Why Mermaids Sing

Chapter 21

A very proved to be a sleepy Kentish market town with a wide High Street curving down a gentle hill toward the banks of the Medway below. It was dominated by its old Norman church, St. Andrews, which stood in the midst of an ancient but well-tended churchyard of scythed grass dotted with worn gray tombstones. To the south of the church lay the rectory, a pleasantly proportioned house of mellow red brick built late in the last century, with twin, two-story bay windows protruding gracefully on either side of a small white porch.

The Reverend William Thornton received them in a study overlooking the rambling untidy gardens that stretched away from the rear of the vicarage. The study was a scholar’s refuge, filled with piles of manuscript pages and ancient leather-bound volumes that overflowed the room’s many bookcases to spill onto tables and across the floor.

They found him seated in a green leather chair beside the empty hearth, a frail-looking man with wispy gray hair and a prominent nose made more conspicuous by the gauntness of his cheeks. A rug covered his legs. He did not stand at their entrance.

“You must forgive me for not rising to greet you,” he said when the stout middle-aged housekeeper in a mobcap ushered them in to see him. “I fear my legs no longer support me. But please do not allow my infirmity to lead you to deduce that you are unwelcome. It’s not often I receive visitors from London. Please, sit down. Mrs. Ross, some tea.”

“Please accept our apologies for intruding upon you,” said Lovejoy, taking a seat on a nearby comfortably worn sofa. “But we must ask you some questions about your son.”

Declining a seat, Sebastian went to stand with one hip resting on the low sill of a window overlooking the garden. He watched as Thornton’s pale cheeks sagged, his lips trembling for a moment before he pressed them tightly together.

“It’s because of these killings in London, isn’t it? You think there’s some connection?”

“There may be,” said Lovejoy.

One of the Reverend’s bony, heavily veined hands tightened on the edge of the rug in his lap. “Mrs. Ross told me about this last one, the Stanton boy. It’s terrible, just terrible.”

“What can you tell us about the day your son disappeared, Mr. Thornton?”

The rector sat in silence for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was hushed and oddly flat, as if he could speak only by sealing off his every emotion from the tale he was telling. “Nicholas was up at Cambridge, but he’d come down for the Easter holidays. He used to spend every minute he could when he was home in the wood behind the house, and that was where he went that morning. It was a Wednesday. He was due to return to Cambridge in just a few days.”

“He went fishing?”

“He took a pole with him, but I think it was something in the nature of a prop, so he’d look productive.” Amusement gleamed, then was gone in an instant. “He said he’d be back in an hour or two, in time for nuncheon.”

“But he didn’t come back?”

“No. I didn’t worry at first. You know what boys are like. But as the afternoon wore on, I became concerned. Nicholas was not usually so careless. When the shadows began to lengthen toward evening, I finally decided to go looking for him. I found his pole and his shoes beside the stream, near his favorite fishing hole. But nothing else. It was as if he had vanished.”

“Was there any sign of a struggle?”

“No. Some men from the town volunteered to help me search the wood and beyond.” Thornton restlessly shifted his legs. “I wasn’t so infirm then, you see. We fanned out over the entire area, but we found nothing. Not until the following morning.”

“When his body was discovered in the churchyard.”

The Reverend’s lower lip quivered. “Yes.”

Sir Henry hesitated, as if reluctant to press on. He glanced at Sebastian, who said, “Was your son by any chance acquainted with either Dominic Stanton or Barclay Carmichael?”

Thornton’s eyes widened. “No. Not to my knowledge. Nicholas was up at Cambridge, studying divinity. I can’t imagine he would have met either one.”

“Tell us about your son, Reverend,” said Sir Henry, his voice unusually gentle. “What was he like?”

A sad smile touched the rector’s lips and brought a brief spark of life to the tired old eyes. “He was one of the most curious children I’ve ever known, always asking questions, wanting to see how things worked.”

“And as a young man?”

“He was little changed. He was still a child in so many ways. Not in his mind,” the clergyman added quickly. “He was always very bright. But in his ways and interests.”

“Have you other children?”

“No.”

Sebastian let his gaze drift over the neglected garden to the small glebe and, beyond that, the stretch of wood where the boy had disappeared.

“Can you think of anyone who might have had a grudge against your son,” Sir Henry asked, “either real or imagined?”

The Reverend drew a deep breath that lifted his thin chest, then let it out in a sigh. “Not that I know of. Nicholas was a very quiet boy. Quiet and serious. My wife used to worry about him. She used to say he was more at ease with books than with people.” Again that wistful smile touched his lips only to vanish, leaving him looking more stricken than before. “I thank God every day she didn’t live to see what happened to him.”

“Your wife is dead?”

The Reverend nodded sadly. “She died this past January, right after Christmas.”

Sebastian was careful not to look at Lovejoy. He’d heard it said that once the magistrate had had a wife. A wife and a child both, now long dead.

“You have our deepest sympathies,” murmured the magistrate.

Sebastian found his gaze drawn again to the scene outside the window. To the north of the garden with its brick paths and overflowing clumps of marigold and santolina, lavender and roses, lay the church of St. Andrews. Through a gap in the high yew hedge he could see the church’s squat medieval buttresses and an ancient square tower that thrust up broodingly against the blue September sky. The churchyard was an expanse of carefully tended green, far tidier than the rectory’s own garden and crowded with a scattering of ancient gray headstones and tombs. He wondered if the Reverend had been the one to find his son’s body, although it wasn’t a question Sebastian felt inclined to ask.

“Do you mind if we ask who examined your son’s body?” said Sebastian.

The Reverend appeared surprised by the question, although he answered it readily enough. “No, of course not. It was Dr. Newman. Dr. Aaron Newman. He lives here in Avery, just across the green. Perhaps he can help you in a way I have been unable to do.” The Reverend paused. “I keep reminding myself, ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ But it doesn’t help. The man who did that to my son—” His voice broke. He paused to swallow hard, then said more quietly, “Whoever did that to my son was evil. To visit such an end on a poor innocent lad of nineteen…” His voice failed him again, and this time he made no attempt to continue.

Lovejoy rose awkwardly. “Please forgive us for intruding on you, Reverend. We won’t trouble you any longer.”

The Reverend passed a trembling hand across his eyes. “But you must stay for tea.”

The magistrate gave one of his peculiar little bobbing bows. “Thank you, but no.”

Sebastian pushed away from the window, conscious of a sense of frustration. What could possibly be the connection between this clergyman’s serious, studious son and a spoiled nobleman’s son like Dominic Stanton, or a sophisticated town buck like Barclay Carmichael? He remembered what Kat had said about the seeming randomness of the killings making everyone feel vulnerable. He wondered if that was why he was so anxious to find some link among the three murdered men: because the lack of a link in these savage murders made the act somehow that much more horrifying.

“Are you from around here, Mr. Thornton?” he asked suddenly.

The Reverend shook his head. “I come from Nayland, in East Suffolk. Near Ipswich. This living was presented to me by my wife’s uncle. When I was a young man, it was always my intention to devote my life to missionary work, carrying the good news of our Lord to the unfortunate heathens dwelling in sin and darkness in the benighted regions of the world. I never thought to have a parish of my own, let alone a benefice of this size.”

Sebastian knew a flicker of interest. “Did you ever go on a mission?”

Mr. Thornton pushed himself up straighter in his chair. “As a matter of fact, yes. I spent six years in the Horn of Africa before I married. And then Mrs. Thornton and I had occasion to go on another mission nine years ago, when I was able to leave my parish in the care of a curate.”

Nine years ago, Sebastian thought, Nicholas Thornton would have been ten years old. “And Nicholas?” Sebastian asked. “Did he go with you?”

“Oh, no. Nicholas was at Harrow by then. He never did come out, even for a visit. Mrs. Thornton was very jealous of the child’s health, and she feared he’d take ill in such an insalubrious climate. He spent his school holidays with her brother.”

“Where precisely did you and Mrs. Thornton go?” asked Sir Henry, although Sebastian knew the answer even before Thornton gave it.

“India.”

“A coincidence, surely?” said Sir Henry, when Sebastian told him of the conversation with Sir Humphrey Carmichael. They were crossing the village green, headed toward the doctor’s rambling white frame house. As they walked, a gaggle of white geese scattered, complaining, before them, the sun bright on the birds’ gleaming feathers. “I daresay thousands of Englishmen have visited the Indian subcontinent at some point in their lives. Have you?”

“Yes.”

“There. You see? Besides, we don’t know that Lord Stanton has ever been to India.”

“No, we don’t.” Sebastian stared off across a cluster of stone cottages half hidden beneath a riot of climbing roses putting on a final display of fall blooms. “All the same, if I had a son, I think I’d be worried.”