Circle of Shadows

PART IV
IV.1

4 May 1784

Doubt can drift through corridors like a woman’s scent. It passes in a touch from one being to another; a question asked, or even the idea that a question has been asked, can circulate without facts to carry it or definitive news to push it from place to place, but nevertheless it leaps from one to another like an infection. The day Harriet, Crowther and Graves arrived in Maulberg, everyone knew that young Mr Clode had murdered Lady Martesen and attempted to kill himself in remorse. Shocking, of course. But done, enclosed, over, tied up and tidied away. This morning, without being able to say quite why, everyone was less sure. The question opened up like a wound, and at once the next followed. If he was not guilty, then who was? Many tried to dismiss the question, to ignore it, but it troubled the corners of their minds. Gentlemen paused in the middle of their correspondence to stare out of the window; they found they were not listening to their stewards. Ladies ceased to hear their maids as their hair was dressed, and gave their orders in a manner distracted and unsure. Servants raised their eyebrows at each other as they passed in the corridors, shook their heads in the courtyards and the question spread, knocking at the doors with the milk-seller, carried out of the dress shops and perfumiers, coming home from the market with the fish and potatoes till it landed finally on the lap of a middle-aged woman sitting in the kitchen of a neat little house on Bergman Strasse.

Mrs Gruber was alone and expected no company that day. Her mistress had left Ulrichsberg after the funeral for her sister’s house in Hamburg with her little son and the best plate. Her only duties in the past fortnight had been to catalogue the contents of the house and see it protected from dust and sunlight until the final decisions could be made. The will had been read and confirmed her master as a man reasonable and fair in death as in life. His family were content and the servants had all been left with a little something to keep out the cold. Mrs Gruber thought she might go and live with her son, perhaps invest the money she had been left, and that she had saved, in the business he was beginning to grow. He and his wife had offered her a home in the past, and told her they would be glad of her help with the book-keeping. There was a good chance of growing old peacefully and secure there. Well. There it was. She would not be sorry to leave Ulrichsberg. But now the question had crept in through the keyhole and she wondered how to answer it. There was, after all, no help coming to her master now, but then again … He had been generous. He had been kind. He had put business her son’s way, and even if he could be short-tempered at times when the gout was eating him up, a little careless in the friends he made and brought to the house sometimes, he deserved something.

She decided to take a walk. She would put on her hat and spend a little part of the morning in the fresh air, and if the chance came to speak her mind, so be it.

The third person Mrs Gruber exchanged good-days with that morning was her niece, who worked as a maid in the palace: the young girl was delighted to interrupt her morning’s comings and goings to gossip with her aunt. They talked about the preparations for the wedding and after speculating about what share in the entertainments they might expect, the girl chatted about the English who had arrived, friends of Mr and Mrs Clode. Her aunt asked her if they seemed friendly or respectable people. Her niece confirmed it, and told her in great detail about the strange Mr Michaels who was now in residence in the fake village and who spoke the dialect of the region like one of them. Mrs Gruber nodded, made her decision and within half an hour of this conversation was knocking on Mr Michaels’s door. Half an hour later she found herself seated in a private drawing room of the palace with Mrs Westerman, Mr Crowther and Mr Michaels as support. She was given tea, treated with great civility and left glad she had come. When she sat down to her modest lunch some hours after that, back in the kitchen of her dead master’s house, she was not sure if she had done the right thing. Part of her thought His Honour would want to be left in peace. But she had learned how a question can lead one in strange directions. The image of Mrs Westerman’s open smile and schoolgirl German stayed with her the rest of the day. Mr Crowther’s eyes, she noticed, were ice blue like her master’s.

As soon as Frau Gruber had left them, Harriet and Crowther went in search of Krall. They found him surrounded by paper in a cloud of tobacco. He greeted them happily enough.

‘I have traced the mask! It seems it was not tainted before it arrived in Oberbach — Padfield’s housemaid tried it on to amuse the footman and suffered no ill-effects.’ He realised the English were not listening to him with the attention he had hoped for.

‘The Honourable Diether Fink,’ Crowther said at once.

Krall drew heavily on his pipe then wafted away the smoke as if it had come as a bit of a surprise to him. ‘A good man. Banker and adviser to the court. Died in his bed some two weeks ago. The Duke himself rode before the coffin. What of him?’

‘You did not feel that another suspicious death following on that of Lady Martesen was of significance?’

Krall rubbed at his forehead with his fingertips. ‘Suspicious? It wasn’t suspicious. He choked. His doctor hooked the nut that killed him out of his throat himself — he told me so. A tragic loss, of course. But people die and he had reached a fair age.’

‘His wrist had been cut,’ Harriet said. ‘Deeply. Then cleaned and bandaged.’

Krall dropped his hand to the table and stared at her. ‘His wrist? His wrist?’ His eyes narrowed, making Harriet think of the rocks overhung with vines she had seen on the road to Castle Grenzhow. ‘How do you tell me of this?’

‘His housekeeper came to see us,’ she replied. ‘She saw the wound as she was laying him out. There was no other mark on his body.’

Krall hunched his shoulders. ‘His wrist? Yet cleaned and bandaged? You trusted the woman?’

Crowther nodded. ‘She seemed quite respectable, and kept apologising for troubling us with her fancies. Is the fact Lady Martesen’s wrist was injured widely known?’

‘No, no … I don’t know. It seemed an unimportant detail. The gossips had plenty to feed on. No, I don’t think it was widely known. Why did the woman wait to speak till now?’

It was Harriet who replied. ‘She had been uneasy about it since the morning of Fink’s death, but when she heard there was some doubt after all about Lady Martesen’s murderer …’

‘I see, I see. Well, my humiliation is complete. Damn that incompetent sawbones. How could he not notice?’ Krall sank his chin into his chest. His craggy face had grown red and his fists were clenched. He said in a lower voice, ‘What else?’

‘That there were no servants in the house that evening, but there were signs Fink had a guest.’

‘That I had heard. No one knows who …’

‘That did not strike you as suspicious?’ Crowther said.

‘Fink had plenty of guests!’ Krall exploded. ‘The man loved his whores — half the bastards in Ulrichsberg are his! There was no surprise he chose to entertain on the quiet while his wife was in Strasbourg. I heard because the other gentlemen liked to say that at least he died content. And why should we look? We had Lady Martesen’s murderer safely locked up. Were it not for Mr Clode’s connections and nationality, we would probably have condemned him already.’

Harriet moved to the window. As the day of the arrival of the new Duchess approached, activity in the palace seemed to continually increase. As she watched, a number of gentlemen, musicians by the shapes of the cases they were carrying, were crossing the yard in the direction of the Royal Opera House. A man in green and gold was directing an over-laden cart under one of the archways. ‘It must be related. From her description, the wound was not accidental. I believe whoever killed Lady Martesen killed this banker too.’ She felt the fabric of the curtain hangings with one hand. Thick material, heavy and the colour of blood. ‘Two killings of members of the court. Was Clode merely a convenient scapegoat then? The attack on him incidental?’

‘I think not,’ Krall replied, rubbing his temples. ‘Whoever killed Lady Martesen went to some trouble to drug that mask, then lead Mr Clode to the scene. It would have been simpler to drag in some fool from the streets. He would have had no rich friends to support him, no Ambassador to force us to keep him safe. Two … two targets. What is the phrase?’

Crowther twisted his cane. ‘Kill two birds with one stone, I think is what you have in mind, Herr Krall. Mrs Westerman, the answer must be locked in with Mr Clode. He must give us a list of those people he met at court since his arrival here, and his dealings with them.’

‘Graves and Rachel will return to the castle today to continue his interrogation. And you and Herr Krall are right: whoever has performed this killing is clever enough to know a peasant would make a better scapegoat than the agent of an Earl.’

‘We cannot be sure that Fink was murdered,’ Krall said, almost to himself. ‘Some coincidence, some accident.’

Crowther watched him steadily. ‘I do not think you believe that, Herr District Officer.’

‘No. I do not.’ Krall kept his chin low. ‘What am I to tell Swann? The cortege of the Princess arrives at the border tomorrow morning. She arrives here the day after. Well, it is too late for her to go home now. As long as news doesn’t reach them before they are past the borders of Maulberg.’ He brought a fist down on the table. ‘Damn this to hell.’

He looked up at Harriet, a slight air of challenge in his eye, but she made no sign of offence or distress.

‘What if Lady Martesen were not the first victim?’ she said instead.

‘What?’ Krall said, distracted. ‘What do you mean, madam?’

‘I mean, whoever has done this has managed to throw sand in our eyes most effectively. Perhaps they have tried and succeeded before. Have there been any other deaths in the last few months?’

‘People do die, Mrs Westerman.’

‘Yes, Herr Krall, but I am talking about members of the court and ignoring any case of long illness, or falls. Fire, for instance.’

Krall looked at her suspiciously, but said nothing.

‘Fire, Mrs Westerman?’ Crowther asked.

Rather than give him any answer, she turned to Krall, her head tilted to one side.

‘I believe,’ Krall said wearily, ‘Mrs Westerman might be referring to the death of Count von Warburg. He was indeed killed in a fire at his house just before Christmas.’

‘The circumstances?’ Crowther said shortly.

Krall looked a little angry. ‘There was a fire and he died. Just before Christmas! Von Warburg had supped at court and returned to his own house. The maid woke in the night smelling smoke; by the time she knew what she was about, the whole of the top floor of the house was ablaze. Luckily for her, she slept in the kitchen. They managed to save the neighbouring houses, but there was nothing much left of Warburg’s place. It was assumed he had gone to bed drunk and the candle had caught on the bed-hangings.’

‘And that might be exactly what happened,’ Crowther said.

‘It might well be,’ Harriet replied, ‘or it might be another murder concealed.’

Harriet saw her friend close his eyes briefly. This was exactly what Crowther hated most. When he had a body, or a collection of facts to examine, he was content, focused. This sort of speculation frustrated him, made him feel lost in the fog.

‘Was the body examined?’ he asked.

Krall turned to stare out of the window. ‘The upper storey collapsed. There was not much of a body to bury, let alone examine.’

He then groaned slightly and put his head in his hands.

‘You have remembered something else?’ Crowther said, perhaps unnecessarily.

‘And then there was Bertram Raben,’ Krall said heavily.

Harriet folded her arms. ‘Yes?’

‘A suicide. It seemed. In January. He was a serious sort of fellow, a writer and poet, a young man but well thought of. He wrote for our newspaper here. We thought perhaps this fashion for suicide which has swept the country in recent years had finally caught up with us. But something was a little odd about it to me.’

‘We are all attention, Herr District Officer.’

‘I happened to be in town, and my colleague asked me to look in. Well, there was his room, papers everywhere, of course, and him just sat in the middle of it, opposite the door on a straight-backed chair. Thought it was an odd place to choose to die. Why not the easy chair by the fire? And there didn’t seem to be enough blood.’

‘Interesting.’

Krall stood up and leaned on the desk, his shoulders up. It cost Harriet some effort not to back away. ‘This is madness,’ he growled. ‘Yesterday I had one woman dead, and her murderer under lock and key; now you want to persuade me I am looking at four murders and no suspect.’

‘We cannot waste time with nostalgia, Herr Krall,’ Harriet said in slightly clipped tones. ‘Now to whom can we speak about these gentlemen?’