Imogen Robertson - Anatomy of Murder

Crowther lifted his cane to his eye level and blew from it some piece of dust visible only to himself before replying.

“No great importance? Indeed. Perhaps Mrs. Westerman and I will have greater success. We are recruited now to hunt out mad singers as well as murderers.” He made as if to leave, then turned back to the young man, who was looking very pale. Crowther wondered if the extreme emotions Mr. Bywater appeared to be laboring under were an example of the workings of an artistic temperament. If so, he was happy not to share it, since it seemed to be exhausting. “I am glad, Mr. Bywater, that you showed me this piece. It reminds me that what is perceived as a single creation might sometimes be the work of several hands. We have assumed that the person who put Fitzraven in the water was the same being who killed him. Perhaps that was not so, and yet another owns the enterprise that conspired to remove the man.”

Bywater looked at his feet and said sulkily, “I have heard of you as a man of science, yet you display a fertile imagination.”

Crowther rolled the head of his cane between his fingers. “Natural philosophy demands both the rigor of detailed, dull work, and the occasional flight of fancy. It is not unlike music in that way, I believe. At times your work is to stitch together the achievements of other men and lay down chords for the likes of Manzerotti to leap off and fly from, and at times you show signs of great inspiration yourself, such as in the already famous duet. It would be a depressing sort of hackwork, would it not, without those moments of blessed guidance?”

Bywater did not reply, and after observing him a few moments Crowther turned to leave Montagu House once more. The composer remained with his palm pressed to the glass of the cabinet that contained the Androkidias vase; it seemed he was trying to draw something from that ancient object into himself. Crowther would have said he had no use for talismans of that kind, but as the thought glanced over his mind he caught sight of his hand on the silver ball of his father’s cane, and was forced to smile.

Harriet had time before Crowther returned from the British Museum to write to Dr. Trevelyan with an inquiry after Theophilius Leacroft. She sent her affection to her husband at the same time and managed to write some civil replies to a number of James’s friends. Their regrets and good wishes came from all over the globe as the ripple of news-Captain Westerman’s great success, then grievous injury-unfurled through letter and word of mouth through the Service and striking at the edges of empire and exploration, began to flow back to Caveley and onto London in the form of these letters, travel-stained and smelling of salt and wood. They made the room in which she found herself seem very small.

There was a knock at the door and Rachel slipped into the room.

“Harriet? I am not disturbing you?”

Harriet shook her head and pointed to the bed, where Rachel seated herself while the last line of the latest letter was formed.

“What can I do for you, my love?” she said a little absently as she blotted her sheet and began to fold it.

“Harry, I have seen Miss Chase.”

Harriet swung round to face her sister. “What? Verity has been here? Why was she not announced? I have not seen her since we came to London.”

“She came in the back way-we talked in the kitchen.”

“Lord, I hope her father does not know. He thinks his daughter a princess. If he thought she were paying visits through the kitchen he would blow out the windows of his house with his huffing.”

“Harriet!” Rachel said very sharply. “Why must you always make fun?” Mrs. Westerman was startled into silence and looked at her sister, who was twisting her hands together in her lap, an angry flush of red on her cheeks. “Do you think of nothing but yourself? You do realize, I hope, that the living have their problems and puzzles and difficulties to deal with, as much as the dead.”

Confused, and a little cold in her stomach, Harriet began to say, “Dear girl, has Mr. Clode-”

“There-you see? You must always think yourself one step in front of us. It is not a puzzle and I have nothing to say of Mr. Clode. You are not my pattern in that way!”

“Rachel, I. .” Harriet rocked back in her chair, letting her hand fall to her side.

“Miss Chase came to talk to me because she feared Graves no longer thought of her as he once did. There seemed to be an understanding between them, but with the sudden elevation in his fortunes, his hatred of living on Lord Sussex’s money. . I came for your opinion on a matter she wanted to ask about.”

“I am sorry, Rachel.”

“It is so like you to assume! You are unfair! Mr. Clode is a man I much admire, but there is no understanding between us. Honestly, Harry, do you think he is the kind of man who would approach me, behind your back and with James in such a way?”

“Rachel. .”

“Though he will most likely never wish to be in company with me again now, when he hears of. . He is a country lawyer, his reputation must be his fortune. How could he be respected with a sister-in-law who likes nothing better than chasing corpses into the gutters of London and offending every person of rank she approaches? All the time while her husband is sick and she chases after cheap scandal in a borrowed carriage!”

Harriet’s movements became very precise, and while her sister found her handkerchief and wiped it angrily across her eyes, sealed up the letter she had been writing with infinite care.

“I am sorry if my behavior offends you, Rachel, or Mr. Clode,” she said very quietly. “But I shall not alter it.”

Rachel’s voice had grown more steady, but her tone was still insistent. “He has said nothing, how could he know? But if he did! Oh Harriet, if not for me, will you not think of your daughter? What of baby Anne? James is no longer able to grant you respectability and force people to think well of you.”

“Graves, I think, accepts what I must do.”

“Graves is an oddity in society, Harriet. He is tolerated because he controls the patronage of the Earl of Sussex’s estate. And he is a man.” Harriet flinched. Rachel closed her eyes for a long moment, then opened them again to look at her sister. Her green irises were ringed in gold: Harriet had forgotten that. Her tone when she spoke again was bitter and loaded with sorrow. Harriet had never heard it in her sister’s voice before. “Tell me, who will marry the sister or daughter of the notorious Mrs. Westerman?”

Harriet felt a cold white rage begin to build under her skin.

“Any man that wants her twenty thousand pounds will take Anne, Rachel. Just as Clode will swallow my behavior for your ten! The papers were drawn up before my husband became an imbecile. Your money is quite safe.”

Rachel went very white as if she had been struck, then drew a shuddering breath. Harriet found herself thinking of Marin’s appeal to Manzerotti in the “Yellow Rose.”

“You married for love, a respectable man. Yet you say you will give your daughter to some man who cares nothing for her reputation but wants only her money? How could any woman be happy with a man who took her on such terms? Listen to yourself, Harriet! Last summer your enemies threatened to make you an outcast and they failed. Yet in investigating another killing now you seem intent on doing their work for them. James has made his family rich, but we are not earls or barons. What is allowed to them will be marked against us. Already people talk. Are your children to be blighted before they come out of the schoolroom?”

“Blighted?” Harriet raised an eyebrow and looked into her sister’s face. She was still so young. Her face was all velvet. Her lips trembled and she held her handkerchief clasped at her chest, a pattern of feminine distress. Harriet turned back to her desk and took up her pen again. “Thank you, Rachel. I think you can have nothing further to say at the moment. I shall see you at dinner.”