The Regency Detective (21 page)

When making his observations on the track earlier, Swann had squatted down on his haunches and surveyed the various prints on the ground. When he had satisfied himself of certain facts he stood and carefully followed the half dozen trails belonging to Fitzpatrick and his two men, along with the two remaining sets and his own as well, back to the clearing. He could account for four of the half-dozen but the two other sets of footprints he could not. Swann assumed that at least one of them belonged to the murderer and this was the one with its prints deepest in the snow. The stretcher-bearers had obviously carried the girl back along the track, but these led in the other direction, while the final remaining set seemed also to have been carrying something, given the depth of its own prints, but they did not seem deep enough to suggest it was a human load.

After the branch had momentarily pulled him back, and with Swann back in the murderer’s mind, he had continued on his way, through the woods and into the clearing. Here he set the girl back down onto her feet; a single, naked footprint in the clearing the only remaining evidence that this had happened. The murderer then untied the dirty rag which had muffled the girl’s screams throughout her terrifying journey and discarded it onto the snow, within a clump of trees, from where Swann had retrieved it. A knife glinted momentarily in the moonlight and with several clean strokes the remainder of the girl’s dress was cut and fell off her to the ground, leaving her body naked and shivering as she faced her abductor. The girl was turned around and shown the ropes that awaited her. Her eyes no doubt filled with absolute terror and her bladder control lost, as her abductor attempted to push her forward. The girl had perhaps attempted to resist at this point, but had simply not been strong enough. At exactly what time during this evil episode the girl had been murdered, Swann did not know, but he only hoped for her sake it had been swift and her suffering short.

Given the macabre nature and location of the murder scene, it seemed more than probable that it had been chosen and arranged earlier; leading Swann to assume the perpetrator visited the clearing at least once before carrying out the crime. This showed the killing had been premeditated, with the woods and this isolated spot in particular, selected specifically. Given that the scene had been so deliberately ‘staged’, and perhaps not only in order to terrorise the girl, Swann felt, it could be assumed that the location held significance or importance. Again though, Swann did not know what that might be at present. What he did know, however, was that the killer had been unskilled in his work and Swann believed this to be his first victim. No sailor would claim the knots that had bound the girl to the trees and no surgeon the knife wounds that peppered her body. Had the girl been part of a sacrificial rite? The scene seemed to have been put together quickly; too quickly in fact, to indicate the girl had actually been a victim of a genuine ritual. It therefore seemed to Swann to be the work of a person who wanted to
show
the scene rather than use it for a specific purpose. If this was the case, then what did the murderer want to show? And why was this particular girl chosen? Could any girl have carried out the same role, only this one was known to the murderer?

Swann picked up the branch again, the one he had used back at the track, and more out of a meditative practice rather than for further investigation, began to place it vertically within each of the footprints that still remained intact within the clearing. He left the naked footprint untouched but measured the footprints surrounding it; this was the spot where the murderer had brought the girl down, as one pair of footprints was etched less deep in the snow than the previous set immediately before. Swann squatted down beside them in contemplation.

Whatever Fitzpatrick may have thought, this killer was definitely of the human species. Swann then shook his head momentarily at the remembrance. He could understand that kind of superstitious nonsense in perhaps the uneducated circles that George and Bridges circulated, and possibly even from educated women who read too many gothic novels, the genre of writing that had become popular during the last few years, but Swann had been surprised to learn that Fitzpatrick might also believe it. This was perhaps it though; the scene was reminiscent of those found in the pages of that type of book. He wondered if there was actually significance to it, but before he could think further, a noise came from behind.

‘She’s gone then, poor lass,’ said a voice.

Swann turned to see a man standing there.

‘It was you that chanced upon her?’ Swann asked, observing the recognisable clothes of a gamekeeper.

‘A terrible sight to come across first thing in the morning,’ the man replied.

‘Indeed, at any time I would suggest,’ said Swann. ‘Did you remove or touch anything?’

‘I am an honest man and a Christian one, Mr, er …’

‘Swann. I am sure that is the case, sir, and I did not wish to imply otherwise. But I needed to ask. What can you tell me about the scene as you discovered it?’

‘There is not much to tell, sir. I was shooting over in the woods to the east – it is the best time to catch rabbits you know, early in the morning – and I was making my way back to begin delivering them, when I came across this unholy sight.’

‘May I enquire as to where you deliver?’ asked Swann.

‘I would rather not say, sir.’

‘You were hunting illegally, then?’

‘No sir, this is my trade and I am allowed to pursue it honestly, it is just …’

‘Just what?’ said Swann.

The gamekeeper remained silent.

‘May I remind you an innocent girl has been murdered here. Now what are you not telling me?’ demanded Swann.

‘Well sir,’ the gamekeeper now spoke, ‘one of my customers is a very private man and he does not like his business known by anyone, even the fact he gets rabbits from me.’

‘Would I be correct in believing that you were on your way there when you found her?’

‘That is right, sir.’

‘Very well, I will not pry into your business further. It is the facts at this scene which are important and not who you were delivering rabbits to.’

‘Thank you, sir. Will that be all?’ asked the gamekeeper.

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Swann. ‘Although is that your cottage over on the hill, in case I require any further information?’

‘Yes sir, it is.’

‘Thank you,’ said Swann, once more.

As soon as the gamekeeper had gone, Swann crouched down and looked at the freshly-made footprints. They were analogous to one of the unidentified sets but only less deep. A few moments later Swann stood and marked the fifth sketch in his pocketbook with a
GK
, eliminating the gamekeeper as a suspect: the earlier, deeper footprints, he now realised, created through the carrying of his rabbits.

And then, beside the one remaining set of footprints Swann had yet to identify, he wrote the letter
M
for murderer.

‘No, no Miss Gardiner. Your stroke is still too heavy. A delicate touch is required, a
delicate
touch.’

‘But Mr Luchini, perhaps I have no feeling for it?’

‘And yet it is on your insistence that we are painting landscapes. It is on
your
insistence.’

For a few moments the elderly Italian art teacher and his pupil remained in silence, as they contemplated the half-completed landscape on the easel in front of them, before Mr Luchini felt compelled to expand the point.

‘The more delicate the touch,’ he explained, ‘the more an observer will be taken in to the scene you have created. Your aim should always be to transport the person viewing your painting into the very landscape itself. With this view of Bath, for example, the intention is that you want someone in London looking at it to feel transported to the city, as if they are here.’ He stroked the graying hairs of his untidy goatee beard and continued. ‘That is why painting exists, to carry people elsewhere. But you do not feel it within you, do you Miss Gardiner? You try to do two things at one time and therefore become, how you say, confused.’

‘What do you mean, Mr Luchini?’ asked Mary.

‘You attempt to paint what you believe the observer wants to see, while at the same time being drawn to wanting to paint what
you
see. Do you see?’

‘I am afraid I do not, Mr Luchini,’ replied Mary truthfully.

‘You are afraid of your gift, Miss Gardiner. You are scared to express yourself fully as a painter, or at least as a landscape artist. And because of this, you move the brush too heavily on the canvas. The brush should caress the canvas, like this.’

Mr Luchini took the brush from the easel and softly brought it across the canvas, then made another stroke next to it, only heavier.

‘Do you see the difference?’ asked Mr Luchini.

‘I think so,’ replied Mary.

They stared at the two splurges of paint on the canvas with Mr Luchini glad to have been able to illustrate his point, while Mary, despite what she had said, still unable to see the difference between the two strokes. As they continued to stand transfixed in their silence, they heard someone enter through the main door of the house and a few seconds later Swann appeared at the entrance to the room.

‘Jack, you were not expected at this hour,’ said Mary.

‘I have returned only briefly to consult a particular volume,’ he replied.

Mary made the introductions and the two men acknowledged each other.

‘I look forward to seeing your work at the gallery tomorrow, Mr Luchini,’ said Swann. ‘Mary was most insistent that I should attend but I do not require any coercion to view an exhibition by the finest Italian painter of landscapes at present in England.’

‘That is too kind of you, sir, too kind,’ replied Mr Luchini.

‘So, what do you think of my landscape, Jack?’

‘You wish me to be honest, Mary?’

‘I would wish nothing else.’

‘Then I would have to say that your strokes are too heavy.’

Mary sighed in frustration.

‘Ah, it is like there is an echo, Mr Swann, an echo. Your sister’s ability resides in the painting of faces, not trees and grasses.’

‘I believe you are right, Mr Luchini,’ said Swann.

‘The portrait work in her sketchbook is excellent, most excellent,’ continued Luchini, ‘most life-like and many of them drawn from memory, I believe. Have you seen these portraits, Mr Swann?’ the Italian art teacher enquired.

‘My sister has yet to grant me that pleasure, Mr Luchini.’

‘And I am no longer able,’ interjected Mary, ‘as the sketchbook is now lost.’

‘Lost?’ said Mr Luchini, ‘Oh, the tragedy, the tragedy.’

‘Indeed it is Mr Luchini. I was not able to locate it before your arrival this morning and I fear I shall not be able to do so after you have left.’

Swann turned to his sister. ‘I am certain it is not lost Mary, merely misplaced and will be found before the day is out. But now, I must continue on my way. It was a pleasure to meet you Mr Luchini.’

‘The pleasure is entirely mine, Mr Swann, entirely mine.’

As Swann left the room he covertly patted his jacket pocket to make sure the sketchbook still resided within it. He then went to his sister’s room and after he had replaced her sketchbook in the bottom drawer of the dresser from where he had earlier taken it, continued upstairs to the library.

Lockhart sat silently as he gazed out of the window. Things had not proceeded according to plan this morning but then that seemed to have been the way lately. It had been a somewhat turbulent year overall, although he had come through it largely unscathed, as he usually did. And this time, of course, was the additional bonus that at last his abilities and skills had been recognised for what they were and he was being handsomely rewarded for them.

Although he spent time in London, as he had done so the previous day, his visits were always brief and the place he now called home was Bath. In all his previous travels he had not spent any length of time in the city and that had been one of the reasons they had chosen it as his new base. Making the acquaintance of Kirby in London, earlier in the year, had been the turning point to his change of fortune, or so he believed, as he was certain that the series of fortuitous events which transpired since then had been in some way connected with that meeting.

Lockhart had, at one time, held notions of becoming a Member of Parliament, relishing the exemption from arrest the position carried with it, but he no longer needed that kind of protection; he belonged to a world which provided him with all he required. And yet he still did not feel completely safe, the letter he had received the day before, at the London hotel he used when staying in the capital, had seen to that. He would deal with it of course, as he always did, employing his quick wits and steely nerves that he had put to such good use during the preceding years.

And then there was Mary, sweet dear Mary. He had taken a shine to her the very first time he had seen her and although knowing he should not, given the implied stipulations inherent of his current role, could not help conversing with her and not long after, instigating a relationship. He had been introduced to her by Kirby, through his magisterial colleague Fitzpatrick, at a social event in Bath, not long after he had arrived there. Mary had made an immediate impression on Lockhart. There was something independently spirited about her he liked, although what was more attractive to him was that she also seemed to possess a naivety of heart. The relationship had been progressing most agreeably until her mother had died and Mary’s brother had arrived in Bath for the funeral.

There had been the initial complications, such as having travelled down on the same coach from London as Swann, and being indirectly involved in the assassination attempt on the man’s life after meeting him in the coffee-house (although later finding out he had been more directly involved than he realised), but once again it seemed as if everything had worked out to his advantage, as Swann had seemingly relinquished any interest in him.