Imogen Robertson - Anatomy of Murder

Without standing, Harriet crossed her thumbs, trying a stranglehold in the air. Crowther set his cane aside long enough to lift his own hands, curled, in front of his throat as if to resist a throttling ghost. Harriet nodded and sighed and touched the hair at the nape of her neck.

Crowther continued: “I believe that later that day, one of Fitzraven’s associates in the pay of the French came to see him and, finding him dead and fearing Fitzraven’s death might expose him to more scrutiny than he wished, he cleared the place of anything that might implicate him, and disposed of his body-hoping for the case of a disappearance rather than a murder.”

“Very well,” said Harriet, returning her chin to her palm and beginning to rap at her skirts with her free hand. “So why not just be still thereafter? Why the murders of Bywater and Miss Marin?”

He looked at her silently, and watched as a light of comprehension crossed her face, and, crashing after it like wind behind the rain, a sort of horror that dulled her green eyes. She sat up straight.

“Oh, Crowther! Did we cause this by our involvement?”

“I do not know, Mrs. Westerman. But suppose you are the man who disposed of Fitzraven and you see that the investigation into his death is pointing toward Mr. Bywater. Further suppose that you suspect that Miss Marin knows something more than she should of your activities. I would not be at all surprised if Miss Marin, in her rather distracted state after her visit to Mr. Leacroft, betrayed both facts, unwittingly or not, to those who might have been watching her. .”

Harriet spoke slowly, letting the thoughts unfurl even as they moved across her lips into the receiving air between them. “You decide it is safer for your enterprise that Bywater should kill himself rather than be subject to arrest and trial, and arrange it so. An admission of guilt, and no living man to say that he neither disposed of the body nor took anything from Fitzraven’s room.”

Crowther began to spin the cane again; it gave a soft regular thrupp across the fibers. He carried on her thought as if it had been his own. “In the process, you learn that Miss Marin has arranged to meet him in the scene room.”

“The second bird flies into your hand.”

“Indeed, Mrs. Westerman. And we see how readily the law, at least in the figure of Mr. Justice Pither, is convinced everything is neatly tied.”

Harriet stood and walked over to the window, where the daylight was already beginning to weaken. She wrapped her arms around herself and swung from side to side. A neat little curricle went barreling past, containing a party of young people laughing and urging the flush-faced young man driving to increase his speed.

“Crowther, this is a bold and bloody mind! Is Carmichael man enough to do such a thing?”

“Perhaps, but I have always thought him a sneaking sort of beast-one well-versed in secrecy and covert business-but this smacks of a decisive forward stepping intelligence I do not see in him. Am I right in assuming you think Harwood guilty of no more than a sharp nose for business?”

“That is so. His distress last night was palpable. I believe he loves his opera house. Beyond his human sympathy for Miss Marin and Bywater, I think the scandal washing over his place of business was horrible to him.”

“I would agree, so I must look around the place for another figure of authority, a man ready with his knife. .”

The door swung suddenly open and Stephen stumbled into the room, followed by Lady Susan, who was laughing and telling him to wait. Harriet turned around with a frown.

“What is it, young man?”

“Sorry, Mama. I just had to say, I sang Papa’s tune to Susan and she knows what it is.”

Harriet sighed and smiling, turned to Crowther. “Forgive me, Crowther. James was troubled by a returning melody this morning during our visit. Perhaps knowing the name of it will give him some relief.” Then, getting up from her seat and crouching to be on a level with Stephen, she prompted, “Tell me then, my dear.”

It was Susan who answered. “It’s just funny, Mrs. Westerman, because it is the same tune that Mr. Crowther sent over very early this morning on the scrap of paper. It is ‘Sia fatta la pace,’ Manzerotti’s favorite aria.”

Crowther’s cane came to a sudden stop. “I sent some of the manuscript from Lord Carmichael’s study, but it was untitled. Is that what it is, Lady Susan?”

“Yes, sir. But Mrs. Westerman, I am surprised you did not know it yourself when the captain sang it to you. Did you not hear it last night? It is his last aria.”

Harriet swallowed and answered calmly, “There was no third act last night, Susan.”

The young girl blushed and looked down. “Of course-Miss Marin. I am stupid-I forgot. She was so lovely.”

Crowther stood and walked over to her, setting his cane very firmly in the space between them. “Lady Susan, can you explain to me exactly to what degree are the aria and the man interlinked.”

Susan considered carefully. “As near as they can be, sir. I do not think anyone who knows any music thinks of Manzerotti without hearing that tune, and no one hears that tune without thinking of Manzerotti. It has been popular here some time, and always with the notation that it is as sung by him.”

She looked nervous. “Did we do right to come and tell you?”

Harriet put out her arms and hugged both the children to her, briefly and fiercely.

“Very right,” she said. “Very right.”

They had neither of them noticed that Susan was carrying a neat roll of papers in her hand.

“Oh, and here,” she said, holding them out with a slight blush of pleasure. “Mr. Crumley and I have finished the pictures.”

As soon as the children had been sent back out of the library, Harriet stumbled through a more detailed account of that morning’s visit with James and his play with the boat.

“The song came to him as he spoke about the Frenchman in the sick bay. He said. . he said. . Oh, Crowther, I think my husband may have tortured that man to get that song from him!”

Crowther did not look at her. “It was a hard engagement, I think, was it not?”

When Crowther looked up he saw there were tears in her eyes and she was biting her lip. “Indeed, the French captain struck their colors, then fired again. Only when he was killed did they surrender. When James’s first lieutenant spoke to me, he was still so enraged by it he shook.” She was looking at him with a desperate sort of appeal in her eyes. Crowther would have been glad to tell her he thought it impossible that James would have resorted to abusing a prisoner in his care, that whatever the battle or the stakes involved he would have behaved righteously, but though he hardly knew Captain Westerman at all, he knew something of men. He offered her the only comfort he could.

“I am sure Captain Westerman thought only to serve his country.”

Harriet choked slightly and put her hand over her mouth.

“Mrs. Westerman, we must make use of these pictures.”

Jocasta liked the look of Proctor as soon as she laid eyes on him. He was taking shelter from the weather in a lean-to close to the Stairs, smoking his pipe with concentration and knocking the ashes out on his stool from time to time as they approached. He saw them coming and kept them under steady observation, then, having heard all they were ready to say, called out to a much younger man who was still jostling for trade across the river farther down the Stairs.

He asked them to repeat what they had just said in the younger man’s hearing. They did so. Then he stroked at his massive beard a while, ending by giving it a good hard tug as if his hand was trying to pull his mouth open and get the words out by main force.