Island of Bones

V.4

When Harriet returned to the museum, frustrated and disappointed, she found the main part of the museum being swept. The body had been removed — Harriet guessed that Mr Askew’s office had become his mortuary. The girl who had offered to keep watch over the body was completing her labours and her friend was arranging the fallen rock samples on Mr Askew’s counter. The girl looked up as she came in and nodded to her.

‘Lord Keswick is in the back room, Mrs Westerman.’

Harriet began to unbutton her gloves. ‘Stella, have you ever heard the stories of the ghost of Lord Greta walking the hills in times of trouble?’

She smiled. ‘That was just old Farmer Willocks used to say that, madam, when he came into town for the market. He always had a story for the fire, and that was just one of them. He used to say the Northern Lights celebrated on the day Lord Greta escaped from custody, and that there was a witch in Thornthwaite Forest could turn herself into a hare, and he had a story of some bogle or other for every month in the year.’ She chuckled and started the broom moving again, the glass cracking like ice in the pail on winter mornings.

‘Did you hear the story? Is he living?’

‘No, bless you, madam. There aren’t that many like Lottie Tyers, who are too stubborn to die. We shared out the arvel bread for Willocks when I was right small. Twelve years ago, maybe. But I heard the story. It was the time of. .’ she dropped her voice a little, ‘when the First Baron was murdered. Willocks said he was out in the evening seeing to his pigs, and he saw the ghost of Lord Greta on a black horse crossing Pow Beck. Then next day he heard there had been horrible murder done at Silverside Hall, so he reckoned he’d seen a bogle sent as a sign.’

‘Where is Pow Beck? And how did he know it was Lord Greta?’

Stella snorted. ‘Said he knew him by his bearing. And Pow Beck lies along the way to Braithwaite. I thought his other bogle stories were better, but he told the story of the ghost of Lord Greta enough times for it to drift around after we buried him.’

‘You don’t sound as if you believed him?’

It was the young man who replied. ‘If Lord Greta’s ghost came in times of trouble, he’d have been seen when the small-pox came. And if he came in times of murder, then he’d be outside the window now, wouldn’t he?’ His voice lowered a little as he finished, and Harriet found herself looking towards the shutter.

‘Mrs Westerman?’ She jumped a little and turned to see Crowther in the doorway to the office. Stella set to work again with the broom and the young man busied himself with the rocks. ‘Perhaps you might join me?’

She followed him into the office trying not to blush, and as the door closed behind them, she asked, ‘Did you hear any of that, Crowther?’

He nodded. ‘Any news of significance from the Royal Oak?’

‘Three gentlemen are currently in residence. Of these, two are of an age and have been here ten days or more. The first was having lunch when I arrived and was extremely surprised to be engaged in light conversation by a respectable widow. His name is Bloodworth, which gave me hope for a moment, but if he is a murderer, then I abandon all hope of ever knowing my fellow man. Charming, handsome, but I would swear him innocent. The second left this morning, a family man travelling with his two young daughters.’

Crowther looked up with his eyebrows raised, but Harriet shook her head. ‘He was a man of enormous girth who, Mr Postlethwaite said, had to rest on his way up the stairs to his chamber. The thought of him dragging Mr Hurst’s body into a cave and covering it with stones is impossible. Have you had word from Mr Hudson?’

‘He left before you arrived, Mrs Westerman, but his information was much as your own. He is determined to widen his search and has taken horse for Kendal in hopes of finding his nemesis there.’

She looked at the body of the museum owner, lying across his own desk. ‘Poor Mr Askew. Did he have any family?’

‘His maid tells me there is a married sister in Cockermouth.’

‘And have you learned anything more from his body?’

He nodded and indicated Mr Askew’s left hand. She went to it and took the cold fingers between her own. The locking of the body was just beginning to pass; the muscles were still tensed, but she could open them just enough to observe the flesh of the palm. The skin was torn at the base of the fingers, though there was no sign of blood.

‘I see it, Crowther. But I cannot pretend to understand.’

He looked at her as she cradled the dead hand. ‘Those injuries can only, I believe, have been caused after death, since such abrasions should bleed. I believe some jagged object was torn from the hand when it was already clenched in death.’

She straightened, her green eyes clean and dancing. ‘The struggle! Mr Askew had something in his hand that his killer feared might identify him?’

‘That is my speculation, Mrs Westerman.’

‘Then at some time in the night he realised it was missing and came back to collect it.’

‘It was fortunate,’ he said rather dryly, ‘that the murderer kept the key to the front door.’

Stephen found Casper by his old camp. He had not expected to see the man himself there, but rather hoped to leave some secret signal for him that his mission of the previous night had been successful. He had not thought what that signal might be, and was standing by the firestone feeling rather lost when he suddenly found Casper at his side. He looked ill to Stephen’s eyes. The bruises on his face were blossoming against the pale of his undamaged skin, and his eyes had the haunted air of a man who has slept little. Joe hopped down from his shoulder and hunched in the sun.

‘You have it?’ Stephen nodded and patted his waistband. ‘Good lad.’

‘You have not found her.’

Casper suddenly picked up the kettle from its place by the fire and threw it with all his strength across the camp. It clattered loudly against the rocks on the far side of the clearing. Joe fluttered up and cawed. Stephen remained very still. ‘Nowhere! Nowhere! I know every mine dug on these hills since Queen Bess! Every nook and cranny of them! I’ve hammered and yelled at every seal to the mines. Any that are open I have crawled through like a rat and nothing! Nothing! And the nails on the barriers rusted and old each one. Where is she?’ He dropped onto one of the stone benches and put his head in his hands. ‘I lose hope, boy. Three days, and she is gone as a ghost! His clothes smelled of earth, deep earth. But nothing, nothing and nothing. They must have drowned her. Poor Agnes, poor clever Agnes.’

Stephen sat down next to him and put his thin arm across his shoulders. Casper turned towards him, and Stephen felt his forehead rest on his shoulder for a second. He smelled of air and sweat and tobacco.

‘Can you use the Luck to find her?’ He drew the case out of his waistband with his free hand and placed it on Casper’s knee. ‘Is there not some magic?’

Casper wiped his face on his sleeve. ‘Nay, youngling. If the Luck wishes her found, it will find its own way to do it. It guides and protects and punishes in its own way, not by simple men like me mumbling over it.’ As he spoke he took the case in his hands and held it lovingly. ‘I hope it may. Perhaps it tests us.’ He was stroking the leather of the case. ‘My da made this for it a long time ago now. The pox came in fifty-four, and everyone was so afraid. It is a foul way to die. They say it strikes those who fear it most, like a devil. The skin breaks and bleeds and people go wild and desperate in their pain, spitting and screaming till they are not man or woman or child, but some lost demon.’ Stephen shuddered. ‘My da did his duty. He covered the Luck and each night took it to every house where the pox was burning some poor soul. You ever seen it?’

Stephen shook his head.

‘Pray you don’t. Fever first, and cramps. Then they’d take to their beds and the pustules would come. Fat and seeping and the stink of them. . they make you rot before you die, and so many their own mother wouldn’t know them. The things they’d call out.’

‘Did the Luck help?’ Stephen said quietly.

‘It calmed them, and calmed their people. We thought it had passed. Then my dad fell, getting from his bed in the Black Pig. I put it under his pillow, but he went hard anyway. Whatever sin he ever did, he paid for it then.’ He turned and spat onto the ground, then handed the leather pouch back to Stephen. ‘You take it, boy. It’s safer with you for now — the magistrate might get me yet. Gentry you may be, but for now you are Luck-keeper of this place.’

Stephen nodded and placed it back in his belt. ‘There’s something else.’

‘What, lad?’

‘That man from Portinscale, the young one?’

‘Swithun Fowler? Have you seen him scuttling about? What of him?’ Casper’s eyes had become bright and seeing again.

‘I saw him as I was coming out from the Black Pig last night. He was leaving his mother’s cottage and heading north. There was something strange about his arm. The sleeve was torn, and I think I saw blood on it. Looked like it was hurting him. It wasn’t when we saw him the morning after you got beaten.’

‘Was it now? North. . is he hiding in Thornthwaite? We’ve visited all the old holes there, but I didn’t have an eye out for a camp. Thought they’d have fled further by now. What holds them?’ Casper reached down to where Joe was hopping and pecking at his feet. Stephen could feel the excitement in the man’s bones. The jackdaw stepped daintily onto his forefinger and allowed himself to be lifted up. ‘Arm hurt, hey? It wasn’t us that did that, was it? What do we say to that, Joe?’

‘Good, good!’

Harriet heard a knock at the museum’s front door, then the sound of Stella greeting Ham. She stepped back briskly from the office into the main room. Even with her injured ankle Stella had made a fine job of clearing the space, and Harriet said so. The girl smiled.

‘Thought I’d never heal, madam. But it’s taking my weight better and better now.’ The museum looked as if it could be reopened within the hour, were it not for the body of the owner with his bruised and broken neck lying in the other room. Ham was looking flustered.

‘Ham, you have been sent to us again! Is all well at Silverside?’

‘Yes, Mrs Westerman, or I don’t rightly know. Seems there might have been words between Mrs Briggs and the Vizegrafin, not my place to say, of course!’ he added quickly, as if he had just admitted to the murder of Mr Askew himself.

Harriet smiled at him. ‘Don’t worry, Ham. But do you have some message for us?’

He looked startled again. ‘Yes, madam, just that Mrs Briggs asked if it might be possible to see you at once.’

Harriet frowned. ‘Mr Crowther and myself, Ham?’

‘She just said your name, madam. She was right fretted to have missed you at breakfast and has been darting back and forth to the window looking for you ever since. Worse since we heard about poor Mr Askew, then that lawyer came and went looking white.’

‘Hudson. White is the partner,’ Harriet said a little distractedly. The last thing she had any time for at this moment was a quarrel between the women at Silverside. She and Crowther had hardly been given a chance to speak to one another. Then she thought of the unanswered summons of Mr Askew and sighed. ‘One moment, Ham.’

She opened the door into the office once more. Crowther was still examining the wounds on Mr Askew’s hand. ‘You’re going,’ he said. It was a statement rather than a question.

‘I am. Will you join me?’

He shook his head without looking at her. ‘No, I shall spend a little more time here, then perhaps ask that man to break the door down into Mr Askew’s apartments. I shall join you at Silverside later.’

The door closed and he was alone.

Mrs Briggs might have been keeping a close watch, but it was Felix who first appeared as Ham brought the carriage to a halt on the gravel path outside the house.

‘Mrs Westerman!’ he said, handing her down. ‘I went to the vicarage to see Sophia, but I was not allowed into the house. Miss Scales said she would not see me.’ He made his eyes wide and pleading. ‘She said she was not seeing anyone, but that was not true! Mr Postlethwaite was allowed to pay his respects, and Mr Sturgess. It is only myself she will not see.’

‘Does that surprise you, Felix?’ Harriet said rather impatiently and tried to move past him, but he laid his hand on her arm.

‘She wanted to see me before,’ he said, his grip tightening. Harriet looked at him — a child, she thought. That poor girl has married a spoiled child with an ugly temper, and now she will be saddled with him till he drinks himself to death or a boar catches up with him. Or a murder of crows. Perhaps it would have been better if the marriage had been kept secret; at least then Miss Hurst might have had the chance to make another choice.

‘She wanted to see you when her father went missing; she hoped to see you, no doubt, when her father was found murdered. Perhaps she thinks your visit unforgivably late.’

‘But she is my wife!’

‘She was your wife then too, Felix. And your wife when you left her with that monstrous father of hers and ran away to England with your mother.’ He turned pale, as if she had struck him, but did not release her arm. ‘Now let me go.’

Ham cleared his throat. He was standing at Harriet’s elbow and looking rather sternly at Felix. He rolled his great shoulders. Felix lifted his hand from her arm, and Harriet walked briskly into the house.

Mr Askew’s apartments showed him to have been an orderly sort of man. There were a pair of armchairs round the fireplace in red leather and a number of well-stocked bookcases. The room was dominated, however, by Mr Askew’s worktable on which he produced his plans of the surrounding countryside. Inks and stone for grinding them lay next to an astrolabe in a walnut case. The table had large candlesticks at each end, and though they were burned to stubs, Crowther could see Mr Askew used beeswax candles to work with. Again he had a rather painful sense of fellow feeling.

Of the portrait that Crowther had glanced at there was no sign. Rifling through the man’s desk he found a great many cuttings from the newspapers advertising or reporting on his various entertainments, and boasting of the number of visitors of quality from many European countries whom he had welcomed into his museum. It had not been so when Crowther was a child. No one came here then, and the town had been miserable and poor. He picked up the astrolabe, which was beautifully made, and considered his father. The land he had bought he had used purely to create the wealth Crowther now enjoyed. He had cut down the timber, worked the last deposits he could from the mines and invested the profits elsewhere, where it could do no good for these people. For that, they had made him a peer of the realm. Mr Askew may have been an awkward man at times, but he had brought visitors and their money into Keswick, he had unpicked the history and geography of the area and made it available to his fellow men. Crowther had sneered at him, and now he lay dead among his exhibits, another bloody story among so many others.

Crowther closed his eyes briefly and put down the astrolabe. If Mr Askew’s married sister permitted it, he would buy the instrument himself and place it on his own worktable to remind him. He remembered that Harriet had purchased a violin from the estate of another man who had died violently. Perhaps they deserved the reputation as carrion birds that some were keen to give them.

The notebooks Crowther found were full only of sketch maps and measurements. Mr Askew, it seemed, had not kept a journal of his thoughts. There was no note, no letter. Crowther leaned back in the chair and half-closed his eyes. He was trying to recall, in each detail, the portrait of James Westerman, Harriet’s late husband, that hung in the drawing room in Caveley. It was a sort of exercise before he made an attempt on recalling the glimpsed portrait of Lord Greta. The oil of Captain Westerman showed him in a version of Captain’s undress uniform — a vigorous, handsome man, with the sea churning behind him. It was painted, Mrs Westerman had told him, just before their marriage and shortly after he had achieved the rank of Captain. His barge bobbed off a little to the left in reference to his new position; he had his sword in front of him like a cane. The painter had given the impression of intelligence and humour to his expression. Crowther wondered briefly what the same painter would make of his own angular, ageing self. Would he be painted with a knife in his hand? Darkness behind him, his face made even more haggard by the candlelight by which he always worked? Well, such were his signs. Just as the barge, hat and sword were those of the late Captain.

Crowther opened his eyes again. He saw Mr Askew in front of him as he glanced up; the portrait had been almost life-size, and by the way Mr Askew had held it, it seemed he and Greta were looking at each other, turned slightly away from the viewer, one arm forward. A profile, and what were the signifiers there? A ring. The landscape behind him. On the waistcoat, an elaborate chatelaine. Crowther saw it, placed his hand on his forehead and thought. He had seen it before.

He stood up so quickly that Mr Askew’s chair tipped over behind him.