Anatomy of Murder

7

In Jocasta Bligh’s early days in Town, when she worked in the Rose and Grape tavern in the thick of the city, she’d lived in rooms shared with ten others where the banisters were stolen to feed the feeble fires of the residents. A hard place to keep yourself to yourself if that was what you wished, though Jocasta had managed it. Then the cards had arrived, whistling and chattering into her life.

They had come to her by accident or chance, as most things do. She’d discovered them, a little greasy and torn, wrapped in a newspaper, in a dingy corner of the dingy bar where she earned enough pennies to keep from starving. She kept them about her, thinking their owner might come back and ask for them, but a month later no one had done so, and she had grown to like looking through the pictures of strange people, the designs that looked like playing cards, but weren’t. Cups and swords, coins and clubs; men, women, stars and angels. Then a seed merchant, a Frenchman, had spotted her dealing them to herself in a quiet moment when the publican wasn’t hovering, and had some talk with her. The cards were known in his country, he said, people used them to tell fortunes, and for a week he found her out every night and told her more; the meanings he gave to the pictures, and how to lay down the cards so their messages bled into each other to make new stories. It was like mixing wines, he told her. One card lay next to another, and some new thing emerged that tasted like neither, only existing where they joined.

The regulars thought for a while that the “Northern Fortress”-what they called her in those days-might have been breached. But there was nothing in that. Jocasta learned; the seed merchant completed his business in London and left; and she was there with her picture cards and a little hope.

The drinkers heard and asked, so she started telling fortunes for the people who drifted through the bar, getting them to lay down the cards and turn them over. People began to seek her out, scraping up pennies and the occasional shilling to have her tell them what she heard in the pictures till she found herself with enough chink in her pockets to take this room and leave off working for others. Twenty years ago now that was. Twenty years of pretty comfortable with a candle. Men she avoided, but for the last ten years she’d had Boyo. She was grateful, and when she had walked her feet off to arrive in London, having abandoned her home of mountains and lakes, she had never expected to feel like that again.

Not happy though. Every now and again, just when you were feeling a little too at ease, the cards had a habit of tapping you sharp-like on the shoulder and reminding you there was a price to be paid still. She did not like having to know some of the things they insisted on telling her. There had been a knock or two at the door since Kate Mitchell went off, but Jocasta hadn’t moved from her place or shifted the lay she had made for the young woman.

Jocasta looked hard at the cards till her head began to ache. All Swords. A dark woman. The Magician with his sticks and balls laid out before him, upside down. The Moon all sick and fading, The Hermit with his lantern and stick like the watchman up in Seven Dials-it was so like the man you’d have said they’d used him as a model. Then The Tower. Most of the cards could be kind or vicious with their predictions, depending on how they fell and what conversations they had with their place or the other cards near them. The Tower she’d never seen as anything but angry, though.

She smelled the sea again. She’d seen it only the once, but she remembered the stink. Then she got again that smoky smell, and these lies. Not the normal man-woman lies, not the kind ones or the cruel, or the words you just let slip that might be true when you say them but are lies as soon as sunlight hits them. Those lies she saw in the cards all the time, but these were others. She put her head on one side and screwed up her eyes. Had the thing been done? Was there still any stopping of it? That the cards would not tell her.

Once, when she was just beginning to turn the cards for other people in the tavern and winter was making the roads more dirty and foul than ever, a man had asked to have his fortune read as a lark with his friends. She’d laid them out and looked up into his square red face, and blurted out that he would be dead before the year’s end. He’d stopped laughing, but asked her how, all the time acting like he was paying no mind to it. Again, without a thought she told him he’d be hanged, and he pushed his way out of the bar and onto the streets in a rage. His friends had thought it all fine entertainment and given her more than she usually asked for in coins, then followed him out. The next day the whole street was alive with the story, and Jocasta felt ashamed. The day after, news reached them that the man had been taken up by one of the thief-takers, was a known highwayman and was likely to be at Tyburn before the end of the month.

Jocasta immediately became famous in the parish and found herself dealing cards a dozen times a day. She’d been to the execution, saw the cart bringing the man from Newgate with the priest beside him and the crowd cheering. She was sure he’d noticed her in the mass of people, and nodded to her. The crowd loved him. He went bravely with his head up. Jocasta spent two pennies on a pamphlet of his last confession and got a boy who’d been to the charity school to read it to her. The woodcut didn’t look much like him, and the words, though entertaining in their account of his terrible crimes, didn’t sound as if they came from his mouth. Jocasta couldn’t watch the drop; just heard it, the clap of the opening trapdoor in that moment of stillness, then the roar of the crowd. She had felt sick and wouldn’t read cards for a week. Then she got hungry.

With a growl she swept the cards up again and sat them in their box. Another knock came at the door, and this time she answered it.

When Harriet folded back the damp sheet from the corpse, she found herself being oddly precise about her movements. She was aware that Crowther was, for the time being, still more engaged in watching her than looking at the body.

“Crowther, I am quite well. I have heard more hurtful words about my husband’s current condition than those Proctor just used, and with less care and respect in them.”

Her companion did no more than nod, but it seemed the reassurance was sufficient. He continued to lay his knives and hooks on the bench in front of him.

“I must be a little more subtle in my arts here than we were in Thornleigh,” he said. “The cut throat on the body you used then as an introduction to myself was a more obvious cause of death than drowning.”

Harriet smiled a little at his characterization of their meeting. She had bullied her way into his house, she had forced him to place himself in danger, she had caused his most private griefs to become public, yet they had developed between them a friendship that was as valuable to her as the love of her own family.

Since the events of the previous summer he had become a regular companion in her house in Caveley. He would arrive unannounced when the mood took him-or, if he had taken delivery of some exciting preparation or curiosity, they would not see him for a week. She missed him greatly at these times, though she would never admit it, or tease him for ignoring them when he returned. To Harriet’s younger, orphaned sister Rachel, he took the role of an uncle, encouraging her, tolerating her, or ignoring her depending on his mood and Rachel’s choice of conversation. To her children he also stood something like an uncle. He did not join in their games, but would answer any question her son could think of to ask, until, when he grew tired of the circling logic of a seven-year-old, he would declare himself hungry and in need of a child to eat, whereupon Stephen would scream with delight and run from the room. .

Crowther’s dry voice broke in on her thoughts. “So, Mrs. Westerman, what do we see at first?”

Shaking herself, Harriet turned toward the body and looked into the dead eyes for the first time.

He was an elderly gentleman, she thought, something older than Crowther. The slight stubble on his face was white, and the flesh of his face was loose and lined. His eyes were gray and his jaw hung open as a man who has been suddenly, unpleasantly, surprised in the midst of a laugh. His limbs were thin, though not malnourished, the nails of his hands neatly and closely clipped to the pads of the fingers. She felt their texture. His throat was hidden by a sodden cravat, but there was a red mark high under his jaw on his left side. It did not seem a bruise or tearing of the skin.

As Harriet tilted the man’s chin toward her to better examine it, she realized there was something not quite right about the shape of his mouth. Gently retracting the man’s upper lip, she saw that his teeth were false, but not made of the usual animal bone or carved and stinking wood. Easing them loose, she passed them to Crowther without comment and he lifted them to examine them more closely under the light of the oil lamp.

“How very strange,” he said.

“He is of an age, Crowther.”

Crowther did not reply at once, but turned the dentures over in the light, then flicked them with his fingernail. They gave a dull chime like a teacup awkwardly placed on its saucer.

“No, Mrs. Westerman. I am not surprised that he required false teeth at his age, or was vain enough to wear them, but these are most unusual. They have been cast of porcelain. I have never seen such things before. A really most ingenious idea. And a rarity. We must make enquiries.” He smiled contentedly and Harriet shook her head a little. Crowther’s enthusiasm was not often provoked, but when it was, it tended to be by the most unusual things.

Their examination of the body was methodical. The rope and knot were first scrutinised, then the man’s ankles were unbound, his clothing removed and each piece passed between them before being folded and placed on the bench beside the teeth. The man could afford to dress like a gentleman, but all his pockets were empty.

His skin was marked, discolored in several places, but removing his cravat and exposing the throat had exposed a pattern of bruising that made Harriet draw in her breath. Moving forward, she put her hands, thumbs crossed, on the cold flesh over the Adam’s apple, trying to stretch her fingers to reach the marks, then had a sudden sharp vision of it living under her, struggling to breathe, a wet rattling gasp. She sprang away from it and shivered. Thoughts of her husband reared in her mind like agitated mud at the bottom of a pond, then fell back.

“That certainly seems consistent with the bruising,” Crowther said. “If he were throttled, we are likely to find damage to the hyoid bone.”

Harriet remained with her face in shadow. “Could a woman do that, Crowther?” she asked.

“Mrs. Westerman, I am quite convinced that some women can do anything.” He paused, and added in a more measured way, “Many women would have the strength to kill a man in this manner. Certainly.”

At last Crowther turned toward his knives, and looked inquiringly at his companion. She did not return his gaze at once, but stood with her shoulders tilted and her head on one side, gazing at the poor naked being in front of her. He looked so frail and waxen on the table in the spill of the lamp that she felt a sadness flow up from the cold ground under her feet.

There were times when she hated the brutal honesty of flesh. The body was marked and bruised in places other than the face and neck; odd, red, angry patches that seemed to glow out against the general pallor of the skin.

Harriet let her mind clear and her eyes rest on that strange red mark under his chin. It sparked some memory, some trace of thought in her, but the idea would not form itself into a notion she could put into words.

“Shall I make the first cut, madam?”

Since their first meeting, Harriet had only once seen Crowther perform a full autopsy, and that had been on the corpse of a cat. It was known to the members of the reading public, and now to the fellows of the Royal Society, that she had attended Crowther in his examinations of other unfortunates, but they did not perhaps realize how limited, in some ways, those examinations had been. The business of pulling open a corpse was a brutal art, slippery and foul-smelling. It required a scientist to become a butcher, and a gentleman to redden his cuffs with gore and bile.

By way of answer she sat down on the bench a little removed into the shadows, crossed her hands in her lap and settled herself, to show she meant to remain where she was as Crowther went to work with his knives. He adjusted the lamp and lifted his scalpel, which caught a gleam.

“Crowther? Did you examine your father’s body after his murder?”

Crowther went still.

“I did not, Mrs. Westerman. The baron had already been buried before I could return from London. And my brother was in custody. The local justice greeted me with a record of his confession. He later retracted it, of course. But I saw only fear of the noose in that action.”

“Your brother was tried in the House of Lords.”

“He was. The execution was public. I attended both.”

Harriet looked at his profile. His words had been fluent, but he seemed frozen now in his place. She thought it was likely the man on the trestle was of an age of Crowther’s father when he was killed. Leaning forward, she placed her forehead in her palm.

“I am sorry I asked you such a thing, Crowther. Whatever tact I had, I seem to have lost in these last months.”

Silently acknowledging her words, and placing the sharpened steel on the dead flesh, Crowther made his first cut.

Justice Pither had had an uncomfortable afternoon’s watch. Twice he stepped into his backyard and raised his fist at the door of the old stable to offer assistance or refreshment; and twice he lost his nerve and retreated without knocking to take up his position in his study again, rereading the familiar passages of his handbook for the duties and dues of a justice of the peace. Despite his vigilance, however, when the door to his study finally opened and Mrs. Westerman stepped into the room, he was surprised enough to drop his glasses, and thought himself for a moment in danger of stepping on them. But Mrs. Westerman did not come with enlightenment. She merely requested ink and paper and the use of one of his servants as message boy. Her note written and put into his servant’s hands, she turned to leave the room again.

“Do you,” Mr. Pither inquired, leaning with one hand on the inconveniently low desk, and in a tone which he hoped both invited confidence and inspired trust, “require anything. . er. . further?”

Harriet considered, her head on one side.

“No. Thank you.” Then she was gone.

Another half-hour or so passed, and Mr. Pither heard his street door opening and closing again before a rather young man was shown in by the servant who had taken the message. He was a good-looking sort of fellow, somewhat thin and tall, and his dress was elegant even if his movements seemed a little uncertain, and his cravat rather sloppily tied. In the few moments he was in Pither’s presence he was in danger of dropping his hat twice. Pither offered the gentleman a seat. The offer was declined.

“I am Owen Graves,” he said. “Mr. Crowther and Mrs. Westerman sent for me. Where might I find them?”

Mr. Pither recognized the name, of course. This young man was guardian to the great estates of the Earl of Sussex, and also of the young earl himself. He struggled for a moment to think of a phrase that would fix him in this important gentleman’s mind as a coming man of intelligence and wit, but failed, and could do no more than show his new guest out through the back door of the house and indicate the old stable. As Mr. Graves bowed and stepped forward, Mr. Pither retreated and began to wonder if there was food in the house sufficient to feed all these people.

He did not have long to count up his stores, for within ten minutes of the arrival of this Mr. Graves, all three of his guests had presented themselves in his study once more. Mr. Crowther had something of a glint in his eye, Mr. Graves looked merely serious and Mrs. Westerman calm, though there was something in her movements as she entered the room that suggested rather more vigor in her person than there had been on her arrival. Mr. Pither thought her rather handsome and wondered how it would feel to walk through Hyde Park on a Sunday with her on his arm, telling her of the wrongs he had righted during his week and receiving her respectful praise.

“Well, Crowther, do not keep poor Mr. Pither in suspense any longer,” she said.

Crowther looked up at the justice from under his heavy lids and nodded. “Very well. Mr. Pither, the man presently in your outhouse was strangled, not drowned. Probably some time yesterday. He is indeed called Fitzraven-Nathaniel Fitzraven, in fact-and our friend Mr. Graves here informs us he had been a professional violin player. Of late years, the arthritis building in his hands had forced him to become more of an assistant to the management of His Majesty’s Theatre in Hay Market, also known as His Majesty’s Opera House.”

“Really? A violinist? The Opera House? Oh, I see.” Mr. Pither was at a loss.

“Also,” Harriet added with a smile, “after he was throttled, Mr. Fitzraven was left on his back for some hours before being thrown into the river.”

Justice Pither’s jaw worked uncomfortably for a few moments. “But how can you possibly know such things?”

Crowther settled back into his seat to explain, but was cut off by a wave from Mrs. Westerman.

“No, sir, please allow me. You shall say everything in Latin and in detail that would stop a decent man from enjoying his dinner.” Mr. Crowther blinked but did not protest. Mrs. Westerman continued, counting her points on her fingertips and sounding for all the world as if she were rattling off an order to her grocer: “He has bruises to his throat, and the hyoid bone is broken, thus, strangulation. As to the movement of the body-when a person dies their blood does not freeze, but like water tries to find the lowest level it can and congeals there.”

Mr. Pither looked a little nauseated, but nodded bravely. Harriet smiled at him encouragingly and went on, “Mr. Crowther has been instructing me in the matter this afternoon. I now pass on the knowledge to you, sir. Mr. Fitzraven has patches on his back that suggest he was lying flat for some hours before he was thrown in the river. Some blood also gathered in his feet, as the process was not complete when he went into the water. He was wearing a rather fine coat. The air trapped in it held him upright from his tether. As to his full name and profession, we noticed a mark on his neck I remember seeing on friends of Mr. Graves here, who are violinists by trade, then it was a simple matter to ask him to come here as he knows every fiddle player in London.” She gave him a bright smile and folded her hands again in her lap.

After a moment’s pause, while Justice Pither attempted to absorb the information so cheerfully flung down before him, he asked hopefully, “And who killed him?”

“That we cannot know,” Crowther said dryly. “Mr. Graves here can furnish you with his address.” The party began to stand. Justice Pither scrambled to his feet.

“But please. . I. . Mr. Crowther, Mrs. Westerman. Do not desert me! Please tell me you intend to look further into this matter. My duties. . I cannot investigate this poor man’s death in any satisfactory way myself.” At that moment, in the street, and with a deplorable lack of respect for the solemnity of the moment, a rather harsh-voiced person started yelling that he had mackerel for sale. Harriet and Crowther were looking at each other. “Surely, you have a duty. .” the justice said pitiably. “Mr. Graves, please help me to persuade them.”

Graves looked between the justice and Mrs. Westerman. “I believe that, in doing what they have already done, my friends have more than fulfilled their duty,” he said. “Beyond this point, their chances of success are no greater than yours.”

Justice Pither looked distressed. “I beg you, sir, madam!” His shoulders slumped and he looked at the table in front of him, at his little leather volumes, and said more quietly, “But I have nothing to offer you. I have no influence, no connections to compare with those which you already enjoy in your own rights. I know most people in this city think me a fool for trying to see the laws enforced, the guilty punished and so on.” He sighed. “You are right, Mr. Graves.” He drew himself straight, trying to be brave. “Thank you, Mr. Crowther, Mrs. Westerman, for your valued assistance. I shall do my best-place the proper advertisements and so on. I am most grateful to you both for telling me so much about this unhappy wretch.”

There was a long pause. Mr. Pither could hear Mrs. Westerman’s gloved fingers beating a tattoo on the cloth of her dress, and some part of him began to hope.

“Oh dear,” said Harriet at last. “Now you have made us your allies in a way all the influence in the world could not. Do you not fear it to be so, Mr. Crowther?”

“I do, Mrs. Westerman,” that gentleman replied.

Pither almost shook with relief. Harriet offered him her hand and he snatched it up in both of his own, his total confidence in their abilities shining out from him.

“Thank you.”

Harriet patted his hand and released herself with a slight wince. “We shall regret it, I imagine. I hope you shall not, sir. We are at your service.” She glanced at the clock on Mr. Pither’s mantel. “Or at least we shall be so in the morning. The dinner hour approaches and Mr. Graves’s house keeps careful hours.”

Graves took advantage of the carriage trip returning them to Berkeley Square to tell them what he could of Nathaniel Fitzraven, musician. It became clear at once that he had not liked the man, and as Graves seemed to like and value most people to a degree Harriet found frustrating, she had pushed him for his reasons and impressions. He had spoken haltingly at first, watching the damp, darkening streets pass by through the carriage window. He shivered.

“He liked to pretend intimate knowledge of his betters. He played in the band of His Majesty’s Theatre for some years and the association with the singers and patrons there was a tonic to him. To hear him speak, you would have thought him the confidant of every music lover of note in the city. Then his talents began to desert him; his fingers stiffened to the point he could no longer perform what was required.”

“The swelling of the joints was not extreme,” Crowther said, his eyebrows raised.

Graves looked down at his own young hands for a moment, then hid them in his pockets. “It does not need to be extreme to lose a musician his livelihood. He managed to wheedle himself back into the employ of the Opera House, however. Perhaps the manager there, Mr. Harwood, pitied him. This year and last he was running errands for them, and acting as if he was Harwood’s right-hand man. He bought last season’s selections to be made up into songbooks.” Graves, among his other responsibilities, also managed a small music shop in Tichfield Street, a much less fashionable part of Town. He continued: “I did not like the way he treated the children. As soon as their true lineage and worth was acknowledged, he became ingratiating. My heart sank if they were keeping me company in the shop and he entered on some pretext or other. I am sure he told everyone he stood like an uncle to them.”

Harriet smiled gently at him as she pulled her cloak more tightly round her throat. “Lord Sussex and Lady Susan know who their friends are, Graves.”

The young man shrugged his shoulders. “Susan does, I think. But Jonathan is still very young. However, whatever my doubts about Fitzraven, Harwood placed great trust in him this summer. He sent Fitzraven to the continent to recruit singers for the current season. Fitzraven came back bristling with pride, and looking rather sleek. He had engaged Isabella Marin in Milan and, indeed, this new castrato of whom such praises are spoken-Manzerotti. They say he is the greatest singer to come to London since Gasparo Pacchierotti’s debut of seventy-seven. One of my customers heard him at a party in Devonshire House some days ago and was all but overcome.”

Harriet and Crowther must have looked a little blank at the names. The noise of London was crashing in on them through the windows of the carriage as it bullied its way along Cockspur through horses, carts and bobbing sedan chairs in the gathering dark. The carriage wheels spat mud up the doors as they jostled between ruts, the light had bled out of the day and already the shadows were deepening and the colors folding in on themselves. A pieman, his tray almost empty, chucked the last of his wares to a group of dirty-looking boys who had been following him down the road. After a brief struggle the strongest of them emerged in victory and held his prize high above the heads of the others. He tore pieces of the misshapen pastry off and stuffed them into his mouth, while keeping the rest out of the reach of his mewling, begging band and their long skinny fingers. Hawkers and song sellers walked by them shouting out their produce and prices, occasionally running a casual, assessing eye over the carriage, which here at least moved scarcely faster than they did, and over its occupants. A girl, no more than fourteen but already pox-marked and old in her expression, peered in and whistled at Graves, then noticing Harriet winked at her, and with a swing of her hips was gone. Graves was too busy marveling at his companions’ expressions to notice her.

“Really, Crowther, Mrs. Westerman,” he said, “you are educated people but your ignorance of music is astonishing.”

Harriet looked very serious. “Forgive us, Graves! We are new to the capital, and I was in the East Indies in seventy-seven and Crowther was in-?”

Crowther looked up from his fingernails. “Oh, I was in London. And I went to a concert or two, but my occupations were in general less polite.” And when Graves looked inquiringly at him, Crowther met his gaze and said very evenly, “I was cutting up dead people.”

Graves cleared his throat and crossed his legs.

“Then Graves, my dear boy, you must educate us.” Harriet smiled and folded her arms. “Who is this Manzerotti? And who is Isabella Marin?”

Graves leaned forward with a sudden enthusiasm that reminded Harriet that, for all his cares and responsibilities, he was still not yet twenty-five.

“Manzerotti is said to be the greatest soprano castrato living. He is much spoken of. It is a marvelous thing to have him in London! They say that with both him and Marin in the company, the serious opera or ‘opera seria’ could equal the success of Creso in seventy-seven, and there were sixteen performances that season.” He sat back again with the air of having delivered a startling revelation.

Crowther exchanged a glance with Harriet, and lifted his eyebrows, murmuring, “Is that good?”

Graves gave an exasperated sigh. “It is remarkable! An opera is judged a great success if it manages a dozen performances. And Isabella Marin! Her name is pure gold on the continent, and it is her first appearance on the English stage. It is a sensation.”

Harriet pulled absentmindedly on one of her red curls of hair, saying, “Are there no English singers who can hold a tune? Why did Harwood need to send Fitzraven to the continent to recruit? Are we not at war with most of our neighbors over there?”

“Art knows no boundaries or borders,” Graves said a little stiffly, then, throwing his body back into the corner of the coach and smiling, “but it is partly fashion. We English love to see something new at the opera. I think bringing in singers from hundreds of miles away to serenade us makes us feel more important. What is nearby is necessarily unexceptional.”

He looked up and to his right into the dark of the carriage. Harriet could tell he was imagining the sound of this Manzerotti’s voice in the private auditorium of his mind. Then, coming to himself and noticing the streets outside, he said, “We are nearly arrived. I hope you dine with us this evening, Mr. Crowther.”

Mr. Crowther bowed and the carriage came to a halt.

Mr. Crowther was not a regular guest at dinner in Berkeley Square; however he thought it might be politic not to return to his own rented house as yet. He had been late at work the previous night; indeed, dawn had already begun to cough at the windows when he ceased his examination of small lesions on the brain of a young man who had died of a seizure. It had been a fascinating study, but he was not entirely confident that he had tidied away all his samples before retiring at last to bed. If he had been remiss it was likely the maid would have been thrown into hysterics by the discovery of part of a brain in a jar and left her post. He had lost two maids in this way since coming to London, and his housekeeper, Hannah, though loyal, had limits to her patience. He hoped to avoid the punishment of a bad dinner by taking a seat at Graves’s table. However, although the food was excellent, the table was so crowded with good humor he feared his digestion might still suffer.

Mr. Gabriel Crowther was not known for his sociability. Indeed, when the Royal Society invited him to address them it had been more out of respect than in expectation that he would accept. But he had accepted. It was Mr. Crowther who had, in September of this year and after careful correspondence, found and recommended Dr. Trevelyan’s establishment as a suitable place for James Westerman to be confined. It was Mr. Crowther who had written to Graves to advise him of the matter, and his letter that had prompted the family’s warm invitation to Harriet and her family to treat their establishment as their home while James was resident in Highgate. Mr. Crowther had rarely done so much for any other human being. The reward for his unusual activity was to discover in a distressingly short time that he missed the society of the ladies of Caveley, so when the invitation from the Royal Society at Somerset House arrived he drew up a list of reasons why it would be advantageous to spend time in London, and ordered his housekeeper to make the necessary preparations.

His welcome in Berkeley Square had been warm, and he was forced to admit he had been glad to see them all. However, he had not lost his habits of silence and isolation completely. A noisy table of young people could still feel something of a trial. Lady Susan was giving her guardian an account of her day that included a cruelly accurate impersonation of her Italian master. Miss Rachel Trench, Harriet’s younger sister, was trying hard to interest her sibling with an account of some wallpapers she had seen, which she thought might be suitable for the salon in their country house of Caveley. Graves was torn between listening to Susan and preventing his jugged hare from escaping over the edge of his plate. The candles blazed and the footmen went to and fro setting down dishes or taking them away, and Stephen and Lord Sussex were competing to entertain the table with their story of a dead rat in the cellar and their plans for the corpse in various schemes to terrify the maids.

At the head of the table, the personification of calm good grace, sat Mrs. Beatrice Service. Her dress was modest and neat, and her gray curls were pinned up neatly under a white cap. Her eyes suggested she found the world an amusing and pleasant place in general. When Owen Graves had taken on the task of constructing a proper household in which these two ennobled orphans, Lord Sussex and Lady Susan, might grow, he naturally turned to those who had already shown themselves to be their friends in their time of poverty and obscurity. Mrs. Service was such a one. She had lived in the street where the children were born, and had known both their parents. A poor widow, albeit a gentleman’s daughter, she had passed her days quietly starving and trying not to cause any difficulty for anyone in the process. Now she lived with Jonathan, Susan and their guardian as friend and companion in Berkeley Square. She had a box at the opera, good food when she wanted it, and thought herself a very lucky woman.

There was an element of the governess about Mrs. Service’s role, though Susan had masters who visited the house to instruct her in music and, despite her early reluctance, French and Italian, but there was never any question among the household as to her status. Mrs. Service was counselor to Graves; she held the keys to the store cupboards; the housekeeper came to her for directions; and she acted as a sort of honorary grandmother to the children. She was by nature retiring, but her principles were sound and held with conviction, so if she ever had cause to speak to Susan about the propriety of her behavior, her words carried great force, and were attended to. Just now, she gave the Earl of Sussex a mild look and the speeches about the rat came to an abrupt halt. In the little silvered moment of silence that followed she asked Mr. Crowther how he had occupied his day.

“Mrs. Westerman and myself have been recruited to investigate a murder, Mrs. Service,” he replied.

The silver silence became something harder, and the room seemed to still. Graves put his fork down and said, “Susan, Jonathan. I am afraid Mr. Fitzraven, the gentleman from the His Majesty’s Theatre, has been killed.”

The children were silent a moment, till Jonathan, looking up at Crowther under his pale lashes, asked in a small voice, “Was he stabbed, sir?”

Crowther watched him carefully as he replied, “No, Lord Sussex. He was strangled and thrown into the river.”

Lord Sussex nodded. He had, Crowther surmised, been thinking of his own father’s death; it seemed his sister’s thoughts followed a similar trajectory.

Susan looked up at her guardian. “Graves, did he have any children? He never mentioned any.”

Graves reached out his hand to touch her hair. “No, my love. He was alone in the world. That is why Mr. Crowther and Mrs. Westerman must try to give him some justice.”

The argument, Crowther thought, sounded a little weak. He and Harriet had already agreed that Mr. Palmer’s role in the case should not be known to anyone else in the household. It would seem to involve unnecessary risk to all concerned. However, noticing as he did now the tightening of the muscles around Miss Rachel Trench’s jaw, he wished his conscience would let him be more frank. He then became aware that Lady Susan Thornleigh was looking at him with wide and thoughtful eyes.

“You are going to find out who killed Mr. Fitzraven, then? I am glad.” Her glance returning to the plate in front of her; the little girl chased some morsel of meat through its gravy with her fork like a god idly steering ships onto rocks or toward treasure. “Though he was never very nice to me till I became rich. Then he smiled much too much. Before then he used to just ignore us and try and impress Father with talk of the opera. Isn’t it foolish to like someone just because someone else has died and left them money and things?”

He nodded. “Yes, my dear. Very foolish.”

Rachel stood up rather suddenly. “I had thought you in better spirits this evening, Harriet. I hope this new adventure is not the reason for that. Forgive me, Mrs. Service, I have a sudden headache. I fear you must excuse me.”

Mrs. Service nodded to her pleasantly. Harriet rested her forehead on her fingertips and closed her eyes. Graves merely looked serious.

“Mr. Crowther, I think you have not tried the salmon,” Mrs. Service said. “Let me help you to some.”

As she was so employed she continued, “Mr. Graves, Susan and I were planning on attending the opening night of the season at the Italian Opera. It is tomorrow, you know. I hope Miss Trench will join us. Will you come with us also, as part of your. . investigations?”

Mr. Crowther looked at the pink flesh of the fish in front of him, the buttered pastry flaking around it, and found his appetite, always light, was gone.

“I believe we will be at His Majesty’s rather before that, Mrs. Service. And of course, Mrs. Westerman and I would not wish to expose you or the children to any scenes that might be awkward, or unpleasant.”

“Of course not,” Harriet echoed rather wearily.

Mrs. Service smiled and beckoned the footman behind her to remove her plate.