Imogen Robertson - Instruments of Darkness

The coroner waved his hand despairingly, trying to make himself heard over the noise.

“Please, please! If we could just take our seats.” He turned toward where Hugh Thornleigh was sitting. “Mr. Thornleigh, you were there when the body was found, I believe: did you see these marks?” The crowd became suddenly quiet again. It seemed as if every individual in the room had inhaled and now waited for him to speak. Thornleigh did not stand, and seemed to address his words to his boots.

“Yes, I cut her down. Can’t say if they are rope marks. But I saw marks there, true enough.”

The crowd groaned and shouted. The squire turned white and spun on his heel, storming out of the room. The shouts grew again, and a low hissing began to circulate under it around the room. Wicksteed put a hand over his mouth as a man might do trying to hide a laugh. The coroner trembled, his voice shivering and high.

“This is unacceptable! I cannot run the court in this way! The sitting is suspended. I will return in one week’s time.”

“Don’t bother, lickspittle,” said the voice at the back.

The coroner gathered his papers and scuttled out of the room in the wake of the squire, leaving his jury open-mouthed and directionless behind him. Rachel felt a hand tug gently at her sleeve, and looked into little Jack’s white face.

“Am I not to testify? Mr. Thornleigh said I was to testify.”

Rachel heard the crowd rock and exclaim around them.

“No, Jack. Not today, I think.”

“Well, that was exciting,” Rachel said dryly as the room began to empty. Harriet patted her hand, then turned to look a little nervously at Crowther. Now that the passion had left him he looked very gray and older than she had seen him before. His head was bent forward a little, his hands clasped on top of his cane. It was an elegant piece of work, the wood black and heavy, its head, half-covered by Crowther’s thin fingers, a ball of worked silver.

“I have not seen you use a cane before.”

He did not look at her.

“I am at a delicate age, Mrs. Westerman. One night’s loss of rest can make me an old man.”

“You are not so very old.”

There was a flash of a smile in her voice; he looked up at her and she was sorry to see his face looking dry and bitter.

“Indeed, madam? I am so glad you think so.”

The tone was hostile enough to make her blush and look away, but before more could be said, Michaels strode back into the room and spoke.

“His hand has been forced. He’s just arrested Hugh for the murder of Joshua Cartwright.”

Rachel put her hand to her face and Harriet stood quickly.

“Here? Now?”

Michaels nodded. “The squire said he has taken evidence from the vicar and Hannah, though it’s been done informally as yet, and has told him he is to remain at home. Probably in the hopes he’ll put a bullet in his brain and spare us the trial. He may do as well, if I know Thornleigh. Innocent or not.”

Crowther still had not altered his posture but spoke. “Perhaps that would be as well.”

Harriet felt the blood rise in her throat, and she turned on him sharply.

“Really? Perhaps the squire was right and your secret past. .” she put enough emphasis on “secret” to make him wince, “has made you a lover of neat endings. I am surprised your researches have led you where they have, if you value neatness above truth.” She felt suddenly the cruelty in her own words and put her hand to her eyes. “This is not right. We must think further, and quickly. Please, let us go somewhere we can talk freely.”

She saw he was become a little gray around the lips, and a panic that she had torn down in an instant whatever trust and companionship that existed between them pricked at her skin, making it hot and angry. She felt tears rise behind her eyes. “Oh, how can you just sit there?”

He did not look at her; only the tight, thin lips moved.

“You seem capable of talking freely enough here, Mrs. Westerman.”

She bit her lip and her words deserted her. Instead, she looked at him for a long moment, then turned with a groan that could have been frustration or grief and got up to leave the room, the need for movement too urgent to resist. Rachel stood to follow her, then hesitated and took a breath.

“Mr. Crowther. I do not think Mr. Thornleigh is responsible for any of these deaths. You yourself have suggested other scenarios …”

Crowther met her eyes, his own heavily lidded, a slight sneer on his lips. “Perhaps my solitude has made my imagination fantastical.”

She continued to look at him. “Please help us.”

He returned his gaze to the silver mass of fruit and vines that formed the head of his cane, wondering what gods had prompted him to bring it with him this afternoon. It was the one thing he still possessed that had belonged to his father. Rachel too waited a moment, staring at his sharp profile, then realizing she would get no answer either, turned and followed her sister, her pace more respectable, her shoulders drooping. Michaels spread his hands in front of him and picked at something lodged under the nail of his right thumb.

“Terrible creatures, ain’t they, Mr. Crowther-other people. .”

Crowther stood and left with a steady stride. Outside, men and women paused in their various conversations to look at him. He walked on.

Graves was surprised to find how close they were to Leicester Fields. He was uncertain if Mr. Chase wished to be accompanied any farther, since he had set off at his usual punishing pace, but Graves still had his half-story of Alexander turning in his mind and hoped to learn more, whatever Mr. Chase had said about his further ignorance.

They turned into the open space of the fields and found themselves immediately pressed against the wall of one of the houses bordering it by a rush of men wild-eyed and hallooing, driving in front of them a startled cow into Charing Cross Road. Someone had tied a blue cockade to the animal’s head, another flicked about on the end of the poor creature’s tail. She had, it seemed, been made a temporary mascot. The pinched faces of the men who slapped her sides and urged her on split with glee, their eyes were glittering and small. The cow gave a startled low and tottered on as one man whipped her across the rump.

“Nooo pooopery!” the man cried and his companions hugged themselves with joy and took up the shout, pushing the poor beast past them. Graves thought of the imps in hell on the frescoes of his father’s church. Some had been painted over, their tortures too salty for the growing nicety of the church, but he had been fascinated as a child by those that remained, their little dark bodies and wide grins as they tortured the waxen, naked bodies of the fallen. He thought he saw them again now, in the smoke-stained faces of these raggedly dressed warriors of Protestantism, in their wild delight in public violence and desecration. He was, for a moment, childishly afraid. Then he heard Mr. Chase gasp.

“Oh, good Lord!” Graves turned to see where his companion was pointing. “That is Lord Saville’s house.”

Graves had walked this way often enough in the past to know what he should in rights be seeing, an elegant white stone front, with a clean step and polished fixings, but some dark hand had passed over it, and everything that had once appeared solid, comfortable, a symbol of wealth and civility, was on fire. Flames licked out of the top windows, touching their orange tongues to the roof slates, and sucking down the guttering; the second floor belched smoke through burning drapery, and below them, where the flames were still slipping and curling, Graves could see shadows moving; every minute one would come forward, smoldering and laughing, to throw plunder down on the street below. The watching crowds cheered and danced, their soot-streaked faces shining and joyful, mouths open, wild. Graves caught his breath and murmured, “The seas are bright, with splendor not their own, and shine with Trojan light.”