Instruments of Darkness by Imogen Robertson Read Free Book Online Page A

no more than a purse with a few shillings and Crowther wondered where this man’s other possessions, if he had any, might be waiting, dumbly, for him to return. His boots were rather dusty, but whole. The clothes he wore were of passable quality, though a little worn in places, but only the material and design of the waistcoat showed any pretensions to fashion. Was its purchase one indulgence in an otherwise sober existence? An attempt at gentility? Crowther rubbed the stuff of the waistcoat between his thumb and forefinger, feeling the quality of the fabric. It might have been his own at one stage of his life.

    ‘How far away are we from Pulborough? And does the stage stop there?’ he asked, and Harriet looked up at him with surprise. ‘I have not needed to make the journey since my arrival in Hartswood,’ he explained.

    ‘It is about four miles. The stage to London passes there on Tuesdays, from London on Thursdays. You are wondering how he reached our village.’

    ‘I am. But it is most likely if he came from London, it was by coach and then on foot. He has the dust of the road on his feet.’

    Mrs Westerman merely nodded then took up a cloth, wet it, and began calmly to clean the blood away from around the horrid gash in the neck. Crowther stared for a second, then fetched a cloth of his own and started the same work opposite her. Their silence stretched into minutes, and Crowther slowly became aware of a sense of reverence, of humility in the warm room making its way into his bones. He recognised it from his own workroom; that sense of wonder that came to him as he concentrated on these bodies, these vessels through which life so fleetingly, and often with such cruelty, flew. The sensation was, he had recognised long ago, the nearest he would ever come to religion.

    Returning to the window, he dropped his cloth into the basin, watching for a moment as the water bloomed pink around it. He recalled Harvey’s words: A‘ll the parts are nourished, cherished, and quickened with blood, which is warm, perfect, vaporous, full of spirit . . .’ This wondrous substance that flowed through the hearts of every man, whatever his condition or nature, this symbol of love and death floating free from his fingertips. He thought again of the dark marks on the tree trunks in the coppice, and wondered how long it would be till the local children made a little shrine of terror about them.

    Turning back to the body, he crouched down to examine the wound afresh, and with infinite gentleness placed a finger on the edges of skin.

    ‘Mrs Westerman.’ His voice sounded unnaturally loud in the room, after their long silence. ‘If you have the stomach for it, come and look at this wound again and tell me what you see.’

    Her greenish eyes searched his face for a moment, then she walked slowly round the edge of the table, her bloodied cloth still in her hands, and gave her attention directly to the place he indicated, her face bent to the horror of the wound. Her voice as she spoke was composed.

    ‘The cut is deepest here, on the right side. So if he was surprised from behind . . .’ She frowned.

    Crowther took a knife from the roll behind him. ‘May I?’

    ‘Of course.’

    He stood behind her, took the knife in his right hand and said, ‘You are looking forward . . .’

    ‘Waiting for whomever I am meeting to appear in the clearing . . .’

    ‘I come up behind you. Take you by the shoulder . . .’ He did so, placing his left hand on her shoulder, and with his right brought the knife in front of her body, hovering a few inches from her throat. His own mouth went suddenly dry and as if from a great height he saw himself, the woman, the body.

    ‘I see,’ Harriet said. ‘The force came on the right side of the wound as the cut was completed. He was murdered by a man who favoured his right.’

    ‘And who was of about the same height, since the cut goes straight back to the vertebra.’

    Harriet looked at the