One of the household passed along the passage outside the dining room, their shoes skimming carpet and stone. Crowther drank deeply.
“And no one inquired further into his connection with the girl?” he asked.
“I believe I have said enough of his character to suggest why no one had the stomach to inquire more closely,” the squire said. “The girl certainly had no Mrs. Westerman to champion her, no one so willfully naive. Or if she did, perhaps he was warned away early and well and has learned his lesson since. Mrs. Westerman may have the same path to tread.” The squire looked a little angry. “Nor did Miss Randle need a champion, nor does this fellow in the woods. Thornleigh has lost his eldest son to the world, his second to drink and lives an idiot while his third is brought up by a whore.” The squire’s voice had become almost hoarse on his final words.
Crowther did not move, merely continued to watch his tented fingertips, his face without expression.
“Sarah Randle died before Thornleigh’s first marriage, you say?”
The squire looked up again, as if surprised to find he had been speaking aloud, and to another. He shrugged, and his voice returned to something like its usual pitch and phrasing.
“Indeed. He spent much of the next few years in London, then returned to us with a wife. And an unhappy affair that was, though the first Lady Thornleigh bore him two sons, as you know, before her death. Three girls died before they reached four years old.”
“And did she die in childbirth?”
“No, a fall, only three years after Hugh was born. I fear the death of her daughters left her ... a little nervous. From that point until Thornleigh’s second marriage we saw little of him. He lived mostly in town, only coming to hunt with small parties, and always reluctant to stay long. The children were brought up by the servants, then sent away to school. They seemed good enough men in their youth, though.”
He shifted his chair a little.
“I am grateful to you for examining this wretch, but I wish you would trouble yourself no further in the matter. Mrs. Westerman, and I mean no disrespect, can be impulsive, a little quick to judge. It is the penalty she pays for her own prodigious energy, so I am glad she is to have your counsel, Commodore Westerman being away, and he acting as he does as her sea anchor in the general run of things, if I have understood that term correctly.”
Crowther bowed slightly. The squire nodded, interpreting the gesture according to his own desires.
“The place where you must come to, where damage will be done, you must come to very quick. And if you do not hold her back, you must take a share in the blame for whatever comes to pass. And, of course, your own association with the family, if you intervene or not, may harm them.” The squire paused, watching Crowther’s forehead crease with a slight frown. His voice took on a certain soft sheen. “I should perhaps tell you, while we are being so open, that I know your name was not Gabriel Crowther at birth.”
The silence in the room was like an act of violence. Crowther held himself absolutely still. The corner of the squire’s fat red mouth twisted a little.
“I am that which I appear to be, Mr. Crowther. But there have been other chapters in my career, and some of the habits I learned, I have kept. I make it my business to know a little of the people of note in the area, beyond the usual gossip. But I shall not address you by any other name or rank than that you have chosen for yourself.” He paused. “I can assure you that my inquiries have been discreet, and my silence on the subject is absolute—for the time being. To my knowledge at least, no one else within the county suspects you to be anything other than who or what you say you are. I will say no more, other than to repeat my request that you attempt to hold Mrs. Westerman back, for her own sake.”
Crowther was conscious of little more than the passage of the air into his lungs and out again. His thoughts would not form into words. The squire sighed deeply and scratched again at his stubble before continuing in the same low voice.
“I am very fond of the family at Caveley Park, and would like to be assured they have protection and support from a man of intelligence and skill such as yourself.”
When Crowther finally spoke, his voice sounded to him like a thing apart. He had no will in it.
“As you say, there may be no great mystery here, but I will do all I can to support the family.”
The squire lifted the wine and filled their glasses, smiling expansively as if he thought Crowther an excellent fellow and charming company. His voice lost its serious tone, and he became once again the expansive country gentleman he had at first appeared to be.
“Excellent, excellent. Now tell me, sir, is that your bay I noticed in the new stables as I came round? Do you hunt? She reminds me very much of a filly I had as a boy. Marvelous jumper, she was ...”
Crowther let him talk and drank his wine, though it tasted to him suddenly bitter and black.
9
Mr. Graves had promised not to leave the house, and Mr. and Mrs. Chase and their daughter were happy to let him keep watch within calling distance of the old nursery where the children slept. He had taken them to that family’s house, old friends of Alexander’s, as soon as it was clear nothing could be done for his friend, and before he would allow anyone to see to his own wound. It stung now, but the pain was nothing next to the horrified throb in his throat. He wondered if Susan would ever recover. She had been white and silent since they found her, apart from the moment when he had pulled her away from her father’s body again, and she had let out such a terrible yell that several in the crowd had crossed themselves. The yellow man was searched for, but no one could name him, and with the growing disorder in the town, there was not a man free to look further for him.
Miss Verity Chase stepped into the room, carrying a steaming glass.
“Do drink some of this, Mr. Graves. It is my mother’s restorative, and mostly brandy, I think. She and some of our neighbors have gone to see to Alexander and fetch clothes for the children. And you should know that their girl, Jane, came back with her mother as soon as news reached them. They will look after the shop. But then what will happen after that, Mr. Graves? The children are orphans now. Do you know of any family that might take them? If not, we must hope their inheritance shall pay for some school or other, though if they are poor and without relatives to fight for them, their lives will be hard.”
Mr. Graves passed his hand over his face, and Miss Chase felt suddenly like the worst sort of fool. She had spoken the first words that had come into her head, and had offered him worries to heap upon the horrors he was already victim to. She watched him holding the glass. Even his hands seemed suddenly older.
“I have little enough, nothing but what I can earn with my pen. It makes me a poor prospect, but I will always have a place for them. I hope you will also stay their friend.” She nodded. “As to family ... that may be difficult, but must be tried.”
He stretched out his long legs, then noticed with a pulse of horror that a little of his friend’s blood was still visible, dried and dusty, on his shoes. He pulled himself straight again, and drank for want of anything else to do or say.
The brandy hit his stomach and glowed there briefly before the cold and dark of his body extinguished it again. Her presence was a comfort though. It had been in the past a torment and delight, ranked as he was in the legions of admirers; he had never before felt it as this. He glanced at her profile again then back at the glass in his hand before he continued.
“Alexander told me that he left his family when he married for love, but that his family is at least well to do, I think. He wondered if he had done the right thing, cutting the children off from their inheritance, but he seemed glad to have left the influence of his house. I doubt Adams was ever his name.”
Miss Chase looked shocked and serious. “What is to be done then?”
Graves shifted awkwardly on his chair and looked around the room as if he might find answers posted on the fire irons or hanging from the bell pull.<
br />
“I shall go to the magistrate and the coroner in the morning, then let us bury him under the name he chose. There is no more family to shift for him and his if we shall not.”
“You have no idea why Alexander was murdered in this way?”
She picked up her sewing from the table at her side as she asked the question and let a few moments pass. She found that her hands were still trembling too much for the fine work she had in front of her, so she let it lie on her lap again, and traced the emerging pattern with a fingertip. Graves frowned, and the wound on his face twisted painfully.
“I have no idea. I do not think it was cards, or women.” He held up his hands in miserable frustration. “We may know more when Susan decides to speak, if she decides to do so. But I cannot question her.”
His voice struggled under the last words, and he felt more than heard Miss Chase’s soft response: “Of course.”
Her father came into the room and prevented Graves’s attempt to stand with one fat hand.
“Don’t you even think of getting up, boy. I’ve set up a truckle bed in the side room of the nursery. Not much comfort, but I thought the nearer you are to those children tonight, the easier you’ll rest.”
“What news, Father?” Verity asked. Mr. Chase looked worried and bit his nail. “Don’t bite your thumb, dear sir.”
The words were automatic, but she blushed to find herself correcting him this evening. Mr. Chase did not seem to resent the comment, however.
“They say Lord Boston was dragged from his coach, but no one was hurt more than ripped clothing and injured pride. Half of the House seem to have lost their wigs though. All the great legislators of the land, struggling about with their fine coats in tatters and mewling like infants.” The thought amused him, and he struggled for a moment to maintain a proper gravity, but as his thoughts moved on his tone evened. “Troops appeared at the House of Commons to guide them out again, but they cannot act against the crowd till the Riot Act is read and the magistrates are in hiding or besieged. An evil night this is, an evil night.”
Graves stirred himself and looked up into Mr. Chase’s broad face.
“Who then do we inform of Alexander’s death? The proper authorities ... He must be buried. The children.”
Mr. Chase’s paw tapped him gently on the shoulder again. “Do as you can in the morning, Graves. But if I read it right, the law will be no help to you while this disorder lasts. Let us look to our own and bury him decently. There are enough of us to swear to what was done when this is passed and the law can turn to us again.”
Graves settled in his chair. “Thank you, sir, for allowing me to stay near the children.”
“Dear boy, as if I’d send you away with your face in pieces and all of London, it seems, ready to fall to flames. And I was very glad you came to us. Speaks of a trust, boy, that I value. Your place is not fit for a family, I imagine, and they cannot stay in the shop. No, we must hugger mugger here, keep a watch on the children and an eye on those drunks and warriors staggering about outside.” He saw a look of alarm on his daughter’s face. “Briggs and Freeman have gone to fetch your mother home, my dear, and see poor Alexander is secure. I hear the crowd broke up a wine shop owned by some poor Catholic, so now they are drunk and hungry for whatever they can grab. A dark day it has been, and who knows what the morning will bring us.”
10
Crowther left the house after sitting with the ladies awhile, silently, as the squire entertained them. He was aware that the current situation in America, and Commodore Westerman’s part in it—crucial, apparently—had been much discussed, but he had not attempted to pay any close attention. He heard, however, the tone and temperature of the conversation and so learned that Commodore Westerman was loved and missed by his family.
His attention was directed to a portrait to the right of the fireplace. The commodore looked very young to him, and pressingly vigorous. He wondered why Mrs. Westerman kept the picture here in the formal salon, rather than in the room where most of her daily business was conducted. Perhaps she did not wish to be always under his eye. He watched her a little coldly in the candlelight—the flutter of her hands as she talked, the play of red in her hair as she gave enthusiastic agreement to some truism of the squire’s. He wondered how her manner would change if she knew of the conversation the men had just had. Her friendly reception of Bridges in her house looked suddenly like the worst sort of naivety. How could she see into the mess of murder if she thought this man was her friend? But he would not hold her back. The squire had angered him, and in so doing had bound him tightly to the body in the stables.
Having taken his leave early and pleading a tiredness he no longer felt, Crowther let his horse walk at its own pace through the modest gates of Caveley, and turned the animal’s steps back toward the village with the merest pressure of his knee against its flanks. The evening was beginning to darken, reluctantly, as if holding on to the pleasant sun of June as long as it possibly could.
He supposed that to an extent his system was recovering from the sudden shock that another man knew the secret of his identity. The sharp chill that had spread through his bones had faded, but he was left uneasy. The wall he had constructed between himself and his past, that had seemed so solid mere hours ago, had become weak and porous. It was true the squire had no reason to expose him, not at the current moment at any rate, but if Bridges traded his way through life with information and politics, it might at sometime be worth more to him to expose Crowther than to keep his knowledge to himself. And as Crowther knew he had no intention of withdrawing, or persuading Mrs. Westerman to withdraw, that moment might come suddenly and soon.
Crowther was angry with himself. His secure existence seemed suddenly a sham. He had been building his self respect on an illusion. And if the truth were generally known in the neighborhood, what would the world then say? Would they condemn the women of Caveley for having had him in their house? He pulled his cloak up around his face, and let the horse walk on. Probably not, and it was unlikely that Mrs. Westerman would care if they did. But her husband might think differently, and worse than that she herself might pity him, and he was not sure if he could stand her pity. He would become again merely a walking freak show. People would point him out on the street to tell his story to their neighbors. He would be shamed, tainted with more horrible stories than any of the Gothic fairy tales that were told of him and his butcher’s knife today.
He should never have written that paper, but he had been flattered into it. He was proud, that was his difficulty. He sighed, and ran his hand through the black mane of his horse, testing its coarse texture against his hands. He had taken the identity of Gabriel Crowther more than twenty years ago, traveled with it, studied with it, corresponded and dealt under it, till he felt it become far more his own than that with which he was born. The week after his brother died he had put it on like a new skin and left England to study anatomy in Germany, so turning in his thirtieth year that which had been a casual interest of his youth into the reason and occupation of his waking hours. He had walked the hospital wards in that country and others. He could, and did, pay for the privilege without having to concern himself with examination boards and fighting for a paying position in any hospital. From the beginning his fellow students ignored him. Once they realized he was no threat to their chances of employment he ceased to be of interest. He was glad of it, feeling already too old and worn for their entertainments or friendships. His studies then took him to lecture halls all across Europe, studying the vessels of humanity, watching them being opened up, learning to make the same—and further—investigations of flesh. He was not squeamish, nor sentimental. He had done his part for his masters, waiting to collect the bodies of the freshly damned from under the city gallows to dissect and study, and made use of what he had learned in order to develop his own theories and lines of inquiry. His knowledge earned the respect of his teachers even if his manners estranged them.
After ten years he
had returned to London to study with John Hunter, a man of talent and energy for whom he had done some of his best work, though at the time he refused to take any credit for it. He remembered now as the summer scents drifted up to him from the hedgerows the strange specimens Hunter would pay a fortune to lay his hand—and then his knife—on: a crocodile brought all the way from the African coast alive in the hold of a merchant ship; a lion that Hunter had bought sagging with old age from a traveling menagerie. Both had shared his home awhile. Crowther had flourished under the influence of the man’s questing intelligence, his rough disposal of fools or knowledge untested. His grounds were always full of the strangest creatures in God’s creation. As were perhaps his lecture halls.
Crowther himself had been drawn back again and again throughout the years to the marks that violent death leaves on a body. He had made observations and documented them, handing out his conclusions to the world in anonymous papers or in conversation and correspondence. Only once had he put the name of Crowther to a paper, that which had fallen into the hands of his neighbor. His remarks had been general, the specifics referring only to experiments conducted on animals, but when his colleagues had encouraged him to work deeper in the area, he had shrunk away. When his work was questioned, he had retreated rather than take his theories into the world. He wondered if Mrs. Westerman had read those responses to his work, the ironic enquiries as to why Mr. Crowther did not make use of the multiple murder victims London could offer, and the final punishing line that if ever a madman took it into his head to attack the city strays, Crowther would no doubt prove their avenging angel. His move to Hartswood and Laraby House had been an attempt to distance himself from that branch of his studies; to begin afresh on contributing to the growing knowledge of his age, some small but useful discoveries of fine detail. The attempt, it appeared, had failed. His work over the last year had not been good, and now here was another corpse.
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