Imogen Robertson - Island of Bones

‘Didn’t mean to alarm you, Mrs Westerman,’ Casper said, ‘but I’d be glad of some speech with you.’

‘Morning, Casper.’

‘Good day, youngling.’

Harriet took her arm from round her son. Casper’s bruises were rainbows of purple and yellow, and his features more drawn than when she had seen him standing by Mr Hurst’s body. ‘You are welcome to sit with us. You look weary.’

He shook his head. ‘Best I’m not seen from the house. Let me tell you a thing or two and then I’ll go about my business.’ Harriet waited, and he watched her for a moment before apparently coming to some decision in his own mind. ‘There’s a girl gone missing from the village. Agnes Kerrick is her name. I think she was taken by the men that beat me, since she came upon it. I mean to find them, and her.’

‘Do you know who they were?’

Casper nodded. ‘I’ve got an idea of two of them. I had a prowl around last night and they ain’t sleeping in their own beds no more, but I think I can rattle some words out of the mother.’

‘Do you think they have harmed this girl, then? Can you tell me their names?’

‘If they have, I shall know it. As to naming them, I’ll keep that to myself for now. I know these folk, and have my ways. I must ask your trust.’

Harriet sighed, but eventually nodded and said quietly, ‘Do you think the attack on you is connected with the murder of Mr Hurst?’

‘Can’t make sense of that,’ Casper said, scratching hard at the back of his neck. ‘The placing of that body is a pebble in my shoe. It was done by someone who knew it as a secret place, but did not know it as a place of mine. The people here know I have reason to go there often enough. The men I have my eye on for my beating know that well as anyone.’

‘So who. .?’

‘Gentry.’

Harriet was quiet for a while.

Casper sniffed. ‘I’m sure the men that beat on me made all the ruckus at the Black Pig too.’

‘From what Miriam said, it sounded as if they were looking for something,’ Harriet told him. ‘But what? Did they mean to steal money from you?’

Casper looked out on the lake. ‘How is Miss Hurst bearing up?’

Harriet told him what she could of the interview with her son listening, and of the notice in the paper. ‘Can you see any join here, Casper?’

‘Can’t say I do. Can’t say it, unless this season has made all men mad and there’s blood boiling all over. If I learn anything that touches on him, I’ll get word to you. But I’ve got to find Agnes. That’s my first thought. You look for traces of her where you go, and I’ll stretch my ears to the wind for any word of your business.’ He made to leave but Harriet put out her hand and rested it on his arm. He flinched as she did so, and she felt the tight strength of his muscles under her white fingers.

‘The Island of Bones, Casper — the skeleton. What do you know of that? Did your father ever mention-’

‘Nothing. But this I’ll say. In forty-six, Sir William set my da up with enough money to buy the Black Pig. And he was not a man who parted with his money easily.’

Harriet released him and bit her lip.

‘What can I do, Casper?’ Stephen said. ‘Shall I come with you?’

Harriet felt Casper’s eyes flick to her and back to her son.

‘Not now. Come to the cabin in an hour, and we may have words.’ He pulled something from his satchel. ‘And here’s fresh for your Mr Quince. How is he?’

‘A little better,’ Stephen said quietly.

Casper ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘Mind your ma, lad.’ Then he touched his forehead to Harriet and was gone. The trees swallowed him like light.

Harriet realised her son was looking at her. ‘Just please be careful, Stephen,’ she said softly.

Crowther was examining the third of the dozen arrows in his nephew’s quiver when he heard the door open and saw Felix in front of him. For a second they simply stared at each other, then Crowther placed the arrow on the baize of the billiard table to his right and picked up the next.

‘May I ask what you are doing, sir?’

‘I am examining your arrows, Felix, for any sign of the blood or brain matter of Mr Hurst. I would have done so last night, but feared there would be insufficient light.’

Felix made a harsh noise in his throat, somewhere between a gasp and a laugh. ‘You are being humorous, dear uncle.’

Crowther set the fourth arrow next to the third, and plucked another from the quiver. ‘I never make jokes, Felix. And if I were to do so, I should make better ones.’

Felix stepped forward to the billiard table as Crowther continued. He leaned on it in an attempt to appear at ease, but as Crowther glanced up he could see the young man’s fingers were shaking.

‘May I ask then why you think this necessary?’

‘I wish to spare Mrs Westerman the task. You knew Mr Hurst — indeed, as far as we are aware you are the only person here who did know him. Did you owe him a great deal of money?’ He looked up again, but Felix did not reply. ‘Is that why your mother dragged you across Europe to visit poor out-of-the-way Mrs Briggs whom she neither likes nor respects? And where there is one creditor, I have no doubt there are others.’ Again he gently placed the arrow down and picked up the next, bringing the point close to his light blue eyes and turning it slowly. ‘It must have been a considerable amount, for Mr Hurst to pursue you so far.’ He paused and looked more closely at the arrow’s tip, then laid it down. ‘Only dirt.’

‘Do you enjoy seeing members of your family hanged?’

Crowther lifted another arrow. ‘Have you ever seen a man hanged, Felix? From close to, I mean, not from the distant seats where it is reduced to a puppet show.’ Felix did not move. ‘I have, on those occasions when I was sent to claim the body for dissection. A horrible death: a foul sound, how the breath struggles in the throat against the rope, the jerking of the legs, the eyes distended. . Most soil themselves. No, I take no pleasure in seeing any man hanged.’

‘I did not kill Hurst. You are right, I did owe him money still. But he had debts and enemies of his own.’

Crowther turned to him. ‘If you did kill him, may I suggest you flee at once? You may have lived a life protected from the consequences of your actions up to this point, but I am afraid, Felix, our crimes catch up with us in the end, one way or another.’ He thought of his father, of himself, then he set down the last arrow. ‘No trace that I can see. Though that proves nothing.’ He tried to read his nephew’s expression, humiliation and fear badly masked. ‘If I remember correctly, you claim to be quite a shot. Perhaps as you are in such need of money, I should be careful when I am out walking.’

He stepped towards Felix, then waited for him to move aside and give him passage out of the room.

‘Perhaps you should.’ The skin around his lips was white. Crowther smiled slightly and raised his eyebrows and Felix moved aside. Crowther walked past him but, as his hand touched the door, Felix spoke again.

‘I did not kill him. I have been foolish, but I am not a murderer.’

Crowther turned back towards him. ‘You remind me so much of Lucius Adair, Felix,’ he said, and with no further explanation, left the room.

Agnes woke suddenly in the darkness and cried out, then looked about her, waiting for her heart to slow. Her hands were bound in front and her fingers were cramped and uncomfortable, but she could still grapple for the bottle at her side, and she got the neck of it to her lips without spilling any. She drank, then rested her aching head against the damp earth behind her. There was something different in the air. The indecipherable darkness that had met her at her last time of waking had given way a little and there was a scent of something other than earth. She began to shuffle forward and got to her knees. Yes, there. She had been sleeping in the blanket in some kind of deep alcove in the wall. Some old passing place of the workers perhaps, and as she crept out of it she began to see forms around her, or shadows of forms. Her eyes strained to make sense of it. She felt forward towards the place the air seemed a little brighter, keeping her shoulder to the wall.