The Shadowcutter (32 page)

“It is only a theory,” said Felix.

“But it is the most likely one we have so far, given what we know. I’ve been trying to make connections and imagine enemies where there may be none. There may be no connection at all between this and Eliza Jones and John Edgar. I want there to be a connection because I want this to mean something. But perhaps it does not. It is simply a wretched turn of the wheel of fortune. And perhaps we will never know.” He hauled himself to his feet. “I think I need to be alone for a while, if you will excuse me,” he said, turning and going up the stairs.

Felix watched him go without another word.

Chapter Twenty-nine

A brutal headache had come over him and Giles was suddenly exhausted beyond endurance. He took off his boots and coat, stretched out on the bed and lay there, bone-tired but unable to rest. All the information grated and pinched at his already inflamed mind. He felt sick with pain and confusion, unable to keep his eyes open.

He found himself in the topsy-turvy world of half-waking dreams. He was on the beach at Swalecliffe again, as he had been with Carswell the other night, with the band playing in the distance. Once again he was writing the names of the dead in the sand: first Eliza Jones, then John Edgar, and then Laura Vernon. He wrote them and felt nothing, and, at the same time, felt surprise at how little he felt. He had made a collection of marks in the sand meaning nothing. That was how it seemed. But then he had turned towards the sea again and seen Laura.

She was far out in the water and he saw that she was in difficulty. She was calling out to him. Yet her cries were quite silent, and he could only see them, not hear them. Her distress was very evident, heartbreakingly so – he felt it like a pain in his chest, and yet he stood there still, leaning on the stick with which he had just written her name in the sand, as if there was nothing to be done.

He woke shortly after that, the sight of her pained face vivid in his mind, and immediately felt violently sick. He also found he was sweating and shaking uncontrollably.

Holt came in later and found him retching into the chamber pot.

“I shall get Mr Carswell,” he said.

“No, no, I am not ill. It is only –”

“You have taken ill with the shock, sir,” Holt said, steering him to a chair. “As much as a bullet. I’m fetching Mr Carswell.”

Realising this was the only way he would get to be left alone, Giles consented to let him go. Alone again, he rinsed out his mouth and attempted to steady himself with a small glass of brandy. He did not feel physically strong, it was true, and his mind was racing about on a thousand courses. He felt he was trapped in a labyrinth, searching in all directions for both the entrance and the exit at the same time. He was determined to master the situation and himself, if only to push away the creeping dread that he had not done enough, that he had left her to die alone.

If I had not have gone away, it would not have happened. This is on my hands...

If he had worked harder and faster he could have broken the puzzle and she would not have died. Because even if there was no immediate connection between her death and those others, he felt sure it might still be discovered, no matter how irrational it might seem to believe that. For all the questions remained. Carswell’s theory was only a theory. Why was she on the staircase and how had she fallen so violently? How could an assault of some kind not be ruled out?

Laura’s embroidered shawl was lying on the chair, and he picked it up and twisted it in hands, pacing the room, and attempting to make some sense of his disordered mind, reasoning furiously with himself that he was not inventing causes and effects. Holt was right, he had taken a bullet and he was in shock, but he was clear enough about that. He threw the shawl onto the bed, went to the writing table and searched for a pencil.

“We must ask all the questions, however unpleasant,”
Carswell had said.

He searched through the papers which he had put in his document case, looking for the list he had made of all the members of the household shortly after they had begun to investigate the death of Eliza Jones. It was an extensive list, not to say bold, for it began with Lord Rothborough himself, and ended with the pantry boy. It spared not a soul, not even the Marchioness. Pencil in hand, he stood in the window and read through each and every name, and then returned to the first page: Lord Rothborough, Lady Rothborough, Lady Charlotte, Lady Augusta, Lady Maria, Lady Warde. He underlined Lady Warde three times. She struck him like a wrong note played in an otherwise well-played piece. There was something not right about her, but what it was he could not yet determine.

The door opened and Carswell came in.

“Holt tells me –”

“I want to talk to Lady Warde,” said Giles.

“Now?”

“Remember when were in Edgar’s shop and we talked about insider information? How Eliza may have picked up useful titbits from other servants. Well, perhaps her mistress was –”

“Holt said you were vomiting,” said Carswell. He attempted to press his hand to Giles’s forehead but Giles manoeuvred out of his reach. “Sir, I beg you.”

“It was nothing.”

Carswell peered at him.

“You do not look yourself. You look decidedly flushed.”

“How could I be myself, in such circumstances?” he said, attempting to move away from Carswell.

“Of course, but you will let me examine you, sir.” Carswell grabbed at his wrist. “And you are squinting at the light.”

“I have a headache. It is not surprising,” said Giles. “But really –”

“Sit down, sir,” said Carswell, his hand still on his wrist.

“We have too much to do.”

“You will sit down,” said Carswell, with some firmness. “You must yield to my opinion in this, sir, if you have an ounce of sense. And you pride yourself on that, I think, your good sense.”

Giles sat down, realising that Carswell was not going to be easily dismissed. Carswell reached for his watch and took his pulse.

“I cannot be ill,” said Giles.

“Hush,” said Carswell. “You have all the symptoms of a fever – your pulse is elevated, you are flushed and perspiring, and you are shaking.”

“Perhaps, but –” Giles began.

“Aching limbs?” Carswell put in. Giles nodded, in spite of himself. “And headache and vomiting. You are going to bed, Major Vernon, and that is an end to it. The sooner you rest the sooner you will be well again.”

“There is some truth in that,” Giles was forced to concede, now feeling that he really was in the grip of an affliction. “But one thing first, Carswell, before I take your good advice, which I promise I will –” But he got no further, for he found his gorge rising again and was forced to stagger hastily across the room to the washstand.

“Bed, sir, and that’s an end to it!” said Carswell, behind him.

-0-

“Is he going to be all right?” Sukey asked.

“I think so,” Felix said. “He is very strong – it is distressing rather than dangerous for him.”

“I don’t suppose he is a good invalid at the best of times,” she said, managing a brief smile.

“No. But Holt can manage him very well. And with luck he will fight it enough it off soon enough.”

They were in the dressing room adjoining the bedroom. It was still scattered with Mrs Vernon’s things: her books, sketching kit and music lay piled up on a table. Felix picked up the sketchbook and opened it. She had not been as accomplished at drawing as she was at music but the fact she had taken it up had been a triumph at the time. It had been a useful tool in keeping her calm. He looked at a clumsy pencil sketch of a rustic cottage and then at an imperfect portrait of Sukey, but that was all he could manage. He put it down quickly and turned away, so that Sukey should not see him stifling his tears.

“I had better get all these things packed away,” said Sukey. “Out of sight –”

“Will not be out of mind,” said Felix.

“Not for a while, no,” she said, with a sigh. “But we have to keep busy. Which reminds me. I was going to give this to Major Vernon. It is probably nothing, but then again –”

From her pocket she took a ragged scrap of black stuff, stiff and slightly greasy, and handed it to him.

“What is this?”

“I don’t know. I found it when we first brought her into the state room – it was caught in her petticoats. I thought it might be important so I kept it. I meant to mention it earlier, but I didn’t know quite how to, not with all those other people there, it was not the moment. It’s probably nothing at all, but I can’t quite work out why it would be there, caught up in her skirts.”

Felix looked at it carefully.

“Is it silk?”

“Yes, good quality too, although it’s quite worn. I wonder where it came from.”

“Is it something that they might use in the household?” said Felix. “I know nothing about these things. I remember my mother cutting up old clothes for cleaning rags, that is all.”

“Not silk,” said Sukey. “Good silk like this, you’d try and turn it and use it for a lining or shoe bags or something like that, but this looks so strange to me. Not like it has been carefully snipped off, leaving a bigger better piece. Do you know what I mean? Look how badly cut it has been, like it has been torn with a knife, in a hurry.”

“As if to destroy it?” Felix said and went to the window with it to examine it in a better light. “There is a stain on it, I think. And it was tangled up in her skirts?”

“Yes.”

“These loose threads...” he said, pulling at them. “I wonder if – do you have a minute or two?”

“Of course, if you do not want me to sit with Major Vernon.”

“Holt is with him. It will not be for long. But I think we should go back to that wretched staircase, while there is still some light.”

“Before someone sweeps up too carefully?” Sukey said.

They went along the broad bedroom passageway and were about to pass through the padded door into the gloomy, Spartan other world of the domestics, when Sukey suddenly crouched down.

“Hold the door just like that,” she said. “And will you see...” He crouched down beside her and saw she was pointing to another scrap of of black silk, this time with half a buttonhole worked in it, lying on the corner of the threshold where the door would have hidden it from sight.

“Same stuff?” he said, as she picked it up.

“Perhaps,” she said.

“A look with the microscope will tell us for certain,” he said.

“So what do you think it means?” Sukey said, going through onto the landing. “What would Major Vernon say?”

“He would say it meant that someone passed through here with a bag of silk scraps and dropped some of them near to where Mrs Vernon fell. That the scrap got caught in her skirts before she fell. That is as much as we can say.”

“But it might mean something,” said Sukey. “Please God, it might!” She was looking carefully at every inch of floor, stooping down as she did so.

“I know but – well, you know as well as I do that all the questions we ask in life do not have simple answers. That sometimes we cannot explain things.”

“You are the last person I imagine would say that,” she said.

“I must have listened to my father for once,” he said with a sigh, going to the bannister and looking down the well again, at the dizzying steepness of the steps. “He gave me a fine lecture this morning about the necessity of Christian resignation. That I must simply accept this and tell Major Vernon the same thing. Perhaps he is right. Perhaps there is and will never be an adequate explanation. She fell, and we shall never know why because we were not there to see what happened. We can only truly know what we experience with our own faculties. What am I doing making you get on your hands and knees and look for bits of black silk I don’t know! It won’t make this hurt any the less, will it, to know exactly what happened?”

“You didn’t make me,” she said, “and you are tired and in need of your lunch. That is why you are losing heart.”

“And you are not, are you?”

“That person with the bag of silk scraps may have seen or heard something. They will not be hard to find, I am sure. There may be something that will help us – and that will help Major Vernon. And I think I have found another one! Yes!”

“You have the eyes of a hawk,” he said, going and crouching beside her. This time it was tiny triangle of silk. “Major Vernon will be impressed.”

“Won’t he be?” she said, getting to her feet again. “Where does that door go?”

“Up to a lumber room, I think.”

“Better see if there are any more up here,” she said, opening the door. It revealed another tight little staircase, which she at once climbed up.

“Why would you put a bag of silk scraps in a lumber room?” Felix said, following her.

“You might if you had a box of your own up here. One of the chamber maids – they are no more than girls and I think they are not allowed to keep a box in their room. Perhaps this is where the servants’ boxes are stored. She might have been collecting them to send home to her mother for the mending bag.”

“And if she had seen something she would probably be afraid to speak,” said Felix.

“Certainly, for she may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mrs Hope is very stern with them and a job here is not to be thrown away lightly.”

“But such tiny scraps?”

“Those are the ones that were dropped. There may have been bigger pieces well worth squirrelling away. Of course I am only making stories here, but don’t you think there might be something in it?”

“Yes,” he said, peering into the cavernous, gloomy space, full of trunks and hampers. It was lit only by a couple of small skylights.

“I have a candle,” Sukey said, reaching into her apron pocket.

“And I have a lucifer,” he said. “We are well-matched,” he could not resist saying as he struck the match and lit the candle she held out to him.

She frowned at that, and turned away with the candle, plunging him into the shadows. He wished he had not spoken, but the sight of her face illuminated in that brief, bright burst of lucifer light had made him weak with desire.

He watched her walk away, and did not follow. There was only light for one of them to search by and he let her get on with the task, hoping the work would make her forget or at least forgive his clumsiness. Well-matched – yes, she must frown at that. There was not one of their friends or relatives who would see it as anything but an abomination if they were to marry. But it did not stop him wanting it, and he had never wanted it more as he watched her explore the shadows of that lumber room.