Instruments of Darkness

by Imogen Robertson

  “What is it, Susan? Does it hurt you to see it?”

  The girl looked a little wildly from side to side at the adults.

  “I don’t know what to do with it! Am I to wear it? I think it is too big for my finger. What if it fell off in the street!”

  She burrowed her head into the young woman’s shoulder and cried so hard, Graves was almost frightened for her. He caught Miss Chase’s eye, and opened his mouth hoping to find something of use to say. Miss Chase shook her head very slightly at him, and cradled and shushed the little girl till her sobs lessened a little. With one hand she then felt at her neck, and drew up a simple gold chain that hung under her bodice.

  “Susan, my love, I have an idea. I think it would be a fine thing for you to wear your mother’s ring. Let’s hang it on this old chain of mine.”

  Susan looked up, unsure, but hopeful.

  “But it is yours,” she said.

  Miss Chase looked quite severe.

  “It is my gift to you. Look, the clasp is very secure.” Susan operated the little catch and bit her lip. “Now we may put your ring on it,” she did so, “and fasten it round your neck.”

  Susan let the light chain be placed over her head, and held up the ring so it caught the light.

  “There,” said Miss Chase, leaning back. “You can wear it under your bodice, as I did, so it is always close to your heart, and safe as if it were in the Bank of England.”

  Susan smiled consciously and tucked the chain away. Graves watched, his feelings as the admirer of one woman, and protector of the other, tumbling over in his chest like flag-waving acrobats. Susan leaned into Miss Chase’s embrace again, and they looked at the box, the great pile of papers it contained making Susan shrink against Miss Chase’s arm. Keeping the little girl secure, Miss Chase reached out for the black lid, and closed it over the papers again. Graves stirred a little, as if about to protest. He met command in Miss Chase’s eye.

  “That is enough for now. We can look at the papers later. They will keep, and I think Susan and I should take a turn round the square.”

  He heard Susan sigh with relief, and kept silent.

  2

  Harriet took a drink from her coffee cup, tapping her foot impatiently on the carpet. Crowther wondered how she had managed to contain her energy on the relatively small stage of one of His Majesty’s ships. Even in the country it seemed that she never had enough room to move. While she gathered her thoughts to speak to her sister he considered. Perhaps it was not the physical space she occupied that bound her, but the delicate pressures of expectation and custom that wove the world around them into such tight ropes and checks. Invisible and made of stuff as slippery and delicate as silk, but strong, and tight, for all that. She sat forward in her chair and began to speak.

  “Very well. Hugh, it seems, asked Joshua Cartwright to find someone to look for Alexander, the heir to Thornleigh and its title. This man, Carter Brook, was engaged, and obviously found something—we know that because of the ring of Alexander’s he was carrying—but when he went to meet Hugh in the woods he was attacked and murdered before he could tell Hugh anything.”

  “So says Mr. Hugh Thornleigh,” murmured Crowther, keeping his eyes on Rachel. She must have prepared herself for this, he thought, since his implication that the man she had once loved might be a liar and murderer drew no reaction.

  Instead, she said calmly to her sister, “Finding, or preventing Alexander from being found, must be at the bottom of this, surely?”

  “Yes.” Harriet twisted her head a little to look out of the window as she spoke. “All the wealth of the estate, and the title depends on Alexander being found, as you know. Though of course if he cannot be traced, or is found to be dead, or is declared to be dead after proper searches have been made, then Hugh inherits everything. For now it is by common consent that he runs the estate.”

  Crowther cleared his throat. “I have wondered why the family has not taken steps to have Viscount Hardew declared dead before now. His absence has been so extended, and nothing seems to have been heard from him.”

  Harriet shrugged. “The current lord still lives, after a fashion. Perhaps that means the family do not think the case pressing. He has already survived five years in this half-state.”

  “You do not think Hugh ambitious to take the title?”

  “Hardly! Do you, Crowther?”

  “No. From what I have seen of him I think he wishes only to divide his time between the hunt and the bottle. But I could be very wrong. Something grates at him, makes him bitter. It may be the fact he has the responsibility for the wealth of his family, but no power to enjoy it. That may make him wish for Alexander’s return, as he says—or wish the missing heir to hell.”

  Crowther and Harriet’s attention had been drawn in the exchange to each other. When Rachel now spoke, calmly and firmly enough, they both turned to her, slightly surprised to find there were three in the conversation.

  “Suppose that everything Hugh and Mr. Cartwright said in front of the coroner was true, and Hugh’s motives purely looking to the good of his family rather than his own situation within it... why did not Hugh instruct his steward, Wicksteed, to try and find out about his brother? He has left everything else of moment about the estate to his care since he arrived.”

  “I can only conclude that Hugh wanted to gather, and act on, this information in secret, as he hinted at the hearing,” Crowther replied. “I was surprised, and not a little doubtful, when he ascribed that secrecy to a wish to protect the feelings of Lady Thornleigh. Unless he thought she might be harsher in her treatment and attitude to Alexander if he was in straitened or,” he paused, “disgraceful circumstances of one sort or another. And yet her talk about alarming duchesses does not suggest she would care much if his position were ... irregular. And if he is alive, she is quite as dependent on his goodwill as Hugh. If not more so.”

  Rachel nodded. Crowther leaned back in his chair with his fingers touching tips in front of his chest and continued, “From whom did he wish to keep matters secret then? Is Wicksteed more loyal to Hugh, due to their connection in the army, or has Lady Thornleigh gained influence with him? And what has Hugh to fear from either of them? What did our lady of the needle say, Mrs. Westerman?”

  Harriet made a face. “There is some gossip in the Hall that Wicksteed has made himself useful to Lady Thornleigh, and whatever their previous relations, no one in the Hall thinks Wicksteed is a favorite of Hugh’s.”

  “She must be very lonely in that big house,” Rachel murmured.

  “And is,” Crowther leaned forward, “Lady Thornleigh feared in any way by Hugh?”

  “He tolerates her presence with a bad grace and thinks nothing about her at all, I think,” Harriet answered. “At least, that was the feeling I had when we were friendly.” She paused and looked a little conscious. “But I have often thought there is something mysterious in his relationship with Claver Wicksteed. That man does seem to wield great power in the house, and I have always had the impression that he makes Hugh uneasy. I cannot think why Hugh put a man he seems to dislike so in such a position of power in his household.”

  “So Wicksteed—a man, we assume, of relatively obscure origin, and whatever talents or graces he has, there is nothing in his previous life we know of to suggest why he is qualified to be the center of power in one of the richest houses in the county—and yet he is.” Crowther scratched his chin. “We must see what we can do to find a little more out about the man. If he has some secret hold over Hugh, it is unlikely he would want to see the rightful heir return to Thornleigh Hall. Wicksteed may well not have that same power over the heir, Alexander, if he is found and tempted back home.”

  Harriet stared into her coffee cup as if searching for runes.

  “That does make some sort of sense,” she agreed.

  “But what is the nature of the power Wicksteed has over Hugh? Does it really exist? Might not Hugh simply think him a good manager, even if he is not personally f
ond?” Rachel said doubtfully.

  Crowther looked at her seriously. “We must suspect everything, and believe nothing till we have proof of it.”

  “That sounds like an immoral philosophy, Mr. Crowther.” Rachel smiled at him and he smiled back at her.

  Harriet had begun to rap her fingers against the fabric of her sofa again.

  “Mrs. Mortimer does not know of any hold Wicksteed has over Hugh, and if Belinda Mortimer does not know, I can guarantee you that no one else in the household can understand it either. And I think she has told me everything she knows.”

  “I saw her nephew arriving at the stables looking very bright,” Rachel said.

  Harriet grinned at her. “Well, I intend on spending your earnings from the skin salves on employing him, and getting him and James new boots.”

  “If Hugh is innocent,” Rachel said with a sigh, “do you think perhaps Wicksteed might have killed Brook to stop Hugh finding out where Alexander is, Mr. Crowther?”

  “Perhaps. It sounds to me as if what Wicksteed has, he has fought for. And it is generally acknowledged that when a man has had to strive for position or money, he is loath to give it up.”

  Rachel looked sadly into the middle distance and twisted a corner of her dress with her right hand, before saying in a low voice, “Unlike Alexander, who just walked away from it all.”

  Crowther felt the back of his neck prickle and his voice, when he spoke, seemed very far from him.

  “What we grow up with in profusion, we are less likely to value, as a rule.”

  Each of them stared quietly for a few moments at different parts of the foliage artfully woven into the commodore’s carpets. Harriet stirred first.

  “You are full of epigrams today, Crowther. We should gather them all together in a book for the edification of the public.” He gave her a slight bow from his chair. “We must go and see Mr. Thornleigh,” she said, and added to her sister, “Not you, my love, just Crowther and I.”

  “I doubt he will do anything other than damn us to hell, let alone tell us what, if any, hold Wicksteed has over him.”

  “Then let him. But if he is innocent, we must try to help him.”

  “And the nurse? Why was she murdered?” Rachel looked up at them. “I presume it was not by her own hand that she died.”

  “She was murdered,” Crowther agreed heavily. “I have no doubt on that score.”

  Harriet stood up and began to pace the salon between Crowther and her sister. Rachel followed her with her eyes, Crowther put his palms together as if in prayer and continued to stare at the floor and listen to the sisters speak.

  “But what possible share could she have had in the business?” Harriet wondered aloud.

  “Perhaps she did know the nature of Wicksteed’s hold on Hugh.” Rachel replied.

  Harriet stopped in her pacing and turned back to her sister. “Perhaps that was what was contained in those letters—but how could she know what it was, on a much shorter acquaintance with the house, when Mrs. Mortimer, who has been there regularly since before Hugh and Alexander were born, does not!”

  Crowther felt the air around him shift; a space, ready for a new thought, seemed to open up in the center of his mind. The shreds of some inspiration hung around him; if only he could knit them together in his brain ... There was something there, longing to take form.

  “When did Lord Thornleigh’s nurse arrive at the Hall?” he asked.

  Harriet turned to him with a shrug. “She has been in the area longer than us.” She swung back toward her sister. “Didn’t she arrive, by accident almost, a month or two after Lord Thornleigh became ill?”

  Rachel nodded. “Yes, she happened to be staging down to Brighton to stay with her sister, and heard about Lord Thornleigh on her way. She has had all sorts of experience with these illnesses in the past—acting as a nurse, you know—so she decided to walk over from Pulborough and offer her services. The household was very pleased to receive her.”

  The two women looked toward Crowther with curiosity, aware of the tension in his narrow frame. Even as the thoughts bound together like rope in his mind, he was ashamed to realize he was drawing great satisfaction from their attentive eyes, and when he spoke again, it was not without the air of an actor claiming the stage.

  “Of course. The mysterious letters from London. The timely arrival, then her murder. I have it!” He looked up from the floor, his eyes suddenly and almost unnaturally blue in his pale face. “Alexander sent her.”

  3

  Harriet ate her dinner quickly, and Crowther barely ate at all. As soon as the servants left the three to themselves, the revelation that Alexander might have sent Nurse Bray to Thornleigh was picked over again, and the women seemed ready to accept it as fact.

  “We have no proof,” said Crowther wearily, and for the third time.

  “There must be an inquest tomorrow,” Harriet replied a little crossly. “Perhaps Nurse Bray had friends at the Hall of whom we know nothing as yet. They may be able to inform us.”

  “I hope for their sake, if they exist, they do not know Alexander’s address,” Rachel sighed. “Having it seems to be very dangerous.”

  Crowther and Harriet looked at her, suddenly stilled.

  “If I were you,” she continued, “before going to the Hall and demanding that Hugh tell us if he is in the power of his steward, I would see what you can get from Mr. Cartwright. He is the only one we know who met Carter Brook when he lived, after all. He was so miserable to be seen to know Brook, perhaps he did not say everything he knew of him.”

  Crowther nodded. “You are quite right, Miss Trench. That is perhaps the best course of action.”

  Rachel helped herself to a little more of the fish, and grinned a little pertly at Harriet.

  “He will probably not wish to see you. So I would suggest a long walk in the heat to the village and a sudden attack of faintness just outside his shop, Harriet.”

  Crowther saw Harriet smile, and commented, “This country lost a great general when you were born a woman, Miss Trench.”

  “Every woman must think like a general from time to time, I think,” she answered with a slight bow. “And you’ll be glad to know the country also lost a great actress when my sister was brought up to be a respectable married woman.”

  Harriet mirrored her sister’s bow back to her with a slightly twisted smile.

  “I’m not sure I am behaving like a respectable married woman at the moment, Rachel.”

  Her sister widened her eyes a little. “Oh Harry, I did not say you were a respectable woman, just that you were brought up to be one!”

  Crowther wondered if Mrs. Westerman were about to throw her napkin, and suspected Miss Trench was saved only by the door opening and Mrs. Heathcote’s arrival to clear the dishes.

  Miss Trench had not exaggerated her sister’s skills. Crowther saw Mrs. Westerman prepare herself as they approached the shutters of Cartwright’s shop, taking her breaths in a shallow rush, but as her weight fell against him, just where Crowther could still reach the door-knocker, he could not have distinguished between a genuine spell of weakness and those symptoms that Harriet displayed. He only hoped his performance would be equal. He struck an urgent double clap at the door, and as soon as it was opened by a sweetheart-faced maid, the girl who became nervous when left alone, he supposed, he half-led, half-carried, Mrs. Westerman in before the girl could do any more than open and close her mouth. Crowther pushed at the first door he could see, which led into a modest parlor, and supported Harriet into a chair.

  The maid looked at them rather nervously, then said firmly, “Mr. Cartwright sends his apologies but he is much engaged with business today, and unable to receive callers.”

  Crowther composed his face into a severe frown and turned round sharply on his heel.

  “Dear girl, do you suppose Mrs. Westerman or myself are in the habit of making social calls in this manner?” The child lifted her chin. “Mrs. Westerman has been taken ill in the heat,
and requires a place to rest. Your master may go to the devil, for all I care.”

  Harriet looked up, her face flushed, her breathing still short, her eyes moist with appeal.

  “I just need a glass of water, and a chance to recover myself, Hannah. We found Nurse Bray yesterday, you know... I began to think of her poor face, and ...”

  Crowther was fascinated to see a large tear run down her cheek. Without thinking, he took her wrist in one hand and his watch in the other and started to take her pulse. Hannah stepped forward with a little sigh, and her shoulders relaxed.

  “Of course I’ll get you some water. You stay right there, ma’am.” She shot a bitter look at Crowther and turned quickly enough for her skirts to swish. The door rattled on its latch behind her.

  Mrs. Westerman’s pulse was steady and even as any man could wish. Crowther looked up from his watch and caught her eye. She winked at him. They could hear a muttered conversation in the hallway outside, and the door opened to allow the master himself in, bearing the water and leaning his upper body forward as he walked, as if he felt it dangerous to have his own head higher than either of his guests.”

  “Dear Mrs. Westerman! So sorry you are unwell.”

  He offered the glass. Harriet took it with a trembling hand.

  “Mr. Cartwright, so sorry to disturb you!” Her eyelashes fluttered, and he tutted away her apologies. “You know Mr. Crowther, I presume. Mr. Crowther, this is Mr. Cartwright.”

  Crowther drew himself up very straight and looked down his nose. “Ah, yes! The glove man.”

  Cartwright gave a slightly sick smile. “That’s right, sir. As I have had occasion to remark to you before, the name is above the door. But do take a seat.” He took a step back and opened the door into the hallway again. “Hannah! Fetch in some of that lemonade, if you will.”

  Harriet raised a hand. “We trouble you too much, sir.”