Ghosts of Mayfield Court (12 page)

Old Mr Brahms had presented him with a plethora of names and dates, most of which he had recorded in the fat notebook, bulging with letters and papers, and secured with an elastic band, that he always carried.

Names, yes; but behind the names there lay hidden a vast fortune, which was still in existence. Where was it? Who owned it now? It had passed out of the Forshaw family with the death of Gabriel, supposedly in Africa, and had been settled on a woman called Cecily Bancroft. The widowed Cecily had married a man called John Walsh, who had brought her a little
stepdaughter
, Helen….

As Jackson approached the entrance to Bread Street a
four-wheeler
, drawn by two horses, rounded the kerb with a screech of iron tyres. He jumped back in alarm, but in that moment he had seen an elderly man looking out of the cab window. Surely it was the Reverend Walter Hindle? Jackson began a half-hearted run along Bread Street, but the vehicle was soon lost in the press of traffic making its determined way to Cheapside.

Finding himself near a little public house, Jackson went in, ordered a pint of mild ale, and sat with it at a little marble table near the window. He was grateful to get out of the oppressive dust and heat of the London streets. Had he really seen the Reverend Walter Hindle? Perhaps. But he must not let himself be led astray from the task in hand. What should he do now? He
would go to Somerset House, and start a search for John Walsh, and Cecily Walsh, formerly Cecily Forshaw,
née
Bancroft. After that, he would call upon Inspector Blade at Little Vine Street Police Station, and ask him what progress had been made in the investigation of the murder of Mr Maximilian Paget.

The heavy four-wheeler turned out of Cheapside into St Martin’s Le Grand, passed the entrance to Noble Street, and drove into a quiet court lying behind Pewterers’ Hall. The driver climbed down from the box and opened the door. A strong,
beetle-browed
man emerged on to the pavement. He turned to help a second passenger to alight, an amiable, frail old gentleman in clerical dress.

‘How much will that be, cabbie?’ asked the strong man.

‘One and sevenpence, guvnor.’

‘Here’s a florin. Help me get this gentleman up the steps of number three.’

Together they assisted the old man to mount the four deep steps leading up to the black-painted door of number three, one of a terrace of tall, redbrick houses with railed areas accessible from iron gates let into the railings. The strong man rang the bell, and the cabbie turned his heavy vehicle on the cobbles, and made his way slowly out of the court. A stern woman in the starched uniform of a nurse beckoned the visitors to enter the house.

‘Well, Mr Lucas,’ said Dr Morrison, ‘I’m very pleased that Sir Leopold and Lady Carteret have chosen me to look after this gentleman. How are you, sir? You’re looking quite well! Excellent!’

Doctor Morrison was a man who had fallen into flesh, and was comfortable with his condition. He smiled a lot, and his voice was cheery. The eyes behind the gold pince-nez were shrewd and calculating. He was thinking to himself: this is the Reverend Walter Hindle, a retired Congregational minister and
missionary. He is hovering on the borders of senility, and men of his temper can be dangerous if not controlled. Sir Leopold had always been generous to a fault, and he, Morrison, owed him a debt of gratitude.

The Reverend Walter Hindle acknowledged the doctor’s greeting with an old-fashioned half-bow. He returned smile with smile.

‘I am quite well, thank you, sir. I expect you were introduced to me just now, but I forget very quickly. Did you say that we are in Exeter? Lucas, I don’t quite understand—’

‘Exeter?’ cried the jolly doctor. ‘No, Mr Hindle, this is good old London! I’m sure you’ll be very happy here with us at St Gabriel’s House. It’s a home-from-home for gentlemen like
yourself
, with all your needs consulted, and all your ailments treated with care and sympathy. Nurse, will you show Mr Hindle to his quarters? Perhaps he’d like some tea? A church? Certainly. We’re only a stone’s throw away from St Botolph’s in Aldersgate Street. Or would you prefer a Protestant chapel? We’ll have a little talk about that later.’

When the nurse had left the room into which they had been ushered, Dr Morrison’s smile disappeared as if by magic. He motioned to a chair, and Lucas sat down.

‘I gather that Mr Hindle has become a nuisance?’

‘He has, Doctor. And more than a nuisance: a danger. All the parties in this business have scruples about making away with a clergyman—’

Doctor Morrison waved away with a pudgy hand the idea of ‘making away’ with anyone.

‘Come, now Lucas, let’s not have any talk of that nature. You’re too – too physical, you know. We’re not in the Middle Ages. These days, we need more subtle approaches to this kind of problem. I suppose he knew the Forshaws?’

‘He knows far too much about everything, sir. That’s the trouble. If there are any sleeping dogs around, Mr Hindle will be
sure to waken them up. A bite from the kind of dog I’m thinking of could be fatal.’

‘Well…. He’s safe enough here. Don’t worry about St Botolph’s. He’ll never get further than the little walled garden at the back of the house. We … we have medications, you know, that inhibit memory. So tell Sir Leopold Carteret not to worry.’

Lucas rose to go. He looked vaguely dissatisfied. He had once been a warder at Hanwell Lunatic Asylum, and in his book Walter Hindle was a dangerous lunatic. The trouble with
aristocrats
was that they were too scrupulous. Admittedly, Mr Hindle was Lady Carteret’s brother. But one silly old man wouldn’t be missed.

‘Doctor Morrison,’ he said, as he rose to take his leave, ‘is Dr Zhdanov still doing his sterling work at Chatham Court?’

Doctor Morrison’s brow creased in a frown of annoyance. He rose from the desk where he had been sitting, and faced the beetle-browed man who stood opposite him. Morrison, to do him credit, feared nothing and no one.

‘Don’t ever mention that name in my presence, do you hear? I’ll not stand by and see Hindle marched down that particular road. You’re a good man, Lucas, but you’re becoming too familiar. Get back to Sir Leopold, and tell him his worries are over. Hindle will see his remaining days out here with us. And when he dies, it will be from old age and senility. Nothing more than that. No! No more. Be off with you!’

The 5.35 afternoon train for Warwick drew out of the Great Western Railway’s terminus at Paddington exactly on time. Saul Jackson leaned back in his seat in a half-empty third class carriage and gave himself up to thought.

With the aid of an interested and helpful clerk, he had unearthed the death certificates of Cecily Bancroft and her second husband, John Walsh. He had been described as ‘
independent
gentleman’, and she as ‘housewife’. Their deaths had
occurred at their residence in Mallard Lane, Edgbaston, Cecily’s on the 18 August, 1863, and John Walsh’s on the 19 August. The certificates, duly signed by two physicians, attributed their deaths to acute food poisoning, ‘consequent upon the consumption of tainted lobster.’ More poison…. They had been married for only a year.

Two months after the deaths of her father and stepmother, John Walsh’s young daughter, Helen, had been claimed by her aunt, Arabella Paget, and taken to live for one day at Mayfield Court. And there she had stayed, killed in childhood and concealed in the garden of that baleful, half-ruined grange.

The woman stood in the darkened passage outside the candle-lit room, fearful to step over the threshold that would lead her to insanity. Was she awake or asleep? There were times, during the night, when she could no longer be certain. She had never liked that room, with its dark, oppressive Tudor panelling, and the high, intimidating Elizabethan bed. What vermin nested in those faded plumes atop the bedposts? What cobwebbed passages lay behind the panelled walls?

Asleep or waking, whenever these terrors assailed her, she forgot who she was, knowing only that she was an outcast, an abomination.

She had left the more cheerful part of the house behind her, venturing, candlestick in hand, further away from the present age and back into the dim and dangerous past. Was she awake? The floorboards creaked beneath her steps, and the slight internal breeze that blew constantly through this part of the house caressed her face. Why was she behaving like a silly girl? Press on, and enter the candle-lit room.

There: she had hurried through the bedchamber without
incident
, and had passed through a door at its further end that led into the ancient library of the house, a long, dim room with a fireplace at either end. Neither she nor her husband – what was
his name? – ever ventured there. It walls were lined with shelves, bearing thousands of old books, some bound in vellum, others in costly leather. They looked as though they were not meant to be read, and never
had
been read. The clock in the turret above her struck two.

Fool! She was awake, and putting her health in peril by this nocturnal wandering. She looked across the room at the long window, its panes containing their family’s ancient armorial
bearings
in dim stained glass. Below the window was a long table, where something was hidden by a green baize cloth. She did not recall seeing that table before. She would look at it before retracing her steps to the sanctuary of her own bedroom in the other part of the house.

She flung the green cloth aside, and saw, gleaming white in the moonlight, the perfect skeleton of a young child. Shuddering, she groped her way out of the hellish library and into the sombre bedroom with the high four-poster. The room was not empty. Beside the bed stood the figure of a young girl of ten or eleven, gazing earnestly at the pillow. Yes, it was her burden, the externalization of a guilt that would one day sear her mind and leave her a lunatic.

How still she stood! She was wearing the dark olive-green dress with the lace at collar and cuffs, that she had worn that night…. Her hair fell down across her cheek, partly hiding her face. The woman began to tiptoe towards the door, hoping that the child would not see her. Her limbs trembled so much that she could scarcely walk. She glanced back almost involuntarily, and saw the child turn to look at her.

Little Helen’s face was dark and cyanosed, her eyes protruding from their sockets. So had she looked when the woman had pulled the pillow away from her face to ascertain that she was dead. She was dead now, looking at the woman from her dead eyes, set in her dead face. Helen Paget, her accuser to Heaven.

The woman uttered a shriek of fear, and jerked herself awake.
She was in her bed, in her own familiar room, and the clock at her bedside told her that it was just after six o’clock. The welcome light of dawn shone at the window. A dream, then. Another cursed dream. It was over thirty years, and the dead child would not let her alone.

And she was not the only ghost who came to haunt her, and to point her on the road to damnation. They were all there with her in the house, Cecily, and John, and the weak-willed Hector, and Gabriel, too. She would come across them unexpectedly in different parts of the house, both by night and by day.
All of them
.

She could not petition God for mercy, because He would not hear.

The wicked shall be turned into Hell
.

9

Catherine's Narrative: a Will and a Letter

I
buried my Uncle Maximilian on the 17 August – the Friday following his death. Doctor Whitney, the police surgeon, had told Michael the details of the
post mortem
, which had shown unequivocally that Uncle had died of poisoning by wolfsbane. An inquest was to be held on the twentieth, the earliest date that the coroner could make available, but in view of the hot summer weather, it had been deemed advisable that the body should be released to me before that date.

Inspector Blade had come to see me briefly on the morning following Uncle Max's death, and had told me that the inquest would be opened and then immediately adjourned until the police investigation was completed. I was able to give my whole
attention
to the arrangements for Uncle's funeral.

I had been advised to use Dowbiggin and Holland, the
distinguished
funeral furnishers, and they proved to be an excellent choice. They attended to every detail, and I must admit that I sighed with relief when the whole melancholy business was taken out of my hands.

Do I sound hard and unfeeling? I deeply mourned my poor dear uncle and, as you will see later in my narrative, I had no intention of leaving his foul murder unavenged; but at twenty I was still little more than a girl, and my loss had somehow opened
a door that had been hitherto closed – a door into an independent future, with Michael at my side.

I had asked for a grave to be dug in Putney Vale Cemetery, and there I stood, with Michael and Marguerite, all three of us in full mourning, listening to the officiating minister consigning Uncle Maximilian to the earth. He spoke well, and they were beautiful words, but they gave no hint of the horror of poor Uncle's passing:

I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, Write, From henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord: Even so, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labours
.

There was much that I had to do before some kind of normality could be established. I had no intention of leaving Saxony Square, and said as much to Milsom, much to her relief. She agreed with me that it would be prudent to retain our present cook, and that a second housemaid should be employed. The gardener, whom we shared with our next-door neighbour, the relict of a City underwriter, had always proved satisfactory, so no change was needed there.

On Saturday, Marguerite arrived with a young man of
unprepossessing
appearance, declaring that he was one of the most powerful mediums that she had ever encountered. I knew that she was going to suggest a séance, but somehow the idea no longer appealed to me. Uncle Max, according to the officiating
clergyman
, was resting from his labours. I gave them both tea, and sent them away.

On Sunday, I went to church as usual, forsaking the sober rituals of St John's for the heady ceremonies of St Mary's Bourne Street. I knew then that I was in danger of losing contact with my own personality. I was starting to drift into unknown and untried paths, relishing the novelty of my new independence at the expense of that latent self-knowledge that told me I was not a hard, unfeeling young woman at all, but someone desperately in need of reassurance.

When Michael called in the evening, solicitous, kind, and
unassuming
, I found the new façade that I had erected around myself was crumbling, and for the first time since Uncle's death, I dissolved into tears.

I was myself again – the Catherine Paget of old – when, on Monday morning, the 20 August, I called upon my uncle's
solicitor
. Mr Finbar was a man in his fifties, the son of the gentleman who had managed my uncle's affairs for him since the 1860s. He occupied a small set of chambers in a sort of cul-de-sac of an alley halfway between Crutched Friars and Cooper's Row.

Uncle's will, as I knew from the copy that he had left for me in his desk, and revised and dated 10 January 1893, was a very simple affair. After a bequest to Milsom of
£
200, everything came to me absolutely. This included the house in Saxony Square, a portfolio of shares in a number of railway companies, currently worth
£
6,500, and cash deposits in two London banks amounting to
£
12,000.

‘You see, Miss Paget,' said Mr Finbar, leaning back in his chair and regarding me with a kind of detached interest, ‘your uncle, the late Mr Maximilian Paget, always fretted that he had not enough money to live as he would have wished. He was constantly planning and devising ways to unlock some hidden fortune or other that lay tantalizingly out of sight on the fringes of his acquaintance.'

‘And what, pray, do you mean by that?' I asked. ‘“The fringes of his acquaintance”?'

‘He was very tenuously connected with a number of families who had once been very wealthy, and it would seem that nobody knew where this wealth had gone. My father knew far more about all this than I, but one of these families were the Forshaws, the naval shipbuilders at Sheerness. Your uncle spent many fruitless years delving into family trees and other similar matters in order to find where the money was, and to lay some claim to part of it – why, I don't know, because he never
confided in me. He told me what to do regarding his day-to-day affairs, and I did it.'

Mr Finbar had clearly taken offence at my manner of speaking to him. That word ‘pray' had rankled. I tried to look sufficiently contrite, and he gradually relaxed.

‘When all's said and done, Miss Paget,' he said, ‘your legacy is a very tidy one. Very tidy. Your house alone is worth three
thousand
, you know, and those shares and deposits amount to eighteen and a half thousand pounds. And that property in Warwickshire should fetch four hundred or so. Wisely invested, the whole sum will bring you in a very respectable annual income.'

I was more than inclined to agree with him. Uncle's constant talk of making economies had vaguely alarmed me, but now I saw that there had been no valid reason for his fears. Had he become a miser? No, because in anything respecting my
well-being
and happiness, he had always been generous. It was merely that he had become obsessed with the game of fortune-hunting.

Mr Finbar rose from the table, and unlocked a drawer in a desk standing against the wall behind him. He came back to the table holding a letter, which he handed to me. My heart leapt with excitement when I saw that it was addressed to me in my uncle's handwriting, and sealed heavily with three red wax wafers. This was the letter that Uncle Max had told me would be given to me after his death.

‘I will tell you at once, Miss Paget,' said Mr Finbar, ‘that I have no idea what that envelope contains. I have had it for only a short time, and I was given strict instructions not to give it to you until after your uncle's death. That moment has now arrived. I'm going through to confer with my clerks, and will leave you here in peace to read your uncle's letter.'

He suited his action to his words, and left the room, closing the door behind him. I broke the seals, opened the envelope, and spread the enclosed letter out on the table. It was written on our family's headed notepaper, but was undated.