Corridors of the Night (31 page)

‘I’ll go on here,’ said Monk. ‘You go to the village and find the sexton from the local church. Tell him what we’ve discovered and bring him, and any other grave-digger he has.’

‘You go to the sexton, sir,’ Hooper responded. ‘You’ve more authority than I. It’ll be—’

‘I also don’t have a recent arm injury,’ Monk said tartly. ‘Do as you’re told. Don’t make me pull rank on you, Hooper.’

Hooper smiled broadly, straightening up his back. ‘You just did – sir.’

‘That’s right, so don’t stand arguing with me. Go and get the sexton.’

‘Yes, sir!’ Hooper gave a mock salute, and winced.

He returned a long half-hour later, bringing with him the sexton and another grave-digger, both carrying spades. Monk had spent the time searching the orchard for other spots out of the way of tree roots, and where the grass was greenest. He was filthy, his hands were bruised and his back ached.

They worked until the dusk was too deep to see any more. They found six further bodies; in all there were four children and three adults, so far as they could tell. The adults were young women, small in height, slender-boned, but – judging from the skulls and teeth – fully grown. They were in various stages of decay. Nature and insects had taken nearly all the flesh.

It took the men until after midnight to inform the parish minister and have the burial places marked. The bodies were taken to lie decently, crowding the small morgue, which had never before had more than two occupants at a time.

These bodies were evidence, but as soon as all notes and drawings had been made, the local Church would bury them decently, even if in graves no one could mark with a name.

They knew of no way to say how long they had been buried, how they had died, or who they had been in life. The farmhouse had been frequently unoccupied over the last hundred years. Even when someone had been living there, there was easy access from the road to the orchard without going through the garden. Everyone believed it was whoever lived in the farm that had buried the bodies so that they would lie undisturbed in land to which they had the right, but there was no way to prove it. Anyone could have come from the far side, at night, and buried their dead . . . their victims.

Monk and Hooper found accommodation at the local inn. Early the next morning, as the sun was rising, they walked back to the farm, hitched the horse to the wagon again, and set out for home.

They arrived in the late morning to find Hester up and busy in the house, cooking. This was not an occupation she sought willingly, but it required attention to do it well and prevented thoughts of other things. As soon as she heard Monk’s steps in the hall, she dropped the wooden spoon with which she had been stirring cake mixture and ran to the kitchen door to meet him, Scuff on her heels.

Monk did not need to ask if she were better; it was in her eyes, in the strength of her arms as she held on to him. He kissed her mouth, her face, held her even closer, then looked past her at Scuff and saw the pride in him, and the question.

Monk nodded and smiled back. He would say the words of thanks later, when Hester was not there.

She pushed away from him now, looking up. Suddenly she was grave.

‘The judge has abandoned the trial of Hamilton Rand,’ she said quietly. ‘And Adrienne Radnor as well. Oliver said there is prejudice attached, which means they can’t be tried again. I’m so sorry.’

HESTER MADE as little mention as she could of the fact that Hamilton Rand had been effectively found not guilty. People might think what they wished; he could not be tried again. It was not even as if he were a doctor and there was any privilege that could be taken from him. And what Magnus Rand had known, or how much he had been compliant, had not ever been mentioned. There was nothing more Monk could do, therefore raising the subject caused nothing but useless regret, even guilt. They had done the best they could. Oliver Rathbone had been right in his instinct not to prosecute the case. Not that he would be tactless enough to say so.

The terrible knowledge of the bodies in the orchard troubled all of them. But whatever they believed, there was no proof at all that they had been buried by Rand, or by his gardener. The Rand brothers owned the place, but had seldom visited it. Indeed, Magnus Rand had not been seen in the village since his childhood visits to the aunt, who had owned it then.

The bodies were examined thoroughly, but it was not possible to say how they had died, or when, except very roughly. The only thing for certain was that there were no clothes found. Presumably those had been burned in the large furnace where other waste was disposed of. There was very little flesh left because the bodies had been exposed to the insects, worms and so on in the ground. For certain there were no injuries on the bones. None was broken or marked, and there was no damage whatever to the skulls. Any defence lawyer would claim that there was no connection with two brothers who lived in London and seldom visited. None of the bodies was identifiable, nor could anyone say to the month or year how long they had lain there. The land was accessible to anyone.

The gardener did not return, nor could he be found.

Adrienne Radnor was a different matter. Hester thought more and more of the relationship between her and Radnor himself. She had not liked the young woman, and yet there was something in her turbulent emotions that she could not forget.

She remembered her own father more often since she’d encountered the Radnors, all the good things about him: his sudden, startling sense of humour; his love of butterflies and the enormous knowledge of them that he had acquired, for no reason other than the pleasure it gave him. He knew they served a purpose in the life and nature of plants, but they were also unnecessarily and almost frivolously beautiful.

Other memories came back to her with painful clarity. He had been so proud of her when she went off to the Crimea to nurse. She could see his face in her mind’s eye, filled with pride. It was her mother who had been doubtful. He had been convinced she would succeed and find both hardship and happiness in the venture. Of course he was right.

While she was gone he had been deceived, ruined and so – as a matter of honour, as he saw it – had taken his own life. Her mother had not lived long after him. And Hester had not been anywhere near to help. There might have been nothing she could have done, but that was not the point – she would have tried.

Adrienne Radnor’s situation was different. She had given up any chance of her own personal happiness in order to stay at her father’s side, first in his loneliness when her mother died, then later to nurse him as his illness developed and he became dependent upon her for even simple things.

What had she given up? She was a handsome woman. She must have had opportunities of marriage, her own children, freedom to be separate from her father, both financially and socially. And yet she had chosen to stay. Why?

The sharp unease of Hester’s dreams came back to her. Had that been out of love, or duty? Was it some guilt or flaw in Hester that she saw it as a mutual kind of emotional dependence? Radnor needed Adrienne to care for him, but he could have hired someone to do that. He had more than sufficient money. Rand had told her that Radnor provided funds for his research, and would continue to do.

It was Adrienne’s love for him, her need of him, her passion and vitality of life that he needed to feel, even touch. He needed her emotional force to live through vicariously, as he needed the literal blood of Charlie and Maggie, and when they were worn out, of Mike.

She considered speaking of it to Monk, but there was nothing he could do. This was something she had seen in the days when she was at the cottage, watching and listening because she could not help it. If Radnor died Rand could not afford to let her live and she had seen the knowledge of that in Radnor’s eyes, too. He understood it perfectly, and it amused him. Her life depended upon his. It was the ultimate irony.

She recalled the vigour in him as he burst into the courtroom. That was over a month ago, and yet the shock of it still rippled through her like a cold wind on naked flesh. She would feel it again and again. It was a cry of the passion to live, to survive. He was, in that moment of supreme victory, the passionate, indulgent, fiercely alive man his nature had created, unencumbered by weakness or the fear of death. He had seen the darkness of annihilation and beaten it!

Did he really need Adrienne any more? With his health back, was she anything more than a shackle, to make him remain here and in some way look after her?

He could marry her off. She was heiress to whatever he did not spend on himself. Perhaps that would not be so very much. She was still young enough to bear children, though perhaps it might not be as easy as in her youth. But perhaps she did not wish to. He certainly owed her more than a match of convenience after the years she had given up to be with him. She had said she wished to travel with him to see all those great sights he had spoken of when he thought it impossible he would ever revisit them. Hester could remember vividly the longing in Adrienne’s face. She loved his company. All other men would seem tame to her.

Did Radnor want to take her? He had let Hester know that included in his love of life was his love of women in particular. His physical appetites were intense, and he had no thought whatever of curbing them. Was Adrienne going to be part of that? A watcher, unneeded and unloved?

With a cold certainty Hester was sure that Adrienne was not. Maybe she would be forced into a marriage she did not want. Or if she became too clinging, too clingingly dependent upon him, might she meet with a fatal accident?

No, of course not. Hester was allowing something she thought she had seen in Radnor’s eyes to create a picture of evil that was totally without foundation.

However, it was engraved in her mind so she could see it every time she closed her eyes and was momentarily back in the cottage, feeling the emotional bonds tightening around her, keeping her there. Of one thing she was certain: Radnor did not need his daughter any more.

Tomorrow, when Monk was on the river, she would go and visit Adrienne to talk to her alone.

She had considerable difficulty persuading Scuff to go with her.

‘Yer didn’t ought to go,’ he said with conviction. ‘She didn’t help you when you were a prisoner and could ’ave been killed. In fact, if Radnor’d died, you would’ve been. An’ she ’ad to know that! She in’t in any danger ’cept of being used by ’er father, and that’s going to ’appen whether you say so to ’er or not.’ That was very reasonable, and he knew it. He was behaving like a man, not a boy. He was telling her why she shouldn’t go, whereas a boy would just have asked her not to. He smiled very slightly.

Hester smiled back at him. ‘Are you saying that because she didn’t save me, then I shouldn’t try to save her?’ she asked.

For an instant he was wrong-footed. ‘Summink like that,’ he agreed.

‘You think I should be like her?’ Now she sounded surprised.

‘No!’ Of course that was not what he meant. ‘But yer don’t ’ave to go out of yer way to tell ’er what she prob’ly knows anyhow. She won’t listen to you, because she don’t want to hear it. Yer said so and yer said she in’t got anyone ’cept ’er father, so if she wasn’t with ’im, what’d she do?’

‘Get married,’ Hester replied. ‘Have a family of her own.’

He thought about that for a moment or two. The only time he had seen Adrienne Radnor was when they had rescued Hester and the children. Adrienne had been frightened and angry, fighting all the way. Her hands had been tied behind her back with rope, her hair all over the place and her dress filthy from when she had been thrown on to the ground as they overpowered her. He had never thought of the possibility of anyone wanting to marry her. But then he didn’t understand a lot of things about why and who people married. They just did. A fair few regretted it later, both men and women.

‘Yer can’t do that for ’er,’ he said, pleased with the logic of that.

‘No, of course I can’t,’ she agreed. ‘All I might do is make her see her position a little more clearly.’

He frowned. ‘Yer mean scare her? She’ll get angry!’

‘Yes, I suppose I do. Because she might.’

He had expected her to argue, and then he could have argued back. The fact that she had not robbed him of a response.

‘Come with me?’ she asked. ‘She’ll be a lot more careful about getting angry with two of us.’

Scuff knew the look in her eyes. She would go alone if she had to. It would be much better if he were there. He would at least protect her if Miss Radnor were to lose her temper.

He conceded with as much grace as he could manage.

Hester timed her visit for the mid-afternoon. It was a little early for the usual social call, but not so early as to clash with a late luncheon. It was also the time she thought it least likely for Bryson Radnor to be at home. He had been abundantly full of vigour at the trial; she judged he would escape the confines of the house, and the tedium of female company, as often as he could. If she saw him present, or any evidence that he was so, she would turn and leave again – she hoped unseen.

She knew his address from Magnus Rand’s notes on Radnor when he first came to the hospital, but the house was far larger and more imposing than she had expected. It spoke very clearly of Radnor’s considerable fortune, both from its size and the care with which it was maintained. It was set well back from the road, and the late summer garden was filled with bloom. The second flush of roses sent out a rich perfume that wrapped around her before she reached for the bell-pull beside the carved front door.

The house should not have surprised her; Radnor had made no secret of his love of all sensual beauty. And yet its beauty caught her oddly vulnerably all the same. There was an ease in it, an exuberance for life. It pulled her memory back to his gaunt face, filled with passion and fury when he was so afraid of dying, of losing all the great, rich world and the excitement in its own infinite vitality. She hated him, but she understood him.