“No one would receive her in town, even when Lord Thornleigh was well, for all her talk of scaring duchesses,” Harriet said as the coach set off again.
Crowther remarked, “But why did she not make more friends when her husband became ill? I would have thought she still had an acquaintance wide enough after a year of marriage that would be eager to spend his money.”
Rachel turned toward them from the window and smoothed her skirts.
“She has very little money of her own, as a matter of fact. And she must be resident wherever Lord Thornleigh is, to receive anything at all. The articles of the marriage contract were very strict. When Lord Thornleigh dies she will be guardian of their little boy and have charge of his money, though not much is settled on him direct. He gets everything at the discretion of the new earl-Alexander, if he can be found. Hugh as well has only a little of his own. In her position, I think I would bundle up that horrible clock in a blanket and make a run for London, but she is probably too lazy.”
Rachel realized that both Crowther and Harriet were looking at her open-mouthed.
“Mr. Thornleigh told me,” she said, with an air of slight defiance. “And Harry, I did tell you I was making skin salves from Mama’s old recipes. You just weren’t listening.” She pouted a little. “You would have noticed when you did the accounts for the next quarter, for I have made four pounds, as it happens.”
Harriet was amazed.
“You have surprised your sister into silence, Miss Trench. An achievement, I think.”
Rachel met Crowther’s eye and smiled happily. He blinked his hooded eyes at her. “Now, if you are interested in inflammations of the skin, I have some books I can lend to you. Not usually reading I would recommend to females, but if you find it interesting …”
Rachel looked very pleased. Crowther glanced out of the window for a moment, trying to avoid the cheerfulness in her smile defrosting his own bones too far into softness. He was just in time to see a figure standing under the great portico at the Hall. It was a man, slim, but as far as he could tell from this distance, well formed. It was not Hugh Thornleigh, nor did he have the look of a servant about him. His hair was dark. The man watched their carriage retreat without moving. There was a stillness in his posture that Crowther found oddly disquieting.
3
“Make way there for the lady, please. Oi, Joe, move yerself and get a chair for Mrs. Westerman, will you? I said, move yer arse, for the love of God! Pardon me, Mrs. Westerman.”
The body had been moved from Caveley’s stables to those of the inn during the course of the morning. The fifteen jurors, gathered up by the constable from the customers of the Bear and Crown the previous evening, had had an opportunity to tut over it and look narrowly into the dead man’s eyes, and now the jurors, coroner, witnesses and the curious lookers-on were squeezing into the low, rough room in the back of the Bear and Crown.
Michaels, the landlord, was always insisting he was on the point of presenting a series of musical concerts and private dances there, but Harriet suspected he found it too convenient for the storage of salted pork and potato sacks during the winter to do anything of the sort. However, the polite fiction that renowned musicians were about to take the day’s journey from London to entertain them was maintained throughout the neighborhood, as there was a general agreement that even the rumor enhanced the reputation of the area.
Michaels was a huge man who had started his life on the London streets, and through his love of horses, luck and a good head for business had found himself in his forties a man of property and owner of a flourishing business. No one knew his first name, or even if he had one; his children, his friends and even his wife never used any other form of address to him. He was to be found every morning among the hubbub of his household-to his own offspring were often added cousins and nephews who were thought to be in need of his generosity and rough love-reading the newspapers and drinking his small beer. It was said that he was often appealed to, to arbitrate disputes in the village, and had been consistently found to be fair and almost unnaturally incorruptible. Some of the villagers were worried that the squire would not approve of this circumventing of his own authority as local Justice, but Harriet had long believed that Bridges and Michaels had an understanding of their own.
She was glad of his assistance now as Michaels pushed his way through the crowd and set a chair for her near to the table around which the jury were gathered. A fair proportion of the local inhabitants were there, though the county gentry, it seemed, had thought the affair below them, or had not yet heard of it, Harriet thought, looking around her and thinking that the village shops must mostly be closed this afternoon through want of their usual staff, owners and customers. Crowther followed in her wake and took up a position behind her. There were a few murmurs in the crowd as he was recognized, but if he was expecting any hostility he was wrong to do so. A man he thought he might know as the father of his maid grumbled something at him, and he found he was being presented with a chair of his own and a not unfriendly nod.
He looked about him. On the opposite side of the room-it was arranged a little like a church with the jurors playing the bride, the coroner the groom, and the observers seated or standing the length of the space like family and friends-he noticed Hugh. He was as usual looking somewhat dishevelled and uncomfortable. Crowther noticed he had so placed himself that most of the room would be hidden from him by the blindness in his right eye. On his left, leaning back a little in his chair, was the same lithe figure Crowther had spotted on the steps of Thornleigh Hall. His coloring was very dark and his features marked. He looked a little overdrawn, Crowther thought, to be regarded by most women as truly handsome. His cheekbones were a little too high, his chin rather too pronounced. Probably in his early thirties, so of an age with Mr. Thornleigh, though a great deal better preserved. He reminded him of the slightly satirical drawings of great male actors he had seen in the Illustrated News. Even for a man as controlled in his movements as Crowther, this figure next to Hugh appeared strangely still. Yet his thin lips were moving; he was speaking to his master, and by the bend of his neck, Crowther could see Hugh was listening.
Crowther gave his companion a look of inquiry. She caught his eye and nodded swiftly. So this was Claver Wicksteed. There was a gloss to him, as if he had been polished. Crowther wondered if his pupils were white in a fawn iris, as if constructed out of thin mother-of-pearl veneer and maple-wood. The man was prettily made, like a flashy piece of furniture for my lady’s chamber, but Crowther doubted the craftsmanship. Hugh’s face was set in a deep frown and he stared at the dusty floor to the side of his crossed ankles.
Crowther looked behind him and caught the cautious smile and nod of the squire, who was conversing with a couple of middle-aged men Crowther assumed to be farmers. Turning his eyes to the front again, he saw Joshua Cartwright standing unhappily by the window. He spoke to no one, and continuously picked at the lint on his sleeve till Crowther was afraid his cuffs would be bald by the end of the session.
The coroner looked about him, then stood and shushed the crowd. The appeal for quiet was picked up and carried to the rear doors, where it was reinforced with a growl from Michaels. The air was stilclass="underline" the coroner looked pleased with the effect.