Graves settled in his chair. ‘Thank you, sir, for allowing me to stay near the children.’
‘Dear boy, as if I’d send you away with your face in pieces and all of London, it seems, ready to fall to flames. And I was very glad you came to us. Speaks of a trust, boy, that I value. Your place is not fit for a family, I imagine, and they cannot stay in the shop. No, we must hugger mugger here, keep a watch on the children and an eye on those drunks and warriors staggering about outside.’ He saw a look of alarm on his daughter’s face. ‘Briggs and Freeman have gone to fetch your mother home, my dear, and see poor Alexander is secure. I hear the crowd broke up a wine shop owned by some poor Catholic, so now they are drunk and hungry for whatever they can grab. A dark day it has been, and who knows what the morning will bring us.’
I.10
C
ROWTHER LEFT THE house after sitting with the ladies awhile, silently, as the Squire entertained them. He was aware that the current situation in America, and Commodore Westerman’s part in it - crucial, apparently - had been much discussed, but he had not attempted to pay any close attention. He heard, however, the tone and temperature of the conversation and so learned that Commodore Westerman was loved and missed by his family.
His attention was directed to a portrait to the right of the fireplace. The Commodore looked very young to him, and pressingly vigorous. He wondered why Mrs Westerman kept the picture here in the formal salon, rather than in the room where most of her daily business was conducted. Perhaps she did not wish to be always under his eye. He watched her a little coldly in the candlelight - the flutter of her hands as she talked, the play of red in her hair as she gave enthusiastic agreement to some truism of the Squire’s. He wondered how her manner would change if she knew of the conversation the men had just had. Her friendly reception of Bridges in her house looked suddenly like the worst sort of naivety. How could she see into the mess of murder if she thought this man was her friend? But he would not hold her back. The Squire had angered him, and in so doing had bound him tightly to the body in the stables.
Having taken his leave early and pleading a tiredness he no longer felt, Crowther let his horse walk at its own pace through the modest gates of Caveley, and turned the animal’s steps back towards the village with the merest pressure of his knee against its flanks. The evening was beginning to darken, reluctantly, as if holding on to the pleasant sun of June as long as it possibly could.
He supposed that to an extent his system was recovering from the sudden shock that another man knew the secret of his identity. The sharp chill that had spread through his bones had faded, but he was left uneasy. The wall he had constructed between himself and his past, that had seemed so solid mere hours ago, had become weak and porous. It was true the Squire had no reason to expose him, not at the current moment at any rate, but if Bridges traded his way through life with information and politics, it might at sometime be worth more to him to expose Crowther, than to keep his knowledge to himself. And as Crowther knew he had no intention of withdrawing, or persuading Mrs Westerman to withdraw, that moment might come suddenly and soon.
Crowther was angry with himself. His secure existence seemed suddenly a sham. He had been building his self-respect on an illusion. And if the truth were generally known in the neighbourhood, what would the world then say? Would they condemn the women of Caveley for having had him in their house? He pulled his cloak up around his face, and let the horse walk on. Probably not, and it was unlikely that Mrs Westerman would care if they did. But her husband might think differently, and worse than that she herself might pity him, and he was not sure if he could stand her pity. He would become again merely a walking freak show. People would point him out on the street to tell his story to their neighbours. He would be shamed, tainted with more horrible stories than any of the Gothic fairy tales that were told of him and his butcher’s knife today.
He should never have written that paper, but he had been flattered into it. He was proud, that was his difficulty. He sighed, and ran his hand through the black mane of his horse, testing its coarse texture against his hands. He had taken the identity of Gabriel Crowther more than twenty years ago, travelled with it, studied with it, corresponded and dealt under it, till he felt it become far more his own than that with which he was born. The week after his brother died he had put it on like a new skin and left England to study anatomy in Germany, so turning in his thirtieth year that which had been a casual interest of his youth into the reason and occupation of his waking hours. He had walked the hospital wards in that country and others. He could, and did, pay for the privilege without having to concern himself with examination boards and fighting for a paying position in any hospital. From the beginning his fellow students ignored him. Once they realised he was no threat to their chances of employment he ceased to be of interest. He was glad of it, feeling already too old and worn for their entertainments or friendships. His studies then took him to lecture halls all across Europe, studying the vessels of humanity watching them being opened up, learning to make the same - and further - investigations of flesh. He was not squeamish, nor sentimental. He had done his part for his masters, waiting to collect the bodies of the freshly damned from under the city gallows to dissect and study, and made use of what he had learned in order to develop his own theories and lines of enquiry. His knowledge earned the respect of his teachers even if his manners estranged them.
After ten years he had returned to London to study with John Hunter, a man of talent and energy for whom he had done some of his best work, though at the time he refused to take any credit for it. He remembered now as the summer scents drifted up to him from the hedgerows the strange specimens Hunter would pay a fortune to lay his hand - and then his knife - on: a crocodile brought all the way from the African coast alive in the hold of a merchant ship; a lion that Hunter had bought sagging with old age from a travelling menagerie. Both had shared his home a while. Crowther had flourished under the influence of the man’s questing intelligence, his rough disposal of fools or knowledge untested. His grounds were always full of the strangest creatures in God’s creation. As were perhaps his lecture halls.
Crowther himself had been drawn back again and again throughout the years to the marks that violent death leaves on a body. He had made observations and documented them, handing out his conclusions to the world in anonymous papers or in conversation and correspondence. Only once had he put the name of Crowther to a paper, that which had fallen into the hands of his neighbour. His remarks had been general, the specifics referring only to experiments conducted on animals, but when his colleagues had encouraged him to work deeper in the area, he had shrunk away. When his work was questioned, he had retreated rather than take his theories into the world. He wondered if Mrs Westerman had read those responses to his work, the ironic enquiries as to why Mr Crowther did not make use of the multiple murder victims London could offer, and the f inal punishing line that if ever a madman took it into his head to attack the city strays, Crowther would no doubt prove their avenging angel. His move to Hartswood and Laraby House had been an attempt to distance himself from that branch of his studies; to begin afresh on contributing to the growing knowledge of his age, some small but useful discoveries of fine detail. The attempt, it appeared, had failed. His work over the last year had not been good, and now here was another corpse.
Crowther looked about him at the deep silhouettes of shadows in the lane and, like an incantation, mouthed the old syllables of his lost name. They conjured the image of his father, his lands, his brother. He saw the faces and vistas of his youth and early adulthood, and felt them crowd about him. He had told himself they were lost and forgotten, yet he knew in truth, if he were as honest with himself as he claimed to be, that they had never left him for a moment in all these years. So, beyond his talent with eye and knife, this then was all he knew of himself: he was a man who had seen his brother hanged for the murder of their father. He was a man who had angrily, bitterly, pulled free of his brother’s hands when the latter had protested his innocence and begged for help. In those deaths, in that action, his whole fate and being was bound. The rest was merely dressing and show.
Very well. Flight had finally proved impossible; he must turn about and look the world in the face again. He sighed and looked down at his hands. He had been twisting a loop of the reins so tightly round his fingers, he had driven the blood away and left them stiff and aching. He released them, and felt the warmth of circulation pricking again under his skin. He must risk living a little more in the world, and see how the world responded.
A shadow suddenly freed itself from the hedgerow some yards in front of him, and stood waiting for him in the road. Crowther felt himself pulled from his thoughts and back into the very present. Should the fellow try to rob and murder him, he would still at least have to thank him for taking him from his own preoccupations.
‘Captain Thornleigh?’ The voice was a loud whisper, impatient and nervous. Crowther kept his cloak high, felt his fear ease away and his curiosity awake, and rather than respond he brought his horse to a stop.
‘You left me waiting, Captain. My servant will become nervous if I am gone all evening. I am sorry indeed that it did not come out right with Brook, but I must know what you will have me say tomorrow. I would not bring anything disagreeable to the Hall for all the world, but my mind is troubled, sir, troubled.’
The man stepped forward, and caught his first glimpse of Crowther’s face. His own went white.
‘My mistake, sir. I thought you came from the Hall. My apologies for disturbing your ride.’ He looked down and stepped clear of the track. Crowther did not move, however, but continued to stare into the man’s face. It was broad and pleasant enough. A well-preserved specimen of middle age, and middling means. Crowther felt a dim light of recognition spark in his brain.
‘You run the draper’s shop in the village.’
The man looked up again with a little reluctance, and a not entirely convincing smile. He continued to glance up and down the lane as he replied.
‘I do, sir, I do. I sold the gloves you are wearing now, sir. I remember, as gentlemen normally come to buy their own, but your maid Betsy came in with an old pair, and we endeavoured to find a match in size and quality. I hope we managed to your satisfaction, sir.’
Crowther was aware of a slight reprimand in his tone. Aha, so he had offended this little man by not coming into the shop and discussing leathers and fits with him, had he? Indeed, villages were as complex to negotiate as the courts of Europe. He lifted his hand and looked at his glove in the fading light as if for the first time in his life. The man had good eyes to recognise his merchandise at this hour and distance. The shopkeeper did not like to be kept in suspense.
‘I hope you find them a comfortable fit, sir?’
‘Very, Mr . . .’
‘Cartwright, sir, Joshua Cartwright. It is writ above the door of my shop.’
Crowther folded his hands across the reins, and watched Mr Joshua Cartwright’s eyes skip right and left along the path.
‘So it is, forgive me. And you are waiting for Mr Hugh Thornleigh?’
‘Captain Thornleigh he is to me, sir. Always shall be. As you say, though I think I may have mistook the evening, so I shall head home now, begging your pardon. I do not like to leave the shop long. With the death of that man my maid will be worrying herself over me, and I don’t want her coming out to search for me in the dark, sir. Wouldn’t be right.’
‘Indeed.’ Crowther nodded, smiling his chilly smile.
‘Good night then, sir.’
The shopkeeper stumbled a little, climbing over the stile under Crowther’s suspiciously benign stare, and set off back towards the village with busy officious strides through the uncomplaining grass of the meadow. He turned back every other minute, as if hoping Crowther might simply disappear, though without apparently slackening his pace, an impressive manoeuvre on uneven ground. Crowther remained mounted and still until the shopkeeper was lost in the gloom of the first cottages, then slid from his horse and led it behind the hedgerow, returning to assume Cartwright’s position leaning on the low stile. He hoped he would not have to wait long.
He was lucky; the moon had shifted her position but little in the sky when Crowther heard someone moving down the road towards him. He stepped into the road, just as the man who had surprised him had done. A figure on horseback approached. When he spoke, Crowther knew him at once as Hugh Thornleigh.
‘Joshua?’ And when Crowther said nothing: ‘Well, what will you have of me? Much good your assistance, or that of this Carter Brook, did me. We have nothing to speak on. Send me no more messages, but give your Hannah this coin at least - get her a salve for her sore feet. She must be exhausted, the number of times you’ve sent her tripping up to the Hall today.’ The voice was fat and slurred; a gloved hand reached towards him. ‘Well, take it then, Cartwright.’
Crowther stepped closer and lowered his cloak.
‘You may keep your coin tonight, Mr Thornleigh. Joshua found it necessary to return to the shop. He seemed rather concerned, however, about what he should say to the Coroner tomorrow.’