Imogen Robertson - Island of Bones

‘Casper been here, you think?’ his wife said.

‘Maybe, maybe.’ He scratched his nose. ‘Let’s keep it close, Issy. No need to mention it, I’d say.’

She took the shilling from his hand. ‘No need at all, Tom.’

Harriet left the breakfast table before either Felix or the Vizegrafin had made an appearance, and went to join Crowther in the old brew house. She found him stitching up the torso of Mr Hurst, and was reminded of the sailors mending the sails. He shared their combination of concentration and practised ease. He looked up at her.

‘Is it morning?’

‘There are windows, Crowther. How could you not notice?’ She picked up the lamp from the table and blew out the candle. Crowther paused only to note that the light of the room did not alter considerably, and returned to his stitching. Realising that Crowther did not think the question merited a reply, she asked another.

‘What did you learn from the body? I note you have not opened the skull.’

He cut his thread, and returned needle and scissors to the leather roll.

‘I thought the coroner’s men had better see the wound as it is first,’ he said. ‘Any word on when the inquest is to be held?’ After she shook her head he lifted the sheet from where it lay over Mr Hurst’s waist and drew it up over his face. ‘Sturgess is taking his time about arranging it.’

‘He is too busy chasing Casper around the hills, I imagine.’ She leaned against the trestle table on the left of the space, then realised that on it lay the coffin and boiled bones of the Jacobite and straightened up again rather smartly. She was irritated to see that Crowther had noticed.

‘I can tell you that Mr Hurst was not an entirely vigorous specimen. His liver was rather engorged and his heart clogged and fatty. If he came here to walk the hills, it would probably have killed him as neatly as that arrow did.’

‘You are certain it was an arrow then?’

Crowther shrugged on his coat and smoothed down his sleeves. ‘Something very like an arrow was driven into his brain from a low angle with considerable force. You know I am seldom certain of anything, Mrs Westerman, but I present my evidence.’ He picked up a saucer from the table behind him. Harriet registered, rather uneasily, that the pattern was that of Mrs Briggs’s breakfast china. On it lay a wooden splinter, some two inches in length and rather black. She looked up at him with her eyebrows raised. ‘I removed it from the brain. The incline of the wound shows it was driven upwards.’

‘Not fired from a distance then, if it was an arrow.’

‘I can think of no scenario where firing from a distance would have caused this injury.’ He paused, and only continued when she had nodded. ‘I have taken a number of measurements. The puncture is roughly three inches in depth. Death would have been immediate.’

‘How did you manage. .?’

He smiled and produced a folded paper from his pocket. Within were three quills, blunt at the end. At a point about three inches along each was nicked. Harriet was delighted. ‘What an excellent idea! You introduced the quill into the wound. .’

‘And when I felt the resistance of uninjured matter, made a nick with the scalpel on the shaft. It also confirmed the angle. The results are consistent. I would also say that as far as I am able to tell, the wound does not narrow.’

‘I supposed a thin stick of any sort, or the narrow end of a billiard cue. .’

Crowther shook his head. ‘Given the force required, I would think an unworked branch thin enough to match the wound would have shattered, and a billiard cue would have left a wider wound, do you not think? Aside from the fact one is more likely to have an arrow to hand in the woods close to where an archery competition is in progress, than a billiard cue.’

Harriet shrugged, conceding the point, but only to a degree. ‘What if he were murdered elsewhere then transported some distance to his burial site. You have noted he did not seem the type to go traipsing in the fields for pleasure.’ Crowther smiled slightly and Harriet found herself doing so in reply. ‘Crowther, what else? And can you also explain to me how you seem so much more improved in spirits when you have spent all night with a corpse rather than when you actually sleep?’

‘To the latter I can say nothing. To the rest, look at his shoes.’ Harriet turned to the neat pile of clothing behind her and lifted the shoes. Leather, rather soft, and with large buckles on them. Shoes more appropriate for a drawing room than a country lane. They were dusty though around the toes, as they would become were a man walking on dry paths, and the heels scuffed. Dragged a little way, having walked.

‘I see,’ she said simply. Crowther seemed pleased with his night’s work, but for all that she could not feel they had advanced greatly. She thought of the argument she had heard in the library the night before, and twisted her mourning ring.

She was still considering the matter when they emerged from the old brew house. Crowther turned to secure the lock, so it was Harriet who first noticed Felix standing a little way away on the lawn and waiting for them. As Felix stepped forward, he did not have any of his usual ease and he seemed unsure what to do with his hands. Crowther leaned on his cane and waited for him to approach them, but though Felix looked as if he wished to speak, Harriet spoke before he could begin.

‘How were the Falls by moonlight, Felix?’

He blushed. ‘I spent the evening at the Black Pig, Mrs Westerman. I was considering what I should do, and wished to do so away from my-away from Silverside.’

But Crowther, it appeared, was uninterested. ‘When did you last see Mr Hurst, Felix? Do try and be exact.’

Felix opened and closed his mouth. ‘I have come here to be as frank with you as I may, and against my mother’s wishes, so I shall be as exact as I can, sir. It was during the garden party. I left for a few minutes to speak to Mr Hurst before the archery competition. I had arranged to meet him on the path above Silverside at about that time.’

Crowther studied his nephew carefully. ‘To give him the money that you had received from selling your watch.’

‘Yes indeed, but how did you know?’ Felix looked afraid. Harriet stepped forward and placed the watch into his hand. However much he had frightened her, she could not help feeling a little sorry for him now.

‘Tell us exactly what passed between you,’ Crowther said.

‘I gave him the money, and told him it was all I had. Then he laughed at me. He liked laughing at me. I had played cards at his house for some months, and he enjoyed telling me how much he had despised me the whole time.’

‘He was not angry?’ Harriet queried. ‘He had had a long journey from Vienna to Keswick for three pounds!’

‘I expected him to be so, but no. He had been pressing since his arrival in the village, for a greater sum, but then it was as if he did not care, or was suddenly content to wait until I. .’

‘Inherited?’ Crowther said icily. ‘And exactly how much of my fortune have you spent already?’

Harriet interrupted. ‘You were humiliated by him then. Angry enough to kill him?’

‘I was, but I did not. I left him enjoying my dismay and returned to the party for the competition.’

‘At which you performed badly, as I recall,’ Crowther said. It was interesting, Harriet thought, that he had bothered to observe his nephew’s performance at all.

Felix went rather red. ‘I was not myself. I went onto the jetty to try and calm myself, then Mr Quince appeared at my side with a message from Mr Hurst’s daughter. Then I. . It was unforgivable, Mrs Westerman.’

‘Was there something offensive in the message?’ Crowther asked.