The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

46

Step by slow step, I proceed down the corridor, poking my head into every bedroom before allowing myself to walk past it. I’m wearing the brass knuckles, and jumping at every noise and shadow, wary of the assault I’m certain is coming; knowing I can’t beat the footman should he catch me unawares.

Pushing aside the velvet curtain blocking the corridor, I pass into Blackheath’s abandoned east wing, a sharp wind stirring drapes that slap the wall like slabs of meat hitting a butcher’s counter.

I don’t stop until I reach the nursery.

Derby’s unconscious body isn’t immediately obvious, as it’s been dragged into the corner of the room, out of sight of the door and behind the rocking horse. His head is a mess of congealed blood and broken pottery, but he’s alive and well hidden. Considering he was attacked coming out of Stanwin’s bedroom, whoever was responsible obviously had enough of a conscience to keep the blackmailer from finding and killing him, but not enough time to take him anywhere safer.

I quickly rifle through his pockets, but everything he took from Stanwin has been stolen. I didn’t expect otherwise, but as he is the architect of so many of the house’s mysteries, it was worth a try.

Leaving him sleeping, I continue on to Stanwin’s rooms at the end of the passage. Surely only fear could have pushed him into this misbegotten corner of the house, so far from the meagre comforts afforded by the rest of Blackheath. By that criterion though, he’s chosen well. The floorboards are his spies, screaming my approach with every step, and the long corridor offers only one way in and out. The blackmailer clearly believes himself surrounded by enemies, a fact which I may be able to exploit.

Passing through the reception room, I knock on Stanwin’s bedroom door. A strange silence greets me, the din of somebody trying to be quiet.

‘It’s Constable Jim Rashton,’ I call through the wood, putting the brass knuckles away. ‘I need to speak with you.’

The declaration is met with a flurry of sounds. Steps go lightly across the room, a drawer scrapes, something is lifted and moved, before finally a voice creeps around the doorframe.

‘Come in,’ says Ted Stanwin.

He’s sitting on a chair, a hand stuck inside his left boot, which he’s brushing with a soldier’s vigour. I shiver a little, rocked by a powerful sense of the uncanny. The last time I saw this man, he was dead on a forest floor and I was going through his pockets. Blackheath’s picked him up and dusted him off, winding his key so he can do it all again. If this isn’t hell, the devil is surely taking notes.

I look past him. His bodyguard is sleeping deeply on the bed, breathing noisily through his bandaged nose. I’m surprised Stanwin hasn’t moved him, and more surprised to see how the blackmailer’s angled his chair to face the bed, much as Anna has done with the butler. Clearly, Stanwin feels some affection for this chap.

I wonder how he’d react knowing Derby’s been next door this whole time.

‘Ah, the man at the centre of it all,’ says Stanwin, the brush pausing while he regards me.

‘I’m afraid you have me at a loss,’ I say, confused.

‘I wouldn’t be a very good blackmailer if I didn’t,’ he says, gesturing towards a rickety wooden chair by the fire. Accepting his invitation, I drag the chair closer to the bed, making sure to avoid the dirty newspaper and boot polish strewn on the floor.

Stanwin’s wearing a rich man’s approximation of a stable hand’s livery, which is to say the white cotton shirt is pressed and the black trousers are spotless. Looking at him now, dressed plainly, scrubbing his own boots and squatting in a crumbling corner of a once-grand house, I fail to see what nineteen years of blackmail have bought him. Burst blood vessels riddle his cheeks and nose, while sunken eyes, red raw and hungry for sleep, keep watch for the monsters at his door.

Monsters he invited there.

Behind all his bluster is a soul turned to ash, the fire that once drove him long extinguished. These are the ragged edges of a man defeated, his secrets the only warmth left to him. At this point, he’s as much afraid of his victims as they are of him.

Pity pricks me. Something about Stanwin’s situation feels terribly familiar, and deep down, beneath my hosts, where the real Aiden Bishop resides, I can feel a memory stirring. I came here because of a woman. I wanted to save her, and I couldn’t. Blackheath was my chance to... what... try again?

What did I come here to do?

Leave it alone.

‘Let’s state facts plainly,’ says Stanwin, looking at me steadily. ‘You’re in league with Cecil Ravencourt, Charles Cunningham, Daniel Coleridge and a few others; the lot of you fishing around a murder that happened nineteen years ago.’

My prior thoughts scatter.

‘Oh, don’t look so shocked,’ he says, inspecting a dull spot on his boot. ‘Cunningham came asking questions early this morning on behalf of that fat master of his, and Daniel Coleridge was sniffing around a few minutes after that. Both of them wanted to know about the man I shot when I chased Master Hardcastle’s murderer off. Now here you are. Ain’t hard to see what you’re up to, not if you’ve two eyes and a brain behind them.’

He glances at me, the façade of nonchalance slipping to reveal the calculation at its foundation. Aware of his eyes upon me, I dig for the right words, anything to repudiate his suspicion, but the silence stretches, growing taut.

‘Wondered how you’d take it,’ grunts Stanwin, putting his boot down on the newspaper and wiping his hands clean with a rag.

When he speaks again it’s low and soft, the voice of somebody telling stories. ‘Seems to me this sudden lust for justice probably has one of two causes,’ he says, digging at the dirt beneath his fingernails with a penknife. ‘Either Ravencourt’s caught the whiff of scandal and he’s paying you to look into it for him, or you think there’s a big case waiting to be solved that will put you in the papers and make your name.’

He sneers at my silence.

‘Look, Rashton, you don’t know me or my business, but it knows men like you. You’re a working-class plod walking out with a rich woman you can’t afford. Nothing wrong with climbing, done it myself, but you’re going to need money to get on the ladder and I can help. Information is valuable, which means we can help each other.’

He’s holding my gaze, but not comfortably. A pulse throbs violently in his neck, sweat gathering on his forehead. There’s danger in this approach, and he knows it. Even so, I can feel the lure of his offer. Rashton would love nothing more than to pay his way with Grace. He’d like to buy finer clothes, and pay for dinner more than once a month.

Thing is, he loves being a copper more.

‘How many people know that Lucy Harper is your daughter?’ I say blandly.

Now it’s my turn to watch his face fall.

My suspicions were raised when I watched him bully Lucy at the lunch table, all because she had the temerity to use his first name when asking him to move out of the way. I didn’t think much of it when I saw it through Bell’s eyes. Stanwin is a brute and a blackmailer, so it seemed only natural. It was only when I witnessed it again as Dance that I caught the affection in Lucy’s voice, and the fear on his face. A roomful of men who’d happily stick a knife in his ribs and there she is, all but telling them that she cares about him. She might as well have painted a target on her back. No wonder he lashed out. He needed her out of that room as quickly as possible.

‘Lucy who?’ he says, the rag twisting tight in his hands.

‘Don’t insult me by denying it, Stanwin,’ I interrupt. ‘She has your red hair and you keep a locket with her picture in your jacket, along with a codebook detailing your blackmailing business. Odd things to keep together, except they’re the only things you care about. You should have heard how she defended you to Ravencourt.’

Each fact out of my mouth is a hammer blow.

‘It isn’t hard to figure out,’ I say. ‘Not for a man with two eyes and a brain behind them.’

‘What do you want?’ he asks quietly.

‘I need to know what really happened the morning Thomas Hardcastle was murdered.’

His tongue roams his lips as his mind gets to work, cogs and gears lubricated by lies.

‘Charlie Carver and another man took Thomas out to the lake, then stabbed him to death,’ he says, picking up the boot once again. ‘I stopped Carver, but the other one got away. Any other old stories you want to hear?’

‘If I was interested in lies, I’d have asked Helena Hardcastle,’ I say, leaning forward with my hands clasped between my knees. ‘She was there, wasn’t she? Like Alf Miller said. Everybody believes the family gave you a plantation for trying to save the little boy, but I know that’s not what happened. You’ve been blackmailing Helena Hardcastle for nineteen years, ever since the boy died. You saw something that morning, something you’ve held over her all this time. She told her husband the money was to keep Cunningham’s real parentage secret, but that’s not it, is it? It’s something bigger.’

‘And if I don’t tell you what I saw, what then?’ he snarls, throwing the boot aside. ‘You spread word that Lucy Harper’s old man is the infamous Ted Stanwin and wait to see who kills her first?’

I open my mouth to respond, only to be confounded when no words come out. Of course that was my plan, but sitting here, I’m reminded of that moment on the staircase when Lucy led a confused butler back into the kitchen, so he wouldn’t get into trouble. Unlike her father she’s got a good heart, knotted with tenderness and doubt – perfect for men like me to step on. No wonder Stanwin stayed out of sight, letting her mother raise her. He probably funnelled his family a little money over the years, intending to make them comfortable until he could put them permanently beyond the reach of his powerful enemies.

‘No,’ I say, as much to myself as Stanwin, ‘Lucy was kind to me when I needed kindness, I won’t put her in danger, even for this.’

He surprises me with a smile, and the regret lurking behind it.

‘You won’t get far in this house with sentiment,’ he says.

‘Then what about common sense?’ I ask. ‘Evelyn Hardcastle is going to be murdered tonight and I think it’s because of something that happened nineteen years ago. Seems to me it’s in your interest to keep Evelyn alive so she can marry Ravencourt, and you can keep getting paid.’

He whistles. ‘If that’s true, there’s better coin to be made in knowing who was responsible, but you’re coming at this crooked,’ he says emphatically. ‘I don’t need to keep getting paid. This is it for me. I’ve got a big payout coming, then I’m selling the business and getting out. That’s why I came to Blackheath in the first place, to pick up Lucy and finish the deal. She’s coming with me.’

‘Who are you selling it to?’

‘Daniel Coleridge.’

‘Coleridge is planning to murder you during the hunt in a few hours. How much information is that worth?’

Stanwin is looking at me with a bright suspicion.

‘Murder me?’ he says. ‘We’ve got a square deal, him and me. We’re going to finish our business out in the forest.’

‘The business is in two books, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘All the names, crimes and payments in one, written in code, of course. And the cypher to decrypt it in another. You keep them separate and think that keeps you safe but it doesn’t and, square deal or not, you’ll be dead in’ – I pull up my sleeve to check my watch – ‘four hours, at which point Coleridge will have both of the books without parting with a shilling.’

For the first time, Stanwin looks uncertain.

Reaching over to the drawer in his bedside table, he removes a pipe and a small pouch of tobacco, which he packs into the pipe’s bowl. Scraping away the excess, he circles the burning match across the leaves, taking a few puffs to draw the flame. By the time his attention returns to me, the tobacco is burning, smoke forming a halo above his ill-deserving head.

‘How’s he going to do it?’ asks Stanwin, out of the corner of his mouth, his pipe gripped between his yellow teeth.

‘What did you see the morning of Thomas Hardcastle’s death?’ I ask.

‘That’s it, is it? A murder for a murder?’

‘Square deal,’ I say.

He spits on his hand.

‘Shake then,’ he says.

I do as he asks, then light my last cigarette. The need for tobacco has come upon me slowly, the way the tide nudges up a riverbank, and I let the smoke fill my throat, my eyes watering in pleasure.

Scratching his stubble, Stanwin begins speaking, his voice thoughtful.

‘It was a funny day that, strange from the off,’ he says, adjusting the pipe in his mouth. ‘The guests had arrived for the party, but there was already a bad atmosphere around the place. Arguments in the kitchen, fights in the stables, even the guests were at it; couldn’t walk past a closed door without hearing raised voices behind it.’

There’s a wariness to him now, the sense of a man unpacking a trunk filled with sharp objects.

‘It weren’t much of a surprise when Charlie got fired,’ he says. ‘He’d been carrying on with Lady Hardcastle long as anybody could remember. Secret at first. Obvious later, too obvious if you ask me. They wanted to be caught, I reckon. Don’t know what got ’em in the end, but news went around the kitchen like a pox when Charlie was dismissed by Lord Hardcastle. We thought he’d come downstairs, say goodbye, but we didn’t hear a peep, then a couple of hours later, one of the maids fetches me, tells me she’s just seen Charlie drunk as a lord, wandering around the children’s bedrooms.’

‘The children’s bedrooms, you’re sure?’

‘That’s what she said. Poking his head in the doors one after another, like he was looking for something.’

‘Any idea what?’

‘She thought he was trying to say goodbye, but they were all out playing. Either way, he left with a big leather bag over his shoulder.’

‘And she didn’t know what was in it?’

‘Not a clue. Whatever it was, nobody begrudged him. He was popular, Charlie, we all liked him.’

Stanwin sighs, tipping his face to the ceiling.

‘What happened next?’ I prod, sensing his reluctance to continue.

‘Charlie was my friend,’ he says heavily. ‘So I went looking for him, to say goodbye more than anything else. Last anybody saw he was heading to the lake so that’s where I went, only he wasn’t there. Nobody was, at least that’s what it looked like at first. I would have left except I saw the blood in the dirt.’

‘You followed the blood?’ I say.

‘Aye, to the edge of the lake... that’s when I saw the boy.’

He gulps, drawing his hand across his face. The memory’s lurked in the darkness of his mind for so long I’m not surprised he’s having trouble dragging it into the light. Everything he’s become has grown out of this poisonous seed.

‘What did you see, Stanwin?’ I ask.

Dropping his hand from his face, he looks at me as though I’m a priest demanding confession.

‘At first, just Lady Hardcastle,’ he says. ‘She was kneeling in the mud, sobbing her heart out. There was blood everywhere. I didn’t see the boy, she was cradling him so tight... but she turned when she heard me. She’d stabbed him through the throat, almost taken his head off, she had.’

‘She confessed?’ I say.

I can hear the excitement in my voice. Looking down, I notice that my hands are clenched, my body tense. I’m on the edge of my seat, my breath held in my throat.

I’m immediately ashamed of myself.

‘More or less,’ says Stanwin. ‘Just kept saying it was an accident. That was it, over and over again. It was an accident.’

‘So where does Carver come into this?’ I ask.

‘He arrived later.’

‘How much later?’

‘I don’t know...’

‘Five minutes, twenty minutes?’ I ask. ‘It’s important, Stanwin.’

‘Not twenty, ten maybe, can’t have been too long.’

‘Did he have the bag?’

‘The bag?’

‘The brown leather bag the maid saw him take from the house? Did he have it with him?’

‘No, no bag.’ He points the pipe at me. ‘You know something, don’t you?’

‘I think so, yes. Finish your story, please.’

‘Carver came, took me to one side. He was sober, dead sober, the way a man is when he’s had a shock. He asked me to forget everything I’d seen, to tell everybody he’d done it. I said I wouldn’t, not for her, not for the Hardcastles, but he said he loved her, that it’d been an accident and it was the only thing he could do for her, the only thing he could give her. He reckoned he had no future anyway, not after being dismissed from Blackheath and having to move away from Helena. He made me swear to keep her secret.’

‘Which you did, except you made her pay for it,’ I say.

‘And you’d have done different, would you, copper?’ he says, furiously. ‘Clapped her in irons then and there, betraying a promise to your friend. Or would you have let her get away with it, scot-free?’

I shake my head. I don’t have an answer for him, but I’m not interested in his pitying self-justification. There’s only two victims in this story: Thomas Hardcastle and Charlie Carver, a murdered child and a man who walked to the gallows to protect the woman he loved. It’s too late for me to help either of them, but I’m not going to let the truth stay buried any longer.

It’s done enough damage already.