Circle of Shadows

by Imogen Robertson

  ‘Our thanks, Major,’ she said. ‘My sister?’

  The Major smiled. ‘Is also in residence and in good health to the best of my knowledge.’ He glanced out of the window. ‘It seems the formalities are completed. Your man and maid have been watching our officials like hawks.’

  He bowed again and offered Harriet his arm back to the waiting carriage.

  The packets were found to contain copies of every document Krall’s investigations had produced in the previous weeks. Rachel’s note which accompanied them was short; warm words wishing for their speedy arrival. They were the first words of Rachel’s Harriet had seen since the messenger had delivered her wild and confused letter. Harriet read the note very carefully and a number of times before handing it to Crowther then attacking the seals on the official documents.

  The District Officer, Herr von Krall, had signed and stamped each one. It seemed he had been very thorough, and as a further courtesy, the papers had been translated into English for the convenience of the accused and his friends. There were descriptions of Oberbach, a map of its principal buildings, detailed testimony from the friends and companions of Lady Martesen and from Rachel herself. There was an account of the examination of Lady Martesen’s body and a careful description of the room in which she was found. The language was legal, dry, the accumulating detail horrific to Harriet. After weeks of knowing nothing, she felt her mind constrict as if it now wished to avoid knowing too much.

  They divided the papers between them and the beauties of Maulberg were ignored. The cultivation of the land went unnoticed, the ruins of ancient towers along the Neckar glowered in vain, the cheerful faces of the peasantry received no friendly glances from the finely dressed inhabitants of the coach. It rattled on. They read.

  ‘This is very strange.’

  Harriet heard Crowther speak and looked up. Her head ached. She was trying to absorb the names on the papers in front of her. Each person mentioned seemed to have a string of titles that must have reduced the scribe to tears.

  ‘You are reading the account of the examination of the body, Crowther?’

  ‘I am. Have you the document that details the initial discovery of Lady Martesen?’

  She looked through the papers on her lap. The air was still cold enough for her to need her gloves and they made her fingers awkward.

  ‘No, all I have here are accounts of her activities in the weeks preceding her murder. Card parties and salons. Her pleasure at being chosen as a lady-in-waiting to the new Duchess when she arrives. It seems she all but lived at court.’

  ‘I wonder if it made her rich,’ Graves said, and Harriet looked up at him, eyebrows raised. ‘Many of these small German courts are terribly corrupt, Mrs Westerman. Large sums of money are given in exchange for honours or lucrative positions, often via the women of the court.’

  ‘It says here her estate and jewels are left to her cousin, the Countess Judith Dieth, but does not say what the amount is. You are well informed, Graves,’ Harriet said.

  Graves gave a rather lopsided grin. ‘I have had to become so. The financial interests of my ward extend into too many of these statelets. I have the document you want, Crowther,’ he added, juggling papers.

  ‘Would you tell me what it says?’ Crowther asked.

  ‘It is the District Officer, von Krall’s own account,’ Graves said, running his finger down the page while Crowther set aside his own papers. The spring sunlight gleamed hopefully on the silver head of his cane and was ignored. ‘He says the back parlour and bedroom of the haberdasher’s in Oberbach had been hired by Colonel Padfield to allow his party to change into their carnival costumes on their arrival in the town. Oberbach is some eight miles from the town of Ulrichsberg where all our principals reside in or near the court. Rachel and Daniel had been given the honour of rooms at the palace. I should think so too, the amount their Treasury owes to Thornleigh. Well, at some point after the main parade in Oberbach was done, the better people went to dance in the Town Hall’s Council Chambers. It seems Daniel appeared drunk.’ Harriet shook her head. In the four years she had known him, she had never seen Daniel the worse for drink. ‘I know, Mrs Westerman. I do not believe it either, but he seems to have been behaving oddly,’ Graves continued. ‘Now Colonel Padfield took him outside, and went to fetch water for him. When he returned, Daniel was gone. Padfield searched the immediate area and found no sign. Returned to Rachel and his wife to tell them what had passed, then went to look again with a couple of his friends.’ Graves glanced up at his two companions. Harriet turned away as if to admire the view, but saw nothing. ‘It is just as Padfield wrote in his letter to you. He thought to go back to the room where they had prepared for the party, and found the door locked – but he says he heard a noise within. There was no response to his calls, so he and another man broke down the door. Lady Martesen was lying dead in the centre of the room. There follow details of her costume … Her eyes were bloodshot and there was a deep wound to her left wrist.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Daniel was crouched in the corner of the room, bleeding heavily from wounds to his own wrists. He seemed to have no idea where he was or what he was about. Good God, to see it set down like this …’

  Harriet had folded her arms tightly around herself. ‘Anything more?’

  ‘There was a cut-throat razor between his feet.’

  ‘Anything further about the body, Graves, other than the costume?’ Crowther asked from his corner.

  ‘No – wait. Krall reports very little blood around her body. He says other than the cut on her wrist and the bloodshot eyes, she appeared unharmed, her clothing not disarranged or torn. No bruises. God, they must think …’ He controlled himself. ‘There was some damp about her clothes. One moment – a carafe of water was broken on the floor. And there was a pinkish foam around her lips and mouth.’

  Crowther sat forward. ‘A pinkish foam? Those are the words?’

  ‘Yes. Is that significant?’

  Harriet thought of the girl laid out across the floor, hardly marked, her wounded hand trailing behind her, but her eyes open. Unmistakably dead.

  ‘The cut on her wrist,’ she said, before Crowther could reply to Graves’s question. ‘Crowther, does the account of the body say how deep it was?’

  ‘It severed the artery,’ he replied, without referring to the report.

  ‘Surely a wound like that would have bled profusely? And it would have taken some minutes before she even fainted away. If she had struggled or fought after it was sliced, there should have been blood spattered everywhere, and all around her.’ She noticed that Graves had put his head in his hands.

  ‘If it were administered while she was alive, then yes,’ Crowther said. ‘If she had been killed, and the wound made afterwards, it would only leak a little.’ He examined the papers in his hand once more. ‘That is the conclusion they seem to have reached. No bruises to show she was throttled. Hyoid bone intact. They suggest she was smothered.’

  ‘Is that possible? To smother someone and leave no bruises?’ Harriet frowned, concentrating.

  ‘Yes,’ Crowther said simply.

  ‘She did not defend herself at all?’

  ‘If so, it left no mark on her or on Daniel.’

  ‘Of course Daniel had no mark on him,’ Graves said. ‘He didn’t kill that woman.’

  ‘He was deranged when they found him, Graves,’ Crowther said. ‘And he is a strong man, he could have smothered her quite easily.’

  ‘I did not know you had come all this way to help put his head in a noose.’

  ‘He has killed before.’

  ‘In defence of my wards, in a fair fight! Good God, Crowther, if you were a younger man, I would call you out.’

  ‘Do not let my age hinder you, Graves.’

  ‘Gentlemen!’ Harriet said. ‘Peace, please. Graves, you know perfectly well Crowther believes Clode to be a victim of some evil here, just as Lady Martesen was. And Crowther, please, have some humanity. What of the wounds on Clode’s wrists?’


  Crowther shook his head. ‘Nothing to suggest they were not self-inflicted, other than the fact they make no mention of hesitation marks.’

  ‘How could he have been in such a state that he would let someone slice his wrists! Even if he were dead drunk.’ Harriet bit her lip. ‘And do not say that perhaps he did do it himself or Graves will fly at you again.’ Crowther preserved a diplomatic silence. Harriet’s fingers rapped against her dress. ‘You said there was something strange here.’

  ‘Clode spoke about dreaming of water, did he not, in his first meeting with Krall?’

  Graves breathed deeply and calmly replied, ‘Yes, he dreamed he was drowning. Then dreamed this devil creature was slicing his wrists. They do not believe him. They think he was driven suddenly mad by guilt and somehow magicked a razor into the air and slit his own wrists. They think this devil is his conscience.’

  Crowther said softly, ‘A pinkish foam around the mouth is indicative of death by drowning.’

  ‘Drowning?’ Harriet said. ‘In a locked room?’

  ‘Colonel Padfield said in his letter that the key was not in the lock when he broke down the door. If a door does not fit well in its frame, it is easy enough to lock it from the outside, then slide the key back in under the bottom edge. I experimented with the door to the dining room in Caveley while you were bullying your maid, Mrs Westerman.’

  ‘There is a terrible draught in that room. I wondered why Mrs Heathcote was looking at you so severely.’

  There was a rustling from Graves. ‘Mr Crowther, is this foam conclusive proof of drowning?’

  Harriet watched Gabriel as he replied, and began to see how much the journey had tired him. There was a greyness in his skin. She had not realised how much she had asked of him. ‘No, not conclusive. There are a couple of other telling phrases in Krall’s description of the autopsy, his comments on the appearance of the lungs and so on. I think it was not his own drowning Daniel dreamed of, but hers.’

  ‘But how?’ Harriet exclaimed.

  ‘I do not know,’ Crowther said slowly. ‘It is possible to drown in a gutter, of course.’

  ‘I saw some who died like that, during the riots in eighty,’ Graves said. ‘But she would have been soaked to the skin, or at least her hair would have been wet if she had been held in even a basin of water.’

  Harriet straightened the papers on her lap and struggled to think clearly. ‘Suppose she were placed in the chair, her head tilted back, water poured down her throat in that position?’

  ‘Possible,’ Crowther said, ‘but she would have resisted. Her hair and clothes would be soaked as she tried to avoid inhaling the water. She would have exerted herself against the necessary restraints … It is in our nature to fight death. She would have to have been unconscious, but there is no mention of a head wound, no smell of alcohol or sign of opiates here. Yet, the foam, the shape of the lungs … The report does not realise it tells us she died by inhaling water, but I believe it does.’

  ‘Dear God, what a foul death,’ Harriet said, and they were all silent for a while, until Graves cleared his throat.

  ‘But what could have caused this strange confusion in Clode? He sounds as if he was seeing visions.’

  ‘That I cannot say,’ Crowther replied. ‘He must have been drugged in some way, but the effects are not like anything with which I am familiar.’ Harriet watched him out of the corner of her eye. She suspected from the manner in which he held himself that his shoulder was paining him, but knew better than to enquire.

  ‘Still. At least we have made a beginning,’ she said determinedly. ‘Where did this razor come from? If we can demonstrate that she drowned, who would believe that a man, as stumbling and confused as they testify Daniel was, could manage such a thing? They cannot hang him with us asking these questions.’

  ‘They would probably behead him,’ Crowther said. His shoulder was definitely troubling him.

  ‘They will do neither, Mrs Westerman,’ Graves said. ‘We have money, we have reputation, and we have the support of King George. We will not lose him.’

  The horses slowed to a walk and the company arrived at Ulrichsberg just as the church bells were ringing midday.

  II.2

  The same day, the Old Lecture Hall, Leuchtenstadt, Maulberg

  A CENTURY OF CHALK-DUST rather than incense, the silted spirits of many years of intense intellectual strain rather than devoted prayer, but the Old Lecture Hall did have the atmosphere of a cathedral, that reverential attention of the congregation listening while a single voice unfolded mysteries in Latin – though these mysteries were mathematical rather than metaphysical. It was usually silent, so when someone yawned very loudly then returned to gnawing the last flesh off his apple core, the sound echoed out like someone singing bawdy ballads at Communion. The Professor’s chalk ceased to move across the board. He abandoned Monsieur Clairaut’s explanation of the motion of the apsis to turn slowly towards the auditorium of students.

  It was quickly obvious who the offender was. The significant glances of his more cowardly pupils guided the Professor’s gaze towards the centre of the room where a youth sat – no, not sat, lolled – core in hand and staring up at the plain, whitewashed ceiling above him. The Professor stared his famous Medusa-like stare until the boy, apparently aware that the low drone of his voice had ceased, turned towards him and grinned. He spoke in German, like a shopkeeper.

  ‘Sorry, Professor, do carry on. I think you were still on the second order effects, weren’t you?’ The youth yawned again, and the Professor found himself on the receiving end of what could only be described as an encouraging wink.

  The boy who delivered it could not be more than twenty. His light brown hair was unpowdered and the eyes somewhere between grey and blue. It was not a very handsome face; the nose was snub and its expression was rather foolish, or rather innocent to the point of foolishness. He looked, the Professor’s mind rummaged through its clutter of equations and Latin maxims for the right word … fresh.

  The silence in the room that followed this remark deepened as forty young men of good family and high expectations drew in their breath and waited for the explosion.

  ‘I would hate to think I am boring you, Mr …?’

  ‘Pegel, Herr Professor, Jacob Pegel at your service.’ He waved the remnants of his breakfast. ‘No, not boring me exactly, but this is all quite basic stuff, isn’t it? Good old Clairaut.’ He looked about him at the white, awe-struck faces of his fellow students, the same foolish grin on his face.

  The Professor had been at pains to impress upon his students, in awful tones that made them tremble as if they found themselves at the Gates of Hell, that only the occasional mathematical genius among them might hope to come to a true understanding of the three-body problem. The rest must be left to wail in the limbo of mathematical ignorance. He had had them in the palm of his wrinkled hand, terrified and obedient, and now this boy appeared, blowing raspberries at him. This new boy. The Professor recognised the name only too well. The Head of the University had had a quiet word with him about letting this snub-nosed little whelp attend his lectures. He had no title, no apparent wealth, but still the Dean had asked that the doors of the Old Lecture Theatre be opened to him, and eventually, after a series of deep sighs and shakings of his head, the Herr Professor had agreed that this boy would be allowed to attend his lectures without the usual qualifications and stipulations. It had obviously been a mistake.

  The tension of hearing the great learning of Clairaut spoken of in such a way was too much for one young man in the back row. He giggled, then attempted to disappear behind his companions while simultaneously stuffing his handkerchief into his mouth.

  The Professor smiled, a thin evil smile. Those who had feared an explosion of his temper now almost wished for it. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘Herr Pegel, you would like to continue the lecture, in that case. Do educate us poor provincial half-wits.’

  Forty pairs of eyes swung back to Pegel. He must apolog
ise now, surely, then the great rage of the Professor would tear forth in rush and thunder and fall upon him like the waters of the Red Sea closing over Pharaoh’s troops.

  ‘Righty-ho then!’ Pegel said cheerfully, swinging himself upright and trotting down the stairs. ‘But you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, really. I know this sort of thing was all the go thirty odd years ago.’ He sprang up onto the dais and put his hand out for the chalk. The Professor, beginning to suspect he had not woken up this morning after all, handed it over.

  Pegel stood back from the board a moment, then picking up a duster wiped the slate clean. The gasp this time was audible. He paused again, then, whistling, began to write, occasionally interrupting himself to tap his chalk and bark an explanation of his terms. In five minutes the board was filled once more. Pegel made a final underlining and stepped back. ‘And here we are! Spherical harmonics, you see? Track that little beggar through and there’s your explanation of the great inequality of Jupiter and Saturn.’

  He turned to his audience. Thirty-nine pairs of eyes stared back at him over thirty-nine open mouths, but in the front row one youth was scribbling furiously, glancing up to the board and back down. ‘That’s a good lad,’ Pegel said softly to himself.

  If the Professor heard him, he gave no sign. He was staring at the board and murmuring under his breath, ‘It can’t be that simple. No, surely not, you’d have to … then …’

  Pegel clapped his hands together to knock the chalk-dust off them. ‘Lord, there’s the hour up already. Off you go, chaps.’ Looking as if they had been collectively stunned, the students began to file out silently from the room. Pegel watched them go affably enough, but as the scribbler of the front row passed him, his face was briefly lit by a slower, more genuine smile. He heard the clatter of conversation in the hall, then turned back to the Professor.