A Woman of Consequence (9 page)

Dido emerged cautiously from the vicarage sweep and looked about her.

It was a dull, raw morning; shreds of mist lay about the gravestones in the churchyard, and all the spiders’ webs on the vicarage railings were thickly beaded with moisture. There had been rain in the night and the ruts of the village street were full of puddles. Beyond the black and white front of the inn, the usual little knots of women were gathered upon the steps of the baker’s and the milliner’s shops; but, though Dido looked very carefully, she could not distinguish Margaret among them.

Very much relieved, she set off along the street at a brisk pace, her thoughts all fixed upon a stile beyond the village forge which led, through a little copse, to the Madderstone footpath. Once over this stile she would be beyond Margaret’s sight – and free to spend the morning as she pleased.

She passed the Red Lion in safety, and the baker’s, with its warm yeasty scent. She was passing under the chestnut trees on the village green and was just daring to hope … when a voice called out her name.

She gave a guilty start. However, it was not Margaret, but Lucy Crockford who was hurrying over the yellow carpet of fallen leaves.

‘My dear friend!’ she cried, ‘I am so very glad to have met with you! For I must speak to you on a matter of the utmost importance … and … delicacy.’ Her face coloured coyly – until it matched almost exactly the pink satin lining of her bonnet.

‘Indeed?’ said Dido looking anxiously about her. ‘But I am afraid I am in rather a hurry just now.’

‘Then I shall walk with you.’ Lucy linked arms and leant close to talk as they walked on. ‘You are on your way to Madderstone to visit the poor invalid I suppose?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh! It makes me quite
wretched
to think of dear, dear Penelope lying sick,’ said Lucy in her slowest most languishing voice. ‘No one feels these things as I do! I declare, I had rather be sick myself than see someone I care about suffer! You will laugh at me for it, I am sure, but it is quite true.’

Dido showed no inclination either to laugh or to reply, but only to walk on as fast as Lucy’s dragging arm would allow.

‘I wish,’ continued Lucy, ‘that I might come with you to Madderstone and sit a while with poor Penelope! But I dare not attempt it!’

‘I see no need for caution. I do not believe there is any infection in a broken head.’

‘Oh, but it is so dangerous to my nerves. I feel things so
very
deeply. Captain Laurence …’ there was a conscious glance as she spoke the name, ‘says that it is extremely uncommon for a woman to be so exceedingly sensitive, so very
alive
to the feelings of everyone around her. He thinks it something quite remarkable. But I am sure that,
if I am remarkable, I had much rather
not
be. As I tell the captain, it is a dreadful trial to me. Harriet of course is different. She is much better suited to a sickroom.’

‘I do not doubt she is.’

Lucy pressed Dido’s arm and sunk her voice almost to a whisper. ‘In point of fact, it is Harriet I wish to talk to you about.’

‘Oh?’

The pressure of Lucy’s fingers increased. ‘Dido,’ she whispered urgently, ‘you
must
speak to Harriet on my behalf!’

‘Must I? On what subject must I speak?’

Lucy cast her eyes down modestly. ‘Captain Laurence,’ she whispered.

‘Oh!’

‘You must tell her,’ Lucy said eagerly, ‘that she should not attempt to separate …’ She stopped speaking, looked conscious, tossed her head. ‘She seems determined to part us. And I declare it will break my heart …’ She stopped again, and gave Dido’s arm another squeeze. ‘I am sure you understand.’

But Dido was quite determined not to understand so easily. ‘Has the captain made you an offer?’ she asked.

‘Well …’

‘Has he?’ Dido was so eager to know – for Silas’s sake – whether Captain Laurence was, indeed, an engaged man that she momentarily forgot the risk of capture to herself. She drew Lucy to a halt outside the open front of the village forge – where the light of the blacksmith’s fire shone out into the dull morning, and the smells of hot iron and coal mixed with the damp air. ‘Is there an
understanding between you and the captain?’ she asked firmly.

Lucy bent her head. ‘Nothing has quite been said,’ she admitted. ‘There has been no outright proposal. For you know it would not be proper to announce an engagement whilst my poor friend is lying sick. I could not
bear
to do anything so indelicate myself, and the dear captain is so very considerate …’

‘Is he?’ said Dido suddenly, half to herself. The description did not quite chime with her own opinion of the man – and yet, for some reason, it had raised again the troubling memory of that moment when she and Laurence had stood together on the gallery … Why?

But meanwhile Lucy, who had not heard the question, was running on eagerly with her own narrative.

‘Of course he cannot speak until Pen is quite out of danger. But …’ She stopped with such a look of happy consciousness as cried aloud to be prompted.

Dido put aside her doubts about the captain’s character. ‘But?’ she prompted obligingly.

There was a little lifting of the eyes. A sigh of great sensibility. ‘But … I believe I do not say too much if I confess that there is an
attachment
between us.’

‘I see.’ Dido was rather surprised by this news; she had been almost certain that – if Captain Laurence settled on either of the two friends – it would be the lovely Penelope. She looked doubtingly at Lucy’s unremarkable little face: the ruddy light of the blacksmith’s fire deepened the rather excessive colour on her freckled cheeks and laid a faint red gleam across the lank curls clustering under the pink bonnet. Could a man such as Laurence be charmed
by the person or the mind of Lucy Crockford?

Of course, there was money to be considered. But the Ashfield estate, she knew, was entailed upon the male line. It was not a subject ever entered upon by Lucy or Harriet, but it was generally known in the village that there was somewhere a distant relation who could ‘turn them out of the house if anything should happen to their brother’. It was also universally supposed that Lucy and Harriet’s marriage portions were small – a thousand – two was the most that even generous gossip allotted to them.

Two thousand pounds was certainly no great inducement to an ambitious man. And Dido would take an oath that Laurence was ambitious. It was possible that Lucy was deceived – either by her own wishes, or by the gentleman himself …

Meanwhile Lucy was chattering on. ‘Two days ago, on the evening we all dined at the abbey, Captain Laurence and I were in the conservatory
alone
all the time between dinner and tea. And he was
very
attentive.’

She smirked and raised her brows in a way which invited her companion to beg for confidences – but Dido was in no mood to oblige her. ‘And you are certain,’ she said briskly, ‘that Harriet would oppose an engagement?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘But why? Why should Harriet wish to prevent your happiness?’

Lucy primmed up her lips. ‘It is not in my nature to be suspicious,’ she said, ‘nor to speak ill of a sister.’

Dido stared a moment, then understanding dawned. ‘You suspect her of … admiring the captain herself?’

Lucy tossed her head. ‘Why do you suppose she has
insisted upon staying at Madderstone with Penelope?’ she cried in a sharp, quick accent.

‘Why, she is nursing her!’

‘But why cannot she leave the house? The business of nursing could be safely left in the hands of Nanny and the Madderstone housekeeper. But there is no shifting her from the place! She is
determined
to remain where he is.’

‘I cannot believe …’ began Dido, but just at that moment, Margaret’s unmistakable green and yellow bonnet emerged from the butcher’s shop. Forgetting everything but her own need for liberty, Dido began to hurry towards the stile, pulling Lucy with her.

‘Please, please say that you will speak to Harriet for me.’

‘I do not know,’ Dido said distractedly … The stile was just a few paces away now. They had reached it. She was climbing the step; but her companion was dragging upon her arm, preventing her from crossing over. ‘Very well! Yes, I shall speak to her.’ She broke away: climbed the stile.

‘Oh thank you! Thank you!’ Lucy clapped her hands together like a child. ‘You will be sure to do it without delay, will you not?’

‘Very well,’ said Dido resignedly. ‘I shall speak to her this morning.’

The trees of the copse at last cut Dido off from the sight of the village street. She stopped among the dripping branches, drew a long, grateful breath of damp
leaf-mould
and considered this new responsibility which had been laid upon her.

She found she was rather angry at what had just passed. She had more than enough to occupy her at present and she certainly had no wish to be deeply involved in Lucy Crockford’s affairs. She was determined to fulfil her promise of ‘speaking to Harriet’ as briefly as possible.

She gave no credit at all to Lucy’s notion of Harriet being in love with Captain Laurence – she had seen no symptoms of it … Although there was no denying that Harriet had seemed determined to fix herself at the abbey, and she did appear to be opposed to a match between her sister and the captain. Dido had observed as much herself.

Now, why should she oppose such a match? Was it possible that she knew something about Captain James Laurence which made her fear for her sister’s happiness?

That was a very interesting thought indeed!

As she began to hurry along the path away from the village, Dido gladly abandoned all thoughts of love affairs for the rather more interesting subject of the Captain’s character. Why did she distrust him so very much herself?

And why, when Lucy spoke of Captain Laurence as considerate, had she suddenly remembered again that moment when she had been with him upon the gallery? – the moment of the bones’ discovery. Why should that moment have come into her mind?

She stopped walking and pressed her hand to her head in a great effort of memory. The trees dripped disconsolately around her. A pigeon broke cover suddenly and whirred up into the sky.

She tried to recall every detail of that moment on
the ruined gallery. The dying light, the damp, gloomy stillness of the abbey, the captain’s fingers laid gently on her own hand, his very considerate words: ‘Miss Kent, I think you had better wait here. I shall go to see what it is and return to tell you …’

‘Oh!’ The answer came upon her so suddenly and forcefully she could not help crying out. How stupid she had been! Of course, it was not his consideration which must be suspected, but its
cause
.

On noticing that something was discovered in the water, Captain Laurence had immediately advised Dido to remain where she was, while he went on alone to investigate. But why? How had he known – how could he have known – that the discovery was unsuitable for a lady’s eyes?

‘He knew!’ she cried wonderingly to the dripping trees. ‘James Laurence knew that there was a body to be discovered in the pool.’

How, thought Dido as she walked briskly towards Madderstone, could the captain have known about the body before it was discovered?

She ran eagerly through everything she knew about the man. He had certainly been at Madderstone on the day Miss Fenn disappeared. Anne had spoken of ‘all the Laurence cousins’ being in the house. But he cannot have been more than … (A little bit of rapid calculation and counting of fingers.) No, he cannot have been more than sixteen or seventeen years old at the time. One did not like to suspect anything of a boy of just sixteen or seventeen … And yet, he was a big man; even at sixteen he would have been strong enough …

It would certainly be very interesting to know whether James Laurence had been on familiar terms with the governess: whether he might have had any cause to harm her.

She stopped as she came at last within sight of the abbey, wondering how best to pursue this subject. The mistress of the house had already told all that she could – or would – tell, and the master did not wish the matter to be discussed. But there were certainly those among the servants who remembered Miss Fenn. And, in Dido’s
experience, the testimony of an intelligent servant was always worth attending to.

She turned aside from the main sweep, passed the hothouses and the wall of the kitchen garden, and came into the poultry yard. Here she paused and looked about for anyone she might talk to.

It was a well-kept yard, enclosed by a wall so ancient it might be a relic of the abbey’s domain, and furnished with a dozen or so low wooden poultry houses. The hens strutted and fussed in the dusty earth and strings of black and yellow chicks hurried, cheeping, behind them. In one corner there was a rough bench and sitting on that bench, plucking a chicken, was … Harris Paynter.

She stared; but there was no mistake. It most certainly was the young surgeon sitting there with a sack spread about him to protect his clothes, his hands full of brown feathers which he was diligently stuffing into a bag, the limp body of the bird hanging across his knees. His hat was tilted onto the very back of his head and stray pieces of white down were clinging to his black hair.

How very odd!

‘To be quite candid with you,’ she said, glancing at the half-naked hen as she approached, ‘I rather think that this patient is beyond hope of recovery.’

‘Oh no!’ cried Mr Paynter who was constitutionally deaf to humour. ‘I am only collecting a few feathers, Miss Kent.’

He said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a gentleman to do, but Dido could not help but ask why he should find himself so urgently in need of feathers that he must gather them for himself.

‘They are required for a little … enquiry which I am carrying out at present.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes a …
medical
enquiry.’ He laid aside the bird and the sack and dusted a few stray feathers from his person.

‘Indeed?’ said Dido, ‘I did not know that feathers were a cure for any illness.’

‘Oh no,’ he said very seriously and raised his finger as his habit was when he wished to make a precise point. ‘In point of fact, I suspect they are a
cause
rather than a
cure
.’ He picked up his bag.

‘What? Poisoned by feathers? This is a new thing.’

‘On the contrary, Miss Kent,’ he said with a bow, and not even the hint of a smile. ‘The case I have in mind is an old one. Some fifteen years old.’ And with that he hurried off. She almost called him back; but he seemed very anxious to be gone and, besides, she did not know exactly what she could say – what she would ask – if she did succeed in delaying him …

‘Well! He’s a strange one, isn’t he?’ said a voice close beside her. She turned to see Mrs Philips, the housekeeper, picking up the half-plucked chicken from the bench and frowning in puzzlement beneath her well-starched cap.

‘Oh, yes, it does seem rather … unusual behaviour, does it not?’

The housekeeper shook her head. ‘Came here saying could he have some feathers. Said it was for his “enquiries”. “Well,” said I, “you’re welcome to all the feathers you care to take out of this bird” – and off he goes to pluck it! Ah, but he’s always been a strange one, Miss Kent; has been ever since his uncle took him in when he was just five years old.’

‘Indeed? Has he?’

‘And, in my opinion, he takes the strangeness from old Arthur Paynter. For he was a great one for “natural philosophy” and “experiments” and young Harris admired him very much.’

‘And now the nephew has taken to “experiments”?’

Mrs Philips nodded. ‘Last month,’ she said, ‘it was eggs gone bad he wanted for his enquiries. Comes here solemn as a judge – “Have you got any eggs gone bad, Mrs Philips?” “Well,” said I, “I might, but I don’t see why you’d want them.” And he says it’s a “medical enquiry” for finding out why they make folk sick.’ She folded her arms and stood with the bird dangling over her crisp white apron. ‘Don’t know what the sense is in that for I’m sure we all know a bad egg will give us a powerful bellyache. Seems to me a surgeon’d do better reckoning out how to cure folk, not how to make them sick.’

‘Oh, yes, yes indeed.’

‘Ah well, as I often say, there’s no accounting … And so, Miss Kent, what brings you here? Was there anything you wanted?’

‘Oh no … no. I just came to look about me and see how your chickens go on … I see the new clutches are all hatched. And you seem to have done remarkably well! I do believe you have hardly lost one!’

‘Well!’ Mrs Philips cheeks glowed with pride. ‘It’s very kind of you to say so, miss. And, though I don’t like to boast, these new pullets are coming on very nicely …’

Mrs Philips was an old acquaintance of Dido’s and she fell comfortably now into a conversation which, beginning upon the merits of her pullets, moved very naturally to
the depredations of foxes, and thence to the even worse depredations of poachers on the estate, to the deplorable state of all the estate’s walls, to their long-awaited repair, to repairs and improvements in general, and so, at last, to the draining of the lake – and the relics which it had revealed.

‘And that,’ remarked Dido, watching her companion closely, ‘is an extraordinary business, is it not?’

‘Dear, dear, yes, a very odd business indeed,’ said Mrs Philips. ‘There’s no accounting, is there? Poor Miss Fenn lying up there in the water all this time and no one knowing anything about it! That fair makes me shudder.’

Dido nodded kindly. ‘It must have been a very great shock to everyone who knew the poor lady. And you, Mrs Philips, who had known her ever since she came to this house, must feel it very deeply indeed.’

‘Dear, dear, yes,’ she sighed, very well pleased to have her share of sympathy.

They stood together for a while without speaking, watching the hens pecking up corn. A large cockerel with a fine green and gold tail flew up onto the broken wall and crowed importantly.

‘I understand,’ said Dido as indifferently as she could, ‘that poor Miss Fenn had been low in her spirits for some time before she died.’

‘Yes …’ said the housekeeper, a little doubtingly. ‘There’s no denying she
had been
a little low … But … Well, there’s no accounting, is there?’

‘No accounting for what, Mrs Philips?’

‘Well, that did seem to me she’d got a bit brighter in
the last few weeks. More at ease with herself.’

‘Indeed!’

They watched the poultry a little while longer. A very fat hen shuffled herself luxuriously in a dirt bath and a frantic line of chicks peeped and scuttled out of her way. Dido was considering risking a very particular question – and decided at last that it must be hazarded.

‘Was Miss Fenn at all acquainted with James Laurence?’ she said, her eyes still fixed upon the hens.

The housekeeper looked surprised. ‘Why, yes, of course. All the Laurence boys knew her, for they used to come often on visits – their mother being Mr Harman’s sister, you know.’ She stopped, smiled fondly. ‘The truth is – and I wouldn’t mention this to anyone else – but young Mr James was rather struck with Miss Fenn that last summer. We all used to laugh about it a bit. Nothing improper of course – just following her about and leaving flowers by her place at dinner.’

Dido ceased to study the hens. ‘He was in love with her?’ she cried.

‘Oh no! I would not call it love. Not in a boy of sixteen for a woman of nine and twenty.’

‘Well, you and I may call it what we wish, Mrs Philips,’ said Dido meditatively, ‘but to a boy of sixteen I think it might seem very much like love.’

‘Perhaps you’re right, miss. But it wasn’t to be wondered at, you know. She was such a very handsome woman and she had such a way with her. And if young Mr James
was
in love with her …’ She bent over the dead chicken in her hands and began to tweak a feather or two from its neck, ‘he was not the only one.’

‘Oh?’

Mrs Philips continued with her plucking.

‘Who was this other admirer?’ Dido prompted.

‘Well – quite between ourselves …’

‘Of course.’

‘Mr Portinscale.’

‘Indeed? You believe Mr Portinscale was … paying attentions to Miss Fenn?’

‘Oh yes, there can be no doubt about it! All that last summer she was here, he’d call regular at four o’clock – just when he knew she was at liberty. And they’d walk out across the lawns and down to the pool nearly every fine day. “Mark my words,” I used to say, “we’ll see her settled in the parsonage before Christmas.” But then … Well, there’s no accounting, is there, miss?’

‘No accounting for what, Mrs Philips?’

‘Why! The way it all went off.’

‘Mr Portinscale never made an offer?’

‘Ah well!’ cried Mrs Philips. ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’ But she folded her arms and began to look about at her chickens with the air of a woman who knows a great deal.

Dido waited a moment or two – long enough to raise the fear in Mrs Philips’ mind that she had lost the opportunity of displaying her superior intelligence. And then … ‘I suppose,’ she mused, ‘Mr Portinscale was deterred by Miss Fenn’s being only a governess …’

‘Oh no!’ cried the housekeeper immediately. ‘He was not deterred at all!’

‘Oh? You believe he made an offer?’

‘Well …’ lowering her voice as if she feared the hens
might overhear. ‘I’ve never mentioned this to anyone before – on account of her disappearing so soon afterwards – but I believe he did.’

Dido said nothing, only raised her brows a little.

‘It is all in the sitting of a gentleman’s hat, is it not, Miss Kent?’

‘The sitting of his hat?’

‘Oh yes, a gentleman wears his hat in a very particular way when he is in love. On the very back of his head – with a sort of a tilt to it.’

‘Perhaps you are right. I confess I have never observed it myself.’

‘Well, I have, miss. And when I saw Mr Portinscale walking to the door that afternoon, I looked at his hat and I said to myself, “It is coming to a crisis. He’ll speak today for sure.”’

‘And do you know what the outcome was?’

Mrs Philips looked suspiciously once more at the spying hens and whispered, ‘I’m sure he spoke that afternoon – the afternoon before she went away. Oh yes, he spoke – and was refused. I know, for I was watching and I saw him leave the house.’

‘And his hat?’

‘Pulled right down over his eyes. And a look like thunder on his face. She’d certainly refused him.’ She frowned thoughtfully. ‘And refused him in a way he did not like at all!’