Imogen Robertson - Island of Bones

‘I am shocked, madam!’ Sturgess said, drawing himself very straight. ‘What would your husband say if he were to know you allowed your son to run around with a person of that type?’

It would have been better for Mr Sturgess if he had simply enjoyed her discomfort and left the matter there. He had now invoked her husband, and that made her angry. Somewhere behind the white light of fury in her mind she was aware that Crowther had very slightly edged away from her.

‘Did you know my husband, sir?’ she demanded. Mr Sturgess began to look a little less sure of himself. ‘Did you serve with him? Were you acquainted in any way? You did not — yet you presume to tell me what he would think of my behaviour! It is the same arrogance which is sending you after Mr Grace, and in my experience, arrogance is seldom rewarded!’

‘Mrs Westerman, a cunning-man with your son. .’

Harriet smiled at him. ‘Get back on your horse, Mr Sturgess. My husband was once cured by a witch-doctor on one of the Polynesia Islands. He would have the greatest respect for Casper Grace.’

Mr Sturgess still managed to retain some of his air of outraged righteousness, but he did as he was ordered and climbed back onto his mount, then with a savage pull at the animal’s mouth, turned it out onto the road again.

‘Was that true, Mrs Westerman?’ Crowther murmured as they watched him retreat.

‘About James? No, though it happened to a friend of his. No, Crowther, I am afraid James would be as shocked as Mr Sturgess that I did not know what Stephen was about. But he was my husband; that would be his right. Mr Sturgess does not have it. I shall speak to Stephen later.’

Crowther offered her his arm and she took it, telling him, ‘I notice Mr Sturgess had no interest in finding Miss Hurst.’

‘He has his suspect, he has no need for the girl. Let us find her ourselves.’

The ladies were among the shade in the walks behind the church itself, hoping to find some relief from the heat. In the heavy stillness of the air it was difficult to imagine the sudden shout of rain the previous evening. Harriet saw the two women arm-in-arm and paused, and with that strange instinct humans have of sensing when they are watched, the women turned and waited for them to approach. Harriet expected to see some sign of either dread or hope on Miss Hurst’s face when she noticed them. She gave no mark of either, however; it was Miss Scales whose ruined face flitted with hope or concern.

‘Miss Hurst,’ Harriet said as she reached them. ‘This morning a man called Casper Grace brought a body to Silverside from the hills. Mr von Bolsenheim recognised it as that of your father. He is dead, I am afraid.’

The girl lowered her head and sighed, murmuring something in her own tongue that Harriet could not catch.

‘Some accident?’ Miss Scales said, clinging tightly onto her companion’s arm.

‘That seems unlikely,’ Crowther replied.

Miss Hurst looked up quickly. ‘When?’

Crowther rested his cane on the ground between them. ‘Some time yesterday before the storm, I believe.’

Miss Hurst watched Crowther for a moment, then said precisely, ‘Thank you, Mr Crowther. I also thank you for your actions this morning. You have been kind to a stranger. Heaven sees what you do.’ She turned to Miss Scales who was trembling on her arm. ‘I should like to return to my lodgings now, Miss Scales.’

‘My dear, there is no question of you returning to the Oak. You shall stay at the vicarage with my father and myself as our guest. But what are you saying, my lord? That Mr Hurst was attacked? Can there be some doubt, some mistake?’

‘I am afraid there is no mistake, Miss Scales.’

‘Oh, how very terrible. How shall we manage?’

For a moment Harriet thought that Miss Hurst was going to refuse the invitation to the vicarage, but as Miss Scales pulled a little on her arm, she yielded. Miss Scales looked very distressed, and Harriet thought she saw the younger woman pat her arm. They turned towards the back way to the vicarage. Harriet watched them go with a confused frown.

‘Miss Hurst seemed a great deal more distressed this morning when her father was only missing,’ she said. ‘Is it some trick of the national character? No screaming, no fainting, no tears. I have never seen such news being taken in a like manner. Shall we follow on, Crowther? I feel a great curiosity to know more of her father. What did she say?’

‘Indeed.’

Harriet turned towards him and saw he was looking at a granite monument before which Miss Scales and Miss Hurst had been standing. She followed his gaze and read the engraving. Julia Penhaligon, wife of William Penhaligon, Baron Keswick, died 5th January 1750 aged 41 years .

‘Your mother’s grave. I am sorry, Crowther.’

He looked at her down his long nose. ‘Why, Mrs Westerman? I do not think she hears us.’ He sighed then continued a little more easily, ‘I think we must speak to the Fraulein. I thought she looked worried rather than grieved. As to what she said, she spoke in her own language but I recognise the quotation. It was a favourite of one of my tutors in Wittenberg, from the Book of Isaiah: For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord .’

Harriet’s eyes lifted to the stirring leaves above them. ‘What might she have had in mind at that, do you suppose?’

‘I cannot say, only that the professor of whom I spoke used the phrase to remind us that God’s works were not readily understandable by men.’

‘So perhaps she finds God’s hand in this. .’

Crowther looked weary. ‘There are those, Mrs Westerman, eager to see God in everything that passes before them. I look at that wound and I see a man with a weapon in his hand and nothing holy in his mind. Shall we follow them?’

Harriet did not move. ‘Let us give them a few moments. Perhaps you might look instead at the letter from Jocasta.’

She saw Crowther frown and hurried on. ‘I wrote to her before I left Caveley and asked her to tell me what she remembered of her time here.’ She flushed faintly. ‘I did not mention it till now, as I did not know how those events might be related to the body on Saint Herbert’s Island, and I had no wish to speak of them until I thought they might be of significance.’

Crowther said coldly, ‘Mrs Bligh claims she saw a man who was not my brother standing over my father’s body and that he wore a green coat. I also told you I believe that she simply saw the first discoverer of the murder.’

‘But she did not recognise the man! Who was it that first discovered Lord Keswick?’

Crowther was silent for a moment. ‘As I recall, it was the coachman from Silverside.’

‘She would know him , surely. She must have seen him every day in the village. Had he been in service with your family long?’

‘Yes, but seeing a body might confuse any person. Certainly a young girl. Often people are wrong about what they have seen. I do not understand what you mean to accomplish by having me hear her account again.’

‘Please just let me read it, Crowther.’

He moved sharply away from her. ‘Mrs Westerman, my brother confessed! Confessed in front of the servants and the Vicar of Crosthwaite in his room at Silverside within an hour of the body being discovered. He came suddenly from London with his debts pursuing him. He had assaulted one of his most pressing creditors in the street only days before. He arranged to see my father and within hours Lord Keswick was dead. My brother was found weeping in his room with a knife in his hands, and only the actions of the servants prevented him ending his own life on the spot! He slashed Mrs Tyers’s face when she attempted to disarm him. Are those the actions of an innocent man? Your perversity is remarkable. The whole world knows my brother murdered his father, so you must believe he did not. Whatever the crimes of my father, he did not murder himself. And what has any of this to do with the body on Saint Herbert’s Island? Explain that to me! You are spinning fictions out of the air and trying to build roads between them!’