Island of Bones (28 page)

‘Lottie, this note of yours . . .’ The old woman turned back to the wheel and began to work the pedal. ‘Who was this man?’

‘That I cannot say, Master Charles.’ Each time she spoke his old name, Crowther felt it push against his chest. ‘I heard tell of the snuffbox, and I remember clear as day seeing one like it. Striped, is it? With a rose on the lid?’ He felt her sharp eye on him again and nodded. ‘Was the day after the fire destroyed Gutherscale and your father’s hopes of living there. The year was forty-five, just as we got news of the Young Pretender beginning his games. You and Master Adair were away at school, Margaret just a tiny child. A man in travelling clothes arrives at the Hall. My age he was, and a strong-looking devil. I opened the door to him, and there he was taking a pinch from that box, and such a look on him. Fierce. Angry. He had bitter eyes.’ She chuckled. ‘Not much left of his looks now, I’ll bet.’

‘Did he give his name?’

‘Not one I trusted.’

‘What was it?’

‘Percival. He wanted speech with your father. Sir William went out and they had words on the lawn.’

Crowther considered. Percival. The name of the knight that went searching for the Grail. ‘What else, Lottie? Did you hear their conversation?’

She was silent for a long time, and Crowther heard nothing but the clack of the wheel. ‘Full of threats and flounce, he was. But you shouldn’t threaten a man’s children, no matter what you’re looking for. Your father took him off to the Island of Bones and I sent Ruben after them. Lord, I ran to him where he was stamping out the embers at Gutherscale.’ The spinning wheel paused for a moment and she stared in front of her. ‘I had served your father from the day I was twelve years old, Master Charles, and I feared for him that day. So I ran to Ruben and set him running to his boat. I thought they’d paid him off. That’s what Ruben said that night when I asked. That the man was paid.’

‘We think he might have been a follower of Lord Greta, over here with Greta’s brother Rupert de Beaufoy.’

She continued to work the pedal on the spinning wheel, and Crowther watched a while as the wool was twisted out from between her fingers.

‘Maybe.’ She glanced up at him. ‘Lord Greta loved Gutherscale, Master Charles. It was the home of his father, and his father’s fathers. Think he’d want to see another man set up house there?’

Crowther felt suddenly cold. ‘Lottie, are you saying this man put the torch to Gutherscale on Greta’s orders?’ he said slowly. ‘What did my father tell you?’

‘Your father was not the sort to confide, Master Charles, you know that. And your ma knew to keep clear and quiet when he was feeling dark. And they were dark days. But there was this man, you say he was Greta’s man and there the day after the fire.’ She sighed. ‘Your father was not the same man after Gutherscale burned. He carried the embers in him.’

Crowther drank again from his pint-pot and leaned back a little, listening to the wheel clicking and turning.

‘Adair was not at home at the time?’

‘I just told you he was away.’

‘Did my father have his cane with him?’

He saw her glance at it, leaning up against the wall of her nephew’s home. ‘He always had it. That is like asking me if he had both hands attached, Master Charles.’

He watched the meadows frothing out below them in wedding finery, all white clover and dog-roses, though this year there were not the poppies he remembered from his youth or the sparkle of cornflowers. He wondered if it were the effect of the strange weather that the fields were weeded of them.

‘I wanted to believe that Adair killed that man.’

‘I know you did, Master Charles.’

Crowther put his hand to his forehead for a moment. ‘Lottie, do you recall Ruben’s daughter, Jocasta?’

The spinning stopped and Lottie looked up with a smile. ‘I do. Wilful lass, but I always liked the ones with a bit of fight in them. Any news of her?’

‘She tells fortunes in London, and is well.’

‘I’m glad. She was wise to go.’

Crowther set his tankard on the ground and felt his weariness rise through him. ‘She made mention of my father having hired some extra footmen – burly types – in his last months. Is that true? Do you know why he did such a thing?’

Lottie shifted her hands to knead the raw fleece while she spoke. ‘Good for the joints, raw wool. I reckon spinning has saved me from rheumatism.’ She reminded Crowther of the housekeeper’s cat in Caveley, pulsing its claws on the kitchen stool. ‘Master Charles, some say grief can make a man do odd things. Lord Keswick shut the doors on Silverside a while after the mistress died, then they came to keep it shut. All business to be done by letter and they let anyone know who came to call that the Master was not receiving.’

‘You think that was a symptom of grief, Lottie?’

She lifted a finger. ‘
Some
might say that, Master Charles. I think it was the letter.’

‘What letter?’

She shook her head. ‘“What letter?” he says, as if I read my lord’s papers through of an evening. What letter indeed? All I know is with the letters of condolence came one that shook him up. I put it into his hand and saw him freeze solid as he read it. An hour later I saw him stow away something like it in that little hidden safe in the office, and the same day I was told to find two or three more men for the house, men who looked like they could land or take a blow, he said. And I was to arrange to send your sister away for schooling. There was no mention of her leaving Silverside till that day.’

‘I knew nothing of such a safe.’

‘It wasn’t often used, nothing of value in it by then,’ she said vaguely. ‘Nasty brutes those men were, and he paid handsomely for their company. Much good they did. I suppose they did not think to protect him from his own son. I sent them on their way quick.’

Crowther looked up at her. Her eyes were clouded, looking out at the view, seeing something else.

‘You do believe it was my brother who murdered Lord Keswick then?’

The pedal started up again, briskly. ‘Course I do. I found him, didn’t I? In his room, his hands all bloody, weeping and cursing himself. Though he didn’t
mean
to cut me, Master Charles. Not sure if he meant to cut himself either, just the knife was in his hands and he was so wild. I should not have got so close, but we’d just found Lord Keswick and all of us were a little mad. Poor stupid boy. The coachman got the knife off him, we turned the key and he was still raving when the vicar and the magistrate arrived. But you know that. Told you myself.’ She stopped spinning again, but this time did not look up. ‘He apologised to me, you know. That I didn’t tell you. Yelled it out while they were taking him off to Carlisle – said he was sorry and it wasn’t his fault.’ She shook her head. ‘Nothing was ever his fault though, was it? Wheedling little bully since the day he was born, but I never thought he’d kill the master. I am only glad your mother was dead. Died younger than she merited, but at least it saved her from dying of grief.’

Harriet found Fräulein Hurst in the upper parlour. She was in the windowseat, and so lost in her reading that she did not hear Harriet enter. Mrs Westerman took the opportunity to study her for a moment. She seemed very calm. Harriet found it difficult to stay still even now; at Miss Hurst’s age she would have been out of doors at all hours. Had she herself ever looked so young? She could not believe it. The lines around her eyes had become so familiar in the mirror she could not imagine they had once not been there at all. She sighed, and the Fräulein turned quickly. Harriet thought she saw in her face hope – happiness, even – then it fell away into disappointment. As she set down her book she seemed suddenly more distressed than at the moment she had heard of her father’s death.

‘Mrs Westerman?’ Harriet crossed to a sofa in the centre of the room
and took a seat, patting the fabric next to her. Sophia obediently crossed to join her and placed her hands together in her lap, her eyes lowered. ‘Mr Scales has so many fine books. I have not had the chance to read very much since I left the convent.’

‘Forgive me for interrupting you, Fräulein Hurst.’

She flinched as her name was spoken. ‘Please, call me Sophia, madam.’

Harriet watched the soft profile. ‘Sophia then. I asked to speak to you alone for a few moments. I hope you do not mind.’ A slight shake of the head. ‘Sophia, my dear, I wish to find out why your father was murdered.’

The girl looked up quickly, then back to her folded hands. ‘You are certain he was murdered, then? How was he killed?’

Harriet wondered how to respond; then, thinking of all the times she had heard facts frustratingly glossed over with half-truths and euphemism, said simply, ‘It appears that he was stabbed from behind, in the neck.’ Sophia accepted the information calmly. Harriet watched her face with a frown. ‘The blow went up into the brain. There was very little blood. He would have died on the instant.’

Sophia asked nothing further.

‘Did anyone want to harm your father, Sophia? Did he have enemies here?’ The girl shook her head, but it was not clear if she was refusing to answer, or answering in the negative. A tear ran down her cheek. Harriet wished she had learned the trick of weeping so neatly. Whenever she cried for James, she snuffled and sobbed and bit her pillow, leaving her face blotched and her eyes red as demons.

‘Can you tell me something of him, of your father?’

Sophia swallowed and produced a handkerchief from her sleeve, wiped her face and blew her nose in a businesslike fashion.

‘I have little to say of him, Mrs Westerman.’ Harriet did not normally enjoy the sound of an Austrian accent, but in this young woman’s voice it gave her words a frost-like clarity. ‘I only met him six months ago. I was a boarder at a convent school from the time my mother died. That was when I was four years old, and her relatives paid to have me educated.
They did not approve of her marriage, but they felt they had a duty not to see me starve. The nuns taught me to write to my father twice every year. I never had any reply. Then, just after my seventeenth birthday, a letter arrived from Vienna. My father wanted me to live with him in his house there. Within a week I had left the only home I had ever had.’

‘And what did you find in Vienna?’

Sophia stood up and went to the window, looking out at the view across the gardens to the lake and the hills beyond. ‘Why do you ask me these questions?’

Harriet watched her with her head on one side. ‘Mr Sturgess thinks it was Casper Grace who killed your father and will track him down and have him hanged if he can. I think he is being rash.’

‘Casper? What reason would Casper have?’

‘That is my question. I have just learned that your father had some kind of dealings in Cockermouth.’

The young woman shrugged her shoulders. ‘I know nothing of Cockermouth.’

‘I am sorry if you find my questions discourteous, but I would find out what I can to make sure the wrong man is not punished.’

‘I do not know this word “discourteous”.’

Harriet extended one arm along the back of the sofa. ‘Rude.’

Sophia gave a short laugh. ‘You are not as discourteous as
meine gnädige
Frau von Bolsenheim.’

Harriet lifted her arm from the sofa and examined her fingernails. Good Lord, I am becoming Crowther, she thought, and let the arm drop again. ‘I thought you handled that lady rather well.’

Sophia turned away with a toss of the head. ‘I understand she called you a whore,’ Harriet continued. Sophia crossed the room and picked up a romantic little porcelain model of a shepherd and shepherdess from the mantelpiece.

‘Why must
you
ask questions?’ She said crossly. ‘Why not this Mr Sturgess or the vicar? He does not ask questions, only offers to pray with me for my father. I find I cannot.’

‘There are longer answers, but I shall give you the shorter one. I ask questions because I wish to know the truth. Mr Sturgess does not. The vicar is busy enough with the truths of his parish. Do you not sometimes wish to do what you want to, Sophia?’

The girl’s grip tightened on the figurine. ‘I wish to smash this ugly, lying thing. I wish to dance on its splinters.’ Her breathing slowed and she placed the model back in its place. ‘But I shall not. First because it belongs to Miss Scales and she might be fond of it. Secondly because a good young lady does not do such things. Does not do what she wishes. A whore
would
smash it.’

Harriet watched her straight spine. She was too thin. Harriet could count the vertebrae of her bare neck and thought of the space on her father’s neck where the blow had been struck.

‘It is my understanding that whores are often expected to do what they are told to, Sophia.’ Sophia turned round and stared at her. ‘My dear, I mean only to say that sometimes, we ladies are not so distant from those poor creatures as we like to think.’

Harriet was not sure what reaction to expect at this, but she did not think the girl would collapse to her knees. She stood very quickly and crossed to her. Sophia was crying again, but more after Harriet’s fashion than the single poetic tear she had shed for her father. Harriet crouched down beside her, her skirts blooming about her, and gathered the dark head onto her shoulder.

‘My dear! Do tell me what has happened. I am so sorry. All will be well, I promise you.’ It was such an easy promise to make. She had made it to her sister years ago, she had made it to her husband and to her son a thousand times. Sometimes it had been a false promise, she knew that. So they sat for a few moments while the birds sang about their business outside and Harriet’s dress developed creases for the maids to despair over.

When Sophia had begun to calm herself and made use of the handkerchief again, she spoke.

‘I was happy to be summoned to my father. I had seen so little in my
life. When the carriage entered the city I could not help laughing. All those people. All those fine clothes.’ Harriet stroked her shoulder and was suddenly very glad she was no longer young. ‘The house where the carriage stopped looked so fine, and there was a footman to help me with my trunk. I was afraid, but happy. I wanted my father to love me. He showed me into the parlour. It was pretty. Yellow paint on the walls, and the furniture all new. I was so pleased to arrive at such a house.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘He did not own any of it. It was all hired by the week. When he is in funds the house looks like that, then a few days later men would come to the door and hammer away, then take all of it. There was a little desk in my room. He told me it was mine, but it was a lie. They took that too.’