Anatomy of Murder

by Imogen Robertson

  “He doesn’t see you, Sam. He just sees a child and doesn’t think to mind you.”

  Sam shrugged. “Anyway, it was just the two of them and the priest, and they made quick work of it. I did as you asked. Clayton is keeping an eye on Milky Boy, and Finn’s going to follow her about. What are we going to do?”

  Jocasta looked at the boy. “What age have you, Sam?”

  He fed the last of his pie to Boyo and scratched the terrier’s ears. The dog licked his lips with a smack and leaned into Sam’s hand. “Don’t know, Mrs. Bligh. I went into the workhouse in Camberwell two winters past when my mom died of fever. I think I was about eight when we went in, so ten now, I suppose.”

  “Know your birthday?”

  He shook his head. “No. Once when Dad was red with the gin he gave me a belt round the ear and told me it was a birthday gift. That was in the spring.”

  They sat in silence for a while till their food was settled. Then Jocasta got up with a grunt. Sam scrambled to his feet.

  “Where we going, Mrs. Bligh? Are we going to visit the grave?”

  Jocasta frowned. “What use would that be? Think she’ll leap out and tell us how it was and how to prove it?” Then, relenting: “Maybe later, lad. First we are going up to the kiln. I want to see where she fell.”

  Having concluded their conversations with Manzerotti, Crowther and Harriet made their way to visit Graves at the music shop, it lying, as it did, on both their ways. They found a notice in the window informing them that all copies available of the “Yellow Rose Duet” from the opera Julius Rex had been sold, but that more would be available the following morning. Smiling to see it, Harriet pushed open the door. She found not only Graves and his assistant Jane in the little shop, but also her sister Rachel, and Lady Susan. Susan was playing the harpsichord, her first instrument, in the center of the shop while the adults around her were occupied in setting the room straight. Graves was counting the large amount of money he found in the cash box in front of him.

  “Dear heavens!” Harriet exclaimed, looking around her. “Have the musicians of London been rioting?”

  Lady Susan looked up from the keyboard and grinned. “Mrs. Westerman! Can you believe it? There was such a crowd here, Graves had to send to the house for Alice and Cecily to help. So Rachel asked Mrs. Service if we might come along and see, and she said yes, so we came here and I played, then you wouldn’t believe it but Miss Marin herself came in and we sang together and everyone was very nice!”

  “You play and sing beautifully, my dear—I am not surprised they were nice,” Harriet said.

  Rachel sighed. “It was remarkable, Harriet. Miss Marin sang some selections from the Ranglegh songbook too, and I do not think there is another copy left of that here either.” She turned to curtsy to Crowther. “I think my sister might have enjoyed the sight, had she not been out chasing murderers while we enjoy these lesser excitements, but I think Mr. Crowther would have disliked the crush.”

  Crowther failed to repress a shudder.

  “How interesting that Mademoiselle Marin happened past,” Harriet said, choosing to ignore Rachel’s other remark, and wandered over to the counter to at the few remaining songbooks on display.

  Graves’s lips thinned a little as he commented, “I do not think it was an accident. I am sure she planned the whole thing very neatly, and there was a man I recognized here from the London Advertiser. He was not buying music. I should not be at all surprised if we read of this in the paper tomorrow morning. I am sure there will be mention that Susan was playing here. I should not have let her perform.”

  Lady Susan had abandoned her place at the keyboard and come over to join them. Mrs. Westerman put her arm around the young girl’s shoulders.

  “I did not ask you first, Graves,” the girl said kindly. “And you were too busy to stop me.” Her guardian continued to look guilty. “They will call me ‘tragic Lady Susan’ again, won’t they? And talk about how Papa died here.” She looked at the space in the middle of the room where she had cradled her father as he bled to death. Her look was sad, but not horrified. Harriet remembered a midshipman who had lost his arm under her husband’s command. He had been up in the rigging again within a month: the capacity of the young to heal was remarkable. She did not reply, merely stooped and kissed the top of her head. Susan looked back up. “But I wanted to play, and I had many happy times here with Papa, too. And all the concerts he used to have here.” The memory brightened her.

  Graves continued his attempts to reckon up his money. “It is not really fitting, Susan.”

  “Pah! Papa often had me play to his customers.”

  “You were not Lady Susan Thornleigh then, my love,” Graves reminded her.

  “Pah again! I was. It was just we didn’t know it, is all.” She sighed very deeply. “I wish Miss Chase had been here to hear it.”

  At this remark, Graves seemed to lose his place in his numbers for a moment.

  “Do stop saying ‘pah,’ Susan,” he said stiffly. “If we cannot make you behave in a manner fitting to your rank, at least make some effort to speak like a lady!”

  Having said this, he turned his back and Harriet found the little girl looking up at her dismayed. She gave a half-shrug and a small smile and Susan looked down at the ground ashamed.

  The music shop sold a variety of scores and songbooks, most of which were engraved in the workshop that took up most of the yard behind the house. There, Lord Sussex and Lady Susan’s father had worked with copperplates, hammers, scrapers, punches and press to record and disseminate the music of London’s composers and players, having chosen independence over fortune and rank. Now the room was the kingdom of a Mr. Oxford Crumley; a taciturn gentleman without wife or family who had arrived in response to Graves’s advertisement for an engraver of music. He took up residence above the shop, nodded over the tools provided, had Graves arrange an apprentice for him, and settled down to work without further comment. Graves had as yet learned little of him other than he was more than proficient at his work, sober in his habits and showed his much younger master a friendly respect for which Graves was very grateful.

  When Harriet had been introduced to Mr. Crumley, soon after her arrival in London, she had remarked to Crowther: “He is rather like you, I think. He sits all day in a single room surrounded by strange metal tools, so fixed on his art that the place could burn down around him before he even noticed the heat. However, his trade has its advantages. He ends his day covered only in ink.”

  Crowther had not replied, but only continued to read his newspaper.

  Mr. Oxford Crumley now hovered in the doorway to the parlor and back rooms of the shop. He nodded to Harriet and Crowther then made his way to the counter and Graves, and without a word pushed a song sheet toward that gentleman. Graves glanced at it, then smiled broadly.

  “Susan, Mrs. Westerman, Mr. Crowther, do come and see this.” Graves turned the sheet toward them, and Susan clapped her hands together with a little shriek. Mr. Crumley’s work was worthy of her applause. It was the music for the “Yellow Rose Duet,” but rather than a plain statement of the notes such as the shop had been selling that morning, this had a frontispiece of a full-blown rose curled as it might be on a coat of arms, and framed by the profiles of Isabella and Manzerotti. The work was finely done. Mr. Crumley saw they were properly impressed and almost smiled into his cravat.

  “I was at work at it last night, and in the day, but have only just had the time to finish it, Mr. Graves. Might it do?”

  Graves reached out a hand and rested it on the older man’s shoulder, still admiring the paper in his hand.

  “Very well, Mr. Crumley. I had been wondering how many more copies we could possibly sell, especially as every back room in Town will be trying to copy and produce their own versions as we speak, but this will draw them in. You have caught Miss Marin’s likeness very well. I did not know you saw her before today, or Manzerotti for that matter.”

  Mr. Crumley shrugged his shoul
ders. “Neither I had, but the boy was in the pit on Saturday night and I got him to describe them both as I drew.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to where his apprentice skulked, inky and shy in the doorway. Susan waved at him cheerily. He blushed to his ears and withdrew. “It’s a little like riding blind, but once you get the idea of which questions to ask, it’s no great thing. Though I was glad when I glanced in earlier to see that Miss Marin at least was a match.”

  Harriet beamed at the paper in front of her. “You have Manzerotti to the life as well.”

  Crowther spoke for the first time since entering the shop. “I must leave you to the admiration of Mr. Crumley’s artistry. I have an appointment at the British Museum.”

  Harriet handed the song sheet back to Graves. “And I am to go to the Foundling Hospital and meet Mr. Fitzraven’s most recent patron. I hope for the sake of his soul I shall find one being in London who will speak well of him.”

  Graves placed the sheet on the countertop. “As do I, though the hope is not strong, Mrs. Westerman.”

  4

  “How do the pictures work then, Mrs. Bligh?”

  Jocasta and Sam had been directed up this path by a young woman sweeping the steps outside one of the better houses on Tiburn Lane. For the chance of getting her cards read she had been chatty enough, and was glad to tell them about the older woman coming running down the lane yelling for help till Old Beattie had hauled his cart over, and then the younger man following with the lady in his arms all broken. She had watched them go up this way too, and reckoned by her memory of the pattern of her duties done that there had been no more than half an hour between Kate turning up this way looking happy and bright, and her sad return.

  The way was muddy, and Jocasta thought it an odd walk to take on a Sunday with the clean paths of Hyde Park so close, but it had been chosen for its quietness. London was pushing out west like a growing baby stretches and pulls out its mother’s belly for new space. Here they were near its edge and limit. On one side of the way sat the high brick wall of one of the fancier houses, on the left as they walked was hedgerow and a view of the fields. As they cleared the backs of the gardens, she sniffed the air and it tasted of green things hiding away for the winter, and woodsmoke. The quiet settled on her. It was a way that led up to the Marylebone Burying Grounds, now becoming overrun with new rich life and buildings, if you followed it, but Jocasta reckoned the little party could never have got that far and back in half an hour. It took her a few moments to hear Sam’s question, and a few more to answer him.

  “Hard to say it outright, stripling.”

  “The cards tell you things though?”

  “That’s how it seems to me. The different pictures have different thoughts attached to them. When they are laid out, those thoughts come together. The Frenchman I met called them Tarot.”

  Sam had picked up a stick from the way and began fighting the earth with it as they went along. Boyo snatched at the other end and they tugged against each other. Jocasta sniffed and rubbed her nose. It reminded her of her younger brother when they used to go walking along the old Corpse Roads behind Brumstone Bridge. He’d be near forty now, probably with children of his own if he’d lived. She had no way of saying if he had.

  Sam stopped a moment and looked up at her. “I was watching when you were laying them out yesterday. And for that girl just now. They look pretty. Most of them.” Boyo, seeing the game was paused, dropped his end of the stick and headed into the hedgerow.

  “I’ll show you their manner of speech sometime,” Jocasta said slowly. “If you want.”

  His face shone, and he ran ahead along the path with a skip. The young can shed things. Not that she had, not entirely, but Sam’s face was bright again for now. He was not thinking himself orphan and poor, nor of the girl with her head stove in. He only knew he was rested and fed and had power over his limbs—and that was sufficient.

  Jocasta walked on, looking over the ground right and left with no clear idea what she was searching for in the scrappy grass. She could hear Boyo yapping at Sam’s heels up ahead. The image of Kate in the back of the cart kept coming in on her, though. Her little face had been unmarked, and she had looked more of a child than ever, just her hair all disarranged and her bonnet hanging back from a ribbon around her neck. Such a little face for all its pride. Jocasta could have covered it with the palm of her hand. She imagined doing so and lifting her hand away to find the woman breathing again, as if she’d just forgotten the trick of it for a moment and needed reminding. Her husband had been looking down on her, whiter than ever and wondering, with tears in his eyes.

  There had been a boy in Jocasta’s village who used to love to catch rabbits in the woodland on the flanks of the hills around Derwentwater. He came back past the water pump dark-eyed one day and Jocasta was told he’d found one living and suffering in the traps, and had had to break its neck. Terrible sound an injured rabbit makes, like a baby stuck with something sharp. He grew accustomed in the end, of course, and six months later had been one of the ringleaders of a badger baiting out the back of the Black Dog. Still, she had remembered that look, and it came back to her now, thinking of Fred bent over his wife’s corpse with his mother like a crow behind him.

  Jocasta’s eyes flicked up. They were roughly abreast of the brick kiln now. It smoked into the air, tall above the trees and hedgerows, a great upturned funnel firing the building blocks for all the spreading habitations of London. Up ahead of her, where the path reared up to cross the hedgerow through the trees into the next field, she could see Boyo worrying at something on the ground, and Sam standing over him. Boyo was yapping. Jocasta walked on a little quicker.

  Within moments of the carriage turning into the grounds of the famous Foundling Hospital, it became clear to Harriet that her visit here was likely to be an expensive one. First she saw the extensive gardens laid to turf, the modest solidity of the building itself, but then she saw the children. Young girls in high caps and white aprons over their brown skirts; small boys in red flannel waistcoats—all, she thought, out of infancy, but younger than Susan. They stood or walked about in twos or threes, and all turned toward her as she passed. There were so many of them, and these were such a tiny proportion of those born into dreadful want. Neither building nor gardens suggested great softness or comfort, but here was something like a paradise in comparison with the squalor of the city. This is what other beings with money or talent had brought to their city. Mr. Coram had built this refuge, Mr. Hogarth had filled its walls with paintings, and Mr. Handel had crowded it with music. Harriet looked at her hands and wondered if there might be better use for them than turning over the secrets of the dead.

  The kindly looking matron who showed her in and escorted her toward the parts of the building where the committees met and the records were kept spent the time of their walk telling her something of the place, and with each story she told, Harriet could feel guineas bleeding from her purse into the charitable trust.

  “I’ve been here forty years now, madam, and it’s a blessing to see how many have lived and thrived that would have starved in the workhouse otherwise, or been smothered by their poor mothers. Though many of them come too late or too sick. Time was, we used to bury more than half before they were six years old. The newborns go to wet nurses in the country that answer to us, then we look after them here and they are apprenticed out as soon as they are of an age.”

  Harriet said she admired the gardens, and commented that the children must be glad of a place to play.

  “Yes, the boys do the work of it. And well-trained they are too. The head gardener at Hampton was brought here, starving, as an infant and now he is as sleek as any lord and twice as hearty. And, of course, lots of the boys go to the ships.”

  Harriet let her pace slacken a little, remembering the young boys who had served on the Splendor. Some had been raised within these walls. “Does Lord Carmichael do much work for the hospital?”

  She thought she sensed her compan
ion stiffen a little. “He organizes some of the musical activities of this place, and likes to attend the service here on a Sunday. Once in my memory, someone put £100 in the collection plate! I do not think that was Lord Carmichael, however.”

  “Others have been more generous?”

  “Indeed, madam. Mr. Hogarth designed their little uniforms, and Mr. Handel all but built the chapel with the performances he gave here.” She sniffed. “They were truly charitable gentlemen.”

  “Is it wrong of me to guess you do not like Lord Carmichael?”

  “There’s no liking or not. In my opinion he spends time here because other rich gentlemen do, and it’s a stage to strut about on. The king himself is our patron, and on the Sunday when the children sing, the chapel is as full of titles and fine furs as the House of Lords. Though people might say I have a prejudice. One occasion, Lord Carmichael wished a young girl sent out to a friend of his as servant. I did not like the friend and told the committee so. He tried to have me removed from my position.”

  “I’m glad to see he was unsuccessful.”

  The lady put her hands together lightly in front of her. “My roots here are deep, but it was an uneasy time.”

  “What became of the girl?”

  “She ended up working for a butcher in Holborn. Married the son of the establishment last year and I held her flowers for her at the back of the church. But here we are, madam. If you would like to take a seat here, I shall tell Lord Carmichael you are waiting for him.”

  Detaining her a moment, Harriet reached for her purse and handed over the money meant for new papers for the salon to the little matron.

  She did not have to wait long; before many minutes had passed, there were footsteps on the stairs behind her and two gentlemen approached. The elder she took for Lord Carmichael, and a straighter back she had never seen. Crowther’s words had conjured in her mind a being weasly and small, slicked with ill deeds and ill humor. This man was not such a one. He was wigged and powdered, dressed with a perfection that made Harriet feel slovenly, and he had the figure and proportions to bring the best valet into tears of gratitude. His face was long and his nose aquiline; it seemed when he turned toward her and smiled as if a bust of a classical Caesar had become animated. The intricate embroidery on his waistcoat was in gold thread, the patterns of leaves and tendrils swirling across his stomach glowing. Each item of his dress fitted as if it had been sculpted onto him by some follower of Michelangelo. He was taller than Crowther and his face less lined. Harriet wondered if he dressed himself to take a place among his collection; he would be his own centerpiece in that drawing room, making even Manzerotti seem cheap by the comparison.