Harriet felt her head crowd with violent fears, felt her own hand tremble on Rachel’s arm.
‘Let us go in, and send David after Crowther. He may carry messages to and fro for us. And Rachel . . .’ her sister looked up at her fearfully . . . ‘I do not wish any family of mine to make use of any gifts we receive from the Hall for a little while. Can you find a way to manage that? Discreetly if you can.’
Rachel went very white, but nodded and they turned towards the house.
Michaels led Crowther into the house and straight up the narrow stairway to Cartwright’s room. The smell of vomit and bile as the door opened was enough to make Crowther sway on his feet. Both men paused, then Michaels took a chair from the middle of the room and seated himself on it in a corner. He was silent, but had the look of a guard dog about him. Crowther moved towards the bed. It was wet with sweat, and a basin sat beside it, half-filled with a yellowish vomit. Cartwright moaned, and opening his eyes and seeing Crowther, tried to pull himself up.
‘Mr Crowther! Are you well? Mrs Westerman . . . ?’
Crowther sat on the bed and took the man’s wrist in his hand. The pulse was exhausted, thready and jumping.
‘I am quite well, and I left Mrs Westerman in perfect health.’
Cartwright fell back on his pillows and let his eyes flutter shut.
‘Thank God. I feared . . .’ His body convulsed; he pulled his knees to his chest with a low groan. Crowther removed his coat.
‘Mr Michaels - water and all the salt in the house, please. We must do what we can to drive this from him.’
He did not look round, but heard the man stand and leave the room with quick steps. Cartwright tried to open his eyes again, panting.
‘I have been poisoned, have I not, Mr Crowther?’
‘I fear so.’
‘And will it kill me?’
Crowther hesitated, then let himself meet the red glittering eyes of his patient.
‘The violence of the attack suggests you have been subject to a heavy dose. But we will purge you, and recovery may be possible.’
Another cry, and Cartwright’s knuckles whitened as his hands and jaws clenched. As the spasm passed, his hands loosened again and Crowther saw the tears in his palm where his neat nails had dug at the flesh. The sick man breathed hard a moment, then looked up again.
‘It came so sudden. A strange taste . . .’
‘Like metal?’
‘Yes.’ Cartwright looked confused. ‘How did you know?’
‘Arsenic. Then came a violent headache and the sickness?’
Cartwright nodded again, though this time he kept his eyes shut. His skin was clammy and yellow. Crowther smoothed the man’s hair away from his forehead.
‘I have some things in my store so we can make you more comfortable.’ He did not know if he was heard.
Michaels came up the stair again, with Hannah on his heels. Crowther realised as he mixed the salt and water together and held it to Cartwright’s lips that this was his first ever living patient. He doubted the case would be a credit to him; the dose must have been very large, and other than purging his stomach, there was little he could do but keep vigil. The effect of the salts was almost immediate. Cartwright groaned and twisted in his bed to vomit again into the bowl. It lay in a patch of late-afternoon sunlight on the dark wooden flooring, lapped by the edges of Joshua’s bedlinen. They caught a little of the spatter of bile from his mouth. There was some blood. Crowther wondered if the stomach was already bleeding, but perhaps it was only that Joshua had bitten the lining of his mouth while caught in one of the spasms.
Taking the glass, he filled it with clean water and raised his patient a little from the bed with an arm round his shoulders, getting him to drink. Cartwright took greedy draughts of it, and fell back against Crowther’s shoulder. Some water dribbled down the side of his face. Crowther removed his handkerchief and gently cleaned it away. The man let him, panting again, the body waiting for the next attack. His eyes opened briefly, the cornea flushed scarlet with blood. It was like coming face to face with hell itself.
‘Will it take long, Mr Crowther?’ he panted.
‘Perhaps a day.’
Cartwright grunted and turned his face away. Crowther stood and noticed Hannah.
‘Can you read, girl?’ She nodded. ‘Then go to my house and bring me the jar from the cabinet in the study marked
Valerian
.’
She looked confused and Crowther sighed impatiently. Michaels opened a drawer under a little table against the dark wall at the back of the room, then pointed to the ink and paper it contained. Crowther thanked him and wrote the word on the paper.
‘And here is the key. My servants will show you where the cupboard is. Hurry back.’
She flew out of the room and Crowther watched the door shut behind her without moving. Michaels spoke.
‘Do you know what’s doing it, Mr Crowther?’
‘From the violence of the attack and the metal taste he noticed - arsenic, I should think.’
‘Any hope?’
Crowther shook his head.
‘When Hannah gets back I’ll go down with her and stop up the bottles,’ Michaels said.
‘Check the food too, if he has eaten in the last hour.’
‘Why did he ask after you and Mrs Westerman?’
‘We were here a little while ago, to ask if he saw Brook on his way into town,’ Crowther replied. ‘He gave us lemonade.’
‘Which did you no harm.’
‘As you see.’
Michaels bit the side of his thumb and turned away a little. ‘And
did
he see Brook?’
‘Yes. And had Viscount Hardew’s address waved in his face. He could not remember it, though.’
Michaels clenched his fists. ‘You found that nurse from the Hall?’
‘Yes.’
‘Murdered too, I’m guessing. Though the village is trying to tell itself suicide.’
‘Yes. Murdered.’ Crowther did not elaborate, but picked up another chair and set it by his patient’s head, He then arranged his limbs as one prepared to wait a long time.
Michaels looked at him sideways. ‘What was it you sent for?’
‘An opiate. It should lessen his pain at the end.’
Michaels sighed and took his own seat again in the shadows.
Rachel picked up her book and then put it down again, having stared at the same paragraph she had just read twice without understanding it. Harriet continued to walk up and down the room. There was a light knock at the door and Mrs Heathcote came in with a paper folded once. Harriet snatched it from her and opened it, biting her lip.
‘Harriet?’
She turned to her sister and put the note in her hand.
‘Poisoned. There is nothing to be done.’
Mrs Heathcote started. Then recovered herself.
‘I’ll send David back again to wait for more news, ma’am - if there’s no message, of course.’
Harriet nodded without looking up.
‘Do, please. There is no message.’
Crowther was not sure if Michaels had sent for the Squire himself, or if the air had carried the news to him without need of human informer. Whatever way, Bridges had arrived, and having spoken to the maid now took his place in the growing dark alongside Crowther and Michaels. The air in the room was heavy and fetid, and though Crowther had flung up the window there was not enough breeze in the air to carry much relief. Cartwright was becoming delirious, calling on his wife and son, sometimes in tones of desperate loss, at others joyously as if he saw them just in front of him.
Bridges waited till Crowther had cooled his patient’s forehead and measured again the struggling pulse before taking his arm and leading him into the hall.
‘You think it is poison?’ he asked.
‘I am sure of it.’
‘Is his mind still secure? Can we find from him how this came about? Some accident, perhaps.’
‘I have given him a sleeping draught: if you wish to talk to him, do so now, then I may dose him with a more generous hand. His suffering is extreme.’
The Squire sucked his teeth and nodded. ‘Very well, very well. From where do you think the poison came?’
‘I have not yet examined the bottles or foodstuffs in the kitchen, but I suspect the aqua vitae he received from the hand of Mr Thornleigh. The maid said he took some just after Mrs Westerman and I left here. The symptoms came so hard and sudden I can think of no other cause. The lemonade we drank together was obviously not tainted. You can see that by the fact I stand here and speak to you now.’ Crowther’s whisper was harsh and violent.
‘Indeed.’ The Squire replied. ‘Unless it was only his glass that was tainted, as you put it.’
‘That we can clarify with experiment swiftly enough. Give a sample of the liquor to any dog in the street. If it does not die within the hour you may believe what you like.’
‘Very well, very well, Mr Crowther.’ The Squire put his hand on Crowther’s arm and held it for a moment as a man might steady himself on a moving ship. ‘And you maintain the nurse was murdered also.’
‘I do. Do you doubt it?’
‘It is not a matter of doubt, I simply cannot understand what is happening here. Might it be a series of unrelated, unhappy events? Might that not be the simplest of conclusions?’
‘It is unbelievable. These people have been murdered, and not by some lone thief.’
‘You point to Mr Hugh Thornleigh.’
‘If Alexander is never discovered, or found dead, then he inherits the estate! Who else stands to benefit so?’
The Squire looked at him hard in the gloom. ‘And if both brothers are removed? One by stealth and one by the law - who gains there? I would not expect
you
to be so keen to see a man hanged for the murder of one of his family.’
Crowther flushed. ‘I am not keen, as you choose to say it, to see any man hanged. But do not ask me to believe this an accident or Nurse Bray a suicide so you can keep Hugh safe!’
‘Hugh may be better than what comes after him.’
‘Even if he murders?’
‘I do not necessarily believe that a murder has been committed.’
‘Perhaps you might like to discuss that with the victim.’
Crowther pushed the bedroom door open again. Michaels had taken his place at the bed, and now moved aside to let him approach. He nodded at Crowther in such a way he suspected the conversation outside the door had not gone unheard. Bridges bent over the bed and cleared his throat.
‘Now then, Mr Cartwright, I hate to see you in such a state! What has happened here? Some mistake with the household poisons?’
Cartwright opened his eyes and the Squire recoiled slightly. The breath came in rattling gasps.
‘Water,’ he said.
Crowther filled the glass and pushed past the Squire to give him drink. Cartwright sank back, then sighing, opened his eyes again.
‘Perhaps. Yes, perhaps. We were killing mice last Sunday.’ He looked up into the Squire’s round face with desperate eyes. ‘I took water with the liquor Captain Thornleigh brought. Perhaps. Must have been so.’
The Squire rocked back on his heels with a satisfied smile and blinked innocently at Crowther. The latter said nothing, but did not trouble to hide his disdain. Joshua he would not blame. If the draper wished to believe himself a victim of accident, and that belief soothed him, then so be it.
Turning to the table, he added a few drops to the water glass from a brown bottle. A swirl of light purple sunk and spread in the water, and he offered the glass again to his patient. The eyes suddenly opened and locked onto Crowther’s face. Cartwright put up his hand and held the glass away from him, his bloody palm fixing round Crowther’s wrist with force, pulling him close to his lips. Crowther could smell death on him.
‘Tichfield. It was Tichfield Street.’
Crowther felt the blood in his brain stir. He nodded carefully to show he understood; the tension fell away from Cartwright’s limbs and his eyes closed. He let himself be fed the water, and with a slow sigh slipped under the waves of his suffering again.
The Squire stepped forward. ‘What did he say to you?’
‘Nothing but the delirium of his brain.’ Crowther did not take his eyes from Joshua’s face. ‘He will not speak again.’
It was past three in the morning when David returned to Caveley for the last time. The ladies had not gone to bed. Harriet would not give up the watch, and Rachel would not leave her. He came in without removing his cloak and handed over the paper to Harriet, but she could have guessed half of what it contained by the expression on his face. She smiled at him very sadly. He looked pale and uneasy in the candlelight.
‘Thank you, David. You have been very good. Rest now.’