Instruments of Darkness (6 page)

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Authors: Imogen Robertson

Tags: #Historical fiction, #Crime Fiction

BOOK: Instruments of Darkness
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Crowther placed a hand to his brow and exhaled. When he opened his eyes again, he found Harriet’s gaze on him, her head tilted to one side.
‘Forgive me, but you look very tired, Mr Crowther.’
‘I am, Mrs Westerman. It is my habit to work at night, and keep to my bed in the morning when not viewing the slaughtered gentry of the neighbourhood.’ He weaved his hands together and stretched his fingers, making them crack, then continued in a practical tone: ‘Now, this will not be a full dissection. This is not the weather, the body must be viewed by the Coroner’s men in the morning, and I think we can be certain as to how this man died. We will confine ourselves to externals and examine his leg for any old injury.’ Harriet drew herself very straight and nodded. Crowther suspected she was fighting the impulse to salute.
He had removed his coat and was turning to hang it on a convenient nail when he noticed his own tools, wrapped in their soft leather roll on the bench beside the ewer and bowl.
‘How came these here?’
‘William picked them up from your people as he came back through the village. Had you not required them, they would have been returned before you had noticed they were gone.’
‘Your house is well run.’
‘William and David were both at sea with my husband and myself. Mrs Heathcote’s husband serves with him still. I could not wish for a better family. The maids still come and go, but in general I believe a woman never had better servants, or more loyal.’
Crowther turned to the corpse again, wondering if Miss Rachel Trench had ever been to sea, and if not, what she thought of the family now gathered round her.
He had been expecting Mrs Westerman to leave him at this point, but she did not. Instead, she folded back her habit from her wrists, and picked up an apron to cover her skirts. Catching his look, she gave him a wary half-smile.
‘You did say it would not be a full examination.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Then I think I shall stomach it.’ She moved to the body and folded away the linen cover, then, her attention caught, she bent down to examine the hand.
Crowther had studied with some of the best surgeons and teachers of anatomy in Europe. They were busy practical men, their inquisitiveness their main feature, their niceties blunted by their commerce with the dead and the necessary dealings with the underworld of bodysnatchers and resurrection men. He had seen any number of corpses cut up and manhandled, the floor slippery with blood and air thick with human effluvia while a dozen men in powdered wigs jostled over a body to examine some peculiarity pointed out by their instructors. He thought now that he had never seen a sight as shocking, or as strangely beautiful, as Mrs Harriet Westerman taking the stiff fist of the corpse between her own white hands and stooping to examine the dead flesh. Its grey, waxen emptiness alongside the delicate colouring of her face and intelligence in her eyes, seemed a metaphor of divine spark. If she had breathed on that hand and made it warm again, and alive, Crowther would have accepted the miracle and believed.
‘He has a hold of something. Do you have a pair of tweezers?’
‘Of course.’
He handed them to her and watched as she pushed them between the man’s fingers. She bit her lip when she was concentrating.
‘There!’
She passed the tweezers back to him with a flourish; in between their delicate silver tips Crowther saw a scrap of paper. The corner of a sheet, torn off.
‘He had something with him. A note or letter to go with the ring and it was taken from him,’ she said immediately.
‘Perhaps. Or perhaps it was a note from his tailor.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘I doubt anyone goes to meet someone in the woods, in darkness, with a note from their tailor clasped in their hand. Though I understand you. I am too quick.’ She reclaimed the scrap of paper, folded it into her handkerchief and put it to one side.
‘You are perhaps a little hasty. But your methods are just as I would advise.’
‘You forget. I read your article and watched you this morning. I am your student.’
Crowther raised his eyebrows briefly and returned to the body.
The cloak revealed no more than a purse with a few shillings and Crowther wondered where this man’s other possessions, if he had any, might be waiting, dumbly, for him to return. His boots were rather dusty, but whole. The clothes he wore were of passable quality, though a little worn in places, but only the material and design of the waistcoat showed any pretensions to fashion. Was its purchase one indulgence in an otherwise sober existence? An attempt at gentility? Crowther rubbed the stuff of the waistcoat between his thumb and forefinger, feeling the quality of the fabric. It might have been his own at one stage of his life.
‘How far away are we from Pulborough? And does the stage stop there?’ he asked, and Harriet looked up at him with surprise. ‘I have not needed to make the journey since my arrival in Hartswood,’ he explained.
‘It is about four miles. The stage to London passes there on Tuesdays, from London on Thursdays. You are wondering how he reached our village.’
‘I am. But it is most likely if he came from London, it was by coach and then on foot. He has the dust of the road on his feet.’
Mrs Westerman merely nodded then took up a cloth, wet it, and began calmly to clean the blood away from around the horrid gash in the neck. Crowther stared for a second, then fetched a cloth of his own and started the same work opposite her. Their silence stretched into minutes, and Crowther slowly became aware of a sense of reverence, of humility in the warm room making its way into his bones. He recognised it from his own workroom; that sense of wonder that came to him as he concentrated on these bodies, these vessels through which life so fleetingly, and often with such cruelty, flew. The sensation was, he had recognised long ago, the nearest he would ever come to religion.
Returning to the window, he dropped his cloth into the basin, watching for a moment as the water bloomed pink around it. He recalled Harvey’s words:
A‘ll the parts are nourished, cherished, and quickened with blood, which is warm, perfect, vaporous, full of spirit . . .’
This wondrous substance that flowed through the hearts of every man, whatever his condition or nature, this symbol of love and death floating free from his fingertips. He thought again of the dark marks on the tree trunks in the coppice, and wondered how long it would be till the local children made a little shrine of terror about them.
Turning back to the body, he crouched down to examine the wound afresh, and with infinite gentleness placed a finger on the edges of skin.
‘Mrs Westerman.’ His voice sounded unnaturally loud in the room, after their long silence. ‘If you have the stomach for it, come and look at this wound again and tell me what you see.’
Her greenish eyes searched his face for a moment, then she walked slowly round the edge of the table, her bloodied cloth still in her hands, and gave her attention directly to the place he indicated, her face bent to the horror of the wound. Her voice as she spoke was composed.
‘The cut is deepest here, on the right side. So if he was surprised from behind . . .’ She frowned.
Crowther took a knife from the roll behind him. ‘May I?’
‘Of course.’
He stood behind her, took the knife in his right hand and said, ‘You are looking forward . . .’
‘Waiting for whomever I am meeting to appear in the clearing . . .’
‘I come up behind you. Take you by the shoulder . . .’ He did so, placing his left hand on her shoulder, and with his right brought the knife in front of her body, hovering a few inches from her throat. His own mouth went suddenly dry and as if from a great height he saw himself, the woman, the body.
‘I see,’ Harriet said. ‘The force came on the right side of the wound as the cut was completed. He was murdered by a man who favoured his right.’
‘And who was of about the same height, since the cut goes straight back to the vertebra.’
Harriet looked at the knife that hovered still in front of her. ‘Whereas if
you
were to cut my throat,’ she told him, ‘the wound would most likely be angled upwards, given your superior height.’
He bowed and moved carefully away.
 
Mrs Westerman stood a little apart as Crowther looked for evidence of a break in the lower limbs of the corpse. He opened the flesh to expose the bone from knee to ankle. Again he felt the sweat slowly gathering at his neck. The bone in both legs was solid and clean. ‘Harriet did not speak as he worked, merely nodding as he showed her that the bones were true. He felt her attention as he folded the flesh back over the leg and with a curved needle of his own design knitted the skin back together with silk. It was neatly done, and some part of him expected to be praised for it, but when he looked up, he saw that her mind was already elsewhere.
‘This was a cowardly attack,’ she said.
‘To cut someone’s throat from behind, in the night? Yes, that is cowardice - or desperation. You never believed this was an affair of honour, I think.’
‘I did not, but I have been thinking further as you sliced up his shins. The murder was done swiftly, quietly. There is no sign to suggest this was done in the heat of the moment, in a fight or argument.’
‘Though words may have been exchanged and the murderer returned.’
‘Perhaps. In either case the murder was done, and the note taken ... the note - but not the ring. It was not hard to find and it indicates a connection to the family at Thornleigh Hall. If the murder was done with an aim to secrecy, as the wound indicates, why not take the ring and conceal the body, at least to some degree?’
Crowther walked to the ewer and found himself briefly confused about how to wash his hands without getting matter on the water jug. Harriet came over and lifted it to pour over his wrists. He worked the blood free from his short nails, then took up a fresh cloth and began to dry his fingers, looking up into the shadowed roofspace above them. Harriet moved away to cover the body again.
‘Perhaps the murderer was disturbed,’ he said to the empty air above him.
‘Someone, other than the murderer, arrived to keep the appointment? That would be interesting,’ Harriet mused, then continued with a sigh, ‘I wish we knew more about this man, Crowther. Neither rich nor poor, tall nor short. He is a blank.’
‘As you say, Mrs Westerman. But the clothes tell us something. It is they that convince me this man is not Alexander Thornleigh—’
‘The Honourable Alexander Thornleigh - Viscount Hardew to give him his proper title. One should address an Earl’s son properly, even
in absentia
.’
‘I stand corrected,’ he said, then continued, ‘As I was saying, the contrast between cloak and waistcoat convinces me more than the soundness of his leg bones or even his brother’s word. This is a man who would spend a large amount of money on a waistcoat, but not his travelling cloak. That speaks of one who wishes to pretend in company that he has more money than his cloak tells us he has, yet Mr Thornleigh, from what you tell me, has abandoned for fifteen years great rank and fortune.’
Harriet looked at Crowther for a long time, considering, then threw up her hands.
‘For a man so unwilling to look his fellow creatures in the eye, you are a subtle student of psychology,’ she declared, and he bowed.
There was a gentle knock at the door, and Dido put her face around the opening. Seeing the body covered, her expression became less fearful and she came far enough into the room to drop a curtsy to them.
‘Excuse me, ma’am. The Squire has returned from the village and Cook is ready to serve dinner.’
‘We shall come in at once.’ The maid let the door drop behind her. Harriet turned back to Crowther with a half-smile.
‘Well, it seems we have had all the private dealings with this poor wretch that we may expect. I suppose we’d better make matters known to the proper authorities.’ As she turned towards the door, Crowther held his ground and cleared his throat.
‘I have made an examination of the body, ma’am. That is all the true expertise I can offer in this case. I must ask you then, why have you made me an ally in this puzzle-solving of yours?’
She looked at him. ‘Because I think you are by nature a clear-headed man, and you are an outsider, sir, who cares little for the politics of society in this place. That makes you very important to me. I am trusting you to keep us honest. You have already been very rude to me on several occasions, so I am more and more convinced of my need of you. There are very few independently-minded, unencumbered and intelligent men in this neighbourhood, particularly when my husband is at sea, so perhaps my hand was forced.’
‘And would your husband approve of your actions in this matter, madam?’
She looked at the floor. ‘Probably not. He is more of a politician than I am, and he is rich enough already.’ Crowther frowned, and she continued, ‘But it will be six weeks before he can hear of this, and another six before any scolding he has for me will be able to reach Caveley. He can clear the decks of any embarrassment I cause when he returns. He has done so in the past. Does that concern you?’

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