Imogen Robertson - Anatomy of Murder

She was beginning to plot through her tears a series of letters both to the opera house itself and all the newspapers, when Harriet felt compelled to stop her, partly to save her own sanity, and partly because she could see Crowther was starting to enjoy the display of a certain sort of feminine stupidity, and she found his amusement intensely irritating.

“Mrs. Girdle, may we see Mr. Fitzraven’s rooms?” The torrent of words stopped abruptly and Mrs. Girdle examined her suspiciously with red-rimmed eyes.

“If there is anything of value there, it is mine by rights. If I can’t get another lodger into those rooms straightaway, I’ll have troubles.”

“We wish to find who killed him, madam,” said Crowther mildly. “We have no interest in robbing his estate.”

“Some jealous musician! I know it! Oh, he was modest, and a circumspect man, but I could tell he’d been betrayed and disappointed in his trusts.” She blinked at Harriet. “I could tell, madam, having been so often myself disappointed by my fellow creatures. Oh, the stories he could tell of that place, of His Majesty’s! The rivalries! The intrigues!” Her voice had taken on a conspiratorial hush.

“What manner of stories, Mrs. Girdle?” Crowther adopted a slightly skeptical smile. “You would be acting as an agent of justice, you know, if you were to tell us them now.”

The landlady flushed a little and lifted her chin so high it seemed it might escape being swallowed in her collar, after all.

“Oh, dear Mr. Fitzraven was far too discreet a gentleman to say anything very specific, even to me, sir. But it was the tone in which he spoke of the opera, Harwood and Manzerotti and the pretty French girl and them all. The disgraceful behavior he saw there, again and again! I am sure there came a point when he could take no more, made his stand and was cut down for it. I said to him once-he was sitting just where you are now, madam-‘You know things, don’t you, dear Fitz’-that was my name for him-and he nodded and said, ‘Dear Mrs. G., things that would turn your hair white !’

“However,” the lady continued, drawing herself upright and cocking her head to see the effect her revelations were having on her guests, “if you wish to see the room I have no objection. I hold the key to every door. It is a condition of tenancy. This is a respectable house.” Standing up, she went to a bureau squeezed awkwardly into a corner next to the wall and opened a drawer. She moved like a bad actress playing Queen Elizabeth; she was too self-conscious to manage the rather grand effect she attempted. Her guests also stood and she passed them a small sparkling brass key with studied condescension. It appeared that having experimented with horror, and found no echo, she would now attempt dignity. “There. First door on the top of the second flight. You can find your own way.”

Crowther bowed, and was rewarded with a faint wave of her hand.

Harriet had paused on the first landing to glance at the length of the passageway and count the doors that led off it, then moved aside for a flat-faced serving girl to pass her on the stairs, so Crowther had already opened the door to Fitzraven’s room before she joined him at the top of the second flight. He had pushed the door ajar to give a full view of the apartment, but not yet entered it. She was about to pass by him when he stopped her.

“Wait, Mrs. Westerman.” She frowned, then, following the direction of his eyes, gave the room her full attention from their current vantage point.

The room was orderly enough and had little in it that was not plain, functional or both. It seemed the apartment was made up of two chambers. In the original conception of the architect it had been designed as a single space, but wooden shutters now divided it into this parlor room and, presumably, a bedchamber beyond. The ceiling was low, but there was a window looking out to the back of the house that provided some light, and under it sat a writing desk that seemed rather messier than the rest of the room. It did not take Harriet long to see why Crowther had stopped her. The chair that served the writing table had been overturned and lay on its side, a number of newspaper pages scattered around it.

“A sign of an altercation, you think, Crowther?” she said.

“It appears so.”

“May we conclude that Mr. Fitzraven was murdered here?”

“Conclusions of any sort are a little previous at this point,” he replied, “but possibly. Is there not something unusual about the way the armchairs are arranged?”

Harriet walked into the room, the full skirts of her dress washing over the bare floorboards. If she had had the business of arranging the furniture, the chairs would have been farther forward, and closer, so that two people taking their ease there could enjoy each other and the fire. Here, however, the armchairs stood either side of the fireplace, facing out into the room like the porcelain spaniels that framed the mantelpiece of Lady Susan’s modest bedroom in Berkeley Square. Behind the legs of the armchair nearest to the writing desk, a sheet of the Daily Advertiser had been curled and crumpled.

“They have been moved backward, I think,” Harriet said, then turned toward the prints on the mantelpiece above the fire.

Crowther went to the writing desk. A large leather volume sat open at its center, and whatever disturbance had turned the chair on its back and scattered the newsprint to the floor, it had been insufficient to move it. Crowther peered down. It was a book of cuttings. He noticed a little pair of scissors lying next to it, the sort most commonly found in a woman’s sewing basket, and a glue pot. The open page was filled with an advertisement similar to that which Crowther had seen outside His Majesty’s Theatre for the performance of the previous night, neatly glued and placed squarely in the middle of the sheet. He picked up the book in his arms and turned over the pages.

Most of the sections of newsprint Fitzraven had decided to preserve were of a similar nature; advertisements and reviews of the offerings of the opera house from winter 1778 to the current day. Crowther imagined that Fitzraven himself must have been the author of several of them, and having read a few words thought his literary style had little to recommend it but enthusiasm. Other paragraphs had been judged worthy for inclusion. Crowther found himself reading an announcement that Razini had arrived with his companions in the city on 25 October 1779, and that his performance in the opera seria Demofoonte was awaited with much delight. There was also a portrait of Miss Marin. It was perhaps a little idealized, but still very like her. Under it, a neat hand had written December 3rd 1780, and added an exclamation point.

Flicking over another page, Crowther found a series of letters from the pages of the Mercury Post that debated the arrangement of private boxes in the theater and the relative merits and demerits of the old and new systems. Crowther turned again to the last few pages that Fitzraven had reached. There was a paragraph on a private concert Manzerotti had given at the Duke of Cumberland’s house the previous week, and on the page before, an article detailing some entertainment of the upper classes in St. James’s. Crowther could see no obvious connection to the opera until he noticed Miss Marin’s name as an attendee in the final line. He noted with a sneer that Lord Carmichael’s name was also mentioned.

He looked up from his study and out into Mrs. Girdle’s yard, thinking of the man who had stared out of this window only two days before. It took him a moment to realize, as he saw the body and the marks made on it again in his mind’s eye, that he was in truth staring up and across the yard into the windows of the house opposite and into the moon face of a young woman. Seeing that she had been noticed in her observation of him, she started and disappeared into the depths of the house again. Crowther frowned. How could the citizens of London murder one another without being seen? This house itself was full of people, and when one enjoyed the daylight available from the windows, one must also expose oneself and one’s business to the citizenry. He thought of his collection of anatomical specimens in his house in Hartswood, each body part delicately prepared for public display so strangers such as himself could peer through the glass and conjecture on the form and play of muscles, on the variety, invention and cruelty of nature. Crowther himself was a private man, and the idea of being so constantly under the eyes of strangers made him shiver.