Kept (38 page)

Captain McTurk was a thorough man—besides, the obituary columns of the
Gentleman’s Magazine
are not notably extensive—and within a quarter of an hour he had the information he wanted before him. This, it may immediately be remarked, was the memorial to Mr. Henry Ireland. Mr. Ireland had not been personally known to Captain McTurk. Consequently, he began merely by studying the catalogue of that gentleman’s accomplishments. This done, he took up a pencil and a piece of paper from the desk drawer and noted down such points as he found to be of interest. These, it seemed to him, were very singular. For one thing, the late Mr. Ireland was represented as an excellent horseman, a rider to hounds, an amateur jockey even, who had performed to advantage in the Newcastle Plate ten years before, and yet somehow he had allowed his horse to run away with him. For another,
the horse, having run away and deposited him on the base of his skull at the roadside, had for some reason ceased to run and returned to crop the grass peacefully ten yards away. Mr. Ireland’s fatal accident, according to his obituarist, had occurred not so very far from his Theberton estate. In a glass-fronted bookcase to the back of Captain McTurk’s chamber there were a number of maps of the English counties. Taking the map devoted to Suffolk, Captain McTurk traced the road connecting Woodbridge to Wenhaston with the end of his pencil and found that it ran exceedingly close to Theberton. After this, Captain McTurk took the life preserver out from its wrapper again, held it in his right hand and administered with it a little blow to the palm of his left. The pain that this caused was sufficient to make him drop the life preserver onto the desk and wring his left hand between his knees, and it was in this condition that Mr. Masterson found him on entering the room a moment or so later.

“Gracious! Is something the matter?”

“Only that I have near shattered my palm with this d——d bludgeon! Thank you, there’s no need”—this in repudiation of the hand that Masterson extended towards him—“but look here! The thing is found on a roadside on the way to Woodbridge. And not a mile away by my reckoning a man is discovered with his head cracked to pieces and a horse that is supposed to have run away with him still at his side.”

Masterson nodded his head over the facts of the case as they were revealed to him. “I should say that that was a very singular horse, if indeed it did run away with him. By the by, you remark the man’s name?”

“No. What about it?”

“Is he not the husband of the Mrs. Ireland that was lost? The young lady whose trustees were said to have been at fault?”

“And replied that they should be permitted to perform their duties without interference? I believe I do recall.”

Masterson looked as if he might be about to volunteer further information on this topic, only for his eye to fall on the topmost envelope.

“You will not mind my mentioning it, I am sure, but I believe that is from Sir Edwin.” Sir Edwin, it may be said, was the Home Secretary.

“Is it? Well, Sir Edwin will have to wait his turn like everyone else.”

However, Captain McTurk consented eventually to open the Home Office envelope, and even to take certain steps with regard to its contents. Nonetheless, he was sufficiently interested in the bound volume of the
Gentleman’s Magazine
to send Mr. Masterson down to Suffolk and also to ponder in his head what he had heard of Mrs. Ireland and her history.

Mr. Masterson was a diligent man. Despatched to Suffolk, he determined to acquit himself in a manner of which he fancied Captain McTurk might approve. Accordingly, he engaged a room at the Crown in Woodbridge, hired a horse from the stables adjacent to that inn and set out thoroughly to investigate the route that Henry Ireland had taken on the day of his fatal mishap. He discovered, by application to the doctor who had attended Mr. Ireland in his death throes, that the road on which he had met with his accident was perhaps two miles from the gate of his property at Theberton and perhaps a further two miles from the road that connected Woodbridge and Wenhaston. This former thoroughfare Mr. Masterson rode up and down on several occasions with the medical man’s directions on a sheet of paper before him as he went until he was tolerably certain that he had located the exact spot at which Mr. Ireland had come to grief. It was, to be sure, a lonely part of the county—a narrow track running alongside the bed of an old, dried-up river, with a band of dense woodland spreading away in the middle distance behind—and even here, on a spring afternoon with the larks ascending into the pale sky above him, Mr. Masterson said to himself that he did not much like it.

Nevertheless, he was bidden to undertake a survey and undertake that survey he did, fastening his horse’s bridle to a tree and tramping back and forth along the path with his notebook in his hand and casting his eyes first to one side and then to the other. Several things immediately attracted his notice. The first was that the road was not tarmacadamed, being no more than a farm track, and that had Mr.
Ireland tumbled from his horse in the normal manner, it would have been very nearly impossible for him to have sustained the injuries over which the doctor and the coroner’s jury had shaken their heads. Had Mr. Ireland then come down upon a rock sufficient to smash open his skull at its base? Mr. Masterson examined the grass of the verge, which he found remarkably soft and springy and altogether devoid of rocks. How, then, had Henry Ireland come by his blow? Mr. Masterson assured himself that it could only have been administered by the horse during the course of that animal’s running away, and yet the horse had been found calmly cropping the grass a few yards from his dead master’s side. The more Mr. Masterson considered the matter, the more he could find no plausible explanation. Naturally, it occurred to him that if a gentleman who is riding his horse along a country path is subsequently found at the roadside with his head stove in, then some other agency may be to blame, but he was aware that before he reached this conclusion there were other avenues that it behoved him to pursue.

His next action, consequently, was to return to Woodbridge and interview the police captain who had caused the life preserver to be sent to London for the attention of Captain McTurk. This gentleman, though, could only confirm what he had stated in his letter: that the bludgeon had been found at such and such a spot on the road from Woodbridge to Wenhaston, apparently concealed behind a clump of foliage, that nothing like it had been seen in the county before and that no incident existed in his recollection with which it could be connected. Mr. Masterson thanked the police captain and rode back to Theberton, thinking to himself that he would do best by finding some witness who had observed Mr. Ireland at an earlier point on his last ride and could attest to the manner of his progress, the attitude of his horse and so forth. With this object in mind, he spent a day in Theberton village—the estate was altogether shut up, he noted, with an iron bar raised across the gateposts and the trees flaring up above the fences—drank a pint of beer at the local inn and, making no secret of who he was and what he wanted, asked questions of such persons as placed themselves in his way.

He did not find out a great deal, but he discovered something: a
labouring man, employed in draining ditches and pollarding willows for the local farmers, professed to have been walking along the track to his work on the afternoon in question and had seen “th’ squire” half a mile or so from his gates. Interested, but taking care not to show it, Mr. Masterson conducted his interrogation with such suavity that it did not seem like an interrogation at all. Had he spoken to the squire? “’Deed he had, for that he had touched his cap and squire had remarked as it were a fine day.” Mr. Ireland had been riding his horse on the path, had he? “No, he had not. He had been a-leading of the animal on his bridle, like as if it were lame.” And had the man seen anyone other than himself and the squire on the road that afternoon? “None but a tinker or a pedlar or some such person with a pack mule.” Had he thought of imparting this information to the coroner? “Sure, he knew nothing of coroners and suchlike, and if they wanted aught from him, they should come and seek it out.” Mr. Masterson asked various other questions, but this was the sum total of information that he extracted, whereupon he thanked the man, retrieved his horse and returned to the Crown in Woodbridge, thinking that whatever else had happened to Mr. Henry Ireland on the afternoon of his death, he had not fallen into the road, had not struck his head on a rock, had not been kicked by his horse, but had very probably been murdered.

DIARY OF THE REV. JOSIAH CRAWLEY, CURATE OF EASTON

16 January 1866

Dixey called at my lodgings, somewhat discomposed—his hair much dishevelled by the wind—and wishing to speak. On my inviting him in, he declined, saying that he preferred to walk. Accordingly, we strolled a little way along the back lanes. Dixey
apologetic.
Wished, he said, to allow me some explanation for the events of yesterday. Having remarked this, somewhat silent as if he did not know how to begin. A dank, chill day, the roads quite deserted. The young woman apparently a distant relation, his ward, altogether disturbed in her mind (“Quite deranged”—Dixey), who lives in the house. She is biddable enough, he maintains, but prey to fits of violent agitation, these necessitating her confinement. Naturally, I was much interested in this lady, Mrs. Ireland (Dixey somewhat reluctant to reveal her name), yet seeing his discomfiture restrained my curiosity. Mindful of my duty, I enquired, was there anything I could do for Mrs. Ireland from the spiritual point of view? At this Dixey laughed. “She thinks the world a well, and God the bucket. If indeed she thinks anything at all.” Spoke of Mrs. Ireland’s “nasty tricks,” her guile with the servants, &c. Dixey remarked that he proposed a visit to London, where business summons him, meetings with lawyers and so forth, but would return in the spring, when he hoped to see something of me. I was sorry to see him go.

 

24 January 1866

My poem “Alaric” returned by the publishers. I placed the manuscript hurriedly in a drawer, not wishing to reread it.

 

28 January 1866

To Ely. Much conversation with A. I find her much better schooled than I surmised. Decided opinions about the late American war, the Royal household, &c., much better than the usual feminine twaddle one hears on such occasions. Came back in the twilight: the afternoons much less drear,
me judice.

 

31 January 1866

Letter from Cousin Richard. It is as I feared. He can do nothing for me.

 

2 February 1866

Curious encounter with Dixey, whom I had supposed in London. Wandering in the lanes this forenoon, meditating my sermon for Candlemas Day, I realised that, all unknowing, I had approached the back parts of the Hall. The estate very run down here: great clumps of elms, long untended, boundary walls greatly dilapidated. To the best of my recollection, a track running to the right of Dixey’s back garden connects with the front parts of the house. Having come a mile or so out of my way, this I resolved to take. I had walked for ten minutes, seeing no one (altho’ the cries from Dixey’s kennels, hard by, very loud upon the wind), when, of a sudden, Dixey hove into sight, one of his great dogs straining at the leash before him. I moved to greet him, yet he brushed my salutations aside, declaring, why was I at large on his property, did I not know that trespass was forbidden, &c.? Hearing my explanation—that I had stepped out of my way by mischance and
meant no harm—he recovered himself somewhat, apologised for his brusqueness, declared himself much troubled by poachers in the wood. The dog meanwhile straining at the leash as if I was a quarry he meant to run down and devour. Seeing his ill-humour, I resolved to bid him good day and departed somewhat hurriedly the way I had come, conscious throughout of his eye fixed on my retreating figure.

 

3 February 1866

I do not know why I expected a word from Dixey, but none came. Sent a copy of
Mrs. Caudle,
Mr. Jerrold’s amusing sketches from
Punch,
to A., she having expressed interest.

 

“Papa has been asking about you.”

“Has he, indeed? I am sure that is uncommonly kind of him. What has he been asking?”

“He says it is his duty to make enquiries.”

“Perhaps I had better ask my landlady to write a “character.” That is how one employs a parlourmaid, is it not?”

Miss Amelia Marjoribanks laughed, but not perhaps as heartily as she might have done. Mr. Crawley applied himself to his tea. It was an afternoon in February, with snow still on the ground, and they were seated in the Deanery drawing room, an apartment chastely if not abundantly furnished. A modest pianoforte, a trelliswork fire screen, an aspidistra in a pot, a brace of occasional tables arranged in such a way that any visitor directed to a chair was compelled to navigate around them—these were the artefacts with which Miss Marjoribanks surrounded herself on the occasions when she was “at home.” On the mantelpiece nearby lay some volumes of Sir William Smith’s
Dictionary
, which Miss Marjoribanks had not read, and a watercolour representation of Siena, which Miss Marjoribanks had not visited, together with Mrs. Brookfield’s new novel, which she had happened to peruse, and a faded etching of the town of Whitby, with which she
was tolerably familiar, as it had been the site of her father’s former incumbency. These, together with various invitations to sales of work and clerical recreations, a family picture or two and a portrait of the late Mrs. Marjoribanks got up in an elaborate bonnet in the style of Queen Adelaide, completed the room’s decoration.

“It is very curious that Mrs. Harrison and the girls are not here,” Miss Marjoribanks remarked innocently. “Why, it is nearly half past three.”

There was a polite fiction between them that this was one of Miss Marjoribanks’s regular afternoon entertainments.

“Yes indeed. I should be very sorry to miss Mrs. Harrison and the girls.”

Mr. Crawley smiled as he said this, and threw out a glance that landed halfway between his hostess and the volumes of Sir William Smith’s
Dictionary
, but I do not think that he was altogether happy in the position in which he found himself. He was a clever man, and he was conscious that his present situation, here in the Dean of Ely’s drawing room with the Dean of Ely’s daughter softly regarding him from the other side of the Dean of Ely’s fire, placed him at a disadvantage. By his estimate he had been paying his attentions—Mr. Crawley shrank from so vulgar a word as
courting
—to Miss Marjoribanks for nearly six weeks. In this capacity he had walked with her in her father’s rose garden, listened to her sing several of Herr Schubert’s most affecting compositions and handed her into her carriage at the conclusion of an episcopal entertainment. All this was as it should be, and Mr. Crawley had no quarrel with the rose garden, Herr Schubert, the carriage or indeed with Miss Marjoribanks. As well as being a clever man, he was an observant one, and in the six weeks of their acquaintance he fancied that he had come to know her pretty well, that she was, in addition to being beautiful and spirited, proud, fond of having her own way and somewhat lacking in mental energy, but that something could be made of her. Quite how many men approach young ladies with this fanciful assumption, Mr. Crawley did not choose to reflect. His misgivings stemmed solely from the fact that he knew that something was expected of him, that he had wandered, as it were, into a world where his obligations extended not only to the
Dean and his daughter but to whole legions of persons with whom he was only dimly acquainted.

The journey across the fens to Ely that morning had oppressed him yet further in this regard. It seemed to him that the ostler who stabled his horse in the inn knew the object of his mission and smiled over it, that the clerical colleagues who saluted him in the streets were winking at him from beneath their shovel hats and that the domestic who opened the Deanery door to him would be hastening down to the servants’ quarters to discuss his affairs the moment he had removed his coat and hat. At the same time, there was more to Mr. Crawley’s disquiet than this. The Dean of Ely, he had several times heard said, doted on his daughter. Mr. Crawley had observed the extent of this doting. He was aware that he would not be able to emerge from the Deanery with Miss Marjoribanks on his arm without a struggle. He was aware, too, shrewd observer that he was, that Miss Marjoribanks had somewhat ambiguous views about the doting, that sometimes she relished it, while at other times she seemed disposed to strike out on a line of her own. This made him feel that his position with regard to the Marjoribanks household was by no means as clear-cut as it first appeared, that there were other, private motivations at work over which he had no control. And so all in all, however bright the coals of the Dean’s fire and the lustre of the Dean’s daughter’s hair as she handed him his tea, I do not think he was happy.

“How is your father?” Mr. Crawley proposed. There was a second polite fiction between them, which was that Mr. Crawley’s visits were prompted by his veneration of the Dean.

“Papa is with Mr. Prendergast” (Mr. Prendergast was the diocesan lawyer) “and will be all afternoon. I never knew such a one as Mr. Prendergast for taking up gentlemen’s time. Perhaps, Mr. Crawley, you would not mind poking the fire.”

Mr. Crawley did as he was bidden, conscious as he did so that he was failing to shine and that Miss Marjoribanks’s rejoinders to his questions were not all that they might be. Rattling the coals with the poker end, he determined to say something that might raise their conversation to a level beyond that of mere pleasantry.

“One of the advantages of living in lodgings, I find—and there are
not many—is that one learns how to perform domestic tasks of this kind. I declare that when it comes to lighting fires, making toast or brewing tea, I could give lessons to the doughtiest housemaid.”

This, Mr. Crawley thought, was rather neat, reminding Miss Marjoribanks of his bachelor state, hinting at its sorrows, canvassing his own dexterity. But the Dean’s daughter knew all about young clergymen who lived in lodgings.

“Papa says that young men these days are all spoiled, and that it would do them good to darn their own shirts.”

Mr. Crawley thought that he would have liked to tell the Dean that he could darn his own shirts and be d——d. However, he contented himself with giving a final, miserable poke to the fire.

Miss Marjoribanks, it may be said, was similarly confused by the position in which she found herself. Dean’s daughter that she was, she was aware that she held Mr. Crawley in great esteem, knew that he was the grandson of an earl, had even gone, unknown to him, to the chapter-house library to read an extremely learned article that he had contributed to the
Church Quarterly Review
. And yet she had an idea that in the triangle now composed of herself, Mr. Crawley and the Dean, any young man perhaps would have done, and that Mr. Crawley’s punctiliousness, his grandfather the earl and his article in the
Church Quarterly Review
were as nothing compared with certain adjustments that Miss Marjoribanks proposed to make in her relations with her father. All this was a source of some discomfort to Miss Marjoribanks, and not a little shame, and its consequence was that she did not quite know how to proceed. Thus far, Mr. Crawley had been allowed certain of the privileges generally associated with an acknowledged lover, which is to say that he had walked with her in the paternal rose garden, handed her into her carriage and so forth. As to what further privileges might be allowed him, and whether he should be allowed the greatest privilege of all, Miss Marjoribanks was not altogether sure.

Mr. Crawley, meanwhile, was biding his time. He had an inkling of some of this. The idea that much was expected of him by persons for whom he cared not in the slightest still rankled with him. And yet he knew that he preferred an animated Miss Marjoribanks, who tossed
her head and remarked on the plainness of the archdeacon’s wife, than one who relayed her father’s opinion that young men were spoiled.

“You must find it very dull here in Ely,” he suggested, “after the delights of London.”

And here Miss Marjoribanks brightened—up to a point. The delights of London were a subject on which she felt she could talk, yet in truth her stay in Wimpole Street had been rather dull. Deans’ daughters, it may be remarked, are not generally thrown wholesale out into the London charivari, certainly not Deans’ daughters as strictly raised as those of Mr. Marjoribanks. And so Amelia, who had longed for a ball and a carriage ride in the park, had been forced to put up with a tea party convened in honour of the latest fashionable preacher and a charity bazaar in aid of the West African mission. Miss Marjoribanks had listened to the latest fashionable preacher and presided over her stack of embroidered cushions with good grace, but her heart was not in it. And though she prattled gamely enough to Mr. Crawley about the Reverend Wotherspoon’s sermon and Lord John (whom in fact Miss Marjoribanks had had pointed out to her from a carriage window in Brook Street), it was clear also to him that she had not very much enjoyed herself.

After Miss Marjoribanks had finished this disquisition there was a silence. Outside, snow had begun to fall again, slanting in across the line of the cathedral spire and giving a very melancholy aspect to the Deanery gardens. Mr. Crawley thought of his hired horse and the long journey back to Easton and the dismal supper that would await him when he returned. Then, unexpectedly, Miss Marjoribanks spoke.

“Papa has solved the mystery of the woman at Easton Hall. The one who broke in upon your luncheon.”

“Has he, indeed! What has he to say about it?”

“She is Mr. Dixey’s ward, and quite”—Miss Marjoribanks shied away from the word
mad
—“not in her right mind. But Papa says there is some scandal, and that Mr. Dixey is a regular Bluebeard who keeps her locked up in a dungeon.”