by Tessa Arlen
If Mrs. Wickham had taken dinner in her room and then gone for a solitary evening stroll in the pleasant night air before turning in, then why was she dressed in a beautiful and expensive evening dress and wearing satin shoes? Clementine, watching the activity outside, remained immersed in her thoughts. Mrs. Wickham’s account of what had happened to her was not completely accurate. But someone had attacked her and it was unlikely that it had been a tramp. Men who had no work, no home, and little to eat did not ramble through country-house gardens and attack and rob defenseless women, and if they found the courage to do so would have taken her expensive necklace from her, not broken it, spraying pearls in all directions.
The subdued murmur of female voices in the salon was interrupted by Mr. Haldane as he burst into the room, a cigar clamped between his teeth and his face brick-red from generous libations of port following his roast beef at dinner. He glared around the room as he growled questions at the three women sitting together in silence.
Concealed in the unlit conservatory, behind the stout trunk of a young date palm, Clementine drew near to the salon door so she could hear what was being said without revealing her presence. She had no wish to be in the same room as her host because she did not trust herself to speak civilly to him.
Mr. Haldane’s unrelenting questions continued for a few more moments, and having extracted answers from a now defiant Mrs. Wickham, stammering apologies from his anxious wife, and cold silence from a distant Mrs. Lovell, he left to supervise a thorough search of the grounds. Clementine, watching from the conservatory, saw him erupt from the entrance to his house armed with a stout stick, with a bull terrier at his heels, looking for all the world like a well-heeled version of Bill Sikes.
Almost as soon as Mr. Haldane left, Mr. Wickham arrived—he had evidently not yet retired for the night. Without saying a word, he extended his arm to his wife and escorted her from the room.
Clementine, sure that the detestable element had departed, returned to the salon. “They won’t find anyone out there,” she said. “Any interloper will have run off long before now.”
“Important to make a show of strength, just in case, I suppose,” Mrs. Lovell said, her voice grudging, as if she understood the need to turn out the house in a search and yet also knew it was pointless to do so.
“Poor Dorothy, she was shaking like a leaf. Whoever she ran into, it was a horrid experience for her,” was Mrs. Haldane’s only contribution.
“And we will never know who it was,” Mrs. Lovell replied as she walked over to the tray on the table and poured herself another tot of brandy. She lifted it with an inquiring look at Clementine, who nodded, and she poured her a glass, obviously knowing better than to ask Mrs. Haldane, who did not even drink wine with her dinner.
Clementine took the glass and sipped the old brandy. It warmed a path down her throat, tight with disgust at the discourteous behavior of both Wickham and Haldane to their wives. I would rather make hats for a living than try to share a life with either of those vile men, she thought as she pondered the fate of Mrs. Wickham, Mrs. Haldane, and other women imprisoned in marriage to men who did not care for them. She tilted the glass and finished her brandy—enjoying the heat it created in the center of her chest.
Mr. Haldane returned to inform them that the grounds of the house appeared to be empty and that tomorrow he would report the incident to the police. He addressed the three of them as if they were dim-witted.
“She must have come across a tramp; the countryside is full of riffraff looking for a free meal at the scullery door or a chicken to steal. Now, ladies, please, no more little walks in the moonlight.” He barked out a contemptuous laugh and left as abruptly as he had arrived.
Violent things happen in this man’s house to his guests and he trots out these implausible reasons as if none of us has a brain in our heads, thought Clementine. And she wondered again why Mrs. Wickham, who had chosen to eat her dinner in her room, had worn not only an elaborate evening gown but also a necklace of pearls around her neck for a solitary stroll in the garden.
She suddenly felt very tired and yearned for the quiet of her room. She got to her feet and said good night, and as she left the room she heard Mrs. Lovell say to her friend, “I have some arnica upstairs, Maud, let’s go and do something with that wrist you sprained pruning your roses.”
* * *
“It was quite the strangest thing I have ever encountered, Jackson.” Clementine reported the bizarre events of her evening to her housekeeper as Mrs. Jackson concentrated on the twenty-two buttons at the back of Clementine’s evening dress.
“Did anyone ask Mrs. Wickham why she was outside alone at that time of night, m’lady?”
“Yes, I did, but I don’t think Mrs. Wickham answered truthfully. I think she was worried that someone might find out what she had been up to; she did not want anyone to come into the salon, not even the footman. Mrs. Haldane said Mrs. Wickham was ‘incorrigible’ and I had the distinct impression that neither she nor Mrs. Lovell seemed to think that her being outside alone at night was out of the ordinary. Mrs. Wickham certainly didn’t want anyone investigating outside for a culprit.”
“It all seems very odd, m’lady,” Mrs. Jackson said automatically as she concentrated on the last button.
“Yes, it was very strange behavior. Even though Mrs. Lovell and Mrs. Haldane initially did not appear to be surprised that she had been outside alone at night, they were quite shaken by what had happened to her, and quite worried by it, too. There is always a reason for peculiar behavior among a group of people who have lost one of their close friends to violent death.” Clementine, now in her nightgown and dressing gown, climbed up onto her bed and sat with her back supported by a bank of feather pillows.
“Jackson, please make yourself comfortable so we may examine these strange events together. If I tell you my impressions perhaps you can quiz me into thinking more deeply about what happened. My head is in such a whirl, I am sure that I am missing something about the awful things that happened in this miserable house this evening.”
Mrs. Jackson sat down in the chair at the foot of the bed, and Clementine closed her eyes, the better to visualize bizarre events as she spoke.
“After a disastrously uncivilized dinner, I was quite ready to say good night. It was all so very heavy-going. At the end of this miserable meal, Mr. Haldane called his wife to one side outside the dining-room door and, within listening distance of her friends, scolded and criticized her so thoroughly that she was cast quite low all evening. The man is a complete lout.”
Mrs. Jackson shook her head at the behavior of uncouth men.
“Mr. Wickham stayed with Mr. Haldane in the dining room after dinner—I find his behavior to his wife quite petulant and ungracious as well. I have no idea where Mr. Wickham spent the rest of his evening after port, for he did not appear until much later on, when he was called down to see to his very distressed wife.”
Mrs. Jackson remained silent as Clementine went forward in recounting the events of her evening.
“Moments after we had gathered in the salon, Mrs. Bartholomew, looking quite exhausted, poor woman, retired for the night. So there was Mrs. Lovell, Mrs. Haldane, and myself left in the Salon Vert as they insist on calling it—why are the aspiring classes so precious? We were on the brink of retiring, too, when Mrs. Wickham came bursting into the conservatory.” She quickly recounted Mrs. Wickham’s arrival and the subsequent conversations that followed.
“Ask away, Jackson. I can see you are bristling with questions.”
“Certainly, m’lady. You say that Mrs. Lovell and Mrs. Haldane did not seem surprised that Mrs. Wickham had been out in the grounds at night, alone.”
“No, they did not. Initially, that is. You remember I mentioned Mrs. Haldane’s expression ‘incorrigible’? Well, it was her first reaction when we found Mrs. Wickham in the conservatory. Then of course we got the poor thing inside and we could see how terribly hurt she was. And even though Mrs. Lovell was
kind to the very distressed Mrs. Wickham, she was certainly questioning the truth of what she was hearing. And then both Mrs. Lovell and Mrs. Haldane seemed to have a complete change of heart when I asked Mrs. Wickham if she was sure she had not recognized her attacker, and just like that,” she waved her hand in the air, “they both decided that she had been attacked by a tramp. Odd, very odd. Looking back on it all, nothing about the conversation between the three of them seemed right, somehow.”
“Then may I pose some questions to you now, m’lady? Perhaps they will help clarify a little?”
“What? Oh yes, that’s a good idea. Fire away, Jackson.”
“Why do you think she was outside in the garden after ten o’clock at night, m’lady?”
“We know that she had eaten her dinner upstairs alone in her room and then she said she went for a walk to clear her head, but she was dressed in a very expensive and lovely evening dress and her jewelry … and now I come to think of it, she was wearing flowers in her hair. No woman dresses like that when she plans to spend an evening in her room, alone, with dinner on a tray.”
“The flowers in her hair, were they roses from the garden she was walking in, perhaps?”
“No, it was a spray of little white flowers, they smelled quite delicious.” She saw an aha expression light up her housekeeper’s eyes.
“So she was outside to meet someone then, m’lady?”
“Yes, I think Mrs. Wickham went to meet a gentleman, someone she had arranged an assignation with. She either came across someone else, who maliciously attacked her, or the person she was meeting quarreled with her and did that to her. Or she met the man she had arranged to meet, and was discovered by her husband, or perhaps someone else. Of course she might have been attacked by a tramp, but that seems a bit far-fetched to me. Tramps are not that bold. They are much more likely to attack someone walking along a lonely country road—to rob them.”
“But who was she there to meet, m’lady, was it someone from inside the house, do you think?”
“She wanted to impress whomever she was meeting, so I do not imagine for one moment it was her husband, but we must check up on everyone’s whereabouts, Jackson. And we also need to find out where Mr. Wickham was after dinner because maybe it was simply a matter of him discovering her with another man. Mr. Urquhart did tell us that Mr. Wickham got very angry over the Mr. Bartholomew business. It all seems rather sordid, and hole-in-the-corner, to my mind.
“When Mrs. Wickham had calmed down a little and Mrs. Haldane and Mrs. Lovell were talking among themselves, I had the opportunity to ask Mrs. Wickham if she thought the person who had attacked her knew who she was. And before she could think she said yes. I think I find that one of the most significant things about everything that happened this evening. Mrs. Wickham did not recognize her attacker, or she said she did not, but she said she thought the attacker recognized her. Of course how would she know a thing like that? I mean, really know it? I think she gave an instinctive and honest response to my question. The only truthful answer she gave all evening. I can’t decide if this might mean that the person she went to meet attacked her and she is too frightened to tell us who he is, or that it was her husband who discovered her and punished her in that terrible way and she does not want to admit it.” She tucked her bare feet under the coverlet and realized how tired she was. She glanced at the clock on the mantel. it was well after one o’clock.
“Where did Mrs. Wickham say she was when she went outside, m’lady?” Mrs. Jackson got up from her chair by the bed and found her notebook and pencil.
“First she said she had walked to the croquet lawn through the shrubbery and back, and then she sort of added that she had walked on to the rose garden. Both places are at opposite ends of the gardens. I think she was lying about where she was.”
“Yes, I think so too, m’lady. Where else could she have been?”
“If she was not in the rose garden or the shrubbery…” A moment of introspection and then Clementine laughed. “Jackson, this is just like a guessing game—like charades or consequences. Mrs. Wickham met someone by appointment in a very beautiful evening dress … Good heavens, I have just remembered the lace hem of her gown had picked up some dusty cobwebs and little bits of dried leaf. So where had she been? Where would she have picked up cobwebs and dead leaves? It was a place she did not want to admit to being in, since she lied about it. She also said she had been knocked to the floor, not the ground.”
“Do you think it was one of the buildings in the garden, then, m’lady?” Mrs. Jackson looked up from making notes in her book.
“Yes, I do.” Clementine mentally ran through various structures in the gardens that afforded the seclusion of a meeting place and that might have a leafy floor and cobwebby corners. “She might have been in the rose arbor, the summer house, or perhaps she was in a potting shed … Oh, for heaven’s sake, it was the orangery.” Clementine clapped her hands together, threw back her head, and laughed in delight. “She had a little sprig of orange blossom in her hair. As if she had broken it off a nearby tree and tucked it behind one ear … for her romantic tryst.” And looking across at her housekeeper she realized that Mrs. Jackson had guessed the orangery several minutes ago.
“I think you are right, m’lady, the orangery was unlocked this evening for the first time since Mr. Bartholomew was found there.”
“And, I am sure the orangery is perfect for assignations: it is far from the house and completely private. But it was a strange rendezvous because her lovely gown was ripped at the neck, and there were bruises on her shoulders and back. She was most certainly attacked or treated very roughly, but was that done by the man she met there?” Clementine remembered seeing Mr. Haldane marching from his house with a stick over his shoulder. Was this the first time he had gone out into the grounds of his house that night? Is this why his wife had looked so uneasy as she stood in the salon and had leaped so enthusiastically on the idea that a tramp had attacked Mrs. Wickham?
She looked at her housekeeper, whose eyes were fixed intently on her face as she nodded her encouragement. “First thing tomorrow morning we must investigate the orangery, Jackson. It is more than just coincidence that Mrs. Wickham was attacked in the very place that Mr. Bartholomew died, surely? And we must find out where Mr. Haldane and Mr. Wickham were at the time she was attacked. But why on earth would she choose to spend time in the orangery after what happened there earlier this year?”
Chapter Thirteen
At nine o’clock on the following morning, Lady Montfort and Mrs. Jackson walked down to the dining room together for breakfast. They were alone in the sunny room, as Mr. Haldane liked to eat his breakfast at an early hour and Mrs. Haldane’s guests were taking breakfast in their rooms, the footman informed them.
“Any news of the man loitering in the grounds last night?” asked Lady Montfort.
“Not a sign, m’lady. We searched for nearly an hour and found no one.”
“Then we will assume it is safe to venture out into the gardens,” Lady Montfort added, and the young man said yes indeed it was certainly safe to venture out today.
Mrs. Jackson had lain awake for several hours in the night, deep in thought well into the small hours. She had heard the Bishop’s Hever church clock sound the nightly hour across the fields and woodland that separated Hyde Castle from the village. She wondered if somewhere under the protective covering of a hedgerow a gentleman of the road slept in a dry ditch, lying low after the commotion he had caused at the castle. Somehow she doubted it; if there were tramps in the neighborhood none of them had been skulking in Hyde Castle’s gardens earlier that night.
She had turned restlessly in her bed, her mind questing for reasons as to whom Mrs. Wickham, dressed in her most lovely dress, had walked to meet in the quiet secrecy of the orangery. And if she had gone to the orangery for a romantic appointment, how had she known that it was no longer locked up, or, more relevant, how had the man she was to meet there known that the orangery was open
? As the early August dawn began to break she drifted off, to wake after two hours of deep sleep, unrefreshed and fuzzy-headed but with some sort of an answer to her question.
Mrs. Wickham might not have known that the orangery was unlocked. But she had certainly been told by the man she was to meet there that it was. And the only people who knew that the orangery was open were the head gardener, Mr. Clark; Mr. Stafford; and, because she had been with him when Mr. Stafford had told her that he had the key, Mr. Evans. This realization had brought Mrs. Jackson upright in her untidy bed to stare across her fancy bedroom at the little silver clock ticking away the minutes on the writing bureau at six o’clock in the morning. Within the half hour she was up, washed, dressed, and sitting at her dressing table with her notebook.
Mrs. Wickham had certainly not gone to the orangery to meet Mr. Clark. Mrs. Jackson had seen the head gardener only from a distance, albeit one that did not prevent her from noticing that he was a bent old man, with surely no interest whatsoever in the business of secret meetings. Perhaps Mrs. Wickham had an admirer who was staying somewhere locally, but since neither Bishop’s Hever nor four-miles-distant Old Netherford had an inn or public house that put up guests, then she must assume for the time being that Mrs. Wickham’s assignation had been with someone closer to home. She wrote three names in her notebook.
Her mind went back to the talk Miss Jekyll had given to the Hyde Rose Society about harmony of colors for herbaceous borders on their first evening at the castle. She remembered that Mrs. Wickham had spent quite some time in animated conversation with Mr. Stafford. Her behavior had been playful and, Mrs. Jackson’s mouth came down at the corners in disapproval, inappropriate for a married woman. But surely there was nothing of the ladies’ man about her friend. He would no more meet a married woman in the orangery than plant a garden with hybrid tea roses. But Mrs. Wickham, although not exactly pretty, had a pert manner and an energetic flirtatiousness about her that often appealed to a certain type. She sat hunched forward in her chair, her forehead wrinkled in concentration. And Mr. Evans is quite definitely that type of man, she thought as she remembered his devious behavior yesterday afternoon when he had led her into the covered walkway in such a sly fashion.