Circle of Shadows

by Imogen Robertson

  Crowther nodded. ‘I understand. I can see no reason we need let it be known that Beatrice was Mrs Padfield’s sister. What say you, Mrs Westerman?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘I meant to tell you, Mrs Westerman,’ Michaels said, turning to her, his voice soft. ‘If you wish it, I will throttle that Manzerotti for you. I could make it back to England on the quiet.’

  She studied her hands.

  ‘Thank you, Michaels. But no. If I cannot kill him myself, I will not send another to do it. Find this girl and her poison book. And we shall try and discover who has been making such use of it.’

  When he had left, Harriet showed the papers she had collected from Herr Dorf to Crowther. He read through them and put them aside with a sigh. ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘It does read like the work of a madman, does it not? Secret societies working in the heart of government. All assertion, no evidence. Thank goodness we have news of this poison book, or I should think myself lost indeed.’

  If anyone knew who used to go to the village to see spirits, they weren’t saying. Michaels couldn’t blame them. Sneaking off after-hours like that would be enough to lose you your place; better to play dumb and say you had never heard of such a thing, especially to a stranger just rolled in. He gave up soon enough and stepped into town to wait for the boy to finish at the blacksmiths. He timed it nicely; after half an hour Michaels spotted the boy emerging from his workplace and slouched forward.

  ‘Can I buy you a brew, lad?’ he said, nodding towards a doorway nearby.

  Simon looked suspicious. The offer of a free drink is a difficult one to refuse on any occasion; however, when your feet are sore with standing and your bones ache with hammering iron all day, such a refusal is all but impossible. He nodded, and they went into the tavern together.

  A keen-eyed boy just clambering long-boned into his teens brought them beer, and Michaels pronounced in its favour.

  ‘You know I want to talk to you more of the girl, Beatrice,’ Michaels said, once he had sunk half his drink in a single gasp. Simon sipped his as if he thought it might be bad.

  ‘You said you were her uncle.’

  ‘That why you clammed up on me?’

  ‘She told me she had an uncle, but he was dying or dead. You look pretty bloody healthy to me, and for all Gurt or her like say of her, I trust Beatrice over you.’

  Michaels grinned into his beer. ‘Thought that might be it. You were more friendly with her than others knew, eh?’

  Simon didn’t answer, but hunkered over his tankard.

  ‘Did she tell you she had a sister too? Two years older than her, taken out of the orphanage with her by the man they travelled with. It’s on her account I’m asking.’

  ‘Why say you’re an uncle then, and lie to folks you’re asking trust from?’

  ‘It’s a fair question.’ The smoke in the place was so thick you didn’t need to light a pipe yourself, just taste your neighbour’s tobacco for free. Michaels examined the young man. Hard eyes, and thin-faced. He wondered if Beatrice had seen him as a fellow spirit. Like appeals to like, after all.

  ‘All I can say is, the sister married well. Wants to know why Beatrice hasn’t found her out to feel how deep her pockets are, but she doesn’t want to risk asking about her herself now.’

  ‘Who is she?’ His face was hidden by the tankard, but Michaels could still see his little eyes glimmering through the fug and fall of his fringe. He leaned forward till his face was only an inch away from the other man’s, and spoke quietly and carefully.

  ‘You don’t want to think of playing that game, lad. You tell me something that helps, and I’ll see you won’t suffer for it. But don’t get thinking.’ He put his hand on the boy’s elbow and twisted very slightly. Simon hissed in pain. ‘Now maybe your little rat’s mind is thinking who it might be. Maybe you’re thinking I’ll leave Maulberg soon. Well, I might. But I won’t leave the lady unprotected, so even if you do work it out and try and force a penny from her, you’ll have to watch your back every night for the rest of your sorry little life.’ He leaned back again and patted the boy’s shoulder in a friendly way. ‘Be smart. Take the easy money and smile. Two thalers now, if I like what you say, and five more if I find something worth finding.’ It would take the boy two weeks to earn that in the general run.

  He rubbed his elbow. ‘All right. What do you want to know?’

  ‘For two thalers down? Bloody everything.’

  He considered. ‘She wasn’t that friendly to begin with. Held herself apart, you know? Then one night I found her round the back of Whistler’s place sitting on a barrel and crying her eyes out. Thought she’d fly when I saw her, but I showed her a couple of magic tricks. Made her smile. After that we seemed to bump into each other a fair bit. Nothing much. Just a bit of conversation and a laugh at the end of the day.’

  ‘She liked your tricks.’

  ‘Yeah, you know, just pulling a coin out of her ear, that sort of caper. Funny thing is, she never wanted to know how I did it. I asked her why and she explained that that always spoils it. Told me a bit about her sister and uncle then.’

  ‘And what of her work for Whistler?’

  ‘Said she wanted to learn the tricks of alchemy, but that she’d bribed her way into working for a fool who was actually trying to do it – make the Elixir of Life and all that – rather than fake it. She was bitter that she’d spent good money to get the position. Said it was money wasted. All books. No cons.’

  ‘So what did she plan on doing then?’

  ‘She was a smart one.’ He smiled and scratched his ear, the hard glitter in his eyes softening now. ‘The next time I saw her, she said that she reckoned she could still get her money’s worth out of it. He had some book of his own and she’d worked out the way he had of writing in it. Thought it could be sold with the bits and pieces wrapped up with it. Then she’d picked up some learning from the other books, copied out pictures and signs, a few spells and incantations and stuff. Cut out others. Said she was making her own book of magic, and when she found the right mark she’d twist him for everything he’d got.’

  ‘What happened to the books she cut the pictures from?’ Michaels asked. Simon shifted in his seat. ‘You burned ’em in the forge, didn’t you?’ The boy said nothing.

  Michaels looked about the room. Voices were beginning to warm up and the laughter was getting louder. Three or four men of about his own age with their backs to the wattle walls were singing a song to the vine and toasting it in vats. He knew the feeling from his own place. A good night, open pockets and no trouble.

  ‘Beatrice was still wanting to take a step up from the occasional session seeing spirits, then?’

  ‘Suppose so, though she did them now and again for the servants up at the palace.’ He sounded a little more eager to speak now. Get away from those mangled books burning in his master’s fire, no doubt. ‘Said it was a good way of getting information out of them on the sly. She weren’t one to give up on her dreams easy, Beatrice. She thought if alchemy was a wash-out, best thing to do was find a rich family with a hole in it and draw them in. Stay with them, give them the good news of their loved ones, find a bit of treasure for them, then settle in and rob ’em blind.’

  ‘Still don’t see how—’

  ‘She thought she could arrive a pauper and leave a Lady. Find a grateful old man with wealth to leave behind him to the girl who had been such a comfort, who had summoned angels to visit him, and let him talk to his lost ones again.’

  ‘Did she tell you she was going?’

  ‘Yes, the day before.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Late summer, near two years ago now.’

  ‘Where was she headed?’

  ‘Didn’t say precisely.’ He supped his drink again and looked away. Michaels sighed and counted out two coins from his purse onto the table. ‘She took the road to Oberbach.’

  PART V

  V.1

  5 May 1784

  KRALL DID
NOT KNOW why he had been summoned to the Mirrored Hall of Ulrichsberg Palace, but when he found Chancellor Swann there in his shirt-sleeves, grey-faced and alone with a candle in his hands, he began to suspect.

  He had been woken, dressed and then guided to the Chancellor by Wimpf, who had taken the role of his personal servant while he was in the palace. As they approached, Krall found the Chancellor surrounded by a hundred broken images of himself. Together they filled the room like a crowd.

  Swann wasted no words on greeting Krall, but only nodded and swung open a hidden door on the wall behind him, sending their gathered images dancing among each other in the candlelight till they were legion. Wimpf disappeared back into the shadows.

  ‘This way,’ Swann said. The hidden door led to a long corridor, unadorned, and crimped and bent by the rooms between which it snaked. Krall had a sense of being lost in the entrails of some great beast, or finding himself cast suddenly in an abandoned mine. Even in the light of the travelling candle he could see doors and panels to his left and right. From here surely all the court could be observed, reached, secretly. He wondered about his own rooms. After some minutes Swann came to a halt with his hand on a latch to his left. The candlelight made him look a great deal older; his shoulders seemed to have acquired a stoop since they had seen each other a few hours before. There was a light grey stubble across his chin, and his cravat was only carelessly tied.

  ‘Krall, are you loyal to the state you serve?’

  ‘Yes, Your Excellency,’ Krall said, frowning and irritated by the pantomime.

  ‘And your sovereign?’

  ‘My sovereign is the state I serve.’

  Swann seemed to consider this a moment before he continued. He handed the candle to the District Officer and, pushing open the door, gestured for him to enter.

  It was one of the smaller guest chambers. Krall stepped forward. Countess Dieth was seated in the middle of the room on a straight-backed armchair in a full court gown of plum silk, her chin down like someone sleeping over their book. Her left hand hung loosely, pointing towards the floor. Her stillness. In his first confusion, it took Krall a moment to realise she was dead. ‘Huh …’ he said and crossed slowly towards her, his steps heavy and awkward. Her dress pooled out around her feet. Krall lowered his candle and with his right hand gently lifted her chin.

  Her face was white with powder, her cheeks rouged, but around her mouth was a flurry of dark specks, coal dust on snow. He brought the light closer. Her lips were covered in what looked like soil, loose dry soil. Krall looked about him, but the room was clean. Her eyes were open, bloodshot, empty.

  ‘When was she found?’ he said, resting his palm on her cheek. Quite cold.

  ‘Half an hour past,’ Swann said, his voice rather thick. ‘A maid had cause to enter the room. I was summoned, and on seeing the body, ordered that you be awakened.’

  ‘What cause?’

  ‘District Officer?’

  ‘What cause did the maid have to enter this room in the thick of night? Countess Dieth has a house in town – why is she not there?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  Krall tilted the Countess’s face back and carefully opened her mouth. It was full of dirt. He breathed in deeply and with great gentleness closed her jaw and let her head tip forward again. There was soil caught in the bodice of her gown and in the folds of her skirt. He struggled with the impulse to clean it away, to make her neat again. Then he held the candle to cast some light upon the lady’s wrists. The left had been slit and the hand was bloody. The candle moved back and forth. There might have been some blood on the dress, but he could not be sure, given the deep colour of the material. The polished floor was apparently quite clean, no signs of drop or spray. He frowned.

  Krall lifted the candle above his head and walked slowly round the body. The room was very much like his own, one of the apartments provided for the favourites of the court when their sovereign wished them near at hand. Not large, but luxurious, the wood all polished or gilded. Thick hangings tied round the bedposts. The fire had not been lit. The basin and ewer on the wash-stand were empty. He thought of his own chamber in the palace. Every night he had spent there, when he entered the room, the coals had been burning in the fireplace, fresh water to wash in. Normally wine and a little something to dull the appetite under a cloth. There was a small table set up to the body’s right, with decanter and glass set upon it. Both empty.

  ‘Mr Crowther and Mrs Westerman?’

  ‘Retired early and have not left their rooms since. Neither has Mr Graves, nor Mrs Clode.’

  ‘Forgive me, I meant to suggest they should be summoned.’

  ‘I see. You think this is the work of the same person who killed Lady Martesen?’

  ‘And Herr Fink. And possibly Raben and Warburg as I mentioned to you this evening – no, yesterday, I suppose it was.’ It felt natural to speak low. ‘It seems likely, don’t you think, Your Excellency?’

  Swann turned away slightly and put his hand to his forehead. He was trembling a little, Krall noticed. He had never seen Swann display any kind of emotion before. ‘But those crimes were concealed. The madman provided us with a suspect for Lady Martesen’s death, and made the others appear accidental.’

  ‘Perhaps he was not so mad then as he is now,’ Krall said. He caught sight of something and the candle moved quickly through the air, fluttering in the draught, then steadying again. On the back of the door to the west wing corridor was chalked a design in red. A circle with lines through it, drawn over a triangle.

  ‘Do you recognise that, Your Excellency?’

  Swann did not look, but remained with his chin tucked low. ‘Death has come in at our window, into our palaces,’ he mumbled; ‘it strangles our children in the alley, our youth in the street.’

  Jeremiah, was it? Krall thought. So the Chancellor had developed a talent for quotation along with his stoop. ‘It is almost light, Chancellor. Will you wake the Duke and tell him?’

  ‘It is my duty. First I must dress.’

  ‘The Duchess arrives tomorrow. You will wish to keep this quiet a day or two.’

  Swann looked up at him. ‘We might wish it, but I fear it will be impossible.’

  ‘There might be rumours, but it is not impossible surely – for you, Chancellor? Unless the Duke wants this known too.’

  Swann straightened his back, something of his old manner managing to reassert itself. ‘He will not. The servants can be threatened into silence. Countess Dieth’s people in town will be told that she has retired to her country estate. People might assume, given the relations the Countess once had with the Duke …’

  ‘Mr Crowther will not be able to examine the body here.’

  Swann’s mind, it seemed, had woken at last. ‘The Lady Chapel is being redecorated in honour of the new Duchess, but it is not yet finished. The works have been halted while the craftsmen complete her apartments and the preparations for the theatricals. It can be sealed and guarded.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I have two men awaiting orders.’

  Krall stroked his chin. ‘Let her be carried there then while it is still dark, and have the men that carry her guard the chapel. Then send Wimpf to collect Mr Crowther and Mrs Westerman. If that seems fit to you, Your Excellency.’

  ‘A sensible idea.’

  Krall returned to his study of the strange diagram on the door. ‘How many people sleep in the palace, do you think, Your Excellency?’

  ‘Perhaps a hundred or more. Certainly more if you include the quarters of the coachmen and stablehands, and the Ducal Guard.’

  Krall set his candle down on the mantelpiece where its light sent the shadows of the room’s fine furnishings, its gilded mirrors and moulding, skipping and dancing. ‘The palace is not in my jurisdiction, Your Excellency.’

  ‘Nevertheless, given the similarities, I ask you to investigate.’ Krall did not answer at once. ‘We are united in our wish to know the truth, Krall.’

  ‘I am gl
ad to know that.’ Krall had been feeling like an old man these last years, but staring at the design on the wall he realised he was enjoying a sensation he hadn’t felt in some time. He was curious. ‘You may call your men, sir,’ he said. ‘Then, with your leave, if you will send the maid to me who discovered the Countess, and ask Wimpf to wake Mrs Westerman and Mr Crowther. Perhaps he might take them their coffee and something to eat before telling them what is afoot. I will wait for them.’

  ‘Whatever your wish, District Officer.’ There was an edge in Swann’s voice again, but Krall made no move to show he felt it.

  V.2

  HARRIET WAS USED TO waking early, usually before any of the servants came to her room, so when she woke to the sound of movement beyond the draperies around her bed, it was with some confusion. It was still dark. At first she thought she was in her bed in Caveley, but the nap of material on the sheets around her felt unfamiliar. Then it came back over her in a familiar flood, the despatch, the journey, the splendour of Maulberg, that she had had Manzerotti in front of her and a gun primed in her hand, and yet she had not shot. She groaned.

  ‘Madam?’

  She struggled up onto one elbow and twitched open her bed-curtain. ‘Dido? This is early even for you.’

  Her maid was lighting the fire. Harriet’s nightshift slipped from her shoulder and she pulled it round her again. The air was still chill.

  ‘Sorry, madam, but one of those footmen is outside wanting you. Said the name Krall?’

  ‘He is the law officer in charge of the case.’

  The maid got to her feet. ‘That’ll be it then. He’s brought you coffee and rolls and gone to wake Mr Crowther, poor man.’ Harriet smiled. The longer Dido spent in her service, the more she sounded like Mrs Heathcote. ‘There’s something wrong, madam. He was white as a sheet.’

  The white-faced footman, Wimpf, looked as if he intended to retreat when he had shown them to the room in which Krall was waiting, but the District Officer beckoned him inside before closing the door and speaking. The room was soft with early light; gradually the colours and shapes were revealing themselves.