The Murder Stone

by Charles Todd

  With a sigh she nodded. “I know. All too well.”

  He looked down at his shoes as if studying the shine. “Francesca. You’ve never given me an answer. Will you marry me?”

  “What will your grandfather say?”

  He met her eyes squarely. “He will understand.”

  “No, he won’t. He’ll be furious with you. You made a promise to him. He’ll expect you to keep it.”

  “I did promise. But one man can only do so much. And for years I tried.”

  Francesca said, “And your father?”

  “He’ll value you for yourself. He’s a fair man.”

  Then why hadn’t Thomas Leighton come to Devon to ask Francis Hatton face-to-face what had become of Victoria? Because he didn’t want to know?

  “Tell them first,” she said gently. “Before I give you an answer. For my sake.”

  Mrs. Passmore came to call. Her face ravaged by tears and fear, she said contritely, “I want to tell you how sorry I am for all the trouble I’ve caused. When I came to the funeral, it was for my own ends. Everyone has photographs, paintings—I expected I’d see your cousins’ likenesses in every room of the house. It wouldn’t be necessary to disturb you in a time of grief. Sadly, I was wrong.”

  Francesca smiled. “For your sake, I’m sorry.” And found that she meant it.

  “I ran into so many stone walls. Here—at the house in Falworthy. You and your grandfather were my last resort. I don’t really bear a grudge against Mrs. Gibbon—I can see why the children must be protected, no names named. How horrible it would be for some bedraggled slut or drunken vagabond to arrive at one’s door claiming to be one’s kin! I did understand—only, it broke my heart to be so close to the truth—and to be denied.”

  “My grandfather never spoke to me of records that had been kept on the children of the Little Wanderers Foundation. I can’t tell you where they are, or who might have them. But as you say, that’s as it should be,” Francesca assured her, wondering where this visit was leading.

  “Yes, so one would think . . .” Her voice trailed off. Then she said with a sigh, “There was a rector here before the present one. Do you suppose he might know something about Harry’s birth?”

  “Oddly enough, I called on him yesterday. When he came to Hurley to take up the living at St. Mary Magdalene, my cousins were already in residence here. And the man before Mr. Chatham can’t possibly be alive. He retired at sixty-two.”

  “Yes, I see that— Oh, thank you more than I can say, for asking on my behalf!” She smiled warmily, happily.

  Francesca decided to leave her with her illusions.

  “One can always hope . . .” Mrs. Passmore went on, picking at a thread on one finger of her spotless gloves. “I’ll be leaving with my son when they find him and take him back to hospital. I didn’t want there to be hard feelings between us, you and I. We are—in a sense—family.”

  Francesca opened her mouth to deny it. Then she was silent, knowing it would be unnecessarily hurtful.

  “And I would hope that you’d visit him, too,” Mrs. Passmore went on.

  “If it’s my cousin,” she said, “of course I will come often.”

  “Isn’t life odd? I wanted news of my boy, and here he is! Not dead in France after all, but alive and searching for something he had never had before. A mother. It’s the most amazing thing!”

  Francesca pitied her. Simple need had become obsession. “I hope he’ll recover, be whole again!”

  “Of course he will, don’t worry about that, my dear. Love works wonders, they say. But pray for us, if you will!”

  She stood to go, still prompt to her quarter of an hour. “I regret only one thing, that we met under awkward circumstances. I should have trusted my first instincts and come to you openly. But I had a feeling it would be difficult for both of us. Will you say you forgive me?”

  “Yes. Of course I forgive you.”

  And if it turned out to be Harry the Army was hunting—

  Mrs. Passmore left, her spirits seemingly uplifted.

  But Francesca sat there thinking about the two women—Mrs. Passmore, desperate to believe she had found her lost child, and Victoria Leighton, who might have willingly walked away from her own.

  And yet Mrs. Passmore had walked away as well. She had married and said nothing, and she had found a measure of happiness until her husband’s death. It was only then that she had remembered and gone in search of her child.

  Would the same thing be true of Victoria Leighton—if she were still alive?

  Would a day come when Victoria appeared at her own son’s door, wanting to be forgiven?

  It was not a comforting thought.

  Better her ghost, Francesca told herself, than the living woman.

  What story could a living Victoria Leighton tell, to excuse what she had done? And would it be the truth? Or lies?

  I’m glad she’s dead. . . .

  CHAPTER 29

  Leighton had left the Valley, Miss Trotter informed Francesca when she came for the night.

  Another departure without saying good-bye. It was getting to be a habit with Richard Leighton!

  Yet her head, arguing fiercely with her heart, reminded her that it was she who had asked him to speak first to his father and grandfather. . . .

  “But he has kept his room at The Spotted Calf,” Miss Trotter prattled on. “Much to the dismay of the village gossips. At first they had pegged him for a wounded soldier trying to find peace and quiet while he healed. Prone to wander the Valley day and night, after all he’d seen at the Front. Like the rector. Now they aren’t sure what to make of his comings and goings.”

  “Day and night?”

  “It’s likely he can’t sleep. You can see that in his face, if you look.”

  “What else do they say?”

  “That he’s handsome enough to displace the rector in your affections.” Miss Trotter smiled quizzically. “I told you once, to hold your enemy close—”

  “You must be joking!” Francesca retorted, startled.

  Miss Trotter replied quite seriously, “The village would have preferred a Valley man, of course, but most of the eligible bachelors in our part of Devon are dead in the war. Still, Mr. Stevens is almost like one of us.”

  “What else do they say about me?”

  “That you’re haunted. It’s what brought you home again.”

  “Breaking a bone in my leg brought me home again!”

  “Yes, well, that’s only God’s hand in helping you know what’s best.”

  “Do they know that Mr. Leighton came here to accuse my grandfather of murder?”

  “No, Miss Francesca, and it’s just as well. In the village they’d tear him limb from limb, if he offered you harm. For the sake of Mr. Hatton.”

  Francesca could feel the tears rising to fill her eyes. “I didn’t know . . .” she said. She had been too busy listening to her grandfather’s cruelties, his victims. . . . She’d forgotten he had his defenders as well.

  In the early morning light, after Miss Trotter had crept away and before Mrs. Lane had walked up from the village, Francesca again picked up the volume of Latin verse that Francis Hatton had been translating before his stroke.

  He had had this volume in his hand in August when his body failed him, leaving his mind to follow in the weeks ahead. And he had never been well enough to come back to it, even though it had lain on his desk waiting.

  There were notes in the margins by many of the poems. His translations were crisp and clear, with a knowledge of language and a beauty of expression that lifted her heart.

  I knew I ought to have read them before this—

  But somehow there had never been a right time.

  The notes in his bold and vigorous scrawl would have interested scholars, but his enthusiasm was in the challenge and elegance of the work itself.

  Turning a page, she found where his pen had faltered, a word ending in a jagged black streak of ink that ran raggedly across the pr
inted lines and off the paper entirely.

  It hurt her to see proof of the blinding pain that had struck him down—caught him in mid-word. Which had in fact killed him in the end.

  Gently shutting the book, she set it aside, as if she had pried into something private.

  But her eyes had caught a word on that page, and it echoed in her head. After a moment she opened the book again and tried to find her place.

  Here was an obscure poet, writing about the British hero Caractacus—telling through his eyes the story of a warrior’s capture and his final humiliation as he was paraded in chains through the streets of Rome to stand before the emperor Claudius.

  Francesca read the translation and bit her lip in pain.

  For a great curse has been laid upon my house

  By dark gods who sit in splendor above the ashes of my people,

  And I am dragged, bound and scorned, before my enemies.

  A murderous stone weighs on my heart, and they who put it there

  Frivolously wait to see me beg for release.

  But I will die instead and leave only a hollow victory—

  The white shell of my bones. And

  The curse shall be lifted with the stone,

  For it has no power over my dust.

  Yet I will bargain with the Lord of Hell to send it

  Winged and flying into the night,

  Curse and stone lost together,

  Beyond the Pillars of Hercules . . .

  And in the margin, Francis Hatton had written painfully, his hand seizing with the power of the stroke—“To Scotland—and even that is not far enough from Fran—”

  Francesca reread the words, her heart beating heavily.

  At last she understood.

  Somehow in his mind—as the stroke gripped hard and the words of the poem still echoed through his damaged brain—Francis Hatton had bound up together the Murder Stone and the sealed letter he had kept for so many years in the solicitor’s strong box. And to protect her, the last of his family, he had ordered the stone removed as far away as it could be carried in time of war—not into the depths of the Atlantic, beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, as in the poem, but at the farthest reaches of British soil. Taking the curse with it.

  The very tip of Scotland . . .

  “For a great curse has been laid upon my house . . . Yet I will bargain with the Lord of Hell to send it/Winged and flying into the night,/Curse and stone lost together . . .”

  Francis Hatton had believed it was his granddaughter’s only salvation . . .

  Who could say but that he was right?

  A shiver raced through her, and she hastily closed the little leather-bound volume, feeling as if she had unwittingly touched her grandfather’s soul.

  CHAPTER 30

  Two nights later, Francesca awoke to harsh, discordant sounds of a bell rung hard. She had been counting the strokes in her sleep, knowing it tolled for her grandfather, each year a deep and throaty note.

  But as she sloughed off sleep and began to hear the sound in earnest, she recognized the stable bell’s iron voice.

  Fire—

  Francesca rolled out of her bed, reaching for her crutches as she called to Miss Trotter.

  But the woman wasn’t there. The boudoir chair was empty, the door to the sitting room standing agape.

  In the darkness she couldn’t find her slippers, but she could feel the edge of her robe at the foot of her bed. She dragged it on, fumbling to tie the sash, and then went swinging through the open door on her crutches.

  A burst of brilliant light filled the room behind her, and she whirled to see one of the outbuildings engulfed in flames. They soared upward in the night sky, fingers of bright orange reaching high into the blackness.

  Not the stables, thank God—was her first thought.

  Turning awkwardly, she moved down the passage as quickly as she could, making for the kitchen.

  By the time she threw open the passage door, she could feel the heat filling the cold night air, and hear the hungry crackle of the fire feeding on hay and dry wood.

  It was the shed nearest to the barn, but at the rate it was burning, sparks soaring and flying well above her head, there was no telling what would be the next outbuilding to catch. Even the house was not out of reach—

  Hobbling down the path through the cabbages and beets, she could see figures arriving in haste, men from the village wearing trousers pulled on over nightshirts, leather buckets in their hands. Someone was already working the pump, sending water splashing into the horse trough. Bill was there, and Miss Trotter.

  The pump was being dragged round from the drive, pushed by men and women whose faces garishly reflected the flames.

  The stableyard was filled with people now, and yet the fire was hopelessly beyond their ability to control it. When the pump was ready, they began to hose down the stables and the barn, some of the men looking anxiously in the direction of the house. Stevens was there, and Tardy Horner, for once in his life on time. Other faces she knew, and people were still arriving.

  Cursing her crutches for the second time, Francesca could do nothing but watch. Mrs. Lane was there, gray hair flying out of its net, her face already streaked with soot. And Mrs. Horner had forgotten her spectacles.

  Someone shouted to Francesca, and she raised a hand in acknowledgment. A man had just been badly singed by the flames, and she saw him coming toward her, one side of his face an angry red.

  It was one of the soldiers, and she hurried him into the kitchen to clean the wound and put salve on it. The smell of singed hair and skin sickened her, reminding her of her arm. . . .

  As soon as he was bandaged, he thanked her and was gone. A villager came in with a burned hand, the knuckles raw, and she did what she could for him. There was no time to look for bandaging. Instead she offered him a tea towel to cover the wound. He tore the cloth in two with his teeth, grinned at her, and wrapped the hand. She tied the ends of the towel and he, too, hurried away.

  Francesca’s stomach was churning.

  “It’s shock and nothing else,” she told herself under her breath. “The sudden shock of the fire.” But there wasn’t the luxury of stopping to consider the question.

  Another patient was brought in, overcome by the smoke, and Francesca ministered to her, listening to the rasping cough, offering cool water for the raw throat. It was the ironmonger’s wife, middle-aged and energetic. Now she struggled for breath like an old woman.

  The night dragged on, and the shed still burned furiously, while the silhouettes of people working against time seemed to dance around it like witches circling some ancient bonfire. Watching from the window, she saw the first flicks of smoke rising from the barn roof. The horses had already been taken away, rearing with fright. The carriage and cart had been dragged out as well, and other machinery. The motorcar had been moved to the drive, out of reach, with the petrol cans sitting on the house steps.

  One of the women came to help make great pots of tea and cut cheese and bread for sandwiches. It was exhausting work, men fighting fatigue now as hard as they still fought the fire.

  Francesca glimpsed Leighton more than once, organizing teams to rake burning debris away from other buildings, pointing out sparks settling on roofs, helping wherever he was needed. Later she could just pick him out, sitting on the Murder Stone, hands on his head in despair as if his body had failed him.

  By the time a first glimmer of dawn touched the Valley, the shed had collapsed in a blizzard of golden sparks, and then the ruins continued fitfully to blaze up and die back, as if reluctant to give up.

  Men stood around in clusters watching, hands hanging as if the muscles in their arms had turned to water. The women were sitting on overturned buckets and rescued bales of hay, on chests from the barn and even an array of saddles thrown haphazardly out of danger. Faces and clothes streaked with soot and dark with water, they looked like survivors of some terrible disaster, waiting to be rescued.

  But the house hadn
’t caught, nor had the stables. The other outbuildings were safe as well, singed and charred in places but whole.

  Francesca had organized a half-dozen young girls to help her prepare pans of eggs and rashers of bacon, more tea, stacks of toasted bread. Plates were taken out and passed around, and the tired firefighters accepted them gratefully, eating hungrily.

  She hobbled out to thank each of the villagers personally. She knew this hadn’t been done for Francis Hatton’s sake—fire was the enemy of every household and the only hope of beating it was to fight it collectively. When one was in danger, everyone else rallied round. But her gratitude was no less sincere.

  Slowly, people began to wander back to their homes. A few stayed on to watch the smoldering ruins. Leighton came to the kitchen and slumped in a chair, wincing as he did so.

  “You should have been more careful—” she began.

  He shook his head. “You don’t stand by idly. I did what I could.”

  Mrs. Lane was collecting the dishes and pans. Francesca turned to her. “Go home. You’ve done enough for today. These will wait until tomorrow.”

  The housekeeper left, promising to be back by early afternoon.

  Francesca glanced around at the disaster in her kitchen, then said wryly, “It has looked better.” And she began to laugh. Worry and fear and exhaustion combining to make her feel light-headed.

  Leighton looked down at her filthy feet and said, “Where are your shoes?”

  Surprised, she stared at her bare feet. “I couldn’t find them. And I suppose afterward I just forgot about them.”

  She wanted to ask him where he’d been and when he had come back to the Valley. If he had spoken to his grandfather—or his father.

  There was a tap at the kitchen door, and she went to admit the sergeant. His fair hair was standing up in spikes, and soot had turned his face black.