Although she kept scolding herself that she was being silly, that she was a grown woman after all, Lucie Fox felt an inexplicable but overwhelming sense of unease as she sat in the grand dining room of Shields Tower. The reason for her discomfort lay in a row of three large and very life-like portraits, which were hanging on the wall directly opposite her place at the table. They were all of men, all in full military uniform and all bore varying degrees of likeness to Sir Hugh Lowther.
Mounted horizontally on the wall beneath each portrait was an obviously well-used regimental sword.
“Those portraits, Atticus; they seem to stare at one so,” she finally whispered after Sir Hugh, purple-faced with fury, had barked his apologies and stormed out to personally fetch Artie, Jennifer and Sir Douglas Lowther, his father. All three had unaccountably failed to respond to the butler’s dinner gong.
Atticus stood and turned to examine the paintings.
“First the statue of the Norns staring at you up the stairway, and now the three portraits there watching you too; I do declare, Lucie, you’ll be quite as insane as Uther Pendragon by the time we’ve finished this investigation.”
“Atty!” hissed Lucie as the door almost exploded from its frame and Sir Hugh, still ruddy-faced and blown-up as a bullfrog, re-entered the room. He was followed by Jennifer and Artie.
“I apologise for our lateness, Mr and Mrs Fox,” Artie explained sheepishly. “But Jenny was feeling a little… a little unwell. She was sleeping and I didn’t like to wake her.”
“Didn’t like to wake her, didn’t like to wake her, by gad! There’s nothing amiss with my daughter that a plate of good, hearty, Northumbrian fare won’t mend.”
Sir Hugh glared at him as he took his place once more at the head of the table.
“She is a Lowther after all!
“My father is nowhere to be found though,” he added after a moment. “Collier tells me he went up to the loughs for the day. He seems to spend all his time loitering around Broomlee these days. Probably fallen asleep in his chair. Collier’s sent angel-faced James, the fart-catcher, to seek him.”
“My wife and I were just admiring the portraits, Sir Hugh,” remarked Atticus, changing the conversation. “I presume by the likenesses that they are forebears of yours?”
A broad grin swept away the scowl on Sir Hugh’s face.
“Two of them are, Fox, yes; my father and my grandfather.” He stabbed towards each of them in turn with the handle of his soup spoon. “The third one is actually me… in my younger days. We’re all in the uniform of the ‘Old and the Bold’ of course, and those are our regimental swords under.”
“They are noble blades, Sir Hugh. May I?”
Lowther nodded affably. “Please do.”
Atticus gently lifted the farthest sword, that of Sir Hugh himself, from its mount. Even with his untrained eye, he could see that it was a very handsome weapon with a long, slim, razor-sharp blade and finely-wrought hand guard. It had also plainly been forged for war. Atticus curled his fingers round the grip and made a gentle, experimental lunge into fresh air.
“Do be careful, Atticus,” warned Lucie.
Sir Hugh hammered his spoon on the table in glee.
“Bravo! You have the makings of a fine swordsman, Fox. If ever you give thought to enlisting, be sure to come to the Fusiliers first. I won the British Army fencing championship with that sword. In fact, I won it thrice, which is to say I was the finest blade in the country, as was my father before me.”
“Now, Papa, don’t be boastful!” Jennifer admonished him, giggling.
“By God but it’s true nevertheless, Jenny.” Sir Hugh was chuckling now; Jennifer’s laugh was infectious.
“It’s all about speed do you see, Fox; speed of the eye, speed of the arm, and most importantly of all, speed of the brain. I have the reactions of a viper.”
He became suddenly serious.
“And you need a first-rate sword too, of course. My father swore by the Shotley Bridge blades, made just over the hill from here, Durham way.” He glared. “But not me; I had one as a boy and I found it to be shoddy. I use Sheffield steel.”
“Is your son intending to follow you into the Fusiliers, Sir Hugh?” Atticus asked.
A sudden and oppressive silence settled over the room and Sir Hugh and Artie exchanged sharp, resentful glances.
“There is nothing in this world I would love more,” Artie said.
The ticking of a great brass wall clock steadily ratcheted up the tension until it became almost unbearable.
“But I have forbidden it, Fox,” Sir Hugh growled at last. “I have set him to work in the commercial businesses instead. Commerce suits his… character and constitution much better than ever a life in the army would.”
“Papa, that’s just not true,” Jennifer exclaimed indignantly. “I’ve told you over and over that Artie would make a perfect and very gallant Fusilier officer.”
Sir Hugh coloured.
“Magistratus Indicat Virum; ‘The office shows the man.’ The man must therefore be worthy of the office, Jenny. Artie quite simply is not. I will not be shamed; my mind is made up and it is immovable. Now let me be whilst I tell the Foxes something of the history of the fighting Lowthers.”
One full hour later, even Atticus was beginning to lose interest in the conversation. The arrival of thick, syrupy, Abyssinian coffee, which Sir Hugh explained he had taken a great liking to during his time in the Sudan, provided a welcome opportunity to change the topic.
“Whilst I remember, Sir Hugh,” Atticus ventured, “would you have any influence with the coroner in this case? Mrs Fox would like to go through Elliott’s post-mortem autopsy report tomorrow – assuming of course that one has been carried out. I imagine the cremation has not yet taken place so it would be helpful for her to examine the corpse too.”
“Your wife wishes to examine the Gypsy’s corpse?” repeated Sir Hugh incredulously.
“If that is possible, yes. It is an important part of our investigation and, as I said to you earlier, she has a far stronger stomach than I for such things.”
Sir Hugh looked bemused.
“I suppose it’s courageous of you to admit to it around the dinner table. Did you take note of that, Artie? But there really is nothing to fear from the dead, Fox; they have already paid their debts in full to the Fates.
“In answer to your questions; yes, I do have some little influence with the coroner and, yes, of course I’d be pleased to use it on your, or rather on your wife’s behalf. In fact she’s in luck, a warrant for an inquest has been issued but I don’t believe any autopsy has yet taken place.”
At that moment the door crashed open once again and Collier burst into the room with James at his shoulder. Propriety and affectations forgotten, they both wore identically horror-struck expressions that shrieked and shrieked that somewhere, something diabolical had happened.
Collier bent by the colonel and panted something into his ear.
“He’s dead? How do you know he’s dead?” Sir Hugh thundered.
“He is, sir.” James seemed to be struggling to speak. “I found him up by his chair at the Broomlee Lough. He’s been throttled to death with a piece of cloth and—”
“Who is it? Who’s been throttled to death?” Atticus barked.
“It’s Sir Douglas, the colonel’s father.” James’ss answer was no more than a croak. As he turned towards Atticus, the sunlight caught a dark stain, slick and wet across the shoulder and front of his cape-coat.
“Where is he now?” Sir Hugh was suddenly on his feet.
“We left him in the scullery, sir. I carried him back but Mr Collier didn’t think it wise to bring him through the house, not with the ladies here and all.”
“Show me,” Sir Hugh commanded and strode from the room.
Above stairs, Shields Tower was grand and imposing. Below them, it was dark, cramped and labyrinthine. Endless corridors twisted this way and that, more of a lair for monsters than a large, comfortable home. But James and Collier led them unerringly and all at once they had passed through a stricken, sobbing crowd of servants, into a billow of sudden heat and found themselves in the scullery.
It was a very large scullery, as was surely necessary to provide for the wants of such a grand house as Shields Tower. Or perhaps it was Grendel’s kitchen because the scene within was monstrous.
They gathered, silent but for Jennifer’s sobs, muffled by Artie’s shoulder, around a large, scrubbed-top table which stood in the centre like a sacrificial altar and stared at the offering upon it. It was what once must have been a man – an old man certainly, but a living, breathing human being nonetheless. Now it was a lifeless husk partly covered by a blood-soaked tablecloth, and the manner of its transformation must have been terrible.
Its glassy, lifeless eyes were protuberant, still bulging from the bloated, ruddy face. Two thick lines of blood, drawn from the nostrils, were coagulating and crusting above the mouth, a mouth that retched and gaped in a never-ending death scream.
But it was the throat above the crisp, starched collar that drew the stare of every person there. Bound tightly around it and banded above and below by broad, angry, purple stripes was a cloth. It was a golden-yellow cloth that had been twisted into a tight rope and knotted fast below the ear.
Lucie was the first to react. She bent to examine the tiny knot pressed deep into the flesh and then reached for a scullery knife. Cautiously and with infinite care, she sliced through the weave, peeled it free from the skin and laid it next to its victim. Carefully smoothed flat, it became a crumpled strip of golden silk, perhaps eighteen inches in length by three in breadth. It was finely woven and had in some inexplicable way a feeling of great age about it.
“Death by strangulation,” murmured Lucie, voicing the terrible thoughts of every person in the room and Atticus nodded.
She began to examine the head and the neck and the marks around the throat, frowning as she did so. After a little while she said, “Atticus, look at—”
“What is it?” Sir Hugh barked.
In answer Lucie pushed her fingers deep into the gaping mouth and pulled out a long strip of something hard and black that reeked of vomit.
Atticus turned away and wretched.
Lucie held it between her fingertips and it hung down like something unholy.
“What is it?” she asked.
James the footman answered. “I believe it is biltong, ma’am.”
Lucie peered into the corpse’s mouth.
“There’s more of it, lots more. Biltong did you say it was? What is biltong?”
“It’s meat, ma’am, dried and cured. We saw a lot of it when we were out with the regiment in Africa. Once it’s cured, it lasts almost forever.”
Lucie laid it onto the table top next to the silk strip. She carefully wiped her fingers dry on a corner of the table cloth that had been laid over the rest of the corpse and then lifted it back. As she did, she revealed completely the cause both of the mottling of blood across the middle of the white linen, and of the wet slick across James’ss cape-coat.
Sir Douglas Lowther had been cleaved almost in two below his ribs, the whitening flesh of his viscera clearly visible in the long, blood-soaked gashes across his waistcoat. The gashes were in the form of the flattened ‘X’ of a crux decussata.
“Just like Samson Elliott!” James hissed and Atticus retched once more.
“Pull yourself together, man. What the bloody hell is the matter with you?” Sir Hugh growled irritably.
Lucie glanced round, frowning. “Elliott had wounds like this?”
James nodded.
Sir Hugh took command once more.
“Collier,” he barked, “use the telephone on the wall of my study and call for the police. Tell them the madman has struck again. Do it directly.”
He pointed to the strip of biltong now part-covered by the folded table cloth.
“Years ago, Lucie, we used to send biltong meat up to the madman. It wouldn’t go bad if he didn’t eat it directly, do you see? Well, let me tell you something about that meat lying there: it is old – very old. In fact, it could easily be twenty years old…”
He left the sentence unfinished.
They stood in a silence broken only by an indignant crescendo of insect wings as Lucie turned to sweep away a cluster of blowflies that were crawling in the gashes. She bent close and began to examine the wounds minutely.
“How very curious,” she murmured, swatting away the insistent blowflies.
“How is it curious?” Atticus gasped his question out. The scullery was oppressively hot.
“In the position of these wounds for one thing; the deepest is right up against the ribcage, and it seems to have been struck from below. It has quite cut through the diaphragm and carved open the lung cavity.”
“So Sir Douglas would have been lying on his back on the ground when he was attacked?” Atticus grimaced in apology to Sir Hugh, who stared back impassively.
Lucie shrugged. “That is what I first assumed too, but then it is the waistcoat below the wound that is soaked in blood. That would suggest he was upright when it was made – or perhaps sitting, if he was in a chair as Sir Hugh suggested. And then there’s this second wound; it’s much lighter – almost superficial.”
“Perhaps he tried to evade the first blow, and the superficial wound was all his attacker could manage to inflict,” Atticus suggested.
Lucie shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. It looks almost as if it was… as if it was drawn into the skin. Besides,” she pressed the lips of the deeper gash together, “it was made after the first, deeper cut opened him up – not before. Do you see how the line doesn’t meet when I press this wound together?”
“But why throttle him, and choke him, and then inflict injuries like those?” Atticus regarded the gash with horror. “Any one of those would have been sufficient to kill him. Why kill him thrice over?”
“I have really no idea, Atticus.” Lucie gently tried to move Sir Douglas’s hands across towards his belly. They were stiff and unyielding. “Perhaps the autopsy will reveal something.”
Atticus nodded, relieved that Lucie was almost finished here. “Let’s hope so.”
He reached over and carefully lifted the crumpled strip of golden cloth by one of its corners.
“This is an unusual material, Lucie.”
“Yes it is. It’s very old, tablet-woven silk.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” he admitted.
“Tablet weaving was a technique, very popular in medieval times, that was used to produce narrow strips of cloth.”
“So you believe that this might be medieval?”
Lucie nodded. “It is very old. Yes, I believe that it could very well be.”
Atticus pondered on the import of her words. “Then it’s another link with this infernal business of King Arthur. Which means it is highly likely that the deaths of Sir Douglas and Samson Elliott are linked, and that they were murdered by the same person… or persons.”
Collier was suddenly standing by Sir Hugh’s shoulder.
“Well?” the colonel barked.
“I’ve spoken with the police superintendent, sir. He sends his condolences and his compliments and asks that you keep the body safe until first light. He intends to come over then.”
Sir Hugh bristled like a bulldog. “Do you see?” he roared. “Do you see? Now you know why we sent for you both, Fox. The Hexham police couldn’t catch the pox in a whore-house.”