A Woman of Consequence (5 page)

‘I suppose it might be possible to find out a little more,’ said Dido thoughtfully, rather intrigued by the problem.
‘Her friends might be questioned. The history of her last days examined more closely …’

‘Excellent,’ cried Mrs Harman-Foote. ‘Then it is agreed – you will make the enquiries my husband will not permit me to make. You will find out about Miss Fenn’s death – so that we may
prove
to Mr Portinscale that she did
not
take her own life and her body must be laid in consecrated ground.’

‘Oh! But …’

‘I am very grateful to you for undertaking the matter Miss Kent.’ Mrs Harman-Foote stood up to take her leave. ‘I know the matter could not be in more capable hands.’

‘It is very kind of you to say so, but …’

‘I should be particularly glad to have the whole matter settled before the All Hallows ball at the end of the month. I must have the poor, dear lady removed from that dreadful grave by then.’

Dido hesitated, disconcerted to find herself imposed upon again – and yet not entirely unwilling to undertake the commission. For it was shocking to think of a woman cast needlessly into a suicide’s grave. And, besides, her own curiosity was piqued. Had there been another cause of death? Or had the young pupil been entirely deceived as to the character of her governess?

However, her ever-active curiosity was at war not only with propriety, but also with memories of previous enquiries of her own: enquiries which had brought upon her responsibilities she had neither expected nor welcomed.

‘Mrs Harman-Foote,’ she said, ‘please forgive the
question: but have you thought about the consequences of any enquiry into the events surrounding your friend’s death?’

‘The consequences?’

‘We have to consider Mr Wishart’s opinion,’ Dido explained. ‘I mean his opinion that the death could not have been an accident. I understand that the nature of the pool – the way in which the edges of it slope so gradually – makes it most unlikely that Miss Fenn could have fallen into it unintentionally.’

‘Of course there was no accident. Miss Fenn was neither clumsy nor imprudent.’

‘And if she did not fall … and if she did not take her own life … then someone else …’ She stopped.

Mrs Harman-Foote was regarding her impassively.

‘You believe that Miss Fenn was murdered?’ cried Dido in amazement.

‘I rather think that she must have been,’ was the calm reply. ‘Mr Wishart says that an accident was not possible. And, since I
know
that it was impossible for a woman of her character and principles to harm herself, I have no choice but to believe that someone else was responsible for her death.’

…
Well, Eliza, be warned by this simple little tale: great ladies of Mrs Harman-Foote’s stamp are no less dictatorial for having tears in their eyes! Grief does not make such a woman any less determined upon getting her own way.

I am fairly caught!

Though I confess that I am not entirely sorry to be caught. The question of Miss Fenn’s death intrigues me. Mrs Harman-Foote seems so
very sure
that her principles would have prevented her from ending her own life. And I should be very glad indeed to help exonerate her if I can – an unconsecrated grave is a terrible thing.

I am to dine at Madderstone on Monday – rather to the surprise of Margaret. At first she was inclined to be offended by an invitation which does not include herself or Francis, but now she has very wisely decided to be delighted, and says again and again how perfectly charming it is that Mrs Harman-Foote should show attention to
her
family.

So the invitation does not, at least, disturb the peace of the household. Whether it will produce anything of interest remains to be proved. I am to be shown the governess’s room and also her ring. And I should very much like to look for myself at the place in which the remains were found
…

Dido was forced to break off. There had been, all through the last few lines, a voice of protest attempting to make itself heard: a voice which was none the less insistent for being entirely imaginary.

‘My dear Miss Kent!’ it was saying. ‘Is it wise to interest yourself in such a very … unpleasant business?’

She closed her eyes. ‘Perhaps it is not exactly
wise,
Mr Lomax,’ she replied in a whisper, ‘but it is certainly humane. Poor Mrs Harman-Foote is so very distressed.’

‘And, tell me honestly, is her distress the real motive here? Do you not seek rather to satisfy your own curiosity?’

Dido coloured. His knowing tone – even in imagination – made her uncomfortable. ‘Curiosity may play a part,’ she consented reluctantly. ‘It certainly qualifies me for the task. But I cannot allow it to lessen the force of the poor lady’s distress.’

She was rather pleased with this argument. Mr Lomax was forced to attack on different ground.

‘And are you sure that investigation is the best way to comfort your friend?’

She faltered. ‘I hardly know …’

‘Consider the consequences. Once questions begin to be asked, all manner of secrets may be revealed – things which are much better left in obscurity.’

‘It is true …’ she began thoughtfully. But just then the wind caught in the eaves outside her window, producing a loud, desolate howl. She opened her eyes upon the cold attic room: the bare floorboards, the clothes hung upon pegs on the wall – the sleeve of a morning gown stirring slightly in a draught of air from the window. An apron
cast aside upon the foot of the bed, and a large basket of interminable sewing beside it, reminded her of the pleasant diversions which awaited her on the morrow.

‘No, Mr Lomax,’ she said as she reached for her pen, ‘I see no reason why I should suffer the inconvenience of your opinions when I have not even the pleasure of your society.’

She turned her attention back to her letter with great determination.

The difficulty lies, Eliza, in proving for certain that a woman did not commit such an act. For it would be necessary to look into her mind, would it not?

It is not, of course, difficult to believe Miss Fenn might have been affected by melancholy – and even despair. The extreme loneliness of the governess’s life: the humiliation of an intelligent, feeling woman reduced to a situation of dependence upon people of inferior understanding is universally acknowledged.

Dido paused a moment and frowned a little uncomfortably at her own words before continuing.

But a great deal must depend upon her character. Exactly what kind of woman was Elinor Fenn?

Anne Harman-Foote’s affection for her governess – and her extreme youth at the time of the death – mean that her testimony upon this subject cannot be entirely relied upon.

Indeed, I confess that at first I had the gravest doubts as to the accuracy of her memories. We have often remarked upon
 
the strange contradictions in her character, have we not? That a woman who sets herself up for clear-sightedness should be so deceived in the nature of her own children – so weak and blind to the faults in their behaviour – has always been a matter of amazement to me. And I could not help but wonder whether she might have been similarly taken in by Miss Fenn.

So I have been asking a few questions among people who remember the governess – at least, I have hardly needed to ask, but only to listen, for, just at the moment, the good folk of Badleigh and Madderstone need no prompting to talk upon this interesting subject.

And the general opinion seems to be that she was neither pretty, nor beautiful, but very handsome. Handsome, I always feel, says a great deal. A woman may be pretty and silly, beautiful and bad. But handsome is a different matter. ‘Handsome’ generally approves the character as much as the features.

And Elinor Fenn was, undoubtedly, ‘handsome’. In the haberdasher’s and in the milliner’s and also in the post office, there is but one opinion: Miss Fenn was a very handsome woman.

Another point of interest is that there is hardly a woman who knew her who had not planned a match for her. Rebecca is of the opinion that her employer, old Mr Harman himself, should have married her. And this remarkable school of thought has other adherents in the village, though mostly among the poorer sort. Mrs Philips, the abbey’s housekeeper, seems to have been content to settle Miss Fenn in Mr Portinscale’s modest, but comfortable, parsonage house – and most gossiping ladies were in agreement with her. Though there were some who recognised the utility of an experienced 
governess in a family with two daughters and would have had the late Mr Crockford make the proposal – if only he had not been so inconveniently devoted to the memory of his dead wife.

It is by no means usual for a neighbourhood to marry off its governesses to every prosperous bachelor and widower within reach. So I cannot help but conclude from all this that Miss Fenn was a very superior woman – or, at least, a very superior governess.

For the rest I can only discover that she was quiet, religious and came from ‘somewhere in Shropshire’. Nothing more definite is ever hazarded than ‘somewhere in Shropshire’. She was, by all accounts, an orphan with no living family.

This picture of her character – the high regard in which she was held by her neighbours and, above all, her religious principles – certainly argues most strongly against
self-murder
. It would, I think, have required something quite remarkable to overcome such a mind and drive it to despair.

I do not know that anything more may be gathered. But tomorrow I shall see what I may discover at Madderstone.

And in the meantime, Eliza, I have been considering again the facts which came out at the inquest. I should certainly like to know more about the journal which Mr Paynter’s uncle wrote. But, above all, I am deeply interested in those coins which were found with the bones. It seems to me very unlikely that a woman setting out from her home intent upon self-destruction should take the trouble of furnishing herself with money
…

The parish church of St James at Madderstone had been built in Norman times, and was older even than the great Cistercian abbey which had once been its close
neighbour. It was a rather humble little building of low rounded arches, crouching amid its yews and gravestones, embellished only by a short, half-timbered tower. On this particular morning, when Dido stopped there on her way to her dinner engagement, the yews were dripping from a recent shower. A shaft of sunlight was just breaking through the clouds and sparkling on the drops which hung under the arch of the lychgate.

She scarcely knew why she had come. But, passing by the gate, her mind full of recent events, she had felt compelled to turn aside and visit the grave of the unfortunate Miss Fenn.

She followed the path which led among the mounded graves of the poor and the stone-boxed tombs of the gentry, but turned aside from the porch, skirted the blunt west end of the church and came into the sunless northern corner of the graveyard, where the air struck cold against her face and the path was green and greasy with lichen.

The grave she was seeking was not difficult to find. A little path of downtrodden grass led to it. It would seem that half the inhabitants of Madderstone village had come, like her, to gaze upon the suicide’s resting place.

It lay under the overhanging boughs of an ancient yew, just beyond the low wall of mossy stones which marked the boundary of the church’s mercy: a raw wound of reddish earth among the yellow grass and dead docks of the waste ground. And it was too small; it would seem there had been no coffin to decently house the bones. They had been tumbled into the ground here with no care, no dignity.

Dido looked back towards the church with the graves
of all its dead gathered close; even the most humble, grass-covered mound safe within the benediction of the little stone cross which topped the tower. Then she gazed down at the unforgiving wall dividing this one soul from grace. The sight was terrible, even to her. How much worse must it be to Anne Harman-Foote, who had loved this woman like a mother?

Insensibly her fists clenched in the shelter of her cloak. ‘I
will
find the truth,’ she whispered, half to herself and half as a promise to the wretched bones. ‘I will do everything within my power …’

She stopped at the sound of the lychgate opening. Footsteps sounded along the path and the figure of a man appeared, walking briskly past the end of the church. There were a few pale-pink late roses in his hand and Dido expected him to stop by one of the tombs, but instead he hurried towards her, making directly for the grave of the outcast.

As he drew closer she saw that it was Harris Paynter, the surgeon.

He was a young man whose firm figure, black hair and dark, heavily lidded eyes had their share of admiration among the ladies of Madderstone and Badleigh; but set against these advantages were his reputation as ‘a precise, plodding fellow’, his being ‘nothing but a
surgeon-apothecary
’ – and a rather sallow complexion.

Though Dido could not help but notice that, just at the moment, his complexion appeared rather better than usual. There was a slight but becoming flush of colour on his cheeks, a hint of emotion that made him seem rather less dull. There was a happy easy confidence in his stride
– and even in the sitting of his hat on the very back of his head. The fine eyes were animated.

‘I am sorry!’ he stopped abruptly as he caught sight of her. ‘Good day, Miss Kent.’ He bowed and, as she returned his greeting, there was an odd little movement of his hand – as if he half-attempted to hide the roses from her view, but then thought better of it. Instead, after a moment’s hesitation, he leant across the wall and placed them upon the turned earth and they both stood for a moment gazing down at the delicate flowers lying softly on the ugly brown clay. A drop of water fell from the overhanging branches of the yew and settled in the curve of a petal.

He cleared his throat. ‘I was walking up to the great house, to visit Miss Lambe,’ he said in his clipped, precise voice. ‘And thought I would just stop – to look at the grave.’ He paused, his eyes still fixed upon the little patch of turned earth. ‘This is a very sad business, is it not?’ he said.

Dido tried to study his face, but it was impossible to make out the expression of his eyes. ‘Were you at all acquainted with the lady?’ As she spoke she was busy calculating that he would have been a child of only six or seven at the time of the death – strange, then, that he should seem so very concerned: that he, of all the people who had visited this grave, should be the only one to bring flowers …

‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘No I did not know her at all.’

‘Oh …’ Dido’s eyes wandered back to the roses. He looked at them with embarrassment and seemed to feel that some explanation was required.

‘I gave evidence at the inquest,’ he said abruptly. ‘I feel …’ He hesitated; he was a man inclined by nature and by the
demands of his profession to choose his words with care, ‘… connected. It is – in part at least – on account of my testimony that she is … excluded from the churchyard.’

‘And you are grieved at the result of your testimony?’

He sighed and put up his hand to lean against a low bough of the yew tree. ‘Yes, I did not foresee this.’

‘It could have made no difference if you had,’ said Dido gently. ‘You were under oath and so had no choice but to tell exactly what you knew.’

He raised his eyes to hers with a very grateful smile. ‘That is true,’ he said.

It was too fair an opportunity to miss. ‘If it were possible, you would be glad to see the verdict changed?’ she ventured.

‘I doubt that it is possible.’

‘Perhaps Mr Wishart cannot be persuaded,’ she said. ‘I know very little of coroner’s courts. It may be that, once it is written down, a verdict is beyond the reach of reason. But this …’ she glanced down at the grave. ‘This is the decision of a clergyman. And it may be that, if we could supply sufficient reasons, Mr Portinscale might amend
his
verdict.’

She had certainly gained Mr Paynter’s attention. He eyed her keenly. ‘I should,’ he said, ‘be very glad to be of service to Mrs Harman-Foote.’ He spoke simply but with great feeling – as if he was particularly anxious to please the lady – and Dido could not but be reminded of that note he had left upon the hall table …

‘Then perhaps,’ she suggested, still eyeing him suspiciously, ‘you might be so kind as to walk up to the abbey with me – so that we may consult together.’

He looked surprised but, when she turned away, he fell into step beside her and listened very attentively as she told him of her promise to find the cause of Miss Fenn’s death.