“I found her, I’m sorry to say. I would rather have lived my life free of that image, but the only service I can render her is to remember. I was out riding and came upon one of the search parties as they neared the woods on the outskirts of Harden. Knowing the girl myself, I dismounted to join them. It was a summer’s evening, much this time of year, the air warm and delicate, the paths and fields so alive with the buzz of creation-everything becoming, it seemed, more perfectly itself. Such a pale little thing she was. She had been thrown down, some yards from one of the smaller paths in the wood. So terribly wrong, it seemed, that she lay there all broken and stopped amongst such a profusion, such vigorous life. Her face was quite unmarked, but her clothes were black with blood. Her body had been stabbed about in a frenzy. Thirteen wounds I counted in her breast and stomach. She was in her holiday clothes, and they were so torn and bloodied about her…. It was sunset when we found her, and the sky was gold and red, with magnificent deep purple clouds draining from the day. The two images are linked in my mind. Her broken body and the glory of the sun sinking in the west. Poor innocent. It could not have been an easy death, or a quick one.”
Crowther did not trust himself to speak. He realized he was held by a narrator of talent; he had felt the late sun on his back, heard the thrum of life in the hedgerow.
The squire continued, “Her belly was swollen. There was no doubt she was with child.”
“No one knew who the father could be?”
“There was gossip that damaged several good men over the coming months, but she had been close. Not one of her friends had, I believe, been confided in. Nor had the sister who shared her bed. Some passing peddler in the village was taken up by the hue and cry, but he was vouched for by two or three of the better people, and the crowd had fixed on him more in sorrow than in anger. He got away unharmed. The whole village turned out for the burial, but Lord Thornleigh did not attend. However, he did ride by with one of his friends, while we were burying the poor sinner. They were laughing at something and I looked up from my prayers and caught his eye. That look I saw on his face is the only reason for the suspicion I have ever had against the man. It chilled my soul then, and the memory of it does so still. It was triumphant, exhilarated. Quite wild.”
One of the household passed along the passage outside the dining room, their shoes skimming carpet and stone. Crowther drank deeply.
“And no one inquired further into his connection with the girl?” he asked.
“I believe I have said enough of his character to suggest why no one had the stomach to inquire more closely,” the squire said. “The girl certainly had no Mrs. Westerman to champion her, no one so willfully naive. Or if she did, perhaps he was warned away early and well and has learned his lesson since. Mrs. Westerman may have the same path to tread.” The squire looked a little angry. “Nor did Miss Randle need a champion, nor does this fellow in the woods. Thornleigh has lost his eldest son to the world, his second to drink and lives an idiot while his third is brought up by a whore.” The squire’s voice had become almost hoarse on his final words.
Crowther did not move, merely continued to watch his tented fingertips, his face without expression.
“Sarah Randle died before Thornleigh’s first marriage, you say?”
The squire looked up again, as if surprised to find he had been speaking aloud, and to another. He shrugged, and his voice returned to something like its usual pitch and phrasing.
“Indeed. He spent much of the next few years in London, then returned to us with a wife. And an unhappy affair that was, though the first Lady Thornleigh bore him two sons, as you know, before her death. Three girls died before they reached four years old.”
“And did she die in childbirth?”
“No, a fall, only three years after Hugh was born. I fear the death of her daughters left her … a little nervous. From that point until Thornleigh’s second marriage we saw little of him. He lived mostly in town, only coming to hunt with small parties, and always reluctant to stay long. The children were brought up by the servants, then sent away to school. They seemed good enough men in their youth, though.”
He shifted his chair a little.
“I am grateful to you for examining this wretch, but I wish you would trouble yourself no further in the matter. Mrs. Westerman, and I mean no disrespect, can be impulsive, a little quick to judge. It is the penalty she pays for her own prodigious energy, so I am glad she is to have your counsel, Commodore Westerman being away, and he acting as he does as her sea anchor in the general run of things, if I have understood that term correctly.”
Crowther bowed slightly. The squire nodded, interpreting the gesture according to his own desires.
“The place where you must come to, where damage will be done, you must come to very quick. And if you do not hold her back, you must take a share in the blame for whatever comes to pass. And, of course, your own association with the family, if you intervene or not, may harm them.” The squire paused, watching Crowther’s forehead crease with a slight frown. His voice took on a certain soft sheen. “I should perhaps tell you, while we are being so open, that I know your name was not Gabriel Crowther at birth.”
The silence in the room was like an act of violence. Crowther held himself absolutely still. The corner of the squire’s fat red mouth twisted a little.
“I am that which I appear to be, Mr. Crowther. But there have been other chapters in my career, and some of the habits I learned, I have kept. I make it my business to know a little of the people of note in the area, beyond the usual gossip. But I shall not address you by any other name or rank than that you have chosen for yourself.” He paused. “I can assure you that my inquiries have been discreet, and my silence on the subject is absolute-for the time being. To my knowledge at least, no one else within the county suspects you to be anything other than who or what you say you are. I will say no more, other than to repeat my request that you attempt to hold Mrs. Westerman back, for her own sake.”
Crowther was conscious of little more than the passage of the air into his lungs and out again. His thoughts would not form into words. The squire sighed deeply and scratched again at his stubble before continuing in the same low voice.
“I am very fond of the family at Caveley Park, and would like to be assured they have protection and support from a man of intelligence and skill such as yourself.”
When Crowther finally spoke, his voice sounded to him like a thing apart. He had no will in it.
“As you say, there may be no great mystery here, but I will do all I can to support the family.”
The squire lifted the wine and filled their glasses, smiling expansively as if he thought Crowther an excellent fellow and charming company. His voice lost its serious tone, and he became once again the expansive country gentleman he had at first appeared to be.
“Excellent, excellent. Now tell me, sir, is that your bay I noticed in the new stables as I came round? Do you hunt? She reminds me very much of a filly I had as a boy. Marvelous jumper, she was …”
Crowther let him talk and drank his wine, though it tasted to him suddenly bitter and black.
9
Mr. Graves had promised not to leave the house, and Mr. and Mrs. Chase and their daughter were happy to let him keep watch within calling distance of the old nursery where the children slept. He had taken them to that family’s house, old friends of Alexander’s, as soon as it was clear nothing could be done for his friend, and before he would allow anyone to see to his own wound. It stung now, but the pain was nothing next to the horrified throb in his throat. He wondered if Susan would ever recover. She had been white and silent since they found her, apart from the moment when he had pulled her away from her father’s body again, and she had let out such a terrible yell that several in the crowd had crossed themselves. The yellow man was searched for, but no one could name him, and with the growing disorder in the town, there was not a man free to look further for him.