Graves’s companion laughed heartily and pointed at him. The man ignored him but fixed an angry eye on Graves.
“I’ll have you for that, you Catholic bastard! I’ll know you again, and I’ll have you.”
He made no move to rise though, and Graves turned on his heel without bothering to reply and continued on his way. The journey was wasted, however. The Justice’s house was besieged, and the mob would not let him through. Some of the rioters of the previous night had been taken up and were to be examined and confined to Newgate for trial. Through the crowd he could see the flash of redcoats. Soldiers on the steps to guard the gate.
“It’s a matter of murder!” he protested. “I must speak to the justice!”
Some of those nearest to him turned enough to look him up and down.
“Will be murder, if they send those prisoners down. True Protestant heroes, every one.”
Graves tried to step forward, and was shoved back by a vicious-looking man twice his size.
“Get out of here, boy. Your business will wait.”
Graves made one more attempt and the same man twisted his arm hard behind him and whispered in his ear with horrible intimacy, “Will your business be served better when this crowd has torn you all up to pieces? Get away, I say.”
Graves slunk back, only able to comfort himself with Mr. Chase’s words of the previous night, and went to make his arrangements with the priest of St. Anne’s. The man was sorrowful and kind, and confirmed the wisdom of letting Alexander be buried and turn to the coroner when the city was calm again.
Graves returned briefly to his own lodgings-a room in one of the least disreputable houses in the vicinity of Seven Dials-to change his clothing, on which he at least could still see the marks of his friend’s blood. As he changed his clothes, he paused a long moment before the pocked and dusty mirror. He no longer looked, he thought, like such a young man. His own wound was still fresh and livid, of course, but the real change was a heaviness in his eyes he did not recognize.
Owen Graves was only twenty-one. He had come down from the country three years before, from his father’s home in the Cotswolds, determined to make a living in London with his pen. It had caused a breach with his family who, struggling to live like gentry on a clergyman’s income, had hoped he might find advancement in the law. But Graves had been romantic. He had struggled to feed and clothe himself through those three years with the work of his pen, and though his work was often admired, it had yet to prove profitable.
He wrote best about music, offering his short reports of concerts to the various presses turning out papers to entertain and inform the capital, but the publishers often complained that though he wrote prettily, he had an unfortunate tendency to write more about the music itself and how it struck him, rather than give a list of any fashionable personages in attendance and describe their manner of dress and behavior. He often tried to combine the necessary with what he regarded as the essential by claiming that some darling of the haut ton was particularly captivated by a certain melody in a certain piece. The trick served him well enough, as those to whom he gifted this great musical sensibility seldom wanted to contradict him, and so he lived. Barely.
He had loved music since childhood. His mother had a beautiful soprano voice, though she had given up her own career as a singer to marry the man she loved and live in uncomfortable poverty. It was family legend that Mr. Handel himself had said her leaving the stage was a waste and a damn shame. His father would tell any new acquaintance the story with pride, but Graves noticed that his mother always seemed to wince when it was mentioned.
So Mr. Graves arrived in town and found Alexander at one of the first concerts he attended in the capital. He had been so engaged by the playing he could not resist sharing his pleasure with the gentleman next to him at the interval. He had chosen to praise a piece that was a favorite of that man’s, and his opinion was listened to with appreciation.
Alexander, being a much older man than himself, had taken the place of a parent for him in those early months, encouraging and counseling the young man even while the grief from the loss of his wife Elizabeth was still raw. In return, Graves gave him his love and loyalty, his enthusiasm and quickness. Alexander’s house had become a second home to him. The man’s children were like the younger siblings he had never had; in their chatter he had found an escape from his own fears and failures, while in Alexander he had found a mentor who rewarded him with his trust and faith. Now he must earn what had been so freely given.
It took Graves a great effort of will to leave the house again. Before he left, he moved the loose pages of his writings around on the tabletop as a child spins buttercups in a pond, and wondered, without knowing why, when he might come back here, and what sort of man he might have become before he next lifted the latch.
Harriet did not feel any pleasure at the idea of calling on Lady Thornleigh that morning. It would look unusual, and she shrank a little from putting herself in a position where her behavior could be questioned.
The purpose of the visit was unclear even in her own mind. She knew she wanted Crowther to see Thornleigh Hall, to see if he sensed there the same aura of corruption she felt, but it seemed a vague beginning to any thorough investigation of the circumstances that had brought the body to the copse on the hill. She said as much to Crowther when she proposed the visit, and was comforted to hear he thought it the right thing to do.
“In my work, Mrs. Westerman,” he had said, “we must often explore in a general fashion at first, till we have specifics with which to grapple. You have suspicions that are still out of reach of language. We must look about us with those sensations in mind, and see if we can put a little meat on the bones of our argument. As to the visit itself, perhaps the local gentry will at this point simply assume you are proud of drawing me out of my seclusion and are parading me about like a leopard on a chain.”
Harriet could not imagine comparing the spare and dry Crowther with a leopard, but the image made her laugh, and that gave her some courage.
It was a long time since the families had done more than exchange compliments via their servants. Rachel felt it her duty to join them, and while Harriet was glad of it for appearance’s sake, she felt almost cruel sharing with Crowther what she had gleaned from the little sewing woman in the morning as they drove in the carriage toward the main gates of Thornleigh Hall. As she spoke, she glanced at the pale profile of her sister from time to time, but Rachel seemed determined only to examine the passing countryside and pretend, for the moment at least, not to hear them.
“Mrs. Mortimer was quite enlightening in the end about the key personages in the Hall. The last steward of Thornleigh was known as a hard but practical man. Not popular with the tenants, but a favorite of his master. Then, a little over two years ago, Claver Wicksteed appeared, out of the clear skies, it seemed, and Hugh announced his intention to make him steward. The former steward was bundled out of his place with enough to buy himself a little shop and left within a week, the hisses of the tenants ringing in his ears.”
Crowther turned toward her, one hand holding onto the edge of his seat as the carriage bounced a little on the dry roads.
“Is Wicksteed better liked?”
“No, not at all, and Mrs. Mortimer suggested to me that his influence on his master seems … unhealthy.”
Crowther looked at her with a lift of his eyebrows. The timing of Wicksteed’s arrival and Hugh’s change in behavior was not lost on them.
“She was not more specific? He takes on no more than the usual duties of a steward?” he asked.
Harriet shrugged. Crowther had always thought the gesture a little vulgar in women, but he was learning to allow Mrs. Westerman any number of liberties.