brook buried,” he told them. “Thought someone should, and Cartwright wouldn’t. Not very happy to be associated with such types as it is. Then I saw you, and thought I wouldn’t bother. It was good of you to go. Like you. Well. Good evening.”

  There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that these words were meant for Rachel, but all maintained the polite pretense that the remarks were general. Harriet cleared her throat as if to begin speaking, though she had no idea at that moment what could be said, when she was saved by a shout from the rising slope behind them on the edge of the park of Thornleigh Hall. A boy was running down the slope toward them, his rough jacket flying out behind him and his feet slipping over the long grass.

  “Mr. Thornleigh, Mr. Thornleigh, come quick, sir!”

  “What is it?”

  The boy tumbled to a halt beside them. He was very pale.

  “Nurse Bray! In the witch’s cottage.”

  He turned and ran back the way he had come. Crowther looked at Harriet. She was already picking up her skirts to set off after the boy. She said tersely, “It’s an old keeper’s cottage on the edge of the wood.”

  She began to head up the slope, Crowther, Rachel and Hugh all following. Behind the trees at the top of the rise Crowther got his first sight of the broken-up little house. It was indeed suitable for witches, if your imagination were that way inclined. Its walls and ceiling were punctured and cloaked by trees, and its remaining stonework covered in ivy. The wide door was ajar, hanging with horrible determination by the last of its hinges. The party by a common consent came to a halt in the lee of the wall. The little boy pointed in through the doorway, the whiteness of his skin making the dirt on his face stand out. He looked like a sentimental allegory of the pastoral and picturesque. They stepped forward, Hugh leading the way, their eyes struggling to make sense of the patterns of light and dark in the interior. Rachel suddenly screamed and turned into Harriet’s arms. The latter held her, looking past her sister’s buried head into the depths with wide eyes. The two men paused as if caught by the withdrawing motion of a great wave.

  A woman’s body was hanging from one of the low beams that ran over their heads. Her face was dark, her tongue forced out between her teeth. He
r feet brushed the air only inches above the stone floor, and with a creak of wood and hemp her body still turned slightly in the vague breeze of the evening. The motion brought her face to face with them. Harriet knew that face, distorted as it was. Nurse Bray, one of the staff at Thornleigh who had arrived like a gift from God soon after the illness of Lord Thornleigh; she had cared for him ever since. Harriet turned away a little, keeping Rachel shielded. She squeezed her eyes shut, very hard, and waited for her heartbeat to slow.

  “We must get her down. Is that barrel still sound?” Crowther’s voice.

  There was a hollow hammer of a gentleman’s boot on wood as the barrel was kicked and tried, then a scrape of wood on stone as someone dragged it across the floor.

  “Mr. Thornleigh, do you carry a knife?”

  There was a pause, the snap of an opening blade, then a horrid sawing of rope. Harriet remembered the sounds of the sick room during battle; under the curses and groans and explosions it seemed one could always hear the rasp of the surgeon’s saw on bone. There was a snap as the rope gave, a grunt of effort from Hugh as he took the weight, and a sigh as he placed the body on the ground.

  “She is dead?” Hugh’s voice now.

  “Oh, yes.” Crowther’s dry response.

  Harriet opened her eyes. Crowther was kneeling beside the body, Hugh standing to one side.

  “Damn!”

  Hugh’s curse echoed in the empty ruin, and like the report of a gun it disturbed the crows roosting in the woods around them. They flew up from their nests with angry shouting echoes. Rachel flinched, then pulled herself free from her sister’s arm. Keeping her eyes carefully averted from where the body lay, she walked straightbacked to the doorway. Harriet turned to watch her speaking to the boy.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jack.”

  “We must stay outside, Jack.” She put out her hand and the lad fitted his dirty fingers into her black glove and allowed himself to be led out into the fading light.

  Harriet leaned her back against the roughly rendered wall and observed Crowther while she calmed herself. He was running his eyes over the body as if he were reading a text. He lifted his hand to move the folds of cloak and rope at the nurse’s neck, and then looked up at Harriet. She understood his meaning.

  “Mr. Thornleigh, perhaps you will be so good as to go and fetch your people? This body at any rate is most decidedly your business.”

  Hugh shot her an angry look and strode out of the door.

  As soon as Harriet heard his steps fading outside she moved across the open space and crouched down opposite Crowther. He looked at her.

  “Making him angry certainly made him leave faster. But I’m afraid he’ll walk much more quickly now.”

  She smiled up at him briefly in return, then gestured toward the doorway just beyond which Rachel and the boy were waiting, and lifted a finger to her lips. Crowther nodded.

  He looked back to the body, and lifted the nurse’s right wrist with a sudden frown. It was deeply bruised where the radial artery was buried under the soft flesh on the underside of the wrist, and spotted with blood under the skin at the sides where the bones of the arm were tied onto the delicate bones of the hand. The body moved easily; she had not been dead longer than a couple of hours. Harriet had removed her gloves and tucked them into her gown, and having seen what he had noticed, took up the nurse’s left hand. Here the bruising was most brutal across the top of the wrist. She lifted it to her eyes, and ran a fingertip over the impressions. She teased something up onto her fingernail then presented it to Crowther. He looked. A fiber. She laid the hand gently down again and stretched her own arms out across the body, crossing them, one on top of the other at the wrist.

  “Rope,” she mouthed silently.

  Crowther felt a coldness swim through his stomach despite the warmth of the evening. He looked closely again at the nurse’s right hand, flexing the dead fingers as an idle man might play with his beloved’s hand on a drawing-room sofa. One fingernail was broken, and three were clogged with skin, and a little blood. He looked up to check Harriet was observing, and understood what she saw. Her jaw was set, and her body was all attention. Crowther laid down the hand, and as if of one mind they looked up to the horribly distorted face.

  “I shall cut away the rope at the neck,” Crowther said very quietly, and did so, revealing the horrid purple where it had pressed against her throat till she was choked.

  He felt with his long fingers for the vertebrae at the back of the neck. They had not broken. She had died from lack of air. It was not a gentle death. Crowther remembered his occasional duties for his professors waiting under the gallows, hoping to claim the body for dissection with the aid of a number of bribes and the assistance of a few men hired to hold back the mob. He had observed both quick and slow deaths from hanging. If the fall did not break the unfortunate’s neck, sometimes their friends would rush under the scaffold and cling onto their legs, pulling down with all their weight, so the final agonies would come as quickly as could be managed. He had seen mothers dragging down their sons’ feet in that way, killing them quickly being the last service they could render to their children. It was the noise that was most unpleasant; the struggle of air gargling uselessly in the closed bowl of the throat, the swish of the legs kicking out like a puppet show, the dance in the air. He wondered if anyone had held the nurse’s legs to shorten her agony.

  Harriet, very tenderly, began to feel the back of the nurse’s head. She remembered doing the same for a midshipman of her husband in their last cruise together. The surgeon had just removed the boy’s leg below the knee, but it was the splinter that Harriet found embedded in the back of the skull, and hidden under his thick black hair, that had done for him. Even as the memory bubbled and fell back in her mind she felt a change of texture in the nurse’s scalp, a mass on the back of the skull. She brought up her hand, dirty with blood not yet fully dry, and showed it to Crowther. He too felt the place on the scalp, then ran his hand lightly over the rest of the body, but could find nothing of significance.

  He stood and examined the beam above them, the curl of rope over it now looking innocent enough. Harriet stood next to him, trying to clean her hand with her handkerchief. It was too delicate an object for the task. Crowther heard her mild curse, and handed her his own without comment. She worked the stuff off her palm and put her gloves back on, before handing the handkerchief back with a sorry shake of her head. When she spoke, the lowness of her voice made him realize she was still very conscious of the potential listeners outside.

  “I did not notice where the barrel was when we came in.”

  He wondered if he should still be surprised that their thoughts tended to travel down the same path in these circumstances.

  “I was trying to recall. Over there.” He indicated the left-hand wall. “And it was on its side, so it could have rolled there when Nurse Bray kicked it away.”

  She looked at him with an eyebrow raised.

  “No, Mrs. Westerman, I have not gone mad. This woman was murdered. But I am thinking how a jury might twist it into suicide.”

  “Harry?” It was Rachel just beyond the doorway, trying to find her sister in the gloom without having to see the body. Crowther saw Harriet glance down at her glove quickly and pull it further over her wrist before she responded.

  “Yes, Rachel?”

  “There is something out here. Someone has set a fire and it is still warm. There seems to be something in it ...”

  Before Rachel had a chance to complete the sentence Harriet and Crowther were sweeping by her. She pointed a little way into the wood past the boy Jack, and just off the path that ran in front of the ruined cottage. There was a fresh pile of ash on the bare earth of the floor, containing several charred fragments of wood kindling and the suspicious pale ash of burned paper. Crowther lowered his palm. It was the faintest memory of heat, but it was there. Harriet gently poked at the ash with a thin twig.

  “I can’t see a
nything written,” she said.

  Crowther poked Hugh’s knife deeper into the ash, and found at its tip a slightly larger scrap that had survived the flames. Both sides were written on; it seemed to be the bottom corner of a sheet of paper.

  “Letters. I am sure of it.” He pointed to another scrap where the word Hall could just be read. Harriet did not respond. She was looking down at his hands with an expression of horror. His glance followed hers. The knife he held was darkly stained. He started.

  “Hugh’s?” she hissed.

  He nodded. Rachel called them.

  “Have you found something, Harriet?”

  Mrs. Westerman stood very quickly, blocking Crowther’s slow examination of the knife from the view of her sister.

  “Letters. But all burned up.”

  Jack looked up from the small section of forest floor he had been studying.

  “Nurse Bray was always very pleased to get letters,” he said.

  Harriet felt excitement rise in her throat. She stepped over very carefully to the boy, and knelt beside him.

  “Who was it wrote her letters, Jack?”

  The boy looked a little overawed, and glanced up at Rachel. She smiled down at him, and that seemed to make him braver.

  “London. She was very private about them though. Others thought she was a bit stuck up, ’specially after a letter had come. We used to say she wouldn’t see fit to know us for a day or two after a letter came, and she never said what was in them. Rest of the time she was all right, though. Used to buy sugar treats sometimes on her day off, and shared them about easily enough.” The boy’s lip trembled suddenly. “I won’t have to look after his lordship now, will I? Now she’s dead? I don’t like him.”

  Rachel crouched and put an arm around his painfully thin shoulders. “Why don’t you like him, Jack?”

  The boy looked into her face round-eyed. “He makes horrid noises, miss. Like this.”

  He moaned suddenly, letting his mouth drop open and his head fall forward and rock from side to side. Harriet recoiled slightly.