“You remarked the missing finger.”
“Yes.”
“It supports the identification.”
“True.” I hesitated and then burst out: “But who could have done such a thing? The violence of the attack passes all belief.”
Grout shrugged. His eyes strayed towards the nearest of the half-built houses.
“Would you care to see where the deed was done? It is not a sight for the squeamish, but it is as nothing compared with what you have already seen.”
“I should be most interested.” The brandy had given me false courage.
He led me along a line of planks that snaked precariously across the mud. The house was a house in name only. Low walls surrounded the shallow pit of the cellar, perhaps two or three feet below the surface of the field in which we stood. Grout jumped into it with the alacrity of a sparrow looking for breadcrumbs. I followed him, narrowly avoiding a pool of fresh excrement. He pointed with his stick at the further corner. Despite his warning, there was little to see, apart from puddles of icy water and, abutting the brickwork in the angle of the wall, an irregular patch of earth which was darker than the rest, darker because shadowed with Henry Frant’s blood.
“Were there footprints?” I asked. “Surely such a struggle must have left a number of marks?”
Grout shook his head. “Unfortunately the scene has had a number of visitors since the deed was committed. Besides, the ground was hard with frost.”
“When did Orton make the discovery?”
“Shortly after it was light. When he woke, he found that while he slept someone had wedged the door of the shed. He had to crawl out through one of the windows. He came here to relieve himself, which was when he found the corpse.” Grout’s nose wrinkled. “First he alerted a neighbouring farmer, who came to gawp with half a dozen of his men. Then the magistrates. If there were footprints, or other marks, they will not be easy to distinguish from those which were made before or afterwards.”
“What of Mr Frant’s hat and gloves? How did he come here? And why should he come at that time of evening?”
“If we knew the answers to those questions, Mr Shield, we would no doubt know the identity of the murderer. We found the hat beside the body. It is in the shed now, and has Mr Frant’s name inside. And the gloves were beneath the body itself.”
“That is odd, is it not, sir?”
“How so?”
“That a man should remove his gloves on such a cold night.”
“The affair as a whole is a tissue of strange and contradictory circumstances. Mr Frant’s pockets had been emptied. Yet the ring was left on his finger.” Grout rubbed his pointed nose, whose tip was pink with cold. “The principal weapon might have been a hammer or a similar instrument,” he went on, the words tumbling out at such a rate that I realised that he, too, was not unmoved by the dreadful sight on the trestle table. “Though it is possible that the assailant also used a brick.”
He scrambled out of the cellar and we walked slowly back towards the shed.
“They may have come here on foot,” Grout said. “But more likely they rode or drove. Someone will have seen them on the way.”
“Ruined men can be driven to desperate measures, and it is not impossible that one of those whom Mr Frant injured has had his mind overturned by his troubles, and has sought revenge.”
Grout gave me a long look. “Or this might be the work of a jealous lover. Or a madman.”
There was nothing more for me to do at Wellington-terrace. As Mr Grout drove me back to school, I sat in silence beside him, my mind too full for conversation. We passed the flask to and fro between us. It was empty by the time we drew up outside the Manor House School.
I said, “May I tell Mr Bransby what has passed?”
Grout shrugged. “He either knows or surmises everything you or I could tell him. So will the whole neighbourhood in an hour or two.”
“There is the matter of the boy. Mr Frant’s son.”
“Indeed. Mr Bransby must do what he thinks fit on that head.” He bobbed his nose towards me. “I do not know how the magistrates will proceed, and if I did know, it would not be proper for me to tell you. However, there will be an inquest, and you may be required to attend. In the meantime, though –” he spread his arms wide “– there will be talk. That much I do know.”
In the evening of that terrible day, I smoked a pipe with Dansey in the garden after the boys were in bed. We walked up and down, huddled in our greatcoats. Soon after my return, Mr Bransby had summoned Charlie Frant. The boy had not been seen since. A message had been sent for Edgar Allan to take his friend’s possessions to Mr Bransby’s side of the house.
“It is said a man has been arrested already,” Dansey said softly.
“Who?”
“I do not know.”
I bowed my head. “But why did the murderer mutilate the body?”
“A man in search of revenge is a man out of his senses. If it was revenge.”
“Yes, but the hands?”
“In Arabia, they cut off the thief’s hands. We used to do it here, I believe, or something similar. Crushing the hands in the manner you described might be another form of the practice. Perhaps Mr Frant’s killer believed his victim was a thief.”
Our pipes hissed and bubbled. At the foot of the garden, we turned, and stood for a moment under the shelter of the trees looking back at the house.
Dansey sighed. “Come what may, this affair will make a considerable noise in the world. Pray do not think me impertinent if I speak for a moment in the character of a friend, but I would advise you to keep your own counsel.”
“I am obliged to you. But why do you make such a point of this?”
“I hardly know. The Frants are great folk. When great folk fall, they bring down smaller folk in their train.” He sucked on his pipe. “It is a thousand pities you were called upon to identify the body. You should not have had to appear in this matter at all.”
I shrugged, trying unsuccessfully to push from my mind the memory of that bloodied carcass I had seen in the morning. “Shall we go in? It grows cold.”
“As you wish.”
It seemed to me that there was a note of regret in Dansey’s voice. We walked slowly back to the house – slowly, because his footsteps lagged. The moon was very bright, and our feet crunched on the silver lawn. The house reared up in front of us, the moon full on its garden front.
Dansey laid a hand on my arm. “Tom? I may call you that, may I not? Pray call me Ned. I do not wish –”
“Hush,” I said. “Look – someone is watching us. Do you see? The third attic from the left.”
The window belonged to the chamber Morley and Quird had shared with Charlie Frant. We quickened our pace, and a moment later passed into the house.
“Moonlight plays strange tricks,” Dansey said.
I shook my head. “I saw a face. Just for a moment.”
That night I slept dreamlessly, though I had feared my nightmares of carnage would return after the sight I had seen in Jacob Orton’s shed.
In my waking hours, the school itself was better than any medicine. For the next few days, our lives continued their placid course, seemingly unchanged. Nevertheless,