Angel of Hever Castle, The (8 page)

****

“We are looking for a certain girl,” Tess said to Madame Renata.  “You said you see Anne at a table, eating stew.  But do you see another young woman, someone who goes by the name Dorinda Spencer?”

The mystic paused for a mom
ent then shook her head.  “There is only darkness.”

“Or her sister?”
Emma said, aware of the breathless anxiety in her voice. “A girl named Rose?”

Another silence, longer and more agonizing than the first.
  Emma was clutching Geraldine’s hand on one side and Marjorie’s on another.  It seemed that every woman in the circle, save for Madame Renata, was holding her breath.

“A
Rose has stepped forward.” the mystic finally said.

“
Where is she?” Marjorie asked.  “What is she doing?”

Silence.
  An ocean of silence, a mountain, an eternity.  The entire world seemed to have frozen.

Madame Renata shook her head. 
A short, definitive gesture, followed by the opening of her eyes.  “The spirits have withdrawn,” she said, in her normal voice.  “Shall we have tea?”

“Tea?”
Marjorie muttered as the three older women left the table and moved into the drawing room.  Tess and Geraldine were still clearly shaken, but Madame Renata was as unperturbed as a woman waking from a pleasant nap.  “It’s always tea.  Do you think there is truth to anything the woman said?  I find the high pedigree of her spiritual guides rather questionable.”

Emma started to confide
about Mary and the red cape, but then thought the better of it.  She had Marjorie seemed to be on the edge of a friendship, but it was hard to predict how a society matron might reaction to the news that Emma’s sister had been not merely a prostitute, but a victim of Jack the Ripper.

“Do you remember what she said, there at the end?” she asked.  “When she saw a girl named Rose?”

Marjorie frowned.  “She said nothing at all did she?  Simply that a girl named Rose stepped forward.”

“Stepped forward
, yes.  Which means, does it not, that Rose is with the spirits?”

Marjorie’s frown deepened. 
“Of course.  If this woman knows her business, then the girl called Rose, whoever she might be, is dead.”

Chapter Ten

Despite
Rayley’s trepidation, the scene which greeted them at Hever Castle was tranquil.  The same scraggly crew they might have expected was gathered around the long dining table, sharing a dinner of oats and potatoes. The food, while hardly aromatic  or appetizing, was more plentiful than when the tyrant LaRusse was in attendance, so Trevor could only assume that the rules about gleaning were relaxed during his frequent absences.  Apparently some of the artists had made a raid on a nearby farm, and the figure now presiding at the head of the table was the painter John Paul.  He greeted Rayley and Trevor with an uninterested wave of the hand, his attention barely flickering from the buxom young creature at his side, and Trevor realized that no one in Hever had noticed that he, Rayley, and Anne had abandoned the castle for the Edenbridge Inn.

This is a topsy-turvy world indeed
, Trevor thought. 
LaRusse departs and John Paul steps into his place.  The king is dead, long live the king.  People gather for breakfast, but if they do not return for dinner, no one goes looking for them or expresses the slightest curiosity as to their whereabouts.  No, not even if they are young girls like Dorinda Spencer or Anne Arborton.  How quickly absolute freedom can become absolute indifference.  

But at least the fact that everyone appeared to be dining as a group meant that he and Rayley could explore the castle uninterrupted.
  He doubted they would find LaRusse or Dorinda – or even any clue as to where they might have gone – within the occupied sections of the castle.  Most likely they would have to move on to the cellar and the gatehouse if they wanted any real answers, but just as Trevor was starting toward the kitchen to begin his search, Rayley signaled to him.

“What is it?” Trevor said, as he joined Rayley at the bottom of the stairs. 

“It’s just occurred to me what was different about the castle as we approached,” Rayley said.  “You know the windows in the east turret?  The ones Dorinda decreed should always stand open because of the paint fumes?  They were closed.”

****

The candles they had grabbed from downstairs were small and ineffectual against the dark and winding stairs.   Rayley muttered a terse warning that there was no handrail and that the steps themselves were crumbling and sloped, indented by centuries of feet.  Trevor, always more cautious than proud in these instances, dropped to his hands and knees for the climb, at one point clinching the candle stub between his teeth like a cigar.

And i
t was in this bizarre and unmanly position that he saw the first one.

The first picture, that is.

It was the face of a woman, very like the face in the portrait they had found in the gatehouse.   Round-eyed, lovely, beseeching.  The Angel of Hever Castle.

Trevor tried to make a sound to halt Rayley, who was above him on the winding staircase
, but the candle in his mouth prevented him from making an audible sound.  Besides, by that time, Rayley’s candle had found an image of its own.   Another portrait, another pose, but the same woman.  “He’s painted her over and over, Welles,” Rayley called back down into the darkness.  His breath was ragged, both from the climb and from a growing sense of dread.  “Rose, you said her name was?  He has gone mad with guilt.”

Trevor muttered something indistinct in reply, but it hardly mattered. 
For as the two men continued to climb they encountered portrait after portrait of Rose.  Rose naked.  Rose in the robes of a Queen.  Rose standing.  Rose reclined.  Rose both indoors and out.  Rose with a child in her arms.  Rose laughing, then stricken with grief.

“Dear God,” said Trevo
r, who paused to straighten and take the candle stub in his hand.  “Be careful when you reach the door, Abrams, and we must extinguish our candles before we open it.  How is the situation at the top of the stairs?  Do you remember?” 

“The steps lead straight to the door,” Rayley called back.  “
Which will give us trouble if we have to force it, since there’s no way to get a running start.  And you must take care to stay to the left, Welles, don’t stand erect like that.  If you lean too far to the right,  you could topple into the stairwell.”

“But
how shall we…”  And here Trevor hesitated, for with each step, he was growing increasingly certain that they were climbing toward a corpse, but he did not bother articulating this fear, since he was reasonably sure Rayley had come to the same conclusion.  Trevor swiped his hand toward one of the pictures – this one of a pensive Rose, contemplating one of the flowers that was her namesake – and was not totally surprised that his knuckles came back smeared with wet paint.  LaRusse had apparently gone into some sort of artistic frenzy – hiding in the garret and producing one hasty portrait after another, propping each on a separate step before climbing back up to begin the next. 

“How shall we what?” Rayley asked
, but as he at last reached the final step, there was a sudden flurry of motion, like a bird taking flight from a high roost.  He raised his candle but it was extinguished at once, with a single whoosh of air - and then it was upon him, a great rushing shape, seemingly airborne.  He let out a cry as he instinctively dove to the left, toward the wall, knocking his head against the stones as he slid to his feet.  Dazed, nearly blind, he watched in disbelief as the ghost took flight and a high metallic scream filled the stairwell.

Trevor, who preferred to think of the creature as an angel, w
as no less stunned at its rapid appearance.  He pulled back his own candle, saving the small flame from extinction, and beheld the figure in white sailing through the darkness, cutting over the stairwell in a definitive swoop, before finally sinking from sight into the dark pit below.  Only the gentle thud of its landing, impossibly far beneath them, indicated that this was a human form and not a supernatural one.

“Abrams, are you there?”
Trevor shouted into the void above him. “What in the name of God was that?  It flew right past me. ”

“I’m fine, Welles,” said Rayley, hoping it was true.  The whack to the head had made him dizzy and he hesitated to push to his feet. 
Not here, so high up in the darkness, with the yawning stairwell to the side.  “I think it was Dorinda, and she wasn’t flying.  She was clinging to a rope…a pulley she devised to lift water….I recognized that screeching sound.”

“What do you mean lift water?” Trevor shouted back in complete disorientation.  “Where the devil did she go?”

But before Rayley could answer, the door at the top of the stairs wrenched open.

The garret
was full of candles, as many as a shrine or chapel, and thus, when the door was pulled back, the stairs beneath it were suddenly flooded with light.  Enough so that Rayley blinked, and turned toward Trevor below him.  But Trevor was standing in open-mouthed wonder as LaRusse Chapman stumbled from the turret. 

He was wild, incoherent, nearly foaming.  He had been trapped there for hours, it would seem, held hostage by not only the lead toxins within the white paint but also by ceaseless images of the woman he had destroyed. 
For now that his eyes were adapting to the light, Rayley could see that the multiple images of Rose on the stairwell were only the beginning.  A dozen other canvasses bearing her face were grouped around the small turret room, her eyes staring down at the men from every direction.

LaRusse staggered.  He weaved.  Rayley struggled to stand, still shaky from his blow to the head
, and Trevor scrambled up the remaining steps.  But they were both too late.  LaRusse paused at the top stair, teetering on the edge of the abyss, and then, with a single step, he was gone.  But this was no angelic flutter, no swirling ghost.   It was the straight sharp fall of a mortal man and the slap at the bottom, below them in the darkness, was the sound of death.

Rayley and Trevor stumbled down the steps as best they could.  The light at the to
p of the stairs was fading as they made their way to the bottom, but just as they reached the last step, a door opened from the dining room.  John Paul coming in to investigate the sound of the crash, a torch in one hand and his beer mug in another, and his minions behind him.

Trevor left Rayley to confi
rm the inevitable – that LaRusse Chapman had instantaneously died upon hitting the stone floor – while he sprinted past the confused cluster of colonists and out the front door.  She was still in sight, just as expected, running in the moonlight away from the castle and toward the open fields.  Trevor was portly, a man too fond of his food and drink.  But in times like this he had a low and efficient sort of run, and so, despite his arduous climb and rapid descent of the stairwell, he was able to close the distance between them within minutes.  She was barely across the moat when his reaching hand found her trailing robe and he seized it, yanking her roughly. 

The girl all but tumbled out of the white cape.  She hit the ground inelegantly, knoc
ked down with more force than Trevor had intended and instinctively he reached a hand to assist her.  
A gentleman to the end,
he thought. 
Even when confronted with ghosts and angels and murderesses, what do I do?  Apologize for my roughness, offer the assisting hand.  They are right to tease me, for I am a fool.  The ladies will be the ones who kill me in the end and I will go willingly, I suspect, with a gentleman’s obliging smile on my face. 

His hand grasped hers.  And when he felt the paint on her palms and fingertips,
still wet, he at last understood it all.  She offered one last spasm of resistance, made one final attempt to twist in his arms, but he held her firm.

“There is n
o need to struggle, Dorinda,” he said gently, looking up at the still night sky.  “It is over.  It is done.”

Chapter Eleven

“Let me make sure I understand,” said Emma.  “
Dorinda was the one who was painting Rose’s face each night on LaRusse’s paintings, changing them as he slept?  She sought to drive him mad by making sure he was constantly confronted with her dead sister’s face and when that did not destroy him as quickly as she hoped, she blocked him in the turret room with an open bucket of lead paint and a whole host of paintings of Rose?”

“Precisely,” Rayley said, settling back on Geraldine’s couch.  “
The confusion was due to the fact that Dorinda and Rose had a strong sisterly resemblance.  Or at least enough of one that when Anne saw Rose’s face, she thought that LaRusse was drawing Dorinda and the notion sent her into a jealous fury.  I made the same mistake too, at first.  Only Trevor saw the difference.”

“
Anne is lucky to have such devoted family and friends.  She might easily have followed in Rose’s footsteps.”

The two of them turned their heads to consider
Anne Arborton, sitting across the parlor at her mother’s side.  She had arrived for Geraldine’s annual Christmas luncheon in a loose smocked dress of the sort a child might wear, with her golden hair pulled back in a ribbon.  Rayley marveled in the transformation the girl had gone through in merely hours, for there was little similarity between the young woman they had delivered on Tess’s doorstep yesterday morning and the one who sat before them now.  Anne seemed to have lost five years in age overnight and judging by the sweet, docile way she greeted everyone at the party, she was more than happy to have her wild adventures behind her. 

She is all contrition and submissiveness
, Rayley thought. 
And she shall be the model daughter, at least for a while.  But by spring I have no doubt that our little Anne shall have thought of an entirely new way to torment her mother.

“When I think on the matter long enough
, I almost begin to feel sorry for LaRusse,” Rayley said aloud to Emma.  “No matter how he would try to expunge the face of the girl who died bearing his child, she still greeted him anew every morning.”

Emma
sniffed.  “I would say he got no more than what he deserved.”

“Oh, undoubtedly,”
Rayley said, “but it has always struck me that insanity is an especially cruel fate, far more terrifying than death.”  He paused and gave a rueful chuckle.  “Dorinda very nearly took Trevor and I down the road to madness along with them.  If you could have seen her running about the countryside in the moonlight, wearing her sister’s white cape…Quite effective, I assure you, and that final night, when she descended from the turret using that same rope pulley she told me she had created for the water…my knees all but buckled in terror.  She was a true actress, that one, capable of creating any effect she chose, and if the girl frightened two Scotland Yard detectives out of their wits, it was no trouble at all to dupe a man whose mind was already corrupted by lead and alcohol.  Sometimes it is easy to imagine the presence of the supernatural, even though it seems a silly thing to confess in the light of day.”

“Indeed,” said Emma, gazing across the crowded room at Madame Renata, who was sedately seated on a divan.  In honor of it being Christmas morning, she had left behind her turbans and jewels in lieu of more traditiona
l dress and, in fact, blended in perfectly with the other ladies at Geraldine’s holiday brunch.  She turned smilingly to accept a plate of tidbits from Fleanders, Geraldine’s crusty old beau, and then resumed her conversation with Michael Weaver, a rising young politician they had all befriended on a recent case in Bombay.  Geraldine’s parties always seemed to bring together bizarre collections of people, for she moved among every stratum of London society with ease, and courted friends with varying political and religious views.   Emma smiled, wondering what would happen if the famously conservative Weaver managed to engage the famously eccentric Madame Renata in genuine conversation.  Or if the blustery Fleanders knew the true history of Michael’s sister Adelaide, who had now joined him on the window seat and was laughing heartily at one of his jokes.  With one wrong word placed here or there, the peace of this Christmas morning might shatter as easily as the icicles dropping from the eaves outside.

“W
hat will happen to Dorinda?” Emma said, turning back to Rayley, for her contemplation of Madame Renata reminded her that the mystic had been unable to muster an image of Dorinda’s fate. All darkness, is that what she had said?

Rayley shrugged, although in truth his feelings on the subject were not as casual as the gesture implied.  “The problem, of course, is that when you attempt to drive someone mad, you often go with them.”

“Shutting someone in a room with paint and a group of portraits is not the same thing as actively trying to kill them,” Emma pointed out.  “It wasn’t as if she attacked LaRusse with a gun or knife.  With good legal representation –“

Rayley nodded.  “She won’t hang, if that is what you are asking.  Her parents are wealthy enough to make sure
she has that proper council and besides, the Edenbridge constable was open to the suggestion that LaRusse Chapman’s death might be called a suicide.  Which I suppose it could be, although there on that stairwell, I must tell you that the lines between murder, accident, and suicide seemed rather blurred to me.  But the local man, Brown by name, is primarily concerned with gathering enough evidence to bar the door to Hever Castle and claim the place is under investigation as a crime scene.  If my read of the fellow is correct, he will make sure that this investigation moves as slowly as possible, concluding only in the spring, or whenever he is certain the colonists have abandoned the property and moved on.”

“So
Dorinda will more likely be confined to an asylum than a jail.”

“More likely.”
 

A pall had fallen upon them both with this last conversational shift, so Rayley looked around the room for a subject to lighten the mood.  There were plenty of possibilities, but he settled on Gage, who was circulating with a tray of champagne.  He was in full livery for once, evidently in acknowledgement of the holiday season.

“You are the total lady of leisure this morning,” Rayley said.  “I take it you no longer help Gage at Geraldine’s parties?”

“It would appear
my leisure is to be extended,” Emma said.  “For Gerry has at last taken the advice of Tess and her other friends and hired a maid.”

At that moment, as if on cue,
Melly MacGraw entered the room with an empty tray, presumably to take away the plates and cups that had been set aside by the partygoers.  The black dress and ruffled apron, which had sagged limply on Emma’s small frame, were entirely too tight for her, the apron straining over her bulging stomach.

“Heavens
,” Rayley said.  “Where did Geraldine find such a girl?  She hardly seems a good candidate for long term engagement.  What will happen when her child is born?”

“There are two theories on that score,” Emma said drily.  “
Melly’s is that the father of the baby, evidently the son of a moneyed household, will arrive in his velvet-trimmed carriage and whisk them both away.   My theory is that she will stay on here, with all of us, and that Geraldine’s household will then have the one thing it needs to make our chaos complete – a newborn child.”

“Is the girl even trained for service?” Rayley said, with an indulgent chuckle, for Emma’s predictions were undoubtedly accurate.  Geraldine’s huge heart would expand just a little more, broad enough to
engulf this girl and her baby. 
They are a lucky pair, indeed,
he mused. 
For they have stumbled their way into a circle of people who, while admittedly unconventional, are all well intended.  The child will be born into a household full of love. 

“Look there
,” he added. “Gage will have his hands full training that one, for I don’t believe she’s ever even handled a tray.  See, she has dropped a cup or something, there is a visible splash of water at her feet…”

“Oh dear,” Emm
a said, pushing to her feet.  “I must tell Gage that our luncheon will be delayed after all. “

****

“So you hired the girl yesterday and she has gone into labor today?” Fleanders roared.  “I say, Geraldine, are we ever to have peace and order in this household?”

“Probably not,” Geraldine said sweetly, patting his wrinkled cheek.  “Now,
Melly is in bed and seems to be faring well, but someone must go for a doctor.”

“Richard,” Marjorie said, and her husband sprang to his feet with the ease of a man accustomed to following feminine orders.  “You remember where the physician on Baker Street lives…”  And the young man had his coat and hat on in a flash,
pulling them from the hands of Gage who bore a saintlike expression of forbearance.

“Oh Gage, yes,” Geraldine said vaguely, as Richard sprinted out on his erra
nd.   “Perhaps we should just serve it all up as sort of picnic on a table?”  She looked around the room.  Tess, and Madame Renata were already upstairs with Melly, who had been shown to Geraldine’s own fine bed.  Marjorie was making her way up the steps to join them.  Michael and Fleanders had begun pacing with an almost comical intensity, while Adelaide and Anne were seated on the rug before the fire, playing with Marjorie’s twins.

“Where is
Trevor?” Geraldine said, turning to Rayley.   “And Emma?”

“They have stepped out into the garden,”
Rayley said, giving her a conspiratorial wink as he took her arm.

“The garden?”
Geraldine said in surprise, glancing out the window at the sleet which had been clicking relentlessly against the windows all morning.  “Whatever for?”

“I believe he may have brought her a holiday gift back from Hever.”

“Wonderful,” she said, attempting to wink herself, although Geraldine had never been particularly skilled at winking and the effort gave her the rollicking look of a drunken sailor.  Just then a shriek from upstairs caused everyone in the room to startle.

“Geraldine,” said
Fleanders, wiping his brow with a shaky hand, “are we to be subject to such noises all morning?”

“Most likely
through the afternoon and evening as well, dear,” she answered.  “It is my understanding that first babies rarely come quickly.”

“Good God,” sp
uttered Fleanders.  “All the day and into the night, you say?  We may as well open the brandy now.”

“An excellent suggestion,” said Geraldine, and she
snatched the heavy glass bottle from the bar before heading back up the stairs.  “And darlings,” she said over her shoulder as she paused on the landing, “the minute that Richard is back with the doctor, send him up straightaway.   Can you believe we are to have a Christmas baby?  Such an arrival means good fortune, I can feel it in my bones.” She bounded up the remaining stairs with impressive vigor for a woman of her age and size, leaving the little group below in contemplation.

“I hate to cause more trouble,”
Anne said timidly, pointing a finger toward the corner of the room.  “But is that tree smoking?”

****

Rayley peeked out the breakfast room window into the small garden and saw Trevor standing alone, under an umbrella. While seizing one of his own from the stand in the corner, he overheard the sounds of Emma and Gage in the kitchen, conferring on how to best turn a formal luncheon into an indoor picnic.   When Emma offered the practical notion of pulling the lamb from the bone for sandwiches, Gage agreed, but by his tone it was clear he found the idea abhorrent. 
Poor man,
thought Rayley,
he had a maid to help him for what…two hours?  And he has labored on a formal meal for days, most likely, only to see all his efforts go to ruin.

Holding the umbrella against the ic
y shards of sleet, Rayley picked his cautious way toward Trevor in the garden.  He found him staring down at the cuttings of the Christmas rose he had brought from the fields of Hever. 

“How did it go?”
Rayley asked, shouting a bit to compensate for the wind.

Trevor, who hadn’t heard his friend approaching, looked up in wry surprise.  “Well, I botched it, of course
I did.  Was there ever any doubt?  Tried to say that the rose reminded me of her because it looks delicate, but is actually able to withstand harsh forces, and I suspect it sounded as if I was comparing her to a soldier.  Why didn’t I work out a proper speech on the train and make you listen as I practiced?  And then of course, I felt compelled to further add that the plant was toxic, which made the comparison go even more wrong, and all the while Emma just stood there, patiently nodding, while I babbled on like an idiot. When Gage opened the door and called for her to help in the kitchen, it was a relief to us both, I should think.”

“I doubt it was as bad as all that.”

“It was worse.  How goes the delivery?”

“
Slowly, most likely.  There was a scream from upstairs and Geraldine took the brandy for the women and then the tree caught on fire and had to be extinguished with a shaken bottle of champagne.  I fear that luncheon shall be no more than sandwiches and punch.”

Trev
or sighed.  “It was the wrong thing to give her.  A snarl of brambles and thorns, wrapped in brown burlap.”