“The business is in two books, isn’t it?” I say. “All the names, crimes, and payments in one, written in code, of course. And the cipher to decrypt it in another. You keep them separate and think that keeps you safe, but it doesn’t, and square deal or not, you’ll be dead in”—I pull up my sleeve to check my watch—“four hours, at which point Coleridge will have both of the books without parting with a shilling.”
For the first time, Stanwin looks uncertain.
Reaching over to the drawer in his bedside table, he removes a pipe and a small pouch of tobacco, which he packs into the pipe’s bowl. Scraping away the excess, he circles the burning match across the leaves, taking a few puffs to draw the flame. By the time his attention returns to me, the tobacco is burning, smoke forming a halo above his ill-deserving head.
“How’s he going to do it?” asks Stanwin, out of the corner of his mouth, his pipe gripped between his yellow teeth.
“What did you see the morning of Thomas Hardcastle’s death?” I ask.
“That’s it, is it? A murder for a murder?”
“Square deal,” I say.
He spits on his hand.
“Shake then,” he says.
I do as he asks, then light my last cigarette. The need for tobacco has come upon me slowly, the way the tide nudges up a riverbank, and I let the smoke fill my throat, my eyes watering in pleasure.
Scratching his stubble, Stanwin begins speaking, his voice thoughtful.
“It was a funny day that, strange from the off,” he says, adjusting the pipe in his mouth. “The guests had arrived for the party, but there was already a bad atmosphere around the place. Arguments in the kitchen, fights in the stables, even the guests were at it; couldn’t walk past a closed door without hearing raised voices behind it.”
There’s a wariness to him now, the sense of a man unpacking a trunk filled with sharp objects.
“It weren’t much of a surprise when Charlie got fired,” he says. “He’d been carrying on with Lady Hardcastle long as anybody could remember. Secret at first. Obvious later, too obvious if you ask me. They wanted to be caught, I reckon. Don’t know what got ’em in the end, but news went around the kitchen like a pox when Charlie was dismissed by Lord Hardcastle. We thought he’d come downstairs, say goodbye, but we didn’t hear a peep, then a couple of hours later, one of the maids fetches me, tells me she’s just seen Charlie drunk as a lord, wandering around the children’s bedrooms.”
“The children’s bedrooms, you’re sure?”
“That’s what she said. Poking his head in the doors one after another, like he was looking for something.”
“Any idea what?”
“She thought he was trying to say goodbye, but they were all out playing. Either way, he left with a big leather bag over his shoulder.”
“And she didn’t know what was in it?”
“Not a clue. Whatever it was, nobody begrudged him. He was popular, Charlie, we all liked him.”
Stanwin sighs, tipping his face to the ceiling.
“What happened next?” I prod, sensing his reluctance to continue.
“Charlie was my friend,” he says heavily. “So I went looking for him, to say goodbye more than anything else. Last anybody saw he was heading to the lake so that’s where I went, only he wasn’t there. Nobody was, at least that’s what it looked like at first. I would have left except I saw the blood in the dirt.”
“You followed the blood?” I say.
“Aye, to the edge of the lake…that’s when I saw the boy.”
He gulps, drawing his hand across his face. The memory’s lurked in the darkness of his mind for so long I’m not surprised he’s having trouble dragging it into the light. Everything he’s become has grown out of this poisonous seed.
“What did you see, Stanwin?” I ask.
Dropping his hand from his face, he looks at me as though I’m a priest demanding confession.
“At first, just Lady Hardcastle,” he says. “She was kneeling in the mud, sobbing her heart out. There was blood everywhere. I didn’t see the boy; she was cradling him so tight…but she turned when she heard me. She’d stabbed him through the throat, almost taken his head off, she had.”
“She confessed?” I say.
I can hear the excitement in my voice. Looking down, I notice that my hands are clenched, my body tense. I’m on the edge of my seat, my breath held in my throat.
I’m immediately ashamed of myself.
“More or less,” says Stanwin. “Just kept saying it was an accident. That was it, over and over again. It was an accident.”
“So where does Carver come into this?” I ask.
“He arrived later.”
“How much later?”
“I don’t know…”
“Five minutes, twenty minutes?” I ask. “It’s important, Stanwin.”
“Not twenty, ten maybe, can’t have been too long.”
“Did he have the bag?”
“The bag?”
“The brown leather bag the maid saw him take from the house? Did he have it with him?”
“No, no bag.” He points the pipe at me. “You know something, don’t you?”
“I think so, yes. Finish your story, please.”
“Carver came, took me to one side. He was sober, dead sober, the way a man is when he’s had a shock. He asked me to forget everything I’d seen, to tell everybody he’d done it.”
“I said I wouldn’t, not for her, not for the Hardcastles, but he said he loved her, that it’d been an accident and it was the only thing he could do for her, the only thing he could give her. He reckoned he had no future anyway, not after being dismissed from Blackheath and having to move away from Helena. He made me swear to keep her secret.”
“Which you did, except you made her pay for it,” I say.
“And you’d have done different, would you, copper?” he says furiously. “Clapped her in irons then and there, betraying a promise to your friend. Or would you have let her get away with it, scot-free?”
I shake my head. I don’t have an answer for him, but I’m not interested in his pitying self-justification. There’s only two victims in this story: Thomas Hardcastle and Charlie Carver, a murdered child and a man who walked to the gallows to protect the woman he loved. It’s too late for me to help either of them, but I’m not going to let the truth stay buried any longer.
It’s done enough damage already.
47
Bushes rustle, twigs cracking underfoot. Daniel’s moving through the forest quickly, making no attempt at stealth. He has no need. My other hosts are all occupied, and nearly everybody else is either on the hunt or in the sunroom.
My heart is racing. He slipped out of the house after speaking with Bell and Michael in the study, and I’ve been following him for the last fifteen minutes, picking my way silently through the trees. I remember him missing the start of the hunt and having to catch up with Dance, and I’m curious what kept him. Hopefully, this errand will shed more light on his plans.
The trees break suddenly, giving way to an ugly clearing. We’re not far from the lake, and I can just about see the water away to my right. The footman’s pacing in circles like a caged animal, and I have to duck behind a bush to keep from being seen.
“Make it quick,” says Daniel, approaching him.
The footman punches him in the chin, staggering him backward. Daniel straightens, inviting a second blow with a nod of his head. This one crunches into his stomach and is followed by a cross that knocks him to the ground.
“More?” asks the footman, looming over him.
“That’s enough,” says Daniel, dabbing his split lip. “Dance needs to believe we fought, not that you nearly killed me.”
They’re working together.
“Can you catch them?” says the footman, helping
Daniel off the ground. “The hunters have a good head start.”
“Lot of old legs. They won’t have gone far. Any luck snatching up Anna?”
“Not yet. I’ve been busy.”
“Well, hurry up. Our friend’s getting impatient.”
So that’s what this was all about. They want Anna.
That’s why Daniel told me to find her when I was Ravencourt, and why he asked Derby to bring her to the library, when he laid out his plan to trap the footman. I was supposed to deliver her to them. A lamb to slaughter.
My head spinning, I watch them exchange a few final words, before the footman makes for the house. Daniel’s wiping the blood from his face, but he doesn’t move, and a second later I see why. The Plague Doctor’s entering the clearing. This must be the “friend” Daniel mentioned.
It’s as I feared. They’re working together. Daniel’s formed a partnership with the footman, and they’re hunting Anna on the Plague Doctor’s behalf. I can’t imagine what’s fueling this enmity, but it explains why the Plague Doctor’s spent the day pouring scorn on our partnership. Trying to turn me against her.
Placing a hand on Daniel’s shoulder, he leads him into the trees, beyond my sight. The intimacy of this gesture throws me. I can’t recall a single time when the Plague Doctor has touched me, or even come close enough for that to happen.
Keeping low, I hurry after them, stopping at the tree line to listen for their voices, but I can’t hear anything. Cursing, I press deeper into the forest, stopping periodically, hoping to catch some sign of them. It’s no use. They’re gone.
Feeling like a man in a dream, I return the way I came.
Everything I saw that first day, how much of it was real? Was anybody who they claimed to be? I believed Daniel and Evelyn were my friends, the Plague Doctor was a madman, and that I was a doctor called Sebastian Bell, whose biggest problem was memory loss. How could I know those were merely starting positions in a race nobody had told me I was running?
It’s the finish line you should be concerned with.
“The graveyard,” I say out loud.
Daniel believes he’ll capture Anna there, and I have no doubt he’ll have the footman with him when he tries. That’s where this will end, and I need to be ready.
I’ve arrived at the wishing well, where Evelyn received the note from Felicity that first morning. I’m eager to put my plan into action, but instead of heading for the house, I turn left, toward the lake. This is Rashton’s doing. It’s instinct. A copper’s instinct. He wants to see the scene of the crime while Stanwin’s testimony is still fresh in my mind.
The trail is overgrown, trees leaning in on either side, their roots writhing up through the ground. Brambles snag my trench coat, rain spilling off leaves, until finally I emerge on the lake’s muddy banks.
I’ve only ever seen it at a distance, but it’s much bigger up close, with water the color of mossy stone, and a couple of skeletal rowboats tethered to a boathouse that’s crumbling to firewood on the far-right bank. A bandstand sits on an island at the center, the peeling turquoise roof and wooden frame battered by the wind and rain.
No wonder the Hardcastles chose to leave Blackheath. Something evil happened here, and it haunts the lake still. Such is my unease I almost turn on my heel, but a greater part of me needs to make sense of what happened here nineteen years ago, and so I walk the length of the lake, circling it twice, much as a coroner might circle a body on his slab.
An hour passes. My eyes are busy, but they stick to nothing.
Stanwin’s story seems cut and dry, but it doesn’t explain why the past is reaching up to claim another Hardcastle child. It doesn’t explain who’s behind it, or what they hope to gain. I thought coming here would bring some clarity, but whatever the lake remembers, it has little interest in sharing. Unlike Stanwin, it cannot be bartered with, and unlike the stable master, it cannot be bullied.
Cold and wet, I might be tempted to give up, but Rashton is already tugging me toward the reflecting pool. The policeman’s eyes aren’t soft like my other hosts. They seek the edges, the absences. My memories of this place aren’t enough for him; he needs to see it all afresh. And so, hands deep in my pockets, I arrange myself at the edge of the water, which is high enough to touch the bottom of my shoes. A light rain is rippling the surface, plinking against thick patches of floating moss.
At least the rain is constant. It’s tapping Bell’s face as he walks with Evelyn, and the windows of the gatehouse where the butler sleeps and Gold is strung up. Ravencourt’s listening to it in his parlor, wondering where Cunningham has got to, and Derby…well, Derby’s still unconscious, which is the best thing for him. Davies is collapsed on the road, or maybe walking back. Either way, he’s getting wet. As is Dance, who’s traipsing through the forest, a shotgun slung over his arm, wishing he was anywhere else.
As for me, I’m standing exactly where Evelyn will stand tonight, where she’ll press a silver pistol to her stomach and pull the trigger.
I’m seeing what she’ll see.
Trying to understand.
The murderer found a way to force Evelyn to commit suicide, but why not have her shoot herself in her bedroom out of sight? Why bring her out here during the middle of the party?
So everybody would see.
“Then why not the middle of the dance floor, or the stage?” I mutter.
All this, it’s too theatrical.
Rashton’s worked on dozens of murders. They aren’t stage-managed; they’re immediate, impulsive acts. Men crawl into their cups after a hard day’s work, stirring the bitterness settled at the bottom. Fights break out; wives grow tired of their black eyes and pick up the nearest kitchen knife. Death happens in alleys and quiet rooms with doilies on the tables. Trees fall, people are crushed, tools slip. People die the way they’ve always died, quickly, impatiently, or unluckily; not here, not in front of a hundred people in ball gowns and dinner jackets.
What kind of mind makes theater of murder?
Turning back toward the house, I try to recall Evelyn’s route to the reflecting pool, remembering how she drifted from flame to darkness, wobbling as if drunk. I remember the silver pistol glinting in her hand, the shot, the silence, and then the fireworks as she tumbled into the water.
Why take two guns when one will do?
A murder that doesn’t look like a murder.
That’s how the Plague Doctor described it…but what if… My mind gropes at the edges of a thought, teasing it forward out of the dimness. An idea emerges, the queerest of ideas.
The only one that makes sense.
I’m startled by a tap on my shoulder, almost sending me stumbling into the reflecting pool. Thankfully, Grace catches hold of me, pulling me back into her arms. It’s not, I must admit, an unpleasant predicament, especially when I turn around to meet those blue eyes, looking up at me with a mixture of love and bemusement.
“What on earth are you doing out here?” she asks. “I’ve been searching for you all over. You missed lunch.”
There’s concern in her voice. She holds my gaze, searching my eyes, though I have no idea what she’s looking for.
“I came for a walk,” I say, trying to slip free of her worry. “And I started imagining what this place must have been like in its pomp.”
Doubt flickers on her face, but it vanishes in a blink of her glorious eyes as she slips an arm through mine, the heat of her body warming me up.
“It’s difficult to remember now,” she says. “Every memory I have of this place, even the happy ones, are stained by what happened to Thomas.”
“Were you here when it happened?”
“Have I never told you this?” she says, resting her head on my shoulder. “I suppose I wouldn’t have. I was only young. Yes, I was here, nearly everybody here today was.”
“Did you see it?”
“Thank heavens, no,” she says, aghast. “Evelyn had arranged a treasure hunt for the children. I can’t have been more than seven, same for Thomas. Evelyn was ten. She was all grown up, so we were her responsibility for the day.”
She grows distant, distracted by a memory taking flight.
“Of course, now I know she just wanted to go riding and not have to look after us, but at the time we thought her terribly kind. We were having a jolly time chasing each other through the forest looking for clues, when all of a sudden Thomas bolted off. We never saw him again.”
“Bolted? Did he say why he was leaving, or where he was going?”
“You sound like the policeman who questioned me,” she says, hugging me closer. “No, he didn’t hang around for questions. He asked after the time and left.”
“He asked the time?”
“Yes, it was like he had somewhere to be.”
“And he didn’t tell you where he was going?”
“No.”
“Was he acting strangely? Did he say anything odd?”
“Actually, we could barely get a word out of him,” she says. “He’d been in a strange mood all week come to think of it, withdrawn, sulky, not like him at all.”
“What was he normally like?”
She shrugs. “A pest most of the time. He was at that age. He liked to tug our ponytails, and scare us. He’d follow us through the woods, then jump out when we least expected it.”
“But he’d been acting strangely for a week?” I say. “Are you certain that’s how long it had been?”
“Well, that’s how long we were at Blackheath before the party, so yes.” She’s shivering now, peering up at me. “What’s that mind of yours got hold of, Mr. Rashton?” she asks.
“Got hold of?”
“I can see the little crease”—she taps the spot between my eyebrows—“you get when something’s bothering you.”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Well, try not to do it when you meet grandmother.”
“Crease my forehead?”
The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Page 32
