Crowther 02 - Anatomy of Murder

by Imogen Robertson

  Harriet dismissed his apology with a shake of her head.

  “What do you have to tell us?” she demanded, then caught herself, continuing to calm her breathing. “My apologies, sir. Would you rather come into the house? You have had an early ride.”

  “No, madam,” Trevelyan said. “I must be returning to Highgate as soon as I may. I come because my colleague from Kennington Lane and I met by chance at our club last night, and something of what he said has been troubling me. I found I could not be easy till I had told you of it, though the significance of his words escapes me.”

  They turned and began to walk along the pathway that ringed the gardens. It was a broad path, and it was easy for all three to walk abreast. Trevelyan found himself with Crowther on one side and Mrs. Westerman on the other, and had a fleeting sympathy with felons accompanied to their places in court.

  He went on: “When I met this gentleman, we of course remarked on having found Mr. Leacroft. I do not know why you inquired after him, and on being asked, said as much. My colleague—his name is Gaskin, by the way—told me it was most strange, as after some year or so with no enquiries being made to his well-being, or visitors received, Mr. Leacroft had found himself the subject of a flurry of calls very recently, culminating in the arrival yesterday afternoon of Miss Isabella Marin, the soprano.”

  “A flurry of calls, you say?” Crowther asked, and came to a halt. He had his cane with him, and began to twist it slowly into the gravel of the pathway.

  Trevelyan nodded. “That was his phrase. He was entranced to meet Miss Marin, of course. She swore him to secrecy about her visit, but having happened to meet me, he could not resist informing me that she had been in his house. I wondered if she were there because of your inquiry.”

  If Trevelyan had been hoping that his words might lead to some sort of explanation from Crowther and Mrs. Westerman, he was disappointed. Harriet sat down on a bench by the walkway and gestured for him to join her. He did so. Crowther remained standing in front of him, his eyes low and still twisting his cane.

  “Can you tell us anything more of his other visitors, Dr. Trevelyan?” Crowther asked, without looking up.

  The good doctor found that the weight of their attention was making him nervous. “I asked him,” he replied. “He said the first was ten days ago, a rather nervous young man whose name Gaskin did not recall. He was apparently closeted with Mr. Leacroft for some hours. He returned a day or two later, again for some considerable period, but has not been seen since.”

  Harriet put her hand to her face. “Could that be Bywater? He was making enquiries, after all. So Bywater did find him! Yet he said nothing to Isabella, despite their fondness for one another . . .”

  Crowther looked up and met her eyes, which were heavy with thought.

  “Remember, Mrs. Westerman, that despite that fondness he believed only that Mr. Leacroft was some acquaintance of her French singing teacher. He did not know the connection was personal. He may have thought that in concealing his discovery he was doing her no great injury, especially if he found some other greater advantage from his visits.”

  Crowther and Harriet turned their attention to Trevelyan again. “But two visits, and another from Miss Marin yesterday does not constitute a ‘flurry,’” Crowther said. “What more?”

  “The second visitor was on Wednesday, only a week ago, and was a much older man. He too spent some time with Leacroft, and Gaskin was careful this time to remember his name. It was Fitzraven. That is the name of the gentleman whose death you have been investigating, is it not? As Mrs. Westerman mentioned in her note.” He looked up at Crowther, who merely nodded. There was a long silence.

  Crowther leaned forward on his cane and addressed Mrs. Westerman. “So let us suppose that Fitzraven followed Bywater on one or other of his visits. Might he have been able to inquire what sort of man Bywater was visiting, his profession, the nature of his malady—without announcing himself?”

  Harriet turned to Trevelyan, who raised his hands. “Hardly impossible. Gaskin has a number of servants, of course. A man may gossip about his employer for the price of a drink. Such is the way of the world.”

  “So,” Crowther said, “let us suppose that Fitzraven knew Bywater was visiting a mad, secluded musician. Then a week ago he decided to visit the man himself. What encouraged him to make that visit?”

  “Wednesday last . . .” Harriet said, rapping her fingers against her dress with increasing speed. “If the ‘C’ è una rosa’ duet was first rehearsed on Thursday, then the parts would have to be got ready the previous day.”

  Crowther ceased to dig his cane into the pathway. “Which was the responsibility of Mr. Fitzraven.”

  “Dr. Trevelyan,” Harriet said very slowly, “does Mr. Leacroft continue his musical pursuits? Does his condition prevent . . . ?”

  The doctor turned to her with his kind gray eyes a little confused, but as frank and honest as ever. “No, Mrs. Westerman. Theophilius Leacroft has a harpsichord in his chamber and spends most of his hours at the keyboard.”

  “What does he play?”

  “A great quantity of works of the masters, ancient and modern, I understand. And he finds some relief from his melancholia in composition.”

  Dr. Trevelyan found himself at liberty to return to Highgate very shortly afterward. The moment Harriet stepped into the hallway of the house in Berkeley Square, she asked for the carriage to be sent around as soon as it could be managed, then began to pace up and down the corridor.

  “It must have been Bywater who visited first, Crowther. Surely!”

  “But it must be proved.”

  “Fitzraven must have followed him on one visit or another, and having seen the music for the ‘Yellow Rose Duet’ . . .”

  “Concluded that Bywater had not had a sudden inspiration, but had rather stolen the tune for his great triumph. Indeed, Mrs. Westerman, I think it likely. But we cannot assume that it is true. Mr. Leacroft had many pupils when in health. Some gentleman may have just returned to Town and decided to call. We are building castles in the air.”

  Harriet came to a sudden stop. Her skirts eddied around her ankles. “Crumley has not yet completed his portraits to identify the angel Gladys spoke of, but perhaps he has done Bywater already. I asked Susan to help him yesterday.”

  “Yes, we did Mr. Bywater,” said a sleepy voice from the stairs. They turned to see Lady Susan descending the main stairway in search of breakfast. She rubbed her eyes and smiled at them. “Shall I go and fetch it? I brought it home. It’s in my Italian book.”

  Harriet clapped her hands together. “Oh, yes, Susan. Please do.”

  The girl spun on her heel and dashed back upstairs again, all the sleep shaken off her.

  Crowther frowned. “Mrs. Westerman, we are neither of us great musicians.”

  “Truly said, sir,” she replied with a grimace.

  “Suppose that Mr. Leacroft’s compositions are the source of the ‘Yellow Rose Duet’—will we know it for sure?” Crowther fretted. “If it has been altered in some way, will we be able to swear?”

  Harriet shook her head and began to bite the edge of her thumb, still pacing the corridor. When Susan came skittering down the stairs again, a paper in her hands, she asked her, “Susan, where is Mr. Graves this morning?”

  “He had to go and see a lawyer. Something to do with investments of Grandpapa’s just coming to light, I think.”

  Harriet thought for a second, then took the girl by the shoulder, saying, “My dear, we need you to come with us. Go and fetch your cloak.” Brightening with excitement, Susan turned to ran upstairs again.

  Crowther had taken the piece of paper from her before she went and looked approvingly at the profile and full-faced image of Richard Bywater. The picture was accurate. Once again, it seemed as if much of his and Mrs. Westerman’s luck seemed to depend on the people their friends chose to employ.

  Gregory approached. “The carriage is ready, ma’am.”

  “And wher
e is Mrs. Service?”

  Susan came downstairs again at a pace. “Oh, she is teaching Uncle Eustache his ABCs. Shall I tell her we are going out?”

  Harriet glanced impatiently at the door. “No need, my dear. Gregory, will you tell Mrs. Service that Mr. Crowther and I have taken Lady Susan out and will return before dinner?”

  The footman nodded and Harriet took Susan’s hand and made for the doorway.

  2

  “What is the day, Sam?”

  “Wednesday, Mrs. Bligh.” Sam was looking better for a sleeping, though his eyes were still red. He ate the bread he was handed with an appetite but Jocasta could see the thought of his friends pass over his face from time to time.

  “An opera night . . . Does the servant from the house work there on opera night?”

  He shrugged. “I should think. She was following on when the Missus and Milky Boy were coming back that night I watched.”

  Jocasta looked unseeing at the cobbler’s tools around her, hung up and waiting for their master—dead things till a man put his hand to them and gave them purpose.

  “Boy, we have business today. Ripley first, another place later. You fed?”

  Sam swallowed and nodded.

  “Right then. Let’s be off.”

  Mr. Gaskin was much impressed by the carriage, and Harriet’s first thought as Slater guided it into the driveway was that she was very glad she had had Crowther’s counsel when finding a place for James to recover. It was not that the house in Kennington Lane was particularly unpleasant; Harriet knew enough from accounts published that some institutions where those whose wits were troubled found themselves were hells almost beyond imagining. Mr. Gaskin’s establishment was a pleasant villa, not unlike Dr. Trevelyan’s home and place of business, but there was an air of neglect here that made its atmosphere very different to the neatness and calm good order in Highgate. The garden borders were obviously only occasionally tended; the floors in the public areas of the house were swept badly, and the woodwork on the sash; windows at the front of the building had grown rotten and not been replaced. Harriet wondered if the friends and relatives of those confined here visited a great deal. She imagined not. It was a place where people were forgotten, and only thought of, briefly, when the bills for their accommodation and care arrived on some sunny breakfast, then were forgotten for another quarter.

  The air of general neglect spread to Mr. Gaskin himself. He was a short man, and very broad. His coat was a little dirty, his linen gray, and his wig oddly yellow in places. He resembled nothing so much as a bundle of clothing done up for the laundress to take away and beat back to a civilized appearance. When he smiled, Harriet’s eye was drawn to a loose wooden tooth set in the front of his mouth and looking as unsound as his windowframes. There was nothing to disgust immediately in his manners, but his breath stank.

  He bowed low as Crowther presented himself, Harriet and Lady Susan. Harriet watched her young friend steel herself as Gaskin bent over her hand on the weedy gravel of the driveway, and was proud of her.

  “Lady Susan! A delight! An honor to have the scion of the noble house of the Earls of Sussex in our establishment.”

  Crowther explained calmly to Gaskin that they wished to see Mr. Leacroft and ask about his other visitors. He withdrew a folded sheet from his pocket.

  “Was this the man who visited first?” he asked.

  Mr. Gaskin took the paper and squinted at it, holding it at various distances from his slightly yellow eyes and cooing: “Oh yes indeed! To the life! What a fine hand!” He bent his almost spherical body toward Susan. “Is this perhaps the work of my lady? I sense a certain feminine grace in it.”

  Susan edged a little closer to Harriet. “I cannot draw. Jonathan can, but I cannot.”

  “Lady Susan is a musician,” Harriet said. “We should like to introduce her to Mr. Leacroft.” It was not until the words were in the air that Harriet wondered about the wisdom of bringing the child to a place such as this, to meet a man of uncertain temperament; to involve the ward of her host in such an investigation as this. Still, it was done now and Mr. Gaskin was, with a variety of speeches to which Harriet did not closely attend, leading them toward a room in the back of the house.

  The general grime seemed to thicken as they found their way. On the walls of the corridor hung a number of inexpert watercolors. The artist had been productive, but his or her works had been carelessly treated. The frames were cheap and ill-fitting, and several had slipped to show the torn edges of the sketchbook from which the drawings had been taken.

  Gaskin saw Harriet looking at them and commented, “The works of one of our former guests, the daughter of a churchman whose habits of piety became rather hysteric when she reached thirty and found herself still unmarried. Such things can twist the delicate constitution of a female.” He shook his head very sadly. “She is returned to her family now, however. Her father was widowed and she keeps house for him. One of our successes.”

  “Have you many?” Crowther asked, peering at a rather fantastical landscape of ruined towers and distant mountains.

  Gaskin lifted his eyebrows and nodded sagely with a satisfied smile. “Indeed, indeed. Mostly we offer care to those not fit for the wider world, and give what comfort we can before their enfeebled constitutions fail, but oftentimes people leave us ready to rejoin their families in safety and health. Though I do not know what prospects I hold out for poor Theophilius. He is sustained here by a legacy of his father’s. That wise gentleman arranged for the interest to be paid directly to this house quarterly after his death, which melancholy event occurred soon after his son’s removal here. It is nearly sufficient to cover dear Theo’s care. The rest of our usual fees I waive.” He turned and forced his smile on Harriet and Susan. “I am a fool to myself perhaps, but one must be charitable.”

  Crowther sighed rather audibly and said, “What is the state of Mr. Leacroft?”

  Gaskin stroked his chin and drew his brows together. “He is melancholic, sir. With some hysteric symptoms. At times he will laugh and sing, and try to teach his nurses and fellow patients to do the same and remain without sleep for a week, playing at his harpsichord and scribbling notes on any piece of paper he can find. Then he will spend a month barely able to raise his head. It is all we can do at such times to persuade him to take nourishment.”

  “What do you do with the music he writes, sir?” Susan asked softly.

  “We use it to light the fires, Lady Susan.” Harriet felt Susan stiffen at her side, but she made no further comment. “But how interesting that you ask. The young gentleman in the picture asked the very same thing.”

  “Indeed?” Harriet said. “And what did the other gentleman who visited ask you, sir?”

  Mr. Gaskin put his nose in the air. “Hmph. That gentleman . . . I did not take to him, madam. I confess I did not. He asked nothing, and told me no more than his name.” He tilted again toward Susan. “I sensed no breeding in him,” he added, and winked.

  Both Harriet and Crowther were drawing breath to ask something further when they heard a long keening wail from the upper story. Lady Susan started and reached for Harriet’s hand. Mr. Gaskin merely looked annoyed.

  “Mrs. Lightfoot!” He looked between the ladies with a wet smile. “A tragic case. Confined here only a fortnight ago by her husband. Her behavior had become so troubling he had no other choice, poor man. She resents it—but she will learn in time. However, you must excuse me. Mr. Leacroft’s room is at the end of the corridor. You may go in. I fear I am required elsewhere.” He bundled back the way they had come.

  Harriet looked with speaking rage at Crowther. He found he could do nothing but drop his eyes.

  Jocasta left Ripley and the chophouse satisfied, and found Sam and Boyo waiting for her opposite the door. When she emerged she couldn’t help seeing how Sam’s eyes were darting about the street. While she was standing and guessing a way through the carts and horses that mired the road, she noticed a tall thin man pass by Sam, and t
hough he gave him no look or word, the boy cowered to the wall. Again Jocasta wished she’d shut Sam up in the cobbler’s cellar and fetched him when all was done and laid down, but the one thing the lad hated more than being out and about was being anywhere without her, and remembering the loss she had let fall on him, she couldn’t deny him. He beamed when he saw her, and even more when she put a pie into his hand. It was still hot from the oven and he had to pull his raggy sleeves forward to hold it.

  “What’s the word, Mrs. Bligh?” he said, as he blew on it.

  “Fred will be in there tonight, and Ripley will find a way to hold him a while. Now be ready to eat that and trot too. We’re up to Seven Dials now. Time for you to meet a very old friend.”

  Sam took a great bite of his pie and wiped the gravy off his chin.

  3

  Crowther knocked lightly on the door of the room Gaskin had indicated, then opened it as Harriet and Susan waited in the shadows beyond. He looked into the room for a second, then gesturing at them to follow him, he stepped inside.

  The apartment in which they found themselves was large, but shabby. It was lit by a high bay window, and a number of books and papers were scattered around the surfaces and floors. Some servant of the place had a care of Mr. Leacroft, however. The furniture might be worn or fraying, but it was cleaner than the hallway from which they had come. Someone had made an effort to wipe the lower panes of the window to provide a view; a metronome and tuning fork were arranged like ornaments on the top of the mantelpiece, and above it hung a watercolor of a man at a keyboard. Harriet recognized the hand of the artist whose works filled the hallway. She showed herself a better artist in this study than in her landscapes.

  The room depicted was recognizably the one in which they now stood, but in the picture it was lit with summer sunshine and there were fresh flowers on the desk in the window. The figure at the keyboard was touchingly caught as if in mid-flourish with one hand raised from the instrument. The whole figure leaned forward into his playing; energy flew from him. It seemed Theophilius Leacroft still had the power to inspire at times.