Secrets in the Stones Read online

  “I will be along presently,” Thomas assured them, although he could not say when. He still had much to do in the study. He wanted to take advantage of the bright spring sunlight that flooded the room, illuminating dust motes that danced in the air and specks and flecks that had landed on the surfaces. Any miniscule one of them might prove vital in identifying the killer.

  As he took a deep breath, as if to gird himself for the task ahead, he was, however, immediately reminded of his wound. He also registered the smell again, the one he had first noticed as soon as he walked into the room. It was sweet and rich, but he could not quite place it. He did not recall that Sir Montagu wore such pungent cologne, but he might have been mistaken. He would ask Lydia if it was his habit.

  Peering through his magnifying glass, he next turned his attention to the bloody footprints that led from the desk to the French window. There was only one that was almost complete. The other two were really only red-rimmed contours. He eased himself gently to his knees to study them and was immediately puzzled by what he saw. The outline of the footwear was lighter and less defined than would normally be expected. Nor was there any sign of a heel mark. It was as if the imprints were made by slippers. And yet the prints were quite large, too large for a woman.

  Thomas scanned the desk and quickly found a clean sheet of paper. Bending down, he pressed it hard on the bloody footprint, then removed it. Only a bare outline was left on the paper, but such evidence could prove vital in the hunt for Sir Montagu’s killer.

  Next he examined the desk. Some of the papers that were strewn across it were spattered with blood. Various bills and documents had been showered with splats, presumably when the blade had severed the carotid artery, sending a crimson jet spewing across the surface. At the edge of the congealed pool of blood, Thomas spied the paper knife that Sir Arthur assumed to be the murder weapon. Wrapping his own kerchief around his hand, he picked it up by the hilt to inspect the blade. He walked to the window for a better look. There was a light smear of blood toward the tip, yet the pattern was very different from the spots and splashes left behind by the gushing of the slit artery. He placed it carefully into his handkerchief and laid it in his case. He was almost certain that Sir Arthur had been incorrect in his assumption.

  A moment later, he heard footsteps approach. Looking up from inspecting a pile of documents on the floor, he saw Howard at the doorway. The butler cleared his throat.

  “Sir, her ladyship is awake and asking for you.”

  Thomas smiled. “Then I shall come right away,” he replied, wincing as he straightened himself.

  Following Howard slowly and painfully up the stairs, he was directed into the boudoir. He found Lydia dressed and seated on the chaise longue by the window. Richard was by her side, his curly head resting contentedly just below his mother’s breast. Lydia was clutching him to her, stroking his hair and gazing out across the lawns. She looked pale and drawn, but as soon as she saw Thomas, she seemed relieved. Richard immediately sat up as he strode toward them, then rushed forward to greet him.

  “Dr. Silkstone,” cried the young earl, tugging at the doctor’s coat. “Mamma says we are to be friends again,” he said, fixing Thomas with large brown eyes.

  Thomas smiled at the boy, then shot a glance at Lydia, who remained seated but calm. He bent low to level himself with Richard. “I am most glad of it,” he replied. He proffered his hand, and after a quick glance back at his mother, who gave him a reassuring nod, the boy took it and shook it.

  As if she had been hovering outside on the landing, watching events, Nurse Pring appeared at the threshold. “Shall I take the young master now, m’lady?” she asked. Lydia nodded, but assured her son she would see him again later in the day. Both she and Thomas watched him go; then, as soon as they found themselves alone, Lydia rose and Thomas moved forward.

  “My love!” she muttered, pressing her head to his chest.

  Thomas let out a muffled cry of pain, and she withdrew quickly. “I am so sorry,” she apologized, pulling away from him. “Your wound . . .”

  He smiled at her and shook his head. “There is no need,” he replied, taking her hands in his. “I can endure anything as long as I know that you trust me again.”

  She threw back her head and looked up at him. “I should never have doubted you in the first place. I am so sorry, I . . .”

  “Shush,” soothed Thomas, placing his forefinger across her lips. “No apologies. No recriminations. We are together.”

  She led him to the window seat and bade him sit beside her. For a moment their reunion meant they both set aside the horror that had unfolded downstairs only a few hours before.

  “I thought I’d lost you,” Lydia told him, harking back to seeing him lying wounded on the common.

  “You should’ve known I would outsmart Lupton,” he told her, brushing off the duel as a trifling incident.

  Seeing he was jesting, Lydia smiled, too, but the respite was short-lived. She gasped and pulled away suddenly. It was soon apparent that her nightmarish discovery in the study was still very real.

  “What’s wrong? What is it?” Thomas followed her gaze to see that her eyes were fixed on a dark red stain on his coat cuff. It was smeared with blood. Seeing her revulsion, he took the coat off immediately, flinging it on the floor and out of sight, as if it were plague-ridden.

  “Forgive me,” he said. He had washed his hands of Sir Montagu’s blood, but the stain on the sleeve had gone unremarked. He put a comforting arm around her once more.

  Lydia was holding her handkerchief up to her mouth. “His head! It was . . .”

  Thomas pulled her to him again. “You have had a terrible shock,” he told her, “but we will find whoever did this.”

  She regarded him with doleful eyes that reminded him of the first time she had come to his laboratory, pleading for him to probe her brother’s death. Her look still sent an electric charge through his body, yet there was something more assured in her expression. Time and successive bereavements had taken their toll on her face and hardened her features. Her vulnerability remained, but it was tempered by a new steeliness. From the look on her face Thomas knew there was something more.

  “You have a suspicion?” he asked.

  “I do,” she said, nodding.

  “Lupton?” Thomas preempted her reply.

  Lydia frowned. “Sir Montagu told me there had been a disagreement between them, and then I remembered a carriage flash past me as I returned to Boughton. I later realized Lupton was inside.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Could he really have done such a thing?”

  The anatomist took a painful breath. “Until I have examined all the evidence and conducted a postmortem, I cannot say,” he replied. He folded his hand over hers. “All I know is there is a warrant out for Lupton’s arrest and when he is found he has some serious questions to answer.”

  Chapter 7

  The thieftaker—one John Thrupp—and his three men were on the road heading north shortly after noon. Thrupp, a hatchet-faced veteran well versed in the ways of villains, had been briefed by Sir Arthur. The magistrate had told him that the murder suspect, a gentleman by the name of Nicholas Lupton, came from a family who owned land in Yorkshire and might try to make his way homeward. There was a possibility he was planning to join the Great North Road at Biggleswade in order to catch the coach from London to York. He would also, most probably, be armed with a dueling pistol and was almost certainly accompanied by a thuggish sideman called Seth Talland. It went without saying both men were extremely dangerous. Any approach, instructed Sir Arthur, must be made with extreme caution. If they had executed Sir Montagu in such a savage and unholy way, the fiends were obviously crazed and might well lash out again.

  Armed with a description of the wanted men—unfortunately no small likenesses were available—the four thieftakers set off at the gallop. The fugitive pair had more than a day’s head start on them. The posse planned to stop off at the many inns and hostelries they passed
on their way. This would obviously slow their progress, but the two guineas that Sir Arthur Warbeck had personally pledged for the scoundrels’ apprehension was as good an incentive as they could wish for. There was a reward for information, too. A guinea to the man, or woman, who could lead them to the fugitives.

  Everywhere they went, they asked questions and spread the word. A murderer, or murderers, was abroad. More rumors had surfaced among other travelers come from Brandwick. News of Sir Montagu’s murder was circulating on the morning of market day, and already those who had visited the village were leaving with more than just cloth or food or other wares. They were weighed down with gossip and accusations, too.

  “You ’eard about the murder up at Boughton?” asked a woman buying ribbons from a haberdasher.

  “Terrible business.”

  A cross-eyed passerby butted in, drawing his finger across his throat. “Fair near cut off ’is ’ead,” he interjected gleefully.

  The trader, a plump woman with a whiskery chin, ignored the man. “They say ’tis the steward.”

  “The one that shot that American knife man?” asked her customer.

  “One and the same.”

  “’E must have gone mad.”

  “Aye, the devil’s got into ’im right enough.”

  By midday the murder was already the talk of inns and shops within a ten-mile radius of Boughton, but the news needed to spread farther and quicker. So, as soon as the thieftakers were engaged, they decided that one of them should ride ahead in haste to scour the coaching inns at Biggleswade so as to prevent Lupton from boarding the York coach at first light. At the same time, the other men would stop and make inquiries at the inns in the more immediate vicinity.

  Meanwhile, much farther south, another young chancer had recently arrived in London. One took one’s life in one’s hands around the foul stream of the Fleet after dark. Any London gentleman would tell you that. In the tumbledown courts and alleyways that surrounded it dwelt the desperate and the damned. That would have been reason enough to make anyone nervous, but Captain Patrick Flynn, formerly of the Irish Dragoon Guards and lately of the East India Company, had cause to be doubly so. He had shouldered his way through the slums of Calcutta and traded with the hardest merchants in Golconda, but this area of London, the haunt of many a robber and murderer, beat them both. Normally his dress marked him out as a man of substance, but on this occasion he had resorted to an old fustian coat and a shabby tricorn over his ginger-colored hair so as to blend in with the surroundings. Circumstances had forced him to call upon the services of such lowlifes in order to achieve his plan. But he did not feel comfortable in such company.

  A little welcome moonlight squeezed through the gaps in gable ends and down narrow alleyways as his carriage journeyed deep into the black heart of the city. It was an area where the roofs of dwellings slumped like exhausted dockers after a hard day’s work. Painted women stood on every street corner, feral dogs roamed freely, and brawling men could spill out of a tavern at any turn. Up ahead he caught sight of an upstairs window suddenly flung open to disgorge a pail of slops. The reeking contents narrowly missed an old man shuffling below, who cursed loudly as piss splashed his breeches.

  Flynn’s carriage came to a halt behind the unfortunate pedestrian. The way ahead was too narrow. The captain put his head out of the window to find out what was happening.

  “You’re on your own from now on,” the driver shouted down from his seat.

  It was what Flynn feared. He knew he and his naukar, Manjeet, would have to make some of their way on foot. This was the part of London where the Fleet River met the Thames just by Blackfriars. It was here that the lascars would often gather. These were the Indian sailors who were conveyed to the shores of England by the powerful and prolific traders of the East India Company. It was here that they were often abandoned to their own fates once they had outlived their usefulness. Droves of the hapless men would huddle around braziers on the dockside to keep warm, their thin cotton shifts and pantaloons affording little protection against the cold English climate. For victuals they were forced to beg or to rely on the uneven bounty of the captains of their erstwhile ships. In short, they were a wretched band. Finding themselves ignored and discarded, they had no way of returning to India unless they accepted that cruel treatment and rampant disease were inevitable elements of their hazardous voyages. Left to fend for themselves in a foreign land, they were desperate men. And desperate men did desperate things, in Patrick Flynn’s experience.

  After a few tentative steps through the thread-thin streets, Flynn and his naukar arrived at the Cockpit Tavern. Manjeet had been with him these past nine years, ever since an unfortunate debacle in Hyderabad when his previous Indian master fell afoul of the law. The former had transferred his loyalties quite easily and remained a good and reliable servant ever since. The only problem arose with his disfigurement. He was without a nose. It had been sliced off as a punishment for his thievery when he was but a youngster. In his homeland he was accepted—there were so many like him. In London, however, he was an object of curiosity and revulsion. The captain insisted he cover the bottom half of his face in public with a silk scarf.

  Flynn looked about him warily, then up at the inn sign that dangled drunkenly off a single rusting hinge. He’d been warned about coming here. He’d heard the stories about unsuspecting patrons dispatched through trapdoors that opened out onto the river, never to be seen again. But he was a man of the world. He’d learned well in India. He was aware he was playing a dangerous game, but he’d shown a penchant for deception at the card table and wagered he was a good match for any of the scoundrels who frequented these parts.

  They were not far from the quayside. At this part of the Fleet, ships could moor three abreast, and the tavern was frequented by merchants and adventurers, too. Here deals were done and fortunes made and lost. Flynn and his man took a table in the corner, away from prying eyes. There master and servant waited, an uneasy silence between them, even though all around there was the constant noise of talk and raucous laughter.

  “A brandy,” Flynn told the serving girl who came to the table after a minute or two. He noted the hair that hung in straggles below her cap was the color of a tallow candle.

  “And for him?” She eyed Manjeet, who sat, head bowed, next to his master. The naukar lifted his face to her unthinkingly, and his scarf fell down. The girl gasped in horror and backed away. Heads turned, and curious eyes fixed on the strange pair.

  “Have you never seen a man without a nose before?” barked Flynn. There was a tinge of an Irish accent in his voice. It always resurfaced when he was angry or nervous or both, as on this occasion.

  The girl’s lip began to tremble, and she scurried off to fetch the captain’s order, leaving him hunched over the table waiting.

  “You are certain they will be here?” he asked Manjeet after a short silence.

  “Yes, sahib,” came the reply. Even after nine years of service Manjeet’s English remained rudimentary.

  Sure enough, the captain did not have to wait long. At the appointed time the two lascars approached, seating themselves opposite him. Flynn could tell they were men of the sea. Their dark faces were weathered, and they stank of stale sweat mixed with a pungent smell he could not quite place. They were strong and intimidating, one a whole head taller than the other. Their hair, black as tar pitch, was tied at the napes of their necks, and they wore the flimsy cotton pajamas of their class. He eyed both Indians with a look of eager anticipation and bade them sit. Manjeet was to be his interpreter in the negotiations.

  “Well?” he began, leaning forward across the table that separated them and then returning his gaze to Manjeet.

  One of the lascars, the one who appeared older and wilier, spoke.

  “You have money?” translated Manjeet.

  Flynn signified he was irritated by such an opening question. He let a sigh of frustration escape to make his point, then delved into his pocket to bring out a
small purse. “Five shillings,” he said grudgingly, flinging it on the table.

  The lascar slid his eyes toward Manjeet. “He said ten,” he protested in his native tongue.

  Flynn did not need his naukar to translate. “The rest when you have told me what I want to know,” he replied. His many years at the card table had taught him never to gamble everything at once.

  Manjeet conveyed the deal, and the lascars swapped looks before nodding in agreement.

  The older spoke a few words and Manjeet listened intently. “The Atlas reached St. Helena six weeks ago with the Besborough,” he told Flynn.

  “And Mrs. Hastings?”

  The taller man nodded and seemed positive in his account.

  “She good, sir, so they heard,” Manjeet relayed.

  Flynn was relieved. At the back of his mind lurked the fear that Marian Hastings, formerly known as Baroness von Imhoff and now married to Warren Hastings, the governor-general of India, might have declined during the long and hazardous voyage from Calcutta. Her poor health was the reason her doting husband had insisted on her trip to England’s fresher climes.

  Flynn allowed himself a tight smile. “And when is the ship due to reach these shores?”

  Manjeet put the question to the men, waited for the answer, then replied. “It is due in Portsmouth late next week, sahib.”

  Another smile, only this time broader, graced the captain’s lips. He showed a row of small front teeth. “Good,” he said with a nod. From what he knew of the celebrated Mrs. Hastings, once she had seen the diamond, she would surely fall under its spell. Reaching into his pocket, he brought out another purse. “The rest of the money,” he told the men. This time Manjeet did not have to translate.

  Chapter 8

  Sir Montagu’s corpse remained overnight in the game larder. It lay beneath a sheet on a long marble slab. Its stockinged feet, spattered dark red, stuck out at the end, and a hand, now flaccid, had emerged from under the sheet to point to the floor below. Day had just broken, although the light remained poor as Thomas entered the outbuilding to begin the postmortem. Once again, he had enlisted the help of Professor Hascher. The elderly Saxon had been due back in Oxford, but had postponed his journey to assist. The latter busied himself stripping the body in a workmanlike fashion as Thomas went through his well-rehearsed ritual of laying out his medical instruments.