A long, thin pall of smoke hung motionless in the still air over Hayden Bridge. It had spilled from the chimneys of the large brass and iron foundry that dominated this part of the valley and helped to make the village an intense bustle of industry, contrasting with the stillness of the fells around it like a bee swarm in an otherwise tranquil orchard.
A question to a ragged street urchin led Atticus and Lucie Fox over the six arches of the old stone bridge that gave the village its name to an imposing, three-storey town house set back behind turquoise wrought-iron railings and a narrow, meticulously ordered garden of box and lavender.
Black enamelled letters on a brass plate fixed to the gatepost confirmed that this was the home and surgery of ‘Dr J. R. Hickson, Medicinae Doctor.’
Atticus pressed a sixpence into the grubby hand of the urchin with a wink and a grin, and watched him tear off excitedly up the lane. He leaned their bicycles carefully against the railings and lifted the latch of the ornate iron gate. It swung easily and silently across the short path of quarry-tiles that beckoned them up to the house itself.
Rapping the gleaming brass door-knocker sharply against the tapping plate of the front door, Atticus smiled awkwardly at Lucie as they heard the sounds of movement within. A woman’s broad outline formed through the leaded lights of the glazing and the shadow of a hand reached up to the latch.
“The doctor is not yet returned to his surgery,” announced an elderly but formidable-looking woman as she glared severely between Atticus and Lucie.
“Yes,” replied Lucie gently, “I’m rather afraid that he has not. May we come inside please?”
“You will need to come back for the evening surgery if you want to see the doctor. Surgery is from six o’clock sharp. Forst come, forst seen, even if ye are gentry. Dr Hickson is very particular on that.”
“That is entirely commendable of him but please, may we come inside?” Atticus tried to copy his wife’s gentle tone. “We aren’t ill; we are commissioned investigators involved in a matter of some gravity.”
He took out his slim, silver calling card case and pulled out a card, taking care to deliberately fold in the bottom, right-hand corner. The woman gasped and her hand flew to her mouth. She understood.
“Condolences: it is bad news, is it not? Someone has died. Is it one of the doctor’s patients? Is it old Mrs Bell?”
Atticus gently offered the card up to her.
“It is not Mrs Bell. I am truly sorry. We are Mr and Mrs Atticus Fox of Harrogate. May I enquire as to your name?”
“I am Mrs Campbell, I keep house for Dr Hickson.” Her voice was barely audible as she whispered through the fingers of her hand, still staring at the card.
Wearing a lingering expression of shock, Mrs Campbell pulled the door wide and bobbed a brief and mechanical curtsey. Atticus paused as they passed to allow her to take the card from him.
“May we?” he asked, indicating a door beyond the handsome stained-glass frame of the vestibule. It was marked ‘Surgery.’
Mrs Campbell nodded.
The room was a fairly standard affair for a country doctor’s surgery; a comfortable drawing room converted into the functionality of a medical consulting room. A large, over-stuffed chaise longue sat in the centre, and there was poignancy to an empty, high-backed chair placed strategically next to it. But for the murderous intent of the as-yet unknown killer, Dr Hickson would have assumed that chair just as he had done at countless six o’clocks before now, and as his housekeeper yet expected him to do.
There was a pair of identical, high-backed chairs lined against one of the walls and Lucie gently ushered Mrs Campbell towards the nearest of them. She perched on the other and took the old housekeeper’s trembling hand in her own.
“Mrs Campbell, I very much regret to say that we have some rather bad news,” Lucie began. “Mr Fox and I have been commissioned by Sir Hugh Lowther of Shields Tower to investigate what have now become three murders committed on his estate in the last week or so.”
“Shields Tower estate is where the doctor has been this very morning,” Mrs Campbell interrupted. “He was to join Sir Hugh for luncheon, prior to seeing his daughter, Miss Jennifer.”
As many people are wont to do, Mrs Campbell had spoken between the points of hearing and listening. She reached the second of these and her expression changed.
“Three murders did you say, Mrs Fox?”
Lucie nodded. “Yes, I did, and as I say I have some very bad news for you.”
She squeezed Mrs Campbell’s hand.
“Sir Hugh had reason to summon us once again earlier today. I am afraid that Dr Hickson was given poison on his way to Shields Tower, poison probably prepared from deadly nightshade berries. He regrettably did not survive.”
Mrs Campbell stared at her.
“No, no it is not possible,” she whispered. “You are both quite mistaken. The doctor has returned to the stables. I heard the sound of his pony along the back lane not one hour ago. He must still be speaking with the stable lad.”
“That was Sir Hugh’s footman returning Dr Hickson’s gig to your stables, Mrs Campbell,” Atticus replied. “Understandably I suppose, he must have returned directly to Shields without calling on you. It was Sir Hugh himself who discovered the doctor’s body on the Stanegate and it lies at this moment in a bedroom at Shields Tower awaiting the police from Hexham.”
Lucie gently patted her hand. “We have seen it there ourselves. I am truly sorry for your loss, Mrs Campbell, and for the unfortunate way you learned of it from complete strangers.”
Whilst Lucie comforted the housekeeper and brought her gently to terms with the news, Atticus’s eyes began to rove around the room. They settled quickly onto a wide, teak bureau, placed strategically to catch the light from the large bay window, and in particular, onto a large, black, leather-bound book which lay open on its top. After a furtive glance at Mrs Campbell who was sobbing into Lucie’s handkerchief, he slipped across the room, pulled a captain’s chair out from under the bureau and dropped silently into it.
His stomach fluttered as he realised that the book was Hickson’s appointments diary and day-journal. It lay open for that day; Saturday, the 7th of June, 1890. There were just three entries on the page, all of them pleasingly detailed and all of them written in a round, exuberant hand.
The first was: ‘Attend upon Mr M. Britton, Shields Tower Est.: Discussion of his incarceration into a lunatic asylum.’ The second, just below, read: ‘Luncheon, Shields Tower: 1 o’clock sharp.’ and the last: ‘Attend upon Miss Jennifer Lowther.’ As he pondered on these, a sudden thought struck him. He turned and said, “Excuse me, Mrs Campbell, but how long had Dr Hickson been practicing medicine in this area?”
The housekeeper dabbed her eyes and thought for a moment.
“A very long time; I should say almost five-and-thirty years now.”
“And he would have attended on the parishes of Hayden and Bardon Mill all that time?”
“Why yes, Mr Fox, of course, and the parish of Simonsburn too.”
“Including Shields Tower and Shields Tower Farm?”
“Yes, he was hardly away from there at one time. That was before Sir Hugh’s son, Master Arthur was born.”
“A patient of his, Michael Britton, told us that a Dr Hickson called upon him twenty years or so ago but I wanted to be certain it was the same Dr Hickson and not his father or someone who happened to share his name. Would he have retained his day-books and journals from then?”
Mrs Campbell looked uncertain.
“I expect so. He never disposes of anything, not ever; it sometimes right vexes me.” She made a noise somewhere between a giggle and a sob. “If he has, they will be in the box room over yonder.”
Then she smiled wistfully through her swollen, red eyes.
“I know Michael Britton well. It’s a great pity he was overtaken by his madness, because he truly was a fine man in his day.”
Atticus looked over in the direction she indicated and noticed for the first time a narrow panelled door set into the almost identical wooden panels of the far wall. He glanced back at Lucie who seemed to have instantly read his thoughts.
“Come, Mrs Campbell, show me the scullery and I’ll brew us up some tea. I’m certain it will lift our spirits no end.” The housekeeper nodded bleakly and allowed Lucie to take her arm and gently lead her out through the Surgery door.
Atticus mouthed ‘Thank you’ to Lucie and, once the Surgery door had clicked shut behind them, he crossed to the far corner of the room, feeling rather guilty despite this being a serious murder investigation.
The box room was cramped and musty and racked from floor to ceiling with shelves containing all manner of papers, magazines, journals and books. They were the chronicles of a lifetime spent in country medicine. As Atticus’s eyes became accustomed to the claustrophobic gloom, his eyes were drawn to a shelf just above head height. It contained a long block of leather-bound journals identical to the one resting on the bureau. They were labelled neatly in chronological order: 1856 through to 1889.
“Eureka!” he murmured audibly to himself. His own voice sounded strange – awkward and slightly tremulous – as if it were some other person rifling through such obviously confidential documents and not him.
‘This is a triple-murder investigation,’ the person with the strange voice reminded him in a whisper. He paused at the sound once more and then he murmured, “Let me see; Artie is twenty-one years of age now and Lady Igraine was lost on the moors around a year after his birth. But given that we don’t know precisely in which month he was born…”
He reached up and carefully pulled down the doctor’s journals marked 1868, 1869 and 1870, blowing a thin film of dust sharply from the bindings before tucking them under his arm.
Atticus Fox laid out Hickson’s journals side-by-side on the polished teak of the bureau top. Settling once again into the captain’s chair, he pulled the first, the journal for 1868, onto the blotting pad in front of him and, like a child on Boxing Day morning, lifted the cover. The round, flowing handwriting of twenty-two years previous was identical to that in the open journal of that very day.
Atticus Fox, through years of practice, was a highly accomplished speed-reader. He scanned each page both rapidly and thoroughly, but he did so always with half an ear to the tiled corridor beyond the Surgery door. As he had been led to expect, there were frequent entries to make house-calls on a ‘Mr M. Britton’ whom Atticus took to mean Michael Britton, now Uther Pendragon. Uther, he recalled once more, had told them that the doctor used to call regularly on him whilst he was well. What did surprise him however was the frequency with which he had also to call upon Lady Lowther.
It seemed apparent from the journal that Lady Igraine Lowther, despite what he had been told from his very first day in Northumberland about her vivacity and zest for life, was prone, like Uther, to frequent bouts of melancholy. Several times in his journal, Hickson had noted the dates when Sir Hugh had been posted abroad to fight or to help train the native troops, and these were inevitably accompanied by appointments to attend on Lady Igraine to administer the necessary ‘comfort’ for loneliness and sadness. It was, he supposed, the other side of the coin to having a Great Empire upon which the sun never set; that loved ones were often separated for long periods by trade or by war in far-away places.
It seemed not a little bizarre to be reading first-hand an account of events gradually unfolding decades previously, which he knew of prior to this only from conversations and hearsay. A note of confirmation of Lady Igraine’s pregnancy was there underlined with a thick double stroke and several months later, in May of 1869, an account of the birth of Sir Hugh’s first-born heir, who was later to be named Arthur, was written up in terse, clinical detail.
He supposed that having a tiny baby had made life much less lonely and rather more joyous for Igraine Lowther. The journal notes following his attendances at Shields Tower became much less frequent but more medically detailed and clinically objective after Arthur’s birth, and calls on Michael Britton very much less often. That was until the 15th of June, 1870 when Dr Hickson wrote just a brief, underlined footnote to the page:
‘Igraine still missing. Now forty-eight hours on the moors. Weather terribly inclement. Presume lost?’ and Atticus could find no mention of either thereafter.
Together with a rather calmer but still shaken and tearful Mrs Campbell, the Foxes respectfully drew the blinds and shutters of the doctor’s house. They left a brief note of explanation pinned neatly to the front door and safely deposited Mrs Campbell with a neighbour and close friend. Then, when at last they clambered back onto their bicycles and pushed off along the cobbles of the road, Atticus related his findings in the journals to an astonished Lucie.
“I certainly had no impression of Igraine Lowther being prone to fits of melancholy,” she exclaimed. “She must have had a very different private and public face. It is markedly unusual for someone to be able to hide such severe symptoms of melancholy so effectively from those around them, but then I suppose by all accounts, she was a quite remarkable lady.”
“So we are given to understand, my dear, but what of Dr Hickson? Did you discover anything noteworthy from Mrs Campbell? Had he made any enemies for example?”
Lucie shook her head. “No, it seems that Dr Hickson was just a quiet and regular country doctor and seemingly well-liked by everyone. I couldn’t find any direct connection with Sewingshields or Shields Tower at all, other than the obvious one that he served them as a physician.
“The only thing of any note at all was this: although Dr Hickson was a confirmed bachelor, Mrs Campbell told me that she once suspected he had a sweetheart. She never ever met her and Dr Hickson would never admit to it but she was sure that he was a-courting.”
“How did she know?” Atticus asked.
“Oh, he became quite the dandy, Atticus, even so far as wearing a girdle. It was then – just over twenty years ago – that he sold his old country gig and bought the smart new one – the one we have seen. Everyone told him it was far too fancy for a country doctor but Mrs Campbell suspected it was to take this sweetheart out for a drive. Dr Hickson would ask her to prepare a special picnic for two on those days.
“But they never married?” Atticus asked.
“No, and that is just it. It appears that this lady also disappeared from the high moors – around twenty years ago.”
Atticus was flabbergasted. “Another disappearance! So that makes three – all from those moors, all of them women, and all around the same time; that is, twenty years ago.”
He counted on his fingers. “First, Lady Igraine Lowther of course. Second, Michael Britton’s fiancée, and now, third; Dr Hickson’s secret sweetheart. If we add those disappearances to the recent murders, that makes six.
“Lucie, we would appear to have fallen into a veritable hotbed of murder and mystery, albeit twenty years apart.”
“Do you remember what Uther said to us, Atticus, after we first introduced ourselves to him and told him that we had been commissioned to investigate Samson Elliott’s death?”
Atticus’s eyes focused on the middle distance as he searched his memory.
“Let me see, yes, I believe I do. He started violently and began visibly to shake. Then I remember he began to drool horribly and needed to wipe his mouth with that grubby pocket-handkerchief of his. He seemed surprised that here had been another death and you asked if he knew about Sir Douglas. He said: ‘It’s started once again then.’”
Lucie nodded, a half-smile flitting across her face for the first time in hours. Her husband’s powers of recollection were quite remarkable.
“More or less, Atticus yes, but then he also mentioned that three smugglers had been mutilated and thrown from a crag and that a soldier from Hexham had disappeared. I wonder if they all had crosses cut into their bodies; I wonder if your six deaths and disappearances are really no fewer than ten!
“He clearly knows much more about the events of twenty years ago than he has thought fit to tell us. Perhaps we ought to be asking Mr Britton-cum-Pendragon a little more about them too, the next time we see him.”
Atticus Fox could not have agreed more.