The Dark Clue (24 page)

She started to laugh, but then stopped abruptly as Walter entered the room. All through my conversation with Miss Fletcher, one part of my mind had been silently composing a thinly veiled rebuke to him, with which I hoped, on his return, to jar him back to some semblance of politeness; but I at once saw that it would not now be necessary. His languor and aloofness seemed to have evaporated like mist before the sun, and he was once again – as he'd been on his return from Petworth, and during our visit to the Bennetts – all enthusiasm and attention. I couldn't imagine the cause of this transformation, but I quickly realized it was not simply a bad conscience: there was an unmistakable sense of direction in his manner as he sat next to Miss Fletcher on the sofa, and complimented her on her garden, and amused her with a silly anecdote about a black kitten which had leapt on him from behind a currant bush, and half-killed his boot. After a minute she started visibly to relax, and shot me a glance so brimming with gratitude –
See! He likes me, after all!
– that I shuddered with pity.

‘What I was wondering', said Walter – after a tiny pause that told me that this was his true purpose – ‘was where are the kitchen and the other offices?'

‘Ah, yes!' said Miss Fletcher eagerly. ‘A good question, Mr. Hartright. Let me show you.'

She rose, and led us back into the miniature hall.

‘There,' she said, pointing to a plain, inconspicuous door beneath the stairs. ‘Turner's triumph. You'd never guess it was there, would you, if you didn't know?'

‘No,' said Walter.

And I must own that I hadn't noticed it before, either, and that if I had I should have assumed it was nothing more than a modest cupboard.

‘Why his
triumph
?' I asked.

‘Why, he designed the house,' she said, with the complacent air of a woman giving a well-tried performance, and seeing from my startled expression that it was having its usual gratifying effect. ‘Oh, yes, he quite fancied himself the architect. So this' – reaching for the handle, and turning it – ‘must have been in his mind.'

I confess I couldn't (and still can't) imagine what ‘this' might have been – unless it was that Turner, the master of
chiaroscuro,
having contrived to make the upper floors wonderfully light, decided, by way of contrast, to leave the basement as dark as possible; for beyond the hidden door you could see nothing but the top of a mean spiral staircase, which disappeared after two or three steps into the gloomy grey haze of a dungeon. Any urge I might have had to explore further (and I felt little enough, faced by this uninviting prospect) was immediately quelled by a sickly waft of cold air, laced with the smells of stale cooking, which rose from the darkness like the breath of a dying animal; so I contented myself with turning back to Miss Fletcher and saying:

‘Yes, very ingenious.'

But Walter was not to be so easily deterred; pressing past me and Miss Fletcher (who seemed on the point of closing the door again), he descended the first few steps. After a few seconds he stopped, and cried, ‘This is remarkable!' and then continued on his way.

‘You are wise to stay here, Miss Halcombe,' said Miss Fletcher, backing away from the doorway. ‘It's rather cold down there, I'm afraid, and you might easily catch a chill.'

I have wondered, since, whether there was anything in her manner – some hint of foreboding or secret knowledge – that might have alerted me to what was about to happen; but all I can recall is a frail, hunched woman, her hands crossed and rubbing her arms, and a smile of humorous apology on her thin lips.

It cannot have been more than two minutes before we once again heard Walter's footsteps on the stairs. I shall never, I think, forget his appearance as he re-emerged a few moments later: the
vigour of his movements, the vitality of his form (which seemed suddenly to have expanded, so that it risked bursting out of his sober town clothes); above all, his face, which bore an expression I have never seen before, and don't know whether I should wish to see again – an expression compounded all at once of excitement, of satisfaction, and (as it seemed to me) of a kind of wild, desolate terror.

Perhaps this is the true root of my uneasiness: in that instant, I recognized Walter's features well enough – but not the mood, the beliefs, the thoughts they expressed. Only last week, I thought he had truly become himself again, for the first time in years (and congratulated myself, poor vain wretch that I am, on having engineered this transformation, by introducing him to Elizabeth Eastlake); now I wonder whether what then
seemed
his true self was no more than a temporary phase – not a terminus, as it were, but merely a small station, through which he has already passed on his way to somewhere else. And that somewhere else is a place I do not know, and will make him a stranger to me. Or -

Later

Heavens! Why did I stop again? A strange storm in my head – my thoughts all lashed together, so I could not unravel them.

It is now past two in the morning, and still Walter has not returned.

He told me he was going to Mayall's photographic studio in Regent Street. He cannot still be there now. Where is he?

Perhaps my anxiety has deprived me of the power to think and write about him.

This will not do.

Concentrate.

One question, naturally, preoccupied me as we got into our cab, and left Sandycombe Lodge.

What had Walter seen in the basement?

Yet I felt I could not ask him directly, for fear that in doing so I might drive him further from me. The truth was, I suddenly realized, I could no longer predict how he would behave. If I revealed that I had seen how deeply he had been affected, he
might, indeed, confide in me; but I could as soon imagine his airily denying it
(You are too fanciful, Marian; I never thought I should find you guilty of that);
or else becoming embarrassed and confused.

For a few minutes I said nothing at all, hoping that he might be moved to fill the silence himself, and so spare me the necessity of declaring my curiosity; but he only sat quietly staring out of the window. At length, unable to bear it any longer, I said:

‘A pretty little house, I thought. Or at least the parts of it I saw.'

An irresistible invitation, you would suppose, to describe the parts I
hadn't
seen; but he merely nodded absently. I must either hold my tongue, or be more direct.

‘What was the basement like?' I asked.

You would think he had been struck deaf.

‘What
is
it, Walter?' I said. ‘Why won't you tell me?'

But again he said nothing; and after a minute or two opened his notebook, and began studying the drawings he had made.

It was intolerable – I
must
discover what he had seen – and yet I was at a loss to know how to prise it from him. It was clear, however, that the more desperately I pursued him now, the more stubborn he would become; so I resolved to ponder the matter in silence.

What might one find in a basement, to excite such a response?

Something that Turner had left there – an undiscovered picture, or pictures. But in that case, surely, Miss Fletcher would have shown them to us, or at least mentioned their existence?

Evidence of a crime – a bloodstain (heaven help us!). Hard to believe – but it was undeniably odd, was it not, that Miss Fletcher seemed to be the only person in the house? Suppose she'd fallen out with the housekeeper, and taken an axe to her in the scullery? Or perhaps she'd had a lover, and he had spurned her?

No, no – inconceivable – if there had been anything of the kind there, she would not have allowed Walter to find it, and he could not have remained silent about it.

Why was my mind running on such terrible things? Was it just that the place made me think so powerfully of a dungeon?

A dungeon. A dungeon. A lightless room. A barred door. Dripping walls, covered in moss. A set of rusting manacles -

The cry of a hawker in the street brought me out of my reverie, and I looked out of the window and saw that we were entering Putney. The road was crowded with carriages and carts; the pavements thronged with dull, decent people thinking of nothing save whether it would rain, or where the cabbages might be best and cheapest. If they could see
my
thoughts, they would indubitably suppose I was mad.

I was somewhat chastened by this reflection (for if I have had nothing else to boast of, have I not always prided myself on my good sense?); but then it struck me that I could turn my newfound weakness to my advantage, by making light of it.

So was there a prisoner in chains there, Walter? Did you find Old Dad, still locked up after fifty years, and raving piteously about varnish?

I turned cautiously towards him, rehearsing the words in my head. He was still engrossed in his notebook, adding a line here, or a scribbled word there, whenever the motion of the cab allowed. Something in his posture, the obstinate set of his neck and shoulder, told me, beyond doubt, that he would not be amused, and I should fail again.

I was suddenly overcome with tiredness – sleep seemed to ambush me, whether I would or not, pressing me to my seat, and turning my eyelids to lead. No dreams of horrors – no dreams of anything, so far as I can recall; and I was woken again after only a few minutes – for we had gone but a mile or so, and were still a little way from home – by a sharp slapping sound. The cause, I soon discovered, was Walter's notebook, which had slipped from his lap on to the floor. I was surprised, for an instant, that he did not bend forward to retrieve it; then I saw that he, too, had fallen asleep, and I picked it up myself.

We are brought up to believe that letters and diaries are sacrosanct, and that it is the blackest dishonour to violate their secrets – but what of a notebook? Surely (I told myself) that is something else entirely – a mere collection of facts, as neutral as a column of figures, which cannot be held to belong to any person in particular. It was only as I lifted the first page that I suddenly imagined what
I
should feel if the situation were reversed, and I found Walter making free with
my
notebook without my permission.

I stopped myself, but not before I had glimpsed one of his sketches. It was not the gloomy interior I had expected, but an outside view of the garden front. There were the two little single-storey wings, with their stucco walls and trim slate roofs; there in the centre Turner's studio, where Miss Fletcher and I must have been talking even while Walter had drawn this (indeed, I could just make out two ghostly little crescents in the window, which might have been our heads).

But below it was another window, which I had not seen before: a lunette, protected by an iron grille, half hidden by a tangle of bushes. Beyond it must lie the basement.

It reminded me of something – something unexpected, though for a moment I could not say what it was. The curved top; the glass (at least in Walter's drawing) so shadowed that it looked like an empty socket – why did they seem familiar?

And then, with the force of a physical shock, it struck me: the half-buried arches in
The Bay of Baiae.

Later still

He is back. I cannot imagine where he has been – I do not wish to imagine – but he is back. Thank God.

The sound of the door woke me. I had somehow persuaded myself that I had finished, and fallen asleep at my desk.

I have just re-read what I wrote. I had
not
finished. I had not described our homecoming.

As we descended at last from the cab, I missed my footing. Walter caught me, but not before I had twisted my ankle. The pain must have shown on my face, because, as I hobbled towards the door on Walter's arm, the driver said:

‘Your missus all right, sir?'

So kindly meant. And yet those words laid bare my heart so mercilessly that even my poor self-deluded eyes could not fail to see it.

Oh God, I am so miserable.

XXIV

From the journal of Walter Hartright, 6th October, 185-

Am I mistaken? Could I be mistaken?

There is something about a photographic studio that makes you doubt the evidence of your own senses. There is the painted backdrop, telling you that you're in the library of a country house or a garden strewn with statues; there are the clamps, half hidden by a curtain, that fix the subject in a pose of apparent naturalness for long minutes together.

But surely it is childish superstition to distrust a man simply because he lives by creating illusions?

Considered rationally, is there any reason why Mayall might have lied?

I cannot think of one. He appears a plain, unaffected, businesslike sort of man. Being American, he has no connections here. If he is now the most successful photographer in London (that was, I am sure, Sir William Butteridge I saw emerging from his studio), he has become so entirely through his own efforts, and the excellence of his work. It is true that he suddenly seemed more obliging when I mentioned Lady Eastlake's name, but that, I am sure, is because she has taken such an intelligent interest in his profession.

So what exactly did he say?

‘Turner came to my
atelier
several times in ‘forty-seven, ‘forty-eight and ‘forty-nine. There was something rather mysterious about our early meetings. In one of them he led me to believe he was a Chancery Court Judge, and he did nothing to dispel this impression, later on.'

Led me to believe.
Odd, but not inconceivable that it was simply a misunderstanding of some kind. Turner was, after all, an old man (he must have been what? – seventy-two? – when they met?) – perhaps his weak eyesight prevented him seeing the puzzlement on May all's face, or he mis-heard a question.

And yet…

‘He came to see me again and again – so often, indeed, that my people used to think of him as “our Mr. Turner”. And every time he had some new notion about light. One day, I remember, he sat with me three hours, talking about its curious effects on films of
prepared silver. The whole subject seemed to fascinate him. He asked whether I'd ever repeated Mrs. Somerville's experiment of magnetizing a needle in the rays of the spectrum, and said he would like to see the spectral image copied.'