‘What of her wrists?’ he said sharply. ‘What of the rope burns on her wrists? Did that strike none of you as strange? The injury to her scalp?’
The noise in the room swelled into a roar.
‘Hear him!’
Crowther addressed the jury. ‘Was there a surgeon there when you looked at the body?’ The Coroner waved his hands at the crowd, many of whom were now standing and looming forward. Harriet saw one of the farmers she knew cross himself.
‘There was no time to bring in another surgeon, Mr Crowther, and we considered you perhaps, a little, ahem, close to the events.’
‘Damn shame!’ cried someone.
‘Sneaking business if you ask me,’ snarled another voice.
Harriet noted that Michaels made no movement to calm the crowd on this occasion.
‘Tell us of these marks! Who killed her?’ another voice demanded.
One of the jurors shuffled forward a step and said into the crowd, ‘We didn’t see her wrists - she had long sleeves on. And her hair was all tidy enough.’
‘It wasn’t when we saw it,’ Crowther said loudly. ‘I suggest you go and look again, if this inquest is not to be a complete farce.’
The juryman looked around at his fellows, and seeing them nod, asked a little shyly: ‘Perhaps you could come and show us, Mr Crowther?’
But before he could reply, the keening voice of the Coroner cut across them.
‘Enough, Edward Hedges! Your role as a juryman does not include addressing the audience gathered here.’
More mutters and low curses from the crowd. Mr Hedges turned to the Coroner with a look of outraged innocence.
‘I only said—’
‘Enough, I say! Mr Crowther, will you please sit down. The court does not recognise you.’
‘Then bugger the court!’ came a shout from the middle of the crowd. There was a laugh, and even Harriet smiled. She put out her hand and took Rachel’s, holding it firmly in her lap. The Squire took a step forward; he was very red in the face.
‘Mr Crowther! By what rights do you lecture us on our business?’
Michaels drew himself straight. Crowther turned to the Squire, and looked at him down his long nose.
‘I am trained in anatomy and natural philosophy. I may be of recent residence in this village, but I am and remain a concerned subject of the King. Any knowledge I can offer the jury is freely given. It does not seem that they have been given much assistance in their examinations.’
The crowd cheered him. The Squire looked at him for a long moment and waited till they grew quiet again; his face looked almost black, the colouring on his fleshy cheeks was so high.
‘And are those qualifications you hold in the name of Crowther, or your real name?’
Harriet looked up at him suddenly before she could control herself. Rachel’s hand trembled under her own. Crowther felt the skin on his neck grow cold. It was inevitable; he had known it must come to this. He was exposed, but he wondered if the Squire was quite the tactician he had thought. He had played his trump early. Even as he waited in those long, silent moments for the words to come to him, he wondered what the Squire feared so much that he would lay down his one good card so early.
Crowther looked about him. Michaels regarded him steadily, the various faces, young and old of the village, observed him with cautious attention.
When he was a very young child his brother would make him perform little plays with him for his father’s household. His brother had loved it, loved and hungered for the attention of those ranks of faces in front of him. He himself had always wished to shrink, would hurry through his words in an attempt to retreat to the safety of the wings, shouting out his text in a rush. His brother would put a hand on his sleeve as they rehearsed and counsel him, ‘Go quietly, brother. Make them lean forward to hear you. Command their attention, don’t bludgeon them with your speeches.’ Crowther wondered if his teaching would serve him now. He let his eyes travel slowly across the crowd then looked down at his cane. Then he spoke.
‘You force me to recall what I would choose to forget. But I shall answer you, here, and give my history. We shall let these people judge if I am fit to comment.’ The crowd seemed to whisper and sigh. ‘I was born the second son of the Baron of Keswick.’ He paused, and a baritone in the back of the room spoke distinctly.
‘A Northerner. Well, any man might wish to hide that.’
The man was shushed, though a quiet smile seemed to travel through the room like a breeze. It caught on Crowther’s thin lips and lifted them a little. Only the Squire seemed immune, his thick frame tense and held solid. Harriet looked across to where Hugh and Wicksteed were sitting. Hugh was looking at his shoes, but Wicksteed had turned and was watching with an expression of polite amusement. The smile left Crowther’s face and he looked down at the dusty grey flags at his feet as he continued.
‘My father was murdered almost twenty years ago, and my brother hanged for the crime.’
He remembered Harriet’s performance at the last inquest, her fluttering modesty that had called up all the protective instincts of the village. He kept his eyes low and his voice soft. He could feel the crowd straining forward towards him. You were right, brother, he thought.
‘I did not wish the title, so renounced it and have since devoted my time to study throughout the intervening years. I have hidden from the past in my books and in the society of the most learned of men. I have come to know many mysteries of the human body, which is a miracle we each carry with us every day. If I can add but a little to our knowledge of ourselves I will die a happy man.’ He could feel the warmth of sympathy in the room. How people love a good tragedy, he thought. Pity and fear ebbed round him, warm waters in which to drown. ‘Crowther is a name from my mother’s family. I have every right to it. Legal
and
moral.’ He lifted his eyes, and let his voice take on its usual dry edge. ‘But whatever my name or your . . .’ he paused . . . ‘insinuations, tell me what they have to do with the fact that Nurse Bray was tied around the wrists and hit over the skull before she was hanged.’
He let his voice grow in volume and pitch; it lifted the crowd to an outraged howl of agreement. The attention of the room, hostile and indigant, turned to the Squire. He was still too angry to feel the mood of the room, and sneered.
‘Perhaps your experiences have clouded your mind, Mr Crowther. Given such a pitiable past, you could be forgiven for seeing murder everywhere.’
Crowther felt a spasm of tiredness and irritation. Damn these people. He wanted only to leave here and be among strangers again. The crowd looked at him, wavering. Harriet put down her sister’s hand and stood.
‘And mine, Mr Bridges? What experiences have clouded
my
mind? I saw the same marks as Mr Crowther described.’ She felt herself blush. ‘And, sir, I think it a shabby thing to force a man to admit his tragedies in public. If Mr Crowther wished to keep his past confidential,’ she paused, ‘well, he has the same right to his privacy as any freeborn Englishman!’
The noise in the room broke and swelled in approval. Even the Squire could feel the push of it against his sides, and began to look about him, realising too late perhaps that he had misplayed the business.
Michaels leaned back comfortably against the wall with a small smile.
‘Go and look at the nurse again!’ Harriet saw out of the corner of her eye Hannah cup her hands to her mouth.
‘Justice! In the name of the King!’ shouted others.
The Coroner waved his hand despairingly, trying to make himself heard over the noise.
‘Please, please! If we could just take our seats.’ He turned towards where Hugh Thornleigh was sitting. ‘Mr Thornleigh, you were there when the body was found, I believe: did you see these marks?’ The crowd became suddenly quiet again. It seemed as if every individual in the room had inhaled and now waited for him to speak. Thornleigh did not stand, and seemed to address his words to his boots.
‘Yes, I cut her down. Can’t say if they are ropemarks. But I saw marks there, true enough.’
The crowd groaned and shouted. The Squire turned white and span on his heel, storming out of the room. The shouts grew again, and a low hissing began to circulate under it around the room. Wicksteed put a hand over his mouth as a man might, trying to hide a laugh. The Coroner trembled, his voice shivering and high.
‘This is unacceptable! I cannot run the court in this way! The sitting is suspended. I will return in one week’s time.’
‘Don’t bother, lickspittle,’ said the voice at the back.
The Coroner gathered his papers and scuttled out of the room in the wake of the Squire, leaving his jury open-mouthed and directionless behind him. Rachel felt a hand tug gently at her sleeve, and looked into little Jack’s white face.
‘Am I not to testify? Mr Thornleigh said I was to testify.’
Rachel heard the crowd rock and exclaim around them.
‘No, Jack. Not today, I think.’
IV.8
‘
W
ELL, THAT WAS exciting,’ Rachel said dryly as the room began to empty. Harriet patted her hand, then turned to look a little nervously at Crowther. Now that the passion had left him he looked very grey and older than she had seen him before. His head was bent forward a little, his hands clasped on top of his cane. It was an elegant piece of work, the wood black and heavy, its head, half-covered by Crowther’s thin fingers, a ball of worked silver.
‘I have not seen you use a cane before.’
He did not look at her.
‘I am at a delicate age, Mrs Westerman. One night’s loss of rest can make me an old man.’
‘You are not so very old.’
There was a flash of a smile in her voice; he looked up at her and she was sorry to see his face looking dry and bitter.
‘Indeed, madam? I am so glad you think so.’
The tone was hostile enough to make her blush and look away, but before more could be said, Michaels strode back into the room and spoke.
‘His hand has been forced. He’s just arrested Hugh for the murder of Joshua Cartwright.’
Rachel put her hand to her face and Harriet stood quickly.
‘Here? Now?’
Michaels nodded. ‘The Squire said he has taken evidence from the vicar and Hannah, though it’s been done informally as yet, and has told him he is to remain at home. Probably in the hopes he’ll put a bullet in his brain and spare us the trial. He may do as well, if I know Thornleigh. Innocent or not.’
Crowther still had not altered his posture but spoke. ‘Perhaps that would be as well.’
Harriet felt the blood rise in her throat, and she turned on him sharply.
‘Really? Perhaps the Squire was right and your secret past . . .’ she put enough emphasis on ‘secret’ to make him wince, ‘has made you a lover of neat endings. I am surprised your researches have led you where they have, if you value neatness above truth.’ She felt suddenly the cruelty in her own words and put her hand to her eyes. ‘This is not right. We must think further, and quickly. Please, let us go somewhere we can talk freely.’
She saw he was become a little grey around the lips, and a panic that she had torn down in an instant whatever trust and companionship that existed between them pricked at her skin, making it hot and angry. She felt tears rise behind her eyes. ‘Oh, how can you just sit there?’
He did not look at her; only the tight, thin lips moved.
‘You seem capable of talking freely enough here, Mrs Westerman.’
She bit her lip and her words deserted her. Instead, she looked at him for a long moment, then turned with a groan that could have been frustration or grief and got up to leave the room, the need for movement too urgent to resist. Rachel stood to follow her, then hesitated and took a breath.
‘Mr Crowther. I do not think Mr Thornleigh is responsible for any of these deaths. You yourself have suggested other scenarios . . .’
Crowther met her eyes, his own heavily lidded, a slight sneer on his lips. ‘Perhaps my solitude has made my imagination fantastical.’
She continued to look at him. ‘Please help us.’
He returned his gaze to the silver mass of fruit and vines that formed the head of his cane, wondering what gods had prompted him to bring it with him this afternoon. It was the one thing he still possessed that had belonged to his father. Rachel too waited a moment, staring at his sharp profile, then realising she would get no answer either, turned and followed her sister, her pace more respectable, her shoulders drooping. Michaels spread his hands in front of him and picked at something lodged under the nail of his right thumb.
‘Terrible creatures, ain’t they, Mr Crowther - other people . . .’
Crowther stood and left with a steady stride. Outside, men and women paused in their various conversations to look at him. He walked on.
Graves was surprised to find how close they were to Leicester Fields. He was uncertain if Mr Chase wished to be accompanied any further, since he had set off at his usual punishing pace, but Graves still had his half-story of Alexander turning in his mind, and hoped to learn more, whatever Mr Chase had said about his further ignorance.