“And your sister?”
“I suspect she tried to speak to him shortly afterward, and he said ... unpleasant things to her. She was desperately unhappy for some time.”
She let her forehead drop into her palm, and brought the teaspoon in her other hand down onto the table with a dull crack.
“I was a fool. I should not have let her be so friendly, but society here is so limited, and I truly believed he loved her. My husband calls me naive, and there have been times perhaps when I have not been such an asset to him in his career as I should have been.”
“An alliance with such a great family would have had its advantages.”
“James is a fine commander. And as for Mr. Hugh Thornleigh—yes, there was that, but also ...” she began to twirl the spoon again, watching it pick up the sun flowing into the room and throw it up along the walls, “... Crowther, I enjoyed his company. I think we both felt ourselves creatures out of their natural sphere.” She looked resigned, letting the reflection of the light hover over an Italianate landscape above the empty fireplace. “I believe the business did our family’s reputation some damage. But then my husband came home for some months in the summer and made us show our faces at every event and gathering within five miles. Rachel is so sweet natured, anyone who meets her knows she is no schemer, and my husband is every inch the gentleman, and Hugh’s behavior continued so ... Well, people began to talk of poor Rachel’s lucky escape. And I was glad. He had made us very wretched.”
Crowther waited till she looked up and met his eye, and asked her kindly, “Do you think there is any connection, any link between that change of behavior and the events of yesterday?”
Harriet tilted her head to one side. “Rachel is afraid she did something wrong, something that made Hugh cease to love her, and I wish I could make her easy on that point. She has not been happy since.”
“And yourself, perhaps, Mrs. Westerman? You too would like to make yourself easy on that point?”
She did not reply, but nodded sadly. Crowther returned his gaze to his fingertips.
“Did anything else of significance occur at about that time?”
“His new steward, Wicksteed, arrived. I will tell you what I can of him.”
Crowther abandoned the study of his nails, and brushed some of the crumbs from his sleeve, having noticed them for the first time.
“Very well. I am content you are not a pair of scheming harridans. Before you tell me of this steward, however, shall I tell you about my conversation with the squire and my meeting with Mr. Hugh Thornleigh last night?”
Harriet gave a horrified laugh into what was left of her coffee, and still choking a little, waved her hand to encourage him to continue.
“Very well, I shall. But only on condition you stop playing with that spoon.”
She put it down very smartly and sat straight. The model of an attentive audience.
2
Alexander was to be buried in St. Anne’s churchyard, half a mile or so from his home. There were burial grounds far prettier, but it was here that his wife had been laid to rest, and Mr. Graves believed that Alexander would not wish to be separated from her. Graves’s first duty though was to reach the magistrate of the parish and find what the law could do to pursue the murderer of his friend. Morning had only just begun to stretch across the city before he was on his way, leaving the children in the care of Miss Chase. Susan was still silent, but more watchful than stunned now, and Jonathan repeatedly found himself caught by sudden waves of grief that seemed to lift and drop his little body at will.
It was not long before Graves came upon the signs of the previous night’s work. The destruction of the Catholic church in Golden Square shocked him. The ground was dotted with pages ripped from the hymn and prayer books, the words singed, wounded, fluttering. The smoldering remains of a bonfire brooded in the center of the embarrassed-looking square of houses. He could see the bars of pews and other fittings of a church rearing within it like the blackened ribs of an animal caught in a forest fire. He paused for a second and a plain-looking man crossing the square halted next to him.
“Shocking, isn’t it, sir? Don’t they know it’s the same Bible we use?” He rubbed the stubble on his chin, and settled the linen bag of goods he carried more comfortably on his shoulder. “How do you call yourself a defender of true religion and then burn down a church? That’s what I want to know.”
Graves nodded sadly, then stepped back in slight alarm. Apparently out of the black and clinging ashes of the fire another man reared up, like a devil come to claim them from the ruins of the destroyed church; he staggered toward them, a damp blue cockade hanging from his hat and his back black with the soot of the fire, next to which he had presumably slept. Graves and his companion stood their ground as he weaved across the square toward them, mistaking them for admirers of the handiwork of his crowd. He looked at them both, then leaning forward into Graves’s face said with a leer, and with a broad wink, “No popery!”
Graves recoiled at the stench of stale alcohol on his breath, and thrust the man away from him. The Protestant hero was still too out of himself to maintain his balance and tottered backward, tripping over the remains of a burned cross at his feet and landing heavily on his arse.
Graves’s companion laughed heartily and pointed at him. The man ignored him but fixed an angry eye on Graves.
“I’ll have you for that, you Catholic bastard! I’ll know you again, and I’ll have you.”
He made no move to rise though, and Graves turned on his heel without bothering to reply and continued on his way. The journey was wasted, however. The Justice’s house was besieged, and the mob would not let him through. Some of the rioters of the previous night had been taken up and were to be examined and confined to Newgate for trial. Through the crowd he could see the flash of redcoats. Soldiers on the steps to guard the gate.
“It’s a matter of murder!” he protested. “I must speak to the justice!”
Some of those nearest to him turned enough to look him up and down.
“Will be murder, if they send those prisoners down. True Protestant heroes, every one.”
Graves tried to step forward, and was shoved back by a vicious-looking man twice his size.
“Get out of here, boy. Your business will wait.”
Graves made one more attempt and the same man twisted his arm hard behind him and whispered in his ear with horrible intimacy, “Will your business be served better when this crowd has torn you all up to pieces? Get away, I say.”
Graves slunk back, only able to comfort himself with Mr. Chase’s words of the previous night, and went to make his arrangements with the priest of St. Anne’s. The man was sorrowful and kind, and confirmed the wisdom of letting Alexander be buried and turn to the coroner when the city was calm again.
Graves returned briefly to his own lodgings—a room in one of the least disreputable houses in the vicinity of Seven Dials—to change his clothing, on which he at least could still see the marks of his friend’s blood. As he changed his clothes, he paused a long moment before the pocked and dusty mirror. He no longer looked, he thought, like such a young man. His own wound was still fresh and livid, of course, but the real change was a heaviness in his eyes he did not recognize.
Owen Graves was only twenty-one. He had come down from the country three years before, from his father’s home in the Cotswolds, determined to make a living in London with his pen. It had caused a breach with his family who, struggling to live like gentry on a clergyman’s income, had hoped he might find advancement in the law. But Graves had been romantic. He had struggled to feed and clothe himself through those three years with the work of his pen, and though his work was often admired, it had yet to prove profitable.
He wrote best about music, offering his short reports of concerts to the various presses turning out papers to entertain and inform the capital, but the publishers often complained that though he wrote prettily, he had an unfortunate tendency to write mo
re about the music itself and how it struck him, rather than give a list of any fashionable personages in attendance and describe their manner of dress and behavior. He often tried to combine the necessary with what he regarded as the essential by claiming that some darling of the haut ton was particularly captivated by a certain melody in a certain piece. The trick served him well enough, as those to whom he gifted this great musical sensibility seldom wanted to contradict him, and so he lived. Barely.
He had loved music since childhood. His mother had a beautiful soprano voice, though she had given up her own career as a singer to marry the man she loved and live in uncomfortable poverty. It was family legend that Mr. Handel himself had said her leaving the stage was a waste and a damn shame. His father would tell any new acquaintance the story with pride, but Graves noticed that his mother always seemed to wince when it was mentioned.
So Mr. Graves arrived in town and found Alexander at one of the first concerts he attended in the capital. He had been so engaged by the playing he could not resist sharing his pleasure with the gentleman next to him at the interval. He had chosen to praise a piece that was a favorite of that man’s, and his opinion was listened to with appreciation.
Alexander, being a much older man than himself, had taken the place of a parent for him in those early months, encouraging and counseling the young man even while the grief from the loss of his wife Elizabeth was still raw. In return, Graves gave him his love and loyalty, his enthusiasm and quickness. Alexander’s house had become a second home to him. The man’s children were like the younger siblings he had never had; in their chatter he had found an escape from his own fears and failures, while in Alexander he had found a mentor who rewarded him with his trust and faith. Now he must earn what had been so freely given.
It took Graves a great effort of will to leave the house again. Before he left, he moved the loose pages of his writings around on the tabletop as a child spins buttercups in a pond, and wondered, without knowing why, when he might come back here, and what sort of man he might have become before he next lifted the latch.
Harriet did not feel any pleasure at the idea of calling on Lady Thornleigh that morning. It would look unusual, and she shrank a little from putting herself in a position where her behavior could be questioned.
The purpose of the visit was unclear even in her own mind. She knew she wanted Crowther to see Thornleigh Hall, to see if he sensed there the same aura of corruption she felt, but it seemed a vague beginning to any thorough investigation of the circumstances that had brought the body to the copse on the hill. She said as much to Crowther when she proposed the visit, and was comforted to hear he thought it the right thing to do.
“In my work, Mrs. Westerman,” he had said, “we must often explore in a general fashion at first, till we have specifics with which to grapple. You have suspicions that are still out of reach of language. We must look about us with those sensations in mind, and see if we can put a little meat on the bones of our argument. As to the visit itself, perhaps the local gentry will at this point simply assume you are proud of drawing me out of my seclusion and are parading me about like a leopard on a chain.”
Harriet could not imagine comparing the spare and dry Crowther with a leopard, but the image made her laugh, and that gave her some courage.
It was a long time since the families had done more than exchange compliments via their servants. Rachel felt it her duty to join them, and while Harriet was glad of it for appearance’s sake, she felt almost cruel sharing with Crowther what she had gleaned from the little sewing woman in the morning as they drove in the carriage toward the main gates of Thornleigh Hall. As she spoke, she glanced at the pale profile of her sister from time to time, but Rachel seemed determined only to examine the passing countryside and pretend, for the moment at least, not to hear them.
“Mrs. Mortimer was quite enlightening in the end about the key personages in the Hall. The last steward of Thornleigh was known as a hard but practical man. Not popular with the tenants, but a favorite of his master. Then, a little over two years ago, Claver Wicksteed appeared, out of the clear skies, it seemed, and Hugh announced his intention to make him steward. The former steward was bundled out of his place with enough to buy himself a little shop and left within a week, the hisses of the tenants ringing in his ears.”
Crowther turned toward her, one hand holding onto the edge of his seat as the carriage bounced a little on the dry roads.
“Is Wicksteed better liked?”
“No, not at all, and Mrs. Mortimer suggested to me that his influence on his master seems ... unhealthy.”
Crowther looked at her with a lift of his eyebrows. The timing of Wicksteed’s arrival and Hugh’s change in behavior was not lost on them.
“She was not more specific? He takes on no more than the usual duties of a steward?” he asked.
Harriet shrugged. Crowther had always thought the gesture a little vulgar in women, but he was learning to allow Mrs. Westerman any number of liberties.
“No, though of course in an estate of this size those are considerable enough. He manages the rents and repairs and no one sees Mr. Thornleigh on estate business anymore. There was a period where he took a more active role in the management of the estate, but that time seems to have passed. Everything goes to Wicksteed and through Wicksteed—and Mr. Thornleigh appears not to give a damn.”
“Strange he should not choose to lose himself in London then.”
Harriet nodded. “I was surprised he did not leave again. I do not know—he seems restless, but has not visited the capital since Wicksteed arrived. Mrs. Mortimer gave me the impression that Wicksteed has the upper hand in the relationship. I suspect that goes against her feelings of the proper order of things. The only people in the village who would speak well of Wicksteed are those young girls with whom he has had nothing to do.”
Crowther looked at her enquiringly.
“No, I mean no scandal. He has never been seen to court any local girl. Only that his looks have won him friends, but his manner of doing business is inclined to be vicious.
He knows the benefits that bargaining for such an estate brings, and squeezes his advantage. I believe he takes pleasure in it.”
Crowther looked thoughtful. “So Wicksteed and Mr. Thornleigh had known each other before, we assume?”
“Yes. He told us, soon after Wicksteed arrived, that they had served together in the early days of the American Rebellion, though I never heard his name mentioned when Hugh spoke to us of his experiences previous to that, and I thought we could name every man in his regiment within a month of his coming home.”
Rachel turned from the window and looked at Crowther.
“I think the Americans are quite right to claim independence, don’t you, Mr. Crowther? Why should they not govern themselves? I think it a great shame my brother James has to serve in such a war.”
Her sister looked annoyed, and drew herself straight.
“My husband does his duty, Rachel.”
The younger woman put a hand out and patted her sister’s knee as a mother might encourage a child.
“Of course, Harry. And I am very proud of him, and he does very well with prize money for the ships he takes. I do not like his orders, though.”
Both women radiated a calm certainty which Crowther found entertaining. They might express it in different ways, but they shared strong will as a characteristic, he noted. He wondered what their father had been like.
“You are a defender of liberty, Miss Trench.”
Crowther was rewarded with a smile.
“Yes. But if you have more unpleasant things to say about the Thornleigh family, say them now, Harry, for we are already in the park.”
Thornleigh Hall was first built by the second earl some two hundred years before, but extensive improvements had been made over the generations to create an elegant and imposing building. Its wide, white-stoned frontage was full of high regular windows which reflected the open green parklan
d on which it stood. The west and east wings swept back at the same height as the frontage, suggesting a superfluity of apartments. It was designed to impress rather than welcome, and that it did. From the open lawns to the ornamental pools that framed the entrance, from the great doorway that could have swallowed their carriage whole to the innumerable chimney stacks that spoke of a city rather than the home of a single family, from the carved arms above the door to the intricate flourishes of stone below each window, it signaled wealth and power so assured it need never concern itself with anything so small as a single being crossing its threshold.
They sent their compliments to Lady Thornleigh from the carriage, and were invited to step in as quickly as could be hoped. Walking into the entrance hall, the sisters and the maid who was guiding them automatically paused for a moment to let Crowther absorb the grandeur of the place. Huge oils hung up the main stairway that reared in front of them and curled its back over their heads to reach the state rooms on the second floor. The pictures were mostly Biblical scenes of battle and sacrifice, mythical beasts being slain by heroes of almost satirical bodily perfection, accompanied by an array of worthies of the house, all displayed in full-length portraits and surrounded by their own personal signifiers of wealth, civilization and dominion.
From the foot of the stairs Crowther could look up into the vault of the roof where a domed skylight allowed in sufficient light for him to admire the remarkable frescoes that spun out over the ceiling. Heaven, Hell and the family of Thornleigh crowded round the Christ Child as He sat in His mother’s arms delivering judgment over creation from His position in the heart of Thornleigh Hall. No doubt the owners thought it the place He would have chosen from whence to judge.
When Harriet noticed where his attention was directed, she murmured, “The ceiling was painted soon after the current earl succeeded his father. That is the current Lord Thornleigh by the Archangel Michael.”
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