‘No,’ Ibbotson agreed. ‘I remember. Just announced it and wandered off. I didn’t make anything of it. He’s always liked to walk.’

  ‘I went to bathe,’ Cowley said. ‘It was hot in the sun.’ He shrugged. ‘Other people were doing it.’

  An ordinary afternoon for young men. Another few years and it could be Richard and Amos telling a similar tale.

  ‘Andrew didn’t come back at all?’

  ‘No,’ Cowley told him. The others seemed content to let him do much of the talking. ‘We were enjoying ourselves. I don’t believe we gave him much of a thought until about seven o’clock. Most of the families with children had gone by then, so it was quieter, but it hadn’t started to feel like evening. We’d been talking and playing cards and picking through what was left of the food. After we finished off the wine, we decided to come back to town.’

  The others nodded their agreement. They were telling the truth, Simon had no doubt. With Barton watching them, they were too scared to lie.

  ‘No sign of Andrew?’

  Harrison shook his head. ‘Not since he walked off.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ibbotson spoke, his skin glowing red. ‘There are sometimes girls out there. You know …’

  ‘Prostitutes, you mean?’

  A small moment before he nodded and looked down. ‘Andrew has … before.’ The colour on his face deepened further as he mumbled, ‘We all have.’

  ‘Did Andrew say that was why he wanted to go to Kirkstall Abbey?’ Simon probed, hoping for the smallest hint or clue.

  ‘No,’ Harrison told him sharply. ‘He didn’t say a word, just that it was a chance to enjoy a summer’s day.’

  No help for him there. ‘What did you do about Andrew when you were ready to leave? Did you look for him?’

  ‘We shouted,’ Ibbotson said and turned to Harrison. ‘Didn’t you go after him?’

  ‘I did. I kept calling his name, but he never answered. Finally I said the devil with it and we came back.’ He gave Mr Barton an apologetic look.

  ‘Andrew had drunk more than the rest of us, but that wasn’t unusual,’ Ibbotson said.

  Simon watched Barton draw in a breath and narrow his eyes.

  ‘We decided he must have arranged to meet someone and he was off somewhere enjoying himself.’ Cowley stared at the floorboards. ‘We thought it would serve him a good turn if he came back and we were gone, so he’d have to walk back to town.’

  ‘You never imagined something might have happened to him?’

  All three shook their heads. Of course they hadn’t. They were young, they were immortal, they had money. They were safe.

  ‘Did Andrew ever talk about a man named Fox?’

  Harrison pinched his lips together and glanced at Barton. ‘Is he the one who—?’

  ‘Yes,’ Simon told him. ‘Did he mention the name at all?’

  ‘No.’ The surprise was genuine. ‘Why would he?’

  A few more questions, but they had nothing more to offer. They left, subdued, and Simon was alone with Barton in the room.

  ‘What do you think, Mr Westow?’

  Simon gripped his stick and paced awkwardly, stretching his leg. It had been a straightforward, honest account. Four young men who seemed to have no real care in the world, out for an afternoon of pleasure. But it seemed one of them had made other plans. What had happened at the abbey? Was Andrew still alive?

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said and saw the fading hope on the father’s face. ‘Truly, I don’t. There’s been no report of a body. He hasn’t committed a crime, and he’s of age, so the constable won’t start looking for him.’

  ‘But you can,’ Barton said. ‘I want you to find him for me.’

  A little further. Willow branches hung over the water and the path grew thinner and thinner, until it was barely more than a line in the dirt, winding between heavy clumps of grass. Something was close. Jane felt it like a weight on her chest, twisting the gold ring on her finger. So close. She moved on, dress brushing against the nettles, and a memory sprang from nowhere: she was four or five years old, out with her mother and father. Suddenly she cried out and saw a red rash growing on her arm where she’d rubbed against the weeds. Her mother pulled some dock leaves and stroked them across the itch and pain until it went away.

  For a moment she felt stunned. She didn’t want to remember anything good about her mother. Why did she need fond recollections of the woman who’d thrown her out on the street?

  Jane stood, breathing slowly until her anger abated. She was here to do a job. A little farther on, she saw the sunlight flash on something in a small pool at the river’s edge. Heart racing, she scrambled down. A piece of cloth, darkened by the water. Reaching out, she tugged at it, pulling with all her strength until the body trapped against a branch turned slowly in the water and she could see its face.

  One look, then she turned and ran.

  Find him. The words filled his head.

  The Foxes were gone and Andrew Barton had vanished. God only knew how, but they had to be linked. Nothing else made sense.

  He walked into Mudie’s print shop, drawing in its heavy smell of ink. George was turning the handle of the press and watching the sheets as they emerged. His eyes shifted to Simon and he stopped work.

  ‘You’d better sit down. You look like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders.’

  ‘Not the world. Just one man.’

  ‘Maybe he really had arranged to meet someone there and went off with her,’ Mudie said when Simon had finished the tale. ‘He’d hardly be the first, would he?’

  It could be that way. But yet … ‘He’s never stayed out like that before, according to his father.’

  ‘What does that mean? He’s a young man feeling his oats. You said he and his father had been arguing.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He could be doing it deliberately. Have you considered that?’

  He’d dismissed it. But hearing it again, it seemed more plausible. The young man had been drinking; it might have seemed like a good idea to him. Andrew Barton would probably show up later with a grin across his face.

  ‘Maybe,’ he allowed.

  ‘It could be that something has happened, too.’

  ‘If it has, then it’s bad. Rosie’s out at the abbey with Jane and Sally.’

  ‘What do you hope to find? It all happened yesterday.’

  He nodded. ‘I don’t expect to find anything. I don’t want to. But we have to start somewhere. That’s the last place he was seen.’

  ‘These friends of his … do you think they know more than they were saying?’

  ‘No,’ Simon told him. ‘I’m sure of that. They told me everything.’

  ‘What do you think? Is he still alive?’

  That was the question. Somewhere inside, he wanted to believe that Andrew Barton was fine. But was that nothing more than a forlorn hope?

  By the time Jane reached the abbey, her hands were scratched by thorns and there were rips in her old work dress.

  Sally and Rosie were waiting by the gig, standing ready with hands on their knives in case someone was chasing her.

  ‘What happened?’ Sally kept her eyes fixed on the distance.

  ‘There’s a body in the river.’ Jane gulped down air and tried to catch her breath. ‘Towards town, in a little pool.’

  ‘Andrew Barton?’ Rosie’s face grew pale.

  ‘No.’ She looked up, confused. ‘It’s Mrs Fox.’

  ELEVEN

  How? Simon thought.

  Why? Why there?

  They’d come through the door a little after five o’clock, all three of them with dark, hooded looks on their faces.

  He saw it in their eyes; they’d found something. But he waited until they were seated and ready to talk.

  ‘No sign of Andrew,’ Rosie told him. ‘But there was never much hope of it, was there?’ He waited. ‘Jane found Mrs Fox.’

  Startled, he turned to stare at her, his head suddenly overflowing with questions.

  ‘She was in the water,’ Jane told him.

  Suddenly all his thoughts were upended, reeling and sliding everywhere.

  ‘Drowned?’

  She shook her head. ‘Strangled with a rope.’

  The same as Shackleton at Grey’s Court. This whole tale kept twisting, growing bloodier, moving beyond his reach and understanding.

  ‘Who else knows about this?’ he asked when they finished telling him.

  ‘Constable Porter,’ Rosie said. ‘Mr Barton, too; he asked when we returned the gig.’

  By tomorrow it would be common currency all over Leeds. Where was Fox? Andrew Barton? They’d had that meeting by the canal …

  He couldn’t begin to untangle the knot in his head. Simon looked at the three women.

  ‘Do you have any ideas?’

  Silence at first. Then Sally said: ‘We talked about nothing else on the way back. None of it makes sense.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ he agreed emptily. ‘Maybe we can find out more tomorrow.’

  Jane’s body was tense after spending so much time in the gig. The seat was hard, jolting her over every bump. Being so high off the ground left her terrified she’d fall and be crushed under the wheels. But Sally enjoyed every moment of driving: the speed, controlling the horse, the way the vehicle bounced and skipped over the road.

  Idle thoughts. Distractions to take her mind from the sight of Mrs Fox as they dragged the corpse from the river. As she lay there on the bank, sodden, the marks stood out around her neck. Strangled with a rope.

  She’d seen the woman alive, followed her all over Leeds. In a curious way, Jane felt she’d known her. Now Mrs Fox was no more than an empty bag of bone and flesh.

  As she walked up Albion Street towards home, she heard Davy Cassidy’s fiddle and followed the sound, craving some beauty to take away the death she’d seen.

  Jane stood at the back of the small crowd, eyes closed, happy to let the music wash over her. As the tune ended and people started to drift away, she moved forward until she was standing by him as he rosined his bow.

  ‘Where do you find all that beauty?’

  He turned a pair of sightless eyes to her and smiled.

  ‘I don’t,’ he told her in his soft voice. ‘It’s already there in the music. All I do is try to let people see it. Not my doing at all.’

  He underestimated himself, Jane thought. She dropped a handful of coins in the cup and he smiled at her.

  Simon had his arm around Rosie, her face nuzzling his neck as she slept. Slowly, gently, he shifted in the bed, careful not to wake her. His eyes stared up into the darkness, and outside in the night he heard someone running, then nothing at all.

  Rest wouldn’t come. Instead, he tried to put some kind of order into the last two days. Two murders, both strangled the same way. Who’d killed them? Fox seemed the obvious suspect. He’d vanished, but so had Andrew Barton. Had they gone off together? Had they been plotting the deaths on the day they met? What was the connection between Shackleton and Fox?

  He’d only discover the answers to those questions when they found the missing men. But there were still other things they could discover. Who lived in the house in Queen Square that the Foxes visited? Who’d rented the room in Grey’s Court? That might shed some light on things.

  Or take them nowhere.

  With his son still missing, Barton wanted someone to keep him safe. With two murders to consider, it was time to put Jane and Sally together. Young, sharp, quick to handle danger.

  Slowly Simon drifted away as the problems gnawed at the edge of his mind.

  Clouds had arrived overnight, high and pale, trapping the heat. Jane sat in the shade, close enough to watch the front of Barton’s house. Sally was checking all around once again, to make sure nobody else was observing.

  Jane hadn’t felt anyone, but that first day she’d never sensed Mrs Fox. She still didn’t understand why.

  ‘Nobody else here, just us.’ Sally scrambled back in beside her. ‘What do you want to do when he comes out? Both of us follow him?’

  ‘No.’ That was too much. ‘One of us can keep watch here.’

  Simon had gone early to see Barton. The worries about his son had turned him into an old man overnight, the lines carved deep in his face. No news yet.

  He lifted his head, eyes rimmed red and full of pain.

  ‘Have you told the constable about Andrew and Fox?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Please, Mr Westow, don’t. Wait. Once he comes back, I’ll make him explain.’

  ‘All right,’ Simon agreed. He felt it was a mistake to say nothing, but it was Barton’s family and he was paying the bills. ‘When will you report he’s missing?’

  ‘Today if he doesn’t come home.’ There was desperation in the words.

  ‘When you do that, Porter is going to need to know about that meeting. He might be able to make something from it. You have to tell him.’ With Mrs Fox a corpse and her husband gone, he’d be furious he hadn’t already been informed. But what was done was over. It couldn’t change the past.

  A slow nod. ‘Perhaps. Can you find him?’

  ‘I can try.’ How could anyone promise more than that?

  Barton might not appear at all, Jane thought, as she sat in the shadow of a branch, watching the front door of the house. He’d probably stay inside, hoping for good news. She’d seen him through the windows, shuffling through the rooms like a man lost in his own life.

  A rustle of leaves and Sally settled beside her once more.

  ‘Are we going to spend the day here?’

  ‘Unless he goes out or something happens.’

  Time passed, and the church bell tolled the hours. Sally kept shifting restlessly.

  ‘Why don’t you go and buy us something to eat?’

  The girl brightened. A movement and she was gone. Stillness returned. Nothing to see in the house.

  Simon stood and admired the handsome buildings of Queen Square. Well-designed, still quite new and far enough from town that the bricks had kept their fresh, bright colour. He leaned on the stick; no more than half a mile from home, but he felt the ache and effort of walking in the summer heat.

  Rosie was behind one of the doors, chatting to Mrs Golden, a woman she knew. Simon studied the front of the house the Foxes had visited. Nothing to distinguish it from any of its neighbours in the square, the same shining black paint on the wood, heavy curtains pulled back in the windows.

  His wife would take her time. That was fine. It gave him a chance to think. He’d promised Barton that they’d search for his son, but the chances of finding him alive grew dimmer every hour. The man had to know that, but as long as he refused to admit it to himself, then Andrew couldn’t be dead. Simon understood that all too well.

  Rosie came back out, beaming as she waved farewell.

  ‘Mrs Curtis,’ she said. ‘That’s who we want. She’s a widow, moved here two years ago after her husband died. Sarah Golden said the rumour is that she’s been having some hard times.’

  ‘Selling her jewellery, do you think?’ If the Foxes had heard about her misfortune, that could explain the visit.

  ‘She doesn’t know.’ She glanced at the house. ‘We’re here, we might as well ask.’

  He was happy to let her lead, presenting her visiting card and invoking the neighbour’s name to get them inside. This was something Rosie did so well.

  The house felt cramped, Simon thought, with far too much furniture for the space, as if the woman had never parted with anything in her life.

  Elizabeth Curtis had probably once been stout, but age had shrunk her. The skin sagged into jowls around her face, her hair had become thin and white and her teeth yellow. But her eyes still had a sharp, attentive intelligence. She pursed her lips as she listened to Rosie, showing the web of lines spreading from it. A shaft of light caught the hairs protruding from her chin.

  ‘It’s hardly a secret that I don’t have much money, Mrs Westow.’ She waved a scrawny arm. ‘I know it’s cluttered, but I’m selling things piece by piece. I need money to live. I only have a single servant now, and I can barely afford to keep her and this place.’ She frowned, but her gaze was defiant. ‘My errant husband didn’t provide well for me in his will. Plenty for his mistress, though.’ She caught Simon’s look of astonishment. ‘It’s perfectly true, I can assure you of that.’

  ‘The couple who came here on Saturday, the Foxes,’ Rosie said hurriedly. ‘Was that the name they used?’

  She gave a small, girlish giggle. ‘It was, and they said they knew I had jewellery. The man claimed to know people among the gentry, to come from a good family near Richmond, related to the Irwins from Temple Newsam. He had a great deal of charm, I’ll grant him that, but something about him rang false.’ She narrowed her eyes, as if she’d remembered something. ‘You’re the thief-takers who caught him, aren’t you?’

  ‘We are,’ Simon admitted.

  ‘I listened to what they had to say. I have plenty of time and visitors are rare these days. The poor man sounded so sincere. I think he might have believed what he was saying.’ She shook her head.

  ‘He has no connection to the Irwins,’ Simon told her.

  Mrs Curtis gave a delicate laugh. ‘I’m not surprised. I’ve been a guest at Temple Newsam … well, it was a long time ago and I was young then. It was obvious he’d never been there.’

  ‘You led him on?’

  She blushed. ‘A little, perhaps. For some amusement.’

  ‘What did they offer?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘They asked to see my jewellery. I showed them the best pieces, but …’ She paused, then, ‘I kept a very careful eye on them both.’

  He laughed. ‘You didn’t trust them?’

  Her eyes sparkled with life. ‘Not an inch, Mr Westow. But it was an … interesting experience to meet someone who’d been pardoned on the gallows.’