Instruments of Darkness

PART II
1

SATURDAY, 3 JUNE 1780

Harriet Westerman’s duties for the day started early. Her destination was a narrow room in the upper corridor at Caveley, where she knew from the moment daylight woke her, Mrs. Belinda Mortimer would be at work. Mrs. Mortimer sewed for several houses in the neighborhood, spending from time to time two or three days at each to deal with the linen and dresses of the ladies, and doing whatever fine-work fashion and utility suggested to the gentry. Fabrics were not cheap, and nothing that could be used again or altered would be replaced by any but the most improvident. The woman was no gossip, however, and Harriet knew she would not be able to bully her into confessing the deeds and misdeeds of her other clients. No one liked a servant who was known to talk intimately of the families she visited, after all. She paused for a moment, reflecting on this, before pushing open the door to the room reserved for Mrs. Mortimer’s use.

She emerged almost an hour later, knowing a great deal more than she had, despite Belinda’s reticence, and having acquired a new stable boy in the shape of Belinda’s nephew. She folded Crowther’s handkerchief with its few threads back into the pocket of her skirt.

Harriet was slow to reach the breakfast room even though she did not pause to visit her son or baby girl that morning. Instead she took time to consider what she had learned, walking around the fruit garden to the east of her house. She was proud of the trees that flourished under her care, and found being among them soothing. The movement of the wind in the leaves reminded her of the sea, and when she closed her eyes she could almost call up the sounds of wind and wave making the timbers of a sailing ship shift and groan, almost catch the tang of salt in the air. But she was now a long way inland.

When she got into the hallway, she was told that Crowther had arrived and was already at the breakfast table drinking chocolate with her sister. Harriet found them sitting close together with Rachel’s sketchbook open on the table between them. Rachel looked up as her sister entered.

“Harriet, Mr. Crowther has been looking over my sketches of Mrs. Heathcote’s cat, and he thinks I have talent!”

She looked as smug as the cat in question, an animal Harriet had never warmed to.

“But he says I must understand the webbing of the animal’s muscles to get it quite right, like Da Vinci! Next time he has a dead cat to dissect, he has promised I may go and watch. Isn’t that good of him?”

Harriet raised her eyebrows. “Charming, you unnatural beast.”

Rachel looked back down at her sketchbook, riffling through the pages, and gave a little shrug.

“I follow you in everything. And it was you who told me ‘we must not be afraid to know.’”

Harriet took her coffee from the sideboard and sat down.

“I was quoting someone else-‘Aude sapere’-and I recall he came to an unpleasant end. Still, there are worse words to live by.”

Crowther lifted an eyebrow. “It was Horace and I believe he retired from more active business to run an estate. Many would consider him lucky.”

Harriet gave no sign of having heard him.

There was a moment of silence. Rachel looked from one to the other and rose with a sigh.

“Well, you have things to discuss, I imagine. So I will leave you. Harry, a note came from the squire. It is there by your plate.”

“I see it. Details of when the inquest is to be, I suppose.”

She looked up at her sister’s soft face. Rachel would make a good manager in a wealthy man’s home and look for no other satisfaction in her life than providing comfort for those she loved. Harriet felt a wave of affection for her sister, but was disturbed to find within that affection a breath of jealousy. She had fallen into the role that her sister was formed for, and felt herself wronged in it. The world gave its gifts, but its pains also often came wrapped in pretty papers.

Rachel let the door close behind her, and Harriet found Crowther observing her over the edge of the newspaper. He caught her eye and turned his attention back to the little items of horror and amusement that made up the Daily Advertiser till she was ready to talk to him.

“You seem to have been made a favorite,” Harriet remarked.

Crowther glanced up briefly. “I’m honored. But she might think me less her friend when I accuse the man whom she loves of murder.”

Harriet became very still.

“Though,” Crowther continued with the air of a man commenting on the weather, and folding the paper again, “he is a stupid, brutish, unpleasant sort of man. He almost challenged me to a duel last night.”

Harriet turned swiftly, her lips parted in surprise, and knocked over her cup. Some of the coffee splashed on the tablecloth.

“Oh, damn! I’ve ruined yet more of the Commodore’s linen.” She sprang up and dabbed at the stain with a napkin. It seemed to spread and darken. “A duel, Crowther? What on earth are you talking about?” She picked up the napkin again, and used it to hide the stain, arranging it carefully as she went on, “And as to any feelings Thornleigh once encouraged in my sister, I assure you …”

He put up his hand. “Mrs. Westerman. Please do not let me frighten you into trying to protect the reputation or conduct of your sister or yourself. I am sure it has been above reproach.”

There was a dryness in his tone that made Harriet uncomfortable. She tried to think what he had seen of them the previous day. A horrid image of herself appeared in front of her; her worst traits blown up and highly colored, her motivations petty and foul.

“And now you think I wish to attack Thornleigh and the Hall as revenge for his jilting my sister?”

Her voice was crystalline. Crowther looked at her with surprise. Harriet noticed his cravat had been tied very sloppily, and there were crumbs of bread on his sleeve. She was sorry to find it did not make her feel any better.

“No, madam,” he said gently. “I do not think that, though Hugh may suggest it to your neighbors at some point.” He sighed and shifted in his chair. “Mrs. Westerman, we both know any discussion of the relations between your sister and Mr. Hugh Thornleigh between us is irregular, and I am well aware I am neither confidant nor counselor to you. But not knowing these things leaves me more in the dark than ever. The squire tried to persuade me last night to convince you to go no further into the concerns of Thornleigh Hall. It irritated me. But he promises matters will become unpleasant, and if you are too nice to speak to me of Hugh Thornleigh without worrying about your reputation, perhaps he is right, and you had better keep to household management.”

His voice had risen a little as he spoke. Harriet held up her hand without looking up from her napkin and nodded.

“I do trust you,” she said simply. “And for some strange reason, I seem to value your good opinion.” Her fingers plucked at the tablecloth. “I am not sure I behaved well. It is ridiculous; I like to tell myself I do not care what the world thinks of me. But I find it unpleasant to talk about these matters.”

“I very much doubt, Mrs. Westerman, if anything you can say will alter the opinion I have of you.”

He said these words almost tenderly, and when Harriet looked up it was with a smile and a faint blush.

“Lord! That almost sounds like a challenge. Oh, very well. I will be as frank as I know how. And I am sorry to be so overly sensible.” She put her elbows on the table, and rested a cheek on one hand. As she talked, the fingers of the other tapped out an irregular rhythm on the stained tablecloth.

“Hugh came back from the war in America with the injury to his face and eye that you see. He had been away since before we purchased Caveley-indeed, it was only two months before, that we had met Lady Thornleigh. The family had not been in evidence at all until Lord Thornleigh’s illness. I believe Hugh wished to continue to serve, since the injury did not stop him being a useful soldier, but when he heard of his father’s illness, and that Alexander’s whereabouts were still unknown, he thought it his duty to return home. It was the first time he met his stepmother, you know. She was a dancer before she became Lady Thornleigh, and only a year or two older than Hugh. They were not friendly. Still, I was glad he had come back, and he became a regular visitor here.”

Harriet looked up into the air to her left, and Crowther waited in silence for her to continue. “Hugh was not then as he is now. A little prone to bluster perhaps, rather loud-but there was humor there and, I thought, a generosity of spirit that wanted only encouragement. He did not drink much more than other men, and though life at the Hall was not perfect, he seemed very happy to sit here with us, swapping war stories with me or listening to Rachel read.” She smiled briefly. “She has a talent for it, you know. I should put her on the stage.”

Crowther returned her smile, then, leaning back in his chair with his fingers tented in front of him, he waited once more for her to continue.

“I say he seemed content enough, but he was still a troubled man. Hugh had black moods from time to time, and twice stood up in the middle of conversation with us and left the house without a word. I never did reason out the cause of those strange departures. We were talking the dullest of estate business on both occasions.”

Crowther stretched his fingers in front of him, apparently absorbed in contemplation of his short nails, and spoke to the air in front of his nose.

“You know better than most, I think, Mrs. Westerman, that time in battle can do strange things to the spirits of the bravest men.”

She picked up a teaspoon from the tablecloth and spun it between her fingers.

“Just what I thought. So I did not worry over-much, and when I saw an affection growing between Mr. Thornleigh and my sister, I thought it would be a help to him.” Her smile twisted a little. “In fact, I congratulated myself that Rachel would be so soon and so well settled. I thought it was all but decided on, and that he was waiting only for the commodore’s next leave to ask to pay his addresses.”

“And then?”

“Then things began to change. This was about two years ago, so two years after he had returned to Thornleigh. He drank more, his moods became darker. Sometimes he seemed quite wild.” Crowther felt her regret, her sympathy for the man, flow from her. “Then he arrived here one evening very drunk. Raving even.” Her mouth set in a line. “I had David and William throw him down the steps. There were bitter words.”

“And your sister?”

“I suspect she tried to speak to him shortly afterward, and he said … unpleasant things to her. She was desperately unhappy for some time.”

She let her forehead drop into her palm, and brought the teaspoon in her other hand down onto the table with a dull crack.

“I was a fool. I should not have let her be so friendly, but society here is so limited, and I truly believed he loved her. My husband calls me naive, and there have been times perhaps when I have not been such an asset to him in his career as I should have been.”

“An alliance with such a great family would have had its advantages.”

“James is a fine commander. And as for Mr. Hugh Thornleigh-yes, there was that, but also …” she began to twirl the spoon again, watching it pick up the sun flowing into the room and throw it up along the walls, “… Crowther, I enjoyed his company. I think we both felt ourselves creatures out of their natural sphere.” She looked resigned, letting the reflection of the light hover over an Italianate landscape above the empty fireplace. “I believe the business did our family’s reputation some damage. But then my husband came home for some months in the summer and made us show our faces at every event and gathering within five miles. Rachel is so sweet natured, anyone who meets her knows she is no schemer, and my husband is every inch the gentleman, and Hugh’s behavior continued so … Well, people began to talk of poor Rachel’s lucky escape. And I was glad. He had made us very wretched.”

Crowther waited till she looked up and met his eye, and asked her kindly, “Do you think there is any connection, any link between that change of behavior and the events of yesterday?”

Harriet tilted her head to one side. “Rachel is afraid she did something wrong, something that made Hugh cease to love her, and I wish I could make her easy on that point. She has not been happy since.”

“And yourself, perhaps, Mrs. Westerman? You too would like to make yourself easy on that point?”

She did not reply, but nodded sadly. Crowther returned his gaze to his fingertips.

“Did anything else of significance occur at about that time?”

“His new steward, Wicksteed, arrived. I will tell you what I can of him.”

Crowther abandoned the study of his nails, and brushed some of the crumbs from his sleeve, having noticed them for the first time.

“Very well. I am content you are not a pair of scheming harridans. Before you tell me of this steward, however, shall I tell you about my conversation with the squire and my meeting with Mr. Hugh Thornleigh last night?”

Harriet gave a horrified laugh into what was left of her coffee, and still choking a little, waved her hand to encourage him to continue.

“Very well, I shall. But only on condition you stop playing with that spoon.”

She put it down very smartly and sat straight. The model of an attentive audience.