by Gary Dolman
“It was beautifully ironic that a doctor should have died as a result of a drug. It was even more ironic that the drug was prepared from a plant called belladonna, which in Italian means ‘beautiful woman.’ It was a beautiful woman who first marked him out for death and a beautiful woman that accomplished it.
“He was very weak by the time he reached the Stanegate and I finally put an end to him. I ate his heart too. I don’t know what was wrong with him, but I felt damned peculiar afterwards. He must have been bad.”
“He wasn’t bad, Sir Hugh,” Atticus retorted, “You simply took in some of your own poison when you ate his flesh.”
“Oh, but his heart was bad, Atticus; his heart was as bad as a doctor’s could be. He swore the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm. Yet he betrayed that oath, he betrayed Igraine’s trust and he betrayed me. He could not live. Eventually Skuld called for his life and he duly rendered it through a poisoned chalice.”
He bowed his head.
“Ah yes,” said Atticus, “the chalice… the first of Arthur’s Hallows. It was clever of you, Sir Hugh, to place them with Britton so you could use them to implicate him in your campaign of murder.
“The sword you gave to him directly when his doctor confiscated his old naval cutlass. The others he believed were given to him by King Arthur himself.”
“The sword I gave to him,” repeated Sir Hugh. “Britton, or as he had become in his own mind, Uther Pendragon, began to believe that Artie and Jenny were actually King Arthur and Queen Guinevere themselves, come to visit him. I presume it was because he already knew that Arthur was his son and Jenny happened to be with him.
“I encouraged them to accommodate his madness. I told them that it might help him. I even told them to take him an old goblet and platter I had brought back from India under the pretence that they were the Grail and Platter of the Hallows.”
He laughed suddenly and harshly.
“The Spear of Destiny was a British Army, standard issue lance and the sword, a Dervish one I took from a desert tribesman in the Sudan. Did you know that most of the Dervish swords are copies of the weapons the old crusaders used to carry, Atticus? No? Well they are. Pass-made of course, but good enough for what I needed it for once I’d had a smith add the runes to the blade for me. First-rate job of it he made too, for an illiterate fuzzy-wuzzy. It was good enough to fool even King Uther Pendragon, himself.”
“And you used it in the killing of Albert Bradley?” Atticus asked.
“Ah yes.” Lowther’s expression was suddenly as hard as the whinstone of the walls around him. “Albert Bradley, my head groom. Every day for twenty years I have had to endure his loathsome face smiling and being polite and wishing me ‘good day.’ All the time he carried in his heart the knowledge that he too had betrayed me. I hope he is rotting in Hell!”
“He is,” Verthandi confirmed with glee, “but he comforts himself by remembering every move of your wife: every scream, every moan she made. He was built like one of his horses.”
“So you ambushed him, Sir Hugh, in his hay loft?”
“It is my hay loft, Fox, and not his. And no, I did not ambush him; I faced him like a man. But like the Gypsy, my father and the doctor before him, he became a victim of the very instrument of his betrayal. You see, he used to lie with my wife in my hayloft. She described it in her diaries as her ‘roll in the hay.’
“Yesterday evening I waited until there was only him and I left in the stables. Then, I pushed a stack of the bales over and cried out for him to come up into the loft. When he did, I challenged him about what he had done. He admitted everything and begged for my forgiveness. I told him what I have told you; that there can be forgiveness only with death. He wept like a puppy, begging me to spare him, saying that it was all my wife’s doing and that she had led him on.
“Miserable bastard!
“But Skuld had decreed that he must die. I rushed him and finally put an end to his pathetic, treacherous life.”
“With your regimental sword to his neck? The wound was identical in size to that found on Elliott.”
Lowther nodded painfully. “His hurt was over in an instant. Mine has lasted these past twenty years. Revenge has dulled it a degree, but God knows it continues still. Thankfully not for much longer, though.”
“God knows?” Skuld screamed and he winced. “God knows? What does Jehovah know against the wisdom of the Sisters? We carve the fate of gods as well as men.”
Atticus cut short her tirade.
“You pinned him to a hay bale with your Dervish sword, knowing that Britton’s fingertip prints would likely be upon it?”
“Yes, I remembered what you told me about the infallibility of fingerprint evidence. It seemed almost too good to be true. I suppose the Norns were truly with me that day.
“I came to the vault to collect another keg of carroting liquid – the nitrate of quicksilver – to poison Britton’s water. As luck would have it, he had evidently found the cave entrance and this vault, and had hidden his sword here. I knew that he had hidden it somewhere from the police, but until then, I hadn’t a notion where. I did suspect he might have thrown it into the Broomlee Lough, as Sir Bedivere threw the real Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake, but thankfully he had not. It was certain to have his fingerprints on the hilt, so I put on my gloves and took it with me as I went to deal with Bradley.
“Then, after I had killed him with my own sword – I am much more comfortable with my own blade – I took Britton’s sword and I drove it through Bradley’s wretched body into the hay bale below. The same hay, mark you, he had lain upon with my Igraine.”
It was Artie’s trembling, strained voice that first broke the brief silence that followed.
“It wasn’t Uther who left the sword here that day, Sir Hugh; it was us – Jenny and me. We found the cave on the day you murdered Samson Elliott and believed that we had discovered King Arthur’s vault. We thought that it would be a perfect place to hide the sword, the sword we took from Uther to prevent him from cutting himself. We even believed that it might have been the real Excalibur.”
Atticus found himself puzzled. “I don’t understand, Artie. Why would Uther – why would Mr Britton – cut himself on his own sword?”
Jennifer answered. “Because sometimes he hates himself so much because of what he has become that he wishes only to injure himself, to cause himself hurt. At other times, the only escape from the awful memories he has whirling around and around his mind is the pain of self-mutilation. His arms have no skin left on them that isn’t striped and lined with cicatrices.”
Atticus glanced at Britton, a cowering, cringing, broken giant of a man standing with his head bowed and he paused for a moment to swallow the lump that suddenly held back his words.
“The cycle of murders continued, I presume, with the killings of James and Bessie Armstrong, Sir Hugh?”
Lowther nodded.
“You talk of Elizabeth Armstrong; lady’s maid, nanny, governess, housekeeper and intimate companion of my wife. Do you by any chance know what she was?”
Atticus nodded.
“You have just said, Sir Hugh; she was your housekeeper and before that your children’s nanny and governess.”
“And before that she was Igraine’s lady’s maid, yes. But I repeat, Atticus; do you know what she was?”
Atticus all at once realised what he was driving at.
“She was a sapphist, I believe – a uranist, a lesbian woman.” He repeated Lucie’s description of her. “Perhaps you would like to explain to Artie and Jennifer what warranted your wrath falling upon their childhood carer?”
Lowther said, “It’s quite simple, Atticus. It was for precisely the same reason it fell on the rest of ’em.”
Atticus made a leap of faith into Lucie’s cosmopolitanism.
“She was having a love affair with your wife too?”
Sir Hugh nodded wearily as Artie and Jenny looked on, utterly stunned.
“I had no idea that women co
uld, could love men and other women at the same time in their lives,” Jenny blurted at last.
“Then you now have proof positive that they can, Jenny. Bessie Armstrong was a music hall acquaintance of Igraine’s whom she engaged as her lady’s maid soon after our marriage. She was quite an attractive woman in those days, I suppose, if a little manly in her deportment and speech. I believe now that they were intimate even before we were married and that their intimacy simply continued. Once Igraine went missing, I kept Bessie on as nursemaid to Arthur and then in turn to Jenny after I was married to Gibson’s widow Victoria. Once they had grown up and left the nursery, Bessie became their governess.”
“He must think you have let her use your daughter!” Verthandi warned him.
Sir Hugh’s eyes suddenly burned with fire.
“You see, Fox; I’ll always know what you’re thinking.”
“What am I thinking, Sir Hugh?”
“That there was a risk to my daughter given Bessie Armstrong’s perverted attraction to women. You’re thinking she might have tried to turn Jenny into a sapphist like herself.”
Atticus frowned. “I was thinking nothing of the sort.”
“She never once touched me, Father!” Jennifer exclaimed indignantly. “We have known for years what she was, but that did not make her some kind of predatory beast of the field. She was quite content with her own lady-friend. It was almost… almost as if they might have been married. I have suffered a hundred more improper suggestions and mauling advances from your precious Fusiliers than ever I have from Bessie Armstrong.”
Sir Hugh shrugged.
“Then there is your answer, Fox, but in any event I was prepared to take the risk. I needed to keep Bessie bound to Shields Tower ’til I could take my revenge on her too.”
“Which you finally did last night, as we and Mr Collier discovered.”
“Yes, I did. After I left you at the stables, I came here and fetched the Lance. I knew that Bessie would be alone on the Twice Brewed road so I went to ground and lay in wait for her.
“Just as night was falling, I saw her hurrying along the lane.” His eyes flashed. “Arthur has called me an abomination, but let me tell you now; what she did with Igraine was a true abomination. I’ll grant Bessie Armstrong this, though: she faced her death like a true Briton. There was no weeping or begging or swooning, no sir. She once boasted to Igraine that she would never feel the prick of a man, begging your pardon, Jennifer. Now you could say that she finally has, but she took it – the spear, the Spear of Destiny, the spear of her own destiny you might say – with courage and with dignity. I for one, salute her for that.
“James, on the other hand, served with me for years in the Fifth – in the ‘Old and the Bold’ – and he screamed like a baby. Bold – pah! I knew he was too damned pretty to be a proper soldier.”
“Anyone would have screamed in suffering what you did to him, Sir Hugh. It was diabolical.”
Sir Hugh’s cold, blue eyes seemed to cut through him like steel.
“Yes it was diabolical, Fox, I agree. James was Igraine’s fart-catcher in her time, did you know?”
Atticus shook his head.
“He was her footman. He would attend on her and stand behind her at the dinner table. He served no purpose there but to catch her farts. Ladies compete to employ the most handsome footmen they can. Igraine always said that James had the face of an angel. It took her no time at all to seduce him into her bed. And so the angel fell, quite literally, and became a demon. So yes, in a sense he was indeed diabolical.”
He seemed to jerk himself from the memory and he peered inquiringly at Atticus. “Did you find Britton’s fingerprints on the lance I left in Bessie, by and by?”
“We didn’t get the chance to look for any prints. The police constables commandeered both the body and the lance shortly after we made its discovery. The only fingertip prints we have were the ones we took from the fake Excalibur.”
Lowther grunted. “Once I had killed Bessie, I blew the bugle horn as close as I dared to Britton’s cottage. I was trying to lure him back there so that those fool constables could take him prisoner. So they were with you and her corpse all the time!
“Well prints there are, Atticus; I checked for them myself. If they’re still there, perhaps I’ll be able to persuade Robson to lift ’em. But if not, at least we still have the prints you found on the sword hilt as you say.”
Atticus said, “You might remember that we found more than just Mr Britton’s fingertip prints on that sword. Arthur’s and Jennifer’s prints were also on it, I presume from when they brought it from Britton’s cottage and hid it here. The presence of their prints on the murder weapon is quite as damning as his.”
Lowther turned an amused gaze onto Atticus. “I hear very well what you say, Fox, although of course it makes not one jot of difference now.”
Atticus felt the sudden knell of dread.
“No, you are correct, Sir Hugh, as you say, it makes no difference now that you have made a full and frank confession in front of us all. I applaud your honesty and courage in doing that. This has been a veritable bloodbath. Eight people murdered and six in a single week. Even Jack the Ripper didn’t manage that.”
“It needed to be over quickly, Fox.” Sir Hugh’s tone had ceased to be cordial; it had a distinct note of menace to it now. “I needed to complete those killings before either Britton was arrested or any of the gifts realised what was happening and escaped me.”
“Of course, but it’s finished now; you’ve had your revenge and your honour has been satisfied. Come. Let us go to the Detective Superintendant. Let the villagers go about their business once again without fear. It is time now for you to meet with whatever destiny Skuld has written for you. I think that perhaps she might have good reason to be merciful with you, Sir Hugh.”
Chapter 39
Atticus Fox made as if to move towards the vault entrance but Lowther stood his ground, firm and unmoving, blocking his path.
“Revenge can only be at its sweetest when one fully shares the knowledge of it,” he said and his tone was grim.
“Let us leave this accursed vault, Sir Hugh.” Atticus was suddenly deeply afraid. Where were those damned fusiliers? “I thought you said—”
“You misunderstand me, Fox. You see it makes not one jot of difference whose fingerprints are on that sword because the only persons who will leave this vault alive today will be my daughter and of course, me. The rest of you will regrettably become the last victims of a deranged madman.”
He grinned at them and lifted up the sword in his hand, tapping the flat of the blade with his fingernail.
“Britton, do you remember this?”
Michael Britton’s gaze slowly crept along the floor of the vault towards Sir Hugh. He nodded.
Lowther continued, “It is your naval cutlass, which Hickson took from you all those years ago. I must say that it is a very poor weapon – all second-rate cast-iron and shoddy steel. We would never accept weapons of this quality in the fusilier regiments. Nevertheless, it will suffice.
“Once I have killed your son and Mr Fox and, finally, you yourself, Michael Britton, I will return it to your own hand for the police or my fusiliers to find. We must make certain that there is plenty of good fingerprint evidence on it, eh, Fox?”
He chuckled and the Norns screamed in laughter with him.
“I will say that I found you standing over your fresh-dead victims. I had to kill you of course, to save my own daughter. Your memory will be held forever in the contempt it has for so long richly deserved.”
He turned to Artie and his face hardened further into an expression of the most complete loathing.
“Arthur, the bastard son of my whore of a wife, the cuckoo in my nest; I have brought you up as my own. But only, mark you, only because it would have been too much of a slur on the family name to have admitted to what you really are. But now you know the truth: you are the illegitimate offspring of a madman and a harlot.
Now you will understand why I always forbade you from joining the Fusiliers. You have weak blood, Arthur, and a lack of moral fibre. Like your father before you, you might have turned coward in the face of the enemy. You might have destroyed the fine reputation that the generations of fighting Lowthers have built up.”
Arthur met his gaze steadily. “I have known and been proud of my real father for years, Sir Hugh.”
For the very first time, the mask of composure slipped completely from Lowther’s face.
“What? You knew? How the devil did you know about that? I haven’t told a soul. Did Britton tell you?”
“He did not need to; I knew because my mother knew that one day you would try to kill her. She wrote me a letter before you eventually did and left it with Bessie to pass on. She wrote how much she loved me and how much she loved my father too, my real father; Michael Britton, a gentle, intelligent and sensitive man, a brave man, who was cursed only by circumstance.”
Sir Hugh stared at him open-mouthed for several, long seconds.
“So be it. Your mother had more brains than I gave her credit for, but it matters not any more. You will soon be joining your father forever in Hell.”
“Papa, no!”
It was Jennifer, her cry almost a scream, magnified and mocked a thousand times by the hard, unyielding walls of the vault.
“It is a matter of honour, Jenny. Let it be. You will understand when you are older.”
“Papa, are you truly a monster? Would you even kill the father of your own grandchild?”
Lowther stared at her, speechless as his mind slowly made sense of her words.
“What? What did you say? What grandchild?” he bellowed.
“I will soon be having a baby, Papa. That is why I have been ill. Artie is the father of that baby, the father of your grandchild.”
Sir Hugh closed his eyes and swayed a little on his feet. When he opened them again, they burned fiercely with the twin fires of hurt and anger. “Then you have dishonoured me too, Jennifer. You have dishonoured the House of Lowther and you have sullied yourself. But there will be no scandal. I will not have another Igraine. You have sealed your own fate!”