Angel of Hever Castle, The (7 page)

Chapter Eight

It is the paint that does it, or so they say.  It makes you sick, brings on the visions of darkness and death. 

And she knows that he is almost there.  That he has almost crossed that thin pale border which separates sanity from madness.  He does not sleep.  He does not eat.  He drinks and paces and rails against his latest girl – that pale and ineffectual Anne. 

It is the white paint that will take him the rest of the way.  It is not an easy thing to obtain in London, where they
are wise enough to fear it, so she was forced to journey to Calais and learn the technique in a French school.  It involved soaking lead plates in Mercury – dreadful stuff – and then flaking off bits to brew the white pigment.  It makes you drunk, forgetful, and foolish.  It brings on “the artist’s disease.”  They claim it is what drove Van Gogh insane, prompted him to cut off his ear and present it to a whore.

And so
shall it work its white magic on LaRusse.

She mixes the paint at two parts white and one part blue, far more than what is prudent.  Far more than the ratio which is recommended at the art school where she learned.  It might even be enough to kill him if she tried, but she doesn’t want him dead. 
At least not now.  Not quite yet.   She wants him to suffer.  To remember.

Ni
ght after night, she rises from her bed.  Puts on her white cloak and runs across the meadow to the gatehouse with a lantern in one hand and her paints in another.   And night after night she finds the portrait, his Angel of Hever Castle, waiting on the easel.  Anne’s arms and shoulders, Anne’s breasts and hands.  And yes, even Anne’s face, at least at first.  But she has always been quick with a brush and within minutes, the angel of Hever is transformed. She is no longer Anne.  She is Rose. 

How many more mornings until he loses his tenuous grip on reality?   No man can exist forever on rum and fear and poisonous fumes.   No man can pose one woman obediently naked before him and paint her in perfect detail – and yet return to his
easel every morning to find another waiting for him.  Her eyes wide and accusing.  His baby on her lap. 

But she is prepared to stay here, no matter how many nights it takes until her vengeance is complete.  LaRusse will never be allowed to forget what he did to
Rose, no matter how many other women may have been in his bed or on his canvases.  He must remember her face even if he forgets all the others.

She must haunt him unto death.

Chapter Nine

“So let us suppose that Spencer is not the real last name of the girls,” Geraldine mused.  She glanced down at Trevor’s latest telegram, which was resting on the table.  “Perhaps Rose adopted a pseudonym when she entered the Kirkland School, which is apparently standard practice for the young women who go there.  And Dorinda took the same name before she went to Hever.”

“But I don’t understand,” Tess, said, fitfully twisting one of her gloves.  “Knowing what LaRusse did to her sister, wh
y would Dorinda follow him to Hever?”

“Revenge, Mama.  It is all that explains it.”  Marjorie, Tess’s older daughter, looked at her mother with sympathy
as she spoke. The last two days had taken their toll on Tess; she had slipped from being a woman who was merely agitated and worried to someone who was having trouble thinking clearly at all.

“It is one of humankind’s greatest motivations,” Emma said.  

“But if Anne is still at Hever,” Tess said, “I can’t see what any of the rest has to do with it.”

“Patience, my dearest,” said Geraldine, reaching over to pat her arm.  “N
ot one of us has forgotten that your precious Anne is the focus of all our efforts.  But if my labors in the arena of crime solving have taught me anything, it is that sometimes the most unlikely strands of a story find a way to twine themselves together.  Answering one question often leads to a greater understanding of another.  And thus throwing light on LaRusse’s past may be the swiftest way to extract Anne from his grasp.”

“It occurs to me
,” Marjorie said thoughtfully, “that when people concoct a false surname, they rarely pull it from midair.  Perhaps Spencer is some other sort of family name – their mother’s maiden name, perhaps?”

“A reasonable notion
,” Emma said, considering Marjorie with new respect.   When she had first arrived on Geraldine’s doorstep with her mother, Emma had been prepared to dislike her.  This young woman, scarcely two years older than Emma herself, seemed to have been uniquely blessed with good fortune.  Striking beauty, a doting family, an advantageous marriage, two perfect children.  It seemed almost too much to fathom that Marjorie would also be possessed of a kind heart and common sense.  But in the brief time she had spent in her company, Emma had found that she was beginning to like Marjorie very much. 

“Spencer as the mother’s maiden name?” Geraldine said.  “Quite right. Tess, help me think.  Do we know any woman in her forties who was a Spencer before marriage?”

“There’s
ElizaAnne Spencer Mill,” Marjorie said swiftly, answering in her mother’s stead.  “It’s what gave me the idea.  I met her last year at the fundraising gala for the Barrow Street orphanage.  A kindly woman, and about the right age, with two growing daughters.  But she and her husband have recently left London.”

“And that in itself is suspicious,” Geraldine said.  “Who in their right mind would leave London?  It is the very pearl of civilization.”

“Two daughters,” Emma said thoughtfully.  “Did she mention them by name?”

But as Marjorie regretfully shook her head,
the doorbell rang.

“Answer it, please
, Emma,” Geraldine said.  “Gage is in the kitchen.”

“You really must get him some help,” Tess said distractedly.  “
Your social life is a whirlwind, Gerry, and it’s inhumane to expect that one poor man to handle it all.  And whoever can that be at the door? I thought our party was complete.”

“Not quite,” said Geraldine.  “I invited Madame Renata.”  As
three questioning faces turned toward her, she hastened to explain.  “Oh, I know she can be quite odd and that some have found her séances to be more… more theatrical than the occasion requires.  But I believe she is a gifted medium, as skilled at her profession as Trevor is at his.  And Emma dear, you needn’t tell him I said that.”

“How much of the situation did you explain to
Madame Renata?” Emma asked.  “She will likely use any information you told her in order to concoct exactly the sort of answers she knows we crave.  These people make their living by feeding on the false hopes of the desperate.”

“I told her nothing, e
xcept that we sought guidance in the matter of a young girl,” Geraldine said briskly, “and please dear, wipe that outraged expression off your face and go open the door.  We can’t leave the poor woman standing in the frost all night.”
****

“We call upon the voices of all women,” Madame Renata intoned.
  “The women who were wronged, betrayed, used for another’s selfish pleasures and then abandoned.  The women who trusted unworthy men and paid the price.  We summon them all here, to make a protective circle around our table.”

“The room is likely to get rather crowded,” Emma whispered to Marjorie, who giggled.  Geraldine shot her a warning look across the table, before obediently bowing her head as if she were in church.

“Let us join hands, my sisters,” Madame Renata intoned.  Her head was swathed in a bright colored cloth that reminded Emma of the Caribbean women she sometimes saw in the marketplace and her hands were encrusted with jewels of every hue.  The rings were most likely fakes, just like their owner, and the overall effect was more than a bit ridiculous.  But she supposed at this point, they had little to lose. 

The five women sitting around the small oak table joined hands
.  The room was dark, save for a single candle, and silent, save for the fact that Tess was already sobbing softly.  Marjorie squeezed her mother’s hand and closed her eyes. 

“The women are with us,” Madame Renata said.  “They have heard the cries of our hearts.  They come in their crowns, in their robes, in their scarlet capes…”

A sudden chill ran over Emma.  Scarlet capes?

“They stand with us,” Madame Renata continued in her sing-song voice.  “Mary, Anne…”

At the name “Mary,” Emma’s head jerked up and her eyes flew open.  But she was not the only one at the table to react.

“
Anne, did you say?” Tess blurted.  “Anne is with us?”

“Queen Anne
comes to our table,” Madame Renata said.  “Graces us with her royal presence.  Your Anne is not here.  She eats stew.”

“Stew?”
Tess said wildly.  “What do you mean, she eats stew?”

“Hush, Tess darling
,” Geraldine said softly.  “Let the woman do her work.”

“Queen Anne is with us,” Madame Renata continued. 
“Daughter of Thomas, wife of Henry, mother to Elizabeth.  She says she knows what it means to love, but to remain unloved in return.”

Emma felt the first stirrings of anxiety
.  Geraldine claimed she said nothing to Madame Renata about the purpose of the evening beyond the fact they sought a young girl.  It was highly unlikely that she had mentioned Hever Castle at all, so Madame Renata’s contention that the spirit of Queen Anne had manifested… Well, what was one to make of it?  That Madame Renata’s use of her name was sheer coincidence or could it be proof that from somewhere in the netherworld, Anne Boleyn was incensed over the abuses taking place in her childhood home?  And then the bit about Mary…

“Mary, Queen of Heaven,” Madame Renata said,
as if she was reading Emma’s mind.  “You honor us with your presence.”

So the “Anne” was Anne Boleyn and the “Mary” was the Virgin Mary. 
Well,
Emma thought, cynicism once again trumping fear,
we certainly seem to have drawn an illustrious group.  
She looked around the table, hoping to catch the eye of Marjorie, who would likely also be skeptical, but the young woman’s head was still bowed and her eyes still closed.  She was chewing her lip nervously, perhaps trying to come to terms with the surprising news that while they were surrounded by saints and royalty, her little sister was off somewhere eating a bowl of stew.

“Another Mary steps into our circle as well,” Madame Renata said,
her voice dropping to a murmur.  “She is the one in red and she bears a message…”

Emma clinched her jaw, belief and unbelief waging
war within her pounding heart.  The last time Emma had seen her sister alive, Mary had been wrapped in a ruffled red cape.  The garish dress of a girl who makes her living on the streets.  They may have been sisters by birth, but their lives had diverged so totally by that point…one of them scrapping for a living on the mean streets of Whitechapel, the other installed in one of the mansions of Mayfair.  On that windy afternoon, they had simply observed each other from afar, silently acknowledging the width of the divide between them, and then each had turned away.  The image had tortured Emma for the totally of the last year.  Should she have charged across the street and grabbed her sister’s red-cloaked arm?  Somehow thought of the right words to persuade the girl away from her inconceivable determination to live as she did?  With a little more effort, might she have changed Mary’s fate and thus saved her life?

“The spirits say we must focus not on the past, but on the present,” said Madame Renata
, once again as if in answer to Emma’s unspoken questions.  “They assure us that they shall help our cause from the beyond, but also warn that we cannot rest in their help.  For while they have the power to turn men’s hearts, only living women have the power to turn their hands.  They say that we see what we must do.  Those who need our help stand right in front of us.”

Melly
,
Emma thought. 
She is speaking of Melly MacGraw.  No, I cannot change what happened to Mary, but perhaps I can save Melly MacGraw from a similarly cruel fate.

“Excuse me,” Tess said timidly. “Might I ask a question?”

“The spirits will answer if they can,” said Madame Renata.

And what a group we have to answer,
Emma thought. 
A headless queen, a murdered prostitute, and the mother of Jesus Christ himself.  Between the three of them, they should know quite a bit about life.

“Well, it’s just one thing,”
Tess whispered uncertainly.  “But what did you mean when you said that Anne was eating stew?  Is that some sort of symbol?”
****

Trevor and
Rayley watched as Anne Arborton not only finished the last of her stew, but used a crust of bread to mop up the gravy.  They had brought the girl to the inn at Edenbridge where they had stayed the first night of the trip, and there had purchased her a farmer’s dinner, most likely her first solid meal in a week.  She had eaten so rapidly that conversation had been limited, but now she sat back, contentedly full, and looked at the two detectives sitting across from her, smiling like a pair of proud papas.

“There is something else I must confess,” she said.  “It was a matter of foolish pride that I did not tell you at once.”

“And what is that?” asked Trevor, settling back in his chair as he waved to the barmaid for another ale. 

“I told you that LaRusse was missing this morning,”
Anne said, looking hopefully at a berry pie cooling on a side table. “But what I didn’t tell you is that no one has seen Dorinda Spencer either.”

****

“Are you quite sure this is a good idea?” Rayley said to Trevor a half hour later.  They were saddled on Constable Brown’s horses and back on the trail to Hever.  The moon, while not quite as full as the night of the solstice, still gave off a glorious silvery light and their travel so far had been swift and effortless.  “Our task was merely to retrieve Anne, and this we have done.  But I don’t feel entirely comfortable leaving her unattended at the inn.  She seems willing to come back to London now, but we know the girl has an impulsive nature.   What if she changes her mind yet again or, even worse, what if LaRusse somehow gets wind of her whereabouts?  He might show up at the inn and carry her off.”

“Really, Abrams,” said Trevor
.  “Anne has come to her senses.  She is undoubtedly in her bed at the inn this very minute, cozy and warm, and quite thrilled to be on her way home.  And we can hardly leave a case, even an unofficial one, at such loose ends, especially not when another young woman is in danger.  A woman you showed interest in merely days ago, as memory recalls.”

“
Agreed.  But what makes you so sure we will find either Dorinda or LaRusse at Hever?  Anne claims they are missing.”

“The fact that
Anne doesn’t know where they might be is hardly proof they’ve left the property,” Trevor said, pulling his horse to a halt as the walls of Hever came into view. 

Rayley pulled up as well.  “No matter now, for
it lies before us.  The lost castle of a lost romance.   But something seems changed.”

“What?”

“I can’t say.”  Rayley frowned, studying the contours of the castle in the moonlight.  “It is just an impression.”

“
So what do you expect we shall find here, Abrams?” Trevor said softly.  “Do you think that LaRusse has fallen to Dorinda or that Dorinda has succumbed to LaRusse?  For we are standing witness to a great battle, it seems.  A sort of battle between the sexes, and we both know that type of fight yields no victors.” 

“I have no idea what waits for us below
,” Rayley said, prodding his horse into motion. “But it frightens me.”