The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne

by Elsa Hart

  Inwood started toward the hall. “We’ll have to summon the parish constable—”

  Carlyle stopped him. “It is already done. The man is also the local butcher, but he appears to take his office seriously. He declared to me that as far as he understands the law, an employee who kills his master is as bad as a traitor to the Crown. By the time I left him he’d roused ten men to the hunt. Come sunset, Dinley won’t be able to ask a rat in an alley for help without being handed over. I wouldn’t be surprised if the morning finds him already drawn and—”

  “Enough,” said Inwood. “There are women present.”

  “Speak freely, gentlemen,” declared Meacan. “No need to be delicate when we’re all in the same room with the same sight before us.”

  Her words made Cecily notice for the first time that they were not, in fact, all in the room. She wondered why Otto Helm had not appeared, but before she could ask, Thomasin tearfully announced the arrival of the undertaker. It was clear as soon as the man entered, assistants in tow, that the space could not accommodate them all. Warbulton, gray-faced, muttered the word brandy like an incantation and slipped out. Carlyle followed.

  A dark wave of exhaustion swept over Cecily. Hunger, hard travel, and the day’s events were taking their toll. Her knees trembled as she left the study. She went to the dining room only long enough to procure bread and a bowl of vegetable stew. No one challenged her when she departed with the dishes. She had to think hard to remember where her bedroom was. The crowded cabinets, connecting doors, and dark stairwells confused her. She was only certain she had found it when she recognized the familiar outlines of her own weathered trunk and bundles of plants.

  Her windows looked down to the street. Through the thick, uneven glass she watched the other guests go. Carlyle climbed into the first coach that was summoned. Warbulton stumbled out after him to wait for the next. An enormous feather protruded from the brim of his hat, twitching aimlessly behind him. When a coach stopped for him, his attempts to climb into it were hindered by his dress sword, which swung on its sash and barred the door until he managed to dislodge it. The last to leave the house was Inwood, who accompanied the undertaker and the body. Curious neighbors collected around them and formed a kind of procession down the street, their hats and cloaked shoulders darkening as mist turned to soaking rain.

  Cecily had just set the empty bowl aside when she heard a soft thud at the base of her door. She opened it to find Meacan, a cup in each hand, one foot raised to tap again with her toe. “Brandy,” Meacan announced, lowering her foot. “I’m certain you need it as much as I do. My heart feels touched by frost and all the skeletons in the house seem to be turning their skulls to look at me.”

  She thrust one of the cups at Cecily, entered the room, and settled herself on the window seat. Her skirts bunched around her in ridges and valleys of stiff linen, turning the pattern of straight stripes on the fabric to one of crooked paths. “Sit,” she said, motioning for Cecily to take the chair by the desk. “Drink your brandy, and tell me what happened.”

  “But you already know.” Cecily set the cup she had been handed down amid the sea urchins on the desk and took a seat. “We found Walter Dinley standing over Sir Barnaby, the knife still—”

  Meacan interrupted. “Still in his hand, yes. That picture has been sketched for me already. But how did any of it come to pass? What was Sir Barnaby doing in his study? Where were you and the others? I have not been able to wrest a clear account from anyone.” Meacan lifted her free hand and counted on her fingers. “Martha could tell me nothing. Nor could John or Thomasin. They were in the kitchen all afternoon. I tried to question the man who assumed authority—the doctor with the sort of eyes that suggest you are friends even before you have been introduced—but he was busy making arrangements with the undertaker. As for the other two, the first was concerned only with effecting his own departure, and the second, the gilded one, was shaking like a mouse in the shadow of a cat. He didn’t speak a word.”

  It was not difficult for Cecily to match Meacan’s descriptions to their subjects. “The one who took so much responsibility upon himself is Giles Inwood,” she explained. “I believe he and Sir Barnaby have been acquainted for many years. The others are Martin Carlyle and Humphrey Warbulton.”

  Meacan propped an elbow on a knee and leaned her head on her hand. Her fingers disappeared into her hair. “So that was Warbulton?”

  “You know the name?”

  “They’ve been talking about him.”

  “They?”

  “The collectors.” Meacan took a drink. She settled her shoulders against the wall of the alcove, secure in her command of the subject. “For men who consider themselves so learned, they are remarkably oblivious to the possibility that a woman who is drawing may be listening at the same time. Humphrey Warbulton is a textile merchant with a vast fortune who is determined to secure a place among the gentry. He had taken it into his mind to earn their respect by establishing himself as a collector, as several have done before him. Of course, to be a collector one needs connections, and the circle does not open to just anyone. His fate is under discussion.”

  Meacan’s expression turned speculative. “Inwood’s name is familiar. Carlyle’s I have not heard before.” She gestured Cecily forward with her cup. “Now I implore you. Do not leave me in ignorance any longer. Tell me how the master of the house met his doom.”

  Cecily welcomed Meacan’s request, and not just because she wanted to oblige her old friend. She was eager to impose order on her own thoughts for the first time since feelings of shock and distress had scattered them. But to her surprise and chagrin, she found as she attempted to relate the events of the afternoon that her memories of the day were not easily assembled. The harder she tried to put them in their correct places, the more they slid away like drops of water on a swaying lotus leaf.

  It was the tour of the collection, she decided, that had compromised her control over her own perception. She had passed through so many realms of nature and artifice in the space of a few hours that she could not hold the whole path in her mind. Had the clocks been chiming three or four when Sir Barnaby had shown them a vial of golden sand from the Tagus River? Had it yet struck five when they stopped beneath the outstretched wings of the albatross? She did her best to give a clear account, beginning with the accident in the library that led to Alice Fordyce’s injury and early departure, and ending with Dinley’s return bearing the letter that had been delivered by courier.

  “And that was the last time I saw Sir Barnaby alive,” she concluded.

  While Cecily was speaking, Meacan had emptied her cup, discarded it, and plucked an urchin from the desk. “And Dinley?”

  Cecily explained how Dinley had attempted to continue the tour only to abandon it minutes later, and how she in turn had extricated herself from the company of Warbulton and Carlyle in order to seek out the Plant Room.

  “So the three of you each went your separate ways,” said Meacan slowly. “And you saw and heard nothing more until you, Inwood, and Carlyle found Sir Barnaby.”

  “Nothing pertaining to his murder,” said Cecily. “Did you?”

  “Not a raised voice or a rushed step.”

  There was a short silence as both women retreated into their own thoughts. Meacan’s brow was furrowed, her gaze on the spiky urchin she was rotating between her nimble fingers. Cecily’s eyes fell on the three bundles on the floor. Her mind moved from the plants within them, patiently awaiting names, to the wealth of information waiting upstairs. “I wonder,” she mused aloud, “whether I will be permitted to stay.”

  Meacan pinned her with an astonished gaze. “Why would you want to?”

  Cecily indicated the bundles. “I collected more than a hundred plants, and I came here expressly to identify them. Without names, they can be of little use to scholars and apothecaries, and would better have been left to grow without interruption.”

  “Well, it isn’t up to me,” said Meacan. “But I would
not choose to sit alone in that dry garret garden studying dead leaves and squinting over Latin in a house where there has been a murder. It will give you bad dreams.”

  “What you refer to as a dry garret garden,” said Cecily with asperity, “is the result of years of dedicated effort. I can think of few better ways to honor Sir Barnaby’s memory, and to ease the passage of his soul, than to put his shelves to the use for which he intended them.”

  Meacan lifted her shoulders in an irreverent shrug. “I suppose it will give you an advantage over the others. You’ll be here first, before the frenzy begins.”

  “The frenzy?” It was Cecily’s turn to be taken aback.

  “The scavengers coming to pick the bones,” said Meacan. “I refer, of course, to the bones of the collection. They’ll be visiting in droves, dressed in mourning, each claiming to have been one of Sir Barnaby’s closest friends. And all the while they’ll be scrutinizing the cabinets for what they hope to acquire, should it come up for sale. And if it is sold, there will be a tremendous squabbling over toads in jars and headless statues and trays of butterflies.”

  “Do you dislike them all so much?”

  “Dislike them?” Meacan leaned forward and set the urchin back on the desk. As she shifted, the stripes on her dress changed course. She sat back and they altered once more. “On the contrary. As I told you before, I rely on them for sustenance. I am like one of the tiny, glimmering fish that swim close to whales and share their food while keeping a wary distance from their thrashing tails.”

  Cecily considered what Meacan had said about the collection. She looked around the room. The objects displayed on the shelves were slowly disappearing, as if night was creeping into the house from inside the cabinets rather than from the windows. “Do you think the collection will be sold?”

  “We will find out soon enough,” said Meacan. Following the direction of Cecily’s look, she frowned at the walls. “I thought this house had an evil feel to it the moment I stepped inside. I should have guessed Death was nearby, sharpening his scythe. There were omens, you know.”

  Cecily raised a brow to show her skepticism. “Accuse me of credulity if you like,” said Meacan. “But you can’t tell me not to believe a portent after it’s been proved true. On the day I accepted Sir Barnaby’s offer of employment, he received me in the dining room. When I entered, I thought at first that a meal was set out before him. Then I realized the table was covered in insects. As if that was not unsettling enough, the specimen he held in his hand was none other than the deathwatch beetle.” Meacan gave an eloquent shudder. “That night I dreamt of mermaids. Turn away from a venture. That’s what it means to dream of mermaids, isn’t it?”

  “More so for sailors than for illustrators, I think,” said Cecily. And because she considered clear thinking and honest observation to be antidotes to fear, she continued. “As for the deathwatch beetle, which is a Scarabaeus much like any other, it has been heard and seen by many who have survived long after the encounter.”

  “And yet Sir Barnaby lies dead,” said Meacan.

  Cecily sighed. “And would lie dead still, had he handled a hundred beetles or none.” As she spoke, her thoughts returned to the study. She saw Sir Barnaby’s open eyes and the ruby-speckled scarf around his neck like the red and white feathers of a bird. The vision changed and she saw Walter Dinley’s face. There had been no anger in it, only devastation. She could not imagine what had moved such a seemingly gentle person to such sudden violence. “If only Mr. Helm had still been studying his snakes,” she said, half to herself. “He might have heard the altercation and alerted the house before it was too late. Do you know what took him away?”

  “How could I? I never spoke to the man.”

  Cecily cocked her head. Helm hadn’t mentioned Meacan by name, but what other lady illustrator could he have meant? “He told me you expressed interest in his work,” she said.

  There was a pause before Meacan answered. “Oh yes,” she said. “The Swede studying snakes. I’d forgotten.”

  Her voice held a false note. Each woman heard it, and each was aware that the other heard it, as well. A sudden constraint settled over them. It was as if an intruder had entered the room and reminded them with a wicked grin that they were strangers. The trust that had come from remembered childhood friendship retreated like a light that disappears around a bend in a tunnel, leaving only an uncertain glow for them to follow. Meacan didn’t volunteer anything further about Helm, and Cecily didn’t ask.

  “You must be too tired to make sense of another thought,” said Meacan lightly. She uncurled herself from the window seat and stood. Her eyes were expressionless smudges of shadow in the gathering darkness. “Rest will do us both good.” She went to the door and left without another word, leaving Cecily looking after her, wondering why, mere hours after the murder of their host, this woman she was no longer sure she knew had lied.

  CHAPTER 7

  At nine years old, Cecily was a quiet, serious girl whose favorite place was the schoolroom filled with books, maps, and burnished instruments that promised conversance with the stars. When her father told her that she was to share her sanctum with a stranger, she awaited the arrival of the gardener’s family and her new classmate with trepidation.

  She never forgot her first sight of Meacan. The girl who descended from a cart laden with potted plants looked like the proud attendant to a fairy queen. Leafy garlands obscured the sturdy wool of her dress. Her hair, as fine and fair as mist around her freckled face, was festooned with blue and purple blossoms. She seemed fully aware of the effect of her appearance, and directed a smile of courtly majesty at the cottage that was to be her family’s home for the year. The spell was broken by a cry of exasperation from the gardener, who had been unaware that his daughter had spent the afternoon turning the plants he had carefully selected on behalf of his new employer into frills and furbelows.

  Despite their differences, friendship came as naturally as sunrise to the girls. In the schoolroom, Meacan accepted Cecily’s authority, if not that of their tutors, and followed her enthusiastically down paths of ink and vellum to ancient citadels, lost libraries, and utopian islands. Meacan, in turn, showed Cecily that curiosity need not be confined to the house. Gardens could be explored, skirts knotted up for ease of movement, and disciplinarians eluded with a combination of advance planning and bravado. As hedges, lawns, and parterres took shape around the Goodrick home, Cecily and Meacan ventured ever farther beyond its bounds.

  One chill October day ten months into their acquaintance, Meacan appeared before Cecily quivering with excitement. A film of spiderwebs clung to her shoulders. She had been investigating an attic room, she said, and had found tucked within an old and brittle book of hours a message written in a cipher she could not interpret. Cecily took the proffered book and opened it. The blue and gold initials were as bright as if the scribe who illuminated them had dipped his brush into the sunlight pooled on his desk and mixed it with the paint. The paper Meacan had found folded inside was mottled with age, its contents written in scarlet ink.

  It had been a month of sorrow. The Goodrick family had welcomed a son, only to see him depart the world less than two hours after he entered it. It was not the first time death had visited the house on that terrible errand, and the grief that hung about the rooms was tinged with bitterness. Cecily could make little of the fragments of discussion she overheard concerning heirs and inheritance, but she was sensitive to the despair that had begun to etch itself onto her parents’ faces.

  Meacan’s discovery shook Cecily from her stupor of gloom. As the gusts of an approaching storm began to rattle the windows, she examined the odd message with eager interest, wondering what stranger or ancestor might have created it. Had she been a few years older, she might have questioned why a document of seeming antiquity was written not in runes or minuscules, but in modern cursive. Her doubts might have deepened several hours later when, its ciphers broken and its riddles solved, the revealed text d
irected its reader to a ruined castle less than an hour’s walk from the estate, where the worthy adventurer would find the lost sword of King Arthur, the blade Excalibur itself.

  But her child’s mind, alight with the thrill of revelation, did not admit doubts. Instead, she permitted the message and its mysterious author free rein over her imagination. She did not even notice that Meacan had remained uncharacteristically quiet, allowing Cecily to puzzle through the acrostics and allusions on her own.

  It was easy for the two girls to slip unnoticed out the kitchen door, through the fragrant herb garden, and around the back of a hedge maze into the woodlands. The household was preoccupied, not only with mourning, but with the task of hosting an eminent nobleman on his way to Scotland. Meacan in particular had studied the man with fascination. The curls of his black wig fell almost to his waist, and he wore the voluminous petticoat breeches popular at court that year. By the next, the fashion would be spoken of with wincing embarrassment by most who had adopted it.

  The air outside was heavy as if, like the grieving house, it contained more than it could hold. The storm that had been coming closer all day was almost overhead. They should have turned around when the birds stopped singing, but neither of the girls was paying attention. By the time they began to climb the hill to the castle, black clouds had consumed the sky and they could hear thunder. The wind grew stronger. Cecily’s skirts pulled urgently at her legs, as if the fabric itself was trying to tug her back to the house and to safety. She heard a crack and turned to see the limb of an old oak crash down across the path behind them.

  The battlements of the abandoned keep grinned like jagged teeth. Nothing was left of the ruin but stone, stubborn against the ravages of time that had rotted the pennants on the walls and the people who had hung them there. To reach its single remaining hearth, they had to ascend an exposed, uneven set of stairs. When they reached the top, it was Cecily who knelt and crawled into the cold fireplace as the first drops of rain fell.