Island of Bones (23 page)

‘More often than not I find money a convenient way of buying peace. Now will you come and speak to Margaret with me, and when we have taxed her memory perhaps we can consult Mrs Tyers.’

It was Harriet’s turn to frown. ‘You wish me to be present while you speak to her, Crowther? I would have thought, given the delicacy of the matter, you would have preferred to speak to her alone.’

‘You presumed wrongly, madam. If you have finished your coffee . . .’

Harriet put the cup to her lips again, then wrinkled her nose. ‘Quite cold!’

The Vizegräfin was surprised to see them enter the library and walk towards her with such firm steps. At first she ignored Harriet and turned to Crowther.

‘You have no intention of lecturing me, I hope, Brother?’

Harriet squinted up at the bookshelves on the upper levels and walked behind the Vizegräfin’s chair.

‘You are right to be concerned, madam,’ she said. ‘He has lectured me any number of times, and as you see, it does me no good. However, I have yet to call a lady a whore at the breakfast-table.’

The Vizegräfin reflected on her jewelled hands lying in her lap. ‘Your grasp of the German vernacular is impressive, Mrs Westerman. Did your sailor husband teach you the word?’

‘No, I speak only a little German. Though I think Miss Scales
understood the word, or at least its import, by her expression when you spoke. What a great many books! I was proud of my library at Caveley till I came here. Were you bookish as a child?’

‘I learned what was befitting to my role.’

‘Enough,’ Crowther said. ‘I neither know nor care what your association is with that young woman . . .’

The Vizegräfin clasped her hands together so her rings clicked. ‘
I
have no association with Fräulein Hurst. I believe her father knew my son a little in Vienna. They are not the sort of people with whom
I
would associate.’

Crowther tapped his cane firmly enough on the carpet to make both ladies start. ‘Margaret, I wish you to tell me something of my father. Can you manage to do that without making yourself ridiculous?’

The Vizegräfin shot out of her seat. ‘
I
make myself ridiculous! You dare say such a thing to me,
Gabriel
, when every paper in Europe has written of your exploits in the company of this woman! Why did you not remain in hiding? Stay under your rock with your knives and your little experiments? My father made you rich, and you sold everything he had worked for before his body was cold, and slunk away. I can tell you this of my father: he was a better man than you shall ever be.’

Crowther looked at her very steadily. ‘I am no murderer.’

The Vizegräfin froze and Harriet thought of them as twinned dragons facing across a family shield. They had the same eyes, the same trick of holding themselves absolutely rigid when angry.

When the Vizegräfin spoke it was as if she had licked each word with something bitter before letting it leave her mouth. ‘No, Gabriel, you only pick amongst the
leavings
of murderers like a butcher’s dog. My father never murdered any man. Rupert de Beaufoy died at the hands of the law as a traitor to his King. My father did his duty.’

She crossed the room and left the library, her skirts hissing and crackling over the floor. Harriet sank into the chair thait she had vacated. ‘We might have managed that better. Your poor sister will soon run out of
rooms to leave in high dudgeon.’ She folded her hands. ‘Who might Rupert de Beaufoy be?’

Crowther sighed and sat down opposite her. ‘He was the brother of the last Lord Greta, whom my sister mentioned to you a little while ago. The one who was caught in the Second Rebellion and executed in forty-six.’

Harriet stared hard into the carpet in front of her, her fingers tapping at the fabric of her dress. She could feel the thoughts and questions plaiting into a braid in her mind like rope in the chandler’s shop.

‘Crowther, when was your father awarded his peerage?’

S
TEPHEN HAD PULLED
Felix’s arrows free from the straw bed of the target and was now wrestling his own from the slight rise in the lawn either side of the painted roundel. He was just fastening his fingers round the second of these when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

‘Careful there!’ Felix said. ‘Those arrows are delicate things. Free them gently at the angle they went into the ground, or you will weaken them.’ Stephen adjusted his grip, and slid rather than yanked the shaft free from the grass. ‘That’s better. A weak arrow can split under the strain of the string, you know.’ He showed Stephen his palm. In its centre was a faint puckered scarring. Stephen touched it with his finger.

‘Did it hurt?’

‘What do you think? Treat these things with respect, Mr Westerman.’

Stephen squinted up at him. Felix did not seem a man who treated many things with respect. Last evening in the drawing room he had seen him pick up and twirl on his fingertips a tiny porcelain dish of Mrs Briggs’s that he himself would have feared to breathe on in case his lungs might shatter it.

‘Tell me more about hunting boar, sir,’ Stephen said. ‘You must be very brave.’

Felix shrugged, resting the tip of his bow on the ground in front of his feet. ‘I suppose I was. My heart was thudding, certainly. I was mostly excited though. It is one of those times that you are too engaged with the task at hand to think of anything else. The world becomes small and all your worries disappear. No bills, no thoughts of your own future. Just you and what is in front of you. It makes one feel free.’

Stephen was confused. To be a man
was
to be free, surely? Out of the schoolroom, no longer having to ask permission for anything. He tried to say so, and Felix shook his head.

‘I am sorry, Stephen. We are never free. It is simply as we grow older, the negotiations become more complex.’

As they walked back towards the firing line Stephen watched Felix grow serious; his eyes were clouding and he handed the bow to him without comment or further instruction. Stephen felt his companion’s sudden gloom fall on his shoulders. He thought of his mother, the way she could be so bright at times and quick, then of the number of occasions over the last year when he had found her curled up in her chair in the drawing room looking so still she might have been carved. He knew she was thinking about his father then, and seeing her so sad with her memories meant he did not speak of Captain Westerman as often as he would like. He would lie in his bed trying as hard as he could to remember how it felt to be lifted in his father’s arms and have the air pressed out of him. He would wriggle as if he wanted to get away, but laughing and only in truth trying to get closer to the man, his scent of salt and sweat, the rough stubble of his face.

‘Do you have a father, sir?’ he said suddenly.

The question shook Felix out of his thoughts and he looked down at Stephen with eyebrows raised. ‘I do. Everyone does, you know.’

Stephen lifted the bow, but found he could not see the target very clearly. He felt Felix’s hand on his shoulder, slightly correcting his posture. ‘I do not,’ he whispered to the feathers of the arrow’s flight and then released the string. The arrow fell short and skidded through the grass. Felix said something swiftly in German under his breath.

‘Damn stupid thing to say. Sorry, Stephen. I know your father was a fine man. My mother is right – I am an idiot not fit to be let out.’

Stephen let the bow drop to his side. ‘It does not matter. You are being kind to me.’

Felix shook his head. ‘Do not trust me, Stephen. I have bad blood.’ He looked up, distracted by some movement at the edge of the garden, and his expression changed from curiosity to sudden shock. ‘Good God!’ Stephen turned to see where he was looking and saw Casper emerging onto the upper lawn from the path into the woods. He was leaning heavily on a stick. Slung around his shoulders was a thick rope, and with it he was dragging something that looked like a sledge. There was a body on it.

Felix set off up the hill at a run with Stephen at his heels. When Casper saw them heading towards him he came to a stop and waited, breathing deeply. One of the gardeners who had been working on the beds outside the front door turned, then dropping his trowel, raced into the house. Felix arrived by Casper’s side, and as he looked at the body, went completely white. He turned at once to Casper.

‘What happened? Where? You are injured! Did you have some sort of fight with this man? Did you kill him?’ Casper looked at him coolly but said nothing. Felix flushed. ‘I said, what happened? Answer me!’

Stephen moved away from him and closer to Casper, who put his hand on the boy’s shoulder but still said nothing. The door to Silverside Hall burst open again and Harriet and Crowther appeared, the Vizegräfin following behind them.

Casper leaned over to Stephen. ‘Is the lady with the red hair your mother?’

Stephen nodded. ‘And the man with her is Mr Crowther.’

‘Him I know, I think. Don’t be frightened, lad.’

Harriet was in the lead of the little group from the house. As she reached them and saw the body on the sledge, she slowed her steps, then put out her hand.

‘I think you must be Casper Grace,’ she said.

Casper took her hand and shook it. ‘I am, and glad to know you.’

‘I am sorry to see you have been hurt. Stephen told us.’

‘I shall mend, madam.’

Crowther had crouched down beside the body and having touched the neck for a moment, stood again. ‘And who was this gentleman?’

Casper lifted the ropes from around his shoulders, wincing as he did so, and dropped them to the ground. ‘I cannot tell you that, my lord. Though by his looks, I’d say this man,’ he nodded towards Felix, ‘knows what name he went by.’

Stephen watched as Crowther turned his cold blue eyes on his nephew. Felix put his hand briefly towards his throat before replying.

‘Hurst, his name is Hurst. I knew him in Vienna.’

Stephen started. ‘Casper! He is Sophia’s father!’

Casper squeezed his shoulder, but continued to speak to Crowther. ‘I found him in the old mine on the flank of Swineside. You know the place?’ Crowther nodded. ‘He was hidden beneath rocks and branches, just in the lip of the workings. If I had not had business there, he might have lain a year.’

‘Hidden?’ Harriet repeated, looking intently into Casper’s face.

‘Yes, ma’am. Someone had aimed for him to stay there.’ He sniffed, and settled his satchel under his arm. ‘Good morning to you,’ he said, and with another squeeze of Stephen’s shoulder he was gone. Stephen looked at the body. It was a man about the age and size of Ham, the coachman. Old, but not as old as Crowther. He had black hair, curled over his ears and very shiny like his daughter’s. Mr Hurst was wearing a buff jacket with gold buttons, and a high, pale waistcoat, a little dusty. There was a twig sticking out from under his collar. His face looked very grey, and his lips were a strange pale purple. The only corpse that Stephen had seen before now was that of his father. James Westerman had looked in the first minutes after death as if he were sleeping, his eyes closed. Mr Hurst’s eyes were still wide open and his mouth a little agape. He lay in the sledge as a man might in a hammock with his ankles together and his arms by his side. His shoes had gold buckles
on them and the skin on his face looked very smooth. Stephen could see no blood.

‘Why has he left?’ the Vizegräfin asked, suddenly shrill. ‘What are we supposed to do with the body?’

She was ignored. Stephen felt a pressure on his arm. His mother had crouched down until she could look him in the eye, and was turning him away from the body. ‘Stephen, would you go and find Isaiah and Ham for me?’ she asked, and looked up at Crowther. ‘We shall carry Mr Hurst into the brewery . . .’ She seemed to be asking Mr Crowther something. He nodded and she stood again. ‘Quick as you can, young man.’

Stephen shook himself, and set out for the house.

Only someone who knew Harriet as intimately as Crowther did would have noticed the set of her mouth, and slight paleness in her cheeks. To anyone else she would seem almost unnaturally calm in the circumstances. She turned to Felix.

‘This man’s daughter was here only half an hour ago, Felix, asking for you and concerned about her father. Miss Scales took her to the vicarage. Perhaps you should go and give her the news that his body has been found, since you know the young woman.’

Felix put his hand to his face; he was still staring at the body. ‘She was here? I did not kn—’

His mother interrupted. ‘There is no reason my son should be sent to talk to the girl! Let one of the servants carry a note. And why should the body be left here? Let it be taken away.’

Crowther listened to the rising notes of her voice, and once again thanked the fates that Mrs Westerman was not inclined to be hysterical.

‘Felix, perhaps you should take your mother into the house. Mrs Westerman, I suggest once the body is secured, that we send a note to Mr Sturgess. He is the magistrate, and the coroner must be summoned. Perhaps then
we
may go to the vicarage and speak to Fräulein Hurst and Miss Scales.’ He looked again at his nephew. He was waiting,
perhaps even hoping that the boy would insist on accompanying them. Felix, however, only took his mother’s arm and Crowther felt his lip curl.

When they were out of earshot he turned to Harriet. She had crouched down next to the body, and lifted the head between her palms, turning it carefully to left and right. ‘I can see no signs of injury, Crowther. The skull seems intact.’ She gently lowered the head. ‘Our skeletal friend is safely boxed then, I take it?’ She took hold of the far shoulder of the corpse and attempted to roll it towards her.

Crowther knelt by her side and assisted her until they could gain sight of Mr Hurst’s back. The limbs were rigid. His tight jacket appeared unmarked, only dusty, as his waistcoat. They let the body rock onto its back again.

‘Nothing,’ Harriet said. ‘But the body is quite dry. His daughter was concerned for him before the fireworks last night.’

‘We can assume he was in his hiding-place before the storm of yesterday evening then,’ Crowther said softly. As they stood again, the two servants of the Hall came trotting out towards them. Both exclaimed at the corpse. Harriet was surprised to see Ham pull one of Casper’s rowan crosses from his pocket and kiss it. Crowther gave them their orders and they picked the rough sled up like a stretcher and headed towards the old brewery. As they followed a few steps behind, Crowther leaned towards Harriet. ‘Let us delay sending to Mr Sturgess half an hour.’