The Shadowcutter (7 page)

“Do folk often fall backwards against a wall?” said Felix.

“They might – if they were intoxicated.”

“Or you might fall if you were pushed by someone,” Felix said.

“That assumes there was someone else there.”

“Well, maybe there was. Perhaps it was a tryst.”

“That crossed my mind. Why else would she be all the way out here? The servants are not supposed to go into the Pleasure Gardens.”

Felix looked down at the body, rehearsing the possible scenarios in his mind.

“So did she die before or after she entered the water?” he said. “Was she drowned, and if not, what killed her? Why was she in the water and if she was alive when she entered the water, why did she not survive?” he said. “Those are the questions. And it won’t be easy to answer any of them until I have done the post-mortem and we have more information about the circumstances of her being here.”

Major Vernon nodded, and then said, “Assuming you are allowed to conduct the post-mortem. Haines, the coroner here, may have his pet physician. And you may not be popular being somewhat connected with this house.”

“What?” said Felix. “Oh, for the Lord’s sake!”

“I gather that Sir Arthur, the county chief constable and Haines are implacable Tories.”

“Lord Rothborough told you that, no doubt. And I am not connected with this house!”

“In their eyes you are. It is as well to be aware of these differences. If we are to make a case for you, we need to know where their prejudices lie. In the meantime, I suggest you make as thorough a survey as you can without taking a knife to her. And then we will go and examine the scene again.”

Felix nodded and pulled off his coat.

“Could you perhaps take notes for me, sir?” he said. “That will speed up the process. And I think we do need to be speedy if this gets snatched away from us by local stupidities.” Major Vernon nodded and reached for his notebook. “But first we need to get her undressed.”

Together they removed her layers of clothing, which revealed nothing very particular, until he had got her stays off, and ripped open her shift, to reveal a characteristic swelling of the abdomen.

“Is that –?” began the Major.

“Possibly,” Felix said, rolling up his sleeves. “I can find out soon enough.”

He began an internal examination. His fingertips had just made contact with what was unmistakably a foetus of four to five months’ growth, when the door flew open. He glanced up, his mind still making sense of the implications of what he had just felt, and saw an elegant young woman dressed in a riding habit standing in the door way. She took in the scene before her and her gloved hand flew to cover her mouth. She then turned and fled.

“Lady Charlotte...” Major Vernon said and went rushing after her.

With his index finger, Felix discovered what was the top of the child’s head and found himself shaking with pity and rage for this poor unborn creature and its horrible fate. Or at least he told himself it was for the child. For at the same time his heart was set adrift on a vast and boiling ocean of feelings, which if he had been a woman, he felt might have brought him to the floor in a dead faint.

With all the effort he could muster, he collected himself, gently taking his hand from the dead woman’s womb, and covering her entirely up again, with all the care he could find in himself, when all the time his imagination was picturing the face of the young woman in the riding habit.

A moment later, Major Vernon returned, closing the door behind him.

“Is she all right?” asked Felix.

“Yes,” said the Major.

Felix went towards the door.

“Are you sure that is wise?” said Major Vernon.

“I don’t know,” Felix said. “I want to... I need to...” and he opened the door and went out.

He saw at once that she was standing in the room on the other side of the hall, but in the doorway, as if she were hesitating on the threshold, that she too felt drawn back towards him.

In this fanciful, pleasure-driven place that their common ancestor had built, where painted birds cavorted above them, they stood in their doorways. It was as if as a physical force was pulling them together, yet they both advanced but half a step each.

“My Lady –” he began, and she at the same moment said, “Sir –” and then she made a gesture to say that he was to speak first. But his mouth was dry. He found he could only offer up his filthy, shirt-sleeved arms and hands in a gesture of apologetic supplication. He would have embraced her if he could. It was what his muscles and his heart were straining to do. She was a stranger and yet not at all a stranger.

“I –” he began but he could not find any words.

He stood there, looking at her, scouring every detail of her face, regretting he had never laid eyes on her before, feeling the loss of never having seen her as a child, never having had her as a companion in youthful adventures. It was a loss he had never known before but now it struck him, cold on his heart, just like the feel of that poor unborn child in the dead woman’s womb.

At length she spoke.

“I am sorry. I did not mean to come. I ought to have stopped myself but –” and she threw up her own hands just as he had done.

He nodded. She was like himself: impulsive, driven and confused.

“I am glad you did,” he said, and took a step towards her. “I am glad to see you at last.”

It was the truth. He had never felt as honest as he did in that moment. It was as if he had discovered something sacred, and there was no place there for lies. She nodded, and he felt certain that she felt the same.

“You should get back to your work,” she said. “Major Vernon...” Felix glanced behind him. Major Vernon was discreetly observing them. “We will have time enough in the future, but she has no time left.”

He nodded, and turned and went back in, closing the door behind him.

Major Vernon reached for his notebook.

“She’s right,” Felix said.

“So?” said Major Vernon glancing at the body.

“She’s with child,” he said.

“How many months?”

“Four to five, but that’s an approximation.”

“That adds to the puzzle. Suicide?”

“God forbid!” he exclaimed. Clinical detachment had deserted him. He could only see the tragedy. He swallowed and said, carefully, “Unlikely. That head injury. That is the key to this.”

“Then we must go and look at the site when you are done here.”

-0-

When he had finished his examination, Felix went with the Major to the scene of the discovery of the body. As they left the dairy, there was no sign of Lady Charlotte which both relieved and disappointed him.

“This way,” said Major Vernon, leading him through a fantastical garden of statues and billowing dark yew hedges, until they emerged to face a mass of water, overshadowed by a cliff that dripped with ferns and which was fissured to create the entrance to a cave.

“And you have to go over that bridge to get into the grotto?” he said.

“Yes,” said Major Vernon. “And that is where I saw the crushed shells.”

“Quite the spot for a tryst,” Felix said.

“Exactly,” said Major Vernon. “But there are any number of points in which she could have fallen, stumbled into the water, don’t you agree, meaning it was accidental?”

“Or she could have been pushed,” said Felix.

“Or held down under the water in the shallows. Drowned by the father of the child.”

“Is that what you are thinking?”

“Come and look at this cave. But mind your step as you go.”

Felix followed him round the narrow path and across the rattling bridge over the water.

“This is not my idea of a garden,” he remarked as they went into the cave and looking around him.

“No, nor mine,” said Major Vernon. “But it is well done, you must concede.”

“We are lucky to have those lights in the ceiling,” said Felix.

“And I have some candles,” said Major Vernon, producing two from his pocket, along with a box of lucifers. He handed one to Felix and struck a lucifer to light it. “Now, what are we looking for? Blood?”

“Blood,” Felix said and together they began to examine the walls of the cave.

“Mr Carswell,” called the Major, “Is this not ..?”

Felix took his hand lens from his trouser pocket and went to look at what the Major had discovered. A patch of dark, dried matter was staining the rubble wall, at about the height of the victim’s head.

“Yes, possibly blood,” said Felix, handing his candle to the Major. He needed his hands free to get a knife and take a sample, which he could examine under the microscope. “And do we have spatters?” he went on, glancing to the right and left of the stain. “Yes, we do. Look sir, there – that might be consistent with the back of the head cracking against the rock with some force.”

“Not a fall then,” said Major. “Someone, in a quarrel, accidentally pushing her back, so that she collided with the wall, or, more deliberately taking her by the shoulders and smashing her head. Which is quite a different matter. What we can establish is that, with reasonable certainty, she was not alone. She could not have sustained such an injury alone.”

“No,” said Felix. “There is too much force involved. I need to make a record of those spatter patterns and get this sample.”

“There is shell in the mortar here,” Major Vernon remarked. “Just like the white shell you found. You’d better get a sample of that too.”

Felix nodded and set to work. Although Major Vernon was ostensibly only holding the candles, Felix could tell his mind was deeply occupied with the possibilities of what might have happened in there.

Chapter Six

After Felix had recorded as much of the evidence in the cave as he could, they retraced their steps through the Italian maze to the dairy. He wanted to look again at the head injury in the light of what they had seen, but as they passed under the faux-Gothic arch, they were met by the sight of a covered stretcher being loaded into a hearse.

“What the –?” he said, turning to Major Vernon.

“That will be on Mr Haine’s, the coroner’s, instructions. How regrettably efficient of them.”

“I haven’t even begun –” Felix said. He would have sprinted over to stop them, but Major Vernon laid his hand on his arm.

“Let’s go and present our credentials civilly – that will help your cause. If I’m not mistaken, that is Mr Haines and Sir Arthur in the barouche.”

Felix nodded. Major Vernon had a way of getting what he wanted in the most unpromising circumstances – it was best to trust to his judgement on such occasions.

“It’s a shame we look so dusty,” Major Vernon said with a smile, putting his coat back on. They had been working in their shirtsleeves in the cave. “Holt will be ashamed of me.” Felix hauled his own coat on and they set out to tackle the two gentlemen in the barouche.

“Major Vernon,” said one of them, a gentleman with iron-coloured hair and the ruddy complexion of a countryman. “Thank you for your communications. It was fortunate that you were to hand in the first instance. I did not know that you were a guest at Holbrook.”

“I am not, sir. I am staying at Stanegate,” Major Vernon said.

“This is Mr Haines, the coroner,” Sir Arthur said.

Major Vernon made a respectful bow to the coroner, who looked to Felix like the sort of man who would quibble with his cook for putting too much butter on the bread.

“And this is?” Sir Arthur went on, with a gesture towards Felix. There was something in his voice which suggested he had guessed who he was, and Felix felt piqued by it.

“Forgive me, yes, of course; Sir Arthur, Mr Haines – may I present Mr Carswell? My colleague at Northminster.”

“Ah yes, your surgeon,” said Haines, in a raspy voice that one could grate cheese on. “A Scotsman, yes?”

“Yes, sir, indeed he is.”

Felix made his bow and grinned like an idiot but held his tongue because he did not trust himself to speak.

“Don’t you have some connection to Lord Rothborough?” said Sir Arthur.

“My father has charge of a parish on Lord Rothborough’s Scottish Estate,” Felix said, with care.

“That isn’t what I had heard,” said Haines, with such insolence that Felix was tempted to snatch the whip from the coachman and strike him with it.

“About this business, if we may?” Major Vernon said, indicating the hearse.

“An accident, one must suppose,” Sir Arthur said.

“Drowning is, in the main,” said Mr Haines.

Felix could hold his tongue no longer.

“The circumstances and the condition of the corpse suggest otherwise. As the first medical man to see her, I would strongly recommend that the inquest be adjourned until a full post-mortem can be performed. Time is of the essence.”

“And you would like the job and the fee, I dare say?” Sir Arthur said.

“I do not care a whit for the fee,” said Felix. “I am only interested in getting to the truth.”

“I suppose you need not care,” said Haines. “After all, you have the rents from Ardenthwaite. A nice gift that is for the son of a poor Scots clergyman, I should say. That is the case, isn’t it, young man, that you have title to the place? No doubt, you’ll be putting up for parliament soon enough. This doctoring of yours is just a pastime. But don’t you think that we will let you have the seat for the say-so. Your ‘connection’ may think he can buy the votes of the Ardenthwaite tenants, but good Sir Robert will be out of his tomb and haunting them if they try and vote for a godless Whig, I can tell you that for a fact!” He punched a bony finger towards Felix.

“Mr Haines, if we might deal with the matter in hand,” Major Vernon said. “The inquest?”

“Tomorrow at ten, at the Golden Lion in Market Craven,” said Haines.

“We will be there, of course,” said Major Vernon. “As will Lord Rothborough.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Sir Arthur. “One of my men will give a report and that will be sufficient for a verdict of accidental death, which is the most likely case here. The only other sensible possibility is that she was a mad woman who drowned herself. Better we record accidental death, Mr Haines and let the poor creature have a decent burial.”

“And let her murderer think he can get away with it?” Felix burst out. “For if this isn’t murder, then –”