Instruments of Darkness

2

It was a particularly handsome, particularly English summer’s day, and the Sussex countryside was full of the pleasing and fruitful colors of the season. The meadow where Harriet and Crowther dismounted was glowing with tall buttercups and purple knapweed, and the morning wind that stirred them was lazy and good-humored. Any civilized man, or woman, might be expected to pause a moment and consider the landscape and his or her place in it. A good season to be away from the city, its bustle and stink. Here the earth was preparing to offer up its gifts to its lords and their dependents. Crops grew, the animals fattened and the soil served those who had cared for it through the year. Here was England at her best, providing reward to satisfy the body, and beauty to feed the mind and soul.

Mrs. Westerman and Crowther, however, were indifferent to the scenery. Neither paused to admire the picturesque swell of the valley’s flanks, or philosophize on the greatness of the nation that had borne them. They disappeared into the woods without a backward glance. The groom dismounted and made his arrangements to lead the horses in his charge to their stables, and it was left to the beasts themselves to admire the view and tear up the wildflowers in their satin jaws.

The path ended in a clearing after some thirty yards of roughish rising ground, overhung with the branches of elm and oak. The way was dry-Crowther tried to remember the last time he had heard rain from the confines of his study-and the air was heavy with the scents of the woodland uncurling into its summer wear. Wild garlic, dew. It would be a pleasant place to walk before beginning the duties of the day, he thought; no doubt that was why Mrs. Westerman had happened along this path.

Crowther realized he had not noticed the year was already blooming into its height. He would have been able to tell any man who inquired that today’s date was the second of June, of course, because he had written the date of the previous day in his notebook as he began work, but he never felt the shift of seasons in his bones, as so many in the country claimed to do. He knew winter because it was the best time to dissect, and summer because servants were more likely to complain then of the smells. From the world outside in its greatness, its bulk, its multitudes, he had turned away to pick apart the smallest vessels of life. He had stayed faithful now for years to the mysteries he could confine to his tabletop. It had therefore been some months since he had lifted his eyes. Now he could feel the first prick of his sweat under the cotton of his shirt, felt his heart begin to labor with the climb. The sensations were oddly novel. He put his hand to his face where the sun reached it through the leaves.

Mrs. Westerman came to a halt, and pointed with her riding crop.

“There. About ten yards along the track to Thornleigh. My dog noticed it first.” Her eyes dropped to the path. “I took her back to the house before I came to you.”

Crowther glanced at her. The voice was steady enough; her face was perhaps a little flushed, but that might be only a result of the climb. He walked in the direction she had indicated, and heard almost at once a small sigh, and her own footsteps following him.

The body lay just off the track and one might have thought it a bundle of old clothing but for the arm and its waxy gray hand extended at right angles from the tumble of a dark blue cloak.

“Has the body been moved?” he asked.

“No. That is, I got close enough to see that he was dead and how-I lifted the cloak to do so-then covered him again. That is all.”

A little swarm of flies had gathered, and were walking as daintily as shop girls in Ranelagh Gardens around the edges of the cloak, and into the nooks and crannies it hid for their private business. Crowther knelt down, lifted the fold of cloth away from the corpse’s face and looked into the dead eyes. The flies buzzed angrily, and he waved them away without judgment.

He had heard it discussed as a student that in death the retina was imprinted with the last image the eyes had seen. The idea had intrigued him in his younger days, and he had made experiments in his former home with a number of unfortunate dogs and two cats before he had given the idea up as impossible. The signs murder left on the body were at the same time more subtle and more commonplace, but he did believe one could often read the expression of a human corpse. Some looked at peace, others, like this face before him, looked only surprised and a little disappointed. The man was wearing his own hair. Dark blond and thick. Crowther lifted the body a little and felt the ground below the corpse, and the back of his cloak. Both dry. And the body stiff, though perhaps not fully so. The flies settled again as he let the ground take the body’s weight once more.

“There was dew on the body when I found it, and the body was not as stiff as it seems to be now,” Harriet said.

Crowther nodded, but did not look up. “Then I imagine that he died last night.”

“That he was murdered last night,” she corrected him.

Indeed, the wound through the neck was unequivocal. Crowther waved away the flies again and bent toward it: a single, violent blow completely severing the carotid artery, leaving the man with an extra, gaping mouth. He would not have suffered long, Crowther thought. The blow had been delivered with enough force to almost sever the neck, leaving the shocking white of the man’s vertebrae visible at the back of the wound. A quantity of dark staining around the collar showed where the heart had continued, briefly, to push blood through the body. Crowther looked along the man’s trunk. He was wearing clean-enough looking linen and an embroidered waistcoat that was made of some richer stuff; black stains were dappled across it in ugly dark pools. He could see in his mind’s eye the man caught and held from behind, the knife at its work, then the release of blood glutting out onto the soil with vivid and final force. He looked about him. Yes, there were marks on the trunks of the trees directly in front of him, and the last of the lilies of the valley had caught a little of his blood. They looked as if they were fading under the weight of it. This man lay where he had first fallen.

Harriet followed the movement of his eyes with her own.

“There is a legend that takes place not far from here,” she said. “A saint did battle with a terrible dragon, and wherever the saint’s blood touched the ground, lilies of the valley have bloomed from that day to this.” She sighed. “Though I doubt we can blame a duel with a dragon for this death, don’t you agree, Mr. Crowther? It was not a fight at all, I think. One stroke, from behind. He was probably dead before he fell.”

Crowther never liked to be hurried as he worked, and he found her enthusiasm a little grating. He punished her by standing silently and looking about him, particularly behind where the body lay, where a killer might have stood. The thornbushes curtsied at him and he reached among their white flowers to pull free a few threads he saw hanging there; he drew out his handkerchief to wrap them in. Only when they were securely in his pocket did he attempt to make any sort of reply.

“And you have concluded this as a result of your extensive reading, I suppose, Mrs. Westerman?”

“I have irritated you. Forgive me.” The frankness of her answer rather embarrassed him. He bowed swiftly.

“Not at all, madam. Your conclusions are in tune with what I see here.”

She was quiet a moment, twisting the riding crop between her fingers, then spoke softly.

“It is hard, don’t you think, Mr. Crowther, to draw conclusions and have no one to discuss them with? One begins to doubt one’s own judgment, or trust it too much. I did not mean to hurry you. Perhaps I wish to prove to you I am not a fool, and in trying to prove it-behave like one.” She met his eye briefly and looked away again. “To answer your question, I do not read as much as I would like. It was by chance I happened on your article. But perhaps my lack of squeamishness offends you. Before we bought Caveley, and my son Stephen was born, I sailed for three years with my husband. I have seen men killed in war and in peace, and served as a nurse, so I have witnessed more than perhaps I should.”

Crowther looked directly at her and Mrs. Westerman turned away, a little embarrassed. Well, Crowther thought as he bent down again to the body, it was a universal truth that in the presence of a corpse people often said more than they intended. He felt it was as a result of this phenomenon that some people believed a corpse could condemn its murderer by bleeding again in his presence. No, the truth was simply that people had a nasty tendency to run on and confess before such a vivid memento mori.

Crowther began to run his hands over the body. His hand stopped at a bulge in the corpse’s waistcoat pocket and he pushed his long white fingers between the silvery folds of cloth to withdraw a ring. It was heavy in his palm, and as he turned it he saw a crest stamped into the gold. He recognized it from the carriage that rolled through the village from time to time, and also from the gates to the great park. He heard his companion draw in her breath and stood up, dropping it into her outstretched hand. She closed her fist around it, and Crowther could have sworn he heard her curse softly.

“The arms of Thornleigh Hall, of course,” he said dryly. She looked at him, then away. He raised an eyebrow. “I should have asked before, Mrs. Westerman: do you know this man? Is he from Hartswood? Is he from the Hall?”

As she replied she tapped her riding crop against her dress.

She did not take her eyes from the body, and her tone was that of private contemplation.

“He is a stranger. I think if he were from Thornleigh or the village I would know him, but … How old do you think this man, and of what condition in life?”

“I would put him between thirty-five and forty-five. About his condition-I would say he is not poor. He has a coat and cloak, and his hands are clean enough, and unscarred. You can see that yourself. What is it you know, Mrs. Westerman, that I do not?”

“Nothing. Merely local history. And the history says the eldest son of Lord Thornleigh left the protection of his family some fifteen years ago, and would be now of this age. His name was Alexander, Viscount Hardew. He is a blond-haired man in the portrait I have seen.”

She took a pace away from the body and turned to look up the path toward the Thornleigh lands. A breeze murmured through the trees and tugged gently at the edge of Crowther’s coat, as if trying to take him back to his rooms and his books before any more was spoken, before some line was crossed.

“You see, sir,” she went on, “I cannot help wondering if this poor man is the heir to the great estates of my neighbors, and if so, why he received so cold a welcome home.”