The Shadowcutter (18 page)

“You are not paid to speculate on such things,” he said, rather sharply. “Do as I ask, and quickly, please!”

-0-

In the end he carried her up the stairs – she was no great burden – and laid her on Laura Vernon’s bed. The room was, of course, in immaculate order, left so by Sukey.

“You’ve grown very strong, Felix,” Mrs Carswell said. “You never could have lifted me so easily before.”

“My work must be doing me good then,” he said, making an attempt to smile.

“Yes, you look well. Very fine. I like your coat,” she added, touching the cloth of his sleeve, appreciating the quality of the linen. He was wearing a linen summer coat, the colour of a milky cup of tea, that Mr Loake had made for him.

“You look like a man of fashion,” said Mr Carswell. It was quite a relief to hear him resume his usual tone. “I hope this Major Vernon of yours has not led you into vanity, Felix.”

“Hardly,” said Felix.

“This house seems vain enough,” said Mr Carswell, touching the elaborate fringe on the bed curtains.

“He did not furnish it,” said Felix. “He took it for the summer so his wife could take the waters. He has the plainest taste.”

“I shall take the waters,” said Mrs Carswell.

“They are extremely unpleasant,” said Felix. “I couldn’t recommend it. But Su –” he was forced to correct himself – “Mrs Connolly makes an excellent chicken broth. That would be a better idea.”

“Mrs Connolly, that is Major Vernon’s housekeeper?” said Mr Carswell.

“Yes, of course she is,” said Mrs Carswell. “You have often mentioned her in your letters. She sounds a great treasure.”

“She is,” Felix said, and wished to God that she
were
there. She would have managed this situation perfectly. She would have known how to offer kindly and discreetly all the assistance his mother needed, and done it with such sweetness that it would have seemed like the greatest of pleasure for her to do it. She had nothing of servitude about her.

And he longed for her to be there, for his own sake, just to see her there, to watch her going about her tasks. It would have calmed him, steadied his jangling nerves. As it was, he was struggling.

Mrs Bolland came in with the fresh tea and the brandy and hot water, and Felix was relieved that his mother took her glassful without much protest.

“We thought we would find rooms somewhere,” his father said, having drunk his own brandy.

“You had better stay here,” said Felix.

“We have brought our own sheets, of course,” said Mrs Carswell, the brandy bringing a little welcome colour back to her complexion. “They are in the box. One never knows about the sheets in lodgings.”

“I’ll go and bring up the box,” Felix said, draining his glass.

His father followed him downstairs.

“What is wrong with her?” said Felix, when they were in the lee of the stairs, and out of earshot.

“Her heart. Murray said...”

“Professor Murray?” said Felix. “You took her to Murray in Edinburgh?”

“Yes, yes, that was the man you set great store by, I think?”

“Yes,” said Felix, though he wished they had not consulted him. Any diagnosis he made was liable to be extremely accurate and suddenly Felix wanted as much room for error as possible. “And?”

Mr Carswell took a great breath: “He said –” But it was clearly to painful to repeat. Instead he laid his hands on Felix’s shoulders, gripped them and said, “She thought, we thought that you might be able to do something. And if not, then –”

“What did Murray say?” Felix said, again, but his father would not answer. Instead he began to climb upstairs with the bag. “Papa, you must tell me.”

“He wrote it out for me,” said Mr Carswell. “You may look at it later.”

Murray might be wrong, Felix thought as he heaved the box upstairs. Even the greatest physicians made mistakes at times. There was always room for a second opinion, though he wondered how objective it was possible to be when the patient was an intimate. There was a detachment needed to make a really precise diagnosis, and that was something he knew he could never be when it came to her.

Mrs Bolland reappeared with the broth and the bread, and they proceeded to arrange themselves to make an odd sort of picnic luncheon in Mrs Vernon’s bedroom. The old customs could not be disregarded and his father said a long and sincere grace over the unbroken bread, and Felix, who might in times past been annoyed by this, was oddly moved. The quiet family circle of the three of them, unexpectedly reconstituted after such an interval, held its old comforting power, despite the quicksands of uncertainty.

Chapter Seventeen

A young lady who had entered into a foolish romantic entanglement deserved to be treated delicately, no matter how silly she had been. Lady Augusta was going to suffer enough when the truth came out: from a broken heart and from considerable loss of face, and the latter, Giles suspected, would mean more to her than the former. For a women to allow herself to be trifled with by a social inferior was a sin not easily forgotten.

They entered the chapel, which was as sumptuously arranged as the rest of the house and had the appearance of a theatre rather than a place of worship, with a velvet hung gallery, entered from above, where the family might pray in comfort. The household, however, sat on benches in the main body of the chapel below. Some of these were furnished with squab cushions, presumably for the upper servants, but apart from that, comfort was in short supply.

Giles chose a lowly bench in the shadow of the gallery and Lady Augusta sat down beside him.

“I cannot lie to you here, can I?” she said, in a tiny voice.

“Were you thinking of doing so?” he said.

“He –” She broke off, and stared at the cross above the communion table. “Oh dear, oh dear...”

“Let us go back a step or two,” said Giles, feeling her heaviness of heart as if it were his own. The poor creature, for all her advantages, had been pulled into a net. “That will make it easier. And remember, this is the right thing to do. To act for justice, no matter how painful, is always right.”

“Yes, yes,” she said, straightening. “Thank you.”

“What I want to talk to you about is last Tuesday night,” he said, opening his notebook. “What happened after dinner, to be precise.”

“Tuesday last. That is the day Eliza Jones went missing.”

“Yes, and I think you may have seen her that night.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And where was this, Lady Augusta?”

“In the garden, after dinner. I was in the little pavilion at the far corner, and I saw her pass by the edge of the parterre.”

“And?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You don’t know what time this was?”

“No. I was there after dinner, that is all I can say”

“And why were you there?”

“Because, because... I think you know why, sir.”

“I need to hear your account of it, I’m afraid.”

“Very well. I went to talk with Mr Syme.”

“And how long did you talk with him for? Were you there half an hour, perhaps, or longer?”

“I am not sure. We had a great deal to discuss.”

“And what happened when you saw Miss Jones? Did you simply see her pass by or did she see you?”

There was a long silence, and Augusta said, “She saw us.”

“How do you know this?” Giles said.

“Because she spoke to him. And in such a fashion. I think she had been drinking. She was very wild. It was quite shocking.”

“What did she say, precisely?”

“I cannot repeat it. It was indelicate.”

“Can you give me the gist of it then?”

Lady Augusta hesitated for a moment.

“She reproached him, in strong language.”

“And how did Mr Syme take this?”

“Of course he told her to hold her tongue and tried to get her to go away, but she would not. So he went out of the pavilion and took her to one side, and said something, and that silenced her and she went on her way.”

“And how did Mr Syme explain all this to you?”

“He said she was a poor sad creature who had lost her wits, who had conceived a passion for him – which of course he had done nothing to encourage.”

“And you believed that?”

“Yes,” she said, after a moment. “Of course I did. He had just asked me to share his lot with him, and I would never agree to marry a man who I could not trust entirely.”

“So he spoke to her and returned to you?” said Giles.

“Yes.”

“And you are certain about that?”

“Yes.”

“And how long did you remain there?”

“Another hour, perhaps. Until it got dark.”

“You did not think you would be missed from the drawing room, then?”

“No, I had said I was going to bed.”

“When in fact you had a tryst with a lover?”

“With a man I intend to marry, Major Vernon,” she said, with a touch of defiance.

“Still?” he said.

She covered her face with her hands.

“You said you would tell me the truth,” he went on. “I am not sure this is it in its entirety, Lady Augusta. A man who asks you to lie for him is not worthy of your affection, let alone your hand.”

Slowly she got up and walked up to the communion rail and stood staring again at the cross, her hand pressed to her breast. Giles could see that there were tears streaming down her face.

“I am sorry to have to press you like this, but you know in your heart that it is for the best, I think.”

She nodded.

“You see, I don’t think you would have stayed with him after Eliza Jones came and said those shocking things to Mr Syme. You would have taken flight, leaving him there with her. You had already lied to your parents about your whereabouts, for his sake, and your conscience was burning like fire already, I should imagine.”

“Yes, yes,” she said, reaching for the rail to steady herself. She turned slightly towards him. “How did you know?”

“I know you are a good daughter. Anything he has made you do is an aberration. Her distress will have roused your suspicions, I think.”

“She was so unhappy,” she said. “And to think he might have caused that – yes, I was frightened and confused and so uncomfortable, so I ran back to the house when he went to speak to her. You are a magician, Major Vernon, you can see into my head!”

“So your earlier story?”

“He told me to say that was what happened, should I be asked.” She now fell to her knees and covered her face. “Oh dear Lord! And since then I have told myself a hundred thousand times that he could not do such a thing to a poor creature, but now –”

He left her there to her prayers and self-reproaches.

He came out of the chapel to find Sukey waiting in the undercroft.

I saw you out in the garden, sir,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind. I wanted a word. In private.”

“Is it Mrs Vernon –?” he began.

“Oh, no, she’s quite well – she and Lady Maria are practising piano duets together. They decided it was too hot to go out, mercifully. No, it is about this business with the jewels. You did say they went from a cabinet in the strong room?”

“Yes?”

She nodded, thought for a moment and said, “Then I think I have worked out how it might have been done – if you’ll let me try and explain.”

“I am all ears,” Giles said.

“This morning, I was down to the servant’s quarters and I wanted something from the housekeeper – some more camomile tea for Mrs Vernon – so I was waiting outside her room.” She broke off. “Perhaps I should show you, it would be easier to explain if we are there.”

So they went together down the tunnel and into the complicated tangle of rooms and passageways that kept the great house running so comfortably.

Sukey stopped at a bend in the corridor.

“Now, if you stand here, you can see everything coming and going along that passageway,”

“And that is the housekeeper’s room there?”

She nodded. “Almost at the centre of everything. And it is quite busy along here at that time in the morning, because they are taking the plate out of there to clean it. Four of the footmen went in to that room there several times with it and came out again without closing the door behind them, let alone locking it. It struck me, that if you had a mind to it, and you knew what you were doing, it would be easy to slip in when the door was open and do what you had to, and all the time the men would be standing gossiping over there, taking their ease – just like they did this morning.” She gave a slight shrug. “But perhaps I’m just being daft?”

“No, not at all,” Giles said, rather impressed with her analysis of the possibilities.

“And then I thought, if you had the right tools, then it would be easy.”

“Yes, quite.” He found he was slightly shocked. “Tell me, how do you know about such things?”

“My late husband – he and his friends were great ones for the craic. They would sit by the fire, drinking and talking of everything, politics, poetry, crime – everything under the sun. I was in the corner, listening. It was an education of sorts.”

“I am sorry you were exposed to that,” Giles said, rather disturbed at what she might have had heard. O’Brien had said that Sukey’s husband had been a wastrel, who fancied himself a writer, but had preferred the bottle and bad company. “They should have stopped their tongues, out of consideration to you.”

“I don’t think they even noticed I was there. And there was nowhere else for me to sit and I was not an object of any interest to any of them. Besides, I am glad I heard it – all of it. Ignorance is as corrupting for a woman as coarse talk. Stupidity is a dangerous condition. Isn’t that what you tell your men?”

“I can’t argue with that,” he said with a sigh. What she had endured was not pleasant to contemplate. “And I have to say I am glad of your knowledge and observations. As a hypothesis that is plausible. One might make a broad assumption that Eliza Jones is our jewel thief.”

“Perhaps it was for her lover,” Sukey said. “A woman will take stupid risks for a man she loves, and taking a set of jewels like that is taking risks.”

“She was with child. I wonder if she was trying to secure her future.”

“Oh poor soul,” said Sukey. “Yes, that makes sense. But then how is she to sell stuff like that?”