A Woman of Consequence (23 page)

For the moment of handing the letter to Lucy was upon her – and she still knew not how to prevent disaster … She looked again towards the two girls standing on the bridge in their fluttering white muslins. Something must be done – and done quickly – to bring them both to disillusion … And yet she dared not offer a word of advice … She dared not even tell Harriet the truth …

Mrs Nolan had drawn out her letter and was reading the direction of it – as if she hoped that somehow it might have changed. Her eyes were narrowed against the sharp sunlight and shadows which were shifting across the paper; she held it closer to her eyes to make out the writing …

And all at once Dido saw, in that one simple movement, the answer to all their difficulties!

She touched her companion gently on the arm. ‘I too have something to deliver,’ she said quietly and, taking the letter from her own pocket, she held it out for Mrs Nolan’s inspection.

‘Eeh dear me!’

‘I wonder,’ said Dido hurriedly, ‘whether you might permit me to deliver
both
letters.’

Mrs Nolan looked a little uncertain, but relinquished her letter and Dido stood for a moment looking down at the two pieces of paper with their black sprawling directions: so innocent looking, so very dangerous – and so very,
very
alike …

‘It is,’ she remarked, ‘extremely difficult to make
out the writing in this light, is it not?’ She swapped the letters about in her hands and smiled.

There was a moment of puzzlement on the schoolmistress’s face – and then a dawning of understanding. ‘Eeh! Miss Kent! You would not!’

But Dido did not reply. She was already running along the path towards the bridge. Lucy and Penelope were walking towards her, their faces flushed with sun and exercise, their bonnet-strings streaming behind them in the breeze.

She looked down just once more at the letters, frowning with all the appearance of a woman dazzled. She held out a hand to each of the girls.

They each took a letter and their faces showed immediate recognition of the hand-writing. They turned aside preparing to break the seals – their movements mirroring one another so exactly they might have been engaged in a country dance.

They stopped, back to back. Dido held her breath.

They seemed to stand frozen for an eternity of seconds in the sunlight as people sauntered past. The child on the grass stumbled and began to cry.

Slowly the girls turned back to face one another. The wind flung back a bonnet string, cracking it like a whip. Lucy’s face burnt red with fury; Penelope’s was pale and trembling, a tear creeping slowly from one eye.

‘Miss Lambe, I believe this letter is directed to
you
.’

‘And this, I think is
yours
.’

Stiffly they made the exchange. A moment later the glorious sound of tearing paper reached Dido’s ears, bringing with it the very comfortable conviction that Captain Laurence’s schemes were defeated.

Dido was very well pleased with her solution of this problem. Her triumph made her rather confident of succeeding at last in all her other undertakings and she had an appearance of great satisfaction and self-congratulation when she entered the theatre the following evening. Mr Lomax noticed it as they met in the lobby and, as they were all taking their seats, he remarked that the air – and the
company
– of Bath seemed to agree with her.

As he spoke, he cast a meaningful look at Captain Laurence, who had now rejoined their party and was being very attentive to Dido – no doubt as a consequence of the cold looks he was receiving from Lucy and Penelope.

Dido only smiled and acknowledged that the air suited her very well. There was no time for further explanation just then, for everyone must look about them and admire Bath’s grand new theatre.

The bright fresh paintings upon the ceiling and the rows of boxes rising up on their bronze pillars, glorious with scarlet linings and gilt lattices, were a fine sight to behold. The audience (though it was, by common consent, as ‘thin’ as the company in the Pump Room) was aglitter with jewels and feathers and silks. And upon the stage there were all manner of gaily painted scenes and clever
tricks with lights and machinery to be admired.

Indeed, amid all this opulence, there was but one dull thing – and that, unfortunately, was the wit of the playwright.

The play itself proved to be a poor old threadbare thing, and throughout the first act Dido’s attention was perpetually wandering from it. She soon found a great deal more to interest her in Captain Laurence’s wanderings about the building than she did in the worn out maxims and jokes of the actors.

The captain seemed to be no better amused by the play than she was herself. He left their box before the first scene was over and, thereafter, he was forever appearing first in one part of the theatre and then in another. She could not help but wonder what he was about and it became a kind of game with her to guess in which box she would detect him next.

‘Do you know,’ she whispered eagerly to Mr Lomax as the first act ended, ‘who the man is that Captain Laurence is talking to now?’

Lomax followed the direction of her eyes to a box almost opposite their own where the captain had now joined the elderly rake of the colonnade, and his well-painted lady. ‘That,’ he replied rather stiffly, ‘is Lord Congreve: the man who owns half the land in Shropshire, and has a great deal of influence at the Admiralty besides – which is no doubt the reason for Laurence courting his favour.’

‘I see!’ cried Dido her interest deepening. ‘But I think you do not like His Lordship?’ she added as she noticed a look of marked distaste spreading across her companion’s face.

‘
I
have no opinion of him at all,’ he said with great dignity. ‘It is
you
who are so very occupied with James Laurence and his acquaintances that you cannot keep your eyes upon the stage.’

Dido suppressed a smile – and continued to look at the captain’s acquaintances. The fat lord was listening intently, as Laurence – with one hand resting familiarly on the noble shoulder – talked earnestly into his ear. As he listened he stroked the old scar on his cheek very thoughtfully – and looked in their direction.

Whatever was Laurence communicating? His plan for Lucy and Penelope’s ruin was at an end; yet he seemed still to be scheming …

‘I w … wonder at Laurence being seen in c … company with that fellow,’ whispered Silas from his seat behind. ‘I’ll w … warrant the friendship’s not known about at Madderstone!’

The expression upon his face suggested he knew something in particular to the disadvantage of ‘that fellow’, and Dido was about to ask what exactly he meant; but the play was beginning again and his attention was returning to the stage.

So she fell instead to examining Lord Congreve’s companion again. And that little painted face set in motion such a
very
interesting train of thought that soon ‘the two hours’ traffic of our stage’ was passing by quite unregarded. Dido recalled all the things which she knew about His Lordship – and an idea began slowly to form in her head: an idea far stranger than the fiction acting out before her. And yet, she assured herself, it was an idea based entirely upon reason, facts and observation.
It certainly allowed for no shadow of coincidence or superstition – perhaps even the ghost itself might be rationally explained by it …

As they all came out upon the stairs at the end of the play, the very great pressure of the crowd bore Dido and Mr Lomax away from their companions and authorised her to cling rather tightly to his arm. Indeed it was only by pressing herself against him that she could save herself from being carried away by a careless troop of passing gentlemen. She seized upon this moment of jostling intimacy.

‘Are you familiar at all with the lady accompanying Lord Congreve?’ she asked urgently. ‘Is she his wife?’

He looked surprised by the sudden application. ‘No,’ he said, gravely disapproving, ‘she is not. His marriage ended unhappily some years ago. The young lady with him tonight is his mistress.’ He turned away as he spoke and held out a hand to guard her as a drunken man staggered by.

‘You call her young,’ said Dido. ‘About what age do you suppose her to be?’

‘What a very strange question!’

‘But I think it is a rather important one. Please? Do you know her age?’

He sighed and shook his head. ‘She is reported to be barely sixteen,’ he said reluctantly. ‘His Lordship has the reputation of … associating with very young women.’

‘Yes,’ said Dido remembering the peer’s behaviour under the colonnade. ‘I rather suspected it.’

She lapsed into a very thoughtful silence and they were carried forward down the stairs on a hot tide of
coloured headdresses, dark evening coats and bare white shoulders. The memory of that white powdered face was still intriguing her. ‘It is a puzzle,’ she said as they came to rest upon the last landing. ‘A very great puzzle. Why should such a young woman paint her face so very thickly?’

Lomax looked down at her laughing: brows raised over questioning eyes. ‘Miss Kent!’ he cried. ‘I would never have expected to find you so much interested in appearance and cosmetic!’

‘Oh, but on this occasion, I am, Mr Lomax! I really believe …’

‘What is it?’ he said, matching her seriousness immediately. ‘What is it you believe?’

‘I believe that that lady’s face paint might be a key to Madderstone’s mysteries.’

He looked bewildered – and rather irritated; he particularly disliked her speaking in riddles. Struggling hard for patience he began, ‘I am afraid I do not quite …’

But she was not listening. Her attention was fixed upon the hallway just a few steps below, where a discourteous footman was now making way for a disdainful Lord Congreve and his companion.

Then, all at once, she was on the move, weaving rapidly through the crowd on the stairs and slipping off the loop of ribbon which secured her fan to her wrist. She reached the bottom of the steps just as the manservant succeeding in clearing a passage for his master; she turned in apparent confusion and nearly ran against His Lordship – there was an ill-bred oath. She stepped back in confusion –
and somehow contrived to drop her fan. It slid most satisfactorily across the floor and came to rest just in front of the couple. She bent to retrieve it – and so was able to look full into the face of the young woman as she stood up and apologised for inconveniencing her …

And it was just as she had thought: the startled white little face was extremely youthful: almost a child’s face – but so thickly coated in grease and powder that tiny cracks were evident about the mouth and eyes.

But, seen as close as this, the face had another secret to reveal …

Dido woke next morning from a light, restless sleep, to the clattering of milk-pails and pattens on the inn doorstep. She lay for a minute or two staring up at the dusty red wool of the bed’s canopy as she once more ran over the ideas which had occupied her long into the night: the face of Lord Congreve’s companion; His Lordship’s ill-bred interest in very young women; the scar upon his cheek; Mrs Nolan’s information that Congreve and Laurence had watched Penelope several days before Laurence made his move with the handkerchief; Silas’s suggestion of some particular vice which would make the peer’s acquaintance unacceptable at Madderstone …

And, once it was all recalled, she found that she could lie still no longer.

She jumped up and stood beside the room’s small window, gazing down upon the early-morning street and the milkmaids who were now hurrying away from the inn, the empty pails swinging lightly on their yokes, and at a cart which was drawn up to bring fowls and vegetables from the country.

There was in her head such a picture of guilt and deception! And yet she was still like a little girl in the schoolroom endeavouring to fit together her map of Europe. Some pieces fell into place very neatly indeed
– but there were gaps and missing pieces which left the continent woefully incomplete. She could not finish her lesson – she could not even be sure that the pattern she had formed was correct …

There were still details to discover. She must ascertain from Silas exactly what it was that he had hinted at last night. But the most pressing business was to speak to Mrs Nolan. It was absolutely essential to know for certain who it was that had placed Penelope in her care: who it was that maintained the girl. When that was established, then perhaps she would know how to proceed.

However, they were to leave Bath this very morning and she had only an hour or two in which to persuade the schoolmistress into confiding. Within five and twenty minutes she was dressed and making her way out of the inn’s door.

The light was strengthening now as the sun rose. Two men were throwing down water on the steps and sweeping dirt away into the gutters. The farmer’s cart was just finishing unloading its goods and, as Dido passed it, she detected a sweet, slightly rotten smell which reminded her sharply of the inn-yard at Great Farleigh …

She turned quickly and saw a boy swinging the last basket from the cart onto his shoulder. Through the wickerwork there protruded several brown and green feathers of game birds.

A smile of satisfaction spread across her face and, as she began to walk slowly across the Pump Yard towards the upper town, she was fitting another small piece of her map into place.

Dido could not help but feel hopeful about her errand. There had, she reasoned, been marked signs of gratitude in Mrs Nolan’s address since the scene in Sydney Gardens – a disposition to regard Dido as a special friend for the service she had rendered in separating Penelope from Captain Laurence. There had even been moments when she had detected an inclination to confide – but caution had always intervened.

Somehow the confidence must be won this morning. A great deal depended upon it – for she was sure that, once she had it, she could find the countries which were still missing from Europe …

She brightened at this thought – and hurried on with such determination that she almost ran against a gentleman just then descending the steps of his house. He drew back immediately with a bow, a well-mannered apology – and a look of earnest admiration …

A look to which Dido was not insensible, despite the preoccupation of her mind. He walked off – but paused twice to look again before turning away into George Street – and she continued on her way amused and delighted to find that the animation of mystery-solving could add such charm to her person. But, as she approached Mrs Nolan’s house, her mood became more sombre – her manner businesslike.

She was admitted by a housemaid and shown into a parlour which could never be mistaken for belonging to anyone but the keeper of a school, it was crammed so full with fancy work. Everything, from the six or seven worked footstools, to the pictures in coloured silks hanging upon the walls and the imitations of china crowding the
mantelpiece, attested to the accomplishments of Mrs Nolan’s ‘lasses’.

‘Well, I am right glad to see you Miss Kent,’ cried the schoolmistress, standing up to receive her, and seeming not to mind the earliness of the hour at all. ‘I’d have been sorry not to have wished you goodbye before you start out on your journey and I particularly wished to see you alone so that I might thank you for dealing so neatly with that little business over the letters. It was very cleverly done indeed. For neither Miss Lambe nor Miss Lucy Crockford had to admit that they had been mistaken – and you know that counts for a great deal with young people.’

‘I believe it counts for a great deal with people of any age,’ said Dido smiling. ‘But I hope Miss Lambe has not been too much hurt.’

‘Eeh well, there were a few tears when she was on her own in her bed, I daresay. But it’ll be got over. She’s not the sort to mind it long. And,’ she leant forward and tapped Dido’s arm, ‘I reckon what’s needed is another fellow for her to fall in love with – someone a bit more suitable, eh?’

Dido agreed to it wholeheartedly, and congratulated herself upon her work of the previous afternoon – when Silas’s poem had been shown to Penelope – and had been
very
favourably received. ‘The Nun’s Farewell to her Lover’ had in fact been declared ‘so sweet, and so very clever and just exactly like the poems one read in books. Or rather better; for one understood just exactly what was meant by it. Which was not always the way with poems in books …’

‘And, in the meantime,’ pursued Dido, intent upon making the most of the present opening, ‘there is another little matter concerning Miss Lambe about which I hoped to talk to you.’

‘Eeh well,’ said Mrs Nolan, turning away and smoothing the threads of an indifferently worked cushion. ‘I think I know what that is. It concerns her going to Badleigh does it not?’

Dido studied the schoolteacher’s averted face, very sensible under the extravagant coquelicot ribbons of her cap. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it does concern her visit there …’

‘Aye, I guessed from the way you looked at me so sharp upon Pulteney Bridge yesterday that you suspected I knew more about that than I was telling.’

‘And do you know more than you were telling?’

‘Eeh yes, to be perfectly candid with you, Miss Kent, I do. And I’m still right uneasy about it …’ She hesitated again. Dido waited in silence. ‘I’ve been awake half this night wondering whether I ought to speak to you about it. For, if there’s trouble brewing, maybe you can put things right.’

‘I shall certainly do everything within my power to … put things right. And, of course, you may rely upon my discretion.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Nolan raising her eyes. ‘The fact of the matter is, I never was happy about her going off to be with the Crockfords.’

‘Because you knew Captain Laurence would be close at hand?’

‘Aye, there was that. But there was something else
too …’ She stopped and turned her eyes once more upon the cushion as if appraising its pattern. She did not seem to know how to go on.

‘Did you,’ Dido prompted, ‘know that Miss Lambe had … connections in that neighbourhood?’

‘Yes, I did.’ Mrs Nolan seemed to make up her mind to disclosure. She looked up, her gaze straight, honest and sensible. ‘The lass herself knows nothing about it of course. She knows nought of her own history. I was told to tell her nothing. But her mother … or rather I should say, the lady who sent her here, she lived very near the Crockfords – at Madderstone Abbey.’

‘Oh!’ cried Dido. She could scarcely draw breath for fear of saying something which might prevent the schoolteacher from continuing. ‘And … this lady was …?’

‘Miss Fenn. Miss Elinor Fenn.’

‘Oh!’ It was quite impossible for Dido to sit still a moment longer. She absolutely must walk about. She could not think while remaining stationary. Excusing herself, she went to the window and found some relief in gazing out at the steep sunny cobbles and a couple of chairmen labouring up the hill. ‘Are you quite sure?’ she asked, turning back into the room. ‘Are you quite sure that it was Elinor Fenn who sent Penelope here?’

‘Oh, aye. Though I never met her.’

‘Did you not?’ asked Dido sharply.

‘No, but I am quite sure of the name. There were letters and money sent; and for the first two years I wrote to her from time to time to tell her how the lass went on – so I am very sure of the direction too. I always fancied
she was companion to a lady at the abbey, or something of that sort.’

‘A governess,’ said Dido rather absently, ‘she was a governess. But,’ she paced back across the room, ‘I do not quite understand. Miss Fenn has been dead for fifteen years …’

‘Dead? Poor soul! But I always suspected it.’

‘And has no one paid Miss Lambe’s allowance in all that time?’

‘Eeh! Miss Kent, I wish I was such a rich woman I could keep on lasses for nought. But no … No, the fact is, about fifteen years ago – just two years after Miss Lambe came here – the money for her maintenance stopped coming. Naturally I wrote to Miss Fenn to enquire about the matter.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘And, after a short delay, I received a reply. Not from the lady herself – but from … a friend of hers. This letter said … now what was it … ? It said Miss Fenn was “no longer able to meet her obligations with regard to the child” and he – the writer of this letter – would in future pay what was necessary. And – all credit to him, Miss Kent – he’s never missed. Never been so much as a day late sending the money. Which leads me to suppose …’ she stopped and primmed up her lips.

‘To suppose that he is the girl’s father?’

‘Aye – though of course, it is none of my business to have an opinion. And I only mention the matter to you because you might be able to make sure the secret don’t get out. You see, Miss Kent, I know how gentlemen can turn when their secrets are exposed. They’re inclined to
get angry – and stop paying the money. I wouldn’t want ought to happen that’d hurt the poor lass – for she’s a dear soul. Not so very clever – but as good-hearted as you could wish.’

‘Yes, she is. I agree that she must be protected.’ Dido turned back to the window to hide her eagerness and asked, as calmly as she could, ‘Can you tell me the name of this gentleman who maintains Miss Lambe?’

‘Aye. His name is Mr Foote – Mr
Harman
-Foote I believe he calls himself now.’