“Not at all, not at all, Mrs. Westerman!”
Crowther settled himself with a convincingly bored sigh and there was a moment of silence as the two men watched Mrs. Westerman take a sip of her water, and then, as if the effort of holding it were almost too much, place the glass on the table beside her. She then said rather more brightly: “So it was you who found the unfortunate Brook for Mr. Thornleigh, Mr. Cartwright. And how did that come about?”
The little man stiffened and looked confused. Hannah reentered with lemonade and three empty glasses. Harriet seemed to fall back into her chair a little, and took hers with a weak, “Thank you,” but as soon as Hannah was out of the room again her condition seemed to improve, and she looked at Mr. Cartwright with steady, friendly attention. He glanced from one to the other and his skin acquired a slight sheen. He reminded Crowther of a cornered amphibian.
“There is a coffee shop I visit during my buying trips to London. I knew Brook very slightly from there. I may, in my dealings with Captain Thornleigh, have mentioned some of the types I had met in London.” He seemed to feel the importance of at least appearing to become a little more comfortable and leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs. Crowther noticed for the first time that his pantaloons were a most remarkable shade of yellow.
“Sometimes, for the amusement of my friends, I am in the habit of composing little character sketches of some of those I come across in the great city. I always hope to have something new for Captain Thornleigh when I see him.”
Harriet smiled broadly at him. “It is such a thing to have the talent to amuse!” Cartwright raised his hand as if to brush away this praise, coloring faintly. “So he knew that you might be able to find help for him?”
“I suppose so, though I stressed I could not answer for Brook’s character, and advised Captain Thornleigh most strongly that he should make no advances of money without some tokens of proof.”
Crowther put his fingers together and let his gaze travel slowly over Cartwright, until he was sure the man was aware of the scrutiny, and uneasy under it.
“Why do you always refer to Mr. Thornleigh by his military title, Mr. Cartwright?”
The little man bristled again. “I had a wife and a son once, Mr. Crowther. A daughter too, though she is off and married now, thank the Lord. Both my wife and son were lost to me in the first years of the American Rebellion. My son was killed in Boston, and my wife took ill and died within a month of the news arriving. Captain Thornleigh knew my boy all his life. Carried him to the camp on his own shoulders, and held his hand while he died.”
Crowther thought again of the masks people wore, blended into their skins like cosmetics for the show of the day-to-day. How much more interesting people were when grief or consideration cleaned their grease-paint away.
“First thing Captain Thornleigh did when he got back was come and see me here, before he even went to his own home to change his coat. He came here to tell me Tom died like a man—something that would make any father proud.”
“That was very good of him, Joshua,” Harriet said quietly.
The man sniffed a little and nodded.
“He keeps me in mind too, even after all these years. He brought me a bottle of something from the Hall this morning with his apologies for involving me in this business. He can have a sharp tongue and rough manner at times, but he is a good soul still. And if he asked me any favor in the world, I’d do it. Not much one can do to thank a man for being there when your boy dies, and seeing he doesn’t die alone. Our Tom wouldn’t have been so scared, not with Captain Thornleigh there. So if he asks me to find him someone who’ll be thorough and cunning in his enquiries, I’ll walk to the end of the earth to do it.”
Crowther let the ice in his own voice thaw.
“So your son knew Claver Wicksteed as well?” he said.
Mr. Cartwright pulled himself together and looked up with a shrug of surprise.
“He did, yes—though there was only one mention of him in Tom’s letters. Mr. Wicksteed was not a favorite, I think. Tom thought he was a spy. He said the lads mistrusted him as he was always writing things down in his little leather books. He does so still. I’ve seen him often enough, writing away with his glass beside him in the Bear and Crown. Though he keeps more to the Hall now, than he did at first. Even Captain Thornleigh we see less of these last months.” Cartwright frowned. “Not that Wicksteed ever bothered himself to say anything to me about Tom. Probably never even realized the connection. Only cares for himself and his position.”
His voice was bitter. Harriet sipped her lemonade.
“It appears Mr. Thornleigh trusts you more than his own steward, judging by the request he made of you regarding Brook.”
Mr. Cartwright scratched a little under his ear as he considered.
“Oh, I don’t know if I could say that, Mrs. Westerman. It is most likely Captain Thornleigh just remembered that I had mentioned Brook, or a man like him in conversation.”
Harriet nodded. Crowther tilted his head on one side.
“Did you see Brook on his way to meet Mr. Thornleigh?”
Cartwright started.
“You did? Mr. Cartwright, do tell us,” Harriet said eagerly.
Mr. Cartwright looked about him with great nervousness. “How can that matter? The coroner said that it was a thief come from London who killed him. Let it rest.”
“And Nurse Bray?”
“It was a suicide, they are saying. Undoubtedly. She was no doubt depressed by being always in company with Lord Thornleigh, and if she wished to burn her papers before taking such a desperate step, then why should she not?”
“Mr. Cartwright, whatever is being said, I tell you sure as I sit here, that that poor lady was murdered,” Harriet informed him. “And it must be bound up with Brook’s death, you see? You’re probably right that any meeting you had with Brook just before his death is of no significance, but please do tell us anything you can. I pray I am wrong, but I cannot sleep easy in my bed, or think of my little boy, my sister or the baby at play with any calmness while I suspect there may be darker dealings taking place. You’re a good man and father. You would feel the same, would you not?”
The appeal to Cartwright as parent and protector was a wise one. He looked down at his knees and sighed, then seemed to make up his mind to speak.
“I did see Brook on his way into town, and spoke to him.”
“And did you observe anyone on the road behind him?” Crowther asked.
“No, sir.” Cartwright glanced at them sadly. “I am afraid I did not.”
Crowther was almost sorry himself. “And what passed between Brook and yourself?”
“He hailed me at the edge of the village, to thank me for putting some work his way. He seemed very pleased with himself.” Cartwright paused and looked about him guiltily. “He showed me the ring—said he got it while the family was out visiting neighbors. Which shows he may have boasted about it elsewhere, and to the wrong man, does it not?”
Harriet said very softly, as if she was pulling free a strand of some very delicate fiber, “Did he tell you how he got the ring?”
Cartwright resumed contemplation of his knee, and coughed a little before replying. “Said he lifted it from the man’s bureau in his parlor—from Alexander.”
Crowther’s tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth. “And did he tell you where Alexander was?”
Cartwright looked deeply distressed.
“He had it written on a bit of paper,” he mumbled.
Harriet looked up sharply and caught Crowther’s eye.
“He waved it about, talking of the money he would get for it,” Cartwright went on. “Better than a banknote, he said. I’ve tried so hard to remember. I told Captain Thornleigh I have tried, but nothing comes. Meadow Street, perhaps—I cannot be sure.”
Crowther felt his heart thud heavily in his chest. Harriet wet her lips.
“Anything more, Joshua? Did he say anything more about Alexander?”
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“Only that it had been the devil’s own work to find him. New name, new situation. He said he thought no other man in London could have done it, and that was as much by luck. Said it was my mention of Alexander being wild for music, he followed that route first. And I’d told him all I knew of Alexander—his looks, and the bad leg and all. It was that and some child he chanced upon which led him to the right place. Thought himself very smart for taking a sketch of the Thornleigh coat of arms with him too.” He looked up at them again. “It was getting late, so he took himself off. Never seen a man look so pleased with himself.”
“He was on foot?” Crowther asked.
“Yes. Must have staged down to Pulborough.” The little man looked up at them again. “I didn’t know what to say at the hearing. They didn’t ask me anything. I told Mr. Hugh afterward, though it felt like a cruelty, and Wicksteed stuck to his side throughout. It didn’t seem to add anything but salt to the problem. I wish I could see that paper in my mind more clearly.”
Crowther blinked slowly over his tented fingertips. “The mind is a mystery, Mr. Cartwright. Try not to struggle with it too much. As you go about the work of the day, let the meeting with Brook play in your imagination from time to time. You may well know more than you think.”
Cartwright looked at him hopefully. “Do you think so, sir?”
“Such things have occurred in the past.”
“It would be such a comfort to help the captain. I shall do as you say.”
They left him soon afterward, with all the proper compliments and considerations. Crowther turned back to see the draper standing lost in thought at the street door where he had showed them out. His bulging eyes were fixed on the ground, his lips moving gently as he attempted to recover those lost filaments of memory—the only things, it seemed, that now bound Alexander to Hartswood at all.
4
Mrs. Westerman was lost in thought as they followed the path back to Caveley. Crowther looked about him at the thick and heavy hedgerows, fat with new growth, fists of Queen Anne’s Lace and curls of white bindweed. He wondered how his old lands were thriving under a new master. He had never met the man who bought the estate. He knew from his former agent that he was a brewer who, having established a fortune and married his daughter to a lord, now wanted some slice of convenient country to call his own. The agent had quoted him: “A true Englishman will never count himself truly happy till he has a bit of land to feed his children from.” Crowther had been glad to be rid of it. It was never supposed to be his, like the title, until the hanging of his elder brother. The ground would recognize a better master and flourish under a wise hand rather than an old name.
He realized they had turned up toward the copse where Brook had been discovered and glanced at his companion, wondering if the direction of her steps was unconscious or the result of some plan on her part. She caught the look and the question without him having to speak it.
“I was wondering if there were anything we could learn from the scene of the first murder. We would not have noticed the ashes of the letters by the witch’s cottage if Rachel had not seen the fire.”
Crowther considered a second.
“You think we may at least find Mr. Thornleigh’s cigar end, if he waited as he said?”
She nodded. “It would prove nothing, of course. But I might feel more like trusting him if we were to find it.”
They reached the spot and Mrs. Westerman went to the little bench in the clearing and took a seat as if waiting for an appointment there. She then bent far forward and turned the dry leaves at her feet over with her gloved hand. He stood to one side watching her. She worked with delicate and precise attention widening the arc of her hand with each sweep, softly biting her lower lip in concentration.
“Ah!” She straightened, the fat brown squib of a smoked cigar held between thumb and forefinger. He approached and took it from her, and held it up to his long thin nose as she dusted her hands clean.
“Yes, I think so, Mrs. Westerman.” He placed it in his palm and poked at it with one fingernail. “I would say this has not been here long, and that it was a good smoke in its time.”
“So Hugh did sit here awhile.” She looked at the view, with her hand cupping her chin. “However, Brook was surprised, so Hugh is unlikely to have sat here waiting for him in full view—if he was the murderer.”
“And the fact that the ring was left on the body would suggest the murderer had no time to search it when the killing was done, so it is unlikely he took his ease, having murdered Brook.”
“Unlikely, but not impossible. Hugh may have forgotten all about the ring, and wished to compose himself before returning to the house.”
“Indeed.”
Crowther took out his handkerchief and wrapped the stub in it, unsure why he did so, only thinking that it seemed disrespectful to her efforts in finding it to throw it back onto the ground. She looked out into the view again. The leaves of the oak on the slope before them stirred in the wind, the dense flowers of green shifting forward and falling back again.
“I would give a great deal to see those notebooks of Wicksteed’s,” she said to the air.
“Do you think it likely he will have written down what he knows? No one has told us he is an imbecile.”
Crowther took a seat beside her, but facing away toward where Brook was found. She did not reply for a while. The quiet of the place, its comfort, began to reach into his bones. He was as far above it as the clouds. He looked up to where they swelled and towered in the blue and amongst the leaves. She spoke again, as if there had been no gap in the conversation.
“I think he is an intelligent man, and a ruthless one. But I suspect myself: perhaps I still do not wish to call Hugh a murderer. And whoever killed Brook must have been in at the death of that poor woman also. I could not forgive myself if a man whom I had trusted had had a hand in the hanging of a middle-aged woman. I must think of her, and it makes my blood cold. She fought, and no help came.”
Crowther let the picture form in his mind. The older woman ... was she tricked into going to the cottage of her own free will with the letters in her hand? Perhaps—but by whom? He could not think of anyone but Hugh with whom she could have made such an appointment. It was he who had been searching for Alexander. Surely if she had decided to reveal her supposed secret knowledge of Alexander’s whereabouts, she would have gone to him. Whoever she had agreed to meet, she had come in trust and been attacked. She must have realized that whoever she had met had meant her harm, for she had struck out, caught someone.
“Was the Thornleigh family at church this morning?” Crowther asked suddenly.
“Yes. Lady Thornleigh came in on Hugh’s arm. She likes to give the populace a chance to admire her from time to time and we do. It is impossible not to.”
“And Wicksteed?” She nodded. “I take it you would have mentioned to me by now if anyone attending had scratch marks apparent.”
She did not look at him, but he could hear the dry smile in her voice.
“Yes, I rather think I should have done.”
“If not the face, then it is most likely the arms of the attacker that are scratched.” Crowther pictured a man, waiting for the nurse in the cottage with the rope standing by, removing his coat in preparation for the heavy, physical work of killing another human being. The scene shifted in his head. The woman with her wrists bound, struggling, watching the rope being slung over the beam.
Harriet spoke. “She must have been gagged.”
No ride to Tyburn with all the crowd hooting and leering could be more terrifying than lying in that cottage on a summer afternoon, wrists tearing at the rope, gagging at the fine linen in one’s throat. He looked deep into the wood.
“I know you are not looking for comfort, but remember that blow to the back of her head. She may have been unconscious from that injury when her murderer put the rope around her neck.”
Harriet kicked at the ground beneath her feet.
“Perh
aps. The wound was bloody, but the skull was not broken. It is as likely the blow was to stop her struggling while her wrists were tied, and she woke straining against them.”
Crowther could feel the cold earth of the ground against his cheek, the aching head, the desperate pull at the wrists. He could see the gloom, a gentleman’s boots stepping in and out of his range of vision as the slow preparations were made. He felt terror run through under his skin as if it had been injected into his bloodstream like mercury, slippery and cold.
“That is as likely, Mrs. Westerman.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “We should ask the squire to make a search of Thornleigh Hall. Check everyone in the household for scratches. Do you think he would dare?”
She shifted a little in her seat to look at him, her head to one side.
“Perhaps if the coroner finds the case to be one of murder, but I doubt it. Even if he found something suspicious, such scratches could be explained away, and the unpleasantness could be extreme.”
Crowther nodded slowly and got to his feet.
“Then we must find it ourselves—and quickly. In three or four days any wounds Nurse Bray left on her killer will have healed, and the moment be lost.”
Graves felt his heart sink. Having persuaded Susan and Miss Chase back to the table on which the black boxlay, and lifted up the first armful of papers it held, he found only faulty copies of old scores. His stomach lurched. He had not realized what faith he had put in the contents of the box. He stood to hide his emotion from the ladies and walked over to the window to stare down into the street—only to find himself looking directly into the upturned face of Molloy. He moved away again sharply.
Miss Chase had taken a handful of papers and was carefully turning them over in front of her, when she said, “Mr. Graves, I think I have found something.”
He took a seat opposite her and she slid a letter over to him. It was written in a simple, careful hand—female, he would guess—and dated some four years in the past. Above the date was written simply Thornleigh Hall, Sussex. He looked across at Susan, who blinked widely at him, and began to read aloud:
Instruments of Darkness Page 17
