Imogen Robertson - Island of Bones

Crowther sat down and drank, painfully aware he had eaten nothing since breakfast and the dinner-hour was probably already passed. Mrs Tyers sucked on her gums.

‘You may call me Lottie still, as you did in your father’s time, my lord.’ She shook her head. ‘I said a stool! Daft lass that, but good-hearted. Married my nephew and has bred him three good sons. They’ll all marry on what I’ve saved from your money. Maybe that’s why she thought your backside too good for anything but that monster, Master Charles. No doubt she’ll treat it as a holy relic now.’

Crowther smiled slightly. ‘I go by the name of Gabriel Crowther these days, Lottie.’

‘That’s your choice,’ said the old lady, raising her eyebrows and nodding at her wheel, ‘but my note was to Mr Charles. It was Mr Charles who stole Cook’s knives for his investigations, Mr Charles I clouted round the ear for it, and it is Mr Charles I shall talk to now, thank you.’

Crowther wondered if she had not so much cheated death, as given it a firm talking-to. He recognised an immovable object when he saw it though, and decided to let her call him what she would.

‘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.’