Instruments of Darkness

by Imogen Robertson

  Giving herself a firm little nod, she dressed quickly, padding through the sleeping house and turning the key to the street door as quietly as she could. One of the under-maids was cleaning out the grate in the front parlor, and she turned in surprise to look at her. Susan gave her a tight little smile and slipped out into the street while the maid, hardly older than Susan herself, was still looking about in confusion.

  The street was quiet still, but Susan approached Molloy bravely enough.

  “You are Miss Adams.”

  His face was very lined, but not yellow. She found herself strangely reassured, and almost corrected him, before she remembered the dangers of her new name and replied with a nod.

  “And you are Mr. Molloy. You make Mr. Graves uncomfortable.”

  He let out a crack of laughter that made her jump back a step. He put one hand up to reassure her while producing a handkerchief with the other and dabbing his eyes.

  “Oh, do I, miss? Do I indeed? Well, it is an uncomfortable thing to owe money, and a more uncomfortable thing still to be held to account for it. Uncomfortable or not, I must be paid today, or I shall see Mr. Graves taken up for debt by dinnertime. I have a wife and child to feed.”

  “What do you mean, ‘taken up’?” She frowned up at him.

  “Prison, missy,” he said, folding his handkerchief very carefully again and putting it in his waistcoat. “He must stay there if I cannot have my money.”

  Susan put her head on one side. “Are your wife and child hungry?”

  He looked rather surprised. “No, sunbeam, not yet. But they may come to be for the want of those twenty shillings, some day. The world has a way of spinning awful quick and sudden, you know that.” She nodded slowly, there was truth in that. “And so we must keep our friends about us, and money is the best friend I know.”

  She opened her eyes at him. “Mr. Graves is the best friend my brother and I have. And you want to take him away.”

  He stuck out his chin. “I do not. I just want the money.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck and looked past her into the street. Susan continued to examine the end of his chin.

  “I don’t have any,” she said. He still kept up his casual survey of the street over the top of her head and shrugged. She bit her lip, then breathed in sharply and began to pull on the gold chain about her neck. “But I do have this ring.”

  He looked down quickly enough then. His eyes caught the gold gleam of the ring and the sparkle of the brilliants. His voice became low and lustful.

  “That’d do it, girly. That’d do it! We’d be all square if you hand that over.”

  “If I give it to you, you’ll leave us and not take Mr. Graves away?”

  He bobbed his head. “He’ll be as safe as safe when I have that in my hand, sunbeam.”

  “It was my mother’s.” She said it softly.

  Molloy glanced up and down the street again. “Your mother would want you to keep your friends about you, don’t you think?”

  She thought. She would always have the miniature, and she would rather have Mr. Graves than the ring. Susan felt tears behind her eyes. She blinked them away. Strange how these little things could help keep Graves safe. She wished the yellow-faced man had given her a chance to bargain.

  “I must keep the chain so Miss Chase does not know it is gone.”

  She reached behind her neck to unfasten the clasp. Molloy paused a moment, then shrugged.

  “Aye, aye, keep the chain, just the ring, missy.”

  He put his hand out, rubbing his thumb and fingertips. There was a sudden clatter, and he looked over her head again with a curse. Susan heard her name called, and turned, her hands still feeling behind her neck, to see Miss Chase striding across to them, her hair all loose and her eyes glittering. She put her hand on Susan’s shoulder as she reached them. Molloy straightened, and began to look a little pale.

  “Mr. Molloy! Explain yourself.”

  “Just a bit of business, Miss Chase.” Molloy ran the tip of his tongue over his thin lips. “No need to concern yourself.”

  Susan’s heart began to thump heavily in her chest. “Please, Miss Chase! If I just let him have the ring then he won’t take Mr. Graves to prison. Please let me. I do not want Mr. Graves to go away.”

  The last words came almost as a wail. Susan felt Miss Chase’s grip on her shoulder tighten. She looked at Molloy.

  “Terrify a child two days after she saw her father killed, would you? How dare you call yourself a man?”

  Molloy straightened, though he still struggled to look Miss Chase in the eye.

  “All very sad, I’m sure, miss. But business is business. You can give me the ring, sunbeam. Miss Chase has nothing to do with it.”

  “Oh, is that so?” Miss Chase was quite flushed. Susan put her hands on the clasp again.

  “You must let me. Please.”

  Miss Chase pulled a little purse from her waistband. “What is the debt, Molloy? I shall pay it before I let you rob this child.”

  He muttered something under his breath Susan was sure she should not hear.

  “Twenty shillings. And there is no robbery about it, Miss Chase. You have no right to say so.”

  “I wonder what people would say if they heard this story, Molloy.” Miss Chase’s eyebrows drew together threateningly.

  “You must not pay it!” Susan stamped her foot. “He wouldn’t like it! You know he wouldn’t. He’d be ashamed and not come near us. It must be me who pays. He looks after me! We owe him and you do not!”

  Miss Chase looked confused. Susan stared up at her with desperate seriousness. Molloy gave a thin smile.

  “No matter to me who pays, but I have other business to attend to, so if you don’t mind hurrying along, ladies ...”

  Miss Chase glanced up at him with a sneer. “Oh be quiet, Molloy. You’ve been hanging round here for days, and I am thinking.”

  Molloy dropped his chin. Miss Chase wet her lips.

  “Very well, Susan. I shall lend you the twenty shillings—” and as the girl began to protest—“ and I shall take the ring from you as surety. That way, you know the money is yours to spend as you like.”

  Molloy did not look up, just traced a half-moon in the dust before him with his boot.

  “Looks like you are getting into my business, Miss Chase.”

  She looked at him with disgust but did not reply. Susan’s heart leaped up happily.

  “Yes, please. That would be right. And when I am a lady I can pay you back.” Susan paused. “And buy you a carriage, if you would like one.”

  “Thank you, Susan. But my father has a carriage, and I am happy to share his.” Susan accepted this with a nod.

  The business was transacted. Susan took the money from Miss Chase and dropped her ring into the young woman’s hand. The latter took it reluctantly, but urged by the determination in Susan’s eyes, put it safely away in her purse. Susan then placed the sum owed into Molloy’s hand with the bright smile of a girl buying sugar sweets. She turned away again, but Miss Chase kept her hand on her shoulder.

  “The note, Molloy.”

  He grinned a little ruefully and took a thick wallet from his coat. It bristled with dirty papers; some had crumpled, and he had tried to smooth them.

  “You’d be a caution in business, Miss Chase. Shame you have to stay at home and paint screens all day.”

  Again, she said nothing, but watched him steadily as he rifled through his papers, withdrawing one from the center of the greasy clump with a scowl. He put it into Susan’s hand. Miss Chase still watched him.

  “And is it noted that the interest has been paid?”

  Susan looked blankly at the figures a moment, then turning the page over, said, “Yes, here it is, Miss Chase.”

  “Very well.”

  Molloy fitted the money into his wallet and put it back into his coat, tapping it gently where it sat over his heart.

  “Joy to do business with you, ladies. Young Graves is a lucky man to h
ave such friends.” Susan looked at him with her head on one side.

  “And now you have your friends, too.” He smiled at her curiously. “The shillings. You said they were your friends.” He gave a sharp bark of laughter.

  “ ’Deed I did, sunbeam, ’deed I did!”

  He tipped his greasy hat and turned to walk up the street, whistling as he went.

  Miss Chase knelt down till she and Susan were looking at each other eye to eye.

  “Tell me, sweet, while we are alone. Have you had a moment to say anything to Jonathan?”

  Susan’s feelings of independence, of power seemed to flood away from her. She looked at Miss Chase very sadly.

  “Yes, and he said I would have to learn French!”

  Miss Chase laughed, throaty and musical, then standing and hugging the little girl briefly to her side, she led her back into the house.

  3

  Crowther stirred and groaned. The knocking at the front door had been enough to wake him, and now there were voices. He half-listened as he swung from his bed and began to dress, letting the shreds of his too-brief rest scatter about the floorboards of his room. He paused. He could swear he heard a dog yelping. He shook his head and reached for his shirt. The vigil had tired him. His bones felt old.

  “Of course he’s asleep, girl! He was at Cartwright’s bed till after dawn. But I must see him, and you must wake him.”

  It was Michaels’s voice. Then that yelping again. There was definitely a dog with him. He heard his maid protest once more, though the words were indistinct.

  “Oh, just go and get him, for the love of God, Betsy. Or I’ll cut off your father’s credit at the Bear and tell him why, you see if I don’t!”

  Another, higher-pitched mumble.

  “No, I don’t want to be shown into the library, thank you! Who do you think I am? I’ll wait in the hall. Now go and wake him before I lose my patience.”

  Crowther opened his bedroom door and looked down into the hallway.

  “No need, Michaels—you have done the job yourself.” He spoke with a smile in his voice, but catching the other man’s eye looking up from the shadowed flags below him, his face became all seriousness. “What has happened?” He started down the stairs. “Coffee, please, Betsy. In the study.”

  Michaels looked uncomfortably down at the dog by his side, held close on a leather leash. A black whippet bitch, a little gray around the muzzle.

  “The dog, though, Mr. Crowther.”

  “It is no matter.”

  Crowther pushed open a door on the left of the hall and let Michaels step in front of him. Then he crossed to the shutters and let the summer light in. He turned back. Both Michaels and, it seemed, the dog, were lost in open-mouthed contemplation of the room.

  It was a pleasant, generous space, paneled in painted wood.

  The previous occupants had used it for a dining room, but Crowther did not entertain, and needed the space for his work. He had had shelves built all along the back wall which housed the volumes and preparations he most valued. In the center of the space was a long, roughly made table, rubbed smooth with much scrubbing, such as one normally finds in the kitchens of better houses. His instruments were laid out upon it. At the far end, under a pair of brass candlesticks sat his writing desk, his neglected notebooks open on top. It was the preparations that held Michaels’s eye. They were the products of almost a decade’s study and careful collection. Crowther had haunted the auction rooms of London and Europe like other men with money and leisure, but he did not buy Italianate art, or marble fragments of the ancients; he bought body parts, each injected with colored resins to show the different vessels and forms we carry, floating in sealed heavy jars of alcohol, or those strange freaks of development, opened up like so many strange texts to be absorbed, learned from. Michaels’s eyes tracked along the shelves.

  “What is that?” He pointed at the delicate tracery of a pair of human lungs. It was a magnificent example of the preparer’s art. Each capillary through which air was drawn into the system hung like bare branches on a still day, dazzlingly complex, delicate as lacework.

  “The lungs of a young man from Leipzig.”

  Michaels’s hand rested on his own chest; he felt it rise and fall under his palm.

  “It is beautiful,” he said.

  Crowther smiled to himself and set a chair by the table in the center of the room.

  “Do sit down.”

  The door opened and Betsy came in to set the coffee things between them. Michaels’s leg bounced with impatience as she set down the cups. The dog seemed less concerned, and with a wide yawn, curled itself under his chair and rested its nose on its forepaws. Betsy left, still keeping her eyes away from the shelves, and as the door closed, Crowther said one word.

  “Well?”

  Michaels balled his fist and worked it into the cup of his other hand. “The kitchen in Cartwright’s house is all smashed up.”

  Crowther bent forward. “Good God. Your wife, and Hannah?”

  Michaels looked up with a quick smile. “Both well and more angry than frightened. They did not hear anyone come in, and when the noise started they found they could not leave the bedroom. When things got quiet, my wife climbed out of the window and came to fetch me.” He met Crowther’s eye. “Do you still have the bottle?”

  Crowther got up without speaking and crossed to the cabinet in the darkest corner of his room. Drawing a key from his waistcoat he unlocked it and withdrew the bundle that Michaels had handed him the night before. He carried it back and set it down on the table between them, then took up his coffee cup again.

  “Good,” Michaels said.

  “Who did it?”

  Michaels put down Crowther’s delicate china with conspicuous care, like a man being careful with his daughter’s playhouse things.

  “Squire’s boys, I reckon.”

  Crowther nodded. “Why?”

  “I heard him say it to you outside the door yesterday. He thinks Hugh did it, but he is scared of what will happen if Lady Thornleigh and her son get control of the estate. She’s smart. And there is bad blood between them.” Michaels tried to explain. “I suspect they knew each other in town before she married the earl, and she reckoned he treated her badly. She looked like she was going to make life difficult for him when she first came out here. Then Lord Thornleigh took ill, and all the power shifted about again.”

  Crowther nodded slowly. “So he thinks it was Hugh, and is aiming to protect him.”

  “You’ll see enough of it at the inquest this afternoon. The coroner will be twitching like a rabbit in a snare, not knowing who’s going to end up having authority over him.”

  “And do you think Hugh was the poisoner?”

  “He handed over that bottle, didn’t he? I always liked him as a boy, but something went wrong with him in America . . . and even if it wouldn’t be pleasant to have that whore collecting our rents and teaching her little boy how to keep us small, I’d rather deal with that than a murderer.” He looked up into Crowther’s eyes, the glint of them blue as chipped ice in his dark face. “And there’s such a thing as justice, isn’t there, Mr. Crowther? You and Mrs. Westerman know that. I can see it by the way you are carrying on.”

  “We’ll do our best. Are you casting your lot in with us then?”

  Michaels shifted a little on his chair.

  “I reckon I shall. I can always sell the Bear and move away—I’ve had offers enough in the past. Anyhow. That’s why I brought the dog. Let’s test the bottle on her and we can see if the coroner is willing to stare us down then.”

  “Very well, but I think we should send for the vicar.”

  “For a dog?”

  “For another witness to what happens to her.”

  “Very well then, Mr. Crowther,” Michaels agreed. “We shall.”

  Miss Chase kept her hand on Susan’s shoulder as they came back into the house, and sat down with her on the sofa in the front parlor. Susan looked up into her face, sti
ll slightly flushed from the confrontation with Molloy, and saw there confusion, pity and, Susan thought, amusement chasing itself over her pretty features. She shook her head as if hoping the thoughts would settle out a little, then gave a half-laugh. “Oh Susan, I have no idea what to do. Should I tell Mr. Graves of what you have done?”

  Susan bit her lip. “I do not know. I don’t want him to worry about Molloy, but it would make him awkward, don’t you think, to know that we have paid his debt.”

  Miss Chase nodded seriously, studying her hands clasped in front of her and letting Susan think out her thoughts.

  “Maybe he will think Molloy has had a change of heart, for our sakes, and gone away for a while,” the girl suggested.

  Miss Chase brushed a strand of Susan’s hair behind her ear.

  “Wise child,” she said. “It is likely. He thinks, I believe, only of you and Jonathan at the moment.”

  Susan’s eyes lifted briefly. “And of you.”

  Miss Chase looked conscious and down at the floor again. Then, after a pause, “Susan, I think it very important that you know, whatever happens, Graves and I will not leave you. We will stand your friends.”

  Susan felt her throat close. “Papa did not mean to leave us either.”

  Miss Chase opened up her arms and gathered the girl to her. Susan cried on to her soft shoulder, feeling the young woman’s hair falling across her neck, the stroke of her hand across her back. Susan thought of her father, looking up at her with a smile, heard his sharp laugh and felt her bruised heart stutter and complain as if it had just begun to beat again. She wept, but her tears tasted different.

  Harriet woke early despite her vigil of the night before. The household was quiet. She left her room and turned up the stairs that led to the nursery in the topmost part of the house, and gently opened the door to the children’s room. Stephen had been fighting battles alongside his father in his dream. The sheets were caught up about him, his nightshirt twisted and damp across his thin chest. She knelt down beside the bed and smoothed the hair away from his cheek; he murmured and turned without waking.