Anatomy of Murder

by Imogen Robertson

  With a growl she swept the cards up again and sat them in their box. Another knock came at the door, and this time she answered it.

  When Harriet folded back the damp sheet from the corpse, she found herself being oddly precise about her movements. She was aware that Crowther was, for the time being, still more engaged in watching her than looking at the body.

  “Crowther, I am quite well. I have heard more hurtful words about my husband’s current condition than those Proctor just used, and with less care and respect in them.”

  Her companion did no more than nod, but it seemed the reassurance was sufficient. He continued to lay his knives and hooks on the bench in front of him.

  “I must be a little more subtle in my arts here than we were in Thornleigh,” he said. “The cut throat on the body you used then as an introduction to myself was a more obvious cause of death than drowning.”

  Harriet smiled a little at his characterization of their meeting. She had bullied her way into his house, she had forced him to place himself in danger, she had caused his most private griefs to become public, yet they had developed between them a friendship that was as valuable to her as the love of her own family.

  Since the events of the previous summer he had become a regular companion in her house in Caveley. He would arrive unannounced when the mood took him—or, if he had taken delivery of some exciting preparation or curiosity, they would not see him for a week. She missed him greatly at these times, though she would never admit it, or tease him for ignoring them when he returned. To Harriet’s younger, orphaned sister Rachel, he took the role of an uncle, encouraging her, tolerating her, or ignoring her depending on his mood and Rachel’s choice of conversation. To her children he also stood something like an uncle. He did not join in their games, but would answer any question her son could think of to ask, until, when he grew tired of the circling logic of a seven-year-old, he would declare himself hungry and in need of a child to eat, whereupon Stephen would scream with delight and run from the room. . . .

  Crowther’s dry voice broke in on her thoughts. “So, Mrs. Westerman, what do we see at first?”

  Shaking herself, Harriet turned toward the body and looked into the dead eyes for the first time.

  He was an elderly gentleman, she thought, something older than Crowther. The slight stubble on his face was white, and the flesh of his face was loose and lined. His eyes were gray and his jaw hung open as a man who has been suddenly, unpleasantly, surprised in the midst of a laugh. His limbs were thin, though not malnourished, the nails of his hands neatly and closely clipped to the pads of the fingers. She felt their texture. His throat was hidden by a sodden cravat, but there was a red mark high under his jaw on his left side. It did not seem a bruise or tearing of the skin.

  As Harriet tilted the man’s chin toward her to better examine it, she realized there was something not quite right about the shape of his mouth. Gently retracting the man’s upper lip, she saw that his teeth were false, but not made of the usual animal bone or carved and stinking wood. Easing them loose, she passed them to Crowther without comment and he lifted them to examine them more closely under the light of the oil lamp.

  “How very strange,” he said.

  “He is of an age, Crowther.”

  Crowther did not reply at once, but turned the dentures over in the light, then flicked them with his fingernail. They gave a dull chime like a teacup awkwardly placed on its saucer.

  “No, Mrs. Westerman. I am not surprised that he required false teeth at his age, or was vain enough to wear them, but these are most unusual. They have been cast of porcelain. I have never seen such things before. A really most ingenious idea. And a rarity. We must make enquiries.” He smiled contentedly and Harriet shook her head a little. Crowther’s enthusiasm was not often provoked, but when it was, it tended to be by the most unusual things.

  Their examination of the body was methodical. The rope and knot were first scrutinised, then the man’s ankles were unbound, his clothing removed and each piece passed between them before being folded and placed on the bench beside the teeth. The man could afford to dress like a gentleman, but all his pockets were empty.

  His skin was marked, discolored in several places, but removing his cravat and exposing the throat had exposed a pattern of bruising that made Harriet draw in her breath. Moving forward, she put her hands, thumbs crossed, on the cold flesh over the Adam’s apple, trying to stretch her fingers to reach the marks, then had a sudden sharp vision of it living under her, struggling to breathe, a wet rattling gasp. She sprang away from it and shivered. Thoughts of her husband reared in her mind like agitated mud at the bottom of a pond, then fell back.

  “That certainly seems consistent with the bruising,” Crowther said. “If he were throttled, we are likely to find damage to the hyoid bone.”

  Harriet remained with her face in shadow. “Could a woman do that, Crowther?” she asked.

  “Mrs. Westerman, I am quite convinced that some women can do anything.” He paused, and added in a more measured way, “Many women would have the strength to kill a man in this manner. Certainly.”

  At last Crowther turned toward his knives, and looked inquiringly at his companion. She did not return his gaze at once, but stood with her shoulders tilted and her head on one side, gazing at the poor naked being in front of her. He looked so frail and waxen on the table in the spill of the lamp that she felt a sadness flow up from the cold ground under her feet.

  There were times when she hated the brutal honesty of flesh. The body was marked and bruised in places other than the face and neck; odd, red, angry patches that seemed to glow out against the general pallor of the skin.

  Harriet let her mind clear and her eyes rest on that strange red mark under his chin. It sparked some memory, some trace of thought in her, but the idea would not form itself into a notion she could put into words.

  “Shall I make the first cut, madam?”

  Since their first meeting, Harriet had only once seen Crowther perform a full autopsy, and that had been on the corpse of a cat. It was known to the members of the reading public, and now to the fellows of the Royal Society, that she had attended Crowther in his examinations of other unfortunates, but they did not perhaps realize how limited, in some ways, those examinations had been. The business of pulling open a corpse was a brutal art, slippery and foul-smelling. It required a scientist to become a butcher, and a gentleman to redden his cuffs with gore and bile.

  By way of answer she sat down on the bench a little removed into the shadows, crossed her hands in her lap and settled herself, to show she meant to remain where she was as Crowther went to work with his knives. He adjusted the lamp and lifted his scalpel, which caught a gleam.

  “Crowther? Did you examine your father’s body after his murder?”

  Crowther went still.

  “I did not, Mrs. Westerman. The baron had already been buried before I could return from London. And my brother was in custody. The local justice greeted me with a record of his confession. He later retracted it, of course. But I saw only fear of the noose in that action.”

  “Your brother was tried in the House of Lords.”

  “He was. The execution was public. I attended both.”

  Harriet looked at his profile. His words had been fluent, but he seemed frozen now in his place. She thought it was likely the man on the trestle was of an age of Crowther’s father when he was killed. Leaning forward, she placed her forehead in her palm.

  “I am sorry I asked you such a thing, Crowther. Whatever tact I had, I seem to have lost in these last months.”

  Silently acknowledging her words, and placing the sharpened steel on the dead flesh, Crowther made his first cut.

  Justice Pither had had an uncomfortable afternoon’s watch. Twice he stepped into his backyard and raised his fist at the door of the old stable to offer assistance or refreshment; and twice he lost his nerve and retreated without knocking to take up his position in his study again, re
reading the familiar passages of his handbook for the duties and dues of a justice of the peace. Despite his vigilance, however, when the door to his study finally opened and Mrs. Westerman stepped into the room, he was surprised enough to drop his glasses, and thought himself for a moment in danger of stepping on them. But Mrs. Westerman did not come with enlightenment. She merely requested ink and paper and the use of one of his servants as message boy. Her note written and put into his servant’s hands, she turned to leave the room again.

  “Do you,” Mr. Pither inquired, leaning with one hand on the inconveniently low desk, and in a tone which he hoped both invited confidence and inspired trust, “require anything . . . er . . . further?”

  Harriet considered, her head on one side.

  “No. Thank you.” Then she was gone.

  Another half-hour or so passed, and Mr. Pither heard his street door opening and closing again before a rather young man was shown in by the servant who had taken the message. He was a good-looking sort of fellow, somewhat thin and tall, and his dress was elegant even if his movements seemed a little uncertain, and his cravat rather sloppily tied. In the few moments he was in Pither’s presence he was in danger of dropping his hat twice. Pither offered the gentleman a seat. The offer was declined.

  “I am Owen Graves,” he said. “Mr. Crowther and Mrs. Westerman sent for me. Where might I find them?”

  Mr. Pither recognized the name, of course. This young man was guardian to the great estates of the Earl of Sussex, and also of the young earl himself. He struggled for a moment to think of a phrase that would fix him in this important gentleman’s mind as a coming man of intelligence and wit, but failed, and could do no more than show his new guest out through the back door of the house and indicate the old stable. As Mr. Graves bowed and stepped forward, Mr. Pither retreated and began to wonder if there was food in the house sufficient to feed all these people.

  He did not have long to count up his stores, for within ten minutes of the arrival of this Mr. Graves, all three of his guests had presented themselves in his study once more. Mr. Crowther had something of a glint in his eye, Mr. Graves looked merely serious and Mrs. Westerman calm, though there was something in her movements as she entered the room that suggested rather more vigor in her person than there had been on her arrival. Mr. Pither thought her rather handsome and wondered how it would feel to walk through Hyde Park on a Sunday with her on his arm, telling her of the wrongs he had righted during his week and receiving her respectful praise.

  “Well, Crowther, do not keep poor Mr. Pither in suspense any longer,” she said.

  Crowther looked up at the justice from under his heavy lids and nodded. “Very well. Mr. Pither, the man presently in your outhouse was strangled, not drowned. Probably some time yesterday. He is indeed called Fitzraven—Nathaniel Fitzraven, in fact—and our friend Mr. Graves here informs us he had been a professional violin player. Of late years, the arthritis building in his hands had forced him to become more of an assistant to the management of His Majesty’s Theatre in Hay Market, also known as His Majesty’s Opera House.”

  “Really? A violinist? The Opera House? Oh, I see.” Mr. Pither was at a loss.

  “Also,” Harriet added with a smile, “after he was throttled, Mr. Fitzraven was left on his back for some hours before being thrown into the river.”

  Justice Pither’s jaw worked uncomfortably for a few moments. “But how can you possibly know such things?”

  Crowther settled back into his seat to explain, but was cut off by a wave from Mrs. Westerman.

  “No, sir, please allow me. You shall say everything in Latin and in detail that would stop a decent man from enjoying his dinner.” Mr. Crowther blinked but did not protest. Mrs. Westerman continued, counting her points on her fingertips and sounding for all the world as if she were rattling off an order to her grocer: “He has bruises to his throat, and the hyoid bone is broken, thus, strangulation. As to the movement of the body—when a person dies their blood does not freeze, but like water tries to find the lowest level it can and congeals there.”

  Mr. Pither looked a little nauseated, but nodded bravely. Harriet smiled at him encouragingly and went on, “Mr. Crowther has been instructing me in the matter this afternoon. I now pass on the knowledge to you, sir. Mr. Fitzraven has patches on his back that suggest he was lying flat for some hours before he was thrown in the river. Some blood also gathered in his feet, as the process was not complete when he went into the water. He was wearing a rather fine coat. The air trapped in it held him upright from his tether. As to his full name and profession, we noticed a mark on his neck I remember seeing on friends of Mr. Graves here, who are violinists by trade, then it was a simple matter to ask him to come here as he knows every fiddle player in London.” She gave him a bright smile and folded her hands again in her lap.

  After a moment’s pause, while Justice Pither attempted to absorb the information so cheerfully flung down before him, he asked hopefully, “And who killed him?”

  “That we cannot know,” Crowther said dryly. “Mr. Graves here can furnish you with his address.” The party began to stand. Justice Pither scrambled to his feet.

  “But please . . . I . . . Mr. Crowther, Mrs. Westerman. Do not desert me! Please tell me you intend to look further into this matter. My duties . . . I cannot investigate this poor man’s death in any satisfactory way myself.” At that moment, in the street, and with a deplorable lack of respect for the solemnity of the moment, a rather harsh-voiced person started yelling that he had mackerel for sale. Harriet and Crowther were looking at each other. “Surely, you have a duty . . .” the justice said pitiably. “Mr. Graves, please help me to persuade them.”

  Graves looked between the justice and Mrs. Westerman. “I believe that, in doing what they have already done, my friends have more than fulfilled their duty,” he said. “Beyond this point, their chances of success are no greater than yours.”

  Justice Pither looked distressed. “I beg you, sir, madam!” His shoulders slumped and he looked at the table in front of him, at his little leather volumes, and said more quietly, “But I have nothing to offer you. I have no influence, no connections to compare with those which you already enjoy in your own rights. I know most people in this city think me a fool for trying to see the laws enforced, the guilty punished and so on.” He sighed. “You are right, Mr. Graves.” He drew himself straight, trying to be brave. “Thank you, Mr. Crowther, Mrs. Westerman, for your valued assistance. I shall do my best—place the proper advertisements and so on. I am most grateful to you both for telling me so much about this unhappy wretch.”

  There was a long pause. Mr. Pither could hear Mrs. Westerman’s gloved fingers beating a tattoo on the cloth of her dress, and some part of him began to hope.

  “Oh dear,” said Harriet at last. “Now you have made us your allies in a way all the influence in the world could not. Do you not fear it to be so, Mr. Crowther?”

  “I do, Mrs. Westerman,” that gentleman replied.

  Pither almost shook with relief. Harriet offered him her hand and he snatched it up in both of his own, his total confidence in their abilities shining out from him.

  “Thank you.”

  Harriet patted his hand and released herself with a slight wince. “We shall regret it, I imagine. I hope you shall not, sir. We are at your service.” She glanced at the clock on Mr. Pither’s mantel. “Or at least we shall be so in the morning. The dinner hour approaches and Mr. Graves’s house keeps careful hours.”

  Graves took advantage of the carriage trip returning them to Berkeley Square to tell them what he could of Nathaniel Fitzraven, musician. It became clear at once that he had not liked the man, and as Graves seemed to like and value most people to a degree Harriet found frustrating, she had pushed him for his reasons and impressions. He had spoken haltingly at first, watching the damp, darkening streets pass by through the carriage window. He shivered.

  “He liked to pretend intimate knowledge of his betters. He pla
yed in the band of His Majesty’s Theatre for some years and the association with the singers and patrons there was a tonic to him. To hear him speak, you would have thought him the confidant of every music lover of note in the city. Then his talents began to desert him; his fingers stiffened to the point he could no longer perform what was required.”

  “The swelling of the joints was not extreme,” Crowther said, his eyebrows raised.

  Graves looked down at his own young hands for a moment, then hid them in his pockets. “It does not need to be extreme to lose a musician his livelihood. He managed to wheedle himself back into the employ of the Opera House, however. Perhaps the manager there, Mr. Harwood, pitied him. This year and last he was running errands for them, and acting as if he was Harwood’s right-hand man. He bought last season’s selections to be made up into songbooks.” Graves, among his other responsibilities, also managed a small music shop in Tichfield Street, a much less fashionable part of Town. He continued: “I did not like the way he treated the children. As soon as their true lineage and worth was acknowledged, he became ingratiating. My heart sank if they were keeping me company in the shop and he entered on some pretext or other. I am sure he told everyone he stood like an uncle to them.”

  Harriet smiled gently at him as she pulled her cloak more tightly round her throat. “Lord Sussex and Lady Susan know who their friends are, Graves.”

  The young man shrugged his shoulders. “Susan does, I think. But Jonathan is still very young. However, whatever my doubts about Fitzraven, Harwood placed great trust in him this summer. He sent Fitzraven to the continent to recruit singers for the current season. Fitzraven came back bristling with pride, and looking rather sleek. He had engaged Isabella Marin in Milan and, indeed, this new castrato of whom such praises are spoken—Manzerotti. They say he is the greatest singer to come to London since Gasparo Pacchierotti’s debut of seventy-seven. One of my customers heard him at a party in Devonshire House some days ago and was all but overcome.”