Harriet turned toward him suddenly. “Are there not continually such plots?” she asked.
Mr. Palmer nodded. “I find myself much engaged, but let me complete my argument. The agents of the French are not foolish. If Fitzraven was in some way involved, my appearance asking questions as to his life, activities and death will no doubt send the conspirators into hiding, and what I can learn will be severely curtailed.”
“Whereas Crowther and I can blunder about asking whatever we like, and people will assume we have simply discovered murder to be an enlivening pastime?” Harriet’s voice was softer than it had been hitherto, and was laced now with amusement. Mr. Palmer smiled.
“Exactly, Mrs. Westerman. It will be thought you and Mr. Crowther seek only to increase or consolidate your renown and so cannot resist the opportunity to examine a man who died in apparently mysterious circumstances. I wish to know of this man’s connections, his habits and nature. I must discover if he was the man my contact learned of, and if, by his death, we may find out what networks of intelligence the French have in this country and where and how deeply they reach.”
“How mysterious were the circumstances of his death?” Crowther said. “Bodies are pulled from the Thames every day.”
“I hope you will let the matter speak for itself. The reports I have are suggestive, but at second hand. Let me not cloud your inquiry with imprecise information at this stage.”
It seemed to Mr. Palmer at this moment that his proposal was still under consideration.
Crowther picked at his cuff and said, very softly, “To whom do you answer, Mr. Palmer?” There was a cold steel in the words.
“My remit in these matters is wide,” Mr. Palmer told him. “I have some money and staff at my disposal, and the liberty to act as I see fit in most matters. Lord Sandwich is the First Lord of the Admiralty-beyond that I am answerable to my king, and the law. As are we all.”
The little clock on the mantelpiece marked the half hour with an elaborate chime that made Mrs. Westerman start. But neither she nor Crowther made him any reply.
“We are at war,” Mr. Palmer said after some moments of silence. “Information can be as vital, or as deadly, as ordnance. If news-accurate news-of the preparedness of our ships, stores or troops regularly reaches the French naval command, men will die. I come in all humility to ask for your assistance.”
Crowther tented his fingers again and said, “Then, Mr. Palmer, you shall have it.”
4
Some minutes after Mr. Palmer left Berkeley Square, the promised invitation from Justice Pither arrived. Its tone suggested that the idea of consulting them was all his own. Mr. Gabriel Crowther watched Mrs. Westerman read the note in her turn. She was pulling on a red ringlet that framed her face, and seemed in danger of straightening it. She was not looking well, and she had told him enough of her last visit to Dr. Trevelyan’s establishment to know it had not given her any comfort. Her husband’s illness had overtaken her like a damp fog. Her lively eyes had become dull, fading from emerald to pondwater in a little more than three months, and her hair, shot through with a fire that seemed to burn when she was angry or afraid, had begun to look rusty and brittle. She was thin. If she were a horse, he would have had her shot. He resisted the temptation to tell her so.
“Do stop glowering at me like that, Crowther,” Harriet said, setting the note down and resting her head in her hands for a moment. “I am afraid you are conjecturing what my lungs would look like in a jar.”
Crowther had picked up the newspaper again and was reading a report of fears for brave Cornwallis and his gallant little army at Yorktown.
“I do not think, Mrs. Westerman, the preparation of a human lung I own could be improved upon at this time,” he remarked mildly. “So you may rest easy. I have, in fact, been regretting that the excitement of our success last week when I spoke to the Royal Society seems to have dissipated so quickly. I expected you still to be pleased. But you do not seem it.”
“Your success, I think. And being told my company is injurious to my husband’s health has not cheered me.”
“I gave your insights and investigative abilities their due. The gentlemen were properly impressed by our success in finding out the mysteries of ‘a certain great house in Suffolk.’”
Harriet raised her eyebrows. “Yes, I got the impression afterward that you must have been quite generous, since a remarkable number of men in bad wigs and stained coats took the opportunity to be introduced to me and patronize me a little while we drank tea. Their wives approached me as if they feared I would stink still of the dissecting room.” She fidgeted in her chair like a child confined to a schoolroom on a hot day. “And it seems ridiculous that on these occasions we cannot refer to Thornleigh Hall by its name. Everyone knows the story. Rachel is constantly having to hide the more hysterical pamphlets detailing the circumstances from the children.”
“Such are the conventions. And I must say you are most ungenerous in your description of my colleagues. There were mavericks and thinkers there enough to excite even your admiration, I believe.”
Harriet made no reply, and looking again at Mr. Pither’s note had to admit to a certain grudging admiration of the way Mr. Palmer had engineered the invitation to examine the body. But she put the letter down with a sigh.
“What could I possibly contribute to this matter that you could not manage better and much more properly alone, Crowther?”
Crowther realized where her thoughts had led her and gave the question some consideration. Mrs. Westerman was certainly right. It was neither her profession, nor her proper sphere to inquire into the deaths of strangers, nor to bring murderers to justice, although as the pamphlets she mentioned had recorded in great detail, she had done so in the past. He considered briefly the possibility of going alone to Justice Pither’s house, but it occurred to him-and it was not pleasant to consider it-that he would not, in fact, be of very much use to the magistrate or to Mr. Palmer without Mrs. Westerman. He had spent many years in the study of the human body, and had a particular interest in the marks and traces violence leaves on its victims, but he lacked Mrs. Westerman’s ability to power forward into other people’s lives, asking questions, conjecturing as to their motives. He had tried in his early adulthood to remove passion from his soul with study, scalpel and syringe. It had been only a partial success, but he had winnowed himself to the extent that he still needed to borrow her warmth-if she had any left to spare him. The idea that she might desert him entirely made him uneasy. He was rich, an acknowledged expert in his field, but he needed her-a woman designed by society only to run a household and amuse herself-to turn his expertise into something of practical use. It was somewhat humbling. He examined his cuffs.
“In the initial examination of the body, perhaps not a great deal, madam. But you have a certain animal intelligence that I occasionally lack. Further to that, you do not look well. You are a creature used to activity, and simply writing letters about your husband’s health is not activity enough.”