The large guest chamber to which Sir Hugh Lowther personally escorted Atticus and Lucie Fox quite took their breath away. Despite the fact that it was within the very ancient part of the house, the bare stone of the walls had been plastered over and the room fashionably decorated in the new Liberty style with its flowing, natural lines. The exquisite walnut furniture was inlaid with a vibrant marquetry of vines and twining plants, which was continued in the gaily-coloured stained glass of the window tops.
Most strikingly of all however, and painted directly onto the plaster above the bed-head, was a large and wonderfully detailed fresco of a fiery, red dragon. It had a long, exuberantly coiling tail and a head which, although fearsome and bestial, somehow possessed an expression of fragility and angst that was almost human. It was curled around as gaoler, or protector, or perhaps even captive of a beautiful, naked, copper-haired maiden.
Atticus had never seen the fresco before, but it disturbed him that the maiden seemed somehow familiar.
“What a very modern room, Sir Hugh!” exclaimed Lucie, interrupting his thoughts.
Lowther was silent for a moment. “Modern? It is hardly modern, Lucie. Would you believe that the decoration of this room was conceived and laid out well over twenty years ago? This was the room I shared with Lady Igraine, my first wife. She personally designed and commissioned everything here.”
He smiled and sudden pain haunted his eyes.
“Igraine was something of a ‘free spirit,’ shall we say, and she wanted the house and gardens to reflect that. That fresco over the bed there was painted by the madman, Michael Britton, before he went insane for the final time. My second wife Victoria restored the house and the gardens to the classical style – all except this room. I forbade her to change this room because it somehow represented the very essence of Igraine and I needed something to remember her by.
“After Victoria died, I moved into the farthest room of the north wing myself – right at the eastern corner. The room is by no means as grand as this one but it is handsome enough, and I am afforded a wonderful view of the moors and the loughs from my window.
“So this house is a mix of my two wives’ characters do you see, Lucie? My own single contribution is the sculpture of Die Schreiberinnen, or The Writing Women, at the foot of the stairs.”
“The three figures from Norse mythology?” asked Lucie.
“Bravo, my dear. I’m very impressed!” Sir Hugh clapped his hands together in delight. “Norse and Teutonic mythology actually, but yes, the very same. The Writing Women are also known as the ‘Norns’ or the ‘Sisters of the Wyrd,’ and they are to us and our Anglo-Saxon ancestors what the Fates were to the ancient Greeks. They have the task of writing all the deeds of our past, our present and our futures in mankind’s great Book of Destiny.”
He smiled grimly.
“Whither do they call us, Lucie Fox; whither do they call us.”
“I have to confess that I was a little unnerved by the statue of the crone pointing up the stairway,” Lucie admitted. “It seemed as if she was pointing right at me – just as if she were accusing me of something. Her eyes seem to be following me every time I look at her.” She turned and peered down the stairwell through the open door. “Look! Even now, she stares at me still.”
Sir Hugh was silent for a moment.
“The Norns see all… and yes, they are exceedingly well sculpted, almost as if they might be alive. I commissioned the piece from Mr John Taylor, a rising star in the world of art and it cost me a small fortune. It was worth every single farthing though and it suits me much better than the coats of armour it replaced. They weren’t even authentic, just a pair of reasonably good reproductions.
“But do not worry, Lucie, the Norn watching you now is Urth: ‘That Which Is.’ She is concerned only with the deeds of our past, unless of course there is something in your own past which might trouble her.”
His eyes lingered on Lucie for a moment, as St Peter’s own eyes might at a fresh-dead soul at the Gates of Paradise.
“But I think not.
“Verthandi, the figure that is depicted as embracing the entire household is the ‘Present,’ or ‘That Which Is Becoming.’ She examines our current deeds.
“My Lady Skuld or ‘That Which Should Become,’ the youngest and the most beautiful of the Norns and my own particular favourite, the one who writes and directs all of our futures faces, well she just faces out towards the moors actually. All our futures are like bleak moorland, do you see – a wilderness where there are no roads and no paths, where we all need direction lest we lose ourselves and perish.”
He closed his eyes and was silent for a moment.
“Quo Fata Vocant,” he murmured at last. “Whither the Fates call. It’s my old regiment’s motto. It’s also what attracted me to commission your own services. You use the same motto, do you not? You hear them too.”
Atticus nodded. “Yes, I suppose in a way we do. My two great passions in life are chess and reading. A writer called Arthur Conan Doyle has just had a story, The Sign of the Four, serialised in Lippincott’s Monthly, which I take for its scientific articles. Mr Doyle created a detective character called Sherlock Holmes whose methods I very much admire. Of course I understand that Holmes is merely a character of fiction, whereas we obviously are very much flesh and blood, but Holmes’s pen-and-ink companion Dr Watson supposedly served in your own regiment: the Northumberland Fusiliers. I knew of the motto from there and Mrs Fox and I decided to adopt it as our own. It seems somehow so appropriate to this profession.”
Sir Hugh smiled wearily. “Then bravo, the both of you; it’s a first-rate choice.” He pulled a handsome silver Hunter watch out of his waistcoat pocket and stared at it for a moment. “I’ll leave you to have your discussions now and see you at dinner. Bessie Armstrong, my housekeeper, will call on you shortly to see if there’s anything you might need to make your stay here more comfortable. We might not have the grand facilities of Harrogate here at Shields but we are, in our own way, just as hospitable.”
As if to cue, there was a sudden, loud knock on the door.
“Come in, Bessie,” boomed Sir Hugh.
Atticus and Lucie turned to see a broad, rather mannish looking woman in middle-age filling the doorway. She stepped obediently inside the threshold, bowed deeply and introduced herself as the housekeeper. Addressing Lucie, she asked if there was anything else they might require. Lucie replied politely that everything in the room appeared to be just-so and quite in perfect order.
“If there is anything you would like, anything at all, you have only to ring down.” The merest hint of a smile broke the cast of Miss Armstrong’s face and softened the gruffness of her voice just a degree.
The Foxes’ room was situated at the very front of the ancient tower, on the first floor. It had a large, mullioned window, which not only made the room very airy and light, but also afforded them a wonderful view of the long, straight avenue of yew trees which drew their eyes constantly to the hills and fells beyond it and the chameleon Northumbrian sky.
Atticus settled himself into the deep, leather cushion of the window-seat and gazed out at this panorama. Part of Skuld’s wilderness perhaps, he mused before he gathered together his thoughts and brought them back to the matter in hand.
“So, Lucie, we’ve had a very interesting first afternoon here, have we not? The case is quite as intriguing as I had hoped it would be, far more interesting than our usual fare.”
Lucie had freed her long, brunette hair from its ribbon and let it tumble down onto her shoulders. She began to methodically brush it out.
“Perhaps so, but the long-lost cousins and the straying wives pay the housekeeping, Atticus, never forget that. Nevertheless, it was a particularly brutal and bloody murder and if we should happen to find the murderer before the police do, it might just seal our reputation. It’ll be in all the newspapers, even the nationals.”
“Was it actually a murder though?” Atticus continued. “To approach the case in the proper manner, we need to ask if Elliott was killed in some other way, by accident or by suicide perhaps.”
“Oh, Atticus, that would be ridiculous. It has to be murder; Elliott wouldn’t have beheaded himself, would he?” She giggled suddenly in spite of herself.
“I suppose not,” Atticus agreed, a little irritably. “So I’ll inform Sir Hugh that that is our starting supposition.”
Lucie stopped brushing and pursed her lips. “I’m not sure that would be such a terribly good idea.”
Atticus turned away from the window, the low rays of the sun accentuating the lines of puzzlement on his face. “But we’ve just agreed it, haven’t we?”
“We have, Atticus. It’s just I am not so sure that Sir Hugh would be too delighted if, after having spent most of his afternoon showing us around the trail of evidence, we then tell him we’ve discovered his Gypsy was murdered. I think he’s probably guessed that part already.
“I know, I know,” she continued as Atticus opened his mouth to protest. “I know it’s all proper method, but I still feel it would be much more prudent just to say that we have some early theories that require the further gathering of evidence.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Atticus conceded. He turned back to his window. “So, what are our early conjectures to be, other than it’s the work of Sir Hugh’s madman, of course?”
Lucie carefully inspected her hair in the looking glass.
“I would much prefer it if you wouldn’t use that term, Atty. ‘Madman’ is such an awfully derogatory word, as if he is some kind of drooling, murderous beast or something.”
Atticus shrugged. “It sounds as if he might be.”
“Even so, I would much prefer it if you would call him ‘lunatic’ or ‘insane.’ Most people who are mad look no different to you or to me or to Sir Hugh, himself.”
“Or to Jennifer,” Atticus added drily. “She must have been either mad or joking when she suggested that Elliott’s killer was the risen King Arthur.”
Lucie stopped brushing her hair once more and frowned.
“I’m not so sure it was a joke. She seemed deadly serious about it to me.”
She turned in her chair to face him.
“There was something else about Jennifer and Artie that seemed a little bit odd too. I just can’t quite put my finger on it.” She stared past Atticus and through the window as her mind flickered once more through their brief meeting.
“I know what it was! They were close – intimate even – far too close for a brother and sister, even a half-brother and sister. They seemed to me to be more like sweethearts.”
“Sweethearts!” Atticus gasped. “But surely that can’t be possible?”
“As you always take care to remind me, Atticus, anything is possible.”
“I suppose it is,” he admitted. “But sweethearts? We must speak with them tomorrow and see if you feel the same. I should like to re-examine the murder field again tomorrow too, but at very first light while the sun is still low over the horizon.”
He pulled his old Wehrly watch from his waistcoat and glanced at the face.
“For now Lucie, I suppose we ought to change for dinner. It wouldn’t do to keep our patron waiting.”