Crowther 02 - Anatomy of Murder Page 19

  The lord’s companion was a much younger man who wore his own hair tied darkly at the nape, and Harriet would have called it a handsome face, as handsome as any young man of her acquaintance, were it not for the fact that the gentleman seemed to be carrying some great distress. His eyes were rather red and he was holding so hard onto his hat in front of him that his knuckles were whitening.

  “Mrs. Westerman.” Carmichael came forward and bowed and looked her carefully up and down. “I am glad to make your acquaintance. I am Carmichael. This young man is my stepson, Mr. Longley, and I fear because of him I shall not be able to have the conversation with you that was promised.”

  “Indeed, sir? I am sorry to hear that. It is a matter of some urgency.”

  Carmichael raised a perfect eyebrow and Harriet wished she had dressed with better care. “Is it, madam? I fear Mr. Fitzraven will remain a corpse no matter what you do. But perhaps I should leave it to Mr. Longley to explain why his affairs carry me away from you.”

  Mr. Longley swallowed and wet his lips. Harriet put up her hand. “No, really, Mr. Longley. You have no need to explain your affairs to me.”

  Carmichael was watching them both with a smile. “Come now. It is my duty to my late wife that he should learn better manners, and my pleasure that he should explain to you how his behavior has led to this state of affairs. I must insist.”

  Mr. Longley was on the verge of weeping. Harriet turned a little sharply to Carmichael and said, “Yet I insist on not hearing it. You may force Mr. Longley to speak, sir, but you cannot force me to listen. Very well. I shall bid you good day and hope to speak to you another time.”

  “No—please don’t go!” Mr. Longley held up his hand, and rushed on in a whisper, “He will be more angry with me if you do.”

  Harriet hesitated, then turned back to them with a nod.

  Mr. Longley stared at the ground. He could not be more than eighteen. Carmichael continued to watch him, his expression one of indulgent amusement.

  “I have been very foolish and find myself unable to pay a debt of honor. I can get no more from the Jews in Whitechapel, and rather than leave the country unprofitably, my father wishes me to pay my debts in another way. I must travel to Harwich.”

  “Leave nothing out, Julian,” Lord Carmichael said caressingly, but watching Harriet.

  “The debt is due today. My father takes me to speak to the gentleman to whom I owe money.”

  “And?”

  “I am a disgrace to my family and my name, sir.”

  “You are not addressing me at this time, Julian.”

  The boy turned toward Harriet’s shocked and angry face. “I am a disgrace to my family and my name, madam.”

  Harriet stepped forward, and ignoring Carmichael put a hand on the young man’s arm.

  “I am sure you are no such thing, Mr. Longley.” The latter choked a little. “Every man makes mistakes. It is how we learn! Do not think yourself worthless so young. You have a whole life in which to redeem yourself.”

  “Do you learn from your mistakes, Mrs. Westerman?” Carmichael said. Harriet ignored him.

  Longley looked into her face, his eyes red and lips trembling. He seemed to her very far away, like a man drowning who sees his ship carried farther from him by the waves and knows it is beyond his strength to reach it.

  Lord Carmichael touched his arm, and he flinched and withdrew a step or two from Harriet. Carmichael turned toward her with a bow. “Forgive me, madam. As you see, we must do a little tour of my stepson’s debtors. I hope I shall see you at my house tomorrow evening.”

  Harriet found she could do no more than nod, but as Lord Carmichael led the boy away, holding him firmly under the elbow, she called out: “You will be in my thoughts, Mr. Longley.”

  The young man looked back and tried to smile bravely at her as Carmichael pushed him forward out onto the gravel forecourt where his carriage waited.

  The guardians of the British Museum were still basking in the acquisition of Sir William’s remarkable collection of Greek pottery and very ready to show them to anyone who made an appointment. It seemed, from the nods Mr. Bywater received and the information he imparted, that he was a regular visitor there. He spoke in hushed tones with knowledge and affection of the shards in the display cases as their little group was encouraged from exhibit to exhibit.

  Crowther could not see the appeal. The Greeks had been of use to the sciences, but he saw nothing remarkable about that which was in front of him other than its age. In the end, he thought, we all become old. Instead, he watched his companion. He seemed rather young, Crowther thought, to hold so high a position in the opera house, but he recalled that such a position often involved hackwork and wondered if Harwood had paid for his expensive performers by employing a cut-rate composer. His face was blandly handsome, and occasionally attractive when he spoke with animation. His manner was nervous, however, and his gaze flicked on and off Crowther’s face as if it was afraid of settling there. His eyes were darkly shadowed and their were ink stains around his cuffs.

  “Do you tend to work at night, Mr. Bywater?” Crowther said.

  “I do. Though it is foolish during the Season when there is so much work to be done in the day. I should not exhaust myself.” Bywater looked surprised. “How could you tell?”

  “I am familiar with the signs.”

  As the main group moved forward, Crowther lingered and took the chance offered by their relative seclusion to say, “Did you kill Fitzraven, Mr. Bywater? We have been told he was following you around the town and the annoyance may have provoked you to murder.”

  It was said in the same light conversational tone they had been using for the last half hour and Crowther did not look up from the display case in front of him as he spoke. He glanced up as he finished however.

  Bywater had gone white. He opened and closed his mouth once or twice, then went red.

  “I most certainly . . . Of course not—how could you think . . . ?”

  “You’re quite sure? It would so enhance the reputations of Mrs. Westerman and myself if we could offer up a felon to Justice Pither with such expediency.”

  Bywater stifled a gasp. “Of course I’m sure. Look, I am most sorry, of course, to do damage to your reputations, but I cannot help you. It is not by my hand that Mr. Fitzraven found himself in the Thames.”

  “You did not know he was following you then?”

  “No, I did not. Was he, indeed?”

  Crowther had apparently become more interested in the pottery than his wandering gaze had hitherto suggested.

  “Strange. He seemed to flaunt the knowledge he got rather than conceal it.”

  “I have known Fitzraven three years. It was my experience that he liked to pretend he knew a great deal, but tended to say very little specifically—perhaps to Harwood, but not to the principals involved. Really, Mr. Crowther—why would I put Fitzraven in the river? This is not a reasonable suggestion, sir.” He attempted a laugh, not with any great success.

  “Murder is seldom reasonable, I think. The motivations of men are mysterious. What is valuable to one, may mean nothing to another.”

  “All that is valuable to me, is my art.” Bywater crossed to a display case on the other side of the room and tapped on the glass. Crowther joined him. In the adjacent room a group of three ladies was standing by a display case of burial ornaments. Two were only girls, perhaps a year or two older than Lady Susan. They stared around the ceilings with wide, vacant eyes, only looking at the case to admire their own reflections in it. The other lady, Crowther thought their governess perhaps, was keeping up a steady commentary on what was before them, though without, it seemed to Crowther, any genuine hope or expectation of capturing their interest. Education for the ladies and gentlemen of the growing empire. Crowther wondered if they would learn anything more than the appearance of sophisticated taste, but perhaps in this instance that was the aim of the lesson; those not able to achieve real learning would study how to give the impre
ssion of it, and grow the wealth of the nation by consuming what they were taught was good and never have to trouble with forming an opinion of their own.

  Bywater wished him to look at another piece of pot. “Do you see what this says, Mr. Crowther?”

  Crowther peered through the glass and examined the Greek lettering. “Androkidias made me.”

  “Think of that, sir. To have created something that can last through the centuries in this way. A man made this, but through his art, through his talent and craft, he has become an immortal.”

  Crowther smiled a little. “And luck, of course. Better pots, better painted, might have been crushed under the heels of careless Greek housewives.”

  Bywater flushed. “No. Look at the beauty here. Art of this quality, art of great quality must survive and carry the name of its creator forward.”

  “Do you mean the shape of the vessel or the designs drawn on it? One man might shape, another paint—and who of us can say whose name it is that we read here? It may be the man who owned the house where the craftsmen worked.”

  The effect of this speech of Crowther’s was rather more extreme than he expected. He had spoken only to dampen the fire in Bywater’s upturned eyes, but somehow his words seemed to have extinguished it entirely. His shoulders drooped and he turned away as if to hide symptoms of distress. If Crowther had, with the force of a man twenty years his junior, struck the composer in his belly, he could not have produced a reaction anymore marked. He looked at the younger man with naked surprise. Noticing this, Bywater made an effort to straighten his back.

  “I choose to believe this object was made by the man who put his name to it, and that because of this thing of beauty his name shall live,” he said a little hoarsely.

  “You must believe what you wish, of course. I do not deny you that right.” Crowther worked his thumb over the silver head of his cane. “You expect immortality because of your duet?”

  Bywater waved his hand as if troubled by a moth. “No, no. That is nothing. I am surprised by its success. I have written much better pieces, and will write greater works in the future. Though its popularity might be of use.”

  “In what manner?”

  “I need time to give voice to the music of which I know I am capable.” His words were suddenly passionate, coming out in an angry hiss. “That means I require commissions, patronage. If some rich music lover is seduced enough by the ‘Yellow Rose Duet’ to provide me with that, it will have served its purpose.” He seemed alarmed at his own vehemence and said, more lightly, “Perhaps, sir, you would like to have a Mass I have been in the process of composing the last three years dedicated to you. It wants only a little work before it is ready for performance.”

  “I am no expert judge of music,” said Crowther, ignoring this last, “any more than of pottery, but I have been told by people who are that ‘C’è una rosa’ is a far greater piece of work than anything you have accomplished hitherto.”

  Bywater clenched his fists. “Nonsense,” he ground out.

  Crowther sighed, and wary of another request for his patronage, said, “Tell me, Mr. Bywater, how far have your investigations into the fate of Mr. Theophilius Leacroft progressed?”

  Again the young man started. Crowther was almost sorry to rain down so many blows on his thin shoulders.

  “Mademoiselle Marin told you? Of course, why should she not. She was seeking an old friend of her singing teacher in Paris at his request. But how could that be part of your investigation into the death of Fitzraven?” Crowther did not trouble himself to reply. “Very well. I have made no progress. I wrote a number of letters and visited some physicians who had rooms in the area of Mr. Leacroft’s last address.” Bywater halted suddenly. “Is Mademoiselle Marin displeased with me in some way? I did not think she attached great importance to this man . . .”

  Crowther lifted his cane to his eye level and blew from it some piece of dust visible only to himself before replying.

  “No great importance? Indeed. Perhaps Mrs. Westerman and I will have greater success. We are recruited now to hunt out mad singers as well as murderers.” He made as if to leave, then turned back to the young man, who was looking very pale. Crowther wondered if the extreme emotions Mr. Bywater appeared to be laboring under were an example of the workings of an artistic temperament. If so, he was happy not to share it, since it seemed to be exhausting. “I am glad, Mr. Bywater, that you showed me this piece. It reminds me that what is perceived as a single creation might sometimes be the work of several hands. We have assumed that the person who put Fitzraven in the water was the same being who killed him. Perhaps that was not so, and yet another owns the enterprise that conspired to remove the man.”

  Bywater looked at his feet and said sulkily, “I have heard of you as a man of science, yet you display a fertile imagination.”

  Crowther rolled the head of his cane between his fingers. “Natural philosophy demands both the rigor of detailed, dull work, and the occasional flight of fancy. It is not unlike music in that way, I believe. At times your work is to stitch together the achievements of other men and lay down chords for the likes of Manzerotti to leap off and fly from, and at times you show signs of great inspiration yourself, such as in the already famous duet. It would be a depressing sort of hackwork, would it not, without those moments of blessed guidance?”

  Bywater did not reply, and after observing him a few moments Crowther turned to leave Montagu House once more. The composer remained with his palm pressed to the glass of the cabinet that contained the Androkidias vase; it seemed he was trying to draw something from that ancient object into himself. Crowther would have said he had no use for talismans of that kind, but as the thought glanced over his mind he caught sight of his hand on the silver ball of his father’s cane, and was forced to smile.

  Harriet had time before Crowther returned from the British Museum to write to Dr. Trevelyan with an inquiry after Theophilius Leacroft. She sent her affection to her husband at the same time and managed to write some civil replies to a number of James’s friends. Their regrets and good wishes came from all over the globe as the ripple of news—Captain Westerman’s great success, then grievous injury—unfurled through letter and word of mouth through the Service and striking at the edges of empire and exploration, began to flow back to Caveley and onto London in the form of these letters, travel-stained and smelling of salt and wood. They made the room in which she found herself seem very small.

  There was a knock at the door and Rachel slipped into the room.

  “Harriet? I am not disturbing you?”

  Harriet shook her head and pointed to the bed, where Rachel seated herself while the last line of the latest letter was formed.

  “What can I do for you, my love?” she said a little absently as she blotted her sheet and began to fold it.

  “Harry, I have seen Miss Chase.”

  Harriet swung round to face her sister. “What? Verity has been here? Why was she not announced? I have not seen her since we came to London.”

  “She came in the back way—we talked in the kitchen.”

  “Lord, I hope her father does not know. He thinks his daughter a princess. If he thought she were paying visits through the kitchen he would blow out the windows of his house with his huffing.”

  “Harriet!” Rachel said very sharply. “Why must you always make fun?” Mrs. Westerman was startled into silence and looked at her sister, who was twisting her hands together in her lap, an angry flush of red on her cheeks. “Do you think of nothing but yourself? You do realize, I hope, that the living have their problems and puzzles and difficulties to deal with, as much as the dead.”

  Confused, and a little cold in her stomach, Harriet began to say, “Dear girl, has Mr. Clode—”

  “There—you see? You must always think yourself one step in front of us. It is not a puzzle and I have nothing to say of Mr. Clode. You are not my pattern in that way!”

  “Rachel, I . . .” Harriet rocked back in her chai
r, letting her hand fall to her side.

  “Miss Chase came to talk to me because she feared Graves no longer thought of her as he once did. There seemed to be an understanding between them, but with the sudden elevation in his fortunes, his hatred of living on Lord Sussex’s money . . . I came for your opinion on a matter she wanted to ask about.”

  “I am sorry, Rachel.”

  “It is so like you to assume! You are unfair! Mr. Clode is a man I much admire, but there is no understanding between us. Honestly, Harry, do you think he is the kind of man who would approach me, behind your back and with James in such a way?”

  “Rachel . . .”

  “Though he will most likely never wish to be in company with me again now, when he hears of . . . He is a country lawyer, his reputation must be his fortune. How could he be respected with a sister-in-law who likes nothing better than chasing corpses into the gutters of London and offending every person of rank she approaches? All the time while her husband is sick and she chases after cheap scandal in a borrowed carriage!”

  Harriet’s movements became very precise, and while her sister found her handkerchief and wiped it angrily across her eyes, sealed up the letter she had been writing with infinite care.