Imogen Robertson - Island of Bones

He nodded and put his hand to his chin. ‘Thank you. First I must apologise for my junior partner. I suspect that he was uncivil. He knows nothing of the business of the advertisement and is inclined to resent it. As soon as I heard of the matter, I at once visited the personage concerned to see how far he was happy for us to take you into our confidence. Having done so yesterday evening, I came to you as quickly as I might.’

‘You know, Mr Hudson,’ Crowther said, leaning on his cane, ‘that there has been another death. Mr Askew, the owner of the museum in this town, was found strangled this morning. It may be that whoever killed Hurst, killed Askew also. If you can tell us anything that might bring that man to justice. .’

Mr Hudson kept his chin buried in his chest. ‘I am aware. Remember I came from Silverside. I knew Mr Askew and admired his energy, though how his death is connected to this matter, I cannot say. I must tell you a story. .’

‘You have our attention, sir,’ Harriet said.

‘Yes, yes. The natural son of Viscount Moreland was travelling in Europe some years ago. He was a pleasant boy, but the man who had been paid to take care of him and guide him in his steps was taken ill in Vienna.’

‘Vienna?’ Harriet repeated. ‘It is my understanding that Mr Hurst was a native of that city.’

Mr White nodded as if this had confirmed some thought of his own, and continued, ‘The young man’s tutor was confined to his rooms some weeks, and in that time his charge managed to lose a great deal of money at a card game held in a house off Rabensteig near St Rupert’s Church.’

‘How much?’ Crowther asked. He had seen such things occur during his own years on the continent. Young men caught by smooth-talking strangers in foreign cities.

The lawyer looked almost tearful. ‘It was a disaster. The boy’s tutor was trusted by the family, and was charged with buying a wide variety of art and sculpture for their country house. He had therefore the letters necessary to draw on a small fortune from the bankers. His charge took those letters and drew on those funds to maintain his place at the table.’

Crowther noticed Harriet had become very quiet, and wondered if she were thinking of her own son, if he could be caught in such a way.

Mr Hudson carried on: ‘The boy was distraught and took it upon himself, far too late, to find out something more about the reputation of the men to whom he had lost his father’s money. He became convinced that the game had been crooked, and went to tell them so. He was challenged, and felt himself compelled to face the challenge. Even then he might have been saved if he had spoken to his tutor, but he was stubborn as young men are, and set out to prove his honour with pistols.’

Crowther studied the canaries in Mr Leathes’ aviary, such small lives in their pretty plumage. He remembered bending over one tiny corpse, Mr Leathes guiding his hand as he made his first cut with a borrowed blade. ‘He was killed by his opponent, I presume.’

‘Murdered, sir,’ Mr Hudson said. ‘Murdered as certainly as poor Mr Askew. The devil he fought was a grown man. A man who had done military service. The boy was only eighteen and had never fired a gun other than in sport. His opponent could have shot wide but he shot to kill. I am sure he did so in order to escape with the money he had so dishonestly won. I call that murder, sir. As does the boy’s father. The first the tutor knew of the business was when the body was returned to the lodging-house in a hired cab.’

Harriet worked her fingers into the brass wire of the aviary. ‘And what became of the man who murdered him?’

‘He fled with the money he had won, and we have had no trace of him since. Inquiries were made, naturally. We found something of the man’s past, offered rewards for information leading to his discovery, but the moment he rode away from the scene of the duel, he disappeared. We let it be known in every large town in Europe that we were seeking him in the hopes that he would find himself among people who knew him under the name he used in Vienna. Men do not change. I was certain he would find himself among the card tables again. For five years I have had a stream of correspondence across my desk from Paris, Rome, as far away as Moscow. Every similar scandal, any resemblance, any hint of a name. Each I have pursued to the best of my ability, and each time, whatever iniquity I discovered, there was no trace of the man I searched for.’

Crowther was still watching the birds whistling in their few square feet of comfortable captivity. ‘What became of the tutor, Mr Hudson?’

The lawyer was silent for a moment, as if he needed to compose himself before speaking. ‘The tutor was my own son. He did not forgive himself and would never accept that the fault was not his. He felt he had failed, and dishonoured me. He took a commission with the Sixteenth, and was killed in seventy-nine during the shelling of Fort New Richmond at the Mississippi River.’

‘My condolences,’ Harriet said quietly.

Crowther looked at the lawyer and said, ‘You were advertising for Mr Hurst because he wrote to you offering you information about your fugitive.’

Hudson unfolded a letter from his pocket and passed it to Mrs Westerman, who released her grip on the aviary to take it.

I know where the man who shot the boy is. He is hiding in plain sight. I shall be waiting to hear from you at the Seven Bells in Cockermouth on the evening of Monday, 14th July and am ready to give you his current name and address when I have bills in my hand for?100. Gottfried Hurst .

Harriet looked up from the paper. It was quite plain, no return address, no date. It seemed Mr Hurst had decided not to use one of the sheets printed with the Royal Oak name that Mr Postlethwaite provided. ‘A considerable sum. You kept the appointment, Mr Hudson?’

‘Naturally. My client sent the letter to me as soon as he received it. I remained in the taproom of the Seven Bells from five o’clock in the afternoon until midnight, with the money ready. No one came.’ His voice sounded hollow. Harriet thought of him during his vigil, the hope that his search might be ending, and his growing disappointment.

‘Why did you think the appointment was not kept, Mr Hudson?’ she asked.

‘I hoped, Mrs Westerman, that he had only been delayed by some accident or inconvenience. I feared that he had been offered more money to stay away. By my advertisement I hoped to encourage him to believe he might ask for more. Even if the man I seek had fled, his trail might still reek enough to follow it. But I had no idea where Mr Hurst was precisely, so no idea where to begin until I heard from my partner where you were staying. Then I realised that Mr Hurst’s information must be good.’

‘How so, Mr Hudson?’ Harriet asked.

‘I had no success in tracing the man’s movements after he murdered the young gentleman, but I had some in finding out about his past. The name he used in Vienna was von Lowenstein, but he was born Grenville de Beaufoy, only son of the last Lord Greta.’

Agnes’s fingers touched something. Smooth, worked wood. She tried to pick it up, only to find it resisted. It had been driven into the soil, even after all this distance. It would have gone through her head and dropped her like a stone. She eased it out of the ground. That it had been meant to kill her was no fault of the arrow, and she had better plans for it now. She turned round very carefully and reached out her right hand to the wall. Good. The arrow she slipped into the waist of her skirt at the back to leave her left hand free. She began to sweep it back and forth as before as she crawled back towards the barricade, but this time she paused more often, plucking loose splinters and sticks from among the stones and stuffing them into her pockets.