Let There Be Blood (A Lord Ambrose Mystery) Page 3

  It was a big house for a local farmer. The Crawshays had once been respected in these parts, and they had been wealthy enough to live in what was considerable style in a farming community. But in the last century, as the fortunes of my family, the Malfines, increased, those of the Crawshays had been on the wane. There had been still some lingering style about the old man; he had been well schooled, capable of a certain grace, between and sometimes even during his bouts of drunkenness, though he had been shunned by his neighbours for many years.

  The heavy oak door of the farmhouse was standing open and I stepped inside, into a stone passage. My eyes adjusted to the dimness, and I felt the cold of the flagstones striking up, even on this hot day. There was another door, leading off the passage to the left. I knocked perfunctorily upon it and walked into a low, long room. A parlour, by its furnishings.

  Perhaps they had seen me from the window. At any rate, they did not seem to be surprised. I even had the impression that they were waiting for me, that they had formed a tableau for my entrance.

  One woman was standing near the window. The other was slumped in a chair by the door. The woman near the window looked directly at me as I entered.

  The parlour had some unexpectedly graceful furnishings. There were several fine old pieces of furniture, such as a delicate little walnut armchair. Heavy curtains of that rose-gilt colour that used to be called old gold, in watered silk. And something rarely seen in the house of a farmer, however prosperous: a pretty cottage piano, with an embroidered Indian shawl thrown over the top.

  I had to stoop because of the low ceiling.

  The woman standing near the window on the other side of the room was outlined against the light. She was strong and tall, with a mass of chestnut hair piled on her neck. A handsome woman. Handsome, rather than beautiful, was what they would say of her. Nothing fragile. “Nothing fancy to look at,” as they say in these parts.

  Nothing fancy.

  Except for the eyes.

  As she turned her head at my approach, the light fell on her face, and I saw that the governess’s eyes were of a most strange colour, a smoky yellowish-grey, light eyes, set perhaps a trifle too close together, giving her face a secret look.

  That blankness, that impassivity, was so unexpected it was almost shocking in itself.

  This, I knew, was Miss Anstruther, the recently arrived governess to the Crawshay child. The pretension of having a governess for a farmer’s family was something that had not escaped mocking comment. So busy had the wagging tongues been that I believe Miss Anstruther must have been the subject of almost as much gossip as I myself. We two were the outsiders in this place — we still had novelty value. Whisper, whisper, whisper:

  “They say he bought her, my lord! Old Gideon Crawshay, at the farm. He bought a governess at Callerton Fair.”

  I could just imagine the excitement in the district, the chattering tongues, the mittened hands of the ladies waving in excitement in the drawing rooms, the lips of the farmers slopping warm piss-ale in the village inn. “Bought her, they say! Fancy that! And what do you suppose he paid for her? Nobody knows!”

  Outside, a cloud must have passed from the sun, for a flood of light suddenly fell through the window and I saw that there was a great stain across the front of the governess’s modest dove-grey velvet dress. It was a broad brownish smear. Dried blood.

  She has touched the bodies and not changed her gown, I thought. The other woman had not the slightest stain on her, although her skirts seemed draggled and dusty. But her hair was combed neatly and pulled over her ears, parted down the centre, and her sleek ringlets fell on either side of her pale face. Her dress was of sprigged cotton, little blue florets on a cream ground, tight across her breasts. She had a hand over her face.

  Strange that the governess had a richer gown than her mistress. Marie Crawshay’s day-dress, pretty though it was, was simple and ordinary, rather like that of a maid in a well-to-do household. The governess’s gown, on the other hand, though plain, was of the finest lustrous Italian silk velvet — in fact, it was of the same quality as my own frock-coats, which was why I recognised it for what it was.

  I advanced into the room. Marie, Edmund’s widow, had taken her hand away from her face and was staring at me. She licked her upper lip, slowly, like an animal. A faint smell of sweat, mingled with that of cologne, arose from her body.

  The woman was drugged.

  The iris of her deep-blue eye was glassy, the pupil reduced, the skin clammy and yellowish. I knew those signs, had seen them before in the feverish context of a military hospital: Mistress Edmund Crawshay had been calmed by laudanum, that is, by opium admixed with brandy. I know not why laudanum is believed to be such a harmless remedy that even nurses give it to fretful children to soothe their teething: I myself, in my fighting campaigns, had seen its operation often enough in the makeshift camps where the wounded and diseased were nursed, and observed that it gave much relief from pain and fever, but that men had then to be weaned from it if they were not to become mostly wretchedly addicted to its use, as poor Tom De Quincey has described in his Confessions.

  This condition that I now saw in Mistress Crawshay at the farmhouse was, I knew, an unnatural tranquillity, the peace of the poppy, the two-edged, untrustworthy, merciful release given by opium, the blissful calm that might break into hysteria at any moment.

  “Madam, my condolences.”

  There was a slight nod in return. The lace handkerchief dabbed at the eyes.

  Pretty eyes, big and blue, with dark lashes, repeated in the small, solemn face of her son, who was clutching at her skirt, staring up at me in silence. The child had the golden hair of his father who now lay in death outside these walls, on a trestle table not ten yards away, those same thick yellow curls that I had seen darkened and dabbled with blood in the outhouse.

  A handsome family, the Crawshays, and no doubt, like so many families where beauty is the general run of the mill and the expected inheritance, intolerant of physical defects.

  “Madam, I am Ambrose Malfine, your neighbour, and, I hope, your friend. They have sent for me because Sir Anderton is away and someone must needs take charge here. I hesitate to press you, but there are questions that must be asked, and it is better that I should put them to you now than that you should be exposed to questioning before the coroner’s jury.”

  I knew something of the law in such cases. She would have to make a formal deposition at some stage, since she was probably the chief witness to the guilt of the gypsy. And she would have to give evidence at his trial. They would hang him in the end, of course, no doubt about that. If she could give me her account of events now, that would be enough to send him for trial and the formalities could follow later. The rope would encircle his neck in the fullness of time.

  “Mistress Crawshay, will you not tell me what passed here this morning?”

  Marie Crawshay turned to the governess. She licked her lips with a small red tongue, opening her mouth silently several times, as if she could not get the words out, but finally managed: “Please take my son out of the room.”

  Miss Anstruther detached the little fingers from Marie’s skirts and with surprising strength gathered the child up easily in her arms and carried him out of the room. He made no protest. Marie Crawshay waved me to a chair and sank back, falling giddily into a pile of velvet cushions.

  “I tried to keep my son away from what happened here, but of course, I couldn’t hide everything … ”

  Marie’s voice faltered and she twisted her hands tightly in her lap.

  “Shall I tell you what I saw, my lord? Now? Well, I was alone when it happened. Miss Anstruther — my governess — had gone — had gone on some … some errands for me, to Callerton. The farm hands were all out in the fields. Edmund, my husband … ”

  Her eyes filled with tears, and they ran down her delicate pink cheeks and fell in little damp patches on to the lace at her neck, but she carried on.

  “I heard a noise. A bang
. I had my son with me — we were in the barn across the yard. He has a favourite little calf, all of his own — Primrose — and when she is older she will give milk just for him, so I told him. He likes to see her every morning — he runs across the yard to pet her.”

  Dear God, I thought, what must old Crawshay have thought of that? A working farm, and the indulgent fancy of a cow kept just as a pet for the child!

  “There will be a trial, will there not? Will I have to testify? In court?”

  “Your evidence will be needed, Mistress Crawshay. I fear we cannot spare you that.”

  “No, no, I understand … If I tell you now, just quietly … with only the two of us here, perhaps I will be less frightened when it comes to the courtroom.”

  Cool. She was very cool. There was a pulse beating very slowly in her throat. It was the drug.

  “Well then, yesterday afternoon … Shall I start there? It was so hot … I think it must be the hottest summer …

  “I was in the dairy when it happened. We had all had our dinner at noon. Then Miss Anstruther left in the pony and trap for Callerton. She was going to do some shopping there. My husband and … Crawshay — they always called him just Crawshay in the village, just his surname — they were doing accounts in the dining room here. I left them at the long dinner table. The dishes had been cleared away and they had the farm account books spread out in front of them. I did a few necessary things in the kitchen, wrapping the ham in muslin and that kind of thing. Then I went out to the dairy. That barn … that place where they are now … that was the old dairy at one time, but it hasn’t been used as a dairy for a century or more, I think, because Crawshay’s great-grandfather had another one built … I mean, the one we use now. I’m so sorry, my lord, my mind wanders from the point, I know. Please forgive me. Anyway, I had tasks to do in the dairy. It was so hot the milk has been tainting quickly. Mattie, that’s our servant, Mattie had gone home to the village. She does not always scour out all the pans properly and I wanted to scald them myself with boiling water, to make them sweet. I went to the dairy and I took Edmund with me. He brought his little wooden horse and he played quietly with that while I was at work. He’s a sweet-natured boy, you know. He was pretending to churn butter for me. Crawshay thought my boy was too gentle, he wanted to make him a bit more of a rapscallion, that’s what he used to say, a rapscallion. We were in the dairy for the best part of the afternoon. I gave Edmund a drink of milk there, warm from the cow. And Edmund had his arms about his calf and he was petting her and stroking her — when I heard a couple of loud bangs from the direction of the house.”

  She stopped short.

  Was it real shock? Marie Crawshay might seem a shrinking flower, but she was a farmer’s wife. She would be used to the sound of gunshots — popping off at rabbits and hares, perhaps after bigger game in my own woods, for I could not be bothered to do anything about the poaching that took place in the grounds of Malfine at night.

  “Did you know they were shots?”

  “Yes, but I thought nothing of it. I thought someone was shooting a coney, or some such little creature. But then I heard another, and then I was quite certain — certain that shots had come from the house. So then I knew of course, it was all wrong. It wasn’t someone out in the fields. I told Edmund to stay with the calf — he’s such a good child, you know. And then I ran out of the dairy. But I didn’t run straight to the house. I don’t know why, perhaps something … some instinct … I must have sensed something because I didn’t run straight across the yard. Lord Ambrose, perhaps God watches over us sometimes.”

  Well, yes, and then again, perhaps He doesn’t, I thought. He hadn’t done much watching over her husband and her father-in-law.

  “I was very frightened, you see, so I didn’t run in straight away — crept up, keeping close to the wall. The door to the house was open and I stood just inside it — and something saved me, something kept me from crying out. Because he was still there, you see, the murderer. Just the other side of that wall.

  “And as I stood there listening just inside the front door, I heard nothing. Absolutely nothing. And that was wrong, you see. The silence was wrong. Because the old man, my father-in-law, Mr. Crawshay — he was not a silent man. I was expecting to hear something: Edmund and old Crawshay talking, or even arguing, but there was nothing at all. There should have been some sounds, even just the noises of them moving around the room — you know, there are sounds in a room even when people aren’t talking.

  “But there was just that dreadful silence, and I stepped a little further down the passage, and then I smelled a bitter, burning scent, and I knew what it was, the smell of gunpowder. And the dining room door, the door at the end of the passage, was open a crack. So I crept up to it. I held my breath. And then I did hear something. I heard someone moving, but with little creeping movements like my own.

  “I put my eye to the crack of the door. And I saw him. The gypsy. Bending over something on the floor. Then he moved, and I could see what it was lying there.”

  She stopped suddenly, and gripped the arms of the chair so tightly that I could see the blue veins swelling up under the pale knuckles. A look of terror crossed her face. “He’s not here now, is he? You’ve taken him away? Say you’ve taken him away!”

  There was a decanter with little gilded glasses beside it on a round table near the window. I took out the stopper and sniffed at it. Wine. I poured out a glass and held it to her lips; I put my arm around her thin, shaking shoulders.

  She swallowed the drink in little shuddering sips. Slowly, her hands relaxed their grip on the arms of her chair and the shuddering ceased.

  “Now listen to me, Mistress Crawshay. You mean the gypsy, don’t you? The gypsy frightens you. We’ve taken him away. He can never hurt you again. You’re quite safe now, quite safe.”

  Whether it was the wine, or my reassurances, she seemed able to go on.

  “You can’t stay forever in a nightmare, can you?” she said forlornly. “You must wake up some time!”

  Then she was speaking again, fast and determined, with a sudden access of strength.

  “Before I tell you any more, you must tell me something. Tell me where the gypsy is now. I have the right to know!”

  “I’ll give orders to have him locked up. He’ll be in the cellar of my house, five miles away. Guarded by two men; deep underground at Malfine, with a padlock and iron bolts on the door of his prison. There’s no escape for him — I give you my word on that.”

  Marie gazed at me for a few moments, as if testing me for honesty. Then she turned her head away and began to talk again.

  “You’ll want to know what I saw. It was the gypsy. He was holding one of the pistols, bending over something on the floor, and then he moved and I saw them.

  “I saw Edmund first. I could see Edmund’s hair, and blood everywhere, and that devil bending over him, and he turned his wicked face towards the door and he seemed to be looking straight at me, and I was afraid he could see me, even through the wood of the door — you know what they say in the village, that the gypsies have the second sight, that they can see through solid walls! He seemed to be looking right at me, but then I saw that he was staring at something — something he was holding up in his hand. It caught the light and I could see what it was. It was the old man’s silver fob watch — I would have known it anywhere.

  “I knew then that I had to get away. I was certain he would kill me if he saw me. For I knew he must have killed them both, Edmund and old Crawshay. The old man would never have let the watch go — he had it always on a chain. I was afraid of everything when I saw that watch in the hand of the gypsy.

  “I was afraid that I could not trust my feet, that they would not move, that I would cry out, that the door would creak, that I would faint. But I thought of my boy! I had to get my child away from the farm and safe from that devil! And eventually I forced my legs to carry me, creeping along, back out of the house. It seemed years before I got down that passagew
ay, tiptoeing, a step at a time. Still no sound from the dining room. Then I slipped outside and into the byre and held little Edmund tight, and put my hand across his mouth in case he cried out, and we crouched down in the straw. At last I heard the outer gate of the farmyard creaking, and I stood up and peered out and I saw him — the gypsy — running down the lane.

  “I told little Edmund to stay there in the straw and not to make a sound. And I went back to the house. They were there — in the dining room. My husband and his father.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Theft was almost certainly the motive — at least for the beginning of the crime which had ended in a double murder. It would be death to be convicted of this robbery alone, and if the wretched gypsy had been caught in the act of theft by the Crawshays, father and son, he might as well have murdered them. After all, he could only be hanged once. He would have nothing to lose by killing them.

  “Mistress Crawshay, please help me. Calm yourself and answer me. Was any money missing?”

  “They might have had some money there. They were doing the accounts for the farm tenants, and some of them had paid their rents recently. The old man and my husband might have been counting up the rents. And the watch is missing, of course. The fob watch the gypsy ran off with. And something else — something that seems very strange, although I didn’t notice it had gone until a little while ago. A bundle of old clothes — quite worthless, really. Why should he take that? Why should he take some old linen? I had put a few things on a side table, ready to be mended. Just some old shirts and some little kerchiefs, for my son. The bundle is missing. Why should he take that? I would have given it to him if he had begged it from me — I was never ungenerous — anyone in the village would tell you that.”