Read Online Instruments of Darkness by Imogen Robertson - Free Book Online Page B

and swallowed.

    ‘Susan ...’

    She did not move. Everything was very far away, as it is just before sleep. The world swam in and out of existence around her. She stroked her father’s hair. It had become disarranged when he fell, and he thought it always so important to be neat.

    ‘Susan . . .’ His voice was so deep, it hardly sounded like him at all. ‘Listen . . . there is a black wooden box under the counter, hidden under the Bononcini scores.’ He paused and shut his eyes again. The breaths were single gasps now. Susan continued to stroke his hair. His eyes opened again, and fixed on hers. ‘You must take it with you wherever you go . . . Talk about what you find in it with Mr Graves.’ Again he closed his eyes, again the sucking gulp on air. Stuff trickled from the corner of his mouth, red and thick. Jonathan began to cry again and hid his eyes. ‘Do not blame me, Susan . . .’

    She did not speak, but continued to stroke his hair. A memory came back to her of lying ill in bed as a child. She remembered the cool of her mother’s hand smoothing her forehead and her singing to her. Her father gasped again, and a tremor ran through him; she felt her hand held almost painfully tight, then his grip suddenly relaxed. Jonathan gulped, and looked up at her.

    ‘Shush, Jonathan. Papa needs to rest.’ She wet her lips, and never ceasing to smooth her father’s hair, began to sing in a cracked and whispering voice:
    ‘Will you sleep now, my little child?
For the sky is growing dark.
Will you sleep now, my lovely child?
For the sky is growing dark.’

    She was careful of her word, and would not let anyone into the shop until Mr Graves returned a quarter of an hour later with a surgeon panting and complaining behind him. When he arrived he had to fight his way through a crowd of the concerned citizenry who had gathered in the doorway, having heard the shouts and seen men running. They were pressed to the plate glass of the window, staring and exclaiming at the sight of the straight back of the little girl, who knelt with her brother in a seemingly shoreless pool of their father’s blood, stroking his hair and murmuring lullabies.

I.8

    D INNER AT CAVELEY Park was a pleasant enough affair considering Crowther said very little, and all were aware of the body of the stranger lying in the stable block.

    The various dishes having been brought to table, the family waited on themselves and each other. The scrape of knife on plate and the comfort of good food well prepared provided all the background and counterpoint necessary to the Squire’s news and enquiries, and Harriet’s and Rachel’s good-humoured responses.

    Crowther let much of it pass without interest or remark until he heard Harriet ask, in response to some light remark of the Squire’s which touched on Thornleigh Hall: ‘My dear sir, I hope you will not mind me asking in the circumstances, but I am curious about your impressions of Lord Thornleigh. We know so little of him. What did you think of him, as a man, before his illness?’

    The Squire did not reply at once, and pushed his plate a little way from him. He pursed his lips, and for what seemed to be the first time that afternoon, thought carefully before he spoke - and when he spoke, his tone was serious and considered. Crowther saw a more thoughtful man appear to take the Squire’s place, or rather saw the mask he habitually wore put carefully aside. Crowther examined him with renewed interest.

    ‘Well, I struggle to say much that is good of him.’

    He drew a long slow breath and let his eyes rest on his half-worked plate, though it was clear he was seeing something else.

    ‘I knew him in the blossom of his life, though we were not closely associated, his rank and fortune being so much greater than my own. He was very proud, and the people he had about him I could not like. They held, it seemed to me, their fellow creatures in contempt. Among the staff in his house, good honest