Island of Bones

V.3

Agnes was afraid that the arrow would have broken and the head been lost among the stones across the floor, but perhaps the angle of the tunnel had saved it. She stood by the gap in the barricade and drew in her mind the line along which it must have flown. Into the deep dark. If she crawled off that way she might get lost in the blackness before she ever found it. The thought made her shiver. Better to die near this faint glow that still tasted of fresh air rather than go mad in the deeper tunnels. It would be so easy to be turned around, mistake her way.

She wondered if she might gather pebbles, or wood enough to lay herself a trail. Miss Scales had told her a story once about a man who stopped himself getting lost in a maze by letting a thread out behind him. She had none. Could she unpick the seams of her dress? She shook her head. The little bits of thread would be too weak and short, and she would be dead before she had the chance to make anything stronger and long enough to be of any use. She must trust to her luck and her prayers then. She got down onto her knees and crawled over to the far side of the tunnel. If she kept her left hand on the wall, and swept out with her right, she should be able to cover the ground where the arrow had most likely fallen. If the tunnel split again, if the wall to her left turned off. . She would fret over that when she need. Putting her hand against the rough earth wall, she began to crawl forward, pausing every moment to sweep her right arm out across the ground with her fingers spread as if she were broadcasting seed in her father’s fields.

As Harriet emerged from the museum behind Ham, she felt Crowther pause beside her and lifted her head. At the bottom of the steps a crowd had indeed gathered. She recognised the landlord from the Royal Oak and one or two of the other faces, but most were strangers to her. These were the weavers, labourers and craftsmen who lived on the other side of the velvet rope. At home in Hartswood she would recognise their faces, see them at church, visit their homes with Rachel when she went among them with her salves and ointments. Here they were as foreign to her as Saracens. For a moment they examined each other across the short distance that separated them. A couple of individuals seemed to be shoving Mr Postlethwaite forward. He took off his hat and looked up at them.

‘Good morning, Mrs Westerman, my lord. Forgive us, but the word is that Mr Askew is dead.’

Harriet laid her gloved hand on the railing of the museum steps. It was strange how the people here moved between using Crowther’s given title and the name he used. When they met him on the street they might be happy to address him as Mr Crowther as an indulgence to his eccentricity, but now, looking up at him and with the smell of blood in the air they reminded him in this way that his title still bound him to the place.

‘Yes, Mr Postlethwaite,’ he said. ‘Mr Askew is dead.’

A sorry sort of whisper ran around the crowd. A girl turned towards the matron at her side and buried her head in the older woman’s shoulder.

Harriet and Crowther began slowly to descend the steps and the crowd shuffled back a little till a sharp-faced woman with full lips and her dark hair escaping from under her cap spoke up.

‘Is Sturgess saying our Casper did this too? Because he didn’t. Didn’t do for the other one either, however he laid him out. And Agnes Kerrick is missing. We need Casper to find her.’

Crowther turned to her. ‘I do not know what Mr Sturgess thinks at this moment, but he wishes to speak to Mr Grace, as is natural.’

She tucked her hair under her cap. ‘Wishes to carry him off and hang him in Carlisle, you mean.’ Her cheeks were red. ‘And we will not let him.’

The air was very still. Harriet looked at the faces around her. Only the woman was willing to meet her gaze. The others looked angry or afraid, but their eyes flicked to her and away as if looking at her scalded them.

Crowther spoke, clearly enough to be heard throughout the little crowd. ‘I believe there is no evidence to hang Casper as yet.’

‘Will that be enough to stop Sturgess blaming him though? How many men have hanged that did not deserve it?’ The woman had come close enough for Harriet to taste her breath, sour in the haze.

Crowther looked at her very steadily. ‘Too many. I assure you Mrs Westerman and I will do everything to make sure that does not happen this time.’

She studied him a second or two longer, then took a step back. ‘I am glad to hear you say that, my lord.’

Crowther made to move forward again, but felt a hand placed on his sleeve. A young man with wide eyes, his skin browned with field work, said, ‘We need Casper, my lord. Don’t let them take him from us. He is our Luck-keeper.’

Harriet frowned. ‘What did you say?’

He looked embarrassed and tried to back away. ‘Our cunning-man, madam. We need him.’

Crowther looked carefully into the faces around him. ‘I will do all that is in my power, I assure you.’

He stepped forward and the crowd made way. There was a reluctance in their movements as they did so, and Harriet did not think all the whisperings were friendly, but move aside they did.

When Harriet found herself in the carriage and pulling away to travel the short distance to Mr Leathes’ villa, she let go a sigh of relief.

‘I thought they would scalp us, Crowther!’

He looked a little shocked. ‘I doubt that — not today at any rate. But my class rules with the consent of the people, Mrs Westerman. If they decide they can tolerate us no longer, they will have no mercy in their revenge for the bill of petty tyrannies we have run up.’

She turned her head to take in the sight of Crosthwaite Church against the hillside. ‘Luck-keeper. . I have not heard the phrase before. Curious.’

‘What are you thinking, Mrs Westerman? I fear my thoughts on the Social Contract are of no interest to you.’

She smiled. ‘I like it when you talk like a revolutionary, Crowther. And I agree. But you are right, my mind has been picking at that phrase. What use is a Luck-keeper if the Luck is lost? Yet it must be if our speculations, wild as they are, about your father’s wealth are correct.’ She fell silent for a while, rapping her fingers on the leather of the seat beside her. ‘Oh good Lord!’

‘What is it, Mrs Westerman?’

‘That chest of Mr Leathes that contained the letter warning your father! With the forced lock. Did you not think it a strange place to leave a letter? And it was covered in soil!’

‘Hardly covered, but certainly dirty. .’

‘The Luck would have fitted in that, would it not?’

Crowther nodded. ‘You make me recall that phrase of Lottie’s when I asked her about the concealed strongbox. She said it contained nothing of value by then.’ He closed his eyes.

‘What is it, Crowther? You have thought of something further.’

‘Mrs Westerman, I made very rare enquiries into my father’s business interests. I knew he had discovered untapped mineral deposits on a parcel of land, so always assumed, when he said. .’

‘Crowther, please, explain before I tear my own hand off in frustration.’

‘I did ask once on what our prosperity was based. He said it was founded on buried treasure.’

Old Mr Leathes was waiting for them by the garden gate looking very solemn, and with no more than a bow, led them to the rear of the house, where a gentleman in his middle years was examining the aviary. He made the introductions, then returned to the house to leave Mr Hudson, Crowther and Harriet to examine each other to the trillings of his canaries.

‘This is a matter of the greatest delicacy, sir, madam,’ Mr Hudson said. ‘I hope you do not think badly of me for emphasising that. I asked Mr Leathes if I might speak to you alone and without his walls, as even in the household of my old friend I fear that we might be overheard and someone might, in all innocence, learn something that should not be learned.’

He reminded Harriet of her father as she remembered him from her youth. A man, softly spoken and inclined to be agreeable, though his expression now was the same nature of worried concern that she remembered when her father had some hard duty of his office to perform.

‘I think we understand, sir,’ she said.

He nodded and put his hand to his chin. ‘Thank you. First I must apologise for my junior partner. I suspect that he was uncivil. He knows nothing of the business of the advertisement and is inclined to resent it. As soon as I heard of the matter, I at once visited the personage concerned to see how far he was happy for us to take you into our confidence. Having done so yesterday evening, I came to you as quickly as I might.’

‘You know, Mr Hudson,’ Crowther said, leaning on his cane, ‘that there has been another death. Mr Askew, the owner of the museum in this town, was found strangled this morning. It may be that whoever killed Hurst, killed Askew also. If you can tell us anything that might bring that man to justice. .’

Mr Hudson kept his chin buried in his chest. ‘I am aware. Remember I came from Silverside. I knew Mr Askew and admired his energy, though how his death is connected to this matter, I cannot say. I must tell you a story. .’

‘You have our attention, sir,’ Harriet said.

‘Yes, yes. The natural son of Viscount Moreland was travelling in Europe some years ago. He was a pleasant boy, but the man who had been paid to take care of him and guide him in his steps was taken ill in Vienna.’

‘Vienna?’ Harriet repeated. ‘It is my understanding that Mr Hurst was a native of that city.’

Mr White nodded as if this had confirmed some thought of his own, and continued, ‘The young man’s tutor was confined to his rooms some weeks, and in that time his charge managed to lose a great deal of money at a card game held in a house off Rabensteig near St Rupert’s Church.’

‘How much?’ Crowther asked. He had seen such things occur during his own years on the continent. Young men caught by smooth-talking strangers in foreign cities.

The lawyer looked almost tearful. ‘It was a disaster. The boy’s tutor was trusted by the family, and was charged with buying a wide variety of art and sculpture for their country house. He had therefore the letters necessary to draw on a small fortune from the bankers. His charge took those letters and drew on those funds to maintain his place at the table.’

Crowther noticed Harriet had become very quiet, and wondered if she were thinking of her own son, if he could be caught in such a way.

Mr Hudson carried on: ‘The boy was distraught and took it upon himself, far too late, to find out something more about the reputation of the men to whom he had lost his father’s money. He became convinced that the game had been crooked, and went to tell them so. He was challenged, and felt himself compelled to face the challenge. Even then he might have been saved if he had spoken to his tutor, but he was stubborn as young men are, and set out to prove his honour with pistols.’

Crowther studied the canaries in Mr Leathes’ aviary, such small lives in their pretty plumage. He remembered bending over one tiny corpse, Mr Leathes guiding his hand as he made his first cut with a borrowed blade. ‘He was killed by his opponent, I presume.’

‘Murdered, sir,’ Mr Hudson said. ‘Murdered as certainly as poor Mr Askew. The devil he fought was a grown man. A man who had done military service. The boy was only eighteen and had never fired a gun other than in sport. His opponent could have shot wide but he shot to kill. I am sure he did so in order to escape with the money he had so dishonestly won. I call that murder, sir. As does the boy’s father. The first the tutor knew of the business was when the body was returned to the lodging-house in a hired cab.’

Harriet worked her fingers into the brass wire of the aviary. ‘And what became of the man who murdered him?’

‘He fled with the money he had won, and we have had no trace of him since. Inquiries were made, naturally. We found something of the man’s past, offered rewards for information leading to his discovery, but the moment he rode away from the scene of the duel, he disappeared. We let it be known in every large town in Europe that we were seeking him in the hopes that he would find himself among people who knew him under the name he used in Vienna. Men do not change. I was certain he would find himself among the card tables again. For five years I have had a stream of correspondence across my desk from Paris, Rome, as far away as Moscow. Every similar scandal, any resemblance, any hint of a name. Each I have pursued to the best of my ability, and each time, whatever iniquity I discovered, there was no trace of the man I searched for.’

Crowther was still watching the birds whistling in their few square feet of comfortable captivity. ‘What became of the tutor, Mr Hudson?’

The lawyer was silent for a moment, as if he needed to compose himself before speaking. ‘The tutor was my own son. He did not forgive himself and would never accept that the fault was not his. He felt he had failed, and dishonoured me. He took a commission with the Sixteenth, and was killed in seventy-nine during the shelling of Fort New Richmond at the Mississippi River.’

‘My condolences,’ Harriet said quietly.

Crowther looked at the lawyer and said, ‘You were advertising for Mr Hurst because he wrote to you offering you information about your fugitive.’

Hudson unfolded a letter from his pocket and passed it to Mrs Westerman, who released her grip on the aviary to take it.

I know where the man who shot the boy is. He is hiding in plain sight. I shall be waiting to hear from you at the Seven Bells in Cockermouth on the evening of Monday, 14th July and am ready to give you his current name and address when I have bills in my hand for?100. Gottfried Hurst.

Harriet looked up from the paper. It was quite plain, no return address, no date. It seemed Mr Hurst had decided not to use one of the sheets printed with the Royal Oak name that Mr Postlethwaite provided. ‘A considerable sum. You kept the appointment, Mr Hudson?’

‘Naturally. My client sent the letter to me as soon as he received it. I remained in the taproom of the Seven Bells from five o’clock in the afternoon until midnight, with the money ready. No one came.’ His voice sounded hollow. Harriet thought of him during his vigil, the hope that his search might be ending, and his growing disappointment.

‘Why did you think the appointment was not kept, Mr Hudson?’ she asked.

‘I hoped, Mrs Westerman, that he had only been delayed by some accident or inconvenience. I feared that he had been offered more money to stay away. By my advertisement I hoped to encourage him to believe he might ask for more. Even if the man I seek had fled, his trail might still reek enough to follow it. But I had no idea where Mr Hurst was precisely, so no idea where to begin until I heard from my partner where you were staying. Then I realised that Mr Hurst’s information must be good.’

‘How so, Mr Hudson?’ Harriet asked.

‘I had no success in tracing the man’s movements after he murdered the young gentleman, but I had some in finding out about his past. The name he used in Vienna was von Lowenstein, but he was born Grenville de Beaufoy, only son of the last Lord Greta.’

Agnes’s fingers touched something. Smooth, worked wood. She tried to pick it up, only to find it resisted. It had been driven into the soil, even after all this distance. It would have gone through her head and dropped her like a stone. She eased it out of the ground. That it had been meant to kill her was no fault of the arrow, and she had better plans for it now. She turned round very carefully and reached out her right hand to the wall. Good. The arrow she slipped into the waist of her skirt at the back to leave her left hand free. She began to sweep it back and forth as before as she crawled back towards the barricade, but this time she paused more often, plucking loose splinters and sticks from among the stones and stuffing them into her pockets.

Harriet felt unsure if she could speak. ‘The son of Lord Greta is here?’

Mr Hudson raised his hands. ‘We must assume so, or at the very least we must think that he has been here very recently.’

Crowther raised his eyebrows. ‘Given the unfortunate demise of Mr Askew, I think we may assume he was also here last night. Do we know what age he is, Mr Hudson?’

‘He was born shortly before the rebellion of forty-five.’

‘In his late thirties, then. Any description of his person?’

‘A gentleman speaking English, German and French like a native. Medium height.’

Harriet cast up her hands in frustration. ‘I saw a dozen men of that age and height at the garden party at Silverside, all with a quiver of arrows at their side, and as many such at the fireworks, though I cannot answer for their linguistic abilities. No limp, sir? No disfiguring mark? Has he a wife, children?’

Mr Hudson shook his head. ‘No duelling scars or obvious injuries I know of, madam. Though he may have acquired them, and a wife and children in five years of travel.’

‘Do not despair, Mrs Westerman,’ Crowther said quietly. ‘There are only two good inns in town. We shall ask there if any of the gentry have been in residence since — when did you receive that letter, Mr Hudson?’

‘In the morning of the twelfth of July.’

‘Since before the eleventh then, who remain in residence or have left this morning and are of a suitable age. There can be relatively few.’

‘Why did he not leave at once, having killed Mr Hurst? Why wait longer?’

Crowther did not waste his breath with a reply. ‘Mrs Westerman, as you have already an acquaintance with Mr Postlethwaite, perhaps you might enquire at the Royal Oak. Mr Hudson, if you might make a similar call on the proprietor of the Queen’s Head. I should like to spend a little more time with the body of Mr Askew.’

‘And you will think on that portrait, Crowther?’

‘Naturally, Mrs Westerman.’