‘Perhaps it would be better if I explained matters from the beginning.’
Mrs Westerman tilted her head to one side, examining him as if he were an optical illusion to be squinted at. ‘That might be best, sir.’ Her tone was somewhat clipped.
Mr Palmer began. ‘I have already spoken to you, madam, something of these matters. I shall repeat the story for Mr Crowther’s benefit and so bring myself to the reason for my visit and my request for your assistance.
If
that is acceptable.’ He turned his head towards Mr Crowther’s narrow profile. The man did not look up from his contemplation of his fingernails. ‘We heard this spring that certain gentlemen of importance in the French Court were apparently crowing over some new master of intelligence they had recruited and expected to have in place in London shortly. Though we had no particulars.’ He paused. ‘The war with the American Rebels does not go well.’
Mr Crowther glanced up at that, with a slight tilt to his eyebrows as if to say, ‘I did not need a Mr Palmer to tell me that.’
Palmer glanced at the newspaper on the gilded couch and cleared his throat again. The government, the Admiralty were being criticised at every point, for either being too slow, or too foolhardy – both with equal vigour. The brief patriotic fervour that had flared when France made treaty with the Americans had died away. The country was sick with a war fought on the other side of the world and with people she believed to be her kin. The Navy struggled to protect trade, Spanish flags were flaunted in the Channel, and every piece of information that Palmer could not prevent slipping to the French was like a musket shot against his King. He was still young enough to feel those blows, and drive himself to greater efforts, more ingenious methods, stranger allies in his attempts to stem the flow. If the French received the intelligence they hoped from this new servant in London, it would be worth more to them than a dozen ships of the line. He thought of England as a body bleeding vital knowledge of her strategies, struggles and capacities into the waters round her coast. Better organisation of that flow could make the wounds gout blood. He must do what he could to put pressure on the injury, sew up the tear. He watched Crowther’s long fingers.
‘I believe the Captain found out something of that . . .’ Palmer lifted his hand to try and conjure a term from the air ‘. . .
spy-master
our European enemies wish to install as he interrogated the individual from the French vessel he captured in June.’
Crowther looked at him down his long nose and said simply, ‘Why?’
Any question was an indication of interest, surely? Palmer seized on it and turned to Crowther, speaking quickly. ‘You know, perhaps, sir, that the ship was laden with supplies for the American Rebels, and this man was not one of the naval officers. I believe his work was intelligence. Captain Westerman indicated as much to his officers after his interrogation of this individual and before his accident. He also made some expression of anger about what he referred to as “traitorous scum in every corner imaginable”. That they stained every beauty. Though what he meant by that, we cannot know.’
Mrs Westerman stood suddenly and began to walk up and down behind her chair, her skirts sweeping over the carpet in regular clicking sighs. The contrast between her activity and Mr Crowther’s stillness was unnerving. ‘Yes, yes, Mr Palmer,’ she said agitatedly. ‘You told me as much months ago – but as
I
told
you
James remembers nothing of his last cruise as yet. There is no reason to believe he ever will. You have questioned his officers and I even gave you sight of his private letters home to me. That did not prevent you from harassing my husband under Dr Trevelyan’s roof ten days ago.’
‘Madam, I did
not
harass him! The information is so crucial that if there were any chance—’ Palmer stopped himself. ‘I did receive two weeks ago a name from a connection I trust in Paris. That name was Fitzraven. I wondered if it might be familiar to your husband. It did not seem to be. I could discover no more.’ He drew breath, but could not resist adding in a rush, ‘I would have explained as much to you at the Admiralty last week, if you had given me a chance to speak in my defence.’ He thought he saw the corner of Mr Crowther’s mouth twitch at that, and Mrs Westerman scowled briefly.
Palmer continued more calmly. ‘The role of this Fitzraven, his status, his importance in the schemes that move against us – nothing of that could be discovered. Only the name, and with that I was unfamiliar. However, I have made it my business to keep a close watch for him.’
Mrs Westerman had come to a stop and they were both observing him now, with something like curiosity. The thin November light caught the red lights in her hair.
‘There are some individuals in the city I employ to listen for items of interest,’ Palmer went on. ‘Any whisper of that name, anywhere in the city, was to come to me – and this morning I hear that a body was pulled from the Thames at first light, and the body was named by a member of the crowd that watched him dragged up the Black Lyon Stairs as Fitzraven.’
He looked up at Mrs Westerman. Her expression was neutral; Mr Crowther was sitting with his fingers tented and very still. ‘I have arranged for one of the Westminster Magistrates, a Mr Pither, to request your assistance,’ Palmer ploughed on. ‘It is not unnatural that he would thinke to so, given your investigation of events in Sussex last year. He would like to add a little lustre to his name by a connection with yourselves.’ At this, Mrs Westerman’s lip curled. Drawing himself straight in his chair, Mr Palmer made his final appeal with a certain solemnity. ‘I have come to you to urge you to supply that assistance and find out what you can of the circumstances of Fitzraven’s death. He then added with a half-smile as the thought occurred to him, ‘Perhaps a little show of resistance to doing so might be of use. If Pither can tell the story of how he persuaded you, it will cloud the matter in a way advantageous to our greater cause.’
‘You seem to have a great ability to find things out yourself, Mr Palmer,’ Crowther said with a faint drawl, ‘and arrange all manner of complicated affairs in a short space of time.’ He drew a neat enamelled pocket-watch from his waistcoat and examined it. Then met Palmer’s eye. Mr Palmer noticed that though Mr Gabriel Crowther might be a gentleman the wrong side of fifty, his blue eyes seemed icy and exceptionally clear. ‘Why do you not look into the matter yourself? Or use one of these gentlemen you trust. Why such unconnected amateurs as ourselves? Why trust a recluse and a known harridan with the secrets of your King?’
Palmer looked up swiftly at Mrs Westerman to see how she took this description of herself. She did not flinch but continued to examine the wall to his right. He took a moment to select his words.
‘Three reasons, sir. The first you should be able to supply, if modesty did not forbid. I have not your expertise in seeing the stories a dead body can tell of itself. Very few men do. For the second let me speak to the matter of trust. I know something of you, Mr Crowther, and all that I have heard suggests to me a man who is unlikely to go gossiping in society of such matters.’ Crowther gave a wintry little smile. ‘Mrs Westerman has served on her husband’s commands. I believe in her loyalty and her principles. Your temper I have felt the heat of, madam, but I see no sign of foolishness in you.’ Mrs Westerman still did not look at him, but he was sure he was attended to, and carefully. ‘The third is related to the confidential and delicate nature of intelligence in time of war. I must know, for the sake of our country’s interests and those that serve them, what is afoot here. Is there a conspiracy to betray this nation to the French? Who is involved in the matter and what damage might they already have done? Who was this master sent to lead? What was the nature of this man Fitzraven?’
Harriet turned towards 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 enquiry 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.’
I.4
S
OME 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 afterwards 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 patronise 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
un
generous 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 realised 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 enquire 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 y 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.