Atticus Fox regarded Sir Hugh Lowther in horror.
“So then you plotted your revenge on your wife’s other lovers? And that also inspired you to commission the statue of the three Norns?”
“Atticus, you are very good, very good indeed. It is a great pity that this will be your last commission. Yes, once Igraine was dead, the Norns commanded me to read her other diaries. When I did so, I discovered in detail how I had been made to look a fool, not once, as she had already admitted to, but many times.
“The Fates, the Sisters of the Wyrd, saw my anguish and they were merciful. They told me both how I might exact my revenge and how I could right forever the wrongs that had been committed.
“The three Norns are the Fates of the Teutonics and the Scandinavians, of the Angles and the Saxons, past, present and future. It seemed appropriate to commission that particular statue of them in gratitude for their great kindnesses to me.”
Atticus said, “It was the statue that first aroused my suspicions towards you, Sir Hugh – that and the sword you used to kill Elliott. The Norns seemed to be more totems than objets d’art to you and the figures were positioned so symbolically: Urth, the Norn of the past with her hand posed as if to point an accusing finger directly towards Igraine’s bed chamber; Verthandi, the Norn of the present watching over you and your present household; and Skuld, the ‘future’ and as you said, your particular favourite, looking over the empty moors. Unless I am very much mistaken, she faces directly towards Sewingshields and this very vault.”
Sir Hugh smiled his chilling smile once again.
“My destiny is bound up with Igraine in her death just as much as it was during her life.
“When I realised that Arthur could not possibly be my son, because at the time he would have been conceived I had been in India training the Sepoys, Igraine confessed her affair with Gibson. She had no choice, because I had read every last sordid detail already in her journal of the time. She acknowledged that he was the father.”
Artie, who had been standing with his back towards them staring at the mortal remains of his mother turned with a bewildered expression on his face.
Sir Hugh fixed him with a cold glare as he continued.
“She blamed me for her actions, did you know, Atticus? She blamed me, by God! She said that I, in leaving her alone for so long, had driven her into the arms of another man.
“Bah, stuff and nonsense! I was serving my Queen and my country’s great empire as a first-line fusilier officer and as a knight, by Jove – a real knight, a fighting knight, dubbed by Her Majesty Queen Victoria herself. Why did she need to fantasise about a make-believe?
“There was also the Gypsy Elliott. She found the idea of a tryst with a ‘hot-blooded Gypsy,’ as she described him, as irresistible. She would steal off to his caravan whenever the inclination took her. As often as not, he would move the damn thing to some secluded spot up on the moors so they wouldn’t be seen.
“It was my pleasure to ram my sword through his treacherous heart; the same heart he said she had stolen from him. But do you know he was quite wrong. She hadn’t stolen it at all. It was still there when I reached inside of him and dragged it out of his miserable body.”
“Was the heart the gift, Sir Hugh, or was that the death itself?” Atticus asked.
Sir Hugh stood aghast.
“You know about the gifts? So the Norns do speak to you after all. But no matter, all our destinies are carved already. The lives were the gifts. There are to be seven in total. The hearts were mine to eat; mine to reclaim so that Igraine will not make the same mistakes again.”
“The hearts were yours to drag out of the bodies and eat!” It was Atticus’s turn to stand aghast. “Like a South Sea cannibal?”
Lowther grinned at his expression.
“Not quite, Atticus. I wasn’t savage about it. I brought the hearts back to this cave and ate them in front of Igraine. Does that still offend you? It was the Norns who ordered me to eat them. Igraine’s love and devotion will come to me next time – all of it – just as it should. After all is said and done, I am her husband.”
“And you stabbed Samson Elliott through the heart because he had given it, his love that is, to your first wife?”
Sir Hugh nodded. “I know that we are like-minded, Atticus, so you must appreciate the symmetry of it all. Yes, it did seem the appropriate way for him to die. I sliced off his miserable head too. He had told Igraine he had lost his mind to her.”
Atticus stared, incredulous as he wrestled with the words that Lowther had spoken.
“And the wounds across his abdomen; they were the sign of the gift – of giefu?”
“They were. They sealed each slaying as a seventh part of my gift to my Ladies the Norns.”
Atticus glanced at Uther who stood, trembling and cowering, with his head bowed.
“We have discovered only six bodies so far. There is a seventh?”
“There is to be a seventh,” Sir Hugh corrected him.
“In addition to your first wife and Mr Gibson?”
Sir Hugh nodded. “And in addition to the three Gypsy smugglers and the regimental padre. You see, in her diary, Igraine confessed her… her love for Michael Britton. Gibson, Elliott and the others were apparently ‘mere diversions to add a little excitement to an otherwise dull and lonely existence in a rain-sodden wasteland.’ She certainly had a way of expressing herself, don’t you think? But she also had the temerity to actually fall in love with Britton.
“I regretted killing her at first – for a time anyway. I kept asking myself if I could not have forgiven her the adultery. Perhaps I had neglected her after all. Maybe I could just have had her horsewhipped and kept her as my wife.
“But then I read that she had fallen in love with Britton. I was glad then that I had killed her, because then I could begin to forgive her.”
His eyes crept over the puzzled frown on Atticus’s face.
“‘Only by the shedding of blood can there be remission from sins.’ Isn’t that what St Paul wrote in the Good Book? Once there is death, then all sin is forgiven, or so our old padre told us before I shot him.”
His face darkened once more as he added, “And in any event the Norns ordered it. It was our fate, all of our fates, carved indelibly in runes.”
“So you intend to kill Michael Britton now I take it, Sir Hugh? Is he your seventh victim?” Atticus needed to keep Lowther talking. The fusiliers must find them soon.
“Michael Britton, the one more than all the others who has so profoundly humiliated me. No, he is not one of the seven. But his life has been given to me all the same and I am determined to humiliate him before he dies just as he has humiliated me. The dishonour will be purged, make no mistake.”
“His life has been given to you? Given to you by whom?”
The blue of Sir Hugh’s piercing gaze grew steely.
“By the Fates themselves, of course, by the Norns. They told me many years ago that his life was mine to do with as I wished.”
“But how could they have told you?” Atticus asked.
Now it was Lowther’s brow that wrinkled in puzzlement.
“In the plainest sense of the word, Atticus; in the same way
that you or anyone else speaks to me – in the same way they speak to you.”
Atticus Fox stared in disbelief.
“He doesn’t believe you,” Verthandi’s voice thundered. “He chooses to deny us, as all the rest deny us. Now you know why we have commanded he be killed.”
“So you needed to keep Michael Britton here, dependent on the alms you provided until you could move against him. You needed him to be insane.”
“Quite so. When Igraine disappeared, Britton’s insanity returned with a vengeance, you might say.” He smiled briefly at his own choice of words.
“Because he had fallen in love with Igraine and, yes, fathered a boy called Arthur and, according to Hickson, because of the association of this whole area with King Arthur, Britton began increasingly to have delusions that he was actually Uther Pendragon.”
“You said that the boy’s father was Gibson?”
“That’s what Igraine told me at first. Later I learned from her diaries that Britton there was the boy’s true father. Apparently she told me it was Gibson because she believed I would never act publically against a fellow officer, especially an officer of the Fusiliers.
“Publically I would not of course, but she hadn’t counted on the possibility that I might kill him in private.
“She never believed me, Atticus, when I told her that the Norns spoke to me, so she never realised that she could never hide her secrets from me.”
“Foolish girl,” Urth agreed.
“And so you began to plan your revenge on Britton?” Atticus prompted.
“Yes I did, and with the splendid luxury of having time, plenty of time, to do it. Britton’s delusions were a heaven-sent opportunity for me to ensure that he was crushed utterly.”
“And of course you knew that the real King Uther Pendragon died after having his water supply poisoned by his enemies. That is presumably what gave you the idea of the carroting liquid.”
“A magnificent stroke of genius don’t you think? I needed Britton to be completely mad, so yes, for these many past years, I have been tampering with his water supply.”
“What, Mr Fox, what does he mean?” Jennifer spoke for the first time, her voice barely louder than the hissing of the lantern.
Atticus turned to her. “I’m sorry, Jennifer, but you will know that your father owns a hat maker’s in Hexham?”
She nodded. Her stricken eyes, wide and unblinking, danced in the lantern light.
“There is a material used in such factories to soften the animal fur before it is made into the felt used to fashion hats. It is called nitrate of mercury and it has a distinctive orange hue, hence its nickname of ‘carroting liquid’ or ‘carrot juice.’”
He lifted his cane towards the kegs stacked on the bench. “The letters ‘AR’ burned onto those kegs do not stand for Artorius Rex at all. They are simply the initials of the Alkali and Reagent Company of Jarrow on Tyneside, makers of, amongst other things, nitrate of mercury and suppliers of that particular material to your father’s hat factory.
“Your father had a quantity specially packed in those little kegs and delivered to his factory along with the usual full-sized barrels. Being small and light, he could easily transport them to this cave, ready to be used in his plot.
“Nitrate of mercury has been shown over time to cause profound symptoms of madness in the workers who use it, together with tremors, drooling and yes, delusions. That is the origin of the popular saying ‘as mad as a hatter.’ I recognised Mr Britton’s symptoms in a pair of your father’s factory workers who were taking a rest break as we happened to pass.”
“Igraine was a hat. She was often felt,” Skuld quipped and her Sisters laughed raucously.
“Please don’t say that,” Sir Hugh begged.
“She needs to know what has been happening, Sir Hugh,” Atticus retorted. “Jennifer, your father has been adding nitrate of mercury to the pump behind Mr Britton’s cottage for years.”
Jennifer Lowther looked directly at her father.
“Why, Papa?” she asked simply.
“Because he took my wife from me, Jenny, and because he broke my heart.”
“And because he wanted Michael Britton, in his madness, to be blamed for the murders of Samson Elliott, your own grandfather, Dr Hickson, Albert Bradley, James the footman and Bessie Armstrong.” Atticus spat.
“James the footman, Bessie Armstrong?” exclaimed Jennifer, “James and Bessie are dead? When? How?”
“We found Bessie Armstrong’s body late last night on the road from Twice Brewed,” Atticus replied. “She had been impaled on the lance Mr Britton believed was the Spear of Destiny. James’s body lies right now at the foot of the Sewingshields Crags with his head resting on the Holy Platter.”
Atticus had hurt Jennifer already by blurting out the news of Bessie’s murder. He did not now want to add to that hurt by describing how James had died. His tone hardened. “Your father wanted Britton to be disgraced as a lunatic murderer and so he left a series of clues for the police and for Mrs Fox and I to find.”
Sir Hugh stood tall and triumphant, glowering at each shocked and bewildered face in turn Then, all at once, his boastful expression faltered and fell.
“Where is she, Fox?” he bellowed. “Where is your wife?”
He looked around, wildly now, his eyes frantically searching the vault.
Now it was Atticus’s turn to smile, even though the smile was formed from the most brittle of veneers.
“My wife isn’t here. She remained outside the vault when the rest of us entered. Be warned, Sir Hugh, Lucie will have seen you come in, she will have listened to every word you have said and she is doubtless, even at this very moment, summoning the forces of justice.”
“He lies,” Verthandi sneered.
Sir Hugh regarded Atticus with something akin to delight.
“Damn it all but you impress me, Fox. I commend your extraordinary coolness under fire. You really would have made a very good Fusilier officer.
“However, I know very well that you’re playing a game of bluff with me. If your wife had gone to summon help, she could not have heard my, shall we call it a confession? If she has lingered to hear it, then she is still here, around Sewingshields. No one gets out of the Fogy Moss quickly.
“Notwithstanding, my men are fast closing the net on this place so I must make quick work of my business here and then ride her down before she has opportunity to make mischief for me. Her fate has already been sealed. It is futile for her to resist it.
“But yes, Atticus; I wanted you all to believe that Britton had masqueraded as the risen King Arthur in committing the murders. Not only could I settle the long overdue debts of honour and make my gifts to the Norns, I could also have Britton take the blame for it all. He would suffer the complete ignominy and shame he so richly deserves. A quite brilliant strategy, don’t you think?”
“In certain respects, yes,” Atticus conceded. “Except that your clues were not only rather too obvious; they were also fatally flawed.”
The smile died once more on Lowther’s face. “What did you say?” A hint of alarm touched returned to his eyes for just the briefest moment.
“Allow me to explain, Sir Hugh. In the case of Samson Elliott, the first of your latter-day victims, the thing that struck me immediately was that although you generally left the running of your estate to a ‘Peasant-in-Chief,’ as you called him, this year you took a keen interest in one, single field. It was the field adjacent to Mr Britton’s cottage. You insisted, against advice, that it be ploughed and sown with wheat. The consequence of this was that in order to avoid running over the growing crop on his way to the Appleby Horse Fair, Samson was forced to take the headland path around the outside of the field, right past Britton’s cottage.
“You ensured that not only could your ambush be carried out with much more certainty, but the finger of blame would also point directly at Mr Britton.
“Elliott, superstitious as he was, believed that he had seen the ghost of a knight-at-arms on the moors. You, Sir Hugh, were that ghost! You were wearing the armour, which bore the Lowther emblem – the dragon argent, passant; the White Dragon – whose sabatons left the prints in the earth. You knew that Elliott would confide his fears to someone and you hoped that after his death, that person would come forward to tell the police, or us, about them. We would naturally link the knight to Mr Britton, who kept an identical suit by his bed and who would not venture out of his cottage without wearing at least the breastplate and as often as not the entire harness.
“Then we come to the sword stroke that killed Elliott. The necropsy on his body concluded that the blade of the sword used to kill him was long and slender and not a bit like the great two-handed sword Elliott thought was Excalibur. It was more like a modern-day regimental sword in fact. It also had a full hand guard rather than a simple crosspiece.”
“How in God’s holy name do you know that?” thundered Sir Hugh.
“I quite easily deduced it for myself,” Atticus replied. “The angle of the wound in Elliott’s chest was approximately thirty degrees to the vertical. I tried your own sword, you will recall, before our first dinner at Shields Tower and the hand guard had that very effect when I made a lunge with it. A sword with a simple crosspiece, like Elliott’s would have left a vertical wound.
“And next we come to the bugle call that was heard over the moors on the morning of Elliott’s murder. You blew it to lure Britton away from his cottage so that you could lay the trail of footprints and spring your ambush. Artie was also out on the moors that morning with Jennifer. He also heard the bugle call and was able to describe its note exactly to me. It sounded very similar to the one we heard ourselves last night and again earlier today, the one I confirmed with your butler as being the modern parade ground call to ‘Rise to Arms.’”
He looked pointedly at Lowther who simply shrugged.
“Then we come to the next murder; that of your own father Sir Douglas. He was killed by choking, by strangulation and by having his heart torn out.”
Sir Hugh smiled the gaping smile of the dragon of his crest.
“Yes, he choked on her.”
“He choked on whom, Sir Hugh.”
“He choked on Igraine, of course; who else?”
“That biltong, it surely wasn’t…”
Sir Hugh gaped once more.
“Yes, Atticus, that biltong was what remained of Igraine’s body. Properly made, it lasts almost forever.”
“I don’t understand.” Artie appealed to Atticus.
Urth answered for him. “What is there not to understand? It’s quite simple; your mama seduced your grandpapa, time and time again. She needed a proper man in her bed, don’t you see – a real warrior!”
Sir Hugh stamped a glossy, black boot on the rock of the floor.
“It is very simple, Artie,” he said. “Even for one of your limited intellect. I fed your mama to your grandpapa too.”
“You are an abomination! You are a… a monster!”
Sir Hugh bristled and his black shadow swelled larger.
“Quo Fata Vocant,” he hissed. “My father seduced the wife of his only son. He paid his dues. The will of the Sisters be done.”
“James told us your father thought Igraine the most beautiful woman in Christendom; that she was so lovely she was quite good enough to eat.” Atticus was appalled by the revelations of his own recollection.
“That is exactly so, Atticus. Don’t they say: ‘be careful what you wish for, lest it come true?’” He chuckled without mirth.
Atticus continued. “And it was you who killed Dr Hickson.”
Infuriated by Sir Hugh’s lingering smile he added, “You claimed to have discovered his body on the Stanegate after he failed to keep an appointment. Actually his first appointment that day was not with Jennifer at all, it was with Mr Britton at his cottage and with you, Sir Hugh.
“I took the opportunity of reading Dr Hickson’s journals of twenty years ago. I read how he often used to call on Lady Igraine to administer ‘comfort’ for her frequent bouts of melancholy, melancholy that afflicted her only, mark you, during your own times abroad.
“Mrs Fox was told by his housekeeper how the doctor once had a secret sweetheart. She went missing on the moors around the same time as your own wife. Michael Britton also told us how his own fiancé also went missing on those same moors, again around the very same time. The disappearances of three women so close to each other should have caused an almighty brouhaha. Yet the long-serving constable had no recollection of any of them other than that of your wife.”
He jabbed the pewter tip of his cane towards Lowther.
“That is because they were one and the same, were they not, Sir Hugh? Dr Hickson’s sweetheart and Mr Britton’s fiancée were both, in fact, your wife.”
“Yes, Atticus, yet again you are quite correct.” The grin had vanished and Lowther sounded weary now.
“While I was in India she asked her doctor – as many ladies do, I believe – to provide physical, what is politely called ‘comfort’ in my absence. Igraine found it irresistible and she soon persuaded Hickson to cross over the boundaries of proper medical practice and engage upon a full-blown affair. She wrote in her diary how excited she would feel to be offering herself up to him; how she would long for her next appointment. Forgive me, Jenny, but it is the truth.
“Of course he obliged her with no-end of appointments, flying up and down the Haydon Road in that damned cart of his. Few men would resist her I suppose.
“When Igraine fell pregnant, Hickson was mortified. He presumed it must be his own child knowing that I had been away in India for some considerable time. But when Igraine told him that the bastard was actually Michael Britton’s, he was desolate, especially since Igraine also told him that she loved Britton and intended to divorce me to marry him. It was then that Hickson stopped calling on Britton and only began again years later at my insistence, when I needed to monitor the progress of his insanity.”
Atticus stabbed the air with his cane again and the pewter tip left a faint orange trail in the gloom.
“You did meet him at Mr Britton’s cottage yesterday, but alone, since you had already frightened Britton off with warnings of Elliott’s brothers coming to take their revenge. You offered him a drink, a drink from Mr Britton-cum-Pendragon’s supposed Holy Grail to which you had added poison prepared from the fruit of Atropa belladonna.”
“Yes I did. He took the drink readily. It was a gloriously hot day after all and belladonna is sweet enough, if a little insipid. After he had drunk it, I told him what it was – witch’s nostrum, a preparation made from belladonna and monkshood. I prepared it myself, to a recipe I found in the book I bought for my daughter on her seventeenth birthday. Do you recollect that your wife had it open on her lap the very day you arrived at Shields? It gave me quite a turn! I thought that you had found me out even as I had only just begun.
“Belladonna has a most curious effect. Did you know, Atticus, it paralyses the vocal chords and renders the victim mute? Hickson couldn’t call for help or raise the alarm. All he could do was run. So he ran. And as he ran, my poison was driven deeper and deeper into his body.
“It was beautifully ironic that a doctor should have died as a result of a drug. It was even more ironic that the drug was prepared from a plant called belladonna, which in Italian means ‘beautiful woman.’ It was a beautiful woman who first marked him out for death and a beautiful woman that accomplished it.
“He was very weak by the time he reached the Stanegate and I finally put an end to him. I ate his heart too. I don’t know what was wrong with him, but I felt damned peculiar afterwards. He must have been bad.”
“He wasn’t bad, Sir Hugh,” Atticus retorted, “You simply took in some of your own poison when you ate his flesh.”
“Oh, but his heart was bad, Atticus; his heart was as bad as a doctor’s could be. He swore the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm. Yet he betrayed that oath, he betrayed Igraine’s trust and he betrayed me. He could not live. Eventually Skuld called for his life and he duly rendered it through a poisoned chalice.”
He bowed his head.
“Ah yes,” said Atticus, “the chalice… the first of Arthur’s Hallows. It was clever of you, Sir Hugh, to place them with Britton so you could use them to implicate him in your campaign of murder.
“The sword you gave to him directly when his doctor confiscated his old naval cutlass. The others he believed were given to him by King Arthur himself.”
“The sword I gave to him,” repeated Sir Hugh. “Britton, or as he had become in his own mind, Uther Pendragon, began to believe that Artie and Jenny were actually King Arthur and Queen Guinevere themselves, come to visit him. I presume it was because he already knew that Arthur was his son and Jenny happened to be with him.
“I encouraged them to accommodate his madness. I told them that it might help him. I even told them to take him an old goblet and platter I had brought back from India under the pretence that they were the Grail and Platter of the Hallows.”
He laughed suddenly and harshly.
“The Spear of Destiny was a British Army, standard issue lance and the sword, a Dervish one I took from a desert tribesman in the Sudan. Did you know that most of the Dervish swords are copies of the weapons the old crusaders used to carry, Atticus? No? Well they are. Pass-made of course, but good enough for what I needed it for once I’d had a smith add the runes to the blade for me. First-rate job of it he made too, for an illiterate fuzzy-wuzzy. It was good enough to fool even King Uther Pendragon, himself.”
“And you used it in the killing of Albert Bradley?” Atticus asked.
“Ah yes.” Lowther’s expression was suddenly as hard as the whinstone of the walls around him. “Albert Bradley, my head groom. Every day for twenty years I have had to endure his loathsome face smiling and being polite and wishing me ‘good day.’ All the time he carried in his heart the knowledge that he too had betrayed me. I hope he is rotting in Hell!”
“He is,” Verthandi confirmed with glee, “but he comforts himself by remembering every move of your wife: every scream, every moan she made. He was built like one of his horses.”
“So you ambushed him, Sir Hugh, in his hay loft?”
“It is my hay loft, Fox, and not his. And no, I did not ambush him; I faced him like a man. But like the Gypsy, my father and the doctor before him, he became a victim of the very instrument of his betrayal. You see, he used to lie with my wife in my hayloft. She described it in her diaries as her ‘roll in the hay.’
“Yesterday evening I waited until there was only him and I left in the stables. Then, I pushed a stack of the bales over and cried out for him to come up into the loft. When he did, I challenged him about what he had done. He admitted everything and begged for my forgiveness. I told him what I have told you; that there can be forgiveness only with death. He wept like a puppy, begging me to spare him, saying that it was all my wife’s doing and that she had led him on.
“Miserable bastard!
“But Skuld had decreed that he must die. I rushed him and finally put an end to his pathetic, treacherous life.”
“With your regimental sword to his neck? The wound was identical in size to that found on Elliott.”
Lowther nodded painfully. “His hurt was over in an instant. Mine has lasted these past twenty years. Revenge has dulled it a degree, but God knows it continues still. Thankfully not for much longer, though.”
“God knows?” Skuld screamed and he winced. “God knows? What does Jehovah know against the wisdom of the Sisters? We carve the fate of gods as well as men.”
Atticus cut short her tirade.
“You pinned him to a hay bale with your Dervish sword, knowing that Britton’s fingertip prints would likely be upon it?”
“Yes, I remembered what you told me about the infallibility of fingerprint evidence. It seemed almost too good to be true. I suppose the Norns were truly with me that day.
“I came to the vault to collect another keg of carroting liquid – the nitrate of quicksilver – to poison Britton’s water. As luck would have it, he had evidently found the cave entrance and this vault, and had hidden his sword here. I knew that he had hidden it somewhere from the police, but until then, I hadn’t a notion where. I did suspect he might have thrown it into the Broomlee Lough, as Sir Bedivere threw the real Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake, but thankfully he had not. It was certain to have his fingerprints on the hilt, so I put on my gloves and took it with me as I went to deal with Bradley.
“Then, after I had killed him with my own sword – I am much more comfortable with my own blade – I took Britton’s sword and I drove it through Bradley’s wretched body into the hay bale below. The same hay, mark you, he had lain upon with my Igraine.”
It was Artie’s trembling, strained voice that first broke the brief silence that followed.
“It wasn’t Uther who left the sword here that day, Sir Hugh; it was us – Jenny and me. We found the cave on the day you murdered Samson Elliott and believed that we had discovered King Arthur’s vault. We thought that it would be a perfect place to hide the sword, the sword we took from Uther to prevent him from cutting himself. We even believed that it might have been the real Excalibur.”
Atticus found himself puzzled. “I don’t understand, Artie. Why would Uther – why would Mr Britton – cut himself on his own sword?”
Jennifer answered. “Because sometimes he hates himself so much because of what he has become that he wishes only to injure himself, to cause himself hurt. At other times, the only escape from the awful memories he has whirling around and around his mind is the pain of self-mutilation. His arms have no skin left on them that isn’t striped and lined with cicatrices.”
Atticus glanced at Britton, a cowering, cringing, broken giant of a man standing with his head bowed and he paused for a moment to swallow the lump that suddenly held back his words.
“The cycle of murders continued, I presume, with the killings of James and Bessie Armstrong, Sir Hugh?”
Lowther nodded.
“You talk of Elizabeth Armstrong; lady’s maid, nanny, governess, housekeeper and intimate companion of my wife. Do you by any chance know what she was?”
Atticus nodded.
“You have just said, Sir Hugh; she was your housekeeper and before that your children’s nanny and governess.”
“And before that she was Igraine’s lady’s maid, yes. But I repeat, Atticus; do you know what she was?”
Atticus all at once realised what he was driving at.
“She was a sapphist, I believe – a uranist, a lesbian woman.” He repeated Lucie’s description of her. “Perhaps you would like to explain to Artie and Jennifer what warranted your wrath falling upon their childhood carer?”
Lowther said, “It’s quite simple, Atticus. It was for precisely the same reason it fell on the rest of ’em.”
Atticus made a leap of faith into Lucie’s cosmopolitanism.
“She was having a love affair with your wife too?”
Sir Hugh nodded wearily as Artie and Jenny looked on, utterly stunned.
“I had no idea that women could, could love men and other women at the same time in their lives,” Jenny blurted at last.
“Then you now have proof positive that they can, Jenny. Bessie Armstrong was a music hall acquaintance of Igraine’s whom she engaged as her lady’s maid soon after our marriage. She was quite an attractive woman in those days, I suppose, if a little manly in her deportment and speech. I believe now that they were intimate even before we were married and that their intimacy simply continued. Once Igraine went missing, I kept Bessie on as nursemaid to Arthur and then in turn to Jenny after I was married to Gibson’s widow Victoria. Once they had grown up and left the nursery, Bessie became their governess.”
“He must think you have let her use your daughter!” Verthandi warned him.
Sir Hugh’s eyes suddenly burned with fire.
“You see, Fox; I’ll always know what you’re thinking.”
“What am I thinking, Sir Hugh?”
“That there was a risk to my daughter given Bessie Armstrong’s perverted attraction to women. You’re thinking she might have tried to turn Jenny into a sapphist like herself.”
Atticus frowned. “I was thinking nothing of the sort.”
“She never once touched me, Father!” Jennifer exclaimed indignantly. “We have known for years what she was, but that did not make her some kind of predatory beast of the field. She was quite content with her own lady-friend. It was almost… almost as if they might have been married. I have suffered a hundred more improper suggestions and mauling advances from your precious Fusiliers than ever I have from Bessie Armstrong.”
Sir Hugh shrugged.
“Then there is your answer, Fox, but in any event I was prepared to take the risk. I needed to keep Bessie bound to Shields Tower ’til I could take my revenge on her too.”
“Which you finally did last night, as we and Mr Collier discovered.”
“Yes, I did. After I left you at the stables, I came here and fetched the Lance. I knew that Bessie would be alone on the Twice Brewed road so I went to ground and lay in wait for her.
“Just as night was falling, I saw her hurrying along the lane.” His eyes flashed. “Arthur has called me an abomination, but let me tell you now; what she did with Igraine was a true abomination. I’ll grant Bessie Armstrong this, though: she faced her death like a true Briton. There was no weeping or begging or swooning, no sir. She once boasted to Igraine that she would never feel the prick of a man, begging your pardon, Jennifer. Now you could say that she finally has, but she took it – the spear, the Spear of Destiny, the spear of her own destiny you might say – with courage and with dignity. I for one, salute her for that.
“James, on the other hand, served with me for years in the Fifth – in the ‘Old and the Bold’ – and he screamed like a baby. Bold – pah! I knew he was too damned pretty to be a proper soldier.”
“Anyone would have screamed in suffering what you did to him, Sir Hugh. It was diabolical.”
Sir Hugh’s cold, blue eyes seemed to cut through him like steel.
“Yes it was diabolical, Fox, I agree. James was Igraine’s fart-catcher in her time, did you know?”
Atticus shook his head.
“He was her footman. He would attend on her and stand behind her at the dinner table. He served no purpose there but to catch her farts. Ladies compete to employ the most handsome footmen they can. Igraine always said that James had the face of an angel. It took her no time at all to seduce him into her bed. And so the angel fell, quite literally, and became a demon. So yes, in a sense he was indeed diabolical.”
He seemed to jerk himself from the memory and he peered inquiringly at Atticus. “Did you find Britton’s fingerprints on the lance I left in Bessie, by and by?”
“We didn’t get the chance to look for any prints. The police constables commandeered both the body and the lance shortly after we made its discovery. The only fingertip prints we have were the ones we took from the fake Excalibur.”
Lowther grunted. “Once I had killed Bessie, I blew the bugle horn as close as I dared to Britton’s cottage. I was trying to lure him back there so that those fool constables could take him prisoner. So they were with you and her corpse all the time!
“Well prints there are, Atticus; I checked for them myself. If they’re still there, perhaps I’ll be able to persuade Robson to lift ’em. But if not, at least we still have the prints you found on the sword hilt as you say.”
Atticus said, “You might remember that we found more than just Mr Britton’s fingertip prints on that sword. Arthur’s and Jennifer’s prints were also on it, I presume from when they brought it from Britton’s cottage and hid it here. The presence of their prints on the murder weapon is quite as damning as his.”
Lowther turned an amused gaze onto Atticus. “I hear very well what you say, Fox, although of course it makes not one jot of difference now.”
Atticus felt the sudden knell of dread.
“No, you are correct, Sir Hugh, as you say, it makes no difference now that you have made a full and frank confession in front of us all. I applaud your honesty and courage in doing that. This has been a veritable bloodbath. Eight people murdered and six in a single week. Even Jack the Ripper didn’t manage that.”
“It needed to be over quickly, Fox.” Sir Hugh’s tone had ceased to be cordial; it had a distinct note of menace to it now. “I needed to complete those killings before either Britton was arrested or any of the gifts realised what was happening and escaped me.”
“Of course, but it’s finished now; you’ve had your revenge and your honour has been satisfied. Come. Let us go to the Detective Superintendant. Let the villagers go about their business once again without fear. It is time now for you to meet with whatever destiny Skuld has written for you. I think that perhaps she might have good reason to be merciful with you, Sir Hugh.”