Imogen Robertson - Island of Bones

His nephew shook his head. ‘Not at all. It was exceedingly generous.’

‘Generous?’ Harriet repeated.

Felix hurried on. ‘She sent me her best wishes and said she hoped to see me during their stay. But having just come from her father. .’ He ran his hand through his hair and straightened his back. ‘Sir, the nature of my relationship with Mr Hurst altered some weeks before my mother and I left Vienna. I owed him a considerable amount, far more than I could pay, more than I knew my mother could pay, despite your generosity. He promised at that time to put off pressing for payment until I inherited if I. .’ He paused and lifted his chin. ‘In short, sir, I married his daughter. Miss Hurst is my wife. We married secretly in Vienna four months ago.’

‘That poor girl,’ Harriet said softly.

Felix flushed, but did not protest. He carried on speaking, studying the ground in front of him. ‘A few days later, my mother received an anonymous letter informing her of the marriage, and demanding I support my wife. She was very angry, and before I knew it had bundled me away up here. Mr Hurst followed us. Lord knows how he found us — bribed the servants, probably. My mother has never learned how to keep the loyalty of her household. He arrived only a few days before you did, sir, and was demanding that I acknowledge Sophia. He had the legal documents with him. I took them to your lawyer with the intention of having their validity checked, but I’m afraid my cowardice overtook me.’

‘Do you still have them?’ Crowther asked.

‘Mr Hurst waited outside Mr Leathes’ office — he did not trust me.’

‘And when you emerged, Felix?’ Harriet’s small store of sympathy for the selfish, self-deluding boy had dried up entirely.

‘I told him they were in order. I knew they were, in truth. He seemed in need of funds at once, so I told him I’d pawn my watch. I also said,’ he had the grace to lower his eyes at this point, ‘that I had hopes my long-lost uncle might advance me some money. We then arranged to meet during the garden party.’

Crowther was looking at him with disdain. ‘And what did the Vizegrafin have to say to that ?’

Felix remained staring at the ground in front of his feet. ‘She told me she was sure she could persuade you to buy him off. She said you owed her that.’

Harriet heard something behind her. Miriam was hurrying towards them from the house, calling their names.

Douglas Dodds was not a man inclined to alter a carefully planned itinerary because someone had been murdered. His business associates called him resolute. It was the word he thought of as he looked in his shaving mirror each morning. He saw his pale pink face, narrowed his pale pink eyes and called himself resolute. But he was also wise. That had been said of him too and more than once; he rejoiced in the description. At first then, when the news reached him that a gentleman had been killed in Keswick, he considered the tender feelings of his wife and daughter and wondered if they might give up viewing the terrible beauty of Borrowdale for an additional day in Ambleside, but a fellow traveller, to whom he had confided his worries, assured him that the murdered man was hardly a gentleman at all apparently, having left bad debts and a reputation for a foul temper at every coaching inn he had passed through. Knowing his own credit and manners were regarded as excellent, Mr Dodds found this reassuring. When his new acquaintance added that the man was also a foreigner, Mr Dodds’s wise fears were done away with entirely and his resolution returned. Many people, otherwise reasonable and hospitable, might find a dozen reasons to kill such a man.

As he drained his glass and called for another, and another for his good friend here, whose name he had yet to learn, Mr Dodds began to think that the killer had done a public service by removing such a sorry Island of Bones character. He found himself therefore on the following morning ordering accommodation for his family at the Royal Oak with a sanguine mind.

As the luggage was being taken down and stowed by Mr Postlethwaite’s neat-looking servants, Douglas Dodds’s feelings were soothed again by his landlord’s description of the murdered foreigner, and he agreed his death was probably due to some unpleasantness that had followed him out of Europe like a bad wind. Mr Postlethwaite then added that he had nothing against the young lady, however, who was generally liked, and carried herself almost like an Englishwoman. Mr Dodds had not heard there was a young lady in the case. On enquiry, he learned that she was now staying at the vicarage until such time as her father could be buried, and that a collection had been started in the village to provide for her travelling expenses back to her native country. Mr Postlethwaite indicated a large jar hanging in a corner of the room from a convenient beam.

‘All sorts are putting their pennies in,’ he said, and tucked his thumbs into his waistcoat. ‘Child of Nox the carpenter, who I know has fed himself on weeds more than one season, dropped a penny in there this morning.’

Mr Dodds was touched, touched and proud that even the most humble of his countrymen proved themselves such fine examples of feeling and charity. While his daughter and wife searched among the luggage for Eliza’s sketchbook, he reached into the coat pocket where he kept his travelling money, and with a significant and friendly smile to the landlord shook a guinea into his soft palm, then, with his good English chest swelling, he stepped over to the jar and dropped the coin in through the narrow neck. It landed fortunately, glittering at the edge of the jar where it would be most visible. He turned and fancied he saw shining in the face of his host a sense of satisfaction much in tune with his own.

When his little party arrived at the museum, however, the first wrinkle in the day appeared, like the lone dark cloud on the horizon just when the picnic meats are set out on the lawn. The museum was housed in a neat, two-storey building of rather more modern construction than its neighbours, with a short flight of scrubbed stone steps lifting to its front door, but the door was shut. Mr Dodds knocked. Mr Dodds received no reply. Mr Dodds was confused. The advertisements stated, and Mr Postlethwaite had confirmed, that the museum was open to the viewing gentry from ten o’clock in the morning. Mr Dodds withdrew his pocket-watch and studied it. He looked up to see the time displayed on the town clock. His watch was confirmed. The hour had struck some twenty minutes previously. He raised his fist to the street door and knocked again. Again no answer.

Eliza tripped down the stone steps and approached the window, shading her eyes with her kid-gloved hand.

‘Oh Papa, I think I see. .’ As Mr Dodds turned towards her, she screamed and stumbled back into her mother’s arms. Her sketchbook slipped. A number of her pencil drawings of the more charming ruined cottages they had encountered on their tour were in danger of getting dirty. Mr Dodds bustled down the stairs in some alarm and resolutely approached the window to see what had frightened the poor girl. On the floor, amongst the remains of a shattered display case, surrounded by glass, split wood and gleaming minerals, lay a man. His eyes were wide open, his head thrown back, his face waxen and his tongue protruding obscenely between his purple lips.

Eliza’s sketches were always to lack a view of Derwent Water. Mr Dodds was back on the road to Kendal with his women white and trembling opposite him within the hour, and he felt the wheels could not rattle along fast enough, shaking off the dust of the low murderous little town in a furious and indignant spin. The last thing he saw as he left the Royal Oak was his guinea, glinting and swinging in the jar. The sight of it caught in his mind. It was like seeing a felon justly hanged and dead suddenly look up at him and laughing, wink.