Instruments of Darkness

7

The back room of the Bear and Crown was crowded again, and although the populace of Hartswood had brought in the smells and tastes of high summer on their clothes and skin, the mood was dark. The room buzzed with low threat and fear. News passed from mouth to mouth, whispered, urgent; men and women bent their heads together and pulled apart, paler. Harriet found herself looking swiftly about the place as she entered like an animal looking for escape routes and hiding places.

The coroner was not yet in his chair, but sat in the furthest corner of the room. Towering over him, his hand on his elbow, his heavy face a little flushed, was the squire. The coroner looked up at him, and Harriet was reminded of a pet rabbit she had had as a girl, who, if anyone other than her mistress approached the cage, would cringe back, her ears flat, eyes wide, nose twitching. A fox had got her in the end. The jury shuffled in the opposite corner like a threatened flock, pulling themselves inward, looking at their boots.

Crowther set down chairs and Rachel and Harriet took their places beside him. The presence of the vicar had prevented any sort of conversation between them. Harriet had murmured something to him of her visit to Wicksteed and received nothing more than a nod. Her own speaking looks of inquiry met with no better-simply a frown and a wave of the hand. Rachel had hold of the young lad, Jack, who had found Nurse Bray’s body, and was trying to talk to him, but Harriet could tell that her sister’s thoughts were wandering. The boy had to tell her twice what his favorite duties were in the Thornleigh household. He had arrived walking by Hugh, or rather a little behind him, but when he noticed Rachel in the crowd he had made straight for her and taken her hand. Thornleigh had merely greeted them and turned away.

The squire released the coroner and swung his eyes across the room. He offered a stiff nod to the party from Caveley Park, and seemed almost on the point of approaching them when the vicar slid softly to his side. The squire bent his head to listen, then shot a look of alarm across at them and to where Hannah stood by Michaels’s massive bulk and his slim wife at the back of the room. Without taking his eyes off the conversation Crowther leaned over slightly to Mrs. Westerman and spoke to her, barely opening his lips.

“The squire fears we are in danger of hanging Mr. Thornleigh, and would rather we did not.” He saw Harriet stiffen slightly. “He may challenge what we have to say, Mrs. Westerman. Are you sure you should be here?”

Harriet looked about her. The faces of her neighbors were uncertain and strained. There was no one in the room who did not know about Joshua, and none, she suspected, that did not know of the experiment with Michaels’s dog. The inquest might just have the name of Madeleine Bray on the docket at the moment, but the room was alive with a doubly murderous fear.

“We will stay. But where is Alexander?”

Crowther blinked slowly. “I have the name of the street in London, but Mrs. Westerman, I must tell you, the squire knows something of me that you do not. .”

She turned and looked at him sharply, but before he could continue, the coroner took his place and cleared his throat.

“We are gathered here to inquire into the death of Miss Madeleine Bray who, it seems, hanged herself in the old cottage on the edge of the Thornleigh woods this Saturday just past …”

There was a general drawing in of breath, and a groan from the back of the room.

“Murdered, man! Hung ’ersel, indeed.”

Harriet glanced at Michaels, who had moved up alongside them and was staring with steady attention at the coroner. Another voice growled from the window, “And Joshua murdered too only yesterday-or are we calling that an accident?”

The crowd murmured agreement. The coroner’s eyes flicked around the room, and he licked his lips. The squire raised his voice.

“There is evidence that that death too was accidental,” he said, and the crowd grumbled, “but I must have quiet, please. Gentlemen-and ladies,” he added with a nod toward Harriet and Rachel, then shuffling his papers he continued with a sniff, “Sorry to see you here again, Mrs. Westerman.”

Harriet flushed a little, but remained looking straight ahead of her. The coroner cleared his throat again, his eyes spun about in his head, and Harriet imagined what he would look like if she pulled off his wig and stamped on it. The image gave her a grim satisfaction, though she was careful not to smile.

“But we are here to discuss only the death of Nurse Bray, if you please,” the coroner continued primly. “Now the jury have viewed the body in the chapel at Thornleigh Hall.” Crowther turned pointedly in his chair to look at where the squire was standing, as immobile as Michaels on the other wall. He met his eye steadily. The coroner hurried on: “And we saw there no evidence of anything suspicious.”

Crowther stood up. “Nonsense!”

The crowd began to whisper. The coroner fluttered his hands in the air.

“Mr. Crowther, please be seated! This is a court of law.”

Crowther remained on his feet. He was carrying a cane, and knocked its end against the stone flags so the sound echoed around the room like a gunshot.

“What of her wrists?” he said sharply. “What of the rope burns on her wrists? Did that strike none of you as strange? The injury to her scalp?”

The noise in the room swelled into a roar.

“Hear him!”

Crowther addressed the jury. “Was there a surgeon there when you looked at the body?” The coroner waved his hands at the crowd, many of whom were now standing and looming forward. Harriet saw one of the farmers she knew cross himself.

“There was no time to bring in another surgeon, Mr. Crowther, and we considered you perhaps, a little, ahem, close to the events.”

“Damn shame!” cried someone.

“Sneaking business if you ask me,” snarled another voice.

Harriet noted that Michaels made no movement to calm the crowd on this occasion.

“Tell us of these marks! Who killed her?” another voice demanded.

One of the jurors shuffled forward a step and said into the crowd, “We didn’t see her wrists-she had long sleeves on. And her hair was all tidy enough.”

“It wasn’t when we saw it,” Crowther said loudly. “I suggest you go and look again, if this inquest is not to be a complete farce.”

The juryman looked around at his fellows, and seeing them nod, asked a little shyly: “Perhaps you could come and show us, Mr. Crowther?”

But before he could reply, the keening voice of the coroner cut across them.

“Enough, Edward Hedges! Your role as a juryman does not include addressing the audience gathered here.”

More mutters and low curses from the crowd. Mr. Hedges turned to the coroner with a look of outraged innocence.

“I only said-”

“Enough, I say! Mr. Crowther, will you please sit down. The court does not recognize you.”

“Then bugger the court!” came a shout from the middle of the crowd. There was a laugh, and even Harriet smiled. She put out her hand and took Rachel’s, holding it firmly in her lap. The squire took a step forward; he was very red in the face.

“Mr. Crowther! By what rights do you lecture us on our business?”

Michaels drew himself straight. Crowther turned to the squire, and looked at him down his long nose.

“I am trained in anatomy and natural philosophy. I may be of recent residence in this village, but I am and remain a concerned subject of the king. Any knowledge I can offer the jury is freely given. It does not seem that they have been given much assistance in their examinations.”

The crowd cheered him. The squire looked at him for a long moment and waited till they grew quiet again; his face looked almost black, the coloring on his fleshy cheeks was so high.

“And are those qualifications you hold in the name of Crowther, or your real name?”

Harriet looked up at him suddenly before she could control herself. Rachel’s hand trembled under her own. Crowther felt the skin on his neck grow cold. It was inevitable; he had known it must come to this. He was exposed, but he wondered if the squire was quite the tactician he had thought. He had played his trump early. Even as he waited in those long, silent moments for the words to come to him, he wondered what the squire feared so much that he would lay down his one good card so early.

Crowther looked about him. Michaels regarded him steadily, the various faces, young and old of the village, observed him with cautious attention.

When he was a very young child his brother would make him perform little plays with him for his father’s household. His brother had loved it, loved and hungered for the attention of those ranks of faces in front of him. He himself had always wished to shrink, would hurry through his words in an attempt to retreat to the safety of the wings, shouting out his text in a rush. His brother would put a hand on his sleeve as they rehearsed and counsel him, “Go quietly, brother. Make them lean forward to hear you. Command their attention, don’t bludgeon them with your speeches.” Crowther wondered if his teaching would serve him now. He let his eyes travel slowly across the crowd then looked down at his cane. Then he spoke.

“You force me to recall what I would choose to forget. But I shall answer you, here, and give my history. We shall let these people judge if I am fit to comment.” The crowd seemed to whisper and sigh. “I was born the second son of the baron of Keswick.” He paused, and a baritone in the back of the room spoke distinctly.

“A northerner. Well, any man might wish to hide that.”

The man was shushed, though a quiet smile seemed to travel through the room like a breeze. It caught on Crowther’s thin lips and lifted them a little. Only the squire seemed immune, his thick frame tense and held solid. Harriet looked across to where Hugh and Wicksteed were sitting. Hugh was looking at his shoes, but Wicksteed had turned and was watching with an expression of polite amusement. The smile left Crowther’s face and he looked down at the dusty gray flags at his feet as he continued.

“My father was murdered almost twenty years ago, and my brother hanged for the crime.”

He remembered Harriet’s performance at the last inquest, her fluttering modesty that had called up all the protective instincts of the village. He kept his eyes low and his voice soft. He could feel the crowd straining forward toward him. You were right, brother, he thought.

“I did not wish the title, so I renounced it and have since devoted my time to study throughout the intervening years. I have hidden from the past in my books and in the society of the most learned of men. I have come to know many mysteries of the human body, which is a miracle we each carry with us every day. If I can add but a little to our knowledge of ourselves I will die a happy man.” He could feel the warmth of sympathy in the room. How people love a good tragedy, he thought. Pity and fear ebbed round him, warm waters in which to drown. “Crowther is a name from my mother’s family. I have every right to it. Legal and moral.” He lifted his eyes, and let his voice take on its usual dry edge. “But whatever my name or your …” he paused… “insinuations, tell me what they have to do with the fact that Nurse Bray was tied around the wrists and hit over the skull before she was hanged.”

He let his voice grow in volume and pitch; it lifted the crowd to an outraged howl of agreement. The attention of the room, hostile and indigant, turned to the squire. He was still too angry to feel the mood of the room, and sneered.

“Perhaps your experiences have clouded your mind, Mr. Crowther. Given such a pitiable past, you could be forgiven for seeing murder everywhere.”

Crowther felt a spasm of tiredness and irritation. Damn these people. He wanted only to leave here and be among strangers again. The crowd looked at him, wavering. Harriet put down her sister’s hand and stood.

“And mine, Mr. Bridges? What experiences have clouded my mind? I saw the same marks as Mr. Crowther described.” She felt herself blush. “And, sir, I think it a shabby thing to force a man to admit his tragedies in public. If Mr. Crowther wished to keep his past confidential,” she paused, “well, he has the same right to his privacy as any freeborn Englishman!”

The noise in the room broke and swelled in approval. Even the squire could feel the push of it against his sides, and began to look about him, realizing too late perhaps that he had misplayed the business.

Michaels leaned back comfortably against the wall with a small smile.

“Go and look at the nurse again!” Harriet saw out of the corner of her eye Hannah cup her hands to her mouth.

“Justice! In the name of the king!” shouted others.

The coroner waved his hand despairingly, trying to make himself heard over the noise.

“Please, please! If we could just take our seats.” He turned toward where Hugh Thornleigh was sitting. “Mr. Thornleigh, you were there when the body was found, I believe: did you see these marks?” The crowd became suddenly quiet again. It seemed as if every individual in the room had inhaled and now waited for him to speak. Thornleigh did not stand, and seemed to address his words to his boots.

“Yes, I cut her down. Can’t say if they are rope marks. But I saw marks there, true enough.”

The crowd groaned and shouted. The squire turned white and spun on his heel, storming out of the room. The shouts grew again, and a low hissing began to circulate under it around the room. Wicksteed put a hand over his mouth as a man might do trying to hide a laugh. The coroner trembled, his voice shivering and high.

“This is unacceptable! I cannot run the court in this way! The sitting is suspended. I will return in one week’s time.”

“Don’t bother, lickspittle,” said the voice at the back.

The coroner gathered his papers and scuttled out of the room in the wake of the squire, leaving his jury open-mouthed and directionless behind him. Rachel felt a hand tug gently at her sleeve, and looked into little Jack’s white face.

“Am I not to testify? Mr. Thornleigh said I was to testify.”

Rachel heard the crowd rock and exclaim around them.

“No, Jack. Not today, I think.”