Graves colored a little.
“You have, sir,” he said. “You have.”
9
The day dropped its head toward evening. Caveley Park was quiet. Harriet and Rachel sat in the long salon saying nothing, but neither pretended to be occupied with anything more than their own thoughts. Harriet had gone upstairs for an hour when they had arrived home, and when they sat to eat Rachel thought she had been crying. They had made a poor attempt at dinner. The silence settled unhappily across the furnishings like dust. Time dripped slowly away, measured in quarters by the longcase clock in the hall. The chimes began to strike on Harriet’s nerves, their little brass hammers finding the knotted cords in her spine and making them ring. There was a soft knock at the door and Mrs. Heathcote came in with a note for Rachel.
“From the Hall, miss,” she said, without meeting her eyes, and withdrew. Harriet looked across at her sister with heavy eyes as the younger woman opened the note and read it, then folded the single sheet again and held it out toward Harriet as she spoke.
“I’m sorry, Harry. But I could not do otherwise. When you went up to rest I sent a note over to Mr. Thornleigh, simply to say I thought him innocent of the charge and trusted the truth would come out in time if he had patience.”
Harriet looked at her sister’s tranquil face. It was typical of Rachel to do such a thing, an act of kindness and generosity the man did not deserve. She hoped that someone who did merit that tender consideration would eventually appear. The girl should be loved for it, protected from it.
“Of course, my love,” she said. “No one could blame you for that.”
Rachel’s fingers still held the sheet. Harriet waited until her sister was ready to release the paper into her care. Harriet felt her forehead throb as she opened out the sheet. She had felt as weak as a child since they had returned home. She wept very rarely, and when she did it seemed to leave her empty and adrift. She read Hugh’s awkward scrawl. There was not much to decipher.
Thank you, Miss Trench. Patience has not served me well in the past, but neither has action improved my lot. I am grateful you do not think me capable of such crimes.
Hugh had added his compliments to them both and his name. Harriet turned the paper over in her hands as if she hoped some secret message might appear scribbled in the corner of the sheet.
“I wonder what he means? If one had the mind, one could read this as a full confession, Rachel.”
Her sister looked up at her with a slight frown.
“I thought when he says ‘action,’ he meant sending Brook to search for Alexander. That did seem to be the start of all this horror.”
Harriet nodded, and winced a little, her headache still insistent and angry. It had been punishing her all evening, and she always told everyone she was never ill. She would be more sympathetic with ladies who fancied themselves sick and nervous in future.
“Rachel, we have not spoken of Mr. Hugh Thornleigh for a long time.”
Rachel smiled a trifle bitterly. “Indeed? It seems to me we have spoken of little else for the last few days.”
“You know what I have in mind.”
Rachel did not look up, but covered her sister’s hand with her own.
“It is passing, Harry. I was very unhappy for a while, you know that. I am a little unhappy from time to time even now, but it is more like a memory of sadness, than sadness itself. Does that make sense?”
Harriet nodded. “I am so sorry, Rachel.”
“Don’t be, Harry.” Rachel looked at her with great tenderness. “It was through no fault of yours, and though I believe Hugh is innocent, I would not wish to be his wife now, nor have I wished it for many months. I promise you that. I am not the wife he needs, nor is he the man to make me happy. Still, there were moments ... when he used to talk about his campaigns with such enthusiasm, or his plans for the estate, there was a rightness about it. I miss thinking of the future with such happiness and excitement, Harry, that is all.”
Harriet closed her hand around her sister’s, and bowed her head.
There was another knock and Mrs. Heathcote opened the door again, with rather more of a flourish this time. The women looked up at her in surprise.
“Mr. Crowther for you, ma’am—and a Mr. Clode.”
They had not mentioned Crowther on the way home, though for her part Harriet had thought of little else, and she blamed her headache on him and his murderous family. It was not right of him to blame her for knowing. Lying on her bed upstairs she had concocted some half-plan of visiting him in the morning and demanding what he had learned from Cartwright of Alexander’s whereabouts, but no righteous indignation she could muster was able to smother the misery of his apparent defection and her own ill-tempered words. She stood cautiously as he was announced. If he gave them his usual dry smile, she would cross to him and give him her hand with all the joy in the world, but she doubted his demons were to be put aside so swiftly. Though if not, why had he come?
Crowther still looked dark and tired as he entered, and his bow to them was at best perfunctory. Harriet held herself back with a sting of regret, making her back straight, and her smile of welcome swift and cautious. He was followed into the room by a far younger man, dark-haired and slim. He was dressed well, the fashions suited him, and he carried about him an air of earnest seriousness. She smiled more gently at him, thinking perhaps she recognized him now, a face from the back of the crowd during the inquest. Crowther waved his hand over his shoulder, without looking at any of them directly.
“Mrs. Westerman, Miss Trench. May I present Daniel Clode?”
Rachel too was on her feet. They both curtsied, and Mr. Clode bowed. He seemed a little ill at ease, and could not lose his slightly worried smile. A gentleman, Harriet decided, though not an idle one.
Crowther continued: “Mr. Clode is a solicitor from Pulborough. He came to visit me this evening after the inquest, and having heard him explain his matter a little, I have asked him to lay it all before us both, madam.”
“I am happy to know you, Mr. Clode,” Harriet said. “Do take a seat.”
He did so with a small smile and a nod.
“Thank you, Mrs. Westerman.” His voice was a smooth baritone, with a touch of the local burr under it. “I knew this house a little when I was a boy and my uncle had business with the previous occupants. It seems to be doing very well under its present owners.”
Harriet mumured her thanks, and thought him a very sensible-looking man. He paused, and her gaze drifted to where Crowther sat, brooding over his cane as he had done in the back room of the Crown and Bear. At once she could not endure it, she could not sit under this cloud they had made between them, and before she had made, it seemed to her, any conscious decision, she found herself on her feet again. Mr. Clode stood also, looking faintly surprised. Crowther merely glanced at her sulkily.
“Mr. Clode, forgive my rudeness, but before we hear what you have to say, I must ask Mr. Crowther for a word in private. Rachel, perhaps you could ask Mrs. Heathcote for some refreshment for our guests.” She turned to Crowther. “Mr. Crowther, if you please, a moment of your time,” and without waiting to see him stand, she left the room and crossed the hallway into the empty dining room, holding the door until he followed her in. She let it close behind her as he walked into the room and turned to rest her back against it.
The lights had not been lit here. They were in a world of dove-gray shadows. Crowther stood in the middle of the room for a moment or two, till it was clear she was not going to speak, then, hardly looking in her direction, he grunted, “Well, madam?”
She felt her temper snap within her with the sudden concussion of a dried branch underfoot.
“Don’t ‘well, madam’ me, Crowther! How dare you? How dare you hate us for knowing your secret? It is appalling of you. I am sorry at what I said, but I was angry with you. You know we had no hand in making your situation public. We had no knowledge of it. Do you fear our sympathy? You shall get none from me. You
have had the luxury of being able to run away from any unpleasantness life can offer you. I can only envy you that.”
He stared at her in astonishment, very white about the mouth.
“Unpleasantness, Mrs. Westerman? You dare refer to what passed in my family as unpleasantness?”
She cursed herself for the word, but was carried forward again; the wind had caught her and there was no turning now.
“So you do wish for sympathy then. My mistake.” She looked him in the eye and would not be afraid. “Damn it, Crowther, you are perverse! I’m surprised you haven’t run through half a dozen identities by now if this is how you react to anyone knowing anything of your past. Strange how pride can make a man into such a coward!”
He took a step toward her; she felt the door at her back.
“If you were a man,” he said quietly, “I would kill you for such a remark.”
She felt her hand tremble a little where it was clasped behind her back. She turned her head, so her eyes looked directly into his own.
“Killing me would not make it any more or less true.”
Their faces were only a breath apart. She felt her heart beat, she thought of him where she had found him, among his preparations with his back to the world, thought, clearly, swiftly and for the first time how he removed himself from the stream of the day-to-day, had a sort of calm, how she had pulled him back into the swiftest of currents. Her eyes began to tear again; she blinked them away.
“Oh Crowther, I am so sorry. And so sorry if involving you in all this has caused you any distress.”
Her sympathy was a thousand times harder to bear than her anger. Two decades’ worth of grief rushed over him in a flood. He dropped the cane with a rattle and turning from her put his head into his hands. His shoulders shook, and a low groan escaped him. She did not move, but felt her body relax. The shadows in the room made him look like a creature of the lonely dark, and cold, but something uncomfortable and cruel between them seemed to fracture and wash away, like a child’s dam in a stream overwhelmed by spring floods.
Then she stooped down on her knees to pick up the cane. The long skirts of her day dress billowed out around her. She did not stand up again at once, but remained where she was, looking up at him. He sighed deeply, and passing his hand across his face, stepped slowly past her to one of the suite of long windows that lit the room, and looked out of it onto Harriet’s carriageway. It was open, and the oblivious breeze shifted the drapes a little. They carried with them the heavy memory of the heat of the day across the oak that defended the front of the house, and let it drift into the dining room. The scent was peaceful, calming.
“Forgive me.”
His voice sounded awkward, like a man who has not spoken in many years, and has not yet become used to forming words again. Harriet stood and walked to his side. She said nothing, but having put the cane in his hand, she let her fingers rest on his sleeve and left them there, looking out at the oak. It was a full minute before she spoke.
“The tree is one of the reasons we came to Caveley. My husband said he would worry less about us while at sea if he knew we had such a friend and guardian.”
He did not answer at once, but when he did he sounded a little more like his usual self.
“Do you really need a guardian, Mrs. Westerman?”
She smiled. “I’d like to think not. But everyone needs allies, don’t you agree, Mr. Crowther?”
“Perhaps.”
She glanced up to see the ghost of one of his weary smiles hovering on his lips. She felt her headache lift a little.
“Do you wish to speak of it at all?”
He knew what she had in mind, and shook his head slowly.
“No, not now. But perhaps at some point in the future. Tonight I wish to hear what Mr. Clode has to say.”
They remained together in the gloom a little longer, letting the peace between them deepen till it seemed right, sufficient. He offered her his arm, and they began to move away. “I am sorry I have not yet told you of Alexander’s whereabouts. I have feared at every point being overheard. Carter Brook found him in Tichfield Street.”
Harriet’s eyes widened. “I know it. Near Soho Square.” She smiled and Crowther opened the door for her into the salon. “Oh Crowther, perhaps we will be able to make sense of this horror in the end.”
10
Rachel and Mr. Clode were on their feet when Crowther and Harriet reentered the room. Rachel appeared to be giving him a tour of some of the curiosities dotted about the salon and describing where on Harriet’s and her husband’s travels they had been found. Harriet rather wondered if Rachel did not know their stories better than she did herself. They discovered them with Rachel laughing at her companion’s rather bemused expression as he looked at the carvings on a small bone flute. Harriet hoped for all their sakes that the serious young man did not examine it too carefully. It was normally played during the fertility rites of an island in the West Indies. Rachel looked into her eyes, and Harriet smiled at her. Mr. Clode bowed to them again, and placed the flute very carefully on the table. There was a certain light in his eye that made Harriet wonder if he had looked at the little instrument rather more closely than she had hoped. She was angry to find herself almost blushing.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Clode. I trust Rachel has not been boring you with sea stories?”
He smiled. “We have traveled to the Indies and back, crossed Europe and made a brief visit to Gibraltar, Mrs. Westerman. I have never been better entertained.”
Rachel looked pleased.
“You are very kind, sir,” Harriet said with a nod.
“I am fascinated, Mrs. Westerman.” He looked at her quite seriously, and Harriet recognized the attractiveness of black hair and blue eyes in him that she had first noticed when she met her husband. “I have barely been out of the county and would love to travel. It is a joy to hear your stories, and Miss Trench tells them very well, I think.”
How old was he, she wondered—twenty-five, twenty-six? Before she could stop herself she found she was thinking how handsome he and Rachel looked next to each other.
“I am sure she tells them better than I do, and my husband and I trust her to make us appear appropriately heroic. Now, Mr. Clode, I am at your disposal if there is something you wish to tell us.”
He immediately frowned again, and took the few moments it required for them to find their seats to consider.
“I feel perhaps—I hope you will indulge me—I should explain why I have not spoken first to the squire. I would have done, but of course with Mr. Thornleigh’s arrest immediately after the inquest was suspended... In short I walked around the village for some hours, and as the information I have is not strictly confidential, and having seen you both at the inquest . . . And the squire did not seem . . .”
He looked uncomfortable, but the decision had been taken during his walk about the village, and it seemed that nothing he now saw caused him to reevaluate it. Harriet wondered if he had any acquaintance with Michaels.
Crowther turned the cane between his palms and spoke calmly. “We understand you, Mr. Clode. And respect your scruples.”
The young man nodded. “Thank you. My uncle is the senior partner in our practice in Pulborough. I have been with him two years now, but he is away and I thought perhaps I could seek your guidance, the squire being . . . unavailable.”
“Thank you for your trust,” Harriet said.
They waited a moment longer. Mr. Clode looked at his cuff. Harriet felt her impatience rise again, but held herself steady till the young man continued.
“Lord Thornleigh’s nurse, Madeleine Bray, left a will with us for safekeeping.”
Harriet straightened suddenly and looked brightly across at Crowther. He held up his hand as if to ward something away.
“That is as much as I know too, Mrs. Westerman. When Mr. Clode had told me that much, I asked him to accompany me here.”
Harriet was pleased, though felt herself a litt
le guilty for being so. It did not seem appropriate to be jealous of information, and she still had her own secrets to tell, but nevertheless she was glad that what more Mr. Clode had to tell, he would share with them both. Crowther turned his eyes back on the young man.
“Tell on, Mr. Clode.”
“Drawing up the will was one of the first duties I took on for my uncle, so I remember Mrs. Bray well. When I heard of her death in town, I decided to attend the inquest to see if I could make contact with her legatees. My uncle and I are to act as executors.”
Crowther nodded and examined the fingernails on his right hand. Mr. Clode looked a little uncertain. Rachel saw he was looking at Crowther and smiled at him.
“Do not mind Mr. Crowther. He always does that when he is particularly interested in what he thinks one is about to say next.” Crowther looked at her, one eyebrow raised. “You do, you know,” she told him.
Crowther cleared his throat and returned his hand to his cane. Rachel turned back to the young man.
“Do go on, Mr. Clode.”
He nodded to her.
“Mrs. Bray had, it seems, few relatives or friends in the world, but to them she left rather more perhaps than one might have expected. There is a sum of fifty pounds to be paid to her old friend, a Mrs. Service, in Tichfield Street, London.” Harriet suddenly clasped her hands together very tightly. Mr. Clode waited, but when she did not speak, continued, “And a little cameo brooch that she notes was given to her by Mrs. Service’s mother, but that she wishes to go to the daughter of her ‘benefactor.’ The daughter is called Susan and, really, this is the part that struck me a little strange and I thought someone’s attention should be drawn to it; this benefactor, the will says, is also of Tichfield Street and ‘goes by the name’ of Alexander Adams.” He did not notice quite the effect his words had had on his audience, as he was frowning at his cuff again. “I thought as I wrote it down for her that it was a strange phrase, and questioned her on it. She seemed most insistent, and there was real delight in her countenance as she specified the wording ...”
Instruments of Darkness Page 24
