The Doublet Affair (Ursula Blanchard Mysteries) (20 page)

Closing the cupboard doors quietly, I went to the desk. It was as tidy as before. The books Leonard was currently studying were mostly either about music or natural history, with a bias towards birds. The boxes, four of them, were still there, and so were the wooden trays. It didn’t seem as if my lock-picks would be needed after all, for of the many things in the study, only the boxes had locks, and their keys were all obligingly in place.

Trying to be methodical, I picked up the nearest tray. It held a number of papers. The top sheet was headed “Remarks on the Limitations of the Spinet” and consisted of an essay comparing spinets and virginals with stringed instruments such as the violin—“the which, newly introduced in living memory, is remarkable in that a note, once created, can be raised to a crescendo or be changed between loud and soft, whereas those instruments played by keyboard lack this and therefore lack expression.”

According to Ann and Barnabas, Mason had tried to design a new kind of spinet. The essay went on to discuss ways by which the drawbacks of keyboard instruments
might be amended in very technical language with many abbreviations but there was nothing suspicious.

Leafing through the papers below, I found another essay, this one on the principles behind chiming clocks, and some diagrams of various keyboard instruments, some quite detailed, some very vague, as though Mason had been playing with ideas.

One showed what seemed to be a keyboard, but the rest of the mechanism was missing except for some arrows. It could represent a spinet, I supposed, with the arrows showing the ways the squills moved to strike the strings. If so, however, the squills moved very oddly. If this were Mason’s attempt at a new design—well, it was certainly new! Nothing here could concern Mary Stuart, anyway.

I reached the bottom of the pile and found the name Dawson burnt into the wood of the tray. I already knew that Jack Dawson, the drowned “Jackdaw,” had visited Lockhill. Leonard must have begged or bought a few trays from him to use as a filing system. Had Jackdaw overheard Leonard engaged in some kind of compromising conversation? But . . .

Something scratched at the back of my mind, and then slipped elusively out of reach as I tried to grasp for it. I puzzled over it for a moment, but then gave up and hurried on. I was becoming nervous again. Another tray held drawings of wings, and notes on the flight of birds and the properties of water when poured over curved surfaces; a third held a copy of a lengthy poem in Italian and a half-completed English translation of it. The translation was smooth and poetic; here, Mason was in his natural element. The
fourth and last tray contained sheets covered with figures, rough and ready accounts by the look of them.

I tried the four boxes. One held correspondence, but of the most mundane kind, to do with sales of wool and corn, exchanges of very ordinary family news with a brother in Devon, and a letter from Mildred Cecil, the one which first suggested that I should come to Lockhill. Another box proved to be where the official account ledgers were kept. One held blank paper and one was empty.

I took a last look round to make sure I had missed nothing. There were no drawers under the desktop, no hidden cupboards. I even ran my fingers over the wall panelling and the map to make sure.

Once more, something scratched at my mind, something new. Something—surely—to do with that peculiar drawing of the keyboard. Looking at it again, I was reminded of something, but I couldn’t think what it was. I was still staring at it when footsteps in the anteroom snatched me from my concentration. I spun round, just as Brockley appeared, looking alarmed.

“Mason’s coming,” he whispered. “I glimpsed him starting up the stairs and now I can hear him coming through the gallery behind me!”

There was no time to position ourselves innocently in the gallery, so I pulled open the left-hand door of the cupboard and hustled us both inside, drawing the door to after us.

We were taking a fearful risk. We would have done better to walk out and face Mr. Mason, with some tale
or other about searching for something Ann had dropped. A convincing story to account for our presence in the study would have been easier to invent than a convincing story to explain why Mrs. Ursula Blanchard and her manservant Roger Brockley had been found squashed into Leonard Mason’s carved oak press along with his cloaks, slippers and night-rail.

Yesterday, I had made a private joke about locking the household into cupboards, but if we were caught now, our presence in this one would be no joke at all. I realised this too late, and so did Brockley.

“We’ve made a mistake. We should have brazened it out,” he whispered.

“I know, but he’s here,” I breathed.

Peering through the crack that I had left open, I caught the flash of blackwork on cream satin as Mason came into the study. Then, afraid that the gleam of an eye, a fold of skirt, might be seen, I shrank away to the further corner of the cupboard, pulling one of the cloaks across me.

“What’s he doing?” Brockley’s words were a thread of speech, close to my ear.

By the sound of it, Mason was at the desk, rustling papers, and clicking his tongue in an irritated fashion. Tidy though his habits were, it seemed that he couldn’t find what he wanted. Had I left any trace of my search? Disarranged something?

We listened, motionless in the dark. I was acutely aware of Brockley’s warm, breathing presence beside me. He moved, probably also trying to draw a cloak over him, and momentarily pressed against me. I remained still, very frightened, and was grateful for the
presence of another person. I had a terrible impulse to lean against him and press my face into his shoulder.

Suddenly I went rigid, appalled at myself, and hit suddenly by a new fear.

I knew very well that if we were caught like this, we were more likely to be suspected of wanting to make use of the couch in Mason’s anteroom, than suspected of spying. Redman would report what he had seen earlier. My reputation would be ruined. Mason would start believing his own lies!

That wouldn’t be all. After our encounter with Redman, I had had a few reassuring words with Dale, explaining the circumstances. Later, I had warned her of the lies circulating in the household. If we were found like this, though, she might well begin to wonder about her husband and me. Worse! If I had any more impulses like this, I would begin to wonder, too!

I clenched my teeth, horrified. What was happening to me? What would Gerald say if he could see me now? Perhaps he could! What if the dead watched over the living? But if they did, then he had seen me with Matthew, my current husband, lawful though now absent. He would have seen us . . . I wondered if it were possible to go insane while standing rock-still and completely silent in a dark cupboard with one’s manservant.

I came back to reality with an unpleasant jerk as purposeful footsteps approached the cupboard. The right-hand door was pulled open. Daylight streamed in. The two halves of the cupboard were divided by a partition which extended from the back to within a few inches
of the doors. From where we were cowering, half hidden behind the cloaks, we could see one of Mason’s padded shoulders as he rummaged in the shelves. I had a depressingly good view of his left ear and a patch of my own stitchwork, where I had repaired the embroidery. If he glanced to the left, he would see us. The concealment of the cloaks was inadequate, and our feet would show below them, anyway.

He did not glance to the left. After pulling impatiently at the books on the right-hand shelves, as if to look behind them, he backed out and shut the door. He also closed the door on our side, leaving us undiscovered but imprisoned in an impenetrable darkness. I doubted if I could pick the lock from this side of the door, and began to tremble.

“Don’t be afraid,” Brockley’s minute whisper came again. “My knife will open that door catch.”

Outside, papers were rustling again and wooden trays were apparently being picked up and slammed bad-temperedly down on the desk. Then came a triumphant “Ah!”, and at last,
at last,
Mason’s footsteps retreated. We heard the study door shut.

“Wait,” whispered Brockley. “In case he thinks of something else and comes back.”

We stood still. Nothing happened. My eyes were adjusting to the blackness and I saw that there was indeed a thread of light where the leaves of the door met. Brockley edged past me and steel glinted as he applied the tip of his belt-knife to the join. The catch yielded, sliding back into its socket. Catching hold of the door edge to keep it from opening too much, Brockley peered cautiously out.

“The study’s empty. Wait.”

He went out ahead of me and stepped to the door of the anteroom, where he repeated the process of cautiously opening it a quarter of an inch. He came back, looking relieved.

“All’s clear. I can see right through to the gallery and it’s empty.”

Emerging from the cupboard, I examined the desk. “I think he wanted his drawings of wings,” I said. “They were in this tray here, though not on top. They’re gone now.”

“And so should we be,” said Brockley in heartfelt tones. “Did you find anything useful, madam?”

I shook my head. “No. We’ve taken all these chances and we’ve nothing to show for it. Let’s get away, but not together, in case we meet Redman again, or anyone else.” I felt hot with embarrassment as I said it. “You go first. I’ll wait in the gallery until you’re well away. If necessary, I’ll pretend I’m looking for something I’ve dropped.”

We escaped this time without being noticed.

Afterwards I badly wanted time to think, but people seemed to be constantly clustering round me. Ann called me to look at something in the stillroom, and then it was dinnertime. I had to help Ann keep the children in order, for Crichton was having his meal out in the workshop with Mr. Mason. During the afternoon, I felt that I must attend to the girls, and suppertime came before I knew it.

The men did appear for supper. Mason had changed into his fawn doublet, having no doubt dirtied the other one in the workshop. Crichton wore his dusty,
unimpressive old gown, which caused Ann to look at him and sigh, although she said nothing.

What with one thing and another, all that day I could not settle down to think until at last night came, and I was in my curtained bed.

Once more, I lay long awake, turning things over in my mind, and once more I was quite immune to my soothing evening draught. I kept the habit up, because I still harboured a vague hope that the gossip in the kitchen while I was making it would one day yield something useful, and the valerian and camomile mixture recommended by Mrs. Logan was sometimes genuinely sleep-inducing. In fact, although Dale had given up taking it with me, because she didn’t really like herbal brews, my bedtime posset was by now an institution. Ann gently teased me about it, and the Logans had given me a special goblet for it, a pewter affair with a small dent in the side.

That night, as on the night before I went to Thamesbank, when I had lain aching for Matthew and feeling as though my mind were disintegrating, the goblet might as well have held cold water. I stared into the darkness, and went over everything I had done and learned since I came to Lockhill.

Twice, during my search of Mason’s desk, something had niggled at me. There were things—two of them at least—that I should have noticed, or recognised or understood, but I could not bring them to the surface.

I turned over restlessly, brooding on tapestries, coincidences, bills for tin and copper, and people who spent money they didn’t possess. I felt haunted by this
curious financial theme. Again I asked myself:
what
were the two fugitive recollections which had stirred in the depths of my mind in Mason’s study? What had I missed?

• • •

I did not sleep until nearly dawn, and woke on the Friday weary and low in spirits. I was late arriving in the attic schoolroom, but when I got there, I found that Pen had taken competent charge, although she and her sisters weren’t sewing. Pen had produced a lute and was strumming a melody, not very smoothly but with plenty of verve, while Cathy and Jane sang.

“Oh, Mrs. Blanchard! This is a song that Mr. Mew taught us, when he used to teach us music. It’s such a pretty song.”

I had struggled half the night to drag unidentified recollections to the top of my mind, and now that I wasn’t thinking about them at all, one of them emerged, in response to the name of Mew.

“Begin the song from the beginning and let me hear it all,” I said, and then I sat down and listened with half my mind, while the other half went back to the court, to the day when Barnabas Mew presented his musical box to the queen. Again, I watched while he showed her how it worked, and then, once more, I visualised the mysterious drawing in Mason’s study, the diagram I had taken to represent his new idea of a spinet. It wasn’t a spinet at all. What I had taken for a sketch of a keyboard was the comblike device in Mew’s musical box, with the teeth which tapped musically against the little knobs on the revolving cylinder. The arrows which had seemed so meaningless
showed the direction in which the cylinder turned and the way the comb teeth were pushed upwards.

It still made no sense, but one thing had emerged from the fog of absurdity: there was a link between Barnabas Mew and Lockhill which was not to do with teaching music. A bill addressed to Mew had turned up in Leonard Mason’s doublet; a drawing of Mew’s musical box—which Mason was supposed to know nothing about—was lying among Mason’s papers. And Dawson, who had suspected trouble at Lockhill, had been murdered in Windsor, where Barnabas Mew lived.

I was looking in the wrong place. I ought to be in Windsor. Cecil had told me not to investigate Dawson’s death, but what if that death were so closely entangled with Lockhill’s secret that they couldn’t be separated? What if the same applied to Fenn’s death? He could certainly have been murdered at Windsor.

The thought of going there myself was frightening, but I wanted to know much more about Master Barnabas Mew. I wasn’t sure how to go about it, but I could begin by looking at Mew in his own territory. Ann had told me that the boys’ prospective schoolmaster was definitely coming to Lockhill next week, and that Mew would return at the same time. She hadn’t mentioned the exact day. I had best make haste, to be sure of catching Mew while he was still at his shop. I would take Brockley and Dale, on an apparently innocent errand and in broad daylight. Surely that wouldn’t be too dangerous?