Island of Bones

V.2

Douglas Dodds was not a man inclined to alter a carefully planned itinerary because someone had been murdered. His business associates called him resolute. It was the word he thought of as he looked in his shaving mirror each morning. He saw his pale pink face, narrowed his pale pink eyes and called himself resolute. But he was also wise. That had been said of him too and more than once; he rejoiced in the description. At first then, when the news reached him that a gentleman had been killed in Keswick, he considered the tender feelings of his wife and daughter and wondered if they might give up viewing the terrible beauty of Borrowdale for an additional day in Ambleside, but a fellow traveller, to whom he had confided his worries, assured him that the murdered man was hardly a gentleman at all apparently, having left bad debts and a reputation for a foul temper at every coaching inn he had passed through. Knowing his own credit and manners were regarded as excellent, Mr Dodds found this reassuring. When his new acquaintance added that the man was also a foreigner, Mr Dodds’s wise fears were done away with entirely and his resolution returned. Many people, otherwise reasonable and hospitable, might find a dozen reasons to kill such a man.

As he drained his glass and called for another, and another for his good friend here, whose name he had yet to learn, Mr Dodds began to think that the killer had done a public service by removing such a sorry Island of Bones character. He found himself therefore on the following morning ordering accommodation for his family at the Royal Oak with a sanguine mind.

As the luggage was being taken down and stowed by Mr Postlethwaite’s neat-looking servants, Douglas Dodds’s feelings were soothed again by his landlord’s description of the murdered foreigner, and he agreed his death was probably due to some unpleasantness that had followed him out of Europe like a bad wind. Mr Postlethwaite then added that he had nothing against the young lady, however, who was generally liked, and carried herself almost like an Englishwoman. Mr Dodds had not heard there was a young lady in the case. On enquiry, he learned that she was now staying at the vicarage until such time as her father could be buried, and that a collection had been started in the village to provide for her travelling expenses back to her native country. Mr Postlethwaite indicated a large jar hanging in a corner of the room from a convenient beam.

‘All sorts are putting their pennies in,’ he said, and tucked his thumbs into his waistcoat. ‘Child of Nox the carpenter, who I know has fed himself on weeds more than one season, dropped a penny in there this morning.’

Mr Dodds was touched, touched and proud that even the most humble of his countrymen proved themselves such fine examples of feeling and charity. While his daughter and wife searched among the luggage for Eliza’s sketchbook, he reached into the coat pocket where he kept his travelling money, and with a significant and friendly smile to the landlord shook a guinea into his soft palm, then, with his good English chest swelling, he stepped over to the jar and dropped the coin in through the narrow neck. It landed fortunately, glittering at the edge of the jar where it would be most visible. He turned and fancied he saw shining in the face of his host a sense of satisfaction much in tune with his own.

When his little party arrived at the museum, however, the first wrinkle in the day appeared, like the lone dark cloud on the horizon just when the picnic meats are set out on the lawn. The museum was housed in a neat, two-storey building of rather more modern construction than its neighbours, with a short flight of scrubbed stone steps lifting to its front door, but the door was shut. Mr Dodds knocked. Mr Dodds received no reply. Mr Dodds was confused. The advertisements stated, and Mr Postlethwaite had confirmed, that the museum was open to the viewing gentry from ten o’clock in the morning. Mr Dodds withdrew his pocket-watch and studied it. He looked up to see the time displayed on the town clock. His watch was confirmed. The hour had struck some twenty minutes previously. He raised his fist to the street door and knocked again. Again no answer.

Eliza tripped down the stone steps and approached the window, shading her eyes with her kid-gloved hand.

‘Oh Papa, I think I see. .’ As Mr Dodds turned towards her, she screamed and stumbled back into her mother’s arms. Her sketchbook slipped. A number of her pencil drawings of the more charming ruined cottages they had encountered on their tour were in danger of getting dirty. Mr Dodds bustled down the stairs in some alarm and resolutely approached the window to see what had frightened the poor girl. On the floor, amongst the remains of a shattered display case, surrounded by glass, split wood and gleaming minerals, lay a man. His eyes were wide open, his head thrown back, his face waxen and his tongue protruding obscenely between his purple lips.

Eliza’s sketches were always to lack a view of Derwent Water. Mr Dodds was back on the road to Kendal with his women white and trembling opposite him within the hour, and he felt the wheels could not rattle along fast enough, shaking off the dust of the low murderous little town in a furious and indignant spin. The last thing he saw as he left the Royal Oak was his guinea, glinting and swinging in the jar. The sight of it caught in his mind. It was like seeing a felon justly hanged and dead suddenly look up at him and laughing, wink.

The temporary servant of Mr Askew had never been trusted with a key to the museum. Harriet and Crowther arrived at the bottom of the steps to find Mr Sturgess instructing the Constable to break his way in with a crowbar. They looked in through the window as the wood of the frame cracked and broke around the lock, and the door swung open. Mr Sturgess started up the steps at once, and pushing his man to one side, entered the room at a dash.

‘I hope,’ Crowther said, turning aside, ‘that Sturgess does not think he will be able to revive the man.’

Harriet shook her head. ‘They were friends, Crowther. It is natural. But he must have seen what we did through the window. He can have no doubts.’ She took his arm and they walked up the steps far more sedately, then turned into the main space of the museum to see Mr Sturgess knelt over the body, one hand on Mr Askew’s chest, the other held over his own eyes.

The remains of one of the high display cabinets that had stood between the two tall street windows lay about the body. The glass doors had smashed, dusting the floor with glass that shined like a confectioner’s dream of winter. The remains of the case itself lay beside their former owner like a companion on a tomb.

‘Mr Sturgess?’ Harriet said gently. He breathed deeply and stood up. He seemed dazed and lifted his hands for a second then let them fall.

‘What horror. Poor Askew! He could be a troublesome neighbour at times, but he loved this place and this country. Do you think he suffered greatly?’

Crowther looked at the body on the ground. The wreckage in the room showed that Askew had struggled, and the distorted face made it clear he had been strangled, which took some minutes as opposed to a knife in the right place or the up-thrust of some sharp object into the brain, but pain, panic and hopelessness left no marks on the body that Crowther could find with his knives and saws. He had no answer for the dead man’s friend. It was Harriet who replied.

‘While my husband lived, I heard many men tell stories of moments they thought they were about to breathe their last in violent times. .’ She hesitated, and Mr Sturgess looked up at her. ‘They told me they were too busy fighting for themselves and their friends to feel afraid or suffer great pain. Perhaps that was the case here.’

Mr Sturgess turned away for a moment. ‘Thank you, Mrs Westerman. You have given me what comfort you can.’ He stood. ‘Casper Grace must be found at once.’

‘You persist in thinking Casper guilty of these crimes?’ Harriet said. ‘On what basis?’

He spun round to her. ‘Madam, Grace is a charlatan and a madman. I have no doubt we shall find proof of his crimes, but his guilt is beyond doubt!’

‘And the young girl who has gone missing? And what of these two men, the Fowlers?’ Harriet asked, her tone still civil.

Sturgess put his hand to his forehead and spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Mrs Westerman! When a young man leaves the area with a woman, I see no need to construct criminal conspiracy! The father is no doubt drinking the profits of his latest bit of thievery.’

‘And the beating Mr Grace received?’ Crowther added.

Sturgess turned on him, his arms outstretched. ‘Why do you support this delusional female, Mr Crowther? No doubt Casper cheated the wrong person with his tricks and has paid for it. Perhaps it was that which changed him from a local curiosity into a dangerous lunatic.’ His breathing slowed. ‘Now may I ask what business you have here?’

Crowther spoke clearly. ‘I know of no other qualified surgeon with experience of such cases in the area. I shall make my observations and place them at the disposal of the coroner. And, Mr Sturgess, it is not myself who supports Mrs Westerman’s delusions, as you describe them. It is the evidence.’

‘Do what you will,’ Sturgess said and left the museum.

Crowther walked carefully to the windows and pulled the wooden shutters completely across the glass, shutting out any curious faces beyond. He turned to see that Harriet had retreated to a high stool in the corner of the room.

‘Mrs Westerman? I hope Mr Sturgess’s rudeness has not distressed you. The man is an idiot. We have met other fools.’

She raised her head with a deep sigh, and tried, briefly, to smile. ‘No, Crowther. Not Sturgess. Poor Mr Askew, I do not for a moment believe his death was a pleasant one. I fear we are become creatures to be fled from. All these deaths! That girl not found, two men missing from the village. These disasters cluster about us. I feel like Job, though I’ve no strength to praise God over these bodies. What did Askew ever do that he deserved our visitation?’

Crowther frowned. Her eyes had an unhealthy light in them and she was speaking more quickly than usual, even for her. He said cautiously, ‘Mrs Westerman, unless you came down here in the night and throttled Mr Askew yourself, we bear no responsibility for this death.’

She spoke sharply. ‘Yes, we do! Look the thing in its face, Crowther! Mr Askew is dead because someone wished to hide something from us.’

‘You cannot know that.’

‘Oh, I am certain of it. He called on us, he left word for us. I was too tired to call on him, and you were too busy with your knives. We have shaken something loose with our questions and it has fallen on this man’s shoulders and knocked him down. We are like children throwing stones at a mad dog, only it is never us that get bitten. Only those with the misfortune to know us.’

Crowther watched the shadows on her face. Since her widowhood there had been one thing unspoken between them, one truth unacknowledged, one point of their last enterprise together that had been too tender for them to touch on. It was neither the time nor the place that Crowther would have chosen to speak of it, but it seemed his hand was forced. Crowther had thought on how the spymaster in London had known to send his assassin to James Westerman. He had considered the circumstances and come to a conclusion. But he had never spoken of it, not until now.

‘You did not kill your husband, Mrs Westerman.’

She stood up quickly and turned her back to him. ‘You know that I did, Crowther. You would have realised it the night James died. I believe it took me a little longer.’

‘I saw the man who killed him.’

‘Do not attempt to be so exact with me.’ She turned towards him again. ‘I am not a fool, Crowther. Did you really believe in all these months I had not worked it out too? James was murdered because I was chattering to an earl with a glass of champagne in my hand and said. . and I know who overheard me. I know what the result was. You cannot protect me from that.’

Crowther crossed the space between them and placed one hand on her shoulder. ‘Harriet. .’ She pulled away from him, but he took hold of her again and turned her towards him. Her head was bent forward and her shoulders were shaking. ‘Harriet, my dear woman, do listen to me. You are right. It was your words that condemned James, but no one, no one would ever blame you for his death.’

She looked up at him. ‘But they do, Gabriel! They do! They all whisper I have no business involving myself in such matters, that I bring shame on my family and friends. That horrid little lawyer yesterday will be saying the same thing, I could read it in his face. And I blame myself. How can I not? If I had only managed to keep my tongue still. . I spoke carelessly, even knowing that there might be people in the room whom we could not trust. Let me take the blame when it falls on me. I am stupid. James, you would not have spoken as I did. God, my own husband! I loved him so, Gabriel. No woman has ever been as lucky. .’

Her words trailed off into tears. Crowther kept his fingers tight around her thin shoulders as if he could keep her from falling into herself with the pressure of his hands. He did not speak until he felt her breathing slow, then said gently, ‘Mrs Westerman, you are a remarkable woman, but you cannot take on responsibility for crimes not your own. Say this happened, and so this. Very well, that seems to be our task, but you have killed no one. Your husband would not blame you for his death. He would thank you for the service you have done for the men with whom he served.’ Her breathing was becoming more even.

‘Please, permit me to take some of the fault for your current distress,’ he continued. ‘I allowed a veil to be drawn over this. We never discussed why your husband was made a target at that time. I guessed, but I did not ask. And I should have realised by my advanced age that turning from what troubles us is no escape.’ She looked up briefly at that with a crooked smile, and he returned it. ‘I do not ask you to draw up a balance-sheet, but you have saved lives, you have served a greater good. How many deaths go unremarked, killers unpunished? Would you let the being who killed Herr Hurst, or Mr Askew, go free to murder again? Would you let Casper be taken off and hanged for the convenience of the authorities because you have decided that you should stop asking questions? Because of that little lawyer and his kind? Your husband married a braver woman than that. I wish to God I had had the pleasure of your friendship in fifty-one. I might have saved my brother from the gallows, had I known you then. Now dry your eyes, do! I need you to see this clearly.’ He slowly released his grip.

Harriet pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and began to wipe her eyes. She blew her nose and inhaled deeply.

‘Very well, Crowther. Though I think I should retire to some nunnery when we are done with this business.’

‘I doubt they would have you,’ he replied dryly. ‘I have never seen you stay still for more than half an hour at a time. Hours of silent prayer would be beyond you.’

He went back to the body again, then heard her follow him to the centre of the room. He heard her voice, and the tone was more like the woman he knew.

‘As it happens, I was three years old in fifty-one,’ she said quietly, and knelt down beside him.

Agnes jerked awake in the gloom, scrambled to her feet and called out, thinking some movement beyond the barrier must have woken her. Silence. She had spent most of the night too afraid to close her eyes. Then she could not be wakeful and frightened any longer. Sleep had taken pity on her. Since her waking at first light though, she had sung to herself whenever she was able, hoping that someone might pass by and hear her, but she could not help shutting her eyes from time to time, and whenever she woke, it was with this cold panic that someone might have passed the mouth of the tunnel while she slept, and left her here. She knew she would be looked for, but if Swithun was right and her people were looking on the wrong side of the lake, thinking she had lost her way in the storm, and if Casper hadn’t seen her arrive in the rainstorm. . She was sure neither of the Fowlers would be back now. She had a little bread left and a few mouthfuls of water.

It was a truth she knew of magic that each spell cast had a cost. She had been so angry at Stella that she thought she was willing to pay it, but now, curled and hungry in the darkness, she thought perhaps it was Thomas she should have been angry with, not the girl — and rather than get bitter and crooked, that she should have only held her head high and laughed at them. Casper had tried to take the hurt of the spell away from her by sending her up the hill with the poppet, but she had wandered away from it to see the fireworks. If she had stayed by them as she had been told, she would not have seen Casper being beaten, would not have been taken herself.

Drying her eyes, she then put her hands together and began to whisper church prayers. The hills would hear them, and know she had learned what she needed to know. She accepted her punishment then, and prayed for forgiveness. When the idea came to her it dropped like a stone into the cool centre of her mind and she opened her eyes with a gasp.

Crowther reached forward and twitched Mr Askew’s collar to one side.

‘Tell me what you see,’ Harriet said.

Instead of replying he pointed to the neck and Harriet saw a thin groove across the man’s throat, sharp-edged. It cut like a purple furrow across his windpipe. She bent forward, steadying herself among the broken glass with her left hand, then wet her lips and said, ‘Too narrow and straight-edged for any rope, yet it was certainly wrapped round his throat. Leather perhaps?’ She looked around the room and without waiting for him to reply, continued, ‘Someone comes at him from behind. At some point in the struggle he grabs on to this display case and pulls it forward.’ She paused. ‘It might have saved him.’

Crowther nodded. ‘But the debris from the cabinet seems to extend below him.’ He lifted Askew’s shoulder and the glass crackled under the body. ‘He was pulled clear before the cabinet fell. His assailant obviously managed to keep his grip. A brave attempt though.’

‘The noise must have been terrific,’ Harriet said, getting to her feet again.

‘Perhaps that is why the killer made no attempt to hide the crime, beyond partially closing the blinds, though perhaps Mr Askew might have been doing that himself as he closed up his business. In either case the killer might well have left as soon as he was sure Askew was dead in case his neighbours came to investigate the noise.’

‘You believe it was a man?’

Crowther rose to his feet and felt his knees complain. ‘Probably. This required some strength, and Mr Askew was not a small man.’

She had ceased to listen to him but turned to the broken doorway. ‘The door was locked. There must be another way out of this house.’

Crowther continued to stare at the dead man and the varied minerals scattered about him. Some still had their labels attached, written in Askew’s punctilious script. Black wad of the Borrowdale Plumbago Mines; Quartz with silver trace from the old mine above Silverside Hall.

Crowther had not warmed to Mr Askew during their brief acquaintance. He did not like the hordes of cooing pleasure-seekers the man encouraged into the town with his fireworks and regattas, and had thought his understanding of the geology of the region was probably superficial at best. However, looking at the scattered minerals he saw the workings of a methodical mind. He had heard Mr Askew’s maps of the area praised, and no one creates a decent map without difficult and detailed work. Examining the labels now, Crowther had to admit that to an extent Mr Askew had been a man after his own heart. He had sought to understand the world around him by breaking it into tiny pieces and giving each part its proper name, attempting to understand the whole by comprehending the detail. Such were Crowther’s concerns in his anatomical studies, yet whatever expertise he had developed, he had never managed to arrive at an understanding of living human beings, their sensitivities and concerns. He wondered if Mr Askew had ever sensed a similar paradox. He had charted and measured each fold in the hills around him, ferreted out its history and its mineral treasures, its legends, but had he ever understood the place entire, how it flowed into its people, and how its people fed it in return?

Harriet emerged from the office. ‘All windows are bolted, as is the door to the yard from that room back there.’

‘The private apartments on the first floor?’

‘There is a door at the top of the stairs, also locked. Only the front door has not had the bolts drawn.’

‘But it was locked also.’

Harriet had knelt down by the body again, blocking Crowther’s view.

‘Was it not said that only Askew had a key?’ she asked Crowther. ‘It is not in his pockets.’

‘Most likely the murderer took it with him.’

Harriet got to her feet again. ‘Perhaps. Or perhaps we are dealing with sprites and ghosts, after all.’

Crowther crouched down again and continued to examine the body. ‘What time is it, Mrs Westerman?’ He heard the flick as she opened her pocket-watch.

‘A little after midday.’

‘The corpse appears locked. I suspect death took place late yesterday evening, after the museum was closed, or his limbs would have begun to soften a little by now.’ He looked above him and noticed a thin wire running from the top of the doorframe and along the picture rail, and up the stairs. ‘Mrs Westerman, can you pull on that wire for me?’

She did so, and they heard a faint ring from behind the locked door at the top of the stairs.

‘So,’ she said, crossing her arms. ‘Mr Askew had retired for the evening. He hears the bell, and comes down in his shirtsleeves, careful to lock his private door as he does.’

‘A cautious man.’

‘Indeed. He even opens the shutters a little to see who is on his doorstep. He is reassured and opens the door. It is only a few days past the full moon — what must he have seen?’

Crowther sighed and passed his hand over his eyes. ‘He may have thought he saw me on the steps. Do you remember his request that you or I might call on him? I also promised to return those papers to him.’

‘Whoever was there must therefore have been dressed as a gentleman,’ Harriet said.

‘He would have opened the door to Casper too, I am sure.’

Harriet shook her head, not so much disagreeing with him but shaking that line of conjecture away from her as it seemed to serve no purpose. ‘He opens the door, and his killer need only take advantage of his surprise for a moment to step in and close the door behind him, then launch his attack.’

‘What could Mr Askew have been so keen to share with us, Mrs Westerman?’ Crowther rested his finger on his chin for a moment, then suddenly slapped his hand on the floor at his side.

‘What is it?’

‘That portrait! Askew was showing me a number of articles from his collection the evening before last in that office. Something seemed to surprise him, but I was distracted by my own thoughts, and did not enquire further. It was a portrait of Lord Greta in his later years — he must have seen something in it. I wondered if his call meant he wished to discuss it.’

In the office Crowther recognised the case in which the Greta relics were stored quite easily, but could not see any sign of the portrait of the last Lord Greta in his age.

‘Either the killer took it. .’ Crowther mused.

‘Can you recall the detail?’ Harriet interrupted.

Crowther paused, irritated at having his thoughts broken in upon, but Harriet was too busy peering at the lurid oil of The Luck of Gutherscale Hall to register his displeasure. ‘Or Mr Askew removed it to his apartments to examine more closely in private what he noticed in my company. It was an ordinary portrait — a man in his best apparel, bewigged and bejewelled.’

He had thought Harriet would take this as a cue to explore Mr Askew’s rooms upstairs, but he saw she had stopped listening to him. Her green eyes were shining as she looked at the magnified jewels of the Luck. Crowther felt a flick of distaste. The habit of women to be attracted like magpies to things that only had a value in their ability to shine was remarkable.

‘I’ve only seen Casper’s plain little carvings. This is the Luck that was lost in 1715?’

‘Yes.’

Mrs Westerman had an expression on her face half-dreaming, and half-excited. He recognised it.

‘Lord Greta, his poverty and exile, his servant coming to your father even as Gutherscale smouldered, the lost Luck. . Crowther, how much was the Luck worth?’

‘Its place in the folklore of this area makes that impossible to judge. To the right collector, however. .’

She frowned. ‘No, not the thing itself. Too slow a thing to sell, too well-known in the area. I meant, what is the value of the jewels themselves?’ She pointed at the painting. ‘What would a trader in precious stones give for the Luck for their sake?’ Crowther went still. ‘Do you see, Crowther? Lord Greta fled the Tower for exile in 1716. Two years later, when your father needs it most, he procures enough ready money to purchase the land from which all his fortunes grew.’

‘But how would my father come by the Luck?’

‘I can’t say, but in forty-six a Jacobite arrives at Silverside full of threats and your father takes him to the Island of Bones. Suppose he meant to take the Luck, but found it was not where he thought it would be and suspected your father. All that new wealth, the cottage become a grand house. He never leaves the Island, and Greta’s brother and followers are betrayed. When your mother dies, rumours begin to circulate in Jacobite circles that your father was complicit in the betrayal. Your father is then murdered. Mrs Briggs mentioned a legend to me, that Lord Greta walks the hills in violent times. What if that belief dates from the time of your father’s murder?’ She began to pace in the room available. ‘I hope Mr Palmer exerts himself on our behalf. I would gladly sign over half of Caveley to him for some more certain explanation.’

‘I had thought,’ Crowther said slowly, ‘we were looking into the past and present, but if I am right, and something that Askew saw in that portrait of Greta led to his death last night, it is all one.’

Harriet growled in frustration. ‘Oh, but what of Mr Hurst? If we believe Felix is innocent, who did kill that man, and why?’

‘Remember also that Lord Greta died years ago, and far away. But as to your speculation about the Luck, Mrs Westerman, there is a rightness to it. Suppose Lord Greta hid the cross, and my father somehow found it. .’

A shadow appeared in the doorway and Crowther turned to recognise Mrs Briggs’s coachman in the doorway.

‘Oh Lord!’ he choked out as he looked down on Askew’s corpse, the lolling purple tongue.

Harriet stepped between him and the body. ‘What is it, Ham?’

Ham blinked at her. ‘There is a message from Silverside. A lawyer come to the house wants to speak to you and Mr Crowther most urgently — a Mr Hudson. He followed me down from the house hearing the business you are about, but given the crowd, preferred to wait for you at Mr Leathes’ house. They are old friends, I understand.’

‘I hope he is of more use than his partner. Thank you, Ham. We shall join you directly. But what of poor Mr Askew?’

‘We shall guard him, madam.’ Two young people had appeared behind Ham in the doorway. It was the girl who had spoken. She had clear blue eyes and dark brown hair that surrounded her face like a cloud. ‘I was his maid, I’m Stella, and he said he’d have me back when my ankle was mended. This is Thomas.’ As she spoke, Harriet took in the sheet over her arm, the thick bandage around her foot. She glanced up at Ham, who nodded.

‘Thank you, Stella.’

Crowther looked the girl up and down. ‘You may cover Mr Askew, Stella. But I would be grateful if you did not begin yet to prepare the body for burial. I must return to examine it when we have met with this lawyer.’

She curtseyed. ‘Yes, my lord.’

Harriet turned to the coachman. ‘Ham, did you say something of a crowd?’

He cleared his throat. ‘It’s market day, madam. Everyone is here and word has got about. There are a number of persons outside.’